Ya know back in the old days it was called a sacbut.....

Just got done practicing.

I play the trombone. Have since the 6th grade when I just kinda fell into it. I was taken to the middle school I was going to attend in the latter part of summer before my 6th grade year began and was pretty much told to pick an instrument. Now originally I was wanting to play the drums (percussion) but with my mother's sanity and hearing on the line I was told that I really needed to know how to play piano before even attempting to bang a drum. So, on to the piccolo. Yea right. Then the assistant band director picked up the long instrument , told me it was a trombone , and to buzz my lips and blow here. Well I did. I let out a big SPLAT, right at the same time the head band director for the school was in my crosshairs. It was enough to stop him in his path and look right at me and exclaim "Now that is a Trombone Player!" Well, not one to ignore fate, I settled on that instrument.

My trombone playing has allowed me to literally go places. I have been to all sorts of cities and played in all sorts of facilities and universities in high school and college. Its been a pretty cool ride. Once I graduated college I just stopped except for playing every 4 years at my university's Band Alumni Reunion ( that would be the University of Notre Dame Marching Band). Well, I got the bug again. I went to Northpark Mall in Dallas and heard the North Dallas Trombone Choir for a Christmas performance. 15 men and women playing trombone for a nice sized holiday crowd. That got the juices flowing. Thankfully they do not mandate tryouts to join. All I had to do was show up at the practices. I have been going the last month and our first performance is this Friday. I am pretty excited to be performing again. It has been going well and being a pretty decent player I have been doing pretty good.


On another note I was very happy with the Patriots performance last night. My wife wasn't but I was ( eventhough she is also an ND grad). This is another notch in Charlie Weis' belt and hopefully with a win at the SuperBowl, another ring. Of course my motive is that with a new Superbowl ring and a good first year as ND head coach he is going to start getting the players that will bring back the reputation that ND had in the early 1990s.

My son, Alex lost another tooth today and doesn't have very many baby teeth to go. Also, he got called back to do a second round of testing for the Talented & Gifted program in his school district. I am pretty proud of him and hope he does well. He is a bright kid but the last thing we are doing is pressuring him. We wanted to have him try out for it just to see how he would do but we were not expecting to actually get in. Now we are half way there so lets see how it goes.