A Couple of Days in Late Summer
I'm still not sleeping to well - well, a combination of "not too well" and "not enough" - this week, so I am pretty bushed by now. And I've been taking it pretty easy, too.
Yesterday was payday, so I quickly went out and squandered a bunch of money. I found a used copy of Steve Winwood's boxed set, The Finer Things. I've always liked Winwood, although I always felt he feel just a little short of being a first-tier rock artist. His work with Traffic is brilliant (and the stuff here from that era that I hadn't heard before is just as good), but his earlier stuff is rather rough pop material, and his later stuff is perhaps a little too polished, and a lot too reliant on synthesizers. Still, it's a nice set. Certainly all the Winwood that anyone really needs to own.
I also bought a scale and a few other odds-and-ends. I weighed myself, and I weigh about 233 lbs, which I think is about ten pounds less than when I weighed myself when I visited John in June. So I guess this biking really is doing me some good. We'll see how well I can do over the next couple of months of biking, and whether weighing myself more frequently helps or hinders my progress.
Truthfully, 233 lbs is quite a bit lighter than my worst fears. Earlier this year I was afraid I had ballooned up into the 260 or 270 range, but clearly that's not the case. Not that wanting to lose between 30 and 50 pounds isn't a significant goal (especially since I have little interest in doing serious dieting), but it's a far cry from 70 to 90 pounds.
After work yesterday I finished watching my stock of Batman/Superman cartoons - it turns out that both series I'm taping are now often re-running episodes I've seen - and spent a few hours head-down in football stats. Yeesh.
I met Karen at the capitol square for Jazz at Five, the weekly series of live jazz held outside during August and early September. Karen ended up losing track of time and was 20 minutes late, which left me a little concerned since I was afraid I simply hadn't been able to find her. We pulled up a piece of pavement and spent about two and a half hours listening.
The first group was a piano/bass/drum trio, who were pretty good. I'm finding, though, that groups smaller than a quartet have to be more than "pretty good" for me to really get into them. I like, for instance, the Oscar Peterson Trio because Peterson is such a kick-ass pianist. So this live trio didn't move me that much, but they were enjoyable. Their bassist - Jeff Eckels - is probably the best known of the three, since he plays on Michael Feldman's Whad'ya Know?, and he did quite a bit of soloing. But I think I just prefer quartets and quintets, something with a sax or trumpet fronting it.
(Funny how there seem to be fairly few well-known jazz trombonists.)
The second group was a latin jazz group, who were okay, but their music was more tightly orchestrated and a bit repetitive (and danceable), so after a while I felt that I got the idea. Karen seemed to agree, so we took off after four or five numbers. All in all, I'm sorry I missed the earlier Jazz at Five shows. Well, next year!
(Karen, by the way, had borrowed Joshua Redman's Moodswing and liked it. I think it's probably my single favorite jazz album I've yet heard.)
Afterwards I went down to the SF3 social gathering, lent a Babylon 5 tape to one of the folks there, and hung out for a while. I was feeling pretty groggy for much of it, though.
I postponed comic book night until tomorrow to go to the jazz show. Just as well, since I wouldn't have had any time to read them later anyway!
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