Summary:

8 AM - Sitting in the ballroom. Terry is back.
8:45 AM - Breakfast. Laughing about Will Ferrel.
9:30ish AM - Personal practice. Moving Force is in the air.
11:30ish AM - Work in the circle. MB takes over for Martin on lunch duty.

1 PM Lunch. Potato-Cauliflower-Cheese soup, bread, salad.
2 PM Personal practice, while clean-up is ongoing.
2:30 PM Down in the basement, amplified.
4:20 Brief tea break.
4:35 Amplified rehearsal.
5:30 Victor heads upstairs to cook.

6:30 Dinner. Greg arrives. Bean burritos. The "Drunken Philosopher's Song."

Evening semi-off (Victor Meli and Terry to Sweeper's rehearsal)
Dev and Glenn work on "Derailed."
Dev, Glenn, MB and Martin: Amplified rehearsal in the basement. Circulation. Moving Force.

Martin Bradburn

Up late, very tired. Dev and Glen are getting sick. Sitting seems hard for the group. Terry has an injured toe. Jovial breakfast with talk of SNL. Personal Practice, doing the counting exercise and crosspicking. MB took my spot on lunch prep so we could continue repertoire work. Lunch then personal practice and amplified circle in the basement, with some technical sound issues. We definitely need more of this type of rehearsal. Dinner is Victor's burrioto's and the previous joke about solids (in the fake half and half) returns. Greg (Meli's guy) joins us for dinner and Glen and I break into "The Philosophers Song". For those Python enthusiasts the song was not done during the original "The Bruces" sketch as aired, but was added later during live performances.

Immanuel Kant was a real piss-ant who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could
drink you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume Schopenhauer and Hegel.
And Whittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.

There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach 'ya
'bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.

John Stewart Mill, of his own free will
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato they say could stick it away,
Half a crate of whiskey every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
And Hobbes was fond of his dram.
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart.
"I drink, therefore I am."

Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed.

After dinner Meli,Terry and Victor headed out for Sweeper rehearsal and the remaining team worked in the basement on circulations. MB and Glen when shopping and upon returning we listened to some song from Get Crafty and the Level 3 in Atlanta recordings. The Level 3 stuff seems really fast, especially on EotN where I think the piece suffers. Meli returns for the last night in the basement, Ya! Dessert and bed. Dev seems not as sick, but Glen sounds like he's in the worst of it.

Glenn Hughes

Monday: Up at 7, but had awaken prior to that time, with a nose full of snot. I had been snoring more intensely than usual, and MB had been prodding me, in the hopes of silencing the nose. Todays events were seen through the lens of a head cold. I had a big cup of tea, while waiting for the troops to show up. Sitting, in the last five minutes of which, I felt like I was about to heave from too much tea on an empty stomach.

Breakfast, falling into a rhythm. We had some loud guffaws, recalling Will Ferrel skits. This was perhaps the high point of the day. Terry was thankfully back.

Personal practice time. I showed Terry the rest of Moving Force, and we played through it a few times. Then, Terry and I worked with Victor for a while on the same. There's an interesting sensation that I've had a few times playing this piece where the movement from my elbow seems to dominate, and my wrist moves very little. Or perhaps they seem balanced. Also interesting experiences working with doing my best to concentrate on just projecting the feeling of the piece, rather than really thinking about the technical aspects. This seems to be the glimmering of a good direction.

At some point, I was playing some of the Jake's II gig from Atlanta. Victor commented that it sounded a bit tense. Yes, it sure does. The funny thing is some of the pieces are perfectly lovely: Butterfly, for example.

Before lunch, we circled up, and worked on our standard numbers. Little performance notes. MB took over from Martin on Lunch, since Martin was needed in the circle. She did a nice job of fixing a salad, and laying out the goods.

We had some time for personal practice after lunch. I worked more on the JM modal exercises, and a little thing I've been writing. Victor gathered us back up, and we did more work in the circle, working through our repertoire.

At Victor's request, Terry and I set up a PA in the basement, and we all went down and plugged in. Amplified rehearsal. Around 4:20, we had a tea break. I used it to put a wet towel on my face, and lie down for a couple of minutes. Then, more amplified rehearsal. Around 5:30, Victor headed upstairs to cook dinner. I set out the ingredients for him, and turned the kitchen over.

More personal practice as Victor cooked. He showed me a bit of Derailed by the Junction (he'd already shown Dev a part as well). I took another little lie-down. Greg showed up around 6:30, and we ate Victor's bean burritos. Not exactly the way I had envisioned them, but tasty none-the-less. Terry tried to make a swan out of a burrito wrapper. Some Python hilarity, including Martin and myself singing the "Drunken Philosopher's Song."

Victor, Meli, Terry and Greg headed out. V, M and T had Sweeper's rehearsal. We cleaned up then relaxed for a little while. Dev and I traded "Derailed" bits, then listened to the version on "Get Crafty." Hard to see how we can learn this piece, and have it rehearsed to performance level, by Friday.

Down basement for some amplified rehearsal with Dev, myself, Martin and MB. Some quite nice circulations, groving on the four beat feel. Then, some work with Moving Force, Dev showing MB and Martin the bass.

MB and I drove out and picked up a few groceries at the Star Market. It was quite dead seeming around the neighborhood. People were probably either traveling, or nursing hangovers. Put the stuff away back home. Chatted some in the living room with Dev and Martin, listening to Get Crafty and Jake's II. Meli returned. Some pie and ice cream in the kitchen with all five of us, trying to tell jokes. As I headed to bed, Dev said "You're sort of funny when you're all groggy and sick." To which I replied "Well, I must do it more often then."

Mary Beth Abel Hughes

Up and going around 7 AM. I should make this a habit. It's nice to get the cat box all tidy in the early am. Sitting on the stool today. Breakfast and then to work. G made nice cinnamon toast. Tales of basement cameraderie among M, Me, and D. Practice again in the Hughes war room. I was pretty diligent. Then, group work. All my EotN work seemed to have resulted in better intro and melody playing, but I messed up all over in the burbles part. Bartok got lost. I really only know patterns. As a result, everything seems encased in body memory. When, I'm alone all is well and I probably don't notice my mistakes as accurately. With the group, the change in environment, others, other perceptions, can throw off my sense of a song.
I made lunch for Ma so that he could practice with the group. G's cauliflower, cheese, carrot soup. V said it was his favorite soup, but I thought to myself that it might be possible that the world has never seen cauliflower, carrot, cheese soup. As with breakfast, we ate and got back to work. I did pretty well going from 2 to group time. We worked and then moved to the basement to try out being "plugged in." Tea then back to the basement. During tea, Me ate a lot of choc chip cookies and so did I. More basement tales. More plug in time, then we separated so that V could make dinner.
I stopped my practice around 6 PM, stretched and went down for the 6:15 PM sitting to find the kitchen a flurry. Folks pitched in to help finish up dinner. No sitting, but good burritos. Somehow V was inspired to ask us all if we had been in a school play as kids (or what was our first play). Interesting responses. Gr, Me's boyfriend joined for dinner. He was a tap dancer as a kid. Ma and G demonstrate talent for Monty Python recitation. Lots of hilarity. Call from CW gave me an opportunity to decline adding more to my plate of activities.
V, T, and Me left after dinner for Sweepers practice, group dish washing. More practice. Then, G, Ma, and D and I went to the basement to get plugged in a do a circulation. It went pretty well. Fun talking about the uniqueness of GC circulations. Apparently, it doesn't work very well if the instruments are different, but can with voices. I think circulations can be very beautiful. D taught Ma and me the bass line for Moving Force.
Upstairs, G and I go to get food supplies on a windy, spooky night. Leave Ma and D in charge of cats and home. Back and listening to GC music. Me comes home from Sweepers practice exhausted. We eat pie. Horrid jokes, long jokes, and badly told jokes result in joke-telling coaching. I learn about rock star fame from Me. G trots to bed and I follow evenually. That's the play by play.
It's almost like I didn't have thoughts today. Mostly, I did my aims...of being present and focussed. But felt quiet all day. Generally, rather boring without much to contribute, verbally anyway. C Reeve died. I managed to do the 35-40 rounds of EotN in honor of him. That means I met the goal of playing this 40 times. More tomorrow of course. I'd like to start a dance group and name it The Quiet People. Did I write this already? Feeling empty, peaceful, and insulated. Da is still sick but may come tomorrow...the ick has spread to G and maybe De.