Los Altos Ye Olde Towne Band concert this afternoon was excellent, the weather was perfect, I hit most of the high notes (and my lips are not happy about that), and the audience was very appreciative. They spelled my name wrong in the program, and put me down playing Baritone sax instead of baritone horn, but I'll get that fixed for next month. I'm just happy to have found such a fun group to rehearse and perform with. I love conductor John DeLoach's style, he's positive, great sense of humor, gives easy to read cues and if there's something in a piece which needs special attention, prior to starting the piece he'll walk over to the section in question and let them know what he's looking for. If there's an especially tough part, during rehearsal he'll warn the section which has the part (usually the trumpets) and make sure they're okay with giving it a try (they always are). I also like that we have women tuba players. During this concert John pointed out soloists and important sections after we played a piece. Best line of the afternoon, I think was him pointing out the front row (flutes, piccolos) and crediting them with having the most notes to play.
Home, changed out of my concert uniform, into cutoffs and a lightweight shirt, grabbed my camera and went to the east bay photo meetup, which was followed by a shoot at Shinn Park & Arboretum. I thought we were going to get to shoot models, but it turned out one of the organizers was doing a private shoot and merely invited us to be at the same place at the same time. There really isn't much to photograph there, some flowers and such, I decided to use the opportunity to see if my flash worked the way the manual said. Total fail. Everything was overexposed and off-color. Big WTF that the semi-pro Nikon D300 doesn't communicate TTL info with the $400 Nikon SB-800 flash. The next notch lower D80 works just fine. You would think the higher-end camera would work better, not worse. No usable photos this time out.
Saw a Hooters was on the way to the park, decided to drop in for Monday Night Football and wings. Had wings and buffalo shrimp with their new parmesan-garlic sauce. Too sweet & salty. I'll stick to their mild normal sauce. Excellent service, but the place was almost empty - odd for a sports bar this time of year. Fremont has no economy and just lost the auto plant, so maybe not a huge surprise.
Chatted with the parental units. Nothing new. They survived two rounds of children visits, now all is quiet.
Plans for tomorrow:
Job hunt
Monday Night Football
