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Two straight nights at home. How dull.
Two straight days in the local office with no appointments. How needed.
July is about to breathe its last. For that final day tomorrow, I will be out on the road, and might even be out at one thing or another tomorrow night, but these days helped me get ready for some busy days ahead.
Not as busy as I'd feared, thankfully: the first of those jury trials I mentioned last week was coming up fast on me for August 5th, and the only solace was that my opponent seemed less inclined to conduct it than even I was. We also got word that the judge's father- himself a political figure of statewide renown- had died over the weekend, which might have independently led to rescheduling. It wound up settling today, and as long as I get a one-page document signed tomorrow, that albatross will be packed away.
While waiting for word on it yesterday, I worked on finishing and submitting my outline materials for a continuing ed seminar I'm speaking at in September. This one is about the sixth different iteration of the subject material that I've done for them, and it's dull as dishwater, but I get obscene amounts of continuing ed credit for presenting my hourish section, plus free regular credit for listening through everybody else's. Even better, they now offer an option to "pay" their speakers by comping an additional one of their daylong seminars anytime in the year following the program. I still haven't used mine from the one I did last year, and I finally found one I can attend that will burn another 7 hours of my biannual obligation in August before I have to turn in my compliance report in November. They used to offer a $10 per attendee "honorarium" to the panel- the whole panel. With four of us splitting the topics on this one, I'd have been lucky to make ten bucks. And these things are cash cows for the "provider," with the going rate being over $300 per attendee for the seven hours, the above pittance going to the faculty, a hotel maybe charging $500 for the room and the snacks (lunch is "on your own"), a minion being paid another $100 or so to take attendance and pass out the certificates, and whatever their advertising budget is.
The rest of this week on the August side of the line is quiet to start, but then things pick up. A longtime client already asked me to make an appearance on that now-freed Monday afternoon. Tuesday is Return To Where It Didn't Go Well last week, already living up to advance expectations of more of the same since the client has been ghosting me for the past two weeks and needed to have something in to me today. Then it's quiet until Friday, when another sometime ghost may or may not have haunted me in advance of the date.
All of that's pretty ordinary, but August will also be full of memorable days. I've mentioned many of them here in past years and will likely again; they tie into the places I've moved, the journeys I've begun and ended, and this year at least, the sport and music that keeps me going. For on the week that I will mark my about-permanent departure from Long Island 42 Augusts ago, I will be returning to it (events in Queens and Manhattan, but the old homestead awaits in between) for my only 2019 appearance in the presence of Mets.
I picked this homestand because it ties in with a much rarer event: a chance to see a longago high school friend in concert, in his band's only US stop on a whirlwind worldwide tour. When I met Freddie more than 50 years ago, we were both kids who got assigned to the clarinet by our elementary school band teacher. I was gently steered to the bass clarinet, where my lack of virtuoso skills would do less harm; Freddie eventually found his way to the sax, which has led him to a band, a 25 year career and more than a dozen albums. Somehow, I've never managed to see them perform, and this year's tour makes a one-night stop at home for a change of reeds and underwear, with a performance that night at New York's Irridium on August 28th.
Once that note got put on the staff, I looked to either side of it to see what the Mets were up to, and they're home from the 27th to 29th against those same Chicago Cubs who, 50 years ago, were kind enough to get scared by a little kitty cat and get out of our way for the Amazin' Miracle of 1969:
I settled on getting tickets to the game the night before Freddie's show, so I'd have a backup plan in case of rain: if it got turned into a Wednesday day game, fine, or I could stay one more day and see them on the Thursday. With the team's fortunes being down if not completely out, tickets were cheap and easy to come by, and I am getting to see a onetime teacher and now dear friend who will be coming with his wife and possibly a kid or two to join us at Citi Field. And others from our old home town may join us as well. It won't be easy getting there: the Monday before is full of court hearings in Buffalo, and then the morning of the Met game I have to begin in Rochester returning to the scene of the reaming from last week- hopefully with a more cooperative client in tow this time. So it'll likely be a straight nonstop shot down the 90 to 81 (never a sure thing in summertime) and finally the Deegan, hopefully arriving in time for pregame festivitating.
But that's getting almost a month ahead. First, a little bit of julio remains- before memories take me back to the old schoolyard;)
Two straight days in the local office with no appointments. How needed.
July is about to breathe its last. For that final day tomorrow, I will be out on the road, and might even be out at one thing or another tomorrow night, but these days helped me get ready for some busy days ahead.
Not as busy as I'd feared, thankfully: the first of those jury trials I mentioned last week was coming up fast on me for August 5th, and the only solace was that my opponent seemed less inclined to conduct it than even I was. We also got word that the judge's father- himself a political figure of statewide renown- had died over the weekend, which might have independently led to rescheduling. It wound up settling today, and as long as I get a one-page document signed tomorrow, that albatross will be packed away.
While waiting for word on it yesterday, I worked on finishing and submitting my outline materials for a continuing ed seminar I'm speaking at in September. This one is about the sixth different iteration of the subject material that I've done for them, and it's dull as dishwater, but I get obscene amounts of continuing ed credit for presenting my hourish section, plus free regular credit for listening through everybody else's. Even better, they now offer an option to "pay" their speakers by comping an additional one of their daylong seminars anytime in the year following the program. I still haven't used mine from the one I did last year, and I finally found one I can attend that will burn another 7 hours of my biannual obligation in August before I have to turn in my compliance report in November. They used to offer a $10 per attendee "honorarium" to the panel- the whole panel. With four of us splitting the topics on this one, I'd have been lucky to make ten bucks. And these things are cash cows for the "provider," with the going rate being over $300 per attendee for the seven hours, the above pittance going to the faculty, a hotel maybe charging $500 for the room and the snacks (lunch is "on your own"), a minion being paid another $100 or so to take attendance and pass out the certificates, and whatever their advertising budget is.
The rest of this week on the August side of the line is quiet to start, but then things pick up. A longtime client already asked me to make an appearance on that now-freed Monday afternoon. Tuesday is Return To Where It Didn't Go Well last week, already living up to advance expectations of more of the same since the client has been ghosting me for the past two weeks and needed to have something in to me today. Then it's quiet until Friday, when another sometime ghost may or may not have haunted me in advance of the date.
All of that's pretty ordinary, but August will also be full of memorable days. I've mentioned many of them here in past years and will likely again; they tie into the places I've moved, the journeys I've begun and ended, and this year at least, the sport and music that keeps me going. For on the week that I will mark my about-permanent departure from Long Island 42 Augusts ago, I will be returning to it (events in Queens and Manhattan, but the old homestead awaits in between) for my only 2019 appearance in the presence of Mets.
I picked this homestand because it ties in with a much rarer event: a chance to see a longago high school friend in concert, in his band's only US stop on a whirlwind worldwide tour. When I met Freddie more than 50 years ago, we were both kids who got assigned to the clarinet by our elementary school band teacher. I was gently steered to the bass clarinet, where my lack of virtuoso skills would do less harm; Freddie eventually found his way to the sax, which has led him to a band, a 25 year career and more than a dozen albums. Somehow, I've never managed to see them perform, and this year's tour makes a one-night stop at home for a change of reeds and underwear, with a performance that night at New York's Irridium on August 28th.
Once that note got put on the staff, I looked to either side of it to see what the Mets were up to, and they're home from the 27th to 29th against those same Chicago Cubs who, 50 years ago, were kind enough to get scared by a little kitty cat and get out of our way for the Amazin' Miracle of 1969:
I settled on getting tickets to the game the night before Freddie's show, so I'd have a backup plan in case of rain: if it got turned into a Wednesday day game, fine, or I could stay one more day and see them on the Thursday. With the team's fortunes being down if not completely out, tickets were cheap and easy to come by, and I am getting to see a onetime teacher and now dear friend who will be coming with his wife and possibly a kid or two to join us at Citi Field. And others from our old home town may join us as well. It won't be easy getting there: the Monday before is full of court hearings in Buffalo, and then the morning of the Met game I have to begin in Rochester returning to the scene of the reaming from last week- hopefully with a more cooperative client in tow this time. So it'll likely be a straight nonstop shot down the 90 to 81 (never a sure thing in summertime) and finally the Deegan, hopefully arriving in time for pregame festivitating.
But that's getting almost a month ahead. First, a little bit of julio remains- before memories take me back to the old schoolyard;)