Updates and Twatnot...

I managed to get through the dental travails, none the worse for wear. I think we’ve settled on this new dental clinic as our permanent choice. They don’t push unnecessary procedures, and the appointment and co-pay process is painless. Aeyong has been there a few times, and things have gone relatively smoothly.

This spring has been a wet one for North Texas, and as luck would have it, the rains have come at a very inopportune time for us. I had started to address some bare spots in the lawn with a seed fabric (Growtrax), and while I was in the process, I thought it would make more sense to try and rejuvenate the entire front yard. Mother nature thought otherwise. The fabric is susceptible to high winds and heavy rain. We tried to time the installation for a calm day, which was several days before the next rain forecast.

We didn’t look close at the rain forecast, it was predicted at around 50% so we didn’t have much concern. Famous last words. We received record rainfall that weekend and similar torrential rains for the next two weekends. Much of the material and seeds washed out, leaving the lawn with many bare spots. I decided to put any lawn rejuvenation on hold until the spring rains had died down. That means late June at the earliest.

In the meantime, I think it was sometime in May that the upstairs HVAC started struggling. To cut the story short, several different companies came out, and all of them recommended a new system (surprise, surprise). We got a fairly wide range of estimates, none of which were cheap. During this process, an HVAC contractor (Atlas AC) that hosts a YouTube channel came up in my feed. I had watched a few of their videos and liked their transparency about the process and prices. As luck would have it, they are headquartered in Texas, and they serve our area.

They publish all their prices online, and there’s a tool to design your own system and get a cost estimate. The prices were much more reasonable and I didn’t have to worry about any gotchas or last-minute changes. I had them come out and estimate our needs, and then we purchased the new system. We had a few payment options, including paying cash outright, using our credit cards, or financing it through their affiliated credit company, CreditHuman.

We didn’t want to take on more debt just as we were getting close to paying off the only remaining debt we had, which was our mortgage. But, we didn’t want to use our emergency cash to pay for something we could get financed. We decided to withdraw $5K from our TSP (IRA), which has had a good year. We’ll end up paying a 10% early withdrawal penalty in addition to taxes, but for something as important as HVAC in Texas, we decided this was a worthy exception.

The install didn’t go as smoothly as desired, we had everything from one of the installers falling off the attic ladder (due to their own incompetence) as well as the outside condenser getting dented at some point in the delivery and installation process. The good news is that Atlas AC stands behind their services and products, and they came back out to replace the damaged condenser with a new one and assess and clean up some residual trash and damage. They also installed two new closet AC runs that were supposed to be installed during the initial visit. During the first visit, the installer removed the attic ladder hinges and springs, and when they put them back together, they didn’t replace some framing nails holding the ladder securely. The installer also damaged our wall when he fell. Atlas AC scheduled a handyman to come out and repair the damage. He’s been out to check and should return sometime next week to make the repairs. All’s well that ends well, and overall we’re happy with the result and will probably use them again when the downstairs unit inevitably needs replacement.

I’ve continued on my primary creative disciplines of 3D and guitar. The other disciplines have been on hold with all the additional concerns of the lawn, HVAC, Aeyong’s medical issues (routine) and the thousand little daily distractions. I resume my guitar studies at Berklee on Monday week, so I’ve been reviewing all the level 1-3 material as well as starting on the level 4 material. I should have enough remaining benefits to complete the Guitar Performance degree with only one semester of the private guitar instruction remaining that I’ll have to pay for myself. I’ve fought against a lack of motivation for more of the theory fire hydrant, but I know that if I don’t take advantage of these remaining benefits, I’ll likely look back on it as a failure. I hope with some deeper immersion (meaning more dedication to the guitar program), that I’ll finally be able to absorb this knowledge and these techniques into my automatic vocabulary on the instrument. All with the main goal of writing great songs, and not necessarily in line with the focus and intent of many of Berklee’s instructors.

As time is of the essence, I decided to try and finish (reset) my yard renovations before the start of the summer semester. While we were laying the yard fabric, a part of one of the rolls came loose and a bunch of seeds spilled out in a pile. We had already laid fabric around it and didn’t want to walk on it, so we just left the pile as it was. Lo and behold, that particular patch was the only part of the new lawn that grew in as thick and lush as we desired. The remainder of the fabric grew in sparse and thin. The good news is I finally have evidence that a thick, lush lawn is possible if the appropriate steps are taken.

I ended up watering with less volume but more frequently that I had with new seed in the past. The other lesson I think I’ve learned is that I need to ensure the seed is at least partially pushed into the soil as opposed to just broadcast spreading and hoping for the best. To that end, I decided to follow the lead of some successful YouTubers and employ several techniques for the first time. Namely, I’m getting five yards of enriched topsoil delivered so I can level out several low areas while providing a nutrient-dense base for the new seed. I’ll be using a lawn levelling rake to get the topsoil spread and levelled, and then I’ll probably give the topsoil a light scarification before laying down a new seed. I’ve purchased some common Bermuda with added fertilizer and some premium Bermuda hybrid seeds. Yesterday I scalped the lawn (for the second time this year), scarified the soil, and then laid down the Anderson’s PGF fertilizer in preparation for the new topsoil coming next week. I also need to install this yard barrier against the sidewalk to keep the new topsoil from washing out on the sidewalk.

When I ordered the topsoil, there was no rain forecast for the next several weeks, but, when I looked at today’s forecast, next week there is now, wait for it, rain in the forecast. I’ve already pulled the trigger on the topsoil and paid for it, and with Berklee starting up again the following week, there won’t be another good time until the fall. I don’t want to try to replant the yard during the hottest time of the year (July-August) despite reports that Bermuda can handle it.

Disillusionment

Despite some tentative optimism, this semester at Berklee has been more of the same vis á vis rigid application of theory, long lists of scales, arpeggios, chords to be swallowed and regurgitated for the sake of checking boxes. It occurred to me that, ironically, the most valuable musical courses for me have been those that were ostensibly a part of the production degree program.

Most of those courses were built on projects that we would create and develop throughout the semester, lending a sense of ownership and making the individual assignments that made up the whole possess a greater weight than another week’s bland arrangement of an old jazz standard to be played poorly and nitpicked for transcription and timing errors.

Most of the courses that make up the guitar degree program are of the jazzers, by the jazzers, for the jazzers. I shouldn’t be that surprised because it is Berklee and that’s kind of their calling card. I’ve found that I require a significant dose of creativity and ownership to be integral to effective learning, and without it, it’s just rote memorization that will evaporate in short order at semester’s end.

On that note(s), I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not likely to continue at Berklee. I think I’ve mentioned previously that the main reason for my return last year was to get the additional income courtesy of the housing allowance. This hasn’t changed and hasn’t helped in my engagement for these classes. The other key issue is that I had used up so much of my credits that I could only take core requirements and so all the guitar courses that I would take by preference were no longer going to receive benefit payments since I’d used up all my electives.

At best, I have enough benefits for one full time semester where I would get that housing allowance. There are only two remaining courses I can take, and both are likely to be theory fire hydrant swallow and regurgitate types that I’ve come to dread. It would be one thing if my frustrations with these courses was self-contained but I find that needing to spend hours per day to digest course requirements and the weekly grind of transcription, practice and performance tends to suck away any motivation I have for my other artistic disciplines.

Everything besides Berklee has been suffering in the last year…drums, keys, bass, vocals, drawing. I’ve held on to reserving time to work on 3D projects and tutorials, but even these are tempered by the daily Berklee distraction. Although I don’t like the idea of forfeiting a semester’s worth of housing allowance payments, I don’t think it’s worth the negative impact it has on my creative disciplines and motivation in general.

I’m taking next semester off regardless, so I won’t say I’ve made a final decision as I still have time to change my mind before my benefits expire in 2025. As of now, this feels like my last semester at Berklee. I’ll probably give myself time to reflect and post again on this at a later date.

A Tentative Change in Plans (for Berklee)

My plan had been that I would take one more semester, Winter 2025, and this would complete all my regular classes and up to level 4 (of 9) guitar lesson requirements. After emailing the financial advisors at Berklee, they worked out that I could take just the private lessons for four semesters and stretch out my benefits for longer than planned.

Since the private lesson is only 2 semester hours, it ends up not counting as much against my benefits as a full time course load would count. With this plan, I’d take just the private lesson for all four of the 2024 semesters, and then in the Winter 2025 semester I’d take my two remaining regular courses and the private lesson level 8 course.

Under that plan, when I get to Winter 2025 I’ll only have 13 days of benefits remaining, but the VA will extend your benefits to cover your last semester even if you only have one day remaining. The downside is that I won’t receive any housing benefits for those four semesters, but I would get them for the last semester. That’s just delaying the housing benefits by a year, so not really a significant change in that I’m not losing any potential benefits. Arguably I’m gaining a year of benefits that I handn’t planned on getting.

As it turns out, January 2025 is also our planned mortgage payoff date so we’ll be getting a few needed income bumps in that timeframe. Without the housing benefit for the next year, our cash balance will likely drop a bit, but we should be able to stretch things out enough until the house is paid off. Worst case scenario, we can dip into my 401K for a bit of cash to tide us over, but hopefully that won’t be necessary.

A Break for Gaming and then Back to the Grind...

I’ve been neck-deep in Baldur’s Gate III for nearly a month, and I just finished the game earlier this morning. It was one of the most satisfying experiences I’ve had in over forty years of gaming, dating back to the Atari 2600 and the nascent days of online gaming (Compuserve, anyone?) Larian Studios has had an incredible run since Divinity Original Sin I and II and now Baldur’s Gate III. In many ways, it’s the spiritual successor to DOS, with just a different setting.

Larian manages to get you heavily invested in the story of your main character as well as that of your allies. I found myself repeating boss battles that I had won just because one of the key allies had died and was unable to get brought back after the battle’s culmination. In the epilogue, a certain character’s story was drawing to the ultimate conclusion and I found myself overcome with emotion that it was truly over. Thankfully, they left an option open for future DLC or sequels and I’m looking forward to that day although it’s likely years away.

The game isn’t perfect, there are bugs in gameplay and quest lines and some weird NPC reactions to murder versus looting. Murder okay, looters go to jail? Inventory management could also use a big overhaul, but I’m hoping we’ll see those sorts of improvements in future updates. Those small complaints aside, Larian got so many things right. A compelling story and characters, flat-out amazing level design, architecture, modeling, sculpting, animations, VFX, etc. It’s one of those games where you repeatedly pause and just look around at the environment design and how much thought and care went into it.

I’ll be replaying it in the future, the variety of possibilities is essentially endless. I want to put it down after such a heavy time investment and give them time to keep updating it and maybe eventually announce DLC or a planned sequel. As of now, I can’t imagine I’ll want to go back for several months, maybe even a year. But, this feels like one of those games I’ll probably play multiple times over in the coming years.

Gaming news aside, I’ll be back at the grind with Berklee Online for likely my penultimate semester if not my last. I’m not highly motivated to go back, but another semester of housing allowance will get us that much closer to paying off our mortgage by the end of next year. I’m taking Private Guitar Lesson III, Solo Guitar (Performance, Accompaniment, and Arranging), and Game Design Principles. I would prefer to be taking a Blender course over the Game Design but they discontinued it and of the options I have for electives, Game Design was the only interesting one. Maybe I should have gone for the interpretative dance class?

The solo guitar course might be interesting, it’s something I want to get better at, but you never know how these courses are going to be presented. Hopefully, it’s not another theory fire hydrant and regurgitate course like so many of them are. I switched from Shaun Michaud to Norm Zocher for my guitar lessons. Shaun was a good teacher and an amazing guitarist/musician, but I don’t think his style combined with my goals was an ideal mixture. I’ve had a few classes with Norm and really appreciated how laid back and non-pedantic he is about the material. I find his style more conducive to learning, regardless of the material.

Figuring out the new norm

I’m not sure there’s ever going to be a “norm” that will last for a significant amount of time, probably moreso from external factors than internal. I finally started to dabble back in writing again starting yesterday. It took me a bit to remember where I was at in the process. One issue is that I was a bit more active in the Joyce Carol Oates’ master class on short stories through MasterClass.com and because I didn’t renew my membership, that class is temporarily unavailable. I think I’ve decided to go back to the beginning of the James Hynes course on Audible and see where it goes from there. I have several writing courses that I’ve acquired and yet to complete. The past two days I’ve spent most of my time slowly transcribing the notes I had made in the Judith Flanders book on the Victorian Home. I still have a ways to go on that task.

I’ve approached drawing sort of the same way, although I haven’t gone back to the beginning. I think I need to pick one course of instruction and follow it through until the end. My plan is to do that with writing as well, although I tend to sprinkle in some work on my novel in progress. The writing courses involve a lot of practical exercises, so when it makes sense I try to write something that may be of use in the novel.

I still haven’t resumed playing bass, and I suppose that’s the final piece of the puzzle. Initially, there was probably some of that COVID funk that was reducing my motivation to practice, but it’s persisted at least partially from a desire to avoid further repetitive strain injuries. One nice recent change is that I’ve had less of the nagging elbow issues as in the past, but I’m still practicing guitar and drums as much as I ever have. I don’t know if it’s just that these issues have needed this much time to mostly heal, or maybe a combination of other factors that I wasn’t considering, namely how I typed at work. I never thought it was much of an issue, but I was noticing some of the symptoms with prolonged reports when I was standing with my elbows bent at 90 degrees. Not sure, I suppose I’ll see when I get back to work.

All that to say I need to get back to practicing some bass. I’m not sure which day is best, maybe the electric guitar day. The only issue there is that I also practice piano that day, so maybe I need to practice bass on my acoustic guitar day when I also practice vocals and drums. I may give it a run today and see how I feel.

First Gig

It's been awhile since the last update. There's lots to talk about, but of primary importance is my first "gig" coming up Saturday. Gig is probably being generous as it's just a couple of songs for my Grandmother Nonie's memorial service. Luckily my big sister Debbie and niece Heather will be singing vocals so that can only help me sound better. We'll be doing altered versions of Amazing Grace and Over the Rainbow as arranged by Tommy Emmanuel but adapted for vocals and my technical limitations. We'll also be doing How Great Thou Art at my mother's request, although it will be the Carrie Underwood version. I'll be playing my Maton acoustic through my recently acquired Fishman Aura preamp and Roland AC-33 acoustic amp. I bought the Roland because I thought we would be doing the ceremony outside, as it's capable of running on batteries. Fortunately the venue has moved indoors, so I'm assuming we'll have access to power. I could probably go straight acoustic, but I wanted some extra compression/reverb for the harmonics on OTR. It's been a learning experience as I've discovered the challenge of playing an instrument while trying to listen and respond to a vocalist. This may encourage me to purse an open mic in the future.