A long day, but a pleasant one mostly. Especially the evening part. I went in at 07:00 this morning and looked at the schedule... there was about a half-days worth of work there. Of course, we can always count on many add-ons, but there we only a few when I left at 14:30 to meet Karen and sign the papers. After doing that, Karen and I came home and steered various kids in various directions, then we headed down to the Topeka Performing Arts Center, where there was a *free* jazz outdoor teaser going on. The *real* shows are going on inside, for big bucks. The annual Topeka Jazz Festival, it is. Karen's cousin Rowena from Manhattan had told Karen about the performance, and we saw her there in the crowd. I parked several blocks from the venue, not wanting to get into any traffic jams, y'know. It was a pleasant walk, and when we got there we say maybe 200 or 300 people watching the first act. We noticed some chairs down in front that were empty and headed for them... second row, even! There was a thin black woman sitting on the end seat of the first row... at first it seemed like she was overly friendly, but I realized that she was actually demented. At one point she had got up in front of the first row and flashed her breasts... there were only a few of us who noticed, I think... there was some mighty good music happening on stage at the time. This lady also had a doll that she was playing with ... Anyhoo, the first group, a trio, was excellent... a russian guy on the keyboards who also sang, an old black guy on the bass viol and a drummer. The russian guy was a helluva performer with an excellent range. The next group was some fairly talented locals sponsored by Payless shoes. They were OK, with an excellent guitarist and a really good sax guy. The young black guy on trumpet started off really slow, missing notes frequently, but he got a lot better once he was warmed up. The third group was another pro set, really impressive. I'd heard of the trumpeter, Tiger Osawa, I think, and he was the star, but the rest of the bunch was excellent too, not a clinker in the bunch.. There were probably 700 people there at the end of the show, it was a pretty good turnout for Topeka. I took a bunch of pictures and tried my hand at movies, I got a coupla good files, but they're pretty big, I might put them up later. The music is only mono, of course, but still pretty good. And much better than the video, which seems to be about 160X90 or something like that, pretty rough. I switched memory sticks in the middle and put the used one in the pocket of my fanny pack with my cell phone... pretty stupid move, that. Wiped it out completely. And I had some damned good frames on it, too. EMF=FMS. Yeah, I made that up. Electro Magnetic Field means Failed Memory Stick. Anyway, the day has pretty much wiped me out. So go visit JD, he's got a coupla new entries up, and some exciting news, if you're a guitar-lover.... My call back-up is over at 08:00 in the morning, so I'm planning on working most of the day tomorrow... I'll update whenever I can over the next coupla days. In the Mail: On the shelf: