santa cruz

I just spent a great weekend at the Santa Cruz Jazz Festival with my school's small jazz band. We had only around 15 people come down for the fest, We had a very large rhythm section but not much meat in the trumpet section (one) or sax section (3) for this trip, so we decided to enter just as a combo, or small band.
We left Friday afternoon and drove through buckets of rain to get to Down Town Santa Cruz. It was sunny there! For the past three years that I have gone, our group has stayed at Pema Osel Ling, a Buddhist retreat camp up in the Santa Cruz mountains.
Friday night, after unloading all of the instruments, we started up a jam session, as always. I went and got my stand up bass from the trailer, brought it inside and took it out of the case, only to find a terrible crack at the end of it. I couldn't play it at all. Quite a sad thing, and rather scary, considering I'm supposed to play it tomorrow for the judges! The trumpet player played us Taps and we gathered around good ol' Sam Basso. "Anything you would like to say, Amelia?" asks a fellow bassist; "He's not dead yet." Says I.
So my choices were 1) play electric or 2) find another stand up at the festival. I sincerely hoped but did not expect to find another stand up bass. But, as life has a way of doing, the band who went before us had one all ready for me on stage. It was different to play, but nothing too exotic that I couldn't play it. It all worked out well. Our combo scored a 3, 1 being best and 5 being worst. Not extraordinary, but not bad either. I think the overal band morale was good about it.
Anyway, all for fun and fun for all, that sums it up right there.
Also while in Santa Cruz my mom found an AWESOME Fabriano sketchbook. I couldn't help but buy it, because I know I'll never see it again for a long time. I'm almost done with my little red one too, so I will be able to use it soon...
Well I have three weeks to finish up my Senior Project. Yikes!! Send my your extra time, if you have some to spare!!
I'll try to post up some pictures when I can download them. Have a nice week and I hope it's sunny where you are.

PS: Hey, according to my Clustrmap there's a whole bunch of you guys visiting here, so I just want to say thanks and hello to America's East and West coasts...hey there you Canadians up there...hi Europe, Africa, South America, Mexico, Middle East, Russia, India, Australia and Asian countries all! Thank you for stopping in here at the Gecko. It make me happy :)