2/15/6 - Been nearly a year since I've updated the journal.  Obviously my priorities in life have changed over time.  The family, job and school are taking up a lot of my time.  What little free time I have is divided between woodworking, music and rest.
I did manage to write a song yesterday. I started it Monday morning and finished it up yesterday. It's dark and unlike anything I've written before. Check it out in the music section.
Becca and I have been having problems lately. I'm not going to get into all of the details but it looks like she's going to change jobs next school year. The school where she's currently working is just too stressful. Hopefully that, along with some other small changes, will be enough to keep us sane.
Becca mentioned last night the possibility of me foregoing my student teaching semester and jumping right into teaching. I'm really starting to consider it because I can't stand this situation anymore and I honestly don't know how we'll manage financially if I student teach. I won't be able to work full time and I will no longer be elligible for financial aid. I'll graduate with over 200 credits, exceeding the limit for financial aid.
I'm so tired of my job. I'm so tired of school. My senior recital is coming up March 31st. For those who know anything about trumpet literature I'll be performing:
Intrada - Honneger
Sonata - Ewazen
(Intermission)
Concert Etude - Goedicke
Eiffel Tower Polka - Poulenc
Nightsongs - Peaslee

It should be a fun show. I have a few family members driving up as well as several friends who plan on attending.
Last week I saw the doctor for depression. I'm now back on Zoloft again. It's been nearly 7 years since my last bout of depression. This time is a little different because there are so many things in my life bringing my down. Last Friday while I was staying at some friends' house I bought a big jug of Bacardi and sat down for lunch. I had a Killian's with my food then proceeded to down 7 tall shots of rum, chased with Pepsi. All in about an hour. I don't remember much else that happened over the next 18 hours. Becca called and I told her I'd been drinking. A couple of friends showed up while I was passed out on the bathroom floor (after having vomited). They helped me to the couch and talked to me for a while. I started drinking around 1:00 and finished around 2:00. I woke up about 8 hours later and stayed up for a couple hours to watch some Jenny McCarthy movie. The only good thing I did that day was making sure that I got trashed early enough to allow me to recover in time for a double shift at work the next day. I guess I'm lucky I didn't get alcohol poisoning.

5/17/5 - Been quite a while since the last update. From the looks of the counters very few people have missed anything.
I finished another semester at UTC. 4 more to go. One of those will be student teaching though. Then we'll be gone! It's looking like we're beginning to settle on moving to Ohio. It's a bit of a compromise. For years I've wanted to move west, to Colorado, Oregon or Washington. I wanted a cooler climate with a nice landscape, out of the bible belt for sure, close to a larger city. Ohio has some of that, but is within a half day drive from Chattanooga, where all of Becca's family is. Becca really wanted out of the bible belt, and I think she wanted to keep some of the hills and mountains, but she doesn't care about the city size. I mean, nothing tiny, but she think Chattanooga is fairly big. She also doesn't really like cold weather, so she's compromising with Ohio, because we will definitely see more snow up there than we do down here. As far as specific cities I've been researching all of the larger areas: Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Akron, Cleveland and Toledo. From what my mom tells me (she lived in Cleveland for a long time) we probably won't like the last 3 since they're in northern Ohio and are more industrial. We visited Cincinnati last fall for my birthday. I think we both liked some things there, but probably spent most of our visit on the wrong side of the city or something, because much of what we saw was abandoned warehouses and industrial buildings. The demographics also seemed extremely skewed. Dayton sounds good from what I have read and what people who have lived there tell me. It's a mid sized city, around 1.5 million in the county, and right in the middle of two large cities: Cincinnati and Columbus. Right now, though, Columbus is at the top of my list. Becca and I both want to go back to school at some point. Ohio State is probably the best school in the state for both of our fields, and it's located in Columbus. The demographics for the city are also exactly what we want. Teacher salaries and school performances also rank at the top of the state. Cleveland pays the most, but also costs the most. My main worry is that at 1.5 million in the city (largest in the state and 15th largest city in the country) is might be too big for Becca. We'd live in a suburb, but she's just not used to anything bigger than the 250,000 in the Chattanooga metro. We have about a year and a half to decide before we need to start applying for jobs and planning the move. Hopefully we'll make a few trips up that way in the coming 18 months and make a decision we'll be happy with.

10/19/4 - I'm always tired.  I usually get around 6 or 7 hours of sleep, and most nights that's interrupted once or twice by a crying child, or a knee in the back.  Then I wake up every morning at 5:30 by extremely loud and shitty music because that's all that will wake up my Becca.  This happens 7 days a week because she never turns the alarm off for fear that she will forget to turn it back on.  Then during the next 75 minutes before my alarm goes off, Becca will ask me stupid questions, scream to me that her pet spider is molting, or remind me of some errand that I am supposed to run.  Then just 10 minutes or so before my alarm goes off she walks in with my daughter to give me a kiss before they leave.  I think I'm depressed again.  I know I'm not happy.  Shit.  That's been obvious for a long time!

I've been participating in a monthly midi contest the last 3 months. Last month I entered "Roswell" and finished 3rd. "A Child's Dream" did okay the previous month, but was hurt by the lack of humanness in the sequencing. This month I submitted "Thoughts of Being a Father" and it has received horrible reviews for such reasons as:
1) People don't know the difference in an introduction and a solo
2) People don't know the difference in an oboe and a string instrument
3) People don't realize that music has to be written with the intention of fitting into a set of limited genres
4) People don't realize that dissonance is okay (and the also think the word is "distant", which means they're morons!
5) People don't realize that a piece doesn't have to be complicated to be good.

You can tell I'm irritated with the moronic "peer" interviewers.

Work sucks now as much as ever; maybe more.  We're in the middle of "Endless Shrimp".  I beg you, do not put a sever through Endless Shrimp.  Do not laugh when you ask for bread at a restaurant, especially when you are asking for it in place of buying an appetizer.  They may laugh with you, but they're faking.  They hate you, and you are not funny.  You are irritating and cheap.  We have another month and a half of this crap to go.  That's much too long.  Then when it's over we're changing uniforms to long sleeve shirts and long aprons.  Not good.

I'm starting to get a few jobs here and there playing trumpet.  I have lined up for this Sunday morning at a church.  Then I'll go wait tables that night.  I have another day of playing already set in mid December.  I expect to get a lot of gigs around Xmas.  One of my friends who plays trumpet here says he made over ,000 playing last December, and he won't be available for most of those jobs this year because he's directing his church's choird.  Of course, he gets paid a year and only works 2 days a week, and probably only puts in about 10 hours a week.  That's over /hr.  Not bad at all.  Damn some churches sure are stupid.  Then again, they do convince hundreds and thousands of people to fork over a big percentage of their paycheck, so maybe they're not so stupid afterall.

If I get caught up on my school papers and studying for tests I'll go ahead and make the final tweaks on my CD and start selling it through Pay Pal and MP3.com.  As it stands now, the CD will include:
Within
Thoughts of Being a Father
The Second Time
Shine On My Path
She Is
Probably Stolen
Present Tree
E3
Day One
Dance of Tears
Cave of Mystery
Joshua
Hilston's Theme
Missing
Knot
Rain
Quickie
Premonition
Roswell

That's 19 pieces, and 22 tracks.  If anyone has any last minute requests please email me now and I'll see what I can do.  I'm mainly sticking to the piano and smaller ensemble pieces because those are the easiest to get a good recording.  I did leave some popular pieces off (This is Me, Summitt, The Sky Is Blue, Nad the Nerd, etc.), but all of these pieces have received positive comments from listeners in the past, so hopefully just about everyone who likes my music should find something they like on this CD.

I'd still like to get some more work done on Golden Lily, my symphonic work.  I received a lot of criticism on the first movement once I sent it out for reviews.  I've been reworking some of it here and there, making a lot of cuts.  I've very frustrated with it.  I started working on the second movement, Discovery, where Lilia sees a poster for gymnastics with her grandmother and leaves her home in Donetsk to train in Kiev.  I like quite a bit of what I have so far, but needed a break from it, so I haven't written in a while.

Sometimes I wonder when life is going to get easier, things will settle down and I will stop having so many things to be frustrated and unhappy with.

8/19/4 - My daughter, Brooklyn, is now 1 year old.  I took her to the doctor for her checkup a few days ago and everything is great . . . blah blah blah.  I know you people don't care.  But it turns out that she's frakin' huge!  We already knew she was a bit chubby.  He brother was a chubby baby too (now he's a bean pole).  She's about in the 80th percentile for her weight.  The real news was her height.  95th percentile!  Holy moly!
My classes start back up this coming Monday.  I'm looking forward to some regularity in my schedule.  It won't make me hate my job any less, but maybe once I finish my CD (I'm almost done) some of you will buy it, so I won't have to work quite as much.  Then I could spend more time writing new music for new CDs.
We need a new couch. Joshua, my son, is 4 and still doesn't quite have control over his bladder when he sleeps. We usually put a pull-up on him at night, just to be safe. Lately, my wife has been forgetting to do so. I think it just gets late and she's too tired to fool with it. Hell, for a while there she wasn't even putting him in bed at night. She just let him watch TV on the couch till he fell asleep there. I can understand that a little, since he shares his room with Brooklyn, and it takes her forever to go to sleep some nights. And then once she is asleep it doesn't take much to wake her up. Anyway, 3 or 4 times now this summer Joshua has slept on the couch without a pull-up, ans guess what? Our couch now posesses the beautiful fragrance of urine. Actually it's a loveseat, which is the other reason we need a couch. 4 people in the house, and only a spot for 2 in the living room. Even my wife, the math teacher (who struggles with basic math), can figure out that we need more seating.
Why don't many of you sign my guestbook? Is it because I'm so fat? Is it because I smell bad? I know I get 200-300 visitors a month most of the time, and usually only 1, maybe 2 entries. Okay, I know guestbooks aren't nearly as popular as they used to be, but at least they're still fun for me to read. It feed my ego. Well, sometimes.
I could have sworn I had something more significant to tell everyone today.

6/30/4 - I have done a few small updates to the site.  The cover pic of myself is from my anniversary in March.  I added 2 new pieces.  One is for a film composition contest.  The other is the first movement of a symphony I'm trying to write.  It's actually a re-write of a 7 movement piece I wrote in 1996 about an athlete from the Atlanta Olympics.  I like what I have so far, but it needs some work.  I welcome any feedback anyone has.  I'll be sending it out to some musician friends to get their input.  Right now the first movement is just over 14 minutes long.  It may get longer.  It may get shorter.  It may stay the same.  But this is a big deal for me, so I want to do it right.

6/6/4 - Apparently there's some loser hanging around this website who thinks he's some sort of program tester, trying to crash my guestbook or something.  I'm sure he or she is probably just some