1) Project Auburn, a celebration of civic pride and elbow grease, in addition to renovating the classic State Theatre

, has renovated the rear garden of OLAS, making it a great site for sculpture, relaxing, and entertainment.  I helped put the fence up and did some of the repainting a few weeks ago when hundreds of volunteers turned out to make Auburn a better place.  Kudos to the Rotary Club and other civic organizations for making our town a better place!

2) The

Auburn Art Walk, a recurring evening of open studios and galleries, occurs every Second Thursday throughout the summer.

3) OLAS is celebrating the new landscaping, in conjunction with the Art Walk, with a show entitled From Earth To Sky, August 14th from 6:00 to 9:00 PM.

4) I acquired a new keyboard, a Yamaha CP300

, at long last giving me some mobility to my music.  (And making it easier to get quality recordings, more about which later.)

The outcome of all these fortuitous circumstances?

Jason and I will be playing our usual eclectic mix of improvisatory world/new age/jazz/undefinable music for the event.

If you're in the neighborhood, come on by!

Wow, so there you have it.  I was just flat tired.  I had been working on the book, trying to get stuff in my house rearranged, etc, and didn't realize how tired I was.  Until I rested a bit that is.  Then I really felt a surge coming on, a second wind if you will (not that kind of wind!) and I was hungry to go...

But then there it was again...lethargy.  I started physical therapy for my hip problems and it just flat wore me out.  I would just sit down and stare into space (or whatever was on that night) and just veg out.  Get a bit of a head of steam on, but then get down again. 

Odd thing was, I only barely noticed.  I am a pretty self aware person, and I generally notice everything about myself as it occurs.  It is sort of embarrasing

though, as some times I notice myself being stupid, yet are powerless to stop myself.  Or how you act all cool when certain types of people are around, or acting like I am 16 driving around jamming to Zeppelin.  (Pete Townshend said it best in the song: Dreaming from the waist

"I'm burning tires with some guy whose hair is turning white
I know the girls that I pass, they just ain't impressed
I'm too old to give up, but too young to rest" 

Add to that that I have stopped taking most of the pain meds I was prescribed that made me slower than molasses in January on the dark side of the moon, and I think I can say that I am finally back.  But don't hold me to that because it is football season, I have a new TV, several Wii and XBox 360 games that need tended too.  See you in the funnies.

Man I am boring. Got up at 7, got presents (Wii MarioKart and Lego Indiana Jones (can't play them until I get home Thursday), a couple of DVDs including the Beatles Help!, Three Stooges, and an English comedy Good Neighbours (notice the superfluous u)) and then my wife left the room and I went back to sleep until 11. Then I went to a local restaurant and had country ham and eggs (they were out of grits, the blighters.)

From there I headed to Grandfather Mountain and walked over this bridge (which was really cool!)







After that I went to one of my favorite restaurants near there called the

Old Hampton Store and had barbecue and banana pudding. The pudding was great and the bbq was pretty good, but the bread was so tasty it overpowered the 'cue.  Oh yeah, and these guys played some great bluegrass:



Then on to the Blue Ridge Parkway for a nice drive. I stopped and talked to my mom for 45 minutes and another 30 some to my daughter. Once I got back to Ridgecrest I had a good hamburger and wrote this blog on my phone. Later I will hang out with the wife for a while before packing and going to bed so I can get up at 5 for the airport shuttle...And I wrote this blog and read a lot of blogs, too.

All along, I considered how I could get back going with my blogs, and I am going to try to do:

On my sqlblog.com

blog, 1 blog a week on some feature of SQL Server, not something tricky, but just something that might be interesting to someone.  1 commentary blog a week, or so, where I will just talk about something technical, but more around the process of it all.  Then on this blog I will post 1 device a week, and something off the wall too.  All of this is "at a usual minimum" not a maximum, but what I will strive to do, along with 3 or 4 forum posts on a new topic each day plus followups.  All of this to start in a few weeks when I am really finished with the book and a few other things I want to try to get done as well.

Hmm, perhaps this was a"boring" birthday, but I got some stuff done and I sure did enjoy it, and I don't really feel a bit older.  Though that will prbably change in 8.5 hours when the shuttle gets here :)