Fri Apr 1 = I'm ecstatic! On the Garmin website I found about 700 apps and widgets for my fancy Vivoactive watch. With a search, I found ten count-down timers; four of which activate the watch's vibration feature. I installed the Workout Timer and now can use the Vivoactive onstage for discrete notice when to bring my set to a close. It is SO much smaller and sleeker than the bulky Casio W-735H that I have been using. Also, since the Vivoactive is waterproof and has GPS, I can use it for kiteboarding. Cool, Cool, Cool!
- This evening I wend down to the Tempe Improv and saw gray-bearded Andy Steinberg, the host, with 14:47 minutes of fun stuff with his unique approach, Billy Barnell, the feature, with 19:19 minutes of good stuff and Ari Shaffir, the headliner, with 69:12 minutes of pretty dark material, emphasizing his being a Jew: my least favorite of the three.
Sat Apr 2 = I may have gotten my Garmin Vivoactive to communicate with my phone by Bluetooth, no thanks to Garmin's instructions, which were confusing and listed nonexistent menu items. Also I got my new Canon VIXIA HF4600 camcorder turned on for the first time.
- This evening I went to the Hamfeast at the Gyro House with Mediterranean Cuisine. There I learned about Fiddler's Dream Coffee House, so went there for a music show with acoustic guitars and vocals by Fred Pinch, and headliner, Cowboy Wrecks (Dan Fridena) with Doug Haywood. Good music (you could understand every word of the lyrics) and casual, entertaining banter. There I learned about an open mic there on Thursdays and about an open mic on Mondays at Joe's Grotto, so I scheduled both on my COMEDY web page.
- Tonight I heard a fantastic Dave Ramsey interview with John O'Leary from March 22,2016. At 9, burns covered 100% of John's body, 87%, third degree, and he was not expected to live. Here are two inspiring video.
4:10 minutes
Legendary sportscaster Jack Buck teaches 9-year-old John O'Leary how to write!
16:26 minutes
John O'Leary appears on the Dave Ramsey Show
- After doing all that and starting my
Vaio
Sony Vaio Duo 11 computer with 11.6" touch screen, Windows 10, 8gb memory and 256gb SSD
backing up to my new 1TB SSD I got to bed about 3:30am - Duh!
Sun Apr 3 = Busy day. I got up for breakfast about 7am and then went back to bed to nap for several hours with interspersed pees (not while in bed!).
- I got my Vaio double backed up and set up tripods for my next comedy/camera/audio test.
Mon Apr 4 = They are replacing the old, 1963, 2.4 mile, $4.1 million 30-year Bonner bridge that connects Hatteras Island to the rest of the world. The first video (2:18) below is the bridge's history and groundbreaking ceremony in 2016. The second video (1:03) is a neat construction animation of the new, $246 million state-of-the-art, 100-year bridge.
Tue Apr 5 = I took my van to Discount Tire, along with an old patched tire with quite a bit of tread for replacing an even older tire with only 4/32 tread remaining. Jeff, there said they could not mount the patched tire because the patch was too close to the sidewall. Besides the patch was not done correctly because it was not plugged.
- Hobby Lobby does not have a plastic bag for carrying my Comedy Shirts.
- This evening drove the 20 miles to Grand Avenue Pizza, only to find that the show had been cancelled without notice. Two other comedians also showed up. I found eight customers there who were up for a comedy show. I couldn't talk the other comedians into joining me, so on the back patio, without a microphone, I did my first 40-minute show: NO NOTES! During the show there were a few jets climbing out overhead, a police helicopter circling and the street sweeper making its repeated passes. It was a good evening.
Wed Apr 6 = This morning I had my van's tires rotated at Discount Tire and the oil changed at Auto Tune.
- This evening I did comedy at Toso's with instalment #4 of my full show routine. Good supportive group. We even had two audience members who were not comedians.
- Before bedtime I put my iCharger on my van's LiFeMnPO battery to balance the cells. They started out with a maximum difference of .03V. After balancing, it was .02V, which Rick of Elite Power Solutions, says is good.
Thu Apr 7 = What a difference management can make - in this case a negative difference at C&R Tire on Cave Creek Rd north of Bell Rd. Previously I was glad when I went to them for service
and felt they were interested in me and my need to economize. I always felt good when I left. Today they seemed to care more about fixing cars, answering phone calls keeping the business going and taking care of their uniforms than about the customers. The attitude of the new manager seems to have sifted down to all the employees. The manager refused to honor my lifetime alignment because I did not have the original receipt from last year in my glove box to show him. After a 10-minute discussion he finally found their record of it. Of course the problem was not their poor recordkeeping, but that I did not have the original receipt in my glove box. Never an apology.
- After that I went to Ken's Transmission and worked on my Full Show Sequence while waiting for Phil to return so we could schedule a transmission service for tomorrow.
- I squeezed in spraying preemergence on my yards, since rain is forecast for the next few days. I hope it rains!
- I had my first appearance at the Fiddler's Dream Coffee House. Good group of mostly old men - all younger than me! Each performer gets one song or five minutes in rotation. I had to leave after round two, in order to get to Chop and Wok in Scottsdale. At Chop and Wok there were only four of us comedians, David Kays, Lawyer Johnson, Trevor Skies and me, so David cancelled the show.
Fri Apr 8 = Early this morning I took my van to Ken's Transmission for its regular 30k-mile service. This evening I went to Stand Up Live in downtown Phoenix and saw Frank Caliendo. He was his usual fantastic. It was like having presidents, sports stars, movie stars on stage at the same time. His imitations included the Clinton's, George W. Bush, Morgan Freeman, Charles Barkley, Dr. Phil and Donald Trump. Of course I publicized my Thursday appearance there and passed out a few tickets.
Sat Apr 9 = Blogging is going to be on the brief side. I let it get behind due to spending so much time working on comedy. Of course I consider that a priority at this time. Sorry. Hey, that's just a little less you'll have to read if you're following me. I haven't even had time to show up much at a gym.
- This evening I went to the weekly hamfeast at the Miracle Mile Deli, 4433 N 16th St down in Phoenix.
Sun Apr 10 = I made some phone calls today to OBX etc. I have been doing a super backup of my Vaio computer in preparation for reinstalling the operating system.
- I left home around 3:30 to do some shopping, stop by a gym and make it to The 3rd St. Theater where I did instalment #5 of my full show. Good group as always. Flipside hosted the show in the absence of Jason Lolli.
Mon Apr 11 = I tried to find someone to watch my yard while I'm gone, since my neighbor to the east will not be doing it.
- Tonight was my second appearance at Joe's Grotto. They put me first. There were three comedians on the show. The rest of the acts were music.
Tue Apr 12 = It took more trips to various auto shops various days to get my van ready for the big trip to the east coast. C&R Tire did not get the rack and pinion replacement finished in time, so I became the Pick-Up Man for the evening with their loaner.
- Tonight, with the pick-up I made two comedy appearances, doing my full show instalments #6 and #7 at Dos Gringos and Grand Avenue Pizza respectively. At the end of the night I was tired, but happy. No notes!
Wed Apr 13 = I finally got all the boxes stowed from my recent purchases. Sometime I'll come up with a list of it all.
Toso's, tonight, was the scene for instalment #8 of my full show. There were actually four non-comedians there. The comedians there are very supportive of each other.
Thu Apr 14 = I tried to install Garmin's Base Camp. Not sure if I was successful or not.
- Record comedy this evening at Lucky Strike in the City Scape area of downtown Phoenix. The record was a 53-minute routine for me. There was an audience of only six, but we all had fun. Dallas Henderson, Lucky Strikes' general manager fixed me up in their Gypsy Room with a wireless mic. Travis there helped with some of the details and Taylor provided drinks to the audience members who wanted something to drink.
It was awesome - and I used no notes at all!
- Stand Up Live had cancelled the New Faces show for the evening in an email they sent out Tuesday. There was no way I would have been able to let all the people I had invited know of the cancellation, having passed out around 150 tickets. Lemonade in style!
Fri Apr 15 - No time to get everything done before my trip, and I have to leave on time to make my appearance at the Loony Bin in Wichita, KS on Wednesday, so I filed an extension on my taxes.
- Around noon I lay in the sun a little and brought three T-Shirts in out of the sun from their month-long fade test, took photos of the results and added the shirts to my supply of spare shirts.
It took a while for George, Cindy and me to find each other and a little Chinese restaurant in Scottsdale where we met for supper.
- This evening I made contact with Eileen Turner for the first time in probably 50 years. Our parents were good buddies from the 1930's and earlier.
Sat Apr 16 - I have moved most of my video files to a new 1 terabyte solid state drive (SSD) to free up more space on my Vaio, which only has a 255gb SSD internally. Now I am backing the external SSD up also.
I trimmed the shrubs in front of the house, washed the van windows inside and out, washed the van - but not the tires... no time. That can be squeezed in sometime later while I am on my trip. I also did two loads of laundry.
Sun Apr 17 - Today I met Pedro Ramirez, who will be checking my yard weekly for weeds. He is probably in his lower 30's, younger than all the other landscapers that I have tried to use. Since Pedro is in the area each week, it will take almost no time for him to drive buy and spray a few weeds, if any grow. It will not take him much time or cost me much money. Good for both of us. We wrote up a little agreement, which he appreciated and I paid him an initial $50. We had a good visit about other things, including separation and divorce. It's neat to be in a position to help people like Pedro.
Mon Apr 18 = I was ready to put my water system (Jerry can with 12v pump) into the van and head out when I noticed that I had evidently set it, full of water and weighing 45 pounds on the cigarette lighter plug and broken the plug. So, instead of heading out I replaced the plug, then headed out.
= I spent the night in Gallup, NM at the Walmart.
Tue Apr 19 = Today I drove THE 564 miles from Gallup, NM to Meade, KS, for a total trip so far of 843 miles.
Wed Apr 20 = Today's drive was interrupted with a CHECK ENGINE SOON warning light. I hooked up my code reader and it showed one code, "Exhaust Gas Recirculation Flow Insufficient." I figured it was nothing critical so reset the code which turned off the warning light.
- I arrived at the Wichita Library at 4pm, checked in with Ron at The Loony Bin by phone and then spent about two hours at the library. I wasted a lot of time with their cantankerous and cumbersome Wi-Fi, but DID get my website updated and checked out some more possible appearances on the way east.
- Tonight's show at The Loony Bin was good. Their online blip for the show said"
What do you get when you put together the stoner's holiday, 4/20, and 6 of the best young comedians in Wichita... you get The Heavy Hitters of Comedy Show. Hosted by Megan Welch and featuring Jeremy Rush, Brandon Winn, Chance Carmichael, Blake Hamilton and Travis Cagle... You couldn't ask for a more groovy bunch of comics. Don't miss your chance to get high on laughter this year.
They put me on first, so I opened with I'm still trying to figure out how I got up here with "6 of the best young comedians in Wichita." I'm from Phoenix and 74... In comedy, we call that a sympathy applause. - I spent the night at a Walmart in north-east Wichita.
Thu Apr 21 = I left Wichita about 6pm and made the 195 miles to Kansas City, MO. I wrote a thank you note to The Loony Bin and then spent about an hour chasing down a post office where it would go out and be delivered tomorrow.
- In the post office parking lot, using the only shade tree available, I spent several hours eating lunch and researching and scheduling an appearance for Tuesday at The Funny Bone in the St Louis area.
- I spent the night at a Walmart in Kansas City, MO.
Fri Apr 22 = Today I finally got my Epson Workforce 100 printer to work, printed out a bunch of updated appearance slips and spent a nice quite night in the WestPort parking lot.
- Tonight I saw Greg Warren, touring headliner comedian at the St Louis Funny Bone Comedy Club in WestPort Plaza. Greg has a CD, "Running Out of Time." Let me tell you about that...! It was a good show. Matt, the Funny Bone manager let me hang for the late show.
Sat Apr 23 = Until Tuesday's 8pm show at The Funny Bone, I'll be actively promoting my appearance there by talking to people wherever I go and passing out my appearance slips. It is always fun, interacting with random people and getting them to laugh and enjoy life a little more.
- I'm pretty happy with what I was able to do today. I got up around 10am, fixed and ate breakfast, wrote a paper thank you not to Matt Behrens, the manager of The St Louis Funny Bone, hand delivered it to the box office guy there, found a Trader Joe's and bought a couple of things at their high prices, found a Schnucks supermarket where I bought a couple more things, found a Dollar Tree where I bought two, 8-packs of thank you notes, went to the St. Louis County Library, Thornhill Branch, and got the single-camera video of my Loony Bin performance in Wichita Wednesday uploaded to YouTube (data intensive) for my on-line Press Kit and went out to the library parking lot to work on this blog, have supper and update my Press Kit (uses little data so I can easily do this tethered to my Nexus 6P).
- Also I worked on my Laugh List project, read some about the death of Prince on Thursday and sorted the paperwork from my recent appearances.
- Spent the night in the library parking lot - nice and quiet: no barking dogs, honking trains or busy traffic. I found a spot that was shady both in the late afternoon and in the morning.
Sun Apr 24 = A little after noon I joined a nearby Gold's Gym under the Silver Sneakers program, so now I can go to any corporate (not franchise) Golds Gym, which includes most of them in the eastern US.
- Back down to the Thornhill Library, I got the second Loony Bin video uploaded. This second version adds about half a minute to the first video and includes three camera views instead of one. Back in the parking lot in my van after the library closed, I decided my routines for Tuesday and Wednesday.
- My LiFeMnPO house battery did its first LVC (low-voltage cutoff) of the trip. Well, no wonder. I have been doing a lot of computing in my van with little driving.
- A little later I made a promo/shopping trip across the street from Gold's Gym to the Schnucks grocery store and spent the night in their parking lot.
Mon Apr 25 = I never made it back down to the library today. I did make it to Golds Gym for a light full-body workout. I seemed to have unexpectedly tweaked my left shoulder doing single-dumbbell over-the-head triceps extensions. My left wrist is doing much better. I passed out a lot of information slips for tomorrow's show at Golds and Schnucks, where I also did a little shopping. Found a nice isolated spot in the northeast corner their parking lot where it would be extra shady in the morning... Maybe too isolated because it evidently highlighted the presence of my van...
Tue Apr 26 = Maryland Heights police officers, Wilson and Gerber rousted me up at 12:30 this morning by banging on the windows during their normal patrol of the area. It took about 30 minutes of visiting about comedy, me, my trip, why I was not at a hotel and answering their curiosity questions about my van appointments and checking with the dispatcher for them to tell me to be sure to lock all my doors and have a good rest-of-the-night.
- Around noon I aimed my van toward the almost black sky since there were storm warnings out with possible winds up to 70 mph. As a result the wind was hardly noticeable in my van while I ate lunch and worked on my comedy sequence project in my van during the deluge.
- The rest of the day I spent in my van, at Schnucks and Gold's Gym.
- The evening's show at The St Louis Funny Bone went well. I had 3-cameras going and, within a couple days, got it all edited into my first video to go online edited by Cyberlink Pro 14. Also the first in 16:9 format. Camera #1 was my new Canon camcorder; #2 was my Nexus SP cell phone and #3 was my Panasonic.
- After the show I headed toward Louisville, KY, spending the night at the Bridgeton, MO Walmart.
Wed Apr 27 = I arrived at the Mid City Mall in Louisville in time to spend several hours at the Highlands Shelby Park Library there. Probably the most user-friendly library I've been to. I got the video edited from Wichita and uploaded and sent an email to Jeff Jones, who books for the Loony Bin Clubs, with a link to the video from Wednesday in Wichita.
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- Then across the mall for the evening's comedy show. It was interesting. Tyler Gooch graciously put me on in spite of my being late. I thought I was plenty early, still being on Central Time. Had I checked I would have realized that the eastern half of KY is on Eastern Time. During my set, I was so focused (pressure) on getting laughs I forgot to just have fun. I did the same routine as in Wichita at the Loony Bin, but to half the crowd size of mostly comedians... and very few laughs compared to Wichita.
- I spent the night in the northeast parking lot of the mall.
Thu Apr 28 = I spent most of the morning back at the Highlands Shelby Park Library and got last night's videos edited and uploaded, updated my Press Kit with the Wichita video, then headed to Berea, KY to see my son and his family, where I spent the night.
Fri Apr 29 = A little after noon I went to the Madison County Public Library, where I stayed until it closed at 6pm. I worked hard on finalizing comedy stops the rest of my way east and updated the UPCOMING schedule on COMEDY, including an open mic (mostly music) right here in Berea on Monday.
- I replenished the 6-gallon water supply for my van's running water system in the Walmart nursery center.
- I spent the rainy night to the east of the Berea Walmart, between some of the pallets of dirt (mulch & potting soil).
Sat Apr 30 = Another mostly-rainy day in Berea Kentucky... At the Madison County Public Library for about four hours, I tried to find more open mic opportunities and reorganized the videos on COMEDY. I also re-did the Announcement slips for my next four appearances and had the library print them out. At 10¢ per double-sided page it probably cost little more than if I had done it with my little portable Epson Work Force 100... and their laser quality was definitely superior to my Epson's draft mode (remember I'm cheap) and faster.
- With 7 days left on my Google fi billing cycle, I have used 1.97g of my 2g data before I have to start paying for additional data, so I will try to do most of my data usage at the library.
- I spent another rainy night at the Berea Walmart.
