Sun Oct 1 = This morning I drove over to Mesa to worship with
George & Cindy
my younger brother and his wife who live in Mesa, Arizona
at The Mission Community Church of Mesa, where they will probably start attending. We never did connect until after church at the Hampton Avenue Souper Salad where we met for lunch.
Mon Oct 2 = I have been working on and tweaking my High Tech Deliveries/Trinidad routine.
- Tonight was my second appearance at
Time Out Lounge; 3129 S Mill Av in Tempe. I did my Crazy People routine and threatened to come back next week.
Tue Oct 3 = This evening, at both Dos Gringos and Grand Avenue Pizze, I practiced my new Technology Delivery and Trinidad routine. Both shows were loose with time and we just relaxed and had fun.
- At Grand Avenue Pizza, Jeff was number 16,000th for my total audience count. Everyone celebrated with an applause. I celebrated by giving Jeff a $5 bill.
- I got to bed at 1:32am - kinda late.
Wed Oct 4 = I messed up my sleep pattern this morning when I woke up at 5:40 to pee and stayed up to phone the UK and Tobago about doing comedy and kiteboarding in Tobago. By the time I did a little necessary research, never able to phone the UK, and got back in bed it was 8:20, so I slept until 12:20pm.
- On the way to do comedy I stopped by Fitness 1 for a short, 18 minute, slow legs workout and earned the Wednesday frosty that I made a little earlier. The show at Toso was fun and we had about five non-comedians in the audience.
- It's hard to go to bed when you find something on the Internet so creatively revolutionary and weird as the GeoOrbital Wheel. You can convert your regular bicycle to an electric one in 60 seconds by replacing the front wheel... and the center of the new wheel does not even turn!
Thu Oct 5 = Another messed up sleep day by getting up at 3:15am to phone the UK about kiteboarding on Tobago. In the process I learned that you must dial 011 to exit the North American phone system before you dial the foreign country code and number. That is evidently what the + means with international calling. I never did find a + button on my telephone. A little later I made some phone calls and sent some emails to Trinidad and Tobago and found a hotel or two that might be interested in my stand up comedy :)
This evening I installed Garmin Express v 5.4.1.0 on my new
XPS
Dell XPS-13 computer with 13.3" touch screen, 60WHr Integrated Battery, Windows 10, Intel 7th Generation Core i7 CPU, 16gb memory and 1TB SSD
and added my Nuvi 2589 and vivoactive.
My
XPS
Dell XPS-13 computer with 13.3" touch screen, 60WHr Integrated Battery, Windows 10, Intel 7th Generation Core i7 CPU, 16gb memory and 1TB SSD
has been having lots of trouble with the Internet. My phones are all OK. Before bed I tried to get everything organized for my early-morning phone calls to Trinidad and Tobago..
Fri Oct 6 = While I was up to pee this morning at 6:15 (the middle of my night), I made a bunch of phone calls for comedy to Trinidad. Nothing is scheduled yet, although I am working on several possibilities.
- I had time to take about an hour's nap before laying out in the sun for 20 minutes, eating lunch and then taking Carol to see her eye doctor under the auspices of
.
While waiting in the waiting room, I got this blog updated and did its monthly rollover :)
- After delivering Carol to her house, I stopped by LA Fitness for an arms workout.
- Boy, was I sleepy in the evening. No wonder, I got so little sleep last night. I went to bed really early tonight. As I get older I find I can not skip sleep one night and make it up the next.
- The first time I got up to pee, I spent about a half hour organizing ideas for my Thursday appearance for a private show for
's
Grandparents Raising Grandchildren. The second time I got up to pee, I set up my Samson PA system with Bluetooth music, ready to practice for Thursday's show.
Sat Oct 7 = Up early, I made phone calls and wrote follow-up emails for comedy in Trinidad and Tobago.
- I made myself a lot of extra work. I was going through my house paperwork looking to see if I had purchased a buyer's title insurance policy. I found a really faded and almost readable thermal copy of a document and decided to scan it with my little portable document scanner. The scanner's batteries were down, so I had to open the unit up to change them and set the date. There was a little recessed button that was labeled, "FORMAT." I thought it would be cool to choose more formats for the scanned images so got out a toothpick and pressed the button... and then. That's when I realized that I had just reformatted the unit's micro SD card... with all my images from the past four or so months.
- I immediately went into emergency mode, did some online research, downloaded and installed Recuva, and sifted through the approximately 64 recovered files of everything that I had ever scanned with the unit. I found about a half dozen recoverable files that I needed and tucked them away into various appropriate folders on my
XPS
Dell XPS-13 computer with 13.3" touch screen, 60WHr Integrated Battery, Windows 10, Intel 7th Generation Core i7 CPU, 16gb memory and 1TB SSD
.
What a job! Oh, yes, since the thermal copy was a JPG image, I was able to increase the contrast and reduce the brightness - a lot - and make it easily readable.
- This afternoon I went to my friendly neighborhood UPS store to get a couple sheets of colored LASER photos made and prepared another red 9x12 to mail to James Corden of the CBS Late Late Show.
- Smart or stupid?? Before going to sleep I got up out of bed because early Sunday mornings is a good time to get cheap airfares. It only took me four hours, starting from ground zero, to research and book my flights to Trinidad and Tobago for the middle of December. Comedy and kiteboarding, of course. What else?
- I finally got to bed a little after five, just before dawn, for another messed up sleep night.
Sun Oct 8 = This morning I got up around 10 for breakfast and a review of my new routine for this evening... then back to bed until nearly four PM. I had just enough time to fix something to eat and get around and leave for the Phoenix Center for the Arts. It was a good show with a good variety, which included four comedians. My new set on being a kid?... needs a little more work. Maybe a LOT more work.
Mon Oct 9 = Tonight I did a short, light, full-body workout at the LA Fitness across the street from the Time Out Lounge in Tempe where I had my third stand up appearance there to a small audience. I did some of my old stuff, which was new to the venue.
Tue Oct 10 = I stopped by an LA Fitness in South Tempe for a quick, reverse-order, light, full-body workout on my way to do comedy at Dos Gringos. Then I drove accross town to The Grand Avenue Pizza Company for another show with great people, as usual. Both places had good audience and good comedians.
Wed Oct 11 = It took me a half hour to processed the video from Sunday's show at The Phoenix Center for the Arts. I had already synchronized and ducked the audio sources. The finished product uses 8% the file space of the files used for the processing, which included four video sources. It was my first time to use four video sources, which is the Multicam capacity of my CyberLink Power Director 15 video editing software. Also it was the first public use my new LG phone camera.
- Tonight I got my PA system, Bluetooth music phone, cameras with charged batteries, gym bag and everything else needed for tomorrow's big trip.
Thu Oct 12 = What a fabulous day! I got up early, piled all the stuff into my van and drove down to the Tovrea Castle for a special event, arranged by
as an outing for their Grandparents Raising Grandchildren support program, followed by a luncheon and stand up comedy by your's truly. Helping to fund the event was my Duet project for 2017.
Tovrea Castle Tour (Click above an image for the original, high resolution version)
- After the Tovrea tour all 26 of us went to the Z'Tejas restaurant on East Bethany Home Road where I set up for the comedy show and we had a splendid lunch. Then I had the privilege of doing a 44 minute clean comedy show for the group.
- After getting all my stuff packed away in my van I went to the YouFit gym across the parking lot for a heavy legs workout, followed by one of my protein frosties. The afternoon was rounded out here at home with a long nap.
- I back tracked going down to Chandler for the Improv Mania open mic. I did the newly developed My Childhood routine I used for the Duet show. At 13, the Improv Mania audience was smaller than in the past because they are now having the open mic weekly instead of monthly.
Fri Oct 13 = I got up early this morning to pee and make phone calls for comedy to Trinidad and Tobago, then went back to bed to finish my night. - Today I got my streaking Samsung Xpress M2835DW B&W LASER printer packed up in its box and delivered to UPS. The printer was in warranty by one day, but the Samsung guy wanted to do the repair as a one time only out-of-warranty courtesy repair. I agreed, but hope the whole thing does not come back later to bite me.
- The big project today was processing the Duet and Improve Mania videos from yesterday. I also updated my Comedy T-Shirt sales spreadsheet for the last week. So far I have sold a total of 225 Arizona Lou Comedy T-Shirts.
Sat Oct 14 = I finally got around to getting my first-of-the-month, Discount Tire pressures check. It took so long because I have to have time to make Discount Tire my first stop on a trip.
All tires were at 33psi until I upped them to my now standard 39psi
- This evening I drove to Stir Crazy Comedy Club way out west in Glendale to see Quinn Dahle. He was really good.
Sun Oct 15 = I checked out abortion on ProCon. This website does a good job of covering both sides of almost any issue you can think of.
- My LG 43UF6400 TV has Internet access built in, but seems to be mostly a gimmick. It took me over a half hour of tedious letter selections by the remote on their on-screen keyboard to find and watch a few seconds of a video. Then it all quit.
- I put in for both the Bird City and the Big Pine comedy festivals.
Mon Oct 16 = In prep for my next flight as a pilot, I researched the Garmin G1000, which came out 13 years ago in 2004. Take a look at what a glass cockpit and its controls look like for a small, general aviation airplane.
Here is an 11-minute introduction to the controls.
And here is a very well organized and informatiove one hour video. It is a little technical, but very interesting.
- This evening I did a heavy torso workout in Tempe before crossing the street to do some comedy at the
Time Out Lounge; 3129 S Mill Av in Tempe.
Tue Oct 17 = I phoned iFly, located about half way between my house and
George & Cindy
my younger brother and his wife who live in Mesa, Arizona
's,
and spoke with Collin. He said to think of it like laying on a bed of air. I am going to suggest, when
Stan
Stanley, my older brother who is retired as a machinist for Eaton Corporation in Hutchinson, KS
comes out for the holidays, that we give it a try.
- This evening I drove all the way up to Rick Bronson's House of Comedy to be told that the open mic had been preempted at the last minute (with no notice to me). Getting on stage there can be frustrating. Making lemonade, I drove down to do comedy in South Tempe at Dos Gringos and then out for more at Grand Avenue Pizza. Both places I practiced on my I Don't Understand routine for tomorrow at Stand Up Live.
- Around 44 St on the freeway I checked my van's performance. I did not tromp it at the very first:
Wed Oct 18 = This evening I did a quick heavy legs workout, on East Camelback Rd, on my way downtown.
- Tonight was the big night I have been looking forward to for about a month: the New Faces comedy show at Stand-up live in Phoenix. It was a fun show and I got a lot of laughs. One hitch was that the line output from their audio panel did NOT include the PA system and the comedian's mic. I got somewhat satisfactory audio with the stereo audience mic which I had placed at the back of the stage. On stage, I couldn't think of my two best jokes to close with, so I closed with my Voice bit. The audience liked it... and never knew.
Thu Oct 19 = This morning I got up at 6:41 for 1:50 of phone calls to Trinidad and Tobago, then went back to bed for the rest of my night. - I lay in the sun at solar noon.
- At 5pm I went to Discover
.
They highlighted their spectrum of services, and I learned some new things. I sat by Elizabeth Banta, the Executive Director. I didn't know that she started there as a graduate intern. She certainly does a good job for the organization.
- On the way home this evening I did a heavy arms workout at the new 7th St. and Coral Gables Anytime Fitness
Fri Oct 20 = I woke up at 6am to make a phone call to Tobago, to fix and eat breakfast and make a follow-up phone call 30 minutes later. I went back to bed, getting up in time to fix lunch and take Lillian to a doctors appointment under the auspices of
. It was my first time with Lillian, very pleasant and nine years older than me.
- On the way home I stopped by the new 7th St/ Coral Gables Anytime Fitness for a hevy torso workout.
Sat Oct 21 = Today's significant project was to activate my awesome computer speaker system. If I had known how to do it and that it would be so easy, I would have done it months ago. Since I got my new
XPS
Dell XPS-13 computer with 13.3" touch screen, 60WHr Integrated Battery, Windows 10, Intel 7th Generation Core i7 CPU, 16gb memory and 1TB SSD
I have been putting up with the little speakers in the HDMI-connected display.
- In the mail today I got a summons for jury service in the Superior Court in Maricopa County in downtown Phoenix. It took me about an hour to figure everything out and watch the informational videos. It is for November 30th, 2017.
- This evening I spent about an hour and a half doing a light legs workout at Fitness 1 and shopping at the nearby Goodwill. I bought a new, better padded and thinner computer bag.
- Tonight I ran across a video on my September, 2014 Blog. I had so much fun, impulsing tonight watching that video and finding others, I thought I'd revisit the PVC Pipes of Snubby J (aka Kent Jenkins). Here's one of his more recent videos (6:17):
Snubby has even started cloning himself, as demonstrated here with his 4:52 video of Star Wars themes.
Here is Snubby J explaining to a high school how his passion and instruments developed (14:20 video)
Google my pvc instrument if you want to hear and see more.
- My PVC Pipe impulse got me to bed at 3am. Not smart. Sunday morning, in retrospect, I realized, in the same time, I could have moved all of the automatic deposits and payments to my new Arizona Federal checking account. Stupid impulsing! Of course I would NEVER stay up that late doing lagidimate things.
Sun Oct 22 = All T-Shirt profits for the rest of the month of October will go to help with the logistical support of the relief efforts in Puerto Rico, through the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN). Puerto Rico's electric grid was totally destroyed, they have no drinkable water and very little food. Although many generous people are donating, there is a real need to get the donations coordinated and to where they are needed. That is where ALAN comes in.
- This evening I headed down to Mesa for 7 minutes of open mic at Comedy Off Main St. On the way home I bought a couple things at Safeway and did a light, fast arms workout at the E Indian School Anytime Fitness.
Mon Oct 23 = Today I ended a perfect workout week by taking the day off. That means last Wednesday through Friday I did heavy workouts for legs, arms and torso, respectively. Then Saturday through Monday I did the same workouts, only fast and light.
- After a half hour waiting on hold to The
AFCU
Arizona Federal Credit Union
,
I spent an additional hour on the phone getting some things clarified. I was having trouble adding
DSFCU
Desert Schools Federal Credit Union
as an external account, transferring funds, etc.
Tue Oct 24 = In the middle of my night, last night, I decided that I needed to research some given names for my comedy bits. I ran across Behind the Name, which tells you everything you could want to know about any name, including popularity graphs by percent used and rank in a lot of countries. Here are the most popular names in the US listed by decade and other ways.
- What is a cheese-head screw? I had to find out and eventually came up with the types of screws. As you might guess, there are lots of types. Here are some:
Wed Oct 25 = I had my new Childhood routine all ready for Toso's this evening, but decided I'd work on my Comedy Class writing assignment and do a heavy legs workout instead. Performing is fun, but hopefully this will pay off in the long run.
- On the way home from the gym I stopped by a
DSFCU
Desert Schools Federal Credit Union
ATM machine - a really high-tech one. I found that I do not need an envelope to deposit checks and cash to my new
AFCU
Arizona Federal Credit Union
account. For cash, you just stick a stack of bills into the machine. It counts them, and tallies the number of each denomination and the total. Nothing was mentioned about any associated fee. Guess we'll find out. Thanks, DSFCU!
- Tonight I tried to do a back up of all the modified files on my
XPS
Dell XPS-13 computer with 13.3" touch screen, 60WHr Integrated Battery, Windows 10, Intel 7th Generation Core i7 CPU, 16gb memory and 1TB SSD
.
Kept getting an insufficient memory error message. I don't understand. There is gobs more meory and disc space than should be needed.
Thu Oct 26 = I recharged my shaver (Remington F-5790) today because the charge indicator had just reached RED. We'll take the charger on our Trinidad and Tobago trip, or not, depending on how long the charge lasts.
- At solar noon I lay in the sun for 22 minutes. As usual, I put sunscreen on eight places: pecs, deltoids, biceps and triceps. It hasn't made a noticeable difference, but if those places are slightly lighter it'll look ripped... on the beach... from a distance. Of course the gym helps in that department also.
- Today it was a quick, slow, heavy arms workout on my way to my first
ARA
Arizona Repeater Association (ham radio operators)
meeting in about six months. The presenter was long winded, soft spoken and interesting, from what I could hear at the back. He had helped out with ham radio communications at various marathons, including Phoenix, Catalina Island, Waldo OR, Light House and Boston.
- On the way home I mailed five letters to senators and representatives in Washington, DC requesting that they vote against the horrid Life at Conception Act, and stopped by Albertsons for some broccoli. While there, I impulsed on a 7-ounce piece of carrot cake. I'll freeze it into fifths and it will give me five treat nights.
- Here's more than you will ever want to know about musical notes, frequencies etc.
Fri Oct 27 = I am still in the process of switching automatic deposits and withdrawls from
DSFCU
Desert Schools Federal Credit Union
to my new
AFCU
Arizona Federal Credit Union
account.
- I phoned to change the day of my jury service at the Superior Court in Maricopa County and found that, since I am over 75, I can request to have my name permanently removed from jury lists, which I did. Being older has its privileges!
Sat Oct 28 = Tonight I went to see Harland Williams at The Tepe Improv. After Dave, the host, did 19 minutes minutes, Harland did a 32 minute combination of creative crowd work and related bits. Then he did a live 55 minute podcast, The Harland Highway, with guest comedian, Josh Wolf. I paid the bucks so got to sit right up front... well the third seat from the front in the middle. Since there were other things going on like an ASU Homecoming Game, it was a relatively small, but enthusiastic audience. Harland mentioned it once at the beginning but never complained.
Sun Oct 29 = I drove 62 miles for nothing this evening. Comedy Off Main Street's open mic was canceled with no notice. I'm getting a little paranoid, and, at the same time, adjusting to the fact that many open mics are run rather poorly. Guess that's what you get at my level.
- On the way home, since it was still early, I stopped by the Tempe LA Fitness for a 20-minute light, fast legs workout. A couple guys liked my inverted shrugs. One of them even tried them.
- Switching my automatic payments over to
AFCU
Arizona Federal Credit Union
is not going very smoothly with a Southwest Gas account mix-up, the City of Phoenix, and Allianz telling you to fill out the wrong form. I'll probably spend lots of time on the phone tomorrow trying to straighten things out.
Mon Oct 30 = It surely was good to see Pedro, my friend and landscaper again. He came over and trimmed my shrubs and we worked out an agreement for him taking of my front AND BACK yards year around... as needed... on a flexible schedule to suit him.
- Tonight was the weekly Writer's Table at Comedy Off Main in Mesa. Very good session, headed up by Ricky Olson, who let me do my Dominican Republic/Hand routine for the group's evaluation... very interesting and helpful. Thanks, class and Rick
- After The Writer's Table I drove to The Time Out Lounge, put my name of the list for the show, then went to a nearby LA Fitness, I think, for a shower.
Tue Oct 31 = This afternoon I lay in the sun in the for 22 minutes and squeezed in two trips. The first trip was west, to Bashas, LAF, Noon Valley for a shower and to Winco for my semi-monthly grocery shopping.
- I never have been good with time, but it is a little unusual for me to get the wrong day. I somehow got to thinking that today was the day to earn one of my Protein Frosties (Wednesday) so accidentally did a short, slow, heavy arms workout at LA Fitness in South Tempe, since I had a half hour to kill before the Dose Gringos open mic. Most everyone was Trick or Treating so we had an audience of only four - all comedians and a wife. After Dos Gringos, we all went over to the Tempe Tavern where there was a shopping audience of eight. It would have been better if it did not include two gals who did not listen to any of the comedians, but visited loudly the entire time, one of them pretty much yelling with her loud piercing voice. I spoke to them before I went up, but it did no good.
