Blog Archive 2018 Feb
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Thu Feb 1 = Today, on my travels I collected 22 more Fan emails on my way way down to Chandler for the Improv Mania open mic, stopping by two gyms on the way home for heavy arms workouts.
Fri Feb 2 = Delicious condiment: I emptied out the crumb tray of my toaster - probably the first time in five years. Of course I saved them. They make a tasty addition to stuff. Sort of like toasted bread crumbs with a little roasted coffee accent.
- Into my spreadsheet, I have started inputting 20 fan emails a day until I get caught up. Also I improved my organization of them.
- My Nexus 6p is of limited use, as it shut down with 85% battery after I opened its default camera app.
- I went to LA Fitness for a slow, heavy torso workout.
Sat Feb 3 = Today I updated the software to version 8.70 and maps to version 2019.10 for the Garmin Nuvi 2589LMT I use in my van. Among other things, Garmin's ULA said that when they decide to quit supporting the unit, it will be considered its end of life and I'll lose my lifetime maps :(
- This evening I drove the 23 miles one way to Stir Crazy in Glendale to see Kevin Bozeman from Chicago who was good for 53 minutes of relaxed entertainment, mostly leaning against the brick wall background. The host was my friend Amy Blackwell. I think she was the best one up there with her 13 minute opener. Omar Durango was the feature with 26 minutes.
Sun Feb 4 = What a good feeling, to introduce people to their first stand up comedy performance. Tonight at
Insane Off Main in Mesa, Dan and Amber Webster had their first try. I think they liked it and will be back here, as well as other open mics around the valley. The show was also my first time to produce and host, solo, in Mesa. For my opening routine I did my newly developed Not Funny Routine. Due to
Superbowl L, there were only eight in the audience. It was fun because it allowed more interactions.
- Before bedtime I have started, occasionally, drinking a cup of hot milk. They say it helps you sleep better and it's something hot on these
cold
Phoenix nights.
Mon Feb 5 = This afternoon I had my 6-month eye exam. Dr Jeff Pyritz said that things are pretty much unchanged with my cataracts, wet macular degeneration and my prescription.
- I had my rout planned for stops at three gyms on the way to Mesa for The Writer's Table workshop this evening. Of course I got off later than planned, so did not make it to any of the gyms, but DID make it to The Writer's Table in plenty of time. It was a good session with Dave, our instructor. Dave gave us some good information about booking clubs. The group and Dave helped me with a new Minivan Routine.
- It took me 15 minutes to input 20 Reminder Emails into my spreadsheet database this evening.
Tue Feb 6 = This morning I did some financial stuff with my old DSFCU and new AFCU accounts.
- This evening I headed down to South Tempe for my new Minivan Routine.
- My van brakes have been making a lot of loud growling and grinding sounds. My solution: EAR PLUGS.
Wed Feb 7 = I spent pretty much the whole day our and about, leaving home at 11:30 and getting back over 12 hours later. At my dermatologists office, Andrew, at the front desk, taught me how to find and connect to a hidden Wi-Fi network. However, for some reason, their network would not connect. For to doctor to see I had to wait about an hour and a half, so that put me behind for my next appointments. Dr Geneve Egnatios took a small biopsy of a spot under my left eye, in part, because it had blood vessels. She said the disadvantage of just watching it for changes is that it could grow larger and deeper - not a good thing, being on the face and close to the eye.
- I got my brakes looked at with estimates at C & R Tire and a new place for me, Brake Masters, as I headed toward east Mesa to:
-
Baja Joe's;
1927 N Gilbert Rd, where Manny, the Soccer Dad debuted his new comedy/sketch improv show.
Thu Feb 8 = Today I got my brakes fixed at Brake Masters. Although their warranty is not lifetime like C&R Tire's, I figured their price was lower enough to self-insure.
- On the way home I had my van washed at a neat no-touch self-service car wash. It was good except their undercarriage rinse did not work.
- This evening I went to LA Fitness to start my slow, heavy arms workout, but only had time for one set for my biceps and another set for my triceps before scooting off to
ImprovMANIA;
in Chandler. When I got there, the little Sony ICD-PX312 stereo recorder I use for recording my sets was not in my pocket. I scoured my van and could not find it, so downloaded and installed a voice recorder on my Nexus 6P cell phone to use as an emergency recorder. Ryan, the host, said it was my funniest set there yet.
- I stopped by an Anytime Fitness on the way home to finish out my arms workout with one slow, heavy set for each of the remaining muscles.
Fri Feb 9 = Today I tried to set up
Informed Delivery with the USPS. It is a free and optional notification service that gives residential consumers the ability to digitally preview their letter-sized mailpieces and manage their packages. We'll see if it really works.
Sat Feb 10 = Today I spent over two hours on the phone with USPS, trying to straighten out my USPS logon :(
- This evening I drove down to see Craig Shoemaker (The Love Machine) again at The Tempe Improv. Good show He kept the laughter rolling for an hour and a half.
Sun Feb 11 = Today I paid my credit card bills and made a big mistake. I re-inked the ink roller on my calculator, but used indellible laundry marking ink instead of the numbering machine ink. That froze up the ink roller so it does not roll and the printer does not print.
- The host let me be first at the Infuse Open Mic's 6pm show so I could make it to Mesa to host my
Insane Off Main show at Comedy Off Main St. Meanwhile, Chris Zucher, the owner, opened the place for me. Thank you Chris. I started the show with my new Minivan routine.
Mon Feb 12 = I bought some Yurbuds ear bud-type ear phones, but the soft plastic enhancers (size #4) are too small and fall out of my ears. I phoned Yurbuds at 800 336-4525 and they are going to send me a pair each of #5 & #6. Thanks, guys!
- I found a scrap of paper laying around on which Hunter Stich wrote his phone number , so I phoned him and refreshed my mind: He lives in San Francisco, we met on
- OBX
- Hatteras Island and the Outer Banks off the coast of North Carolina
,
and he is into tech. When I called he was driving home from a job interview. Good luck, my friend.
- Tonight at The Writers' Table I worked on a resurrected routine about the stupid, distracting, electronic freeway signs.
Tue Feb 13 = I received a check from American Airlines for $151.71 for my out-of-pocket expenses due to the bag they lost for 11 days.
Wed Feb 14 = I had an interesting phone call with Doug Pacey of ADOT about their distracting electronic freeway signs. This is related to the new comedy routine I am developing, and which I did this evening at Toso's.
- I received an email tonight from
America's Got Talent, so I spent several hours preparing and getting my ducks in a row for my Saturday audition. Along with that and other things, I got to bed at 3am :(
Thu Feb 15 = My dermatologist's office phoned and said the tiny biopsy they took under my left eye was completely benign. Thanks, Darcy.
- Today I researched MailChimp for sending my upcoming appearances to the approximately 200 email addresses I have collected. All of the email requests are in writing. MadMimi costs more and does not offer as many contacts as MailChimp's free version. I joined MailChimp.
- Today I recharged the SLAs in my van's jumper pack, my
portable PA system and my
Helicase. Well, not the helicase. After recharging it last November, I accidentally left the battery connect and the charger connect switches on, so the charger slowly drained all life out of the battery. The problem is the battery is burried in the little blue compartment to the right in the Helicase.
- After doing my Electronic Freeway Signs thing at Improv Mania in Chandler, I drove down to an LA Fitness in south Chandler that used to be a 24-Hour fitness. There I did a slow, heavy arms workout... then went on to a nearby Winco Foods where I finished up my shopping list (electronic, of course) and did my semi-monthly shopping. I finished at 12:02am and headed straight home, 40 miles away, where I put everything away before going to bed.
Fri Feb 16 = Dealing with the post office has been a pain. They cannot seem to verify me, necessary to use their Informed Delivery service.
- I cut my hairs this afternoon and went to a gym for a shower so I would not be itchy.
- I sent out a test email through MailChimp and then sent one-time show reminders to 17 email addresses, including myself as a test.
Sat Feb 17 = Big deal today: I rotated my couch cushions and at the same time looked for my lost, second, ChanelMaster remote control. Never found it. I also went to the post office for them to identify me so I could then set up their Informed Delivery.
- Other projects included laying out in the sun a while, creating and uploading my new Insane Off Main poster (below),
and the big project, updating my blog from the third of February to yesterday. This evening I made it to the Moon Valley LA Fitness for an abbreviated heavy, slow arms workout.
Sun Feb 18 = Today I renamed a bunch of files on my stereo Sony recorder from recent appearances and uploaded them to 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
- My Insane Off Main open mic went well, with my new set about the stupid, distracting electronic freeway signs that mostly give useless information.
Mon Feb 19 = I got the word this morning that
- STAN
- Stanley, my older brother who is retired as a machinist for Eaton Corporation in Hutchinson, KS
went to the Hutchinson, KS Regional Hospital emergency room at the recommendation of a nurse who is the wife of one of the pastors. Stan was having trouble speaking. They suspected a stroke. After some testing today they pretty much ruled out a stroke and suspect Myasthenia gravis.
Tue Feb 20 = I saw Dan Nainan, the
cleanest comedian
at the Fountain Hills Presbyterian Church. Then I drove west.
- Grand Avenue Pizza was awesome. The hosts always think of some creative way to distort my
America's Favorite Old Man
introduction. Tonight was no exception. Good job, Buck Newman! My set was five minutes of my new
Minivan Kits routine, warming up for my audition on Saturday for
America's Got Tallent.
Wed Feb 21 = What an awesome night at
The Tempe Improv, with a crowd of about 200. I set a personal record for my number of guests. I had an excellent 5 minutes with my new minivan set.
- Poor David, a comedian friend of mine. His life may have been changed forever in 10 seconds at the show. He ended his set by getting down on one knee, on stage, and proposing to his girlfriend in front of the 200 people. She said nothing, but walked out. I imagine David had a pretty tough night. The proposals you see on the news and on TV are always the successful ones, huh? We're such romantics!
- I stopped by an LA Fitness on the way and did a slow, heavy, but brief legs workout.
- Earlier in the day, I uploaded 145 email addresses to MailChimp and send out the emails for my show tonight. I wanted to do it two days earlier, but am was still figuring out MailChimp.
Thu Feb 22 =
Improv Mania was fun tonight. Ryan Johnson, the host, gave me an awesome introduction. I commented about the Olympics' curling and other thrilling sports, introduced my
America's Got Talent practice set and then did about two minutes worth of Minivan Kids.
Fri Feb 23 = I have always had trouble with my short-term memory. That was accentuated today as I tried to remember the new opening words for two of my
Minivan Kids routine:
None of that old stuff...
Joking aside...
- I got the recordings of some of my recent appearances uploaded to 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
.
- Something I feel I need to do, takes a lot of time and don't seem to have time to do is to analyze my punchlines. That involves listening to a recordings of one of my appearances and rating each punchline. We are talking of about 60 punchlines for each 5-minute set. My spreadsheet gives me a
Funny Factor
for each punchline. I stayed up late tonight (to late) and got the analysis done for my Minivan Kids set. That helped me decide which jokes to leave out to pare my set down to the 90 seconds.
Sat Feb 24 =
America's Got Talent: My big audition was today, along with at least a thousand others. It took just about the whole day: seven hours for my 90 seconds in front of a producer. There was only one other comedian in our group of about 25. I think I did at least as well as he did with an abbreviated version of my
Minivan Kids routine. I nailed the time at EXACTELY 1:30. No, I did not remember the new opening words from yesterday, in spite of practicing them a thousand times. Of course no one knew it but me.
- During the wait time for AGT, I got word that
- Stan
- Stanley, my older brother who is retired as a machinist for Eaton Corporation in Hutchinson, KS
's
condition has deteriorated and they are helicoptering him from the ICU in Hutchinson to the KU Medical Center in Kansas City. This evening I researched and booked flights
to Kansas City, and a rental car there.
Sun Feb 25 = A SuperShuttle picked me up at 1:15pm and took me to Sky Harbor. At the gate, I pulled some strings, due to my short connection time in Houston. I had already requested a wheel chair there, in case the plane was late, I was slow getting off or if my departing gate was a long ways off. I figured I could get off the plane and to the gate sooner by having my roller bag in an overhead compartment rather than being gate checked, which was likely since it was a full flight. I used my wheelchair status to preboard, got the overhead and settled into row 14, the sixth row in the main cabin.
- A slight bug was thunderstorms in the Houston area and our being rerouted over the gulf. The connection in Houston? With a lot of running, taking the tram to my next terminal, I made it to the gate just in time to miss the flight. So much for arriving in Kansas City at 9:45pm. A nice lady helped to reschedule me on a flight to arrive about 11:30pm and hopefully get to the Thrifty car rental counter before it closed at midnight. The flight arrived a little early, I got the car and made it to the huge KU Medical Center campus.
- Getting to
- Stan
- Stanley, my older brother who is retired as a machinist for Eaton Corporation in Hutchinson, KS
's
room was a different matter. There are so many buildings I ended up on the right floor... of the wrong building. It was about 1:30 am when I finally got to Stan's room and joined
- George
- younger brother who lives in Mesa, AZ
so us three brothers were together again. I spent the remainder of the short night in a recliner in Stan's hospital room.
Mon Feb 26 = (It is March 15th now and so much has been happening that I have gotten behind on my blogging. The following entries will be brief). I paid Stan's phone bill so we can keep his phone working: an important link for us and for him.
Tue Feb 27 = Until leaving KCMO on Sunday the 4th I spent a lot of time at the KU Medical Center ICU tower with
- Stan
- Stanley, my older brother who was in the hospital and is retired as a machinist for Eaton Corporation in Hutchinson, KS
,
visiting and taking care of business with
- George & Cindy
- my younger brother and his wife who live in Mesa, Arizona
and making decisions about Stan's care. He left no will, directive or living will, so it is all a guessing game. If you do not have those documents in place for yourself, please, PLEASE TAKE CARE OF IT NOW.
- For exercise, I did a lot of walking the .7 miles from my apartment to and from the hospital and running the stairs up to the fifth floor.
- My apartment is provided as a service for out-of-town families of hospital patients at $25 per night by the Our Savior Lutheran Church on Rainbow Blvd. in Kansas City, KS. What a wonderful service.
Wed Feb 28 = Keep laughing! I had my first stand up comedy appearance in Kansas City, Kansas and also first in a church - for a group of 31 unsuspecting parishioners who came for a soup supper.
- I then drove across the Missouri River, for a somewhat different (Viagra) routine at the Red Front Bar.
