School was out a week ago! I got to end the year with lots of fun performances. I think that was definitely the most performances I’ve had in a month ever in my life. It was definitely fun though, and I’ve definitely taken more pictures during this month than any other month and that was also very fun.

Aside from that, I also attended a couple BBQs. The AX one left me smelling like smoke and it took a whole day for the smell to go away. The one on Memorial Day was nice and quiet and relaxing.

And that’s it for the good news.

This is a minor nuisance, but my laptop charger is dead now. The wires in the connector are short circuiting so it will not provide any power to my laptop anymore. I am currently borrowing my sister’s whenever she is not using it. So that was two chargers that died on me this month, and there’s only one good one left in this household.

Because it’s so annoying having to wait for my sister to not use her laptop to get anything done, I thought this would be a great time to cross over to a Mac. I’ve been thinking about getting a 20″ iMac for a while after all, so why not do it when my PC continues to fail me. But of course, that wouldn’t be the plan for long.

This next bit is rather ironic I think.

I told Michelle about the problem with my laptop, and she (being a Dell user) offers to let me borrow a charger temporarily until I can resolve the issue. So Monday evening, I start heading up to UCLA to pick it up. I only made it half way because my car engine started acting up. While I was going at 75MPH two lanes over from the carpool lane, next to a CHP car, and with a large SUV with rather bright headlights coming up behind me at probably 85MPH, my engine experienced a sudden loss of power. RPMs dropped and my speed was down to 50MPH in about 5 seconds, which now that I think about it is abnormally fast. I tried to accelerate back to 88MPH so the flux capacitor would work, but then my engine completely cut out and RPMs dived to 0. Time of death, 11:12PM.

So my engine is blown, and considering how fast that thing leaks oil, I’m not too surprised. It’s just not fun having to deal with it. It uses over a gallon of oil a month. If it lasted any longer, I would have been using more oil than gas.

Oh and earlier, my shoot-through umbrella and my backpack broke. At least those two were easy to replace.

So plans for summer are going to have to change a bit. No new computer, not as much new camera gear. I have to get a replacement car soon after all.

But the good news is: AX2009 is less than 5 weeks away!

Last Saturday I played one of the most amazing steel drum concerts I have ever been in. It was so much fun, and the best part was a lot of my friends and family came.

My good friend Johnny B’s girlfriend Alyssa was kind enough to take pictures for us during the second concert and she got some amazing shots.

The lighting for this concert was interesting because it was the first time we performed in a dance theater. I thought they would turn on their side lights, but they didn’t for whatever reason. But the pictures still all came out pretty good I think.

Come to my next steel drum concert in December!