Christmas Gig Money: Whatcha Gonna Buy With It?

[the elephant]

Come on, what do you think you might spend your gig money on this year? Will it be an indulgence for yourself, a gift for the spouse/SO, or will you pay a bill or fix something around the house? Will you get a horn? Will you get horn parts? Tools? Books? Underpants? Waffles with butter and syrup? (Damn, now I have a Waffle House Jones going on...)

[Mark Finley]

I am doing a restoration on my 1970 pontiac. Seems like every day there is something to buy. Some days it's sandpaper, other days it car parts. I invested in a fresh air system so I could paint without damaging my lungs. Wasn't cheap, but my lungs are worth it

[Mike C855B]

So far, lunch. OK, maybe lunch, dinner, and maybe breakfast - Waffle House sounds like a mighty fine idea, too. Anyway, the quintet hasn't been active this season for some reason, so opportunities have been few.

I just got home from an excruciating rehearsal (3 hours!) for a gig a week from this Saturday where it's not entirely clear I'm going to be paid, there's a certain "doing a friend a favor" aspect to it. A mystery to me why and how, but a violinist of my acquaintance from many years ago showed-up at tonight's rehearsal. I know he does nothing for free, so if he's getting paid yet I'm not... well... you know.

[toobagrowl]

Already bought what I wanted; waiting for it to get here. That said, yeah there are a couple more paid gigs coming up, but not spending much. Gotta save what little I can and have bills and stuff to pay for. I'd have more money if I didn't have to keep paying off the damn student loans ......I can't wait to pay that off

[toobagrowl]

I just got home from an excruciating rehearsal (3 hours!) for a gig a week from this Saturday where it's not entirely clear I'm going to be paid, there's a certain "doing a friend a favor" aspect to it.

I know that feeling. My main quintet has done more than enough "favor/freebie' gigs; some of them for our first trumpet. I don't mind doing them from time to time, but sometimes it is too much and people will expect it and take advantage of it.

[the elephant]

I have fifteen gigs in two weeks, starting this Sunday. I have three more kiddie shows with the MSO Brass Quintet this Friday. The last gig is a Midnight Mass that lets out at midnight, Christmas morning. Then the quintet will exhange gifts in the parking lot, then I have the long drive home through the forest that is Central Mississippi.

This is a pretty decent year, but I have had much better. With the commuting I have to do this is all I really want, anyway. I have enough with this. And since this is all extra income outside of my normal life and bill-paying cycle I will be getting a ton of parts for two horns as well as some tools and a new torch. I am excited because I have been unusually broke this Fall and have had to curtail my repair and restoration work to my horns and my old Jeep. However, this is the time of the year I get to stock up on stuff to fiddle with for the next eleven months. HAHAHA!!!

I have also suffered from some really bad health issues this past year, now, and I am finally feeling moderately better. Getting to work and playing is no longer an issue. I am grateful for the work, the ability to do it, and the skills that allow me to play with some really top shelf players every day. Now I just have to figure out what to buy my wife, who is an enigma so far as the whole "what gift would you like to get or what do you need" aspect of married life. "Oh, I don't want anything this year." Well, boys, as Admiral Ackbar said, "IT'S A TRAP!"

[windshieldbug]

A clue.
If I'm really flush, perhaps two clues.
Maybe the first clue would be what to do with the second...

[bloke]

After hand-washing dishes for roughly a year (I suppose: hoping for molecular realignment in the 18-year-old formerly-quite-the-cat's-pajamas Bosch machine), we're going to buy a new dishwasher.
This house, unfortunately, is plagued with top-end appliances - which fail and wear out, just as with all the others...except they are much more costly to maintain and replace. Do ~not~ fill your kitchen with top-end appliances, and (just as with a swimming pool) consider them (when preexisting) to be a DEVALUATION of a house you're considering purchasing, rather than any sort of "asset".

The new dishwasher (probably a top-end "home-not-commercial" ★★★★★-rated Bosch) will probably tap out our personal (me-her) Christmas budget. The "super-quiet" feature is nice, the "super-reliable" feature is nice, and the "ACTUALLY DOES clean the dishes" feature is nice as well.

Other than that, I'm going to try to finish another (as of now: 66%-completed) out-building for Mrs. bloke, clear out some more underbrush and "trash-trees" in more areas (tossing the cleared brush into washes, and creating more inviting areas, which will - someday - make this place easier to sell), build a new chicken coup for Mrs. bloke, and fence off another pasture for her (to be able to give the other pasture a rest). Fortunately, the materials for those projects were previously acquired.

There are actually two porches that need to be "four-seasoned" (one in particular: for Mrs. bloke's weaving looms, so we can have one of our guest bedrooms back), but I doubt that (not being a young man), I'll be able to additionally get that done for her before the crazy-busy season starts back up.

For my son, I'm going to try to do some more work on his place (minor issues, that we're checking off for him one at a time). He needs a little bit of window sealing (caulk), some new 3-1/2" wide strips of lauan (very thin appearance plywood) between interior/exterior windows, a dishwasher ($250, not $1250), and an exterior door (installed by a previous owner backwards) turned around. There's also a non-acute mysterious plumbing issue there that needs to be understood, revealed, and addressed.

for myself...??
I'm going to try to clean up my workroom, convert the light fixtures to LED, and get more of the long-term "attic" projects finished (or sold as-is)...whether they are for sale, or for myself. I'm also going to liberate myself of one or two of my own (admittedly: coveted) instruments. Though I'm quite fond of them, the bloke rule of "if it is collecting dust..." is hard-and-fast.

I've begged my relatives to please not give me any stuff. I neither need nor desire any. Likely, I'll be looking through my "stuff" to see if any of it is gift-worthy to any of them. "Stuff" lowers my standard of living and decreases my living space. "Improvement of the blokenvironment" raises my standard of living.

[Mike C855B]

...This house, unfortunately, is plagued with top-end appliances - which fail and wear out, just as with all the others...except they are much more costly to maintain and replace. ...

Yes. Technology isn't necessarily a positive on (formerly) simple devices. A friend who owns the busiest auto mechanic shop in town stopped by my studio yesterday to borrow a micro-wrench. He needed it to adjust a sensor/camera on a car with auto-braking and blind spot warning. Very telling was, "I'm also buying new piece of electronic equipment for the shop - a defibrillator, for when customers get the bill. All this fancy tech is stupid expensive to fix!"

He went on to say that he will soon have to build a separate building just to do alignments because it's not just the tires any more, the driver-assist gimmicks have to be finely-adjusted along with the suspension. He described the alignment bay has to be essentially a photo studio with special screens and calibration targets. "Alignments will need to cost $600 or more pretty soon to pay for all this."

[Charlie C Chowder]

As Clowns, we only clown for free at a nonprofit charity, and if one performer gets paid, we all get paid. Once they pay somebody then they need to always pay. Kind of like a union thing. I don't get paid for playing any of my toys, But if I had the money I would buy a new to me Kanstul Tuba that is at a local store. 5/4 5 valve BBb in prime condition and I can reach the valves. But $9000 for a toy is a little hard to justify.

Charlie C. Chowder

[djwpe]

For the LED lighting for the workroom, be careful of lamp conversions and try to get whole fixtures made from the ground up for LED's.

The conversions often put the highly intense direct light from the emitters in your line of vision.

Also, be careful of color temperature selection.

[bloke]

...This house, unfortunately, is plagued with top-end appliances - which fail and wear out, just as with all the others...except they are much more costly to maintain and replace. ...

Yes. Technology isn't necessarily a positive on (formerly) simple devices. A friend who owns the busiest auto mechanic shop in town stopped by my studio yesterday to borrow a micro-wrench. He needed it to adjust a sensor/camera on a car with auto-braking and blind spot warning. Very telling was, "I'm also buying new piece of electronic equipment for the shop - a defibrillator, for when customers get the bill. All this fancy tech is stupid expensive to fix!"

He went on to say that he will soon have to build a separate building just to do alignments because it's not just the tires any more, the driver-assist gimmicks have to be finely-adjusted along with the suspension. He described the alignment bay has to be essentially a photo studio with special screens and calibration targets. "Alignments will need to cost $600 or more pretty soon to pay for all this."

This house features an extremely nice laundry room. Originally, a countertop passed over where a computerized washer and dryer were installed. When we moved in a dozen years ago, in went our ($200 for the pair - used, and now: 18-year-old) mechanical-drive washer and dryer...and yes, we had to cut that counter top out of the way, as (of course) they are top-loading. We've had no trouble with either to date. The towels, sheets, and clothing seem to be clean and dry.

bloke "...and if they break, I'm pretty sure that youtube can tell me what to do to repair them."

[bloke]

For the LED lighting for the workroom, be careful of lamp conversions and try to get whole fixtures made from the ground up for LED's.

The conversions often put the highly intense direct light from the emitters in your line of vision.

Also, be careful of color temperature selection.

OK...I'll consider your advice. thnx.

1000bulbs.com is based in the DFW area, offers remarkably good prices on 4" LED tube fixtures, and I could pick some up at will-call there (as I owe several people in the area a visit) to save the shipping cost (which messes up their great pricing).

re: color, I typically pick the (obnoxiously bright) "bluish" ones when I really need some friggin' light (such as my carport's cutesy little candelabra-bases three-bulbs-each small ceiling fixtures - as the carport features a dark-green ceiling...as this log house's only accent color is hunter-green/evergreen), and I pick the upper-middle color spectrum for seeing instruments that I'm repairing - or for reading music...Am I on the right track...??

[Ace]

Bloke, you are selling some of your dust-gathering instruments in your attic? I'm searching for an antique contra alto trumpet from around the period 1880-1910, preferably four valves, piston or rotor. Got anything? A lot of orchestral compositions from that era specified F trumpet, alto that is. I'd like to play an old, but good instrument that symphony pros used over a century ago.

Ace

[bloke]

Bloke, you are selling some of your dust-gathering instruments in your attic? I'm searching for an antique contra alto trumpet from around the period 1880-1910, preferably four valves, piston or rotor. Got anything? A lot of orchestral compositions from that era specified F trumpet, alto that is. I'd like to play an old, but good instrument that symphony pros used over a century ago.

Ace

I have nothing like that. A trumpet-hoarder friend ( who hoards odd - often old/oddball - trumpets/cornets, but I honestly doubt if anything that old) friend has at least one (and - knowing him - possibly more).
Send me an email (not a private message) with your name and contact info, and (if he has one with which he's willing to part) he'll contact you.

Otherwise, there are always plenty of these to be had:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=Getzen+Frumpet&_sacat=0

[Ace]

Hey, I like that Getzen link. I think I'll explore it a bit further. Thanks Bloke.

Ace

[djwpe]

OK...I'll consider your advice. thnx.

1000bulbs.com is based in the DFW area, offers remarkably good prices on 4" LED tube fixtures, and I could pick some up at will-call there (as I owe several people in the area a visit) to save the shipping cost (which messes up their great pricing).

re: color, I typically pick the (obnoxiously bright) "bluish" ones when I really need some friggin' light (such as my carport's cutesy little candelabra-bases three-bulbs-each small ceiling fixtures - as the carport features a dark-green ceiling...as this log house's only accent color is hunter-green/evergreen), and I pick the upper-middle color spectrum for seeing instruments that I'm repairing - or for reading music...Am I on the right track...??

The tube lamps that retrofit into old fluorescent fixtures have some potential issues. The fluorescents put out light uniformly over the full circle of the tube. LED's put the light out as tiny point sources (seen in this link as the yellow boxes https://www.dhgate.com/store/product/12 ... 33254.html)

In order to use All the output of an LED, a fixture needs to be designed around the emitter, rather than taking a fixture designed for a completely different emitter and adapting it. It looks like the 1000bulbs lamps have a diffuser, which should help eliminate the point source issue, but make your high lumen LED's much less effective, because you are throwing away a good deal of the light.

You're on the right track for the color. I'd say that the high temp (6000K) obnoxious blue tend to be tiring to many people over long periods.

Don

[Ltrain]

My brass band is making a 4-day field trip to NOLA in February (part musical recognizance / part group vacation).

My holiday gig money is covering sousa flight surcharges and hotel stay!