Muggsy's Brain

And so the Holiday season is upon us and for me, not being a Black Friday shopper, it begins today. The George Maurer Trio is heading for Crosby , MN tonight for a gig entertaining the local hospital staff, we stay overnight and then head for Roseau , MN in the morning for a nearly identical gig entertaining the staff of their hospital. If you didn't look at the map, Roseau is a mere 9 miles from Canada in mid-western Minnesota and the route from Crosby to Roseau takes around 6-1/2 hours. The drive back to St. Cloud on Monday morning will take around 7-8 hours. There goes working on Monday. Tuesday (12/8) sees me playing holiday music with Andrew Walesch , a talented young singer who is out pimping his new holiday CD. We play two shows, one at 2 PM and one at 7:30 PM. Thursday (12/10) is a private party for General Mills at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis. Saturday (12/13) is a concert at St. Edwards Catholic Church (I'd link to their site, but it's a piece of crap)...

Well, I was able to do it, I got a new car for the business. It's a 2006 Chevy HHR, it has plenty of cargo space and it drives like a dream. My landlord and friend, Randy, was able to get me a screaming good deal, the bank was able to swing it through my existing loan without changing what we're already paying ($8 more per month) and it all took less time than I thought it would. Special thanks go out to Kate for allowing me to use her car to get around while we worked everything out! Kate rocks! This is by far the newest vehicle I've ever owned and I plan on driving it until it doesn't go anymore. Gosh! How exciting!

My car's transmission has started slipping in and out of consciousness. The other day it suddenly shifted into second while I was going 30 mph. I was only two blocks from my destination so I babied it into the parking lot and turned it off. When I got back it drove and shifted just fine. I added a couple of quarts of transmission fluid because it has had a slow leak since I got it in December of 2007 and I haven't had the time or money to fix it. That usually does the trick. Today I got to work just fine. When I went to run an errand the speedometer read "0" and the car wouldn't shift out of second. Again, I babied it to my destination hoping that maybe things would clear up when the engine got warm. Nope. First gear all the way back to my shop. I decided the best thing to do would be to baby it all the way home and park it in the driveway. It shifted just fine for the first six blocks until I got to a red light, once it turned green I was stuck back in first. I ...

The date was Sunday, July 9, 2006, the trio had a gig at a festival held at Phelps Mill near Fergus Falls, MN. It was a great day! We played well and we got to jump off the old bridge and swim in the river. At some point during the day I bought a three-pack of oatmeal soap from one of the vendors, expecting to use it in the shower. Unfortunately, it contained perfume and I don't like using perfumed soaps, so the three balls of soap about the size of billiard balls got relegated to hand soap. I've used it daily since and -- I just used the last of it this morning. That's practically 3-1/4 years! My hat is off to the lady who made that soap!

Kate & I were sitting in the living room talking, commenting on how much noise there is in the neighborhood since the college kids moved back into town, when we heard a guy a little too close for comfort yelling, "It's all gonna burn!" We both stood up when we realized that the dude was in my yard, we got to the kitchen when we realized that he was mounting the steps to the back door. Kate got behind me as he started pounding on the screen door, the main door was open, since it was a nice night and I went to close and lock it when dude opened the screen door and started to come into my house! I headed him off and asked him what his problem was. "It's all gonna fuckin' burn," he repeated as he pointed vaguely in the direction of my yard, or the alley, or the garage -- it was hard to tell. I looked out to make sure nothing was on fire. "Why don't you just get out of here?" I suggested. "It's gonna burn, it's all gonna burn!...

A couple of weeks ago I was cooling a batch of Nicaraguan Organic when I heard a loud CLUNK! come from my coffee roaster (the Probat L12 pictured above), I ran into the roasting room from my office to discover that the main drive wheel in the back of the machine, also known as the "idler wheel," had snapped off at its shaft where it connects to the machine's body. I knew what had happened before I looked because it had happened before back when we first moved into our current location about three years ago. A call to Probat down in Tennessee, an overnight package, $180 and a few hours of tricky labor and we were back up and running.  The machine was making a particular rhythmic throbbing sound just before the part snapped, and after the repair it is still making a similar sound. I am waiting -- half- expecting it to snap off again at any second. I am under a kind of stress that I've never been under in over 15 years of coffee roasting, and it's taking a physical...

We were supposed to leave St. Joe at 3:15 PM, that would have gotten us to the Arrowwood Resort in Alexandria, MN and set up with plenty of time to spare. George took the Tahoe full of sound gear and offered Jeff and I the chance to drive his Camero -- and who would pass up a chance like that? It took some doing, but we got our gear into the tiny, little trunk and practically non-existent back seat area -- we had to put the top down to get Jeff's bass amp in the the back, but everything fit snugly and we were ready to go. Jeff ran into the coffee shop to get an iced latte for the road, when he got back to the car he was on the phone. "Take everything out of the Camero and put it in my car," he said, "we have to go back to St. Cloud to pick up the lights." So down came the top again, and out came our gear which we quickly loaded into Jeff's mini-station wagon. We drove to the roastery in St. Cloud, where we store most of our gear, picked up the lights and w...