Best posts made by barliman2001

@Kehaulani-0 Exactly. And as Bitburg is a small town attached to a biiig brewery, the brewery picks up most of the cost...

@joelf Welcome to TB! You've come to the right place to find company and advice. There are three No-Nos here:

1. No politics
2. No woodwinds
3. No shirking

And there are three Musts:

1. Must check in regularly (even if only once a month) because there's so much new stuff coming in
2. Must always be ready for a joke to be flung around
3. Must always keep track of the number of instruments you have (incurable n+1 syndrome)

Oh, and one final obligation:

HAVE FUN!

@Comeback Don't worry - three trumpets an two cornets is only the Stage 1 of N+1 Disease (N being the number of instruments you have..). When you're in my shoes, with 29 trumpets and cornets, two trombones and two euphonia, you get to realize that cleaning is thoroughly overrated...

@dr-go Won't ban you for that.

@grune said in Instrument Maintenance:

@barliman2001 that's an enviable collection for any serious player. which is your favourite?

Every single one, depending on the purpose. I've got a wonderful 1950s Courtois Balanced for jazz and big band work, a #7 Benge for anything chamber music/brass quintet, a really nice Buescher Aristocrat for larger orchestral stuff... even runs down to a Conn International that's perfect for carnival/mardi gras work because some previous owner had it lacquered blue and enamelled with a drunken vulture... the one very special favourite amongst trumpets would be a Selmer high-G picc that I inherited from Maurice André.

Quite interesting that in the Asterix comics, 2017 saw a chariot race through Italy where one team consisted of charioteer Coronavirus and his offsider Bacillus...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix_and_the_Chariot_Race

@administrator Are you going to start building violas?? Shame on you!

Now that we've relearned how to wash our hands, we can tackle how to use indicators in traffic.

@BigDub Wearing a uniform for a flight upgrade is easy. But flying internationally with just a target shooting club membership card as ID - that's tough.
Did it. In the old days, on a flight from Dublin to London Heathrow. As neither the UK nor Ireland had any compulsory form of ID, they accepted anything with your pic in it. They did not notice that that club membership card was nine years out of date!
(And no, it was AFTER 9/11).

Doctor: "Your cough sounds much better now."
Patient: "Well, I'm practising enough day and night."

What does an out-of work philosopher say to a working philosopher?

"One burger with fries, please."

Moshe,

I am not taking up anything religious here. But I want to offer some practical help.
You say you neep some form of transport to get yourself and your racing vehicle (the electric wheelchair) to the venue. Can I help you by contributing to the cost of such transport? And perhaps, if a few more members contributed, we might get this problem out of the way in a few moments. I suggest that you create a crowndfunding site, and publish that here.

Locked. Not loaded.

I'm just now enjoying the pleasure of being assistant deputy helper at the Gutenstein Master Classes (www.meisterklassen-gutenstein.com - my wife is Vice President of the show), and that entails a lot of ferrying people around: from Vienna to Gutenstein Village and back, fro and to the airport, shuttling people from their accommodation in the village to the rehearsal rooms and to the concert hall and so forth. Every master class lasts a week.
Today, I had the fun of ferrying three viola players back to Vienna. You should think that for informal master classes, you would have a small case, perhaps a suit hanger for concert dress and the instrument case. Not this lot. Every single one came with a big case, a small case, a backpack, two bags of groceries (for f...'s sake, it's an all-inclusive thing, with all meals included), the viola case (one even had two violas!)...handbags... little paper bags of souvenirs... I could not resist asking why they had that much luggage. I got a classic viola answer:
"Well, it might perhaps be snowing by the end of the week."
In Austria in July!!!

Like the guy who went to the dentist and was asked whether he wanted his tooth drawn first class or second class. "Well... what's the difference?" he asked. "Oh, it's quite simple. Second class, you get all the young nurses and all the old equipment, and in first class, it's the other way round."

What's the name for the breathalyzer used by Mexican Police?

Coronatest

"Dad, who was Adam's mother-in-law?" -
"He did not have one, he lived in Paradise."

Presidential Candidate Biden about his long family history: "The Bidens were on Noah's Ark"
President Trump: "The Trump family, at the Flood, had their own boat!"

"Emergency! There's a young man climbing up to my room!" -
"Madam, this is for the police. You called the fire service."
"Exactly! He needs a longer ladder!"

@dr-go It's the wrong slot here because there's not much to laugh about my condition. Since I temporarily left TB, I've had two large-scale eye surgeries, both to repair my retina ablation. #1 was fairly successful in that my torn and folded retina was returned to its rightful place, and after the operation, I still had about 30% vision left. But the retina developed massive scar tissue which tore the repair into pieces, and I had to undergo a second operation which lasted for a full five hours and was extremely painful; this was in mid-January, and since then I haven't seen much improvement - sight in my right eye is down to 10%, there is constant pain because the surgeons (some of the best in the country, fortunately) had to put a tight silicon band all round the eyeball which is still in place six weeks later... I am unable to drive, unable to bend down (because that would risk another ablation), unable to do almost anything, have been prohibited from touching a trumpet for six months now (and that's no empty advice, my ophthalmic surgeon is a trumpet player of some note)... there is the constant threat of a third operation looming, and of course the statistical fact tht there is a 15% risk of my other eye getting a retinal ablation within the year... I honestly don't know how I would survive such a blow. All in all, a pretty bleak outlook.