Alles Klar or as my friend would say, Alaska

Hello Everybody!

Here’s some sad news for some, the beard is gone.  That’s right, I shaved.  I have interviews lined up and I don’t want to scare off any potential  promise of a job, particularly now since Germany was threatened of attacks if they did not elect someone that would pull their troops from Afghanistan.

So here is the new me, I figure maybe Mexican farmer would go over well…

 

As some of you may know,  I had an interview late May of this year at the Franconian International School, which went great, but I was a little in the year to obtain a teaching position.  I have been in contact with the school and I am hoping to start an afternoon Writers Club at the school. 

I want to keep up my teaching so much, that I also applied for job with the Department of Defense at Bamberg.  We’ll see how that goes, they’re in the middle of looking up all my info.  

In the meantime, I’ve decided to build snare drums and maybe a complete drum set when I gain the confidence.  This is not a new idea,  here’s the history…

In late 1996, way before I moved to Portland, I began an apprenticeship under a local drum builder and friend in good ol’ Corpus Christi (if anyone has seen my arbor and patio chair knows that wood projects are not completely new to me, I would say I need more practice).  Well, I learned the basics of drum building and our friendship developed into potential business partners.  Now here’s the fall out, I put together a business package, worked out the pricing, contacted the drum shell manufactures, arranged to see a warehouse to build and store the drums and then…poof.  My so called friend/business partner vanished, later I found out he had moved to Houston.  But what is messed up about this situation is he took all the information I had kept in a binder, which at the time I had not thought about making two packets.  Needless to say we are no longer friends and to make things more scandalous I have a sneaky suspicion he slept with my ex-wife, but that’s another story. 

And recently I found some of my old contact information for purchasing drum shells, but when I tried contacting them I was redirected to another distributor. I can no longer buy directly from the manufacture because I’m considered a small fry.  On the plus side, I did meet a German drum builder yesterday and I am scheduled to visit his workshop mid October, he lives about 2 hours away, so I have to make my visit count.  I’m hoping I can get my hands on some German Beech, Mahogany or Walnut, but I’ll settle for Maple.  I also did some research and found several American distributors and buying from them might be cheaper than buying locally.  Due to the exchange rate, it’s more conducive to buy from the US, but German Beech would be ideal.

OTHER NEWS:

‘T’ arrives this coming weekend and then we’re all off to Stuttgart for a day and then to Turkey for a week.  We’ll be staying by the beach for a couple of days and then we head to Constantinople or is it Istanbul. We’re quite excited, Stanley can hardly contain himself.  He’s been locked up in the house for weeks and he’s been complaining about wanting to go outside, but as I reminded him the weather isn’t good for him.

  Signing Off,

M&L