Tag: just for fun

white ringed flycatchers perching on a branch

Phone it in Friday CXLII: YouTube Roundup CCII: Nugget and the Birds

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Remember Gumby? He was that green, bipedal, Claymation humanoid with the orange pony, Pokey. I always liked Gumby and his amorphous, shape-shifting ways.

Apparently, our three-legged dog, Nugget, has beef with the Gumbster. She has a Gumby toy that she loves to shake around. Lately, she’s been pulling Gumby’s soft inner fluff out the poor fellow, and yours portly ends up being the one picking it up. Perhaps Nugget is trying to get me to exercise a bit more.

What Nugget has not been mauling—thankfully—are the birds that come to our bird feeder. I bought a ten-dollar bird feeder at Lowe’s and hung it with a nail outside of our sunroom. Dr. Wife loves the birds, especially Peepers (a female cardinal) and her “boyfriend,” Big Red (a male cardinal).

What’s cool is that the birds are so enamored with their treats, they’ll let me walk right up to the window and look at them. I can get some pictures of them, although they tend to come out a little dark thanks to the UV coating we have over the windows. One day I’ll do a post of nothing but bird pictures (and my self-indulgent commentary).

Today is not that day. Instead, I’ll be sharing a video of a cute bird eating—and of Nugget locked in battle with her Claymation foe:

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Open Mic Adventures CLXVI: “Softly and Tenderly”

The Portly Politico1 Comment

I was working on an alto saxophone arrangement of the hymn “Softly and Tenderly” by Will L. Thompson last week, as I am planning on playing it for Chapel this week at school. I’ve always liked the hymn, and I recently attempted it on sax for a Sunday night singing at my old church. While playing it, I realized I was unclear one some of the notes in the melody, so there was a chunk where I was kind of adlibbing my way through.

That being the case, I thought it would be worthwhile to have a version for alto sax as sheet music. This arrangement is really more of a transcription; that is, I attempted to put on paper what I play when I am noodling the hymn on sax. I tried to replicate the various ornamentations that I add on when I play.

Once I had the transcription I wanted, I didn’t grab my alto sax right away. Instead, I grabbed my bass! I played bass with our new church’s praise band for the first time this past Sunday, and I needed to practice some of the pieces for service. Since I had the bass out anyway, I decided to play the alto sax arrangement on the bass!

The result is the feature of today’s post. The typical key for “Softly and Tenderly” is concert Ab major. That puts it in the key of F major for an alto saxophone (for transposing reasons I won’t explain here, because while I think it’s cool, it’s also kind of tedious and boring). So, by playing on the bass (which I think of a concert-pitch instrument, but which technically transposes everything down one octave), I was shifting the key to concert F major (meaning if I played it with a pianist, the pianist would have to play in F major, not Ab major).

See? Kind of tedious. The bass rendition, however, is not:

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Lazy Sunday CDI: Koi Dance on Other Blogs

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Koi Dance is out now on all streaming platforms and at https://tjcookmusic.bandcamp.com. It’s 90% off (!) with promo code koipond. That promo code is also good for everything on the site, so my full discography is under $10.

A couple of my blogger buddies very kind wrote little blurbs about Koi Dance, so I thought I’d share them today:

Legendary blogger Roman of Opium Tales has also graciously agreed to review the album, so stay tuned!

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Phone it in Friday CXLI: YouTube Roundup CCI: Loaches and Water Treatment

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Koi Dance is out now on all streaming platforms and at https://tjcookmusic.bandcamp.com. It’s 90% off (!) with promo code koipond. That means it’s $1 for twelve tracks of great music (and that promo code is also good for everything on the site).

The intense summer heat has kept the fish deeper underwater, where they can escape the sun and enjoy cooler temperatures. Even the rosy red minnows, who usually swarm any food we toss into the pond, have been more taciturn of late. It had me a bit worried, but water testing indicates that everything looks good. I imagine we’ll see more activity once temperatures began to back off… in late November—ha!

That said, we’ve had a few fun sightings. One of our intrepid loaches has been making himself known, and it’s always fun seeing those weird, goofy-looking critters near the surface.

Loaches typically live at the bottom of the pond, and like to burrow into the dirty substrate. They eat food that’s fallen to the bottom and generally feed on detritus and what not. But they will surface in response to barometric changes, and we have at least one that loves to explore (I’m pretty sure he’s the same one I saw wriggling around in the filter basket one morning; my attempts to relocate him were marginally successful). It’s always super fun seeing them in the ivy, which our big yellow koi, Sunny, also seems to enjoy.

So it is that I have loach-related videos for you today, as well as one kind of boring update about the unsexy side of pond management.

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TBT: First Day of School 202[6]

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Yesterday was the first day of classes for the 2026-2027 academic year. It is the first “first day of school” I have not attended in fifteen-ish years.

Instead, today is my first day of the school year. I’m now the part-time Chaplain for my school, and I only go in (usually) once a week, on Thursdays, for the morning Chapel service. The new headmaster will be covering today’s Chapel, so I won’t give my first devotional until next week.

It’s a little surreal being “back-to-school” in this new role—and without truly being “back” all the time. But I love it so far.

I had to attend a few of the back-to-school trainings and professional developments, and while my school is incredibly mild with that stuff compared to public schools, it was a confirmation that leaving full-time classroom teaching was the right move. Admin was scrambling to finalize the master schedule (in part because there is a new schedule this year), and one colleague had a substantial, last-minute change to his teaching load (fortunately, I was able to give him all of my materials for the course, so he should be good to go). Everyone is magically expected to be ready for this week, and it’s a testament to the kind of miracles teachers pull off that most of them probably were!

Avoiding that kind of chaos is pretty sweet. I’ve had a small dose of it, as the time for Chapel kept shifting around as the admin continued to make tweaks to the new schedule, but I’ve found that being proactive and trying to nail down details with them in writing and in advance goes a long way in the CYA department. Also, I don’t really have to work anymore, so I have ultimate outcome-independence. Being able to say, “no, I don’t think I will” is pretty liberating, albeit counterintuitive to an innate people-pleaser.

Well, here’s to doing the fun part of education with almost none of the baggage. Woooooooooot!

With that, here is 18 August 2025’s “First Day of School 2025“:

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gym equipment

Exercise

The Portly Politico9 Comments

Yours portly has had a lifelong aversion to exercise. Not physical exertion, per se—I grew up moving furniture around my parents’ Victorian house and still lug sound equipment hither and yon—but the idea of physical exertion for its own sake. Why sweat when you don’t have to?

Well, because it’s not “physical exertion for its own sake”; exercise serves a greater purpose in that it improves one’s health. The physical benefits of exercise are, of course, well-documented: weight loss and/or management; greater strength; increased stamina; better cardiovascular health; etc. The mental benefits are pretty profound, too: better sleep; better mood; better ways to sweat out the bottled-up rage of decades.

Still, even with all the alleged benefits, I’ve rarely been one to go out of my way to seek additional physical exertion just because—gasp!—it might be good for me. Exercise is hard. It’s sweaty and unpleasant. Especially when I was working full-time, I dealt with enough sweaty unpleasantness that, in my precious spare time, I preferred to stay glued to my computer desk chair than move around unnecessarily.

Naturally, that’s partially why yours portly is, well, portly (not to mention my unhealthy relationship with food—I’m a sensualist when it comes to eating mish-mashed leftovers). Living life as a larger-than-life bon vivant has its advantages, but it also carries some hefty baggage.

So I’ve been taking some small steps towards improving my overall physical (and mental) health. Dr. Wife and I take a long walk most nights after dinner. I’ve been doing that for a few months now. I enjoy walking, but as my older brother once told me (to paraphrase), “walking is good, but it takes a tremendous amount of time [to see any real caloric burn].” If Dr. Wife isn’t with me I’ll sometimes get in some brief interval running, but I’m not consistent with that at all.

What’s a portly bon vivant to do?

“Eat less, fatso”—hey, I heard that! But, yes, I’m doing that (imperfectly).

“Find exercise that works for you, tubsy”—ah, yes. A good solution. Well, walking works for me, but, as my older brother has noted, it’s fairly inefficient. Running is unpleasant (again, most exercise, for someone like me, is).

Dr. Wife, as usual, presented the solution in the way only an upper-middle class American white girl can: ride the Peloton.

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New Music Tuesday XX: “Chorale for Single Reeds”

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Sunday morning I jotted down another chorale—I’ve been on a chorale kick lately—and decided to experiment with 9/4 time. I really just wanted to see how composing for longer measures might affect the final product. I did find that my “grammar” changed a bit while composing in this unorthodox time signature, with more subdivisions of three popping up.

I exported the WAV from Noteflight and imported it into Audacity. There I applied a “Large Room” reverb filter; a “Wide Synth Pad” chorus effect; and a “Lush High-Ends” master effect.

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Lazy Sunday CD: 🐟Koi Dance🐟 Posts

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Koi Dance is out now on all streaming platforms and at https://tjcookmusic.bandcamp.com. It’s 90% off (!) with promo code koipond. That means it’s $1 for twelve tracks of great music (that promo code is also good for everything on the site).

As such, I’m featuring some posts related to Koi Dance (and the title track, “Koi Dance”):

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

🐟Koi🐟 Dance Splashes Up Mogadishu Matt

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Mogadish Matt, Somalia’s #1 Libertarian and a longtime friend of the blog, shared a bit about Koi Dance (out today on all streaming platforms and on Bandcamp; 90% off with promo code koipond) on his blog, Free Matt Podcast:

Guest Highlight: The Portly Politico

Thanks for the shout-out, my grizzled friend!

Also, I’ll be hosting a listening party tonight (Friday, 7 August 2026) at 8 PM EST; join here.

Thanks again, Matt!

—TPP