The Year End Letter

It was always a tradition for my mother to write a family letter each year to keep people updated on what went on in our lives during the past year. If I was lucky, I got my own paragraph in it. Usually my mom had me type it up on the computer, too, as she was rather computer illiterate.

This year, like last year, I wrote my own year end letter. It is the funniest letter I've ever writen. If you are lucky and on my list, you might get a copy.

The letter has been my main project over the last week, along with making copies of the "Yule Be Gruvin" CD. People are getting them for late Christmas presents. I just ruined that secret.

It is the last day of 2004. Overall, it was a good year. I bought a house, am working at a job I love, and I have my own blog. We'll see what next year brings.

God Bless you all in 2005.
-rm2

Octopothi

Today I had Lunch/Supper at Greek Islands restaurant on Center Street in Omaha. It was close to the hospital where we transported a patient.

Anyways, I ate octopus for the first time in my life. I told the waitress that it was the best octopus I'd ever had. Then I had to confess that it the first time I had eaten it. It wasn't that great. After two piece of Excel Polar Ice my breath still smells terrible.

But now I can write it off my list of things to do before I die.

I wouldn't recommend Octopus to anyone.

Tuesday Bluesday

Yesterday was a long day in the ambulance. Then I had to get up for an early morning transfer this morning. I slept through eight minutes of my alarm clock buzzing before I finally woke up. It was tough for me to wake up. The transfer this morning took over six hours. We went to another hospital 45 minutes away to bring a patient to North Platte for a few test. Then we had to return them to their home hospital. But it took over 2 hours for the tests. It was crazy.

I am headed home to eat lunch and take a nap.

Christmas Day

Merry Christmas to all!
Christmas in Nebraska brings chilly air, but clear skies.
It is a beautiful day despite the lack of snow on the ground.

Gruved Out

Last night was "Yule Be Gruvin" at Da Buzz coffeehouse.
We packed the place out!
The recording of it turned out okay. It even transfered well to CD. If you want one, let me know. They are absolutely free. Hopefully you'll be able to get a tast of it on the site, when I get the MP3 background music up and going. Pictures will come, too.
YBG was two hours of fun. Da Buzz was full of people and noise of a busy coffeehouse. The place has a wonderful atmosphere. I am excited for them to be able to open up the other half of the building. I told Job, the owner, that we'd be happy to come back as a quartet and christen the new part for them with another night of jazz.

Tonight is Christmas Eve. I am stuck in North Platte with no family around. I am spending the evening at a Christmas Eve service at church and then at a family's house. They have the best holiday food there. I was there last Christmas Eve, and I was also there for Easter. I am trying to cut back on some of the things I eat, but I think that idea is getting flushed tonight.

Have a Merry Christmas all of you out there in the world of cycberspace. I know I said "Christmas." Its non-PC, but I don't care. I still remember the reason we celebrate. Don't forget Jesus Christ among the lights and tinsel. If you don't really know about Him, ask me about him. I'd love to share with you what He has done for me.

Dynamite Movie Experience

"Napolean Dynamite" was a film that was suggested to me many months ago. They said I had to go watch it if it ever came to town. Did it ever come to town? NO.

This is North Platte, Nebraska. We have one theater with three screens. It is small, has terrible seating (not the new stadium style), has terrible sound, and is always messy. If someone wanted to make a fortune, they could open up a decent movie theater in North Platte. It is rare that any of the really good movies come to town. If they do, they are only here for a week and then they get bumped out by some new feature that nobody wants to watch.

"Napolean Dynamite" finally came out and DVD and I was able to rent it and watch it. It is one of the funniest movies I have seen in awhile. I won't give any of it away, but only say that it is worth watching. Anyone who was in school in the 80's and 90's will appreciate it's humor.

Snowbird Crash

I am not talking about the people who move to Arizona for the winter. I am actually talking about the Canadian Aerobatic team.

A week and a half ago, the Snowbirds were training in Saskatchewan. During a loop maneuvor two planes collided. The pilot of one of the planes was killed, the pilot of the plane was injured.

Why is this news worth blogging about Captain Chuck Mallett, the injured pilot, is a friend of mine. He played trumpet in the Jazz Band I played with in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan while I went to college at Briercrest Bible College. Chuck is an amazing trumpet player and an amazing pilot as well. I knew him before he was a Snowbird and I knew it was one of his dreams to fly with the Snowbirds. It was exciting when he finally got the word that he was in.

He has been the Snowbirds for almost three years now.
If you are a praying type, please pray for Chuck, his wife, and his young child. Also remember the Selby family. Selby was the last name of the pilot who was killed in the collision. Pray for the crash investigators and everyone else who will be involved in determining why the crash occured.

The music thing

I'm pretty sure I won't try music on the site. The Audioblogger is mainly for spoken word I think. The recording was made over the phone, hence the terrible quality. It sounds like an old Edison wax roll recording.

The song is my arrangement of the Christmas favorite Silent Night.

I think that will probably be my first and only attempt at the music.
-rm2

My First Attempt at music on the site

Finally a picture

This is a picture of me with one of our ambulances. I think we have the best looking ambulances around.
http://photos1.flickr.com/2256957_7b7610606c_m.jpg

Imitation and Flattery

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
So how does bacon feel about "Bacon Bits?"


I'll be honest here. My blogsite is an imitationThe name of my blogsite is a twist on someone else's. Although I am not the first one to do it. There are literally thousands and thousands of websites called "_____'s World." So I changed mine up a bit. But now that I think about it, there are probably others out there that have replaced the "world" with "whirled," thinking that they were being creative.

Why bring it up? There is a site called "Mikao's World." It is a blogsite of some renown with world-wide readership. It is run by a good friend of mine. This is someone who spends a good amount of time blogging. She has done major research on blogging. Check it out if you get a chance. mikao.blogspot.com

That site was also an inspiration for my own. I wanted to start a blog a long time ago, but never made the time to do it. I finally got my rear in gear and started it up. It is difficult to update daily. I do not have access to the internet at home which limits my internet time. I'll try not to let that hinder me, though.

Tuesday after practice...

We practiced as a jazz quartet again today. This time we rehashed some tunes we worked on last week and worked through them a little more. We will try to practice at Da Buzz next tuesday.

I have decided to play a regular upright string bass rather than the KYDD bass. That way, we can be totally accoustic. It will be wonderful. If it is possible, I will take music from the concert and make it the background music for this. I'll see if I can get pictures of it up here too.

The day that was Saturday...

Saturday the 11th was one of my longest days spent in an ambulance so far.
The day started at about 2:30 in the morning when we got a call to go to the town of Ogallala to pick up a patient to bring back to North Platte. When we got back to NP, they sent us to Lincoln with another patient. On our way back from Lincoln, Grand Island called and wanted us to pick up someone to take to Omaha, but when we got there the patient wasn't going to be able to leave for a few more ours. So we went to the Midwest Medical Transport Co. office in Grand Island to chill out, watch TV, and maybe catch a few winks. But about 10 minutes after we got there, one of their units that was already out on the road called us because they had broken down. So we went out with a new ambulance that they could finish their run with. We headed back to Grand Island and went straight to the hospital to pick up our patient to take to Omaha. After dropping off the patient in Omaha, we finally headed back home.

We were out 21 hours total. We put almost 1,000 miles on the ambulance. We were goofy tired at the end of the day. Fortunately we didn't have any runs yesterday, Sunday, so we got to relax a little bit.

Most days aren't as crazy or long as Saturday was. You never really know what to expect in this business.

Why Whirled?

Does life ever leave you in a tailspin? Mine does. Life changes so fast from one minute to the next that it makes my mind spin. The name of my blog has a couple of different meanings.

This is my first web/blog-site. So it is Rob's world.
But since life keeps me on the spin cycle, Rob is whirled.

Both work.
I thought it was clever.

Long day in the ambulance

I just got home from a long day in the Ambulance. 21 hours. We put almost a thousand miles in today. On Monday, I should get a chance to do a more thorough review of the day, but for now I am going home to hit my pillow...sleep, that is.

Practicing Jazz

I just got done practicing with my jazz quartet. It went pretty well. It got me thinking, though.
Do we really need to practice? Usually we can just get together at a gig and play without hardly playing through any of the music or really know what we're doing. We basically just follow lead sheets. Sometimes before playing through a song we'll map out what we want to do, who'll play solos where, and how we'll try and end it. I just wondered why we needed to practice then. Couldn't we just get together the night of the concert, glance over the music and play it with no problems? Probably, but...

Being a Christmas concert, Yule be Gruvin is gonna be much more than just a couple of jazz nuts getting together to play. Its gonna be a tribute to Jesus, the whole reason we celbrate the Christmas holiday. I guess I want it to something more than what we can throw together in a matter of minutes, but something that we have spent more time thinking about and giving the best of our talent to.

We'll try and get together a few more times before the night of the 23rd to go over the songs. I want to give the best "tribute to Jesus" concert that I can.

Yule Be Gruvin

Yule Be Gruvin
December 23rd, 7pm
Da Buzz Coffee House
1208 West A St.
North Platte, Nebraska


I am putting on a Christmas concert with some friends of mine.
Its called Yule Be Gruvin. I'll be playing some solo piano stuff. Then I'll pick up my KYDD Bass and play some tunes with a jazz quartet.

Kent Kittle-Piano
Virgil French-Sax or Clarinet
Gregg Todd- Drums
Robert Martinson II-KYDD Bass

It's gonna be a blast. I'll probably write more about it as the day approaches. If you are in the area, stop by. Admission is free, but bring $$$ for the best coffee arround.

Ambulnace Checks

This morning I arrived at work to do ambulance checks...

I work for Midwest Medical Transport Company, a private ambulance service that mainly does interfacility transfers. As I blog, I can tell you some things about my job, but not everything as a lot of stuff is protected by privacy laws and such beauracracy. Even though we generally do not respond to 911 calls, I have still had the oportunity to see some pretty gruesome things. I love the job, though. I love helping patients. Because of the amount of time I spend in the back with people, I get to know a lot about them.

So anyhow, I get to the station this morning to do ambulance checks...

We have to do ambulance checks each and everyday. This involves checking the ambulance over mechanically, tire wear and pressure, fluid levels, paint chips, body damage, basically anything out of the ordinary. Then we check all the emergency lights, interior lights, power inverter and suction units. We also make sure that all of our oxygen tanks have adequate pressure in them. We do this to make sure the ambulances are ready to go at any time.

To get back to my story, I arrive at the station to do ambulance checks and I mention to one of my coworkers that I have just started my own blog. He asks me what I am gonna put on it. I tell him that I'll try and put funny stuff on it and stories from my life on it. He said he might check it out. Maybe someone will read this after all.

Why Blog?

Really the only reason I want to blog is to get thought out of my head and into the world. I beleive it was Ralph Waldo Emerson who said that pollution was terrible, and the way we treated the world around us was terrible, but the most terrible thing ever was when a man died with an unsung song still in his head. I probably won't be posting any songs I've thought up, but I will be getting things out of my head and into that "whirled" of cyber-space.

Why will people read this? They probably won't. But I won't let stop me. I'll just keep pounding away, writing stuff, and getting things out for the world to see.

Hopefully, I'll learn how to put pictures up on this page too. That way you can see what I see.