Quick to-do list:

FOR THE ARTS CENTER: This week: thank-you certificates for all the folks who donated items to the Big Fund-raising Auction. Include a fill-in-the-value-blank receipt for taxes, too. Get some 9x12 envelopes—we’ll need about 40, I think. I can hand-deliver the certificates on my “rounds.” On the radio with Tommy Boye Thursday morning. Next Monday, John Ramer’s new shop will be open in Tillamook; try to get more RAM for the Arts Center’s 1999-vintage PC. Write minutes from the Board meeting Jan. 2, too.

FOR THE NEWSPAPER: Wednesday, see Jim at the music store about the Jan. 21 concert in Beaver (no, I’m not playing there—I’ll be at the Talent Show in Manzanita); see if I can get photos of the place Friday or Saturday. See if the paper ever printed my Oasis Deli article. Thursday, interview and photograph the high school “speechie” who’s going to the U.N. Garibaldi Days meeting next Monday may be the focus of my column next week.

VIDEO: This week, check the Arts Center’s videotapes, and review footage from the last couple of Open Mikes; extract the footage of me if it’s any good. Extract from the PBS DVD a couple of duet tracks of me and Darrin. Add the Deathgrass cuts from the Wheeler Summerfest. Add titles and a Webcam introduction, and we have the “Here’s Joe” DVD. (Sounds very “voila!” but it will take a while because the computer is very slow processing this stuff.)

MUSIC: This week, Tsunami Grill in Wheeler Thursday night, Garibaldi City Hall Friday night, Tillamook Library Saturday afternoon (I think), and the Rapture Room in Nehalem Sunday night. All jam sessions, no gigs. Marimba practice Sunday afternoon, too.

RECORDING: Sunday, I’ll record Jane’s fiddle part for “Spend the End of the World with Me”; I also have a new Stan Good song to musicate and record, “The Next One” (yes, another apocalyptic number). “End” can get e-mailed to England as soon as the fiddle part is mixed in. The Coventry Songwriters meet Jan. 19, and it’d be nice to have something for them—I haven’t in a long time.

SQUARE DANCING: Caller class Wednesday night in Portland; poster for the March dance lessons to help design; meeting minutes to do.

INFRASTRUCTURE: New speakers are hooked up to the PA (finally); run the Dell laptop through the amp—if it works, it’ll travel easier than the Hewlett-Packard. So the Dell will be the Caller Machine. If the speakers work with the amp and mixer, that’s the “solo” PA. The little H-P laptop has been reconfigured so it’s no longer accursed with Windows Vista—but it has parts that don’t work: it has to operate with a remote mouse and remote keyboard, and with all that, it might as well get plugged into a standard monitor and stay in the computer room.

JOBS. I haven’t forgotten the need for a paying job. Waiting on responses from six applications, three of them city manager jobs and three not, but realistically what I’m expecting are rejection letters. I need to do something else—but what? That’s the other task for this week: figure out what.

Joe