New direction in my blog

Since many of you on the site only know the side I game with, I figured I'd finally open up a bit and blog about the real life "Pulsaris"

My name is Jason. I live in Radford, VA with my wife Kasey. We've been married for 3 years and couldn't be happier. I work in Blacksburg as an administrator for Tuck Chiropractic. I work mainly with the billing of the insurance. There are 9 different clinics all over the area that are part of the business. It can get pretty chaotic having 2 people do the entire insurance billing for 9 clinics! Some days I enjoy it, other days- not so much.

Outside of gaming, I have one really big passion- music. I've been playing trumpet for 17 years. I went to college at James Madison University and played in the marching band all 7 years I was there (the 7 years thing is a story for another day!), and was section leader for 2 of those years. Best trip- we went to Europe and played for Monaco's 700th anniversary in front of the palace- really cool! We also did 2 parades- Cannes, France and Genoa, Italy. The only parades I ever did where we WERE the parade, nobody else. Pretty cool.

I was a member of the Cadets Drum and Bugle Corps (located in Bergenfield, NJ) for two years- 1999 and 2000. The most memorable and toughest summers of my life. For those unfamiliar with drum and bugle corps- its basically professional marching band. You work about 14-16 hours a day just marching and playing- travelling all over the country and competing against other drum and bugle corps. The last week of the season takes place in August- championships week. Quarterfinals contains all the corps competing for the championship and only 17 go on to the Semis. 12 from the semifinals go on to Finals. Finals is the dream for any member of drum corps. Crowds as big as 30,000 pay big money (as much as 125 dollars for THE best seats in the house- avg cost is about 50-75 bucks a seat) to see the top 12. Winner gets the title of DCI(Drum Corps International) Champion, a trophy to be displayed at the corps home and medals and a championship ring(the super bowl ring of the marching world). I was extremely honored to have won finals in 2000.

Currently, I play in 3 groups. The main group I play in is the Bedford Community Orchestra. I also play in the Blacksburg Community Band and a German Oompah Band- The Sauerkraut Band. There's nothing better than getting paid to drink beer and play music!

I'm hoping that with my blog I can share my passion for music.

For starters, here is my last performance with Cadets- 2000. It is music from Disney's Millenium Celebration- in Epcot when they had the big fireworks show. (I'm one of the trumpet players in the front row during the showoff section- and yes, we are playing on each others horns. :) )

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt-1BqQcD3E[/youtube]

(woohoo i fixed youtube)