Tomorrow morning, I fly to Sacramento, California, for a mini-mini-residency at Lodi High School. Tomorrow night is David Vickerman’s last concert as Director of Bands at Lodi, and I’m honored that he wanted to fly me in to work with the group for their last performance together. David will be conducting “Strange Humors” on the concert.

Bright and early on Saturday — and I mean EARLY — I fly from Sacramento to Kansas City, then drive to Lawrence, Kansas, for the recording session of my Concerto for Soprano Sax and Wind Ensemble. Scott Weiss will be conducting the University of Kansas Wind Ensemble with Vince Gnojek playing the soprano sax solo. We record all afternoon Saturday, and all afternoon Sunday, and then I fly home Sunday night.

I have to say: Grand Theft Auto IV is hard. The driving is fine, but I can’t seem to master the shooting. I’m sure I’m doing something wrong, and hopefully I’ll figure it out before it gets too frustrating. Mario Kart Wii, on the other hand, is straight-forward and really fun. Maybe somebody could combine the two games. It would be great to be Luigi, driving his little go-kart around some cheery track like Peach Beach, while running over prostitutes, shooting drug dealers, and hearing Yoshi curse like a sailor.

My biggest complaint about GTA4 is that while there are a lot of fun cars, there’s no Prius. Wouldn’t it be awesome in GTA4 to carjack a Prius and try to maximize your miles per gallon? Your drug dealer friends would be in the car with you, shouting, “step on it, Niko!” but you’d be holding your speed below 55 mph and breaking on the downhills. That would rule.

Can’t talk now. GTA4. Busy.

Much of today was spent playing Mario Kart Wii, and Tuesday is the release of Grand Theft Auto 4 — on preorder from Amazon, so it should arrive around lunch time. I’m supposed to teach on Wednesday, but I’m trying to decide if I should “come down with something” instead. There just aren’t enough hours in the day for the amount of gaming I need to do…