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Things continue....
Feb. 5th, 2020 12:07 pmRehearsals are getting a little more intense as we near performance dates. Odd how that works. I need to do some work on a couple of places in the LCCB repertoire, mostly so I can reliably nail an octave drop. The FCB stuff needs more work. The Britten has been moved off to the May concert, so I have more time to work on it. I have my suspicions that Esme can't play that lick -- I'm not entirely sure that the key action on the larger keys is fast enough. Newer horns tend to have faster action, between shorter key travel, lighter keypads, and lighter/more efficient rod & spring design and placement. The hazards of playing an older horn....
The weekly hunt for stands has reached ridiculous levels. When Harrison closed, four racks of stands (22 stands on each rack) got moved to North, which already had three racks. Six months into the school year, we can't reliably find enough stands for a 90 piece wind symphony. We have resorted to swiping stands from the orchestra room and replacing them after rehearsal. The music directors at North claim to have no idea where the stands are disappearing to. Chairs are getting hard to find, too, which is beyond annoying - North *had* a hundred band chairs, and got 60 usable chairs from Harrison.
The birds continue to eat birdseed, the deer drink out of the birdbath and dig into the snow to get to spilled birdseed. The snow melted over the weekend, so they haven't had to dig through a crust of snow. They tell us we're going to get snow tonight.
We got a new cat tree on Saturday, which the cats have so far mostly ignored; as expected. The old one had a long drop from the bottom level to the floor, and the cats are getting older (Belle is 8, Ji is 12). The new one is, well, new. And smells a bit like packing box and a bit like new carpet. They'll eventually climb it -- Belle is currently curled up in the bottom level, in a sunbeam. Ji rarely curled up in the old tree, but some of that is because the top bed was really too small for him and he's getting too old to be comfortable overflowing a bed - this one has bigger beds, and more of them, so while I don't think they'll ever both be in it at the same time, at least he'll be comfortable.
The weekly hunt for stands has reached ridiculous levels. When Harrison closed, four racks of stands (22 stands on each rack) got moved to North, which already had three racks. Six months into the school year, we can't reliably find enough stands for a 90 piece wind symphony. We have resorted to swiping stands from the orchestra room and replacing them after rehearsal. The music directors at North claim to have no idea where the stands are disappearing to. Chairs are getting hard to find, too, which is beyond annoying - North *had* a hundred band chairs, and got 60 usable chairs from Harrison.
The birds continue to eat birdseed, the deer drink out of the birdbath and dig into the snow to get to spilled birdseed. The snow melted over the weekend, so they haven't had to dig through a crust of snow. They tell us we're going to get snow tonight.
We got a new cat tree on Saturday, which the cats have so far mostly ignored; as expected. The old one had a long drop from the bottom level to the floor, and the cats are getting older (Belle is 8, Ji is 12). The new one is, well, new. And smells a bit like packing box and a bit like new carpet. They'll eventually climb it -- Belle is currently curled up in the bottom level, in a sunbeam. Ji rarely curled up in the old tree, but some of that is because the top bed was really too small for him and he's getting too old to be comfortable overflowing a bed - this one has bigger beds, and more of them, so while I don't think they'll ever both be in it at the same time, at least he'll be comfortable.
