Ramblings of a rural(ish) geek

one to go. LCCB's March concert was called "Not of this World" -- Holst's "Mars", Star Wars *and* Star Trek, Harry Potter, concert band pieces called "Cosmos" and "Sunburst", movie music from The Wiz and The Incredibles.

Yesterday I swapped back to tenor sax for the May concert (entitled "In Living Color", it's movie/TV music from both sides of the B&W/Color divide). I will be the only Tsax player in the May concert - HB works for a florist, and the concert is the day before Mother's Day, PS will be in FL for three weeks in May. I will say that Tenor is physically easier to play than Bari. :) I still prefer playing Bari, though.

Tomorrow, I'm ushering at Hill Auditorium for the Orchestre de Paris. The show is sold out, so I will be busy.

Friday is the stage rehearsal for the FCB March concert. That one is called "Pure Michigan", and all the composers (or the arrangers) have ties to the state of Michigan. Jebra will have stories to tell at the concert on Sunday!

Today, I was going to rake leaves/pick up branches, but my back is bothering me, so I didn't. I did laundry and cleaned inside instead. They tell us that it will "cool off" next week, so it will be more in line with the kind of temperatures we (used to) expect in mid March. So, too chilly and damp to rake and weed.

Neither of the bands had rehearsal this week -- FCB because we'd had a stage rehearsal on Friday and a concert on Sunday, and Livingston because there's no rehearsal on Halloween (a decent portion of the band would be absent from rehearsal due to Halloween activities anyway...).

The concert went really well. Lots of really good movie and musical music, ranging from Wizard of Oz to the Mandalorian. KM startled a lot of people (including band members!) with a very well done scream in Phantom of the Opera. We had to do a coda on the costume parade because a lot of the kids hammed it up at center stage (and there was one little who froze and had to be coaxed across the stage). J and I left the house at noon and didn't get home until after 6. oy. I was very glad we didn't have rehearsal on Monday. I spent some of the time I'd usually spend at FCB rehearsal taking batteries out of the decor we'd taken up for the concert, doing a purge on the stuff we didn't take up, and then packing everything away.

I had an early AM appointment on Monday, which garnered me another early AM appointment on Friday. Whee. Wednesday, I went erranding, and stopped by the hair salon where my preferred stylist is working. I was hoping they could fit me in for a haircut but they were full up for walk-ins. But CH was there, and I was able to schedule something for early next week. (Whee! In the seven or eight months since I last checked, she'd added another day at the salon so she's not booked solid for the next eight weeks.) (CH cut my hair for nearly 20 years, until she went to weekends only and I never managed to get into her schedule. I'd moved to SR's stylist, but I didn't like her as well.)

There's been significant ice in the birdbath and pond this week (the ice I chipped out of the birdbath yesterday morning didn't melt until around noon today!), but it looks like it's going to remain above freezing for the next couple of weeks. I do need to go out and cut back the grapevine on the deck and the perennials up against the house. (I probably should bring in the ghost, as well. heh.)

LCCB concert on Sunday. Bleaah. I mean, for LCCB standards it was pretty OK, but I wasn't happy with my performance. I got lost once, messed up counting *twice* in the same piece (why I was having so much trouble counting in 2 I do not know), and was otherwise just not on my game. I did not miss any key changes, so there's that. And I made an entrance that only one other person did (of the eight or so who were supposed to) -- I can count in 4, and I was pretty sure that the entrance was *here*, and it was very concerning when I only heard one other person playing it. The conductor agreed with the two of us "this is measure...90" he mouthed to the band. A disturbing number of people didn't see that -- by the time of the concert, you should be familiar enough with the music to look up every few measures, and certainly if you can hear that things are "not right". There are more than a few people in this band who just play the notes in front of them and don't listen to what's going on around them. (or they just don't care. either is possible.)

The saxes won the costume contest (the auditorium sound guy has a decibel meter, and voting is done by popular acclaim). I got custody of the trophy (whee?) because the section leader is going to be moving this year. (and she "blamed" the costume on me. My easy costume suggestion was "swans" - white top, black bottom - because we were doing Swan Lake; and she found some quite nice swan hats for <$20, mentioned them to the rest of the section, and most people bought one.) (My favorite was the F Horns, who did a group costume as BoPeep & her Sheep and one of them wore grey with a vest covered with cotton wool as a "wolf in sheep's clothing". hee.)

It rained all day yesterday. (over an inch of rain. never very hard, but it rained from about 10am to about 8pm, with bits of drizzle after that.) Today they're telling us that the high temperature will be in the mid 60sF -- Wednesday it was 85F in my yard. I did no yard work on Wednesday, even though I should have finished weeding the E garden -- my back was complaining, a lot, and I have learned that pushing through that level of complaint leads to a week of doing nothing. I'll give the garden a try later this afternoon, because this is as warm as day as they're predicting for the next week.

I expect that the FCB gig on Sunday will be cancelled. (currently, NWS says it will be 51F with 40% chance of showers.) That will make my life more difficult, as all of the things I'd take to the gig need to get to the cider mill on the 15th -- when I have a gig in Howell at the same time. So I'll be hauling all those things up to Farmington on Monday and handing them off to "someone else" to deal with.

Ji (the black cat) is being an obstreperous little beastie. Monday he decided that it'd been too long since he'd seen his preferred human and went on a hunger strike. I was a bit concerned, but he started eating again on Tuesday. I've not been able to get more than four or five of his pills into him - J's been gone since Thursday morning, so Ji is well down on his meds. foo. It's a long-term systemic med, and missing a few days really isn't going to cause any real problems, but still.... (My thumb isn't as long as J's, so I have to get the cat's mouth open farther to get the pill in. the cat doesn't like this.)

Annabelle (the gray cat) has been going outside on her own for most of the summer - she's figured out doors, so we're a little more willing to let her out. She was out yesterday morning when it started to rain. While it didn't rain really hard, it did start with fairly dense big raindrops. She was very confused by the sky throwing things at her. She trotted right in when I opened the door and called her.

Yesterday I ushered at Rackham Auditorium. The Jerusalem String Quartet did Haydn's E-flat Major, a UMS premiere of P. Ben-Haim's Quartet No. 1, and Dvorak's Quintet in A-Major where they were joined by Inon Barnatan on piano. The Quintet was my favorite, but that was mostly because the cellist and the pianist were having so much fun cuing each other. By the third movement of the quintet, the lead violinist was getting in on the fun. The encore (decided that morning, according to the violist) was a Scherzo from a Shostakovich quintet. I liked the Ben-Haim, but there were people in the audience who didn't like it because "it sounds wrong". (there was one old man who wouldn't/couldn't even admit that it was well-played -- I couldn't tell which. He was complaining to me because I was wearing a UMS badge.) Ben-Haim was a German Jew who moved to Palestine in the 1930s, and the quartet uses a lot of non-European folksongs and tonalities. If you want new stuff that's just like the old stuff only different, you're not gonna like this one -- not like the Haydn, which shuffled the "standards" of a string quartet but still kept within the Western musical sound.

That is all.

J bought a new truck on Monday, and it's very large. (all pickup trucks are large now. There are reasons for this, but they really don't matter.) Turns out that the truck on the lot that matched his desires the best was a hybrid, so now we have two hybrid vehicles. :)

We went out on Monday to see our finance guy (appointment made nearly a month ago), and then we went up to the Ford dealer in Howell to buy a truck. (J had been out last week, scoping out the different brands of trucks, and had pretty much settled on a F150. The fact that we can get the Z-plan discount didn't hurt.) I left him at the dealer because I had to go to rehearsal, and when I got back from rehearsal there was a monster in the driveway. Wednesday, we drove to SH to give the old Fusion to his brother; yesterday we went to the DMV to do a license plate shuffle, because I'd renewed the plates in August, and swapping plates around meant that we didn't lose that.

Monday's FCB rehearsal was odd. I am going to suggest that we go back to the old layout - the one we tried on Monday really didn't work very well for the back of the band. All new music on Monday, although there's a few things in the folder from summer. (We have two concerts in October, so we need to have a few pieces that don't require a lot of work to get into playing condition.)

Tuesday's LCCB rehearsal was also odd. I will be 'section leader' next week, as half the section will be on vacation or just late for rehearsal. I had to take a few minutes at the beginning of rehearsal to get used to playing the tenor sax again....

I will be playing at Belle Isle two weeks in a row. :) By choice, so I can't really complain. The Farmington Band is scheduled for June 28 in the MOBIG River Blast! series, and the LCCB has been asked to fill out numbers/instrumentation for a performance on July 5. LCCB's band director (DM) also works with a couple of bands in the northern suburbs of Detroit, who will be combining for a performance, and DM has asked for volunteers from the LCCB. I like playing on Belle Isle, even though it *is* a long drive (I will spend more time driving than playing, but that's pretty common), so I volunteered. (If it was going to be the third day in a row of playing, I might have declined the opportunity, but there's no FCB rehearsal that week and no LCCB concert on Tuesday, so....)

We have had no measurable rain for a couple of weeks, and it's been warm and sunny, so I am done weeding for a while. There's not much point when the weeds break off at ground level. I do need to find the Sevin and douse the lilies -- they're looking a little bit chomped. There is one bronze iris this morning along with a lot of white ones. There will be more bronze ones later, and the purple ones will be along shortly -- the buds are forming, but not ready to bloom yet. The first of the white peonies opened a couple of days ago, and today there's a lot of them.

A few years ago, we attempted to tear out the rose bush next to the deck. We planted a few stems in a spot that got a reasonable amount of sun at the time, but in the years since, the nearby tree has widened its canopy considerably, and the roses are struggling with not a lot of sun. They're growing really well, but not blooming, so I think we'll have to move them this year. (There are still roses growing off the original root stock next to the deck - they're blooming, even -- so we did not actually succeed in tearing it out. Another job for later in the summer.)

two 12 hour days this week (that's 12 hours away from the house). But we did get the first wave of absentee ballots into the mail. There will be a burst of ballots coming in early next week, and then the rest will come in slowly until the last week of April, when we'll get another burst. And there will probably be a lot that we don't get back, as people look at it and decide they just don't want to vote. (and one of those 12 hour days was work + rehearsal, so it's not as bad as it looks.)

One of those 12 hour days was self-inflicted -- we (C, DC, and I) traipsed off on an errand of mercy to help a brand-new clerk (appointed, not elected, because the person elected as clerk quit after three weeks!) begin to get started. We asked things like "where are your tabulators? Where do you vote? Do you have workers? do you have ballots? Do you have your absent voter list?" etc. DC called up the county clerk of elections to ask a couple of questions, and the person there said, "oh good, you're working with NewClerk" with a note of relief in her voice. Still so many problems there, but at least we got her pointed in the correct direction. I may be seconded there for a couple of weeks, because now that the ballots are in the mail I'm not as critical to DC.

Sunday's FCB concert was well received -- there were requests for more concerts like that. I don't know if there is anything else out there just like Wild Symphony, but there's got to be something we can do. Somebody in the band suggested just doing Wild Symphony again, every couple of years, and that's certainly a possibility. That concert was a lot of work, but then, any concert at the Hawk is a lot of work because there's so much that needs to be done to play at a venue other than North Farmington. Monday's rehearsal was.... annoying... I think is the word I want. Music stands are in short supply at NFHS, and on Monday we were *very* short of stands. After the fourth(!) person asked me if there were any more stands, I got up and said "there are no more stands. deal" It's so annoying when people keep asking me - look, it's after 7:15pm, and (assuming even a basic level of competence) I'm probably aware that there are not enough stands, and there's nothing more I can do. You all are supposed to be fricking adults and have a folding stand in your car, just in case! There's a concert on the schedule for May 21, and BM had to say three(!) times that we're not sure where we'll be for it. We've got NFHS reserved for it, but Maestro wants us to play "somewhere new", so people are working on that.

I am, however, quite ready for a week off from playing. So is my hand -- apparently, playing four days out of five is just at the limit, especially with all the envelope stuffing I was doing.

There are still branches all over the yard from the last few weeks of weather. It's too cold (and wet!) today to deal with them, but it's supposed to be nice on Sunday. So while J is off doing whatever, I'll be putting branches onto the burn pile.

We have finished the training for the accounting software at work. DC and I got to skip the last day's training, as it was for Receivables and Budget, neither of which we are authorized to do. Election-wise, we are in 'hurry up and wait', as we can't do *anything* until the Bureau of Elections gets the precinct lists set up in the voter database. And even then we can't start sending out AV applications until the BoE finds out how(if) the state wants to implement the "state funded return postage" that was part of the proposal that got approved in the November election. But nobody could start (officially) figuring out how to do that until the election was certified, and that didn't happen until two weeks after the recount finished, so mid-December, and then it was holidays....

The transcribed music for Children's March is *much* easier to handle. I need to check with the librarian about getting the tuba part for a couple of pieces, just in case the tuba players miss the concert. I was really annoyed with the two ASax players at rehearsal on Tuesday, as they wouldn't Shut Up and kept talking over everything. I mean, it's no problem of mine if they screw up because they weren't paying attention, but I couldn't hear the director over them yammering.

I got to stay home today! It was weird. But then I went and scheduled a haircut for tomorrow, so I won't get to stay home all weekend. sigh. It's very pretty outside right now, in a cold and wintry style, as the ice coating that fell last night is sparkling in the full sun. (it's also 23F (-3C), so the sun isn't really going to make the ice fall off.)

Annabelle cat has discovered the small cat-trap(cardboard box) that Ji managed to move over the floor register in the den. Ji is somewhat displeased by this, as he wants to have the choice to not curl up in it, but he's mostly gotten over it.

everytime I play an actual indoor concert with the FCB, I'm reminded of how good they really are. J says they sound like a band, not just a bunch of people playing together. And that's really the goal. LCCB is full of decent musicians, but it's not a band -- there's not as much listening to each other for dynamics and style and balance as there really should be. I'm still getting used to sitting in the middle of the band, after 15 years of sitting in the back row with the tubas. The concert went well, and strike was *fast* with half the band helping.

I did still have the cat jacket (halloween cats), so I wore that. I didn't find the vest that goes under it, so I just wore it over a white shirt. I need to make a vest (lime green with purple trim, probably) and/or a proper floofy blouse to go under it. And maybe a drapey ruffly skirt, rather than the black leggings.... I definitely need to get better insoles for the boots -- the old ones that are in there are sliding around.

There is a pool of red and gold leaves under the crab apple tree in the front yard. It's very pretty, even though the day itself is drab and damp.

Today is the day I swap out the summer curtains for the winter ones -- we're "not home" for Halloween, so I need to put the heavy curtains up. (I think our high point for Trick-or-Treaters was 15 groups, and that was years ago, when there were more kids in the neighborhood. There's a few houses with kids, but most houses are empty-nesters like us. The last year I was "home" for Halloween, I had two groups stop by, and one was the next-door neighbors...)

got a phone call yesterday from the township clerk where I work elections. "Can you second the deputy clerk? the R who's been deputy clerk for previous elections has retired, the D who was her second is now deputy clerk, and I *might* be going in for surgery later this month." "You do remember that I don't live in the township?" "yes, that doesn't matter for deputy clerk." So now I get to see the sausage behind running elections. We're stuffing absentee ballots today, and tomorrow is a meeting of the Twp Election Commission. A couple of weeks ago I went in and helped with the preliminary accuracy test -- there was an error in the program, so we have to run the preliminary test again with the new software before we can run the public test. (MI's straight-ticket voting has some quirks that the program did not handle correctly.)

The concert yesterday went pretty well. The space is long and shallow which makes it hard for us to set up. We had kids and dogs trying to pick up the toys we used as spot markers before we actually chalked spots - it's a lot easier to move a toy than erase a chalk mark. It was warm in the sun, and when I was working, but by the time we started to play, I was in the shade. I had flung a white jacket in at the last minute, so that was good. The concert went pretty well, especially allowing for the fact that it was a long way from one side of the band to the other.

Saturday's funeral meal went well - I did get a blister on the top of a toe where the seam in the sock rubbed. I need to remember that I can't wear those socks with those shoes! People kept asking me where things were, and I'm like "it's been years since I worked out of this kitchen, and stuff's been moved at least once since then. Poke around!" Many cupboards and drawers are labeled, mostly correctly, but there's a few things that 'everybody knows' where they are. (to be fair, they're large items that could only be in a couple of places anyway.) There were 160 people at the memorial service, and we got about 100 of them for the meal. We can seat about 90 in the hall, but there were some people who felt more comfortable at the tables outside, and the littles ate in the children's room. We did not run out of food, although we could have used another batch of cookies and another fruit salad. Way oversupplied on coleslaw and pasta salad, just about right on jello and tossed salads.