Ramblings of a rural(ish) geek

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....

DB spun his car into a guardrail Monday evening, driving home in the snow. The rear quarter panel is dented in, and part of the rear bumper is missing. The front end took most of the damage - the front bumper needs to be replaced as does the right headlight, both ordered. Meanwhile, it's still drivable. When it gets warm, we get to replace the hood (which was already crinkled up from previous incidents from both kids). I got home from rehearsal Monday night to J pulling his car out of the garage so he could pull DB's in to work on it, so I got bonus helper time. Sunday he was stuck in traffic for two hours, as 94 was closed through Ypsi, which he didn't find out about until he was on the freeway and past the emergency turnaround.

The toaster oven died the death last weekend. It's been being cranky about things lately, and when it started burning things rather than baking them we decided it had to go. Unfortunately, they don't make them like that anymore. Most toaster ovens are much wider, and the one that isn't has so many negative reviews that we decided No (not particularly fond of the idea of an exploding glass door, tyvm). So we changed course, and J looked for a countertop oven that toasted well (we had both a toaster and a toaster oven because the T-O didn't do plain toast or bagels very well). That (a Panasonic) came yesterday. I have already made toast in it. Today we see how well it does bagels.

We got a finalised spring schedule for the FCB. It's going to be a busy few months - concerts in March, April (2), May, and June (2), including a guest conductor and the Motor City Festival of Bands and some HS kids coming in for an Honor Band.

There is a tentative plan to do a gig at the Belle Isle bandshell in June. There is a committee attempting to bring music back to the bandshell, and the people on it want the FCB to be the first performance (as the pre-eminent community performance group in the Metro area, apparently). That will be fun, but weird. I haven't been to Belle Isle in decades (I remember going to the zoo (now closed) and the aquarium (now re-opened) when I was a kid). We docked at the marina at least once -- Uncle Boris had a boat (lake cabin cruiser) moored at Wyandotte, and we went up to Belle Isle on it. Mum went a lot when she was a kid (she grew up in Detroit), and remembers going to Detroit Concert Band concerts at the bandshell.