Catching up, again

The picture is from the dress rehearsal of my brass band concert last week.  We played at the Southeast Regional Tuba/Euphonium Conference in Chattanooga.  I spent the whole weekend, except for this rehearsal and concert, standing behind a table in the exhibitors' room for the conference.  I was working for the repair shop--we have a few tubas to sell on consignment, and other supplies and toys for brass players.  It was fun for a few hours, but after a while the sound of dozens of tuba players testing horns in one room at the same time was just miserable.  Even after I put in ear plugs, the sound was annoying, and the vibrations were physical; I felt like I was being pounded with mallets--soft, but persistent--for ten straight hours.  Told the boss that I don't mind doing stuff like that, but it would be nice to have someone relieve me for breaks more often.

Got home from that on Sunday and immediately got to work on the Bridge, the brass band journal that I edit for the North American Brass Band Association.  It takes me a few days to throw it all together, four times a year.  It probably wouldn't take as long if I did ANY work on it in between issues, but it seems like I'm always throwing things together in the few days before the deadline.  I've gotten better about saving all my submitted articles in the same Word file over the course of the 3-4 months beforehand, but I still have to gather everything up, edit it, format it and post it.

Got a call this morning asking if I'd sit in with a brass band for the championships next month.  I'll have to fly up to Michigan early to rehearse with them, and miss the NABBA board meeting the night before the competitions, but I am really glad to get to play with a band.  I'm still pissed at my own band for not going--actually, my band voted to go with at least 2/3 majority, but the board overruled it, 7-2.  So, I guess I'm pissed at the board, not the band.  I'm the only board member left who voted to go--the other quit the band and the board after the vote, partly because he was unable to defend the band's desire to go against the board's desire not to.

Ahh, politics. 

Next week I'm playing the euphonium solo in The Planets again, this time with the symphony at the university where I teach.  After that, I guess I'm baritoning for a couple of weeks to get ready for the NABBA competition, and then it's trombone shedding till Easter.  Then juries at the university, a brass band gig, and a wedding performance for a friend in May.  In June, John's coming to help move our stuff to TX, and I will probably stay with a friend till the end of June, when I'll fly to New England for a couple of brass band concerts in Vermont and Massachusetts.  And then I move to Texas.  The grad school thing is still out there--just waiting to hear whether I got an assistantship.  We'll see.

I spent the last couple of days doing nothing at all--just recharging the battery.  Today I'm doing laundry, woo hoo.  Tomorrow I'm going to see a production of The Music Man with a friend whose nephew is starring in it, or singing in it, or likes it...or something like that.  It seems I'm not happy unless I'm stupidbusy.

Oh, what, this journal is about food?  I've eaten some.  Not a whole lot of dairy, actually, but nothing all that healthy, either.  I've drunk a lot of coffee.  I haven't had sushi in forever, maybe I'll eat sushi tonight.  Eh.  Maybe I should start writing about my food again!  It made me eat better.