Monday, part 1: Raindrops keep fallin' on the band
It was Monsoon Monday around here. The weather was terrible. We'd had enough water by 8 AM that the road near my job was almost entirely waterlogged; the gutters had several inches of water and only the middle of the road had any bare pavement. The maintenance guy was pumping out our dock area, and the lake between the buildings had formed despite the new sewer drains, though I could tell the water was trying to clear out--it swirled like it was trying to go down. I'd gotten to work early that day, plus traffic was unusual thanks to the finals schedule at the high school, so I stayed in my car for a few minutes waiting for others to arrive. By the time I got out, the water had cleared. Phew. Except the sky would soon dump buckets on us, and the clouds were very dark for a time--like almost nighttime dark at 10 AM--so that the lake reformed with a vengeance later. My poor young coworker, who is tasked with moving items between buildings, ended up having to drive her car around because she couldn't walk through the water. She'd been warned about the situation but still found herself with wet socks at one point. Lucky for her, our back-building coworker happened to have an extra pair in his car and let her borrow them, but she still had to load and unload her car in the rain. She was not a happy camper, especially given that we had an excessive amount of items to move. I nearly said to her at one point, we're gonna need a bigger boat, but I doubted she'd get the reference and really doubted she'd appreciate that.
I ended up just hanging out in the break room after work. While the weather finally cleared up a bit--and, inexplicably, got a decent amount warmer--I certainly wasn't going to hang around outside after the soaking everything got. I left for band before 6:30 and felt okay. This was to be our one and only marching rehearsal. Nice timing. This is why we should have at least two of those practices, given that the weather we'd had in the morning could easily have continued into the evening, and we're certainly not marching through a flood. As it was, while it had warmed up, it was grossly humid. My flip-folder pages were sticking together during the practice, and when we returned, I had to wipe them on my jeans before I put them away, there was that much condensation on them.
First, though, I get to band and miraculously most of the chairs and stands are in place. Hallelujah. There's only some minor moving of things. It quickly becomes apparent that the 2nd assistant director is in charge tonight, and she is attempting to locate a dry-erase marker to write the evening's plan on the board; this is easier said than done. There's a handful of us in the band room, including AD2's husband up in the trumpet section. I had been talking to her about something before helping to look around for a marker. She walks to another area while the crotchety librarian walks up to me and says, guess what I have on! Uh...dude...I don't want to know. I'm too young for this! Around then is when AD2 comes back in, and I tell her what he's said, and she just gets this...stunned?...look on her face. The librarian then peels off his fleece or whatever to reveal his white marching shirt underneath. Okay, that's far less disturbing than most things, yet...you really felt the need to wear this? He wanted to show everyone the example of the white marching shirt we'll need to wear at some point next week? Okay. Meanwhile, I said to him, you realize AD2's a married woman, and her husband is sitting right there *points*. It was just kind of disturbing how he presented the whole thing. Then, when my bass clarinet friend arrived, I had to go, guess what the librarian said to me! AD2 was right there and went, why do you have to relive that moment? Because the bass clarinet player and I go way back, and we have this kind of relationship; this is the sort of thing we share with each other. Also, I need to spread the pain. Because that could have been disturbing in so many ways.
(Related: Where I was standing when all that started was right in front of the whiteboard. For whatever reason, this is where everyone tends to stand to have conversations, so that they're completely blocking that week's music list. It gets very frustrating and I tend to just write it down on a sheet of paper so I can refer to it while the people stand there. The people at band at the time were joking with me about the situation, partly because, without a marker, we couldn't write up this week's stuff anyway. Last week's items were still on the board, so that's all I was blocking at the time. The librarian had been walking toward me while I was standing there, so I was joking around about having a conversation with him in front of the board, and that's likely when the potential striptease started. Yeah...the man is twice my age. There are some things I just don't need to see. And, well, he's married. But honestly he's an innocent-enough guy that it wasn't maliciously intended...it just came out poorly.)
Poor AD2. Not only was she having a hard time finding simple tools to help run the rehearsal, she had to run the *whole* thing--marching and all. Not only were the director and AD1 gone, but the drum major was gone, too. This bodes well. She's a high school band director and I know she does parades with her kids, because I've seen her do it, but we're a different bunch. And we have new people involved who've never done a parade with us, so they don't know what's going on...and I'm not sure anyone bothered to tell them. We have certain protocols for corners and what we do when we stop, for example, and these poor people were just thrown into this. I was in the third row, and I could see two brand new people in front of me. One joined in the past few months (she's played a couple concerts with us already), but one just joined in the past few weeks after not having played in years. I noticed after a while that he wasn't playing and marching, he was just marching. Oh, it was not great. It wasn't completely horrible, but we could've stood another practice of just marching so we could get the movements. There's always next year. What bugged me, though, had to do with our corners. If you're on an end and we're turning toward you, you're supposed to stop moving as soon as the whistle blows to turn the corner. The one guard in the row ahead of mine, she kept marching every. single. time. And she's the band president! You'd think she'd know what to do. So that was really frustrating, considering I in part had to guide to her. It's hard to use you as a guide for corners if you keep moving! Grr. At least AD2 saw what was going on and kept the front two rows outside for a few extra minutes to work with them on what to do for starting and stopping and things. The thought was, if we could get them to know what to do, the rest of us would just follow along. Fingers crossed.
And, well, I'm glad we didn't get run over. There's always that possibility when a random band comes marching down a regular old street. We're always a pleasant surprise to some people who like our impromptu parade--we saw several groups of adults who cheered us on. I think I only saw one family with kids watching us, but they were happy about us, too. That was cool. Unlike the weather--kind of warm and definitely humid. I got bubbles on my piccolo keys. My Cs weren't coming out properly because I had water on my thumb key, which affected the note.
Back inside, our first song...well, when I saw it on the board, I told AD2 that I might just boycott it. (See post's title.) After Monday's weather, I kinda didn't want to encourage things. :P We worked through some of the songs we'll do for her concert later in the summer, including a Mancini medley that has a super cool lick in one of the songs, I think "Charade." I'm not familiar with it, but it's the best couple measures of the song, and the whole of that part just has this cool spy feel to it. The lick was hard at first because I hadn't looked over this music, and it's high and fast, but after a few tries (and we went over it several times, plus the section has a repeat) I got it and it's pretty solid at this point.
It's been a long few days, and I'm totally blanking on anything else. I potentially had plans after rehearsal so I was eager to get going once it ended. I'm normally pretty poky in putting my stuff away but I was able to pack it up quickly so I could be off to my next adventure.
I ended up just hanging out in the break room after work. While the weather finally cleared up a bit--and, inexplicably, got a decent amount warmer--I certainly wasn't going to hang around outside after the soaking everything got. I left for band before 6:30 and felt okay. This was to be our one and only marching rehearsal. Nice timing. This is why we should have at least two of those practices, given that the weather we'd had in the morning could easily have continued into the evening, and we're certainly not marching through a flood. As it was, while it had warmed up, it was grossly humid. My flip-folder pages were sticking together during the practice, and when we returned, I had to wipe them on my jeans before I put them away, there was that much condensation on them.
First, though, I get to band and miraculously most of the chairs and stands are in place. Hallelujah. There's only some minor moving of things. It quickly becomes apparent that the 2nd assistant director is in charge tonight, and she is attempting to locate a dry-erase marker to write the evening's plan on the board; this is easier said than done. There's a handful of us in the band room, including AD2's husband up in the trumpet section. I had been talking to her about something before helping to look around for a marker. She walks to another area while the crotchety librarian walks up to me and says, guess what I have on! Uh...dude...I don't want to know. I'm too young for this! Around then is when AD2 comes back in, and I tell her what he's said, and she just gets this...stunned?...look on her face. The librarian then peels off his fleece or whatever to reveal his white marching shirt underneath. Okay, that's far less disturbing than most things, yet...you really felt the need to wear this? He wanted to show everyone the example of the white marching shirt we'll need to wear at some point next week? Okay. Meanwhile, I said to him, you realize AD2's a married woman, and her husband is sitting right there *points*. It was just kind of disturbing how he presented the whole thing. Then, when my bass clarinet friend arrived, I had to go, guess what the librarian said to me! AD2 was right there and went, why do you have to relive that moment? Because the bass clarinet player and I go way back, and we have this kind of relationship; this is the sort of thing we share with each other. Also, I need to spread the pain. Because that could have been disturbing in so many ways.
(Related: Where I was standing when all that started was right in front of the whiteboard. For whatever reason, this is where everyone tends to stand to have conversations, so that they're completely blocking that week's music list. It gets very frustrating and I tend to just write it down on a sheet of paper so I can refer to it while the people stand there. The people at band at the time were joking with me about the situation, partly because, without a marker, we couldn't write up this week's stuff anyway. Last week's items were still on the board, so that's all I was blocking at the time. The librarian had been walking toward me while I was standing there, so I was joking around about having a conversation with him in front of the board, and that's likely when the potential striptease started. Yeah...the man is twice my age. There are some things I just don't need to see. And, well, he's married. But honestly he's an innocent-enough guy that it wasn't maliciously intended...it just came out poorly.)
Poor AD2. Not only was she having a hard time finding simple tools to help run the rehearsal, she had to run the *whole* thing--marching and all. Not only were the director and AD1 gone, but the drum major was gone, too. This bodes well. She's a high school band director and I know she does parades with her kids, because I've seen her do it, but we're a different bunch. And we have new people involved who've never done a parade with us, so they don't know what's going on...and I'm not sure anyone bothered to tell them. We have certain protocols for corners and what we do when we stop, for example, and these poor people were just thrown into this. I was in the third row, and I could see two brand new people in front of me. One joined in the past few months (she's played a couple concerts with us already), but one just joined in the past few weeks after not having played in years. I noticed after a while that he wasn't playing and marching, he was just marching. Oh, it was not great. It wasn't completely horrible, but we could've stood another practice of just marching so we could get the movements. There's always next year. What bugged me, though, had to do with our corners. If you're on an end and we're turning toward you, you're supposed to stop moving as soon as the whistle blows to turn the corner. The one guard in the row ahead of mine, she kept marching every. single. time. And she's the band president! You'd think she'd know what to do. So that was really frustrating, considering I in part had to guide to her. It's hard to use you as a guide for corners if you keep moving! Grr. At least AD2 saw what was going on and kept the front two rows outside for a few extra minutes to work with them on what to do for starting and stopping and things. The thought was, if we could get them to know what to do, the rest of us would just follow along. Fingers crossed.
And, well, I'm glad we didn't get run over. There's always that possibility when a random band comes marching down a regular old street. We're always a pleasant surprise to some people who like our impromptu parade--we saw several groups of adults who cheered us on. I think I only saw one family with kids watching us, but they were happy about us, too. That was cool. Unlike the weather--kind of warm and definitely humid. I got bubbles on my piccolo keys. My Cs weren't coming out properly because I had water on my thumb key, which affected the note.
Back inside, our first song...well, when I saw it on the board, I told AD2 that I might just boycott it. (See post's title.) After Monday's weather, I kinda didn't want to encourage things. :P We worked through some of the songs we'll do for her concert later in the summer, including a Mancini medley that has a super cool lick in one of the songs, I think "Charade." I'm not familiar with it, but it's the best couple measures of the song, and the whole of that part just has this cool spy feel to it. The lick was hard at first because I hadn't looked over this music, and it's high and fast, but after a few tries (and we went over it several times, plus the section has a repeat) I got it and it's pretty solid at this point.
It's been a long few days, and I'm totally blanking on anything else. I potentially had plans after rehearsal so I was eager to get going once it ended. I'm normally pretty poky in putting my stuff away but I was able to pack it up quickly so I could be off to my next adventure.