Concert #10: An abrupt ending to the season
My summers go by so quickly now that I have band. It's easy to watch it tick away, given that our concerts are numbered. And here we are, concert number 10, the last one of the year. (The official final concert is the jazz group's.)
I've mentioned this was a weird week. Wednesday morning started off with an unusual encounter: As I was schlepping my stuff to my car, a woman was walking her bulldog across the street. I had immediate flashbacks to the bulldog invasion of last year, but I think this is a different dog; otherwise I can't imagine the woman would have been so friendly. This dog was also leashed. So, anyway, they spot me, and the dog sits down on the parkway and starts watching me, and the lady goes, oh, do you want to go with her? I had four bags with me, and put them both on the passenger seat and in the trunk, and the next thing the woman says is, oh, I bet she has food and water! I said, yeah, it's going to be a long day, I definitely have both! The dog is still looking at me, maybe making quiet woof-like sounds. The owner doesn't get very far with the dog, and I hear her saying, I was kidding! You're not actually going with her! The dog, however, is still staring at my car. It's not until I get in, back out of the driveway, and go down the street that the dog finally jumps up from the grass and runs a bit down the sidewalk. It was pretty cute, actually, and the owner was having this long, drawn-out conversation with the dog.
(Or maybe it *was* the same dog from last year and thinks this is her summer home or something. I still doubt it, though.)
I then got a surprise when I went to band that day--there's been construction in the area, and now the street is getting in on it. I had to take a detour just to get to band! Looks like they're putting in new water mains or something. So, the parking lot for the park is labeled as a street, and it would be considered the first street you can make a right on. It's a fraction of a block from the first street you can make a left on, which dead-ends at the north end of the park. Yep, I had to make a left and go all the way around, a block north, a block east, a block south--this is the street I'd been on--and then continue another block south to reach the cross street that would take me into the parking lot. Phew. If only I could have driven through the park. There's an alley I could have used, which connects to the bank parking lot to the south (which then curves around to meet up with the other lot), but I was past that point by the time I realized I couldn't access the park's lot. What a pain. There's a church due north of the park, which had been under construction last year, doing a remodel, and that had finished up this summer; there's now a construction zone on the east side of the park's lot. If you recall me talking about the goldfinch in the bush a few weeks back, the following week, the house and the bushes there were gone. They're going to be replaced by a condo building, oh goody. That's a really weird place to put a condo, to be honest with you. There's a parking lot (and then the park) to the west, a parking lot to the north, a street to the east (where my car got hit), and then a couple buildings to the south. And they don't look like inexpensive condos, either. The one nice thing, with access severely limited, is that there were plenty of parking spots Wednesday afternoon.
Oh, right--I'd gotten there on the late side, after 6:30, because prior to that was when I had gotten my mysterious offer and was also texting Laura ( who has made her feelings clear on the subject). We'd been discussing things long enough that I realized, oh crap, I should get to band, yet I hadn't eaten yet. My head was so spinny that I wasn't super hungry, though I figured I should eat, so I sat on one of the benches and scarfed my food. In the meantime, I'm watching this group of girls, like late high school or college age, and they're all climbing up on the stage; the door was open. Uh, what is this? I hadn't heard that we were having a choir or anything perform with us. Nope; they were random tourists or something, and they climbed up to have their picture taken, then clambered down the stairs and hopped into one of the tourist trolleys, which then had a heck of a time trying to maneuver around the suddenly reconfigured parking lot. Again, Wednesday was weird.
Being our final concert, we tried to fit a lot in. Both assistant directors were on the docket, with AD2 doing a 3-movement piece we've worked on for a good portion of the year, and AD1 doing a song and an encore. It seems like he's hardly done anything this summer for whatever reason, so it was good to see him up there again...except he told a story tangentially related to the encore piece, involving a 400-piece marching band contingent, improperly handled Big Macs, and a halftime show that went VERY wrong (didja ever see the pie-eating contest scene from Stand By Me?). (On the plus side, apparently the next few years were very lucrative for the band, as McDonald's paid for, like, new uniforms, a new drumline, that sort of thing.) Yeah...we're not going to look at the encore song the same way ever again, thanks. The annoying trumpet player kept calling the pair of songs "Greasy Cheeseburger," as the first was a Grease medley and the other was from a Jimmy Buffett medley. Our vocalist was back, first time all year, and was to do two songs by herself and a third, the official goodbye song, with her mom, the emcee. The percussion section was to also play an important role there, and our itinerary said something like, percussionists, turn off the bubble machine! Wait, we're getting a bubble machine? Haha, no--someone bought two three-packs of bubbles to blow, and they were to blow said bubbles during the song. (It was the ending theme song to Lawrence Welk, by the way.) Sadly, they did not practice it at all Wednesday night. Granted, rehearsal ran long, so whatever. As I expected, "Stars & Stripes Forever" was on the docket as the finale, so when we hit a different march early on, I realized, hey, I should play piccolo on this to warm up and hastily grabbed it out of my bag.
We'd also had our yearly elections on Wednesday. Last year, the election went on FOREVER, like into October or something, and once they finally got the board settled, they redid how votes were counted and we were able to finish said election within the evening. We voted I think three people into the band, and then we voted on two new people for the board itself. Two-chairs-down was one of the four people running for a seat on the board, but alas, she was the first eliminated. This meant she was dropped from the ballot for the second round of voting. The board had a quick meeting after the rehearsal, and the piccolo player walked up to her and said, why aren't you meeting? TCD went, I wasn't voted in! This shows you how much the picc player was paying attention--she'd still voted for TCD during the second round, heh. (They'd used the same ballots from the first round and said, just don't vote for X person.) I did vote for her during the first round, so she knows she got at least two votes. She'd been on the board in the past and ran so that a fresher face was on there. Of the three others, one person had been a previous president; he was eliminated in round two, leaving the two youngest people to join the board. One is a bassoon player and the other plays trombone.
Wednesday night, I'm on my way home and there's this unusual strong smell along Joliet Street in West Chicago. I think it was citronella. What's up with that? The previous week, same area, there had been this sweet smell, almost like bubble gum or something like that. I know when the Partylite factory was in Batavia, you'd smell whatever the day's fragrance was depending on which way the wind was blowing, and I know they moved; did they move to West Chicago? What is that? It was not unpleasant, just odd.
Thursday, since I normally get there around five, I was sort of at a loss as to what I wanted to do. I didn't feel like going to the big park beforehand, yet I didn't feel like hanging around work. You know, screw it, given the construction I'm just going to go to the band's park early. It wasn't even 4 yet. I don't like getting there before 4 because it's 2-hour parking until 6 PM unless you have a permit (I don't), but given the construction, I wanted to make sure I got a spot; I did, and they were actively working at that time, even. I schlepped my stuff to a bench and prepared to hang out for a while, and it's pretty warm and definitely sunny; I pinked up while I was out there, oops. That's on me for not wearing sunscreen. So it's 4 PM, and the people are there setting up for the weekly bake sale, and this guy walks past me and says, you're early enough! You can sit closer! (I'd purposely chosen a spot in the back row.) I told him, I'm in the band; I sit plenty close. He laughed at that.
I'd been asked by the section leader on Wednesday if I wanted a stand partner. I'd missed what she said at first and misheard it as she, the section leader, would be sitting in the second row for this concert. Oh, wow, okay. And I thought she was asking to share my stand. She then said, or would it be better if she shared with the person on the other end? I said, that would be better. I'm used to playing out of my binder, not regular music, and that can throw people off. Plus, I said, now that I have my 5-year pin, I'm prissy. She laughed at that. As it turned out, her daughter-in-law was sitting with us again this week and she was the potential stand sharer. However, it almost would have been better if I'd gone to that end--both the director and the picc player wanted the two of us to stand together for S&SF. The local cable channel was there, so to have the two of us next to each other would be easier in that respect, for getting us on camera in one shot, plus we could hear each other better. But with the TV cameras, there's not much room for everyone to stand on the stage apron. It got decided that both piccs would still go up front, but the brass would stay in place. Okay. Glad that's settled. Clarinets, be warned! It's always fun having to walk past them as they're trying to play.
...And then the door opened onto our final concert, and the sky was...kinda dark. Definitely cloudy, with a medium gray tinge; it was a darker bluish gray to the north and west. Great. We got two songs in when the wind really kicked up, so that in the third movement of her piece, AD2's score took off on her and she kind of had to temporarily stop conducting (we played on) while she and the oboe player gathered some of her pages, and at the very end, the oboe player handed her the rest of her score. Okay, guys, batten down the hatches. The next one was a medley from West Side Story, and by then the sky was dark enough that I couldn't really make out faces in the audience. Also...was that lightning? I thought I saw a flash early on. I definitely saw a flash at the very end and said something to the Eb clarinet player, who went, I wasn't sure if that was lightning or headlights from a car. Yeah, definitely lightning. The next piece was one of the vocal numbers, and I sat out, but yeah...uh, we have a problem here... As soon as that finished, AD2 had come around to tell the director that, hey, there's lightning, we have to call this. (He likely had no idea since his back is to the sky.) Just as they're talking, the sky opened up. It was like there was a bag of water hanging over the audience, and it ripped open; it was just a deluge. Immediately the umbrellas opened up and people started filing out of the benches. Rats. At this point everything got chaotic, but the director started shouting out the name of the next march (with Marian, the lead clarinet player, shouting out S&SF for some reason...thanks for confusing people), and we played through that and that was it. I did still grab my piccolo, since I had it available and was planning on using it for that song anyway, so at least I got some use out of that. And...we're done. The next song scheduled was AD1's, then the raffle, then the second half of the concert. As we played that last march, people were walking up to the front of the stage. I realized why--the airplane hanger door offered a bit of shelter. Aha. Some brave souls, like my friends' parents, did stay on the benches, but I'm sure they were happy not to have to sit there for the rest of the concert.
More chaos ensued once the music stopped. All the band members were scrambling around, friends and family and just general concertgoers were hanging out under the door, the TV people were trying to gather up their gear, and the rain is still coming down. I'd gone and grabbed my bags and went back to my chair to put my stuff away, but I'm poky enough with one instrument; add a second, and it's a good five minutes before I can leave. Plus, we had to clear most of the items off the stage, so people are moving chairs and stands around me while I'm sitting there. I can hear beeping, which meant someone was trying to close the door, but too many people weren't paying attention and I'd see the door come down a couple feet, then go back up; this happened several times. If you're at the edge of the stage and you break the plane of the laser or whatever, they door will go back up. I finally yelled out, guys, get away from the edge so the door can close! That kind of made everyone stop, look up, and go, oops! But the door finally came down. Once all my stuff was put away, I helped load stands onto a rack, except I accidentally got my hand caught because I wasn't paying attention--twice--but the rack got loaded and it worked out. This rack was actually behind the band setup, and when people realized it was there, they started carrying stands up to the highest tier of the setup and handing the stands over the railing, which was where I grabbed them and stuck them on the stand (and then stuck my hand inside the metal bars that hold the stands in place, where my fingers got caught a little...oops). Once finished, I went to use the bathroom and discovered a party in the lobby, full of people. But it had actually stopped raining, so that was a pleasant surprise.
While I was still putting stuff away, I spotted the bubbles the percussion section was to have blown. Oh, no, you guys didn't get to be the bubble machine! They...were not saddened by that, heh. In fact, around when I spotted the bubbles, I also saw two of the three kids belonging to our married tuba couple. The girl had a dark blanket wrapped around her. Oh no, you're probably all cold and wet! One of the percussionists then offered the parents some of the bubbles; the drummers certainly didn't want them! Anything to make the night a little better, I suppose. We were also supposed to raffle off benches that used to be in the park, before they got replaced. One was one of the very original wooden benches, which looked old and decrepit; the other was a refurbished wooden bench. I think the current ones are not wood, maybe metal and something else. I'd heard people trying to talk each other into signing up for the bench raffle--oh, that would look so nice in your yard! And the other person went, I got one of the old benches the last time we did this, and I'd had to refurbish it! I don't need a second! So, after the concert, I overheard someone else saying they'd only had one person sign up for a bench--oh, I think it was a silent auction, actually. Well, guess who's the winner! We never got to the raffle, we never got to the point of officially closing off the bench auction. Oh well. The concert got called by 8:15 and I got home shortly after 9. Thus ends the 2018 summer season.
I've mentioned this was a weird week. Wednesday morning started off with an unusual encounter: As I was schlepping my stuff to my car, a woman was walking her bulldog across the street. I had immediate flashbacks to the bulldog invasion of last year, but I think this is a different dog; otherwise I can't imagine the woman would have been so friendly. This dog was also leashed. So, anyway, they spot me, and the dog sits down on the parkway and starts watching me, and the lady goes, oh, do you want to go with her? I had four bags with me, and put them both on the passenger seat and in the trunk, and the next thing the woman says is, oh, I bet she has food and water! I said, yeah, it's going to be a long day, I definitely have both! The dog is still looking at me, maybe making quiet woof-like sounds. The owner doesn't get very far with the dog, and I hear her saying, I was kidding! You're not actually going with her! The dog, however, is still staring at my car. It's not until I get in, back out of the driveway, and go down the street that the dog finally jumps up from the grass and runs a bit down the sidewalk. It was pretty cute, actually, and the owner was having this long, drawn-out conversation with the dog.
(Or maybe it *was* the same dog from last year and thinks this is her summer home or something. I still doubt it, though.)
I then got a surprise when I went to band that day--there's been construction in the area, and now the street is getting in on it. I had to take a detour just to get to band! Looks like they're putting in new water mains or something. So, the parking lot for the park is labeled as a street, and it would be considered the first street you can make a right on. It's a fraction of a block from the first street you can make a left on, which dead-ends at the north end of the park. Yep, I had to make a left and go all the way around, a block north, a block east, a block south--this is the street I'd been on--and then continue another block south to reach the cross street that would take me into the parking lot. Phew. If only I could have driven through the park. There's an alley I could have used, which connects to the bank parking lot to the south (which then curves around to meet up with the other lot), but I was past that point by the time I realized I couldn't access the park's lot. What a pain. There's a church due north of the park, which had been under construction last year, doing a remodel, and that had finished up this summer; there's now a construction zone on the east side of the park's lot. If you recall me talking about the goldfinch in the bush a few weeks back, the following week, the house and the bushes there were gone. They're going to be replaced by a condo building, oh goody. That's a really weird place to put a condo, to be honest with you. There's a parking lot (and then the park) to the west, a parking lot to the north, a street to the east (where my car got hit), and then a couple buildings to the south. And they don't look like inexpensive condos, either. The one nice thing, with access severely limited, is that there were plenty of parking spots Wednesday afternoon.
Oh, right--I'd gotten there on the late side, after 6:30, because prior to that was when I had gotten my mysterious offer and was also texting Laura ( who has made her feelings clear on the subject). We'd been discussing things long enough that I realized, oh crap, I should get to band, yet I hadn't eaten yet. My head was so spinny that I wasn't super hungry, though I figured I should eat, so I sat on one of the benches and scarfed my food. In the meantime, I'm watching this group of girls, like late high school or college age, and they're all climbing up on the stage; the door was open. Uh, what is this? I hadn't heard that we were having a choir or anything perform with us. Nope; they were random tourists or something, and they climbed up to have their picture taken, then clambered down the stairs and hopped into one of the tourist trolleys, which then had a heck of a time trying to maneuver around the suddenly reconfigured parking lot. Again, Wednesday was weird.
Being our final concert, we tried to fit a lot in. Both assistant directors were on the docket, with AD2 doing a 3-movement piece we've worked on for a good portion of the year, and AD1 doing a song and an encore. It seems like he's hardly done anything this summer for whatever reason, so it was good to see him up there again...except he told a story tangentially related to the encore piece, involving a 400-piece marching band contingent, improperly handled Big Macs, and a halftime show that went VERY wrong (didja ever see the pie-eating contest scene from Stand By Me?). (On the plus side, apparently the next few years were very lucrative for the band, as McDonald's paid for, like, new uniforms, a new drumline, that sort of thing.) Yeah...we're not going to look at the encore song the same way ever again, thanks. The annoying trumpet player kept calling the pair of songs "Greasy Cheeseburger," as the first was a Grease medley and the other was from a Jimmy Buffett medley. Our vocalist was back, first time all year, and was to do two songs by herself and a third, the official goodbye song, with her mom, the emcee. The percussion section was to also play an important role there, and our itinerary said something like, percussionists, turn off the bubble machine! Wait, we're getting a bubble machine? Haha, no--someone bought two three-packs of bubbles to blow, and they were to blow said bubbles during the song. (It was the ending theme song to Lawrence Welk, by the way.) Sadly, they did not practice it at all Wednesday night. Granted, rehearsal ran long, so whatever. As I expected, "Stars & Stripes Forever" was on the docket as the finale, so when we hit a different march early on, I realized, hey, I should play piccolo on this to warm up and hastily grabbed it out of my bag.
We'd also had our yearly elections on Wednesday. Last year, the election went on FOREVER, like into October or something, and once they finally got the board settled, they redid how votes were counted and we were able to finish said election within the evening. We voted I think three people into the band, and then we voted on two new people for the board itself. Two-chairs-down was one of the four people running for a seat on the board, but alas, she was the first eliminated. This meant she was dropped from the ballot for the second round of voting. The board had a quick meeting after the rehearsal, and the piccolo player walked up to her and said, why aren't you meeting? TCD went, I wasn't voted in! This shows you how much the picc player was paying attention--she'd still voted for TCD during the second round, heh. (They'd used the same ballots from the first round and said, just don't vote for X person.) I did vote for her during the first round, so she knows she got at least two votes. She'd been on the board in the past and ran so that a fresher face was on there. Of the three others, one person had been a previous president; he was eliminated in round two, leaving the two youngest people to join the board. One is a bassoon player and the other plays trombone.
Wednesday night, I'm on my way home and there's this unusual strong smell along Joliet Street in West Chicago. I think it was citronella. What's up with that? The previous week, same area, there had been this sweet smell, almost like bubble gum or something like that. I know when the Partylite factory was in Batavia, you'd smell whatever the day's fragrance was depending on which way the wind was blowing, and I know they moved; did they move to West Chicago? What is that? It was not unpleasant, just odd.
Thursday, since I normally get there around five, I was sort of at a loss as to what I wanted to do. I didn't feel like going to the big park beforehand, yet I didn't feel like hanging around work. You know, screw it, given the construction I'm just going to go to the band's park early. It wasn't even 4 yet. I don't like getting there before 4 because it's 2-hour parking until 6 PM unless you have a permit (I don't), but given the construction, I wanted to make sure I got a spot; I did, and they were actively working at that time, even. I schlepped my stuff to a bench and prepared to hang out for a while, and it's pretty warm and definitely sunny; I pinked up while I was out there, oops. That's on me for not wearing sunscreen. So it's 4 PM, and the people are there setting up for the weekly bake sale, and this guy walks past me and says, you're early enough! You can sit closer! (I'd purposely chosen a spot in the back row.) I told him, I'm in the band; I sit plenty close. He laughed at that.
I'd been asked by the section leader on Wednesday if I wanted a stand partner. I'd missed what she said at first and misheard it as she, the section leader, would be sitting in the second row for this concert. Oh, wow, okay. And I thought she was asking to share my stand. She then said, or would it be better if she shared with the person on the other end? I said, that would be better. I'm used to playing out of my binder, not regular music, and that can throw people off. Plus, I said, now that I have my 5-year pin, I'm prissy. She laughed at that. As it turned out, her daughter-in-law was sitting with us again this week and she was the potential stand sharer. However, it almost would have been better if I'd gone to that end--both the director and the picc player wanted the two of us to stand together for S&SF. The local cable channel was there, so to have the two of us next to each other would be easier in that respect, for getting us on camera in one shot, plus we could hear each other better. But with the TV cameras, there's not much room for everyone to stand on the stage apron. It got decided that both piccs would still go up front, but the brass would stay in place. Okay. Glad that's settled. Clarinets, be warned! It's always fun having to walk past them as they're trying to play.
...And then the door opened onto our final concert, and the sky was...kinda dark. Definitely cloudy, with a medium gray tinge; it was a darker bluish gray to the north and west. Great. We got two songs in when the wind really kicked up, so that in the third movement of her piece, AD2's score took off on her and she kind of had to temporarily stop conducting (we played on) while she and the oboe player gathered some of her pages, and at the very end, the oboe player handed her the rest of her score. Okay, guys, batten down the hatches. The next one was a medley from West Side Story, and by then the sky was dark enough that I couldn't really make out faces in the audience. Also...was that lightning? I thought I saw a flash early on. I definitely saw a flash at the very end and said something to the Eb clarinet player, who went, I wasn't sure if that was lightning or headlights from a car. Yeah, definitely lightning. The next piece was one of the vocal numbers, and I sat out, but yeah...uh, we have a problem here... As soon as that finished, AD2 had come around to tell the director that, hey, there's lightning, we have to call this. (He likely had no idea since his back is to the sky.) Just as they're talking, the sky opened up. It was like there was a bag of water hanging over the audience, and it ripped open; it was just a deluge. Immediately the umbrellas opened up and people started filing out of the benches. Rats. At this point everything got chaotic, but the director started shouting out the name of the next march (with Marian, the lead clarinet player, shouting out S&SF for some reason...thanks for confusing people), and we played through that and that was it. I did still grab my piccolo, since I had it available and was planning on using it for that song anyway, so at least I got some use out of that. And...we're done. The next song scheduled was AD1's, then the raffle, then the second half of the concert. As we played that last march, people were walking up to the front of the stage. I realized why--the airplane hanger door offered a bit of shelter. Aha. Some brave souls, like my friends' parents, did stay on the benches, but I'm sure they were happy not to have to sit there for the rest of the concert.
More chaos ensued once the music stopped. All the band members were scrambling around, friends and family and just general concertgoers were hanging out under the door, the TV people were trying to gather up their gear, and the rain is still coming down. I'd gone and grabbed my bags and went back to my chair to put my stuff away, but I'm poky enough with one instrument; add a second, and it's a good five minutes before I can leave. Plus, we had to clear most of the items off the stage, so people are moving chairs and stands around me while I'm sitting there. I can hear beeping, which meant someone was trying to close the door, but too many people weren't paying attention and I'd see the door come down a couple feet, then go back up; this happened several times. If you're at the edge of the stage and you break the plane of the laser or whatever, they door will go back up. I finally yelled out, guys, get away from the edge so the door can close! That kind of made everyone stop, look up, and go, oops! But the door finally came down. Once all my stuff was put away, I helped load stands onto a rack, except I accidentally got my hand caught because I wasn't paying attention--twice--but the rack got loaded and it worked out. This rack was actually behind the band setup, and when people realized it was there, they started carrying stands up to the highest tier of the setup and handing the stands over the railing, which was where I grabbed them and stuck them on the stand (and then stuck my hand inside the metal bars that hold the stands in place, where my fingers got caught a little...oops). Once finished, I went to use the bathroom and discovered a party in the lobby, full of people. But it had actually stopped raining, so that was a pleasant surprise.
While I was still putting stuff away, I spotted the bubbles the percussion section was to have blown. Oh, no, you guys didn't get to be the bubble machine! They...were not saddened by that, heh. In fact, around when I spotted the bubbles, I also saw two of the three kids belonging to our married tuba couple. The girl had a dark blanket wrapped around her. Oh no, you're probably all cold and wet! One of the percussionists then offered the parents some of the bubbles; the drummers certainly didn't want them! Anything to make the night a little better, I suppose. We were also supposed to raffle off benches that used to be in the park, before they got replaced. One was one of the very original wooden benches, which looked old and decrepit; the other was a refurbished wooden bench. I think the current ones are not wood, maybe metal and something else. I'd heard people trying to talk each other into signing up for the bench raffle--oh, that would look so nice in your yard! And the other person went, I got one of the old benches the last time we did this, and I'd had to refurbish it! I don't need a second! So, after the concert, I overheard someone else saying they'd only had one person sign up for a bench--oh, I think it was a silent auction, actually. Well, guess who's the winner! We never got to the raffle, we never got to the point of officially closing off the bench auction. Oh well. The concert got called by 8:15 and I got home shortly after 9. Thus ends the 2018 summer season.