Finally, Some Chill Time

At long last, the nearly three weeks of almost constant activity have come to an end. Yay! Everyone taped for State Jazz yesterday, so the jam sessions will hold off for a while, probably until marching season is over anyway. Now comes the waiting part, as the state panel chairs will get the tapes in about two weeks and then have until early November to get them judged (which reminds me, I have to assemble my own panel pretty soon--I'm doing tenors this year).

One funny story out of that: I'm talking to friends online on Friday night around 1 a.m. when I get an IM from Betsy the bari player; seems she's left her horn at school! (Normally I wouldn't use names, to protect the innocent, but her name becomes a part of the story below.) Since her school had hosted Region Jazz for the past few years, she didn't even think about bringing it home after their football game that night. Good thing I was online, as Kev's Midnight Bari Loaner Service could spring into action. I felt bad for her dad coming out to get it at that hour, but there weren't too many alternatives...

So there were two results from that: 1) She wants a new bari now, and 2) when she brought it back yesterday, she came bearing gifts: some "Burrito Bucks" from my favorite haunt named after a smoked pepper. Or, as the sentence would read, I opened the door to find...Betsy bearing Burrito Bucks for borrowing my bari. That's almost as many B's as on my birthday blog. :-)

The activities ended with the Province Council meeting yesterday, which I held at the college in a fit of sheer laziness (I drive out to everyone else's chapters all year; they can drive to me this one time). Got a lot done and a good time was had by all.

I had to bust out all my old Robert Palmer CD's this weekend, since he died a couple days ago. Hadn't listened to them in a while, and kinda lost track of what he'd been doing lately. Besides the rocker tunes that everyone remembers ("Addicted to Love," "Simply Irresistible" and so on), he also did some cool jazzy ballads like "It Could Happen to You" and "People Will Think We're In Love." Even if he wasn't on the radar screen of hit radio lately, he did make a contribution (if for nothing else than those groundbreaking videos with the identical-looking "Palmer Girls" in the background) and will be missed. (I'd forgotten how much I liked some of those ballads.) Nice website too; hope it stays up for a while.

This week was weird, as I actually played alto instead of tenor in church this morning. I had loaned my tenor to Ryan for auditions last week and we hadn't hooked up on getting it back yet. I hadn't played alto as a solo instrument at NBC, ever...just as a section player in the old days in the orchestra when I was doubling French horn parts. When I first went in to audition for the old music minister as a soloist, I brought the alto and the soprano. He liked both, but said that the alto was "too sensuous" for playing in church. (Hmm, I thought, that could come in handy sometime...but no, not so far. *sigh*) So I stuck with soprano for the more traditional service and added the tenor when I hooked up with the Impact (contemporary) band. At any rate, alto was kinda weird, but it worked fine and felt more natural in the second service.

After that, I just enjoyed the "me time" today and finished catching up on the TV shows I'd taped over the past three weeks (the VCR kept spitting the tapes out when they got full), and now I'm catching up on this....which takes me to now. Looking forward to a few nights off this week....which I'm sure means more blogging.