The Homestretch

VERBOSITY ALERT: Three posts in one day! Keep scrolling to read 'em all...

I can finally see this semester's "light at the end of the tunnel"--and I'm fairly sure it's not attached to an oncoming train.

I took a period off today (yeah, a rarity for me); I just had so many errands to run, college grades to submit, etc., and with one more performance tonight, I really needed more than a 15-minute inhaled lunch of Burger King. Besides, the kids I gave the "day off" are at Coyle, which is preparing for its trip to Chicago for the Midwest Clinic this week, so the director will be happy to have more of her band in rehearsal instead of in lessons today. (She should have a lot of them; most of my married counterparts are taking the week off anyway, since they have the extra income in their household to buy holiday stuff with.)

So let me just catch up a bit since Friday night:

Saturday started really early with a trip to TCU for the Sinfonia induction. They started at 7:30 a.m. *shudder*, so I left my house a little after six, powered by java and Spymob (that's java the coffee, not the programming language), cruising through the chilly winter morn. Obviously, I can't discuss our secret ceremonies here (though a password-protected "brothers only" section of this blog would be interesting), but suffice it to say all went well, even if most of the brothers had been up all night the night before. Some people were literally falling asleep on the table at IHOP afterwards.

After an afternoon nap, I met up with Combo Too at school for a pre-gig rehearsal. It was frustrating at times, because people were late and concentration was low at times (Miles the bassist and I were commiserating over dinner about the difference between people who had lots of off-campus gig experience and those who had none), but we got done what we needed to get done and still had time for a quick dinner before setup time and an 8:30 start to the gig.

Generally speaking, the gig went well. It was a long, long night, playing from 8:30 until past 12:30, but almost everything came off without a hitch. There were a few times when someone would take an extra chorus (or three) of a solo because they got lost in the form, but overall it was good and everyone liked it. There were way more people there than last week, probably because hot drinks on a cold night appealed to a lot of people. The sound of the combo and the size of the crowd cemented what we had talked about last week: groups from the college playing at Ke Davi on a monthly basis.

Yesterday was relaxing, as it was meant to be--just trying to get caught up on stuff before tonight's gig with Lakeview and the New Orleans trip tomorrow. It's been a long, crazy, rewarding, taxing semester, but it's in the homestretch now.