An Interesting Week

Well, it's one week into July. Yay! We're nearly halfway through summer break. Boo... It's been nice to have some time to relax, but sometimes, I want to be back at the school, because there is so much to do. (Must resist!)

This last week was a wild ride. It's crazy that it's already been a week since we got home from IDRS. While we were driving through Vegas last week, the car thermometer registered at 120° F. It was hot in California and all the way home. We had over 100° here in Cedar, which is not typical for the end of June. Usually, it's the end of July before we get that hot.

On Monday, I toured a couple of housed. I'm looking at buying a house! I walked through a couple of nice places, but then I have found a house that I'm pretty stoked about. It's a one-story two-bed, two-bath cottage, with a sweet shed and landscaping. Next week, I'm going to talk to the realtor about putting in an offer! :) Exciting? I think so! Rent is more than what I'll be paying on mortgage at this place, so I'm checking things out.

What else happened this week? I sang in the Interfaith Choir this week. Our concert was called "Seven Miracles that Saved America." The turnout was great, and we really had a nice concert. I sang first tenor, and I tell you what... I couldn't hit the A above middle C if my life depended on it that night. Oh well. It was good, anyway.

Gone to a Conference

Last week, I did something super fun. Don't laugh! It's nerd-con for double reed players! :-) (For anyone who reads this and doesn't know what nerd-con is or what double reed players are, Google can tell you.) It turned into quite an investment, but I feel a lot better about life after rubbing shoulders with some of the most amazing bassoon and oboe players in the world.

So, about a year ago, I talked to my friend, Ben, about going to the International Double Reed Society convention in southern California. It takes that long to get organized enough to go! We saved up our money, then we drove to Redlands to go to the conference. The thing is, with these conferences, it's a lot of money, a lot of travel, but the payoff is getting to listen to some amazing players, meet really cool people, and attend masterclasses and workshops that help you be a better DR player.

Ben and I went to a lot of recitals, concerts, and masterclasses this last week. Sometimes, it felt like being back in college! We stayed in the dorms, went to classes, and played in quite a few sight reading sessions. It makes me remember just how fun it is to play the bassoon. Our local orchestra does a pretty good job of playing quality repertoire, holding regular rehearsals, and performing a lot. But, it is a small-town community orchestra. So, getting to play in sessions like these with other college-and-beyond-level players is a real treat!

My favorite are sight-reading sessions. A group of IDRS members collects music, and three times nearly every day, anyone who wants to perform, does. We get together and play with whomever shows up. During the conference, we played in duets, trios, quartets, octets, and mixed large groups (with ...oboists... and English horn players). (the triple-dotted "oboists" is a joke. please laugh.)

All in all, it was a great conference, and only once did I want to kill Ben. I'm sure there was once or twice he wanted to kill me too. However, neither of us killed the other (obviously), and we are still friends now.

Now that we're back in Utah, though, I'm trying to sort out what I need to do here at the house... It's a little overwhelming. I managed to finish the laundry. Check! Now for all that other stuff I don't want to do. Things like cleaning the fish tank, tidying up the basement, going through all my stuff so when I find a place to move I don't go crazy packing up all the junk that I don't need... You know that kind of thing. The last nine months (during school), I was only home like twice a week, so my living spaces are kind of disastrous. I made a half-effort a few weeks ago to tidy up, but then I took all my things out of the living space in the basement and made a new mess on the floor in my bedroom... *sigh*

The garden is looking really good right now. I've got some very healthy-looking tomato plants, squash and corn. The beans and peppers are kind of limping along (I think I've got to decrease the watering for those particular plants), and the rhubarb is just kind of there... Something is eating the leaves and it's not looking to happy right now! Stinking bugs!!

What else? I think that's it for now. Just the usual day to day! OH! By the way, I lost somewhere around 17 pounds! :-D Some of my clothes are too big to fit. I went to help some friends move from their apartment and forgot my belt. I had a hard time keeping my pants up! A minor inconvenience -- and proud of my weight loss!

Just some stuff

I'm impressed with how quickly time goes by when you are relaxing. Don't get me wrong, I'm not sitting around doing nothing with my summer, it's still chock full of good stuff, but I am surprised just how quickly June 2nd turned into June 12th...

This week, I've participated in the bell choir, sung with the interfaith choir, played bassoon trios, installed a drip line sprinkler system in the garden, cleaned the basement (and subsequently messed up a bunch of other stuff...), searched for a new home (and looked at listings of literally hundreds of southern Utah homes - some of which won't work because they are in other counties or ...Beaver...), rode over 20 miles (multiple trips) on my bike, and started to get back into shape!

My summer has been good. The drip line might be my biggest accomplishment so far. That felt good. Plus, I killed a black widow spider in the process! (Don't judge... Those things are hateful!) If the thing is dumb enough to hide in the hinge of the sprinkler valve box, it deserves to be squashed.

I'll have to get some photos up from the garden. I'm pretty proud of it! There are tomatoes, rhubarb, squash, zucchini, lima and green beans, bell peppers, and corn. It's not a huge area, but it's a good size, and the plants are pretty healthy.

Today, when I turned on the water to the sprinkler system, I realized that I hadn't put plugs in all the holes in the main water line (I'm using recycled hose lines). AND, the pressure was a little too high for my little garden area. Thus, one section of sprinkler sprayed about 20 feet into the air, catching the wind, and blowing over the fence into the neighbor's yard. I patched that hole, then started the system again. One of the drip valves blew out (aiming at me, of course), blasting a pretty solid stream of water in my direction. Luckily, the wind kicked up right about then, thus I avoided getting totally soaked! Replaced said drip head... twice... and started the system up with much less pressure. SUCCESS! :-)

I talked about riding my bike. That's been fun. I told my brother the other day that my route took me through the adjacent neighborhood to mine, up the running trail, down the hill around the block to the grocery store, back up the hill (oof!), then down the trail and back home. Turned out to be a really good route... just with a lot of uphill! That one section didn't look so enormous until I had to go up it with my heavy bike at the lowest gear. I passed the same old man watering his lawn going down and going back up. I think he made a face the second time I saw him...

Bell choir was pretty awesome. I've never done that before! My first experience was pretty good, too. I had three notes: F, Gb, and  G. Turns out that some of the pieces they are playing have a lot of those notes! I got tied up at one point holding all three bells in my hands and trying to play them sequentially... Just for the record that doesn't work... Gotta do one bell at a time! Anyway, it's good practice for when I do some bell things at the school next year. OK, so they're not fancy bells, but they'll do -- Suzuki Tonechimes. We used to play them in elementary school pretty regularly, and now I have a set in my classroom! w00t!

It's June Already?!

Well, here it is... June! Great times.

I just finished what might be one of the most insane jobs of my life, but I'm actually kind of excited to do it again next year. So I could be (sort of) organized next year, I made a chart of things to do for each major event in a year of my career, and came up with 13 main events, each with some kinda sub-work involved. The chart I made is a "Gantt" chart, and I like it - actually, I'm just geeky enough to brag about a Gantt chart on my blog... :-) Anyway, I think I can survive next year better! (hopefully)

So, I now better understand the reason my predecessor was so tired after all of this stuff! And why she is so bored now that she isn't working there. Just in the last month of school were state choir festival, the final concert, a combined concert with another school, graduation practice, instrument inventory and storage, preparation for instruments to go to the shop, collecting music, compiling school profile data, and making some plans for next year - well, at least some of the framework, anyway... Ha!

Now that I'm not in a rush, time feels like it's going by really fast... We've already been out for just over a week, and I'm starting to "slow down" and relax a bit. The more I slow down, the faster time seems to go.... How weird is that? 

This weekend, I mapped out the garden space at the folks place and planted a bunch of yummy things! :) In fact, it looks pretty good, too... If I do say so myself. Scott, the parentals, and myself did all of it yesterday afternoon, and I didn't even get too much sunburn!

The last two weeks of school, I listened to an audiobook, too. w00t! Haven't had an opportunity to actually read a book just yet, but that's a start! More to follow. Guess I'm going to be spending some time at the library and actually using Goodreads on Facebook? Oh, and getting a library card!

Last week, I went to St. George for some car maintenance. Actually, I ended up going twice, because the first day, I wasn't actually on the schedule for maintenance. Turns out, if I go to the Kia dealer in St. George for oil changes, it's only a $16 operation (well... Plus time and the fuel to get there...). But that's still a deal. I want to say Jiffy Lube costs like 3x that much... So, much for convenience!

The trip to St. George wasn't a total waste, either. I did hit up a few music stores looking for ideas on what to play next year. And for upcoming gigs. There's a lot to choose from! I also hit the Target (hehe) and bought some new shoes and a few shirts. Spent way too much money, but now I have some non-ratty-looking clothes to wear later!

Happening right now is "Hello Dolly!" at the Heritage Theater. I'm playing sax in the pit orchestra, and enjoying listening to the music and exercising my brain when I don't play (which, as it turns out, is most of the show). That's OK, though. It's given me a chance to finish a few Sudoku puzzles and most of the one- and two-star "Nonologic" puzzles on my phone. I do wish I could play a little more frequently, but it's OK, too.

Last thing... For this post, anyway, is the Cedar City Interfaith Choir. I'm singing first tenor, though I'm not sure exactly why I'm singing first tenor! It's fun. The pieces we're singing are super-fun, and the rehearsals have been really interesting. I'm glad I can watch how another choir director does things - I'm learning so much! We'll be singing on July 3rd for a special event.

Now that I'm looking through this post, I guess I haven't really slowed down much yet this summer... Oh well. It's fun, and I am meeting lots of new people. Guess it's a good thing, too! It's forcing me to get out and do things. 'bout time! Haha!

A February Update

So, here it is, February 17th. I've almost been working a full school year! w00t!! One of my new years' resolutions was to blog at least once every month with some updates on things in my life. Yeah... I'm totally that guy that broke his resolution this year already. But, hey, I'm in really good company, right?

UMEA was great. It was a nice vacation. It was really nice to see some of my good friends at the conference, plus I got to visit with a few of my "mentors," too. Sometimes, just sitting and listening to a seminar is a good way to relax... if that makes any sense...

I know I talk about work a lot, but that's because I love my job. :-) There are some really nice things about being employed. For one thing, a steady paycheck is always a plus. My students are amazing -- I'm continually impressed with the things they do. I can definitely see why my predecessor loved it there so much. My coworkers are awesome -- with exception of one whacked-out science teacher. He's awesome, too, don't get me wrong, he's just really strange -- just so you know.

So, the other day, when we delivered singing valentines, I had all my choir students excused for the first 20 minutes of every class so they could sing. First period was great. The kids delivered all their valentines, then returned to class, just like they were supposed to. They were supposed to check in with their teacher at the beginning of each class, meet in my classroom, then deliver the valentines for that period. Well... Second period, most of my class is in science. The science teacher would not let anyone leave for valentines. That got me all sorts of upset! I was about ready to lynch the guy. I sat, waiting for my choir, for over an hour -- nothing. Finally, I had to reschedule all the valentines from second to third period. Luckily, I didn't lose more than $10 on that class period and had to apologize to a couple of 7th grade boys who were very disappointed that we never came to sing to their girls.

How does this relate to the science teacher? He asked for 3 kids from my high school band other day to make up a quiz. I let them go, no problem. So, why was I so upset? Can't I have those choir kids for 10 minutes? No. I can't. He says they miss too much class already, and anatomy is way too important for them to miss for "singing valentines." Whoo... I was ready to hit him. Good thing I don't see him very often, so I just fumed, controlled myself for my classes, and went on throughout the day. Luckily, I was already disorganized enough that we could just reschedule and be OK. But I was NOT  a happy camper on Valentine's Day.

 A couple weeks ago, the bishop called a new organist to trade with me for sacrament meeting. Hooray!! I think you might be able to hear me cheer across the country! I've been doing this for 4 years without a break. This is great! So, I got to church today, excited to be "in the crowd" for a change, but the bishop of the ward we combined with comes up and says that he forgot to get hold of the person to play from their ward. Would [I] mind doing playing today? Being a nice person, I said yes. *sigh* Maybe next week? No. Not maybe. Next week I will sit in the crowd for sure! That's how that's going to be.

Guess what? I just got cast as the butler in "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat." Super-excited!! I had a discussion with the costume lady the other day. She wants all the men wearing the Egyptian skirt-thing, sandals, and a jacket and no shirt. Therefore, I'm now working to try and make my gut a little less ...obvious... in my costume.

Speaking of my gut... I've lost 18 pounds! w00t!! I started Weight Watchers at the beginning of December with my mom, and I've lost some serious weight. :-) Right now, I'm at 175 pounds. That's pretty good that I lost some weight during the Christmas season. Now the trick will be getting the rest of the way to a healthy weight and putting on some additional muscle.

I went to Brian Head yesterday. Oh, and Southern Utah University to help with some theater auditions. I was the accompanist. I'm getting around! Speaking of accompanying... My choir accompanist at the school came for one day and already quit. She didn't work for a full week! It's getting to a point of emergency, I need an accompanist for my choir for festivals!! So, if you are in southern Utah and need a part-time job... look me up!