Laundry and Band Tech

I am currently doing laundry, and I don't think I've ever been happier about it. I was in such desperate need of clean clothes... Plus, all my dirty clothes were strewn about my room from being sifted through to find something reasonably clean to wear each day. The first load is in the dryer right now. Yay!

Do you ever feel like keeping up with the smallest things is a landmark accomplishment? Yeah...

Anyway, it is Tuesday and I like Tuesdays. I don't have to work tonight, I didn't have Wind Ensemble because the piece we're playing (Dvorak octet) doesn't have trumpet parts, and there's good TV on tonight. So I went to Band Techniques this morning, which was a ridiculously trying class (more on that later), but then I got to go out for lunch with Peter at Earls and then come home to be productive. :-)

But, yeah, Band Tech today made me want to smack someone. There were three elements which, individually, would have been vaguely annoying but perfectly tolerable. The first was some people's complete ignorance of jazz. See, we were taking turns running these mini jazz rehearsals, and some of the directorial choices some people made were... questionable. The second thing was Deebs, who kept interrupting the students to rephrase what they were saying. He wouldn't let people say things like "Is it okay if we start at B?" or "Do you want to take a solo?" but instead say things like "We're staring at B and you're going to take a solo." Now, I can understand the theory behind this, and I agree that band directors shouldn't be wishy-washy, but nearly every sentence spoken was reworded by Dr. Street. Most students couldn't even get instructions out without getting flustered. Now, yes, I realize they should have just started rephrasing what they were saying, but we were short on time and the way they phrased things was on of secondary importance to the fact that most didn't know what they were doing. The third thing was this guy from France who walked in halfway through class. I totally don't remember his name, and a despcription would be useless (gray hair, slight paunch), but he was one of Deebs' France buddies. He took a couple pictures, but mostly he sat by the piano. And he played. Not really anything pertaining to the class, but rather this minimalist-ish thing where he would tap one or two high notes over and over again, no matter what was going on in class. Dr. Street actually told him to be quiet at one point, but he resumed it pretty quickly. I have no idea what he was doing or why, but he plink-plink-plinked on regardless.

Oooh! The dryer just finished! That was good timing. I was going to talk about how Kaitlyn's being a grown-up and whatnot, but I'll leave you to go read her blog instead.