Miscellaneous musings

For the record, I don't think that sports are evil and should be banned from all schools. Athletics do have a legitimate place in society, and kids can learn many good things from team involvement (teamwork, leadership, discipline, etc). I just think that sometimes the sports teams get placed a little too high on the priorities list. Is it just a little too much to expect that in a school setting, academics and classes should take top billing over sports and clubs? It boggles my mind how much class time the JH kids miss because of sports. The band director here is lucky if they get to have just 2 or 3 full rehearsals with everybody every week, out of 5 possible class times.

It was freezing in McCain today. Rooms 201 & 204 (the two main rehearsal/class rooms) felt like walk-in coolers. And there's no hot water in any of the sinks in the entire building. It's been like that since classes began. I felt like calling the Fourum to say "Yes, Collegian editors, the music majors have a beautiful new state-of-the-art computer lab, but they have no heat or hot water in their building. Does that make you feel better?"

It was so cold in the band room that my second class was canceled. Conducting prof walked in, said it was ridiculous and too cold, and was it OK if we just canceled? He gave us the run-down of our schedule for next week (our mid-term final is next Thursday) and that was it. Then, my next class (in the same room) was canceled--jazz band director had a really big recording project this evening that he had to prepare for. My 4th class of the day did meet, but all we did was watch clips from some bizarre movie which had nothing to do with playing the flute. It was supposed to give us insight into the Baroque period---mostly, it was just strange and depressing. I really got my money's worth today, yeah boy!

Frost warning tonight. Went out and stripped all the viable tomatoes off the vines, and covered up the pepper plants. They still have some peppers on that aren't ready to pick yet, so I'll try to save them for a little while longer. The tomatoes were pretty much done in, so I'm gonna let them go. Pulled all the front porch potted plants inside Tuesday night. I'll probably just leave them in the north bedroom where I usually winter my plants. Too much hassle to keep hauling them back and forth. They would have only stayed out for a few more weeks anyway. The marigolds and petunias are on their own. Don't have time to continue messing with them, & I'm getting tired of watering them. So I'm conceding the garden, for the most part. That's one less responsibility on my schedule now!

Our first concert was last night. We did OK. I made my bass clarinet debut! Only made 1 glaring mistake (used sax fingering instead of clarinet fingering on a long held-out note) but it was a chord tone so I don't think it was too noticeable. Stuck to my plan of playing what I could and staying out of everybody's way on the rest of it. As a whole, the group did OK. I think there were some things that we didn't play as well as we have been, especially Scottish Dances. But it was still a pretty good performance. Symphony Band was incredible. They are a really awesome group of musicians. Played some really tough and really cool pieces. I very much enjoyed listening to their half of the concert. I did learn something...should have made arrangements to stay over in Manhattan instead of driving back after the concert. Got home at 10:30, and was back up and starting my day again just 7 hours later. I'm really feeling it tonight. For next week's concert, I will do things differently.

Need to do some reviewing, big Theory exam in the morning. And a busy afternoon/evening of Homecoming activities with the MHS bands. Another long day in a week of long days.