solfeggietto

welcome back my friends to whirling dervish week... to wit the following:

final rehearsals, nailing down logistics, msa mandatory training bs, a drop in at dr. giggles to assess how things are going, assessment wednesday night, larry's assessment thursday night, staying on top of everything at main st., getting lesson plans ready for Friday, getting coverage for Tuesday and Wednesday, finding a sight-reading piece, making sure i have clothes that fit, surviving the students million and one questions, fixing instruments...

THEN there is the important stuff: making sure my girls and my wife get the best of their dadden/husband because they sure as hell deserve it this week and not the beast I usually am during assessment week.

sumus, tryin' to enjoy the ride...

the cave

great parable... cool piece of music...

so we are just at about ninety-six hours to go and the games is afoot. sumus my friends, sumus.

one major train wreck to fix in two rehearsals over two days and then a no pressure warm-up/sight-reading the day of.

it is what it is, i don't necessarily like that but this year things, with the exception of a major repertoire miscalculation on my part, were a little out of my control.

four years in a row would be nice, if it's meant to be it's up to me.

the girls: doing the quiet time thing. the wife is working - her schedule got tweaked for tomorrow so i may not get a chance to clear my mind until monday afternoon.

the ipod uploading is in it's final stage. i am actually preparing to create two separate playlists for assessment day - the mental prep mix and the traveling mix.

i hope i can give my family the attention they so rightly deserve this week.

off to the wii for a quick round of sports before dinner with the ladies.

missed opportunities

the girls evidently lost their minds yesterday. I know the feeling.

so the draft of the assessment program comes out and I look at the judges list: Uncle Franz again - I will at least get a fair chance there. Some guy from a private school, the coordinator for Howard County and Bryan Eber.

okay, perhaps I am overreacting but there is a major problem when a guy who barely made it through college, who owes pretty much all of success to his wife's efforts gets to judge an assessment.

jealous much? no and yeah and who the hell knows. as i told my female triumvarate yesterday morning 'sumus'. well yeah sumus and all that but i wonder why i haven't gotten that call yet? or have i been classified as persona non grata because i didn't hang the moon early on in my career.

let's see: rebuild a high school program in four years? check. start a program at a magnet high school and leave it flourishing when i left? check. replace a legend at a community middle school and raise the bar before i moved on? check.

nope obviously not judging material.

sumus quod sumus, but i sure as hell don't have to like it.

deja vu

not one of UNT's best albums but it will work as a soundtrack.

one week from now it will all be over. it appears larry's kids are starting to peak as mine are starting to muddle in the middle so sumus...although i am having flashbacks to DMS and the first crack at Chester Variations. These kids are more talented than that crew, but for some reason I can't get them over the hump.

the girls: it was a genuine joy sitting on the floor with them last night watching the dueling ball choreography. it appears that we have a natural born kicker and a natural born dribbler so I may not escape the sports thing.

today holds the end of the big band jazz sub-unit, start of a new piece in 6th grade, more fine tuning and comfortizing in the 8th grade brass and getting the interims done at some point.

tonight is a new csi with dr. johnny fever his ownself guest starring.

a pensive and unsettled dadden signing off.

sonus ventorum

a snow day. needed for recovery, not needed for festival preparation.

my weakened state made me miss breakfast on a snow day with my ladies. that hurt.

their smiling faces and boundless energy carried me through the morning and into their naptime. the residual pain from yesterday's extractions and other stuff knocked me on my behind at the half day.am going to attempt to go out to eat with my family when they get back from auntie mel's.

tomorrow holds school and getting back on the treadmill and trying to maximize the remaining week before we hit the judges. head is driving me crazy. early night tonight i fear.

the ladies

so the results from the dr.'s appointment are in: we have a mover and a talker.

no. really? couldn't have figured that out on my own.

emma is behind verbally but is a little more physically ahead in terms of balance, movement, etc.
claire is a talking, singing machine and not too far behind her sister in the movement category.
there might be signs of twin speak happening but i'll reserve judgement on that for another day.

bonus dadden day on tap with a nebulous morning followed by a trip to dr. giggles for some repair work followed by a drugged up dadden hopefully not sleeping the rest of the day away.

...then there's that weather event.

solace

would be nice.

it's sunday. up before the sane people again.

today holds more dadden time and very little else. tomorrow holds a trip to dr. giggles for the latest round of oral surgery.

used the new ipod for the first time yesterday, felt good to have it back.

i have started the last round of uploading, should be finished by the middle of the week, then i can start playlists.

the girls are fine. the new approach to feeding them seems to be working. we will try round two today and see if the positive trend continues.

four day week equals seven rehearsals as the drive towards assessment enters the home stretch.

beyond that, nothing. just me and the computer alone on a sunday morning while everyone else sleeps.

pacific fanfare

as in pacific= calm, peaceful, serene.

that's kind of the day I want to have today.

no new chapter in the ongoing saga that is work, no disturbing news from the girls' dr. appointment. the ability to stay awake past 9:45. i just want a pacific kind of day.

circus maximus

is exactly what it feels like i am trapped in right now. team leader is still playing schizoid/paranoid man thinking that everyone is out to get him in the situation even though a little more proactive behavior on his part would have resolved things a LONG time ago.

assessment is in exactly two weeks. i am praying for a two, but would settle for a split decision at this point. some years you know aren't going to happen. where is dr. tim when i really need him?

i am coming home exhausted everyday. not necessarily from my actual job, but from all of the bs that accompanies it. i am crashing earlier and earlier every night and i desperately need a day off but can't take one anytime in the foreseeable future.

my girls are more mobile, more inquisitive and more rambunctious everyday and i am pissed that i can barely muster the energy at times to interact with them.

my loving wife is doing her best to keep things afloat but it's starting to wear on her too.

i never planned on running away to join the circus, yet somehow the circus imposed itself on me.

memento mori/passages

so during my early morning dadden time before every other sane person in the house gets up I discovered that some seminal parts of my existence no longer exist.

serenade in brass ends this year after a glorious 36 year run. there was a period of a decade where i was there every year. through four relationships and various incarnations of westshore, the hip pickles, etc. it was one of the signs of spring that got me ready for the upcoming summer season. i won't be there for the farewell show. but the memories of conga, hair bear, frankie, butch, jimmy russo, etc. as well as the bucs alums doing beyond the sea, mighty st. joe's filling up every square inch of the stage and the yankee rebels adding that hometown touch...

then another quick websearch revealed that the yankee rebels alums dissolved as of august 14th, 2010. that one hit hard. Hamilton was a huge part of growing up in Baltimore. They were at all the parades, they hosted shows at memorial stadium, you get the picture. Wish i has a recording of Requiem for an Era so that I could properly say goodbye.

it pains me on one level that my girls will never get to experience these two entities. on another level, it just compels me even more to make sure that they get to experience as much of their father's formative experiences/places as possible before they all disappear.

morning comes

way too early...

it's the saturday before valentine's day. my internal clock decided that 4:30 AM was a good time for me to get up.

on the work front: former co-worker was supposed to stop by school yesterday evening to claim her stuff and hand in her keys so that hopefully we can get a real music teacher in that classroom. the little general and i were both so wrapped up in festival prep that we really didn't have time or the inclination to get her things in one location for her. we did however lock down everything that belonged to the school.

on the home front: date night with the wife last night brought the usual mix of awkwardness without the kids, some grown-up talk, some tentative plan making and the like. at some point this weekend there will be bedframe building. valentine's day seems to be shaping up to be a low key event.

randomness: still uploading in preparation for the formatting and using of the ipod. girls are transitioning into running stage now. vocabularies are expanding - emma still lags behind on that front, they have an appointment thursday so we will see where they are after that. nascar shootout s tonight, the field is kind of lame. wrestlemania is shaping up to be kind of a down year. other than that, life continues on it's merry path.

and it's still way too damn early to be up

danza antiqua

it seems i've been down this road before. never would have imagined it would take place in such a 'wonderful' place as Franklin.

there are times that you just need to sit back and not intervene even though it would probably be better for you to intervene.

the experiment continues apace. the rehearsal schedule seems to be working, i submit my combined rehearsal schedule today and have the first of the afterschool rehearsals with the flutes and clarinets.

i miss having a normal workday and a stable work environment.

and above all else, i miss my family.

passacaglia in diminution

16 plus afterschool rehearsals.

it can be done, but I have to put my game face on right now. i just hope that i don't let it get in the way of my family time.

let the games begin

whirlwind

these girls are a blurring mass of activity without any change in speed whatsoever.

so this weekend: avoiding the BIG GAME...which if you sit back and think about it, is just that a game. by that same logic: a performance is just a performance - except when that performance is an assessment, which happens in a little under a month. haven't heard back from the bus company, just got around to creating the permission slip/info letter about it and oh yeah, i just changed the second adjudicated piece so we are shooting for a 2. or is that praying for a 2?

the uploading continues apace. almost done putting the rush on and then it's a race to get through the minor artist cd's and the singletons. i will probably format and start using the ipod tomorrow.

today: figuring out a rehearsal schedule, trying to keep tabs on the destructive duo - shiva and doppelganger shiva, wrapping my mind around the challenges that lie ahead.

crescendo and out

morgen

a really morose art song by schubert I believe...

so since we last checked in the following has occurred: jazz night at FHS , annette quit and screwed us over in the process. larry decided to transfer, i have somehow managed to catch some sort of bug that is going around and valentine's day is getting closer and i have very few clues/directions on what to get.

the girls had a full on whine day yesterday. that was unexpected. emma was running a slight fever.

today: uhm, hopefully a better rehearsal from the 8th graders. the melody lesson for the world music kids, some sort of followup to dixieland in american music 8, surviving band 7. band 6? who knows and then it's home to the family for the cold, cold weekend ahead.

fugal fantasia

so the shoe has dropped, island girl has left our oh so dysfunctional team. fearless leader reacted as expected, panicked over nothing and then had an epiphany of sorts. it will be interesting to see how the rest of the year unfolds and what exactly will happen to that position as the belt tightening makes it's way around the system.

two more snow days to burn. i know my beautiful wife will lose her mind if, by some miracle, I have tomorrow off. it was fun spending another day with the ladies even if we almost screwed up the night time ritual by letting evening quiet time run a little long.

i will miss my family tomorrow as i endure a six period teaching day followed by the infamous jazz night at the high school. all of the preceding brought to you by the kindness of the father-in-law's pickup truck.

tonight...whatever needs to be done, pulling shite for tomorrow night's boondoggle and trying to relax.

3 gigs down and still a whole s-load of cds to load in.