New Year

What? We're already two weeks into the new year?? It's amazing how time seems to fly by. I've spent most of this year so far doing, well, not much. Sporadic bits of work here and there as I try and whittle down my accrued overtime in order to appease the dean. In addition to the 1000 plus hours I have of accrued vacation and sick time, I have about 75 hours of CTO overtime which somehow needs to be taken off in the next 40 hour work week.

So, here I am sitting at home on a Thursday when I'd normally be at work. At least I'll have time to have a decent breakfast as I didn't have to rush out the door at 6:42am to catch a bus. Of course I could drive to work, but I like to think I'm being both economical and environmentally conscious.

Anyway, the New Year was fun. We almost did nothing, as we had made no plans. Fortunately Whitney's best friend Melissa bailed us out, as she had reserve a few extra spots at the Rocklin Bowl for their New Year's celebration. So we went bowling on New Year's, and did our champagne toast among throwing strikes and spares.

Well, admittedly, there weren't that many strikes or spares happening. It had been, after all, many years since I had bowled. But I'm starting to get back into it now; we've taken to going to the late night specials at Country Club Lanes, where it's $10-12 for all you can bowl after 11:30pm. So tonight, we may do that again, since tomorrow is a furlough day for me, and I'm just now starting my five day weekend (it's Martin Luther King Day on Monday...)

Hopefully my scores will improve...

It's Christmas Already?

My how time flies...it's already Christmas morning. Not sure what I'm doing up before 8:00am. Oh yeah...the cats wanted their morning soft food. This was a busy holiday season - so busy that we never even got around to getting a Christmas tree. Well, until mom delivered a miniature 12 inch tree while we were gone to Disneyland. Ho ho ho, I guess.

So we just got back from a Disneyland trip, December 20-23. It was the first time we had been there since the middle of July. And that's a long time for us! It was actually our Christmas present to each other - instead of buying a bunch of presents, wrapping them, watching the cats slowly destroy the wrapping paper, and so on, we bought each other annual passports to Disneyland. Even though the price went up to $289, we'll still get our money's worth. In fact we already have our next trip tentatively planned - for February 14-18!

Boy, was it busy in the park! I mean, I was expecting to see some crowds, but on Monday and Tuesday it was exceptionally crowded. So much so that the park tried something new at the end of the day - opening up the backstage area behind Main Street to use as an egress, or rather a short cut, for those trying to exit the park. It certainly helped - traffic was quite jammed on Main Street and along the shop fronts. And it was pretty neat, since you don't normally get to see the backside of things.

Well, today is Christmas and as such there lots to do of course. The holiday break really starts tomorrow, when we can finally sit back and be lazy. And catch up on all the things we didn't get done in the last month...

Thank God That's Over

Well, the Festival of New American Music is now officially over, at least it was as of Sunday. And after a restful yet productive furlough day, I'm back at work catching up on the things that had been put on the back burner the last couple of weeks. I must say, FeNAM in itself wasn't that bad this year for me; everything went smoothly, or seemed to at least, and I only ended up doing 22.5 overtime hours.

The last two weeks were compounded though by Meet Me In St. Louis, my first venture at RSP as Musical Director. Really, my first venture anywhere as musical director. Why anyone would think to put me in that role with no experience is beyond me, but it actually has worked out pretty well. And I've certainly learned a lot. And, it's been fun, which is really the ultimate goal of anything.

Of course, doing a tech week while at the same time trying to get ready to open our busiest festival at Sac State is really not recommended. That was a tough week!

Things were compounded further by my learning on Saturday morning that one of my old friends - my closest friend during my undergrad days at Sac State - passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. This certainly made it very hard to focus at Saturday's and Sunday's musical shows.

But I'm not going to go into that here...yet.

Halloween 2009

Well, Halloween has passed and November has begun, and we've been given an extra hour due to Daylight Savings time as well. What nice timing, for people to get extra sleep following Halloween night. It seems that in recent years I really haven't done much of anything for Halloween. I've always been too busy doing this or that, or just otherwise have not found time to get into the spirit. I certainly did not do any decorating or dressing up.

This year was not much of an exception, but at least I got out a little bit. The afternoon began with a four hour rehearsal of Meet Me In St. Louis. This is my first time conducting a show, which is at once both exciting and daunting. I've been trying to put a lot of time into score study and listening to the CD and even watching the MGM movie twice, so I could get up to speed. It's been going okay - at least I think I'm getting better and certainly learning a lot really fast.

Anyway, after rehearsal we ordered pizza from Papa Johns and went home for a few hours to see if any trick-or-treaters would come by, and to watch some Halloween-esque movie. It was my intention to watch Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein", but as it turns out, I don't seem to have a copy at home. So we watched recorded episodes of Law and Order and CSI. It kind of fits.

No trick-or-treaters came by. Just like last year.

Then we went to go see the 9:00pm showing of Batboy at Sac State. I was fortunate enough to come across some 2-for-1 ticket coupons last week, so it was a rather cheap date. The show was pretty solid overall, certainly entertaining and humorous anyway. And lots of people there were dressed in costume. So, it was kind of like being at a Halloween party.

Okay, not really. But hey, it was a fun holiday after all.

Time Flies

Well it seems like only yesterday that I was writing my last blog on here about jury duty, but that was almost a month ago! My how time flies. I guess that's good that I'm keeping busy.

I've only been doing a little musical playing, most notably the Runaway State Productions Preview Show, which was an open house kind of event including performances of excerpts from last seasons and next season's shows. It was really quite a good show; I did last year's, which was a smaller scale, but this one had a 22 piece orchestra. Next season should be pretty incredible at RSP.

But will I be there?

It's a bit early to know what I will be doing in 2010 musical wise...I'm hoping they decide to put live music in Suds at the Cosmopolitan in January, so maybe I can play bass there. But no word on that.

Here's what I am doing though - last Friday night I was brought on to be musical director for Meet Me In St. Louis with RSP. It was kind of unexpected; for whatever reason their regulars and others who they asked could not do it. I was a bit leery about taking on such a huge role; after all I have never actually directed a musical before. But it should be a great experience, and I'm sure it will go fine.

Time to start doing some serious score study...

Jury Duty. Some Things Don't Change

Well this week I was on standby for jury duty. It's the same sort of thing as before, where you call in on day and their recording tells you to call in other day, which you do, and are then told to call in another day, and so forth until you've made phone calls at least once every day for a week.

This time, though, I actually got called in - in the middle of the day. I had only been called in once, years and years ago. But on Tuesday I got to leave work at noon and go downtown to the courthouse. I tell you, not much has changed. The building is the same, the setup is the same. It is nice that they have TV's mounted which play the big Disney blockbusters from 2 or 3 years ago. But other than that, it's the same deal.

I ended up waiting for two and a half hours while I read through my graduate music history notes and scores. Two separate panels were called over to different courtrooms during that time, but I was not picked in the lottery. So, at about 3:30pm, we were told we could go home and that our service was completed - for the next 18 months anyway.

So I went to the Super WalMart and did some grocery shopping, and still got home before I would have if I had been at work all day.

It almost seems like a waste of time to have someone go to all the trouble of getting off work and have them do all the paperwork that goes along with a summons and the surveys you fill out when your there, to then only be there for less than 3 hours with nothing to show for it. I almost wish I had been pulled onto a panel, then at least there would have been something interesting to do.