Going Home in Two Days

So it's a quasi-furlough Friday here at Sac State. I'm in obviously, and so is Teresa our budget officer, but the rest of the staff is out enjoying a four day weekend - Monday is an all campus furlough closure day. But I'm going to one up them - on Sunday I leave Sac for home. Disneyland, that is. I'm taking off furloughs on Monday and Tuesday and using up some of my accrued overtime from last semester (I still have 50 hours on the books!) for Wednesday and Thursday.

I think this will be the longest trip I've ever taken to Disneyland, a total of four nights. Though as we're leaving on Valentine's Day, and that day happens to be a blockout date for our Annual Pass, we won't be hitting the park until Monday morning. And then on Tuesday we have some other business to attend to...

But it's going to be a nice escape in any event, and I'm sure I'll eat plenty of double chocolate chip brownies. So much for weight loss.

Today is my last day here for a week, and so I have to spend a lot of time getting everything in order for every event that's going to happen while I'm gone. Not a big chore, but enough to keep me busy for now. Off to work!

Super Bowl Sunday

So yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday, and unlike many years, I actually knew who was playing in this one. Not that I cared much. But I was hoping the New Orleans would win, simply as they were the perceived underdog and it was their first trip to the Super Bowl.

And they won all right, despite having a fairly weak defense.

We actually went over to Brian Aguilar's apartment and hung out with some old friends, drank some beer and had tons of munchies. Oh, and prime rib. It was a delightful afternoon, and the game was a good one to watch too. I think it was the first NFL game I had watched in a couple of years.

Our music department actually had their Open House Brunch yesterday - and boy if I had a nickel for every time someone remarked, "It's on Super Bowl Sunday??". As if we were insane for even thinking to schedule something on such a sacred day. But I didn't pick the date, and in the end I didn't even end up going. I could have put some hours of work in for overtime. Well, when I say 'overtime' I really mean Compensated Time Off - no one gets paid for overtime. But I have enough hours already in my account that I need to take off.

So we did the 'American' think and watched the Super Bowl while ingesting lots of not too terribly healthy food. And a good time was had by all.

January. Done.

Woah - it's February already?? It seems like only yesterday we were celebrating New Year, and now the month of January is done and gone.

We're now in the second week of school here at Sac State, and so far it's been relatively quiet. The normal hustle and bustle of students needing to be reminded of their locker combinations and scrambling to finish their recital paperwork and/or change their date to a late time. But other than that - it's been slow. This is perhaps an omen of things to come, as the CSU is making a concerted effort to reduce student population and in the process make a lot of (mostly part-time) faculty obsolete. This is the final semester of Vocal Jazz here, for instance, after garnering national attention with a half dozen Downbeat awards and growing to be one of the best vocal jazz programs in the nation. Next semester: gone. Just one of many examples of cutbacks as the system struggles to stay afloat.

Meanwhile I just piddle along doing my job and little else. There isn't much incentive to go the extra mile anymore, after all.

Outside of school, I did have the unusual occurrence of having to turn down a good paying gig because of another good paying gig I already have lined up. It appears that I will be playing in a production of The Wedding Singer in late April/early May. Yes, the Adam Sandler movie has been made into a musical. This particular production is a high school one, but surprisingly still pays well, and is being directed by an old college friend of mine whom I haven't seen much of in the last few years.

So that's a brief perspective of what's on the horizon. I could write more on other topics, but I figured it's better saved for a future blog. Hopefully I'll find time to post more faithfully in the future...before another month or more just flies by!

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.