Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

I just have to do this.  I’m using the internet for the first time in flight -Delta is offering wifi service on some of its planes, and has a free promotion going.  I’m impressed with  the speed/bandwidth - I really wasn’t expecting much more than dial-up speed.

I’m on my way from Seattle to Atlanta, and then on to Charleston for our annual oyster roast and Ohio State-Michigan gamewatch at my brother’s place, so this is pretty much the All-Buckeye Blog for the rest of the weekend.  The weather in Charleston looks to be high 60s/low 70s, maybe a little rain on Saturday.  Sounds good compared to the conditions we were walking around in last night - high winds and chilly rain driving horizontally at us.

While paging through some photos of my OSU marching band reunion game on the band’s website, I came across this one of me as my row enters the stadium.  I’m the one with sunglasses and the fanny pack laden with my camera.  I’m chagrined to be leaning forward a little too much (click to enlarge):

I’ve got my horn along on this trip, and my youngest brother and I just might find ourselves playing fight songs in our middle brother’s back forty.

OK, my dang Macbook battery is dying after only an hour.  It’s the only thing I dislike about this thing.  Better post this.  More from the Low Country.

At practice last night, we exchanged our TVLand music for the first burst of music for our holiday concert on December 20. The two pieces we sight-read were pretty challenging, and I think that brought us out of a post-concert daze.  One of the pieces was a movement from Gustav Holst’s Winter Suite.  It features antiphonal fanfares from the trumpets, and we experimented with placing pockets of trumpet players in various places around what will be the stage.  It was really exhilarating.  If you go here, there’s an icon you can press to hear the piece (note: that’s not our band).

I’m usually pretty late getting down with the holidays, as my slap-dash gift-giving attests, and look with disdain on the desperate cacophony of holiday commercials that seems to start right after Halloween.  But, after this last practice, my head is in December already.

Also, I finally pieced together photos and video from the OSU band reunion in September here.  It’s taken me a while to get used to the Mac multimedia stuff, iMovie and iPhoto.

My Rainbow City Band had its fall concert Friday night.  The theme was TVLand, and we played music from several decades of television shows.  You wonder what kind of petri dish that earworms incubate in?  Look no further:

• Muppet Show Theme
•  Star Wars Through The Years
• West Wing
• Brady Bunch
• Olympic Fanfare
• Mission Impossible
• Golden Girls
• Sitcom Medley

We had a “technical rehearsal” at the concert venue the previous Tuesday, in order to get used to the tighter seating, its effect on what we could hear, and to coordinate various announcements and multimedia.  I was a little worried, as it seemed our numbers only sounded good the second time we played them, and there were some technical glitches that I didn’t think actually got fixed.

I was also a little dismayed that, at that point, we’d only sold 150 of the 300 seats in the hall.

Not to worry on either count.  We had a surge of walk-up business, and had to turn a lot of people away.  And, once the curtain opened and the baton came down, we were very tight and focused.  I was thrilled with the entire enterprise.

There was one moment of peril on the night of the performance.  During intermission, the people preparing for an Archie and Edith Bunker skit discovered that no one had bought beer, which apparently was a featured part of the skit.  I volunteered to run up the street and buy a can, and off I went.   As I was running at a dead flat sprint out of the convenience store on the corner of Broadway and Madison with a pair of Budweiser tallboys dangling from my hand, I passed an idling SPD squad car, and my skin started to crawl.  I’m pretty sure that it was the tux that saved me.