Oprhée

Last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were rehearsals for the alumni band concert. Got to see a few familar people. We played a few songs. I got to play snare on one and tympani (!!!!) on another! Those ended up being the first two songs we played, so the concert ended up being front-loaded for me. That's fine. Then I played crash cymbals on two and sat the last one out. Obviously, I was most excited to play tympani again after all these years. There was a post-rehearsal gathering Saturday at Central BBQ (the one on Summer, hadn't been to that one before). The highlight was talking some to the oldest band alumni Charlie. He's in his eighties. We had a bit of a conversation about teaching and other things. Sunday was the concert. Beforehand, in the morning, Mary Beth and I went to Interstate (more barbecue) because one of my students told me she worked there and said I should come sometime. Hadn't been there in forever and it was still good. The concert went pretty well. As I said before, it was at the fucking Orpheum of all places. There were several pre-acts. The school has a choir that they hadn't had before. Well, first this elementary school choir sang. The Praise Brothers (or whatever they were called) were pretty godawful. I mean, maybe not if you like that sort of thing, but I loathe that sort of thing. The alumni band played after that. It was fun and shit. We did a semi-"encore' of the school song, so I got to improvise on the typani again (I got to tune by ear quickly after we started played, I dunno, that was fun to me). After us the choir was back on with some sister school's choir doing shit from Guys and Dolls and that was even fucking worse. It ended (finally) with the actual school band (I say finally, because it seems weird to me it took that long to get to the band on their own spring concert, I would have been annoyed sharing it with all that other shit back when I was in school). There was an after party at Alfred's where Mr. Krepper (my old band director) was playing with the Memphis Jazz Orchestra. So I got to talk to him and that was neat (except for the racism creeping in when talking about where I currently teach). He was surprisingly pleasant (hey, he's always been a bitter and cantankerous fellow, but I guess not ALL the time, there was always affection for him...along with the...well...whatever.)

Then there was a work week this week. Heard some students talking about a teacher being surplussed on Thursday. Haven't heard anything else about any from any other sources. As usual, I'm always nervous about getting surplussed myself. Well, they have a new word for it this year, but I forget what they're calling it. Anyway, if it's true, I figured I'd get the call about it on my planning period, which I had on Friday. Didn't get one, but we'll see. Seniority is no longer the consideration with the merger now. I know part of it's gonna be based on those little pop-ins they've had recently. My first pair (on the same day, along with my post-interview) went terribly. But I think they were okay after that, I didn't hear anything else about them (and I know other teachers got called to the office after school on days). Again, we'll see. I also heard part of it is based on attendance, which I'm GOOD on (as in perfect attendance). Yesterday, I had a conversation with a student who's been cutting herself. She's actually not my student, but a friend of soime of mine who hang out in my room sometimes at non-classtimes. Anyway, I've kind've played the counselor with her before, but we had a long conversation. Mostly it comes down to shitty relationships with her family. After listening to her for a long time, I recommended she talk to her counselor. She did mention seeing a therapist, but I think that's inconsistent. I told her I was gonna talk to her counselor too. (Wasn't able to get in touch after school yesterday, so I'll try again next week.) But I recommended she seek her out as well.

After work, saw Josh and Molly and Mariah and Lila. We went to the art walk. Were there a little while, but little kids are antsy. We tried to eat at Chiwawa but the wait was super-long. We ate at Mulan. After that Mary Beth and I went back to the art walk. We ended up quadrupling our art collection!! (It went from one to four, well I'm just counting painting, not the piece of photography we have as well.) We got one from this one woman "Deep Water." Paint globbed on with different levels of a sea blue mixed from dark to translucent. It's a pretty nice effect. Then we went to one gallery and we each picked out one from the same guy. Mary Beth picked "Beach Baby" with purple and blue streaks of paint and I picked "The Plague" with broad black strokes on white. Pretty happy with our art. We celebrated at Bar DKDC. The treat was seeing their menu, which we were too full to partake in (except for dessert for me), but it's Jamaican shit and looks amazing and oddly cheap! We shall return. Also for the most part they were playing pretty good reggae on the overhead. Then the bartender changed and he started playing The Clash, which was fine too. I don't have and rarely listen to stuff from Combat Rock because I really don't like the main songs I've heard from it, but "Straight to Hell" is a really good song. Nice to be reminded.