Two Pilots & an LSW: Weekend Update

Friday, December 04, 2015

Weekend Update

Fog rolled in last night, and was supposed to be gone this morning. It wasn't. In fact, the forecast called for it to stay foggy all day long until tomorrow morning. So I canceled my two students for today, and ate at Buffalo Wild Wings with Steve and Nathan (having a chicken po boy sandwich that I looked up later and ended up being 800 calories--oops). After I canceled them, I agreed to work at the concession stand at a basketball game at school for one of my five required service times. And then the fog cleared off. Gah. But I'd already canceled, so...

So at 5:30 I took Kaylee to school, and while she went off to be a pep band player for the game, I went to the concession stand. There is a very limited space back there, and it's very warm, and there only needed to be two of us back there but they kept putting a third in there too, so you couldn't turn around without hitting someone . It's also very loud. There was a Salvation Army bell ringer IN the lobby with us. Mmm. It's a little difficult for someone like me, but we did pretty well. I was there for four hours making the hot food and getting drinks ready, then the clean-up and putting away. I impressed them because I thought of things ahead of time, so they'd be ready when we needed them instead of us running behind at a critical time like half time, thought to put the cheese in the pizza warmer to keep it warm, and salted the pretzels before I nuked them. Apparently nobody had done that. They said I was smart. I don't know what to say to that. Thank you? :) Meanwhile the hot dog guy ran out of hot dogs and didn't make any new ones right as half time was approaching. Apparently he thought going into the rush with two hot dogs was enough because we weren't out yet. Fortunately that was not my problem! Everything reminds me of flying. That reminded me of instrument flying. If you're not thinking "What's next" and at least one, preferably two steps ahead, you'll regret it. Anyway. Kaylee came by and got a drink and a pretzel. Later she sent me a text and said "Hey, thanks to the concession people who actually gave me a HOT pretzel for once!" That made me laugh. I told her that was me. I don't like my cold drinks to be warm and I don't like my hot food to be cool. Do it right, man. ;)

Two jobs down, three I'm supposed to do to go. Oh, found out that none of the band members are allowed to miss any of the games or they get a "0" on an assignment in band. Well, that just stinks. We thought major band commitments were over when marching band was over, but nooooo. Her voice lessons are still disrupted and she still gets to spend many, many hours on various school nights and Saturday nights to play at games. Fortunately she doesn't mind pep band nearly as much as she minds marching band, so that's good.

So many of the band members didn't turn in their audition that they can't assign chairs, and he is going to have them all play in class for chairs instead. That's a bummer because Kaylee worked at her audition and turned in her best effort and now it'll be just whatever in class. I think they ought to let people who turned it in as they were supposed to have a leg up on those who didn't do what they were supposed to.

I sat down at the piano the other night for only the second time in a very long time. I actually found it starting to come back a lot faster than before. I also found that when I tried, or thought, I botched it. When I just relaxed and wiped my mind and just let my hands move, they did pretty well on their own. The second I started thinking about it, boom, I flubbed. Steve said something like that about doing the radios on our last trip. He hasn't done the radios on trips much in quite awhile, and when he tried to write it down and think about it too much, he'd stumble. When he'd just do it without thinking about it, he'd be fine. Gotta go with your instincts sometimes, trust what you know, even if you're rusty at it. I'll try it a few more times coming up here and see how it goes. I also found it sort of therapeutic, like it used to be. You can't think about anything else. It's like flying in that regard too. You focus, you work at it, nothing else intrudes, just the music. And when you're done, you're kind of tired. But I need to be alone, or I start thinking about whoever else is in the house, and I can't get into it. It was nice.