rehearsal season has begun. the past two weeks, i have had rehearsals on mondays, alternate tuesdays, and wednesdays, plus my classes on thursday and sunday. we’ve got one more week of panto rehearsals (monday and wednesday) before we take the show to the oregon country fair for half-a-dozen performances over three days, which should help us work out the bugs for the traditional “holiday” performances in december.

this is more a reminder to myself than anything else, but i MUST REMEMBER to take my micro-tuba to the repair shop and have them pull two stuck tuning slides which i can’t seem to get free… i MUST REMEMBER because i am taking my micro-tuba to OCF, and will need the tuning slides to work!!

macque is NOT COMING to the oregon country fair this year, for the first time in a huge gob of years (47, or something like that). he hasn’t been doing very well, health-wise, and the doctors have said that if he goes to OCF, it might just kill him. it will be interesting seeing how well this group functions without it’s titular head. we’ve been doing fairly well the past few years, but it has been because macque has been behind it all, pushing.

at the same time, i can’t help but think, “lucky bastard”… he’s got a time limit: he’s coming down the point where he can definitely point to an end of his life that he can do nothing about. it should have been me, in 2003. next time, i’ll have a DNR and an AND ready. who has those things lying around when they’re 43? 😖

then, when i get back from OCF, on monday, i have a sousa band rehearsal on tuesday, a circus class on thursday, a sousa band performance at an old folks’ home on saturday, and a unicycle class on sunday.

my unicycle class, this session, actually has 5 people in it! 4 people other than me! 😉 there’s the little girl who went from not riding at all, to riding a giraffe without a spotter, last year, and her (i think) younger sister, and their (i think) mother, plus two women who look like they’re of indian descent, one of whom is probably between 40 and 55 or thereabouts. i believe the younger one is late teens to early 20s.