Christmas gigging

So White Christmas continues, starting to feel like we should mark each night with a tally scraped on the pit wall. But last night the 3 wind players all had subs (bet that was interesting) and we were at the Little Orchestra rehearsal for the Christmas concert Dec 11. I'm sure it will be fine, apparently there is a choir, a child to sing the bit from Home Alone, some grown up soloists and us backing it all up. Blech.

I had hoped it would be cool orchestral arrangements (one guy is arranging the whole concert for free, which is lovely). But it is super disorganized, we are getting our parts in .pdf via email, which is great, except that out of 14 songs I only have 5. I asked our "librarian" and she said it was no problem, there just wasn't oboe on any of those. Somewhat annoying, but whatever. So I show up last night and the arranger guy (who is also conducting everything) is like, where is the oboe? This is a big solo! But there are no parts to be found anywhere. Grrrrr.

So I'm missing a paying gig (WC), to show up for a less paying but usually more satisfying and consistant gig, but I have nothing to play. I *think* I will end up with music for 7 pieces, and that is ok with me - I don't have to play on everything (although it is WEIRD for the oboe to not have parts if there are other winds in an orchestra!). I did get some reading done, the magazine I've been bringing to WC finally got opened in orchestra rehearsal!

The other crazy thing is the weather here has been bad - so bad they cancelled the only Messiah rehearsal Tuesday. So I'll be playing that tomorrow night (another sub for WC) with no rehearsal. Not worried about playing it, but keeping track of which mvts we are doing is always a challenge (we do the Xmas part and about 10 other random bits, including HC of course!)

The endless nights away are starting to wear on me, things would need to be different at home if I did this all the time! I see very little of J these days because before work he has his "puttering" time (usually messing with cars or some such) and when he gets home he goes directly down to his email in the basement, and I have to leave in usually 1/2 hour depending on when he gets home. And of course he is usually asleep or the next thing to it when I get home. Fortunatly I see D after school every day, makes me so glad I'm not teaching this semester!