Fun at the Beer Tent

Last night's parade with the East Rochester Fire Dept. band was quite the fun experience. The marching itself sucked, since it was god-awful humid out, so I was sweating bullets by halfway through. After the parade half the band ran back to the beginning to march with the Rush FD, but I was not among them. The rest of us went into the fair-grounds beer-drinking area. I availed myself to the complimentary cheap beer entitled to all the bands, and we waited around for a good hour for the Rush/ER band to arrive, drinking beer, talking, and listening to the Penfield and Fairport bands strike up tunes. Eventually they did arrive and began calling "beer tent " tunes. Sometime around then a second case of Labatt beer arrived at our picnic table.

The bands took turns playing various marches and pop tunes, and eventually, at someone's request, all the bands stood in a big circle and played an Armed Forces Salute medley.... that was a rockin' good time. I even sight-read the chart halfway decently. We wrapped up with Stars & Stripes Forever, complete with all our trombones, plus several from other bands, blasting the signature counter-melody at the end. Good times. One nice bonus was meeting a fellow trombonist who turned out to be the middle school teacher at Honeoye Falls-Lima. He was very kind and when he found out I'm studying music ed, insisted that I stay in touch with him, as I could do my observation and/or practicums at his school district. It's good to have connections, since you never know where they'll lead to (like possibly a teaching job someday!). The evening was concluded by quietly having a couple good beers and cigarettes out on the back patio with Heidi... since Ben and Susan were too dull to join us out for drinks. Silly bastards.

Today was going to be go-do-yardwork-at-Tatiana's day, but I haven't heard from TJ, who's out in West Cupcake at his mom's, taking care of her dogs. I will likely just bump it one more day and go do that tomorrow, with or without TJ. So today is back to the to-do lists... cleaning, organizing, and packing for Fred.

T-minus 23 days till classes begin...