Isn’t that how March is supposed to make its entrance or something? If so, it’s a fairly sated lion. The weather has been remarkable over the last few days, with the exception of a few hours on Monday evening, when basically the entire southern United States was under a tornado watch. We got some nice wind and a few strong rainstorms, but it blew over and everything’s been pretty perfect since then.
I made some progress at rewriting queries on Monday and then took the day off on Tuesday. Not for any particular reason other than the fact that it was a nice day and I didn’t want to go to work. I spent the day watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on netflix and cleaning up around the house. Also made some macaroni and cheese – and had brass band rehearsal, of course.
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| A squirrel outside of my bedroom window on Tuesday afternoon |
The rehearsal went fairly well, although the baritone section – minus Betsy Jones, who was auditioning in Virginia – left a lot to be desired. One thing I’ll say for playing in the tenor horn section: I can hear a lot more of the band from its center than I could from the back row (in the tuba section).
Speaking of tubas, I figured that I’d neglected mine for long enough this evening and practiced – mostly scales, long tones, and a few etudes – until my face was about to fall off. I still haven’t figured out what the deal is with the 3rd-line D (I may never figure it out, as the insipid flutter-tone has been going on for over 10 years now), but I spent the last 20 minutes of my practice by slamming into and around the D as hard and fast as I could. As things transpired, I began to get very solid on the D….and the flutter-tone crap moved to the B and C. There has to be a physical reason for this, but I just don’t know what it is. I never had this problem before I put the horn down for 5 years in the late 80s, and I never really noticed it until it began to become a liability in some quintet literature in the mid-late 90s.
Had my annual review on Monday and received, as expected, a rating of “Meets and May Exceed Expectations.” That has got to be the stupidest rating ever devised, and I’ve gotten it every year for the last 12. Either I *did* exceed expectations or I did *not* exceed them. What is this “May Exceed” garbage? At any rate, it was good enough to merit a 3.09% increase in my salary, which is by far the biggest raise I’ve gotten since I started working at BellSouth in 1999. I’ll take it.
We also got our bonus figures on Monday, and I’m not complaining about mine at all. The economy may be in the toilet, but apparently ATT did pretty well last year.
TWD