Marching band - A way of life

I took a different route to work this morning, and on my way passed by a sight that took me back in time: the local high school marching band was practicing. They were in a local park next to a very busy road, giving them an ever changing, yet ever present audience to show off their evolving formations and semi-rehearsed songs.

All through middle and high school I was a bit of a band geek. I played (and still play, sort of) both the cornet and the trumpet. First the cornet, as that is what my brother played. Then the trumpet, as it turns out only my brother played the cornet.

Where I went to high school, marching band was a big deal. If you wanted to play in the regular band, you had to play in the marching band. As a result, we had just under 200 kids in the group, which in a school of 800 is significant. Our band leader was a traditionalist, favoring old standards (“Old Man River” comes to mind), rather than the more contemporary stuff (“Eye of the Tiger” comes to mind, as, after all, it was the late 80’s/early 90’s). And we always stayed in long straight lines, unless we broke off into lines of eight people to make circles. This was cause for lots of teenage angst, as we wanted to be the cool marching band (think “Drumline”), but we did what we were told.

What we lacked in panache we made up for in numbers.

I think I could still do some of the routines if pressed. I could certainly play several of the songs, along with our fight song and alma mater.

A highlight each year was going to the annual Marching Band Festival, held at Hofstra University. It was a total showcase of good, clean dorkiness, and we took it very seriously. Extra rehearsals (two a days!), extra practicing at home, lots of chatter in the cafeteria…

It was a televised event.

As the biggest band, we often went last, and we stormed the field each year with our time-honored entrance of running on to the field in precise steps, with eight steps equaling 10 yards. Each step was counted off in a mumbly way, except for when you hit each 10 yard line and the final stop, at which point you shouted.

If you can imagine, it sounded something like this:
“ONE two three four five six seven eight
TWO two three four five six seven eight
THREE two three four five six seven eight
FOUR two three four five six seven eight
DOWN!” (<-- = stand at attention)

The hometown crowd loved it. Man, those were heady days.

Oh – the uniform. As with any marching band, that was a critical component. Ours were a bit brutal – dark green wool pants, matching blazer, a thick vinyl overlay for the jacket with a big “H” across the chest. Plus, a stiff green and white top hat where the requisite tall plume was attached. And white gloves. It was head to toe boiling hot, particularly on Memorial Day, where we marched in the hot sun for hours.

I will say that the polar-ready uniform did come in handy in the winter months. For example, we played at a Jets game every few years (see where marching band can take you?) and I remember it being particularly frigid there. I am sure I had some sort of hot-coals-in-my-pocket contraption to keep my fingers from chipping off my hands.

I went to look up the uniforms to show you what I mean, but apparently they’ve changed it up a bit. Here is what they look like now. Lucky them.

The perfect toy

Ari the charming cat has a habit of getting up with the sun. In the summer that means he is in your face around 5am, yelling at you to get up and play.

I admire his energy.

Last night, the most wonderful toy he could have ever imagined arrived. And it arrived at around 2am: a lightening bug.

Just as Guitar Hero feeds my love of both music and video games, this insect fulfilled Ari’s desires for a toy that a) moves constantly, b) lights up, and c) never gives out.

Both P and I were awoken by Ari’s running about, and I quickly realized what exactly the fuss was all about when I saw a little dancing light come and land near my head. The lightening bug buzzed about the bedroom for an hour or so (at least it seemed like that), going back and forth from the window to the bedroom door and back, with intermittent stops at the ceiling light right above our bed.

The only object between the window and the bedroom door is our bed. Thus, in human terms, this translates to an eight pound weight being bounced on you over and over, with periodic stops on top of your body if you happen to be near the middle of the bed. Plus the added noise of a chatty cat alternately meowing and attempting to climb the (very thin) curtains.

It was a circus. And even though P and I are both rather sleep today, it was very sweet.

How can it only be Tuesday?

This week is molasses. I feel like it should already be next Wednesday...

Our home has dried out at this point, and if I were 10 years younger I might be up for letting the ceiling mess stay for a while. As this stage, though, I think I should be more adult and work on getting it fixed.

The insurance people sent out a claims inspector to check it out, and she estimated the cost at around $200 higher than our deductible. She also let me know that we could potentially lose our "no claims filed" discount of $207 if we went ahead with things. Stinky. So I closed the claim, and we'll find another way to git 'r done. Suffice it to say you may come over for dinner and find there is a hole in the kitchen ceiling...

The claims person was nice. We ended up talking for a while. There is a part of my aura that encourages relative strangers to tell me their personal details, and thus I know that she had gastric bypass surgery in October. And that she still throws up a lot of her food.

Sometimes, I wish I didn't have this part of my aura.

On the bright side, it is nearly 5pm and it's still light outside. I am going to head out running from my office tonight, as it is flatter here than at my home. I am not really in the mood to have the last mile of my run be uphill. I'm feeling ready to nap right about now, but I credit that to the fact that I live in a cube world and have had one too many meetings today. That just doesn't inspire activity. Once I hit the chilly winter air I'll be fine.

Goal is 6 miles. I made a bet with myself that if I didn't run 75 miles in January, I'd give up chocolate for all of February. I'm going to hold myself to it, and can't imagine going all of February without chocolate. Shortest month or not, it's a long time. I thought the half marathon would put me ahead of the game, but it acutally put me behind, given the days I took off before and after. My own naivite got me.

That said, I'm off to layer up and get out there.

"The cats are fine, but..."

Not really the way you want a conversation to start. But that's what I was told when I called home from the road, after a text message was sent reading, "call before you get here."

Uh-oh.

"The cats are fine, but there was a little incident."

Incident?

Here's the innocent beginning: Apparently P went to turn on the hot water this morning and, when nothing came out, she turned it off. Turning the spout to no avail happens sometimes in our old house. For some reason the pipe leading up to the upstairs bathroom will freeze up in the chill of winter. I don't think it happens anywhere else in the house.

Also necessary to know for this story is that we have two bathrooms and while the sinks look identical, the handles for the hot water actually turn in an opposite direction from each other when turning on/off. In other words, one of them needs to be turned clockwise to stop running, while the other one needs to be turned counterclockwise to achieve the same result. It's one of those little quirks that we know about, we've laughed about, but haven't done anything about because it doesn't impact anything on a larger scale.

Or so we thought.

Back to the story at hand: P turned the hot water knob completely in one direction, and as nothing came out she went to turn it off. She couldn't remember the direction that turned the water off (it sounds silly, but would you if you didn't see the physical evidence of water stopping?) so turned it in the direction she thought was correct and assumed that all was back to normal. She left for work, thinking nothing of it. What she didn't realize was that she had actually turned the hot water knob to full blast, and while it didn't work initially, the water did start flowing as the day went on and the pipes warmed slightly.

You can see where this is going.

By the time she came home from a hard day at the hospital, the upstairs bathroom was flooding and water had seeped through the floor, into the kitchen directly below it. A decent chunk of the ceiling gave its life. The water continued to drip from the kitchen ceiling, through cracks in the kitchen floor, and into the basement.

Like I said, old house. It's one big domino effect.

Poor P felt terrible, and did a major cleanup effort prior to my arriving home. I didn't see any of the puddles - only the small amounts of detritus that continue to leak from the ceiling. And the grody yellow drips that fall every few minutes.

Luckily, the musical episode of Scrubs was on tonight, and that was a great pick me up. That, a little vanilla tea, and two cats to pat.

Oh, well. What can you do? Here's hoping our home insurance covers it!