Jeff’s Blog

Tonight was this session’s final performance. It was, once again, one of the best groups I’ve been in. There was a great drummer (a high school senior), two great saxes (one was a freshman), our instructor (a college professor), and me. We played Caravan, Sweet Love of Mine (in a reggae style), and Ornithology.

We got there early enough to watch a few other bands, and then we were on. Our instructor had knee surgery today at about noon, and yet he still made it for the gig tonight, albeit using crutches.

The actual performance went great, and the decent crowd we attracted liked it. Unfortunately, I won’t have time to do CCJA in the fall because of marching band, but I’ll be able to do the winter session.

Today our school hosted a huge band competition for all of the major bands in the area. The band I’m in played in the morning, so I got there fairly early, especially for a day off school. We played our two songs and did a pretty good job, even though we ended up with an overall rating of 2, with 1 being the best on a scale of 1-4.

I pretty much did nothing until 3:00pm when the school I was in charge of arrived. I had to show them everywhere they needed to go, meaning the room to drop off their cases and things, the warm-up room, the stage, and finally, the sight-reading room.

This was the last day of the ski season. We went up fairly early, and it was incredible. The weather was beautiful and sunny, the snow was still pretty powdery and there was hardly anyone there.

We stayed mostly on greens in the morning, which were perfectly fine, and then went on blues, which were a lot better in the afternoon. Going to a big ski resort is a lot better than a small one, obviously. There are a ton more runs, the runs are wider, and in general the snow is also better.

On the way home though, we got a flat tire. We pulled over because we thought my snowboard was flapping around on the roof, but it was actually our tire. We got out and fixed it in about a half hour, which was really good considering the way it could have turned out. It was a great way to end the ski season, though.

Today is my birthday! I am now fifteen. Today we left the hotel and went to the Astronaut Hall of Fame, part of the Kennedy Space Center. There wasn’t a ton to do there, so we left for the main Kennedy Space Center. While there, we saw another IMAX and went inside the scale model of the space shuttle.

By this time, it was getting to be almost 2:00pm, so we left for the airport for a four hour flight. We got to our home airport, and my grandpa picked us up. We stopped for dinner on the way home, and when we got home I had a surprise cake waiting for me! It was nice to actually celebrate on my birthday.

We spent a lot of today in the ocean, too. We started out in the morning walking along it, and then we left to go eat lunch at Sonny’s again. After that, we went and played a game of minigolf, then went back to the ocean and rode some waves for a few hours. For dinner, we ate at Captain J’s, which had an incredibly long wait, but the food was incredible. After dinner, we played more minigolf. The place had two courses, and if you came back in the same day it was a lot cheaper, so we did. When we were done there, we went back to the hotel restaurant for dessert.