Day: April 21, 2012

Band

Jazz Lessons This Summer?

Karen

Jazz performed his Spring Concert in both Advanced Band and Jazz Band these past two weeks.

Here’s one of the songs from the Advanced Band concert:

And here’s a video of Jazz’s solo in the Jazz Band concert:

I’m actually trying to talk Kevin into uploading the last song the Jazz Band played – it was fast paced and quite good. The kids all played really well. Hopefully, I can post that one soon.

Jazz LOVES jazz band. (Hence the reason I call him Jazz on this blog. Ha!) I mean, he LIVES for the spring when he can play his favorite type of music.

jazz4

What made this year’s jazz band concert cool was the fact that they had a professional jazz player accompany them. The gentleman’s name is Kim Park and he spent a lot of one-on-one time with the kids teaching them the tricks of solo playing.

After the concert, everyone had a chance to purchase Mr. Park’s CD, which we did, and have him autograph, which we did, and when we asked him to make it out to Jazz and told him Jazz was our son, he immediately brighten and complimented us on what a great player Jazz was. “He wasn’t afraid to play,” he said. In fact, Mr. Park liked Jazz so much, that he gave Jazz one of his business cards and encouraged him to contact him for lessons this summer.

(And no, he didn’t give one of his cards to every student).

Which we will likely do, actually. Jazz will not have a summer class this year (the first time in three years he won’t be taking a summer class), so these lessons will be something that Jazz can do to keep himself busy this summer since Kevin and I will be working and Dude will be taking a summer class and HOPEFULLY land a part-time job somewhere.

It really warms our hearts to see Jazz taking his playing so seriously.

jazz3

This is the first year he has really acted pretty serious with his playing. In the picture above, you can see how he’s preparing for the upcoming song. He’s actually tapping his knee in rhythm and mentally preparing himself to play it.

I told Jazz, after the concert, that we are going to have some serious discussions this summer about applying for music scholarships/grants and to make a game plan for whatever college he chooses to attend. He wants to go to Mizzou (Columbia, Missouri), but I’m not sure if we can make that happen since he hasn’t taken all of the courses they require for admission. He may have to attend a few semesters at OTC first to earn his credits before transferring, but that’s just one of many things we’ll have to look at this summer.

There are big changes for both my boys on the horizon, I can see those changes, it’s just a matter of how long it’s going to take us to reach that horizon now.

Work Stuff

The Aloha Girls

Karen

Our clinic has a new boss.

It’s one of those, “WHO you know instead of WHAT you know” people because he’s young, enthusiastic and absolutely clueless on what we do and how we do it.

He’s clueless, but charming, friendly, and eager to learn.

Which is a not a BAD combination, I suppose, but still – WHY do companies do that?!? Is there no wonder there are underlying tensions and buried jealousies? Not from me, I haven’t been there long enough, nor do I really know enough, to feel threatened or jealous, but I assure you, there are a few who not only feel that way, but are vocal about it, too.

Which is stupid and counter productive because how do these people hope to advance within the company when they are vocal with their criticisms?

So our boss is new. And he’s on a mission to impress the big-wigs at the company with his new and improved ideas. Which, to be fair, are quite good and I’ll be honest, the clinic could use a little organization (remember how chaotic it was when they trained me? Actually, I was never “technically” trained, I just sort of watched people and was smart enough to pick up on it faster than most).

One of the ideas he’s been implementing lately is a whole “we’re one big happy team” agenda and again, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Because we all have to work together and a lot of our job responsibilities DO bleed into each other, it’s a good idea to not only get along, but to get to know one another, too. There are two floors to our facility and it might be weeks before I see the girls downstairs and vice versa – though we all talk to each other every day, several times a day.

The boss man (because I have a boss woman, too), suggested we come up with ideas on how we could better “bond” with one another. One person suggested we dress up on Friday (it’s the slowest day of the week for us since we generally never have doctors in the clinic on Fridays – though it’s busy for the rest of us because we’re frantically trying to play catch up from the rest of the week).

The boss said, okay, fine, dress up, but you have to still wear your scrubs, just accessorize in some way.

The front desk girls come up with this attire:

aloha1

These are the Aloha Girls.

Cute, right?

And no. You don’t see me in this bunch because I was part of the “party-pooper” group. I HATE dressing up. Especially at work. I feel uncomfortable and foolish and I opted out of the “fun” exercise.

But the other girls loved it. We had a contest – each area competed with each other, but it only ended up being two areas that participated, so it wasn’t much of a contest.

The Aloha Girls won.

Another “thing” that was suggested was a secret pal sort of thing. We all filled out surveys about ourselves and then we drew names. We were not allowed to draw anyone from our areas because the point of the game was to get to know someone NOT in your immediate area. I am participating in this and I’m looking forward to leaving little surprises for my secret pal from time-to-time. We’re supposed to keep it a secret and then we’ll reveal who we have at Christmas. (I’m assuming this means we’ll have some sort of Christmas party).

Leave it up to new management to pull out all of the silly “games.”

Though it’s nice to break up the monotony now and again.

(By the way, the third woman from the right? Is my immediate boss. She has the heaviest, and most charming, southern accent I’ve ever heard).