I'm currently in Beaver, Utah on tour with the Utah Symphony. This is a very high profile tour, with visits to such big-name cities as Ephraim and Richfield in addition to Beaver. It's kind of a funny little trip, actually. Today we drove down to Richfield, played a one-hour school concert, drove to Beaver and checked into the hotel by 3:00 and had the rest of the day free. I took a sorely-needed nap (I still haven't recovered from my trip to Michigan), ate some food, watched the most recent episode of The Office (U.S. version), and now am going to practice for a while. Tomorrow will be much the same. Last week I was out of school because of fall break and this week is mostly taken up by this tour, so it feels like I'll have been out of school for two weeks. Life is tough.
Being on this tour makes me feel how I usually do when I play with the symphony: I can't believe I'm getting paid to do this. Not in an incredulous this-is-so-lame-I-can't-believe-someone-is-paying-me-for-this kind of way, but in a sense of true amazement that I get money for playing my viola. When I lived in Michigan I had a lot of orchestra work and got exposed to the professional (or semi-professional) scene. I was always amazed at how catty people got and how much they found to complain about. I was just glad and amazed to be getting any money at all for this, and to have people paying to come to the concerts. It was my first time playing in orchestras for money and even now, three years later, I haven't gotten over the novelty of it. It's nice work if you can get it.
As previously mentioned, I went to Michigan last week during my school fall break. It was perfect timing because I got to be there for the week leading up to the big shared birthday. Adam was born on my 20th birthday, October 19th 2001, and I enjoyed being with him on our special day (which was mostly his special day, and rightly so--it's way more exciting to turn 6 or 7 then 26 or 27) when I lived in Michigan. When it came time for me to move back to Utah in 2007, Adam was sad (as was I) but when we'd talk about me moving away he'd always end the conversation with, "But you'll always be here for our birthday, right Les?" How could I refuse?
Before my trip I bought a digital camera at Costco (my first) in anticipation of taking lots of cute/memorable/funny pictures. It turns out that I've been so used to not having a camera that I never remembered to take it anywhere (or even out of my suitcase). I ended up taking a few pictures on my phone, though, which actually has a pretty good camera. Here are a few:
I took this the first day I was there. Esther was still getting used to me, which may explain her apathetic expression.
She cheered up soon afterwards, though, and loved having me take pictures of her on my phone. Here she is doing the famous "Peace out, dude!"
She is a beautiul little girl.
We had Hawaiian haystacks for dinner one night. Eli made his into a work of art.
Since I took a picture of his I had a take a picture of everyone else's too.
We took a trip to Jenny's, a cider mill near Dexter with heavenly pumpkin donuts.
It was so great to hang out with my Michigan family for a week. It makes my little apartment in SLC seem all the quieter, for better or worse.
