ITF/Las Vegas

We went to Vegas May 30-Jun 6. The primary purpose was to go to the International Trombone Festival but we had decided beforehand to stay a few extra days and meet some friends there and have some fun.

The ITF was a nice experience. It was nice to see some acquaintences that I hadn't see in a while and then there were a couple that I don't think that were that happy to see me. My UNT trombone teacher was there and was extremely busy but we got to talk for a few minutes. It seems that one of his students won the second trombone position with the Vienna Philharmonic. I was blown away. I didn't even know that they allowed Americans to try out. And it was his very first professional audition. Also, the 'TF' trombone quartet(also coached by the same teacher as Jeremy Wilson) from UNT won the quartet competition.

I also saw someone that I knew from BYU there, along with his son(whome I can't believe is 15 now). He's the Trombone professor at BYU-Idaho now. Good for him. He is one heck of a player.

I am a little curious why my former BYU roommate, now the BYU trombone prof, didn't show. Its only 7 hours straight down I-15 to lv from Provo. Maybe I'll shoot him an email.

ITF itself had many fine performances and lectures. I'm not remembering them all very well right now so I won't talk about it. That's what I get for not making my blog entry right when I got home.

The highlight of Friday was that night when we ate at the buffet at the Wynne Hotel. It was incredible having shrimp, crab legs that were split lengthwise(making meat extraction easier), pastas, chinese food, bbq, just EVERYTHING. Two thumbs up from up from us. Drawback? It was $36 each.

The ITF ended on Saturday. Monday afternoon we saw the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay. The ads look very cool, showing a huge great whit with its gaping maw against the glass but the actual exhibit was a bit of a letdown. The biggest the sharks got was what I would say 'medium-sized.' Eh.

Our friends, 'Bob' and 'Elaine' arrived on Monday. That evening all of us went and saw the Blue Man Group. What a fantastic experience! They had a giant pvc pipe with bends and sliding sections and they made all kinds of cool sounds with it. There were a lot of flashes of color, long streams of recycled paper rolling over the audience, and other audience participation. I would HIGHLY recommend it.






The next day we walked around a lot, checking out the casinos. We tried to ride rollercoasters at both New York, New York and Stratosphere but they both closed down because of high winds. We checked back on each but no luck. By afternoon I was really wishing that I had brought my newer tennis shoes because my feet were hurting, blisters and all. We stopped at a drugstore-like enclave and I played dr on my feet but I'm not sure that it helped all that much. We ate dinner at Mandalay Bay buffet which was not quite as good as Wynn's but not nearly as expensive($20), either. Bob suggested that we check out Mama Mia, the ABBA vehicle, that night so we ended up seeing that. I didn't think too much of it. The next day Bob and Elaine went back to LA and we came back to TX(a 1200 mile drive).

A good vacation but a loooong drive.

To all my fans out there(both of them): a lot has been going on for the last month and a half and I'm going to try to catch everyone up somewhat. I'll take it one event at a time.


20th Class Reunion

The 3rd week(end) in May the wife and I piled into out 1999 honda accord and went to my 20th anniversery in Magnolia, Arkansas(about an hour due east of Texarkana if that helps anyone). The reunion consisted of 3 events: a Friday Night mixer, a Saturday morning high school walk through for the purpose of seeing all the changes that have been made to the high school in the last 20 years, and a Saturday night dinner and dance at the local country club.


Friday Night Mixer

This was definitely the most surreal of the three. I knew in my brain that everybody would look older but my last memoryof these people was how they looked on graduation day; May 14th, 1987 when everybody was 18. As people started to come through the door it was like a time machine in my head went off, trying to reconcile how people looked when they were 18 with how they looked 20 years later. This happened over and over for each person that I recognized which was kind of trippy. There were quite a few people that I didn't remember, even after looking at their name tag. And many of these people seemed to remember me as their good friend. I was the tallest in school so maybe they remember me that way. I did see a couple of friends there that I used to hang out with quite a bit but not nearly as many as I had hoped. One of these friends only lives 15 miles away from where we live, which was great. We're planning on getting together for lunch soon as he's an attorney and comes to the county courthouse in Denton quite a bit.


Saturday Morning HS walking tour

Our guide was the current hs principle. I think when we graduated, he was the asst principal at the jr high. Most of my memories of him consist of him being a pe teacher when I was in fifth and sixth grade. Anyhow, we met in the library where he started off by telling us how technologicly advanced the school had gotten, how wired the placed had gotten and how lessons were now transmitted from the library to the classrooms. Most of the library books are now on cd(if I heard him right).

Next we walked over to the band hall. We first entered a large bandroom about the same size as the ensemble rehearsal rooms that I rehearsed in at BYU. Then mr principal man informed us that the was the small one. We all walked over to the other half of the building and saw the other bandroom. It was HUGE!!!! WOW!! Not just big but cutting edge, too. Attached to the ceiling was a white satellite opject that we were informed was a sound system(or part of anyone). Actualy it was part sound and part projection(projector) but it was extremely sleek and modern. I'm guessing that that part of it alone was between $50,000 and $100,000. Apparently Magnolia has money to spend. A lot of it.

Then we went over to the huge, new gymnasium. It is very large for a hs gym, has arena style seating, and is convertible for several differnt activities - like graduation. A very nice facility.


Saturday night at the country club

I had never been to the country club before. It was fairly nice but not overly so. The shindig was scheduled to start at 6:30 and that's when people started to stream in. I think dinner itself wasn't served until 7:30 or so. The dancing started after dinner, 8:30 or so. I got to talk with several people whom I hadn't seen yet. It was fun & interesting. Fun to see old acquaintenances and interesting to see what people had done with their lives. Some people did great things, started families, got good educations and good jobs and some pretty much stayed like how they were at graduation. There were a lot of both.
At 9 or so a couple of friends and our wives got bored with the whole deal and went to McDonalds of all places and sat and talked about our childhoods for a while. It was nice reminiscing, talking about movies, talking about how our lives were going. They are some good people. The kind of people who make me think that maybe the world has a chance.