Of Church Eggs and iPads
Mar. 27th, 2025 08:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
taz_39Monday was a "day off."
I was supposed to be at Epic, but someone somewhere messed up our schedule and we ended up with two PAID days off. Whee!!
Jameson was up early for physical therapy, so I got up early too to finish transcribing.
I started off strong but after Jameson left I decided to vacuum, dust, touch-up clean the shower with bleach, then finally bit the bullet and went shopping on macofalltrades.com for a refurbished iPad.
I use my iPad for most gigs. Musicians can easily airdrop music PDFs to each other, and it's easy for me to upload big Dropbox folders to ForScore. Right now I have all of my Disney music on my iPad, plus my Easter gig music and Steamboat Lillies gig music, all of my bass trombone stuff, and a load of show music and ancient Real Books that I don't want to lose.
My iPad is an ORIGINAL iPad Air! It's so old that there have been no updates for it for a long time, and I have to keep it in Airplane Mode otherwise it will freeze up. But lately it's been freezing up anyway, and the battery barely lasts a full day anymore, and I can't even sell it on trade-in because nobody will buy it. Time to ditch it before it crashes and I lose everything.
Anyway, spent $$$ on a 13" Air, and was trying to go back to transcription when I got bombarded with texts from one of the musicians on the upcoming tour I'm signed with. She was having a freakout just like I had a few days ago!
Had I heard anything new?
Why don't we have music yet?
Have I tried reaching out to anyone?
I was delighted to hear from her! See, I'm NOT an overreacting Karen after all! Three months IS far too long to keep your employees in the dark, and I'm not the only one who thinks so.
I was able to share with her all of the legwork I'd done recently, and though there was little to show for it at least there was the text from the Music Coordinator saying that I'm "confirmed" on Thursday. After chatting with her I also decided to message the trombonist who's currently doing our show in Australia to ask him for a pdf of my part. I didn't want to have to do that, but feel like if we musicians don't scrounge these parts ourselves, we won't see them until a week before the gig when management finally gets around to it.
After that it was time for lunch, then I had to cook some beef I'd thawed, then pack lunch and dinner for Disney tomorrow. Then I FINALLY got back to transcription, but it just took so much longer than usual...it's a different type of case so there was a lot of terminology that I had to look up because it was new to me. This is why you can't assume a shorter case will be easier.
Somewhere in there, my "church eggs" arrived from Zimmerman's in Pennsylvania!
There were 18 eggs in total (I'd expected 16) and there were supposed to be 2 or 3 of each flavor from 2 different churches.
Somehow we ended up with 8 peanut butter eggs, 7 coconut eggs, and only 3 buttercream eggs (which is a big shame because those are my favorite!), and from 4 different churches to boot!
I am definitely NOT complaining! What an adorable grab bag of eggs. The woman gathering the eggs for me had sounded excited and flustered over the phone, so I think she lost her mind a little bit and just started throwing eggs in the box :) I was impressed that they all arrived intact, and after a bit of time in the fridge to firm up they'll be ready to enjoy. I made sure to write the store a good review on Google. This is the first time I'll have real "church eggs" for Easter since I was a little girl, and I'm so grateful that this person was willing to send them to us.
Even after dinner I had to continue transcription, but finally completed it (there is still the audio review to do, sigh.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, rehearsal day at the Magic Kingdom!
For a rehearsal day, I'm not filling in for anyone, so the day is based around any music that needs to be worked on or any practice that I want to get in on any aspect of the gig. We start with a 10am play-through of lesser-used pieces. Today we had two new ones which our boss wants to incorporate into the parades, "Heigh-Ho" and "You Can Fly." They were quite easy and after the play-through I decided to focus on memorizing them by the end of the day. I more or less did that (will have to solidify it in my head over the next few days), then went up to watch one of the band's sets, then filled in on the second parade for Keith.
I used the lunch break to practice bass as well, and that was very nice! Will was working today, so he kindly gave me pointers...I essentially got a free lesson!
After that, I decided to have a Small Adventure.
I've never walked the whole of the Utilidors below the Castle before. Why not give it a try!
(photo from pinsacrosstheworld.com)
The Utilidors are one big loop around the castle, probably about a mile long, with a central corridor cutting directly under the Castle. Also, did you know that guests can tour the Utilidors? It's called the Keys to the Kingdom Tour.
Anyway, I walked for what seemed like a long time but was only about 10 minutes. Did not see much except the utility tunnels, storage areas, a lot of engineering rooms, lockers for custodians and other types of essential staff, and lots of signage telling you where you were and where you were headed. There were some boards with general announcements, about castmember events or health screenings or what-have-you that you might see in any workspace. I reached the midpoint/corridor that slices below the Castle, but passed it and kept going.
This next part of the circle was much the same as the first, but part of it broke off into a sort of attached rectangle with some interesting offices, like Retail Merchandise Design or the fire alarm control systems for the Hall of Presidents. Here is where I found a huge chunk of hallway devoted to rare enamel pins! Specifically, hidden mickey pins.
(sample photo)
Hidden Mickey pins are NOT sold in the parks.
They are given to employees to give to guests during pin trades.
Since they are harder to get than the regular pins and a limited number are released each year, they are rare and highly collectible. And apparently, under Cinderella's Castle in the Utilidors, they keep the last several years' worth of hidden mickey pins on display!
I'm sorry I couldn't take photos, but rules is rules.
Additionally, there were many old black and white high-def photos of Walt Disney. Walking around the park, meeting with developers, waving to guests, hanging out with costumed characters, stuff like that. One of the funniest things about these photos is that Walt smoked, and was often holding a cigarette or cigar when these photos were taken...but in most of the photos they've been edited out!! I did find one, however, where he was holding a cigar :)
(photo courtesy Snopes. I couldn't take a pic of the one I saw, sorry.)
There was other stuff too, little memorials to Disney's Fire and Police/Security staff, and some blueprints and robotic parts for Tiki Room birds, stuff like that. I'm really glad I went exploring...there were some MAGICAL things to be found in the secret tunnels under the Magic Kingdom!
I left before Flag Retreat, ate dinner in the car on the way home, and caught up with Jameson before buckling down to set up my new iPad. Look how much bigger it is than my old one! I can't wait to be able to SEE my music!!
I transferred all of my music PDFs and ForScore files over...and just as I was doing that, the Australian trombonist who is currently playing the new version of the show I'm gonna be on, sent me a PDF of his book! Awesome! I can't wait to get started on it!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, finished my transcription job and sent it, then continued working on marking my music (highlighting mute changes, writing in cuts and edits given in emails, bookmarking pages for quick access during practice.) After lunch, grocery for dinner ingredients. I didn't practice because the next thing I had to do was watch a bootleg of my touring show and add timestamps. Without an official recording to practice with, a bootleg is the next best thing, and with timestamps I don't have to navigate a 2-hour video to find the one song I want to work on. It takes a lot of time now but is worth it.
Dinner was butter chicken meatballs, which I've made before, served with brown rice and peas.
After dinner, blowing more money on a decent saute pan. I recently bought us a cheap one and got what I paid for, the bottom is warped already. And then a case for the iPad too. As though to make up for my money flying away, our scheduler for Epic wrote to say that he needed me to cover an extra day in April. Yay!
All that aside, a quiet night. Jameson has been in a mood lately because he's covering for his boss at work, plus doing a special project, and he pulled something in his arm and it's hurting him. And he hasn't heard back from the Disney job he interviewed for last week either. Again. As usual. I'm upset for him. I don't know how to help him.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday: Lesson with Will. Misc chores and practice.
Friday & Saturday: Days “off.” Should receive more transcription work, will practice and cook.
Sunday: Disney day.
I was supposed to be at Epic, but someone somewhere messed up our schedule and we ended up with two PAID days off. Whee!!
Jameson was up early for physical therapy, so I got up early too to finish transcribing.
I started off strong but after Jameson left I decided to vacuum, dust, touch-up clean the shower with bleach, then finally bit the bullet and went shopping on macofalltrades.com for a refurbished iPad.
I use my iPad for most gigs. Musicians can easily airdrop music PDFs to each other, and it's easy for me to upload big Dropbox folders to ForScore. Right now I have all of my Disney music on my iPad, plus my Easter gig music and Steamboat Lillies gig music, all of my bass trombone stuff, and a load of show music and ancient Real Books that I don't want to lose.
My iPad is an ORIGINAL iPad Air! It's so old that there have been no updates for it for a long time, and I have to keep it in Airplane Mode otherwise it will freeze up. But lately it's been freezing up anyway, and the battery barely lasts a full day anymore, and I can't even sell it on trade-in because nobody will buy it. Time to ditch it before it crashes and I lose everything.
Anyway, spent $$$ on a 13" Air, and was trying to go back to transcription when I got bombarded with texts from one of the musicians on the upcoming tour I'm signed with. She was having a freakout just like I had a few days ago!
Had I heard anything new?
Why don't we have music yet?
Have I tried reaching out to anyone?
I was delighted to hear from her! See, I'm NOT an overreacting Karen after all! Three months IS far too long to keep your employees in the dark, and I'm not the only one who thinks so.
I was able to share with her all of the legwork I'd done recently, and though there was little to show for it at least there was the text from the Music Coordinator saying that I'm "confirmed" on Thursday. After chatting with her I also decided to message the trombonist who's currently doing our show in Australia to ask him for a pdf of my part. I didn't want to have to do that, but feel like if we musicians don't scrounge these parts ourselves, we won't see them until a week before the gig when management finally gets around to it.
After that it was time for lunch, then I had to cook some beef I'd thawed, then pack lunch and dinner for Disney tomorrow. Then I FINALLY got back to transcription, but it just took so much longer than usual...it's a different type of case so there was a lot of terminology that I had to look up because it was new to me. This is why you can't assume a shorter case will be easier.
Somewhere in there, my "church eggs" arrived from Zimmerman's in Pennsylvania!
There were 18 eggs in total (I'd expected 16) and there were supposed to be 2 or 3 of each flavor from 2 different churches.
Somehow we ended up with 8 peanut butter eggs, 7 coconut eggs, and only 3 buttercream eggs (which is a big shame because those are my favorite!), and from 4 different churches to boot!
I am definitely NOT complaining! What an adorable grab bag of eggs. The woman gathering the eggs for me had sounded excited and flustered over the phone, so I think she lost her mind a little bit and just started throwing eggs in the box :) I was impressed that they all arrived intact, and after a bit of time in the fridge to firm up they'll be ready to enjoy. I made sure to write the store a good review on Google. This is the first time I'll have real "church eggs" for Easter since I was a little girl, and I'm so grateful that this person was willing to send them to us.
Even after dinner I had to continue transcription, but finally completed it (there is still the audio review to do, sigh.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, rehearsal day at the Magic Kingdom!
For a rehearsal day, I'm not filling in for anyone, so the day is based around any music that needs to be worked on or any practice that I want to get in on any aspect of the gig. We start with a 10am play-through of lesser-used pieces. Today we had two new ones which our boss wants to incorporate into the parades, "Heigh-Ho" and "You Can Fly." They were quite easy and after the play-through I decided to focus on memorizing them by the end of the day. I more or less did that (will have to solidify it in my head over the next few days), then went up to watch one of the band's sets, then filled in on the second parade for Keith.
I used the lunch break to practice bass as well, and that was very nice! Will was working today, so he kindly gave me pointers...I essentially got a free lesson!
After that, I decided to have a Small Adventure.
I've never walked the whole of the Utilidors below the Castle before. Why not give it a try!
(photo from pinsacrosstheworld.com)
The Utilidors are one big loop around the castle, probably about a mile long, with a central corridor cutting directly under the Castle. Also, did you know that guests can tour the Utilidors? It's called the Keys to the Kingdom Tour.
Anyway, I walked for what seemed like a long time but was only about 10 minutes. Did not see much except the utility tunnels, storage areas, a lot of engineering rooms, lockers for custodians and other types of essential staff, and lots of signage telling you where you were and where you were headed. There were some boards with general announcements, about castmember events or health screenings or what-have-you that you might see in any workspace. I reached the midpoint/corridor that slices below the Castle, but passed it and kept going.
This next part of the circle was much the same as the first, but part of it broke off into a sort of attached rectangle with some interesting offices, like Retail Merchandise Design or the fire alarm control systems for the Hall of Presidents. Here is where I found a huge chunk of hallway devoted to rare enamel pins! Specifically, hidden mickey pins.
(sample photo)
Hidden Mickey pins are NOT sold in the parks.
They are given to employees to give to guests during pin trades.
Since they are harder to get than the regular pins and a limited number are released each year, they are rare and highly collectible. And apparently, under Cinderella's Castle in the Utilidors, they keep the last several years' worth of hidden mickey pins on display!
I'm sorry I couldn't take photos, but rules is rules.
Additionally, there were many old black and white high-def photos of Walt Disney. Walking around the park, meeting with developers, waving to guests, hanging out with costumed characters, stuff like that. One of the funniest things about these photos is that Walt smoked, and was often holding a cigarette or cigar when these photos were taken...but in most of the photos they've been edited out!! I did find one, however, where he was holding a cigar :)
(photo courtesy Snopes. I couldn't take a pic of the one I saw, sorry.)
There was other stuff too, little memorials to Disney's Fire and Police/Security staff, and some blueprints and robotic parts for Tiki Room birds, stuff like that. I'm really glad I went exploring...there were some MAGICAL things to be found in the secret tunnels under the Magic Kingdom!
I left before Flag Retreat, ate dinner in the car on the way home, and caught up with Jameson before buckling down to set up my new iPad. Look how much bigger it is than my old one! I can't wait to be able to SEE my music!!
I transferred all of my music PDFs and ForScore files over...and just as I was doing that, the Australian trombonist who is currently playing the new version of the show I'm gonna be on, sent me a PDF of his book! Awesome! I can't wait to get started on it!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, finished my transcription job and sent it, then continued working on marking my music (highlighting mute changes, writing in cuts and edits given in emails, bookmarking pages for quick access during practice.) After lunch, grocery for dinner ingredients. I didn't practice because the next thing I had to do was watch a bootleg of my touring show and add timestamps. Without an official recording to practice with, a bootleg is the next best thing, and with timestamps I don't have to navigate a 2-hour video to find the one song I want to work on. It takes a lot of time now but is worth it.
Dinner was butter chicken meatballs, which I've made before, served with brown rice and peas.
After dinner, blowing more money on a decent saute pan. I recently bought us a cheap one and got what I paid for, the bottom is warped already. And then a case for the iPad too. As though to make up for my money flying away, our scheduler for Epic wrote to say that he needed me to cover an extra day in April. Yay!
All that aside, a quiet night. Jameson has been in a mood lately because he's covering for his boss at work, plus doing a special project, and he pulled something in his arm and it's hurting him. And he hasn't heard back from the Disney job he interviewed for last week either. Again. As usual. I'm upset for him. I don't know how to help him.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday: Lesson with Will. Misc chores and practice.
Friday & Saturday: Days “off.” Should receive more transcription work, will practice and cook.
Sunday: Disney day.
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Date: 2025-03-28 11:01 pm (UTC)