Here’s a look back at the week that was…..
HITS
- It was a great week of student recruitment in El Paso. I spent four days on the road with the percussion faculty as we visited 13 schools in 3 cities. We presented 14 mini-recitals and recruitment presentations to around 500 students. In the process, we had 87 students request more information about our program. All in all, I consider it a great success! It was also a great time to get to put my Admission hat back on and talk to students with that mentality. Even though I didn’t get to do much road work in the Admission Office at Pepperdine, I had forgotten just how much I enjoyed talking to high school students as they were searching for the school that would become their home-away-from-home for the next 4 years. It was nice to remember that many of the skills I picked up in that first job out of college continue to serve me today.
- El Paso is a charming city. I didn’t realize just how HUGE it was! I was really impressed with how the residents managed to maintain a sense of “small town charm.” The city was clean. The food was outstanding – especially West Texas Chop House – and I never felt unsafe.
- Nothing is better when you are on the road than having great company along for the ride. Whether we were laughing about the fact that I had to play AND be polite and enthusiastic before 7am or staging text message quarrels for the entertainment of our students in Plainview, Anthony and I managed to spend every waking hour together without wanting to kill each other. That’s a true sign of friendship! I’ve done enough traveling over the years with friends and co-workers to know that it is not always this easy. I don’t take for granted when I travel with someone that will laugh, pray, cry, and worship with me. (Yep….we went through every one of those emotions in El Paso. It was an eventful week.)
- Even though it was a fun and productive trip, it was an enormous HIT to crawl into my own bed late Wednesday night before finishing up the tour with a few visits to schools in our local area on Thursday morning.
MISSES
- Rude people suck! As lovely as the people of El Paso were, Anthony and I still managed to encounter one absolute JERK on this trip. I’ll keep the details to myself, but it was a situation that made both of us irate and took a couple of hours to get over. It’s not that difficult to simply be polite, folks!
- I’m a piano snob. I admit it! You can imagine just how happy I was to find myself playing on keyboards and out-of-tune pianos several times during the tour. I knew I wouldn’t be playing Steinways from the outset and had prepared myself for it. I made the best of the situation, but that doesn’t mean that I enjoyed it! I’m just thankful that the keyboards had weighted keys at least.
- After several days in the car and playing on keyboards that were never quite at the right height, I developed a major back ache by the end of the week. Thankfully it never went completely out, but I made a quick trip to the massage therapist to avoid a major disaster.
- Now that I’m home, I have a mountain of laundry to do. It’s not my favorite chore in the world, but I don’t despise it either. At least, I don’t hate it when the washing machine isn’t misbehaving! Just as I was starting to write this post, the washing machine nearly flew through the wall as it entered the spin cycle. No, it wasn’t overloaded. Actually, it was only half full! I had the maintenance man look at it a few weeks ago and he found nothing wrong. Just sent another request to the manager to have it looked at again. I suppose I’m just going to have to let it do its thing the next time and take a video of the episode so they can figure out what is really going on with it.
Livin' Life 