Quebecois Jam

 

For any of my readers wondering what I was going to do, I did accept the promotion. Maybe it's a bad idea, twenty years of seniority down the drain and losing a week of vacation. But the raise way more than made up for the lost vacation mathematically (maybe not in reality), and while I will be on a year of probation, it seems unlikely that I wouldn't pass probation for a job I've been doing for eight years now. And I won a major award! More than the money, what really won me over is the idea of being salaried instead of hourly, and not having to watch the clock so closely. Of course my Union and Congress peeps probably think I've sold out to The Man, and they warned me that I would have no more protection. But Seabird and Hardingfele are salaried, and when we walk at lunch, they don't have to watch the clock like I do. Well, starting on the First of June, I won't have to either. As a salaried person, you can take up to two hours off without having to claim any leave time. I've known people who did this every day, so they really only worked six hours a day. Conversely, I've known salaried people who were supposedly working 75% and getting paid for that, but they were really putting in full-time work. My new boss, who seems very reasonable, says she doesn't expect any of us in FART 5 will work more than forty hours a week, so my loss of being able to get overtime (which I haven't used since my first job on campus) should mean nothing. And my job should be just the same... except for when the new system hits in July, when it will be totally different. So much change! It's making me a little nuts, and you know what my cure for that is...

This evening Hardingfele decided she didn't want to go to either the Yid Vicious concert or the Quebecois jam, so I waited for Travalon to come home from work, and then the two of us went to Minocqua Brewery for the jam. I brought trusty old Mandy, because I didn't feel confident enough on the violin to jump into music I don't know, and the invitation just said "string instruments welcome." When we got there, the place was packed, and the jam looked like people who knew each other and the music, so Travalon and I stood around awkwardly until I struck up a conversation with a woman at the bar, and she said she and her husband were leaving so we could have their seats. There was a woman who looked very familiar, and her husband (who didn't) had brought a violin, but he also seemed intimidated about joining the jam. It turned out he also goes to Muso slow Irish sessions, but I don't remember seeing him before. His wife used to work at the community pharmacy, so that's how I knew her. Then some people from the Early Music Festival arrived! I was drinking a sour beer and enjoying a vegetarian pizza (the bartender said those were her two favorite things on the menu as well), and one of the early music people got the sour beer too. One of the guys in the jam was playing a very strange instrument, but it sounded good, and an early music person asked what it was and learned it was an "electronic wind instrument." A fiddler came over to the bar to order a beer, so I asked if it was an open jam, and she said yes, and the guy with the electronic wind instrument was the leader, so talk to him. Then she told him I wanted to play, so he turned, and we realized we had met at a jam before. (He'd had his back to me until then.) He had an iPad setup with the music, and I'm a pretty competent sight-reader, but between all the ornaments the fiddlers were throwing in and an enthusiastic guitarist who kept blocking my view, I only half read the notes and half followed the others. Was I glad I had brought the mandolin instead of the violin! Otherwise everyone would have heard my mistakes. I also told them about the other violin player who was too shy to join, so they brought him over, and he didn't play the melody so much as sort of blue grass chops like I often play with my band on the mandolin, and they sounded good. This jam will happen again on June 12, and apparently there is another Quebecois jam at Cargo Coffee on every fourth Sunday at noon. This is how I will get through the insanity of this current administration - nonstop jamming!

I did DuoLingo right when I got home, instead of in the middle of the night like usual, but only tonight did it give me this message:

I told Travalon that I would get to bed on time tonight, unlike the last two nights, and he was like, "A likely story, Hat." He's right - here it is the middle of the night as I'm blogging.

Famous Hat