The first class is finished - and I'm a little sad. Being surrounded by band geeks for 40 hours this week felt like home. Reading through music, score study, administration of a program... I learned a lot. The hard part will be maintaining the momentum and continuing through school. I'm working hard this weekend to create a student portfolio process, and update the band handbook (which includes rearranging things so that there is a 4 year band curriculum and 4 year step by step goals for students).
I was delighted to be walking through IIT and find a rock that had a yarn-knit cover over it:

I was also mildly amused when I went to a water fountain and learned that it was also a water bottle fill station. It was actually keeping track of the number of plastic bottles it was saving. How cool!
Today I saw an ad for a drum circle for free... hope it's not BYOD. I'm also getting a roommmate tomorrow, which I'm both dreading and excited about.