Cinco de Mayo?

Hmm Cinco de Mayo isn't as big of a thing here as it is back home.

Kari and I celebrated at the ONE Mexican restaurant in Newark. We had margs and cheap food. All in all, a successful evening.

Yesterday was Dad's birthday- Happy Birthday Dad- love you. hope you have a good time celebrating tomorrow!

Today was a great day. We had an inservice day with our ITD and my ST. All of our sessions were canceled for the day. We discussed termination of services and non-inclusion reports (meaning, when you assess someone for music therapy and it is determined that they are not appropriate candidates for MT at this time). We got to watch another Nordoff-Robbins movie- "The Music Child" - which was interesting to see. I'm going to have to watch it again. There is so much happening in every scene that its difficult, nearly impossible, to absorb everything after one viewing. We also had another piano inservice on Classical Improvisation. Our ITD calls it: Improvisational Sight Reading---- can we come up with anything more perfect?! no. Improvisational Sight Reading- I love that. I love sight reading in general--- which in the music world, makes me sort of strange. No one really enjoys sight reading. Except for me, apparently. Anyhow. This idea of classical improvisation is looking at a piece of "classical" music --- serious art music.... not necessarily from the classical era-- and reducing a portion of it, taking it apart and then finding ways to reconstruct it. This means that I should be sight reading every day. I love that idea. The only way to get better at sight reading is to practice and do it constantly. I am looking forward to putting together a classical improvisation. We had to do a write up and whole thing about it. I am really excited.

We also watched this online seminar today on ethics and stuff put on by the State of New York.... kind of like "Live... from Albany.... its the Governor." NY is in the hole big time- huge deficit. In fact, we just got an e mail today saying that Furlough Days will begin in a couple of weeks for selected state workers. We're not sure how or if that will affect us. More on that as it comes.

Tonight I am looking forward to going to bed early and washing some dishes left over in my kitchen. Still getting ready for Betty White Day. We've expanded the menu to include Betty White Waffles which will embrace her likeness using various fruits and whipped cream and Pasta in (Betty) White sauce. Man, I love a good theme.