New Year

Hello everyone.
I hope you all are having a restful break! Was Santa good to you? Life here in wet, soggy Mt. Pleasant (my garage partially flooded today from the warm weather, the snow melting, and the rain. Nothing got damaged) is busy as usual. We have been busy with Sarah's chemo treatments, a quick trip to Chicago, and family and friends occasionally visiting. It seems like I have been down at the office every day this week and most days last week (along with Professor Nichol) getting the ITEA winter journal advertising completed and lots and lots of small details down for MWRTEC.

In the meantime, I just realized that I did not send out the "official" announcement of my sabbatical replacement. After lots of talks with Dr. L'Hommedieu, we finally decided on hiring Scott Hansen to teach BOTH the tubas and euphoniums. Scott studied with Dan Perantoni back at Arizona State University the same time as Dr. Lindahl. He is very excited about teaching all of you. He and I have been on the phone several times a week (which is funny, because the times I am not on the phone with him, I am on the phone with Deanna about MWRTEC) trying to get it all planned out. He will be added to this account so he can send out group announcements, or, individual ones as needed. He will be contacting each of you individual over the next couple of weeks, trying to get items in order for your first lesson.

I am confident that you will enjoy taking lessons from him. His teaching style will most likely be very different from mine, but has established himself over the years as a well-respected teacher and performer. Scott is highly active in the tuba/euphonium world. He has currently taken on the treasurers position with ITEA (I tell him who to send the invoices to for ITEA), and is the Falcone competition CD coordinator (he took my old position that drove me nuts in early April) as of last year. He and Deanna travel the world dealing with tuba and euphonium issues. He is known by everyone in the industry, and again, is highly respected. So, go into your lessons with an open mind, try new things, take what works and remember what doesn't work. Even the items that don't work for you now will some day work for one of your students!

And yes, you will be seeing me around way too much. With all the little items that keep cropping up with MWRTEC, it seems that I need to be at school way more than I should have to.

As to Sarah's chemo. We are down to 14 more days of the hard stuff. After January 14th, we head into a much easier process called "Maintenance." That will be once a month trips to G. R. (for two years) and a bunch of oral medications for her. She is doing well. Though, we almost had a couple of trips to the hospital, but managed to stay out of it. She has lost all of her remaining hair. But hopefully in the next couple of months it will start growing back.

Have a great New Year's Eve and be careful driving if you are out and about tonight. If you need something from me over the next couple of weeks, please call the house. If I am not there, leave a message and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

Thanks,
Mark