Band Dismissed! U-High Pride!

We had senior night and our very last marching band competition this past weekend.  It is so bittersweet.  I am proud of us seniors and how we've managed to maintain a tight knit family through the band.  I'm also so proud of how we performed both Friday night and Saturday.   But, I am so sad that my time with the Marching Pioneers is over. I am going to miss my section but I know I made some very good friends through my role as drum major, within my section and the band.

My grandparents came to senior night and the competition.  It was really great to have more than just my parents there to cheer me on and support me.  While I was doing my salute at the beginning of the show, I saw my parents and grandparents smiling at me and giving me thumbs up.  It was really exciting and encouraging.  We had a GREAT last show. I started to tear up from the podium, as it was my last time being drum major for the marching pioneers (at least for field show performances, we still have a few parades left), and it was just such a good performance end on.

The best part of a competition, or worst part if we don't win any, is the awards ceremony.  The drum majors stand in a line and accept awards on behalf of our band.  We got to accept five awards for our band that night.  That is the most trophies we've won so far this season.  We won best drum majors, best auxiliary (which is the flags), and best percussion.  We also won the award for best percussion of the whole competition and second place in our class. We also had the highest auxiliary and drum major scores of the day, although there were no awards for those.  It was a little disappointing to get only second place in our class since we swept our caption awards, but the captions don't add into the class placement awards.

Senior night was great too.  As seniors we decided to dedicate our band performances to Mrs. Sulzberger, our assistant band director's wife who is struggling with breast cancer. The whole band wore pink gloves, and all the seniors wore pink bandannas in lieu of our hats.  At the end of our halftime performance, all the seniors peeled off and made a ribbon for breast cancer awareness.  It was really great.  Here is a video of our performance

http://new.livestream.com/uhigh/events/2481457/videos/32559253

IMEA

On Columbus Day, I completed my last ever IMEA auditions.  And let me just tell you, boy am I glad.  IMEA auditions are basically a bunch of geeky band boys standing around waiting to audition.  None of them are very good at small talk, and are just incredibly awkward.
IMEA is a lot like that too.  Luckily I have managed to form some strong friendships with a couple boy trombonists.  They are all from in town and I have played in numerous groups with them, and take lessons from the same teacher.  Out of the three closest, two still have the geeky band guy vibe, but they're okay.  The other one...well let’s just say he's sort of a stud.
But, at IMEA, I have only had the opportunity to sit by one these friends once.  Last year.  Every other year I've been stuck in between two geeky guys.  Usually I can get along with one of two fairly well, so long as they’re not too pompous and arrogant.  Almost every year, this guy asks for my number.  And it's always in the most awkward way possible.
Regardless, I had a great audition.  And I found out that I made both concert band and jazz band.  I'm super excited for the Jazz festival in a few weeks!
 

HOCO

I'm about to be that typical girl and make a post about how great my homecoming was and how it was the best night ever...except maybe not to that degree.

My date/boyfriend came and picked me up from my house, and we did the flower thing, ya know, like exchanging the corsage and boutonniere. Then my mom had to take like an obnoxious amount of pictures, which is fine but like we were about to go to a park to take more pictures. Once we got to the park, we took a bunch of pictures, in a lot of different combinations.  I took a picture with my boyfriend's twin and almost everyone else who was in our group.  My smile got worse and worse due to the pain from holding my face in the same position for so long.

We then went back to my house where my mom had made this amazing dinner for me and my friends.  She made a ridiculous amount of food...we'll be eating it for the rest of the week. It was so good. We had chicken Parmesan with pasta with a homemade Alfredo sauce, bruschetta and toasted ravioli as appetizers, a salad course, and a chocolate mousse, cherry cheesecake, and lemon mousse shooter.   It was beyond amazing.

Then the dance was a lot of fun.  The most fun I've had at any dance.  Probably because I actually really like my date for once. He got sickly during the dance because he had eaten so much (all he'd had to eat was a bowl of lucky charms and a piece of cake - so he was a little hungry), so we sat out for a little while, but sitting with him was better than dancing with some of my past dates (no offense to past dates).

Overall, probably my best homecoming ever.

Snag

Apparently I am known as a dramatic person.  When the hall of fame inductee asked Mrs. Markert for the name of two theatrical people, she listed mine and Sullivan.  I am not a theatrical person.  I am energetic and have confidence, but have never once been in a play or musical or theatrical production.  At least I got to play the zebra.  I was a fantastic zebra too.  I needed no acting lessons, unlike the gnarly, ugly nasty tree that Sullivan was supposed to portray.  He started as a nice tree, with his arms up like tree.  Mr. Ros Hill did not approve, and made him fix himself before we continued.

The most awkward part of this whole thing was when the distinguished alum was putting my stripes on.  He just told me to put my arms up.  When a strange man tells you to put your arm straight up, while you're on stage in front of the entire school, you feel a little uncomfortable.  For Pete's sake, what if my shirt had gone up and exposed my stomach? That would have been a major wardrobe malfunction.  Then he told me to get down and crawl.  Zebras do no crawl.  They gallop like a horse.  I could have galloped ten times better than I could have crawled.  Plus, I have a big cut on my knee.   So putting my knee down was extra painful.  So at first, I did a stupid looking bear crawl, then he made me stop and I put my knee down.  It hurt. But, it was a little less embarrassing than looking stupid.

For the rest of that day, people asked me if the skit was planned, and why two of the three drum majors were chosen.  So to set the record straight: The skit was not planned.  Sully and I were picked by Markert for our confidence in front of an audience.  It had nothing to do with being drum major, but just our ability to be in front of a group of people.

Sundays

I hate Sundays. Sundays are the end of the weekend.  I'm usually exhausted from going to a football game the previous day, but I still have to wake up at a reasonable hour so that I can sleep later that night for school.  Sunday's are also homework days.  There is absolutely nothing I'd rather do than spend a full day on homework.  Friday nights are busy with football games, Saturday all day is busy with football or marching band, so I can't even spread out my homework and do a little each night.  Today I've spent the last two hours working on my Western Civilization class. The homework is a little ridiculous.  Usually in history classes, you get to have a discussion board post and discuss the topics you read and reflect on them.  In this class it is read this primary source and answer questions on it.  The primary source has been typed into a text book, and has several typos.  So it gets really hard to read. Then you have to write two short essays regurgitating what you read in the textbook.  Next, I have to figure out my AP Lang homework, and I can already foresee that being a problem.  Any ideas as to make a stress ball connect to myself and create a humanity connection? Me either.