sour_tacos

(Sorry for not posting in a while, I've been having some family health issues that have taken up most of my time. :cry: ) Practice Practice Practice! First day of our June "camp" (just a term to disguise two weeks worth of 9-4 practices in the hot summer sun) I showed up with my music, a bottle of Fruit2 O, and my cell phone. My colorguard friend, who's sibilings had been in band for a cumlitive total for 9 years now, jumped me as soon as I got through the door. "Oh my God are you crazy? Its 100 degrees out there, you're going to need a bigger water bottle! And are you fasting because band moms only make the lunches on Tuesdays and Thursdays and where's your duct tape?" After I called my mom who brought me a bag lunch and a large jug of water, I found my friend. "Duct tape?" She giggled. "I'll let you find out on your own." We were ushered out the door to a "pep" talk by our director, who was as excited as somebody who had just won the lottery. Then the gay colorguard director, "Guard Mike" led us in streches. Complete with gay guy music. :ohnoes: We did some of the strangest exercises I've ever done, and some of the most suggestive looking exercises, all next to a busy public road and in plain view of the freeway. (One made us look like we were giving birth, another one was a strech that involved thrusting, and a partner.) Adding injury to insult were our daily laps around the football field, one on the first day, and a grand total of six on the last day of "camp." After streches, our standard day went something like "practice, lunch, haul crap down to the practice field, practice, haul crap back up, go home. Every day of our June camp I started liking Mark less and less. Slowly, people in both percussion and winds started dropping out for various reasons. (Its not a class anymore, they hated the directors, 4- year old shoulder injuries acting up... yeah right.) This made Mark angry. Very angry. So he took it out on us, the survivors. Everytime we lost somebody, we had to rewrite music. And rememorize. So I had massive piles of music stuck in my binder pockets. I noticed that some of the percussion people had plastic sleeves to put their music in. I figured, whats the use, we just keep getting new music. I thought I was smart, until the wind kicked in. (Here comes the duct tape.) We had to hold down music with everything from clothespins, to cells phones, to DUCT TAPE!!!! It was a pain in the butt, let me tell you. But not quite a pain compared to hauling crap. Its a fact of life when you're a percussionist that you can't simply grab and go. You need to pack, prepare, and PUSH. We had it down by the end of camp. Keyboards would be rolled down the long, trecherous hill to the practice field, then any other large rolling objects. Then small things and drums were loaded into careless teenage guy's cars, and brought down. Often in the back of one of those cars were me and a kid named Kyle, sitting with the open trunk of a guy named Grant's station wagon, or in the back of a kid who ended up quitting's pick up truck. The practicing part of camp was intense, trust me. We played the same things, over, and over, and over, until it was permenently stuck in our heads. But then there are band moms, who are pretty much your mothers away from home. They want to make you fat with all sorts of yummy food, they give you band-aids when you get your finger caught in the inner workings of a marimba, and they are always chasing you around telling you to pick up your garbage. Just like a mother. Join me next time when we discuss That one time, at band camp... \

Spam tacos? Icky.

My mom's cousin's live out there. They got evacuated the other day. But the unfourtunete thing is, they used to live in Minnesota, and two years ago their house burnt down in a fire started by a faulty countertop grill. On Christmas.

First Official "Day"- The Carwash Six hours of washing cars behind a Walmart in the buring sun with people who at the time were strangers, but would end up becoming some of my best friends over the next few months. Sounds like fun? Yeah, it was. When we broke for lunch, we tracked water through walmart wearing towels and bikinis. (No shirt, no shoes, they don't care- we're paying them to hold the carwash... its all about the money.) We really didn't wash much, just squirted each other with hoses, pushed this one kid into the bushes alot, and threw sponges. Oh, and I realized that a few of my guy friends look really... um... pale without shirts on. :XD: A few days before, we had met Mark and Matt. Mark is our percussion director, this middle aged guy who smells like smoke. He seems pretty nice. Matt is our assistant, a college student from UWM that reminds me of a vampire hunter or something... I dunno why. Just thought I'd get that straight, because Mark and Matt resurface in the next post... to make my life a living hell. :twisted:

Wow if that last one happened to me, I'd crap my pants and faint on the spot. Either that or run out of that building faster than Jesse Owens.

No, but I've seen what that can do to a person... my friend's brother doesn't sleep on the weekends, he has all night WOW sessions. I kid you not.

Some of you might have wondered where I've been the past couple months. A majority of you are probably wondering "Why do I care?" :? I figured I'd make a topic expressing my bittersweet feelings on a topic thats taken up my life since June- marching band. The ups, the downs, the competitions, the drama, and natural high that comes from watching yourself on video and realizing that you never knew that you could doing something as complex as participating in a marching band show. So for the next couple days, I'll update this thread to give you the idea of what goes on in a not-so typical marching band season, and why it was the best/worst six months of my life, from the first time I stepped into the high school band room, to my last performance about *checks clock* one hour ago. :mrgreen:

Or the US Army Reserves. Ouch.

Thanks for the sig its awesome!!!!! :mrgreen: =D>

Step1. Get my hotmail. Step2. Add my hotmail. step3. msg me and hope to hell a convo is going on. Ha ha thanks I'll try...

This is my kinda topic! How do I get to these MSN daily chats everyone is talking about?

Jeez that officer is starting to sound like a diva! "My water's not room temperature! My dog's fur was brushed the wrong way! MY BURGER IS SALTY I SHALL FIRE YOU ALL!!!"

I still want to find that comic strip... :XD:

Dunno what of this means but...

Oh gosh if they had this at my school, we wouldn't get anything done, we'd just have a bunch of idiots trying to be "gangstas" (we have alot of them...) rambling on about crap that's just relevent enough to keep them from getting in trouble.