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Mar. 5th, 2003 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ktlovelyWow, today was a strange day. School got canceled--for FOUR INCHES of snow? What the heck? No NY meeting, no classes, and we thought no festival. Yes, district band festival was today. If we didn't compete today we wouldn't even have a shot at state, so Mr. Tovey arranged for us to play in the afternoon instead of this morning. That was fine with me, I got to sleep for another three and a half hours. Got to school just before noon and helped load percussion. Gosh, I love helping with percussion. I don't know why, but it's a ton and a half more interesting than standing around in heels and jabbering with people almost as bored as I am. This year people aren't telling me to go away either.
Festival was at Godwin, not too far away, maybe half an hour. Our bus hit a car. Some idiot was parked in the loading bay and when she tried to turn the corner and back up, she hit their front right headlight. Left a dent, too. The people in back were screaming "STOP!!" but it took her a second to react and she hit them. Anyway, the dimwit in the loading bay made it so we couldn't just back the truck up to it and unload stuff, so we had to carry the percussion up the short flight of stairs to the side of the actual loading platform. The cart (which weighs a ton and is hard even to move on its casters) got lifted straight up b/c it wouldn't go up the stairs. That was interesting. I helped with that, too. We sat around for even longer in the warm up room, then setup crew got to leave and we set up all the chairs and stuff onstage. Second row has 13 chairs an nine stands, just for the record. After that things went faster though. We got back to the warmup room, lined up, and got onstage pretty quickly. Then came the performance.
The actual three pieces went well overall, but not spectacular. I sort of messed up my first solo in Brule River, but the second one was dead on and mom said that piccolo and saxophone in unison sounds like strings. Since there were only four bands out of the 14-16 scheduled actually playing today b/c of school cancellations, we got to do our sight-reading onstage too. That was rather interesting. I've never been on a concert stage that incredibly roasting hot before. It was awful! Mr. Tovey got up in front and whispered, "Who knew you'd be able to work on your tan at festival?" and successfully relieved some of our tension. He was right, though, it was beyond tropical up there. Guh. The sight-reading judge got rather wordy as he was working with us, and we were all about ready to keel over. Polyester uniforms and sweltering stage lights do not mix.
I didn't really stand around long waiting for them to put up our grades. Guess what I did? Haha, helped with percussion again. It's fun stuff. Pat joked, "Yeah, you're our unofficial section leader, Courtney and I don't really do anything." Hah, the day I become percussion anything but equipment-pusher, ...well, I don't know what you can do, but I give you permission to point and laugh. We actually loaded the truck after the grades were up, and I officially decided that nobody at our school knows how to drive. There was this big old dumpster that the truck had to park between it and the wall of the loading bay, with the back open to the loading bay...hah. Between it? Why not just park ON the dumpster? Oh wait, that won't work! We'd better pull forward and hit it from a different angle. Oh, no, now the dumpster's snagged on the side of the truck and being dragged along with us! Oops, and now I'm scraping the side of the truck against the dumpster, thus producing a lovely metal-on-metal sound something like nails on a chalkboard only worse by an exponential factor! Oy vey. It was rather funny though. All I could do was laugh by the time the "thump-scrreeeeaaaaaaach" count had risen to about five. And once they finally found a position for the truck that wasn't touching the dumpster, it was on an angle and there was a gap between the back of the truck and the loading platform, and we couldn't get the truck's hydraulic platform unfolded, so we had to lift the percussion across the gap. And everyone in the band saw it as their solemn duty to crowd the room just inside from the bay doors so that I had to bushwhack my way through them to get at the timpanis. *sigh.* Rubberneckers. We didn't load everything right, either, so we had to brace the bass drum in place with the rest of the instruments b/c we couldn't fit it behind the last load bar. Mr. Tovey just gave up and told Pat, "Just shove everything up next to it and let's get out of here." So we did.
There's really not much interesting after that. We got back to school and pretty much chucked everything into the band room. Discovered how to fit three people, a timpani, marimba, and vibraphone all on the hydraulic lift at once w/o losing anything or anyone off the side. (Stand very still!) It was absolutely frigid outside so every time we did any sort of loading or unloading, it took my feet five minutes or so to thaw out afterwards, but hey, oh well. At least I had a coat, Pat didn't even have that for part of the time. The button ripped off his sport coat and Mrs. Churchill took it to pin the button back on, so he was running around in his dress slacks and little white tux shirt and freezing himself into a Pat-cicle. And NONE of those boys had any sort of winter coats. We all lived and nobody froze, though, so I guess it doesn't matter.
Since I forgot to mention it before, we scored well enough to go to state competition. We didn't do spectacularly, but overall we got a one and we earned what we got, so I'm okay with it.
In other news, Holly actually wore makeup VOLUNTARILY. Call CNN! Aaaahhhaha, I have triumphed! Either that or she just got tired of looking zitty. Either way, it's sorta freaky. At least I had better sense than to reply to her request for foundation with, "So, what's his name?" That would have been almost evil, and I probably would have gotten another bruise at least as big as the one I've got right now. That one's sort of pretty, it turned all sorts of fun colors overnight. It's HUGE though. And right in that spot you rest against the table when you eat, and push the car door open with, and stuff like that. Hmph.
I've rambled enough now, so see you all soon!
Festival was at Godwin, not too far away, maybe half an hour. Our bus hit a car. Some idiot was parked in the loading bay and when she tried to turn the corner and back up, she hit their front right headlight. Left a dent, too. The people in back were screaming "STOP!!" but it took her a second to react and she hit them. Anyway, the dimwit in the loading bay made it so we couldn't just back the truck up to it and unload stuff, so we had to carry the percussion up the short flight of stairs to the side of the actual loading platform. The cart (which weighs a ton and is hard even to move on its casters) got lifted straight up b/c it wouldn't go up the stairs. That was interesting. I helped with that, too. We sat around for even longer in the warm up room, then setup crew got to leave and we set up all the chairs and stuff onstage. Second row has 13 chairs an nine stands, just for the record. After that things went faster though. We got back to the warmup room, lined up, and got onstage pretty quickly. Then came the performance.
The actual three pieces went well overall, but not spectacular. I sort of messed up my first solo in Brule River, but the second one was dead on and mom said that piccolo and saxophone in unison sounds like strings. Since there were only four bands out of the 14-16 scheduled actually playing today b/c of school cancellations, we got to do our sight-reading onstage too. That was rather interesting. I've never been on a concert stage that incredibly roasting hot before. It was awful! Mr. Tovey got up in front and whispered, "Who knew you'd be able to work on your tan at festival?" and successfully relieved some of our tension. He was right, though, it was beyond tropical up there. Guh. The sight-reading judge got rather wordy as he was working with us, and we were all about ready to keel over. Polyester uniforms and sweltering stage lights do not mix.
I didn't really stand around long waiting for them to put up our grades. Guess what I did? Haha, helped with percussion again. It's fun stuff. Pat joked, "Yeah, you're our unofficial section leader, Courtney and I don't really do anything." Hah, the day I become percussion anything but equipment-pusher, ...well, I don't know what you can do, but I give you permission to point and laugh. We actually loaded the truck after the grades were up, and I officially decided that nobody at our school knows how to drive. There was this big old dumpster that the truck had to park between it and the wall of the loading bay, with the back open to the loading bay...hah. Between it? Why not just park ON the dumpster? Oh wait, that won't work! We'd better pull forward and hit it from a different angle. Oh, no, now the dumpster's snagged on the side of the truck and being dragged along with us! Oops, and now I'm scraping the side of the truck against the dumpster, thus producing a lovely metal-on-metal sound something like nails on a chalkboard only worse by an exponential factor! Oy vey. It was rather funny though. All I could do was laugh by the time the "thump-scrreeeeaaaaaaach" count had risen to about five. And once they finally found a position for the truck that wasn't touching the dumpster, it was on an angle and there was a gap between the back of the truck and the loading platform, and we couldn't get the truck's hydraulic platform unfolded, so we had to lift the percussion across the gap. And everyone in the band saw it as their solemn duty to crowd the room just inside from the bay doors so that I had to bushwhack my way through them to get at the timpanis. *sigh.* Rubberneckers. We didn't load everything right, either, so we had to brace the bass drum in place with the rest of the instruments b/c we couldn't fit it behind the last load bar. Mr. Tovey just gave up and told Pat, "Just shove everything up next to it and let's get out of here." So we did.
There's really not much interesting after that. We got back to school and pretty much chucked everything into the band room. Discovered how to fit three people, a timpani, marimba, and vibraphone all on the hydraulic lift at once w/o losing anything or anyone off the side. (Stand very still!) It was absolutely frigid outside so every time we did any sort of loading or unloading, it took my feet five minutes or so to thaw out afterwards, but hey, oh well. At least I had a coat, Pat didn't even have that for part of the time. The button ripped off his sport coat and Mrs. Churchill took it to pin the button back on, so he was running around in his dress slacks and little white tux shirt and freezing himself into a Pat-cicle. And NONE of those boys had any sort of winter coats. We all lived and nobody froze, though, so I guess it doesn't matter.
Since I forgot to mention it before, we scored well enough to go to state competition. We didn't do spectacularly, but overall we got a one and we earned what we got, so I'm okay with it.
In other news, Holly actually wore makeup VOLUNTARILY. Call CNN! Aaaahhhaha, I have triumphed! Either that or she just got tired of looking zitty. Either way, it's sorta freaky. At least I had better sense than to reply to her request for foundation with, "So, what's his name?" That would have been almost evil, and I probably would have gotten another bruise at least as big as the one I've got right now. That one's sort of pretty, it turned all sorts of fun colors overnight. It's HUGE though. And right in that spot you rest against the table when you eat, and push the car door open with, and stuff like that. Hmph.
I've rambled enough now, so see you all soon!
