More than you ever wanted to know about me.

I feel like writing but I don't really have much to write about that isn't pretty much a repeat of my recent posts. So naturally, I am going to make a post of random facts about myself that will most likely a.) interest no one and b.) do one one any good except me (it will aid me in procrastinating my homework.) Anyways.




1. My aunt's house is in the movie National Treasure! You know the part where they're being chased and they go on top of those houses? It's one of those! So, Nicholas Cage has walked on top of my aunt's house! Plus, I love that movie!

2. I have no preference between Coke and Pepsi and don't see why people have such strong opinions about it. Then again, I don't drink pop often at all and when I do it's usually root beer.

3. I have never had a dream about either flying or falling.

4. When I was three years old I went through a phase where I stopped walking and hopped everywhere. I have always loved the feeling of bouncing up and down and I'm addicted to my mini trampoline. This may explain why I have a "springy" walk that EVERYONE makes fun of.

5. The first job I remember wanting to have was a writer.

6. I hate bananas.

7. I won my school spelling bee in 6th grade.

8. I have not yet had my first kiss.

9. Everyone in my family plays one or more instruments except for my mom, but she has a really good singing voice. My singing voice SUCKS.

10. Which reminds me, one thing I am really self-conscious of is my voice. Just, my regular voice. I've heard it on tape and it sounds like I'm freaking six years old. I think it's maybe even unconsciously one of the reasons why I don't talk a lot around people I don't really know... that's getting better, though.

11. I'm Irish... my dad's grandma came here from Ireland. My mom's family is a whole bunch of things... I don't even know what they are.

12. Nanaimo bars are the best thing EVER.



Okayy... that should do it. I really better go to bed now.

In which I give a full, detailed account of my marching band practice...

For those of you who are bored out of your minds interested.


We spent half an hour inside practicing pep band music. That part went relatively well. Relatively being a key word here. (Imagine 100 people with instruments in a room. Now imagine trying to get every single one of them to be quiet. YeeeaaahhhNO.) Then, we went outside, lined up, (WHY do freshmen see an order to fall back as a personal insult?) and marched againandagainandagain around the parking lot. At some point during this part it started raining. Hard. Once the rain saw that us and our instruments were thoroughly soaked, and its job was done, it stopped. We went out to the football stadium and practiced facing the bleachers and playing the songs we're going to play at the game on Friday. We were GOING to play Basket Case and Green Onions, and I was SO excited because we never play Green Onions!! And I love that song! But then people COMPLAINED because apparently I'm the only one who likes it and Bailey (one of our drum majors) was like, "Okay, we're playing Basket Case and Hey Baby!" And we play both those songs ALL the time... anyway, we played them, then practiced going into the stands, then going out of the stands and lining up again, and then facing the bleachers and playing two more songs.


Now, this whole time our drum majors were frustrated because people WOULDN'T. SHUT. UP. Really, they just needed to shut up. We were yelling at each other, and people kept yelling stuff out. It just made people more frustrated, which made the drum majors more frustrated, which made us more frustrated. You could feel the aura of frustration. When we were sitting in the bleachers at the end, Bailey and Collin (our drum majors) told us that freshmen could leave, but everyone else had to stay. And then they basically told us what a poor attitude we were having as a band, and what a horrible example we were setting for the freshmen. It was a talk we NEEDED. We actually ended up talking about a lot of stuff. Like how we should really give the new director a chance, because he's actually trying really hard to make us good. And how we shouldn't complain about EVERY. SINGLE. THING. he does differently, because he's actually keeping a good amount of stuff the same. And how we shouldn't complain when they tell us to do stuff, because... they need to be telling us to do stuff, that's their job. And how we shouldn't just expect ourselves to be better than we were last year just because it's a new year and a new band, but that it will actually take WORK. And we needed to hear ALL of that. It started out as kind of a lecture, but by the end we were all band buddies again, and agreeing on stuff. I'm so glad we had that talk, it reminded me how much I really care about band.


...But it also reminded me why I would make a crappy drum major. It would just take so much of something that I don't have... I want to say courage?... to stand up in front of a group of your peers, many of whom are more than a little ticked at you, and say, essentially, "Hey, you guys are being jackasses, get your act together." I just can't... put myself out there like that. Grrrr. :/

Second home game tonight, we won 30-something to 0. It was fun, but I'm exhausted. I can't wait to sleep in tomorrow!!

Plans...

So, what I think I want to do for my senior project (okay, what I've thought I want to do for my senior project since I was a freshman) is compose a piece of music, and have either the band, or the band and the orchestra together, play it. There are some issues with this. One, I don't exactly know how to score stuff for a band, or an orchestra, since this is something you normally learn in college. You don't just take a piano part and give whatever notes you want to whatever instruments you want... I'm pretty sure it's more complicated than that. And, I'd probably have to learn how to conduct... You don't just stand up there and wave the baton wherever you feel like. Also, I'm not sure if my band director would be down with it. He's new and believe me when I say that he's not short on plans for us. And this would take time. As for the piece itself, I have the beginning of one, and I think it's half-decent, but I haven't been able to get more than that for a year. Last summer (summer of 2008), I went on a trip to Canada with my grandparents and sister. Ever heard of Mountain Travel Sobek? Look them up. We were at this lake in the mountains, somewhere near Whistler I think, and one thing we got to do is kayak. It was my first time, and it was just amazing. The scenery was exactly like a postcard... it was one of the coolest things I've ever done. Anyway, while I was kayaking this amazing music just popped into my head. I think movement, of any kind, helps me think... anyway, it was the coolest thing I'd ever thought up by far. And it was just playing out in my head, without any effort. When I got home I went straight to my piano and tried to figure it out, but I could only remember the beginning and a tiny bit of the rest, and it wasn't even the same as it was originally. But, I still like it. And I think it has the potential to be something really good. And it would be really, REALLY cool if I did end up doing it. I wonder if my band director would agree, and/or help out... ugh, probably not. Nothing against him, but, you know, he has his own stuff to do. And I think that if I'm gonna do this, I need to start pretty soon... I know it's only the beginning of my junior year but it would take a LONG time, especially since... heh... I only have the very beginning of a piece so far. Okay, now I'm just rambling. What else should I talk about?

Band... Band band band. I've decided that I need to be more... assertive. Like, the other day we were lining up to march into the football game, in rows of four. We always put upperclassmen on the ends of the rows because, well, they're generally better marchers, and the people on the end are responsible for keeping the line straight. You want to have mostly people from your section in your row. Our section, the altos, was having particular difficulty lining up because of our lack of upperclassman altos to put on the ends. I was trying my best to work something out, and I told a freshman to fall back. (Which just means stepping back into the next row.) Now in band there's sort of a hierarchy, and if an upperclassman tells you to fall back, you fall back. But this guy just ignored me. At which point many people in my band would have been like, "Fall the &$@# back DAMMIT!!" But I just kind of sighed and tried to make another freshman fall back. Just, stuff like that. I've never been a confrontational kind of person, and I really admire people who can take a leadership role and get people to listen to them, and to do what they want, and just to shut up when necessary. I'm just not comfortable with that kind of thing, and I need to be.

I guess I'll end this now, because it's getting late... I really have the lamest endings to my posts. Goodnight, everyone.

.....

You know when you're in a bad mood for a bunch of small reasons? And you have to stop and think, "Wait... why am I in a bad mood?" And as you figure out what the things were that actually put you in a bad mood, you feel even crappier because they're such stupid reasons? No? Well, welcome to my life.

I guess the main reason is that I'm tired. I got home at 9 last night from an INTENSE marching rehearsal, and I thought I had all my homework done when I left but just as I was about to call it a night I found this packet for psychology that I had TOTALLY forgotten to do. So I was up till almost 11 and got up at 5:45 because of the ridiculous amount of time it takes to get from our "new" house to the school. I did not eat lunch until I got home from school, because I waited in line for HALF AN HOUR to get my school picture taken. They have it set up so that you go at a certain time according to your last name, and my time just happened to coincide with the start of my LUNCH. After recieving my new ID card with the WORST picture of me ever taken, (Yeah, I said that last year but I had no idea) I had just enough time to walk to the office and ask to talk to my counselor about changing my schedule yet again only to be told that I had to go fill out some form. Because they treat all schedule changes the same no matter how important yours is. My sister's friend is a freshman and she's in orchestra, but somehow she got put in concert band instead. When she went to the office last week to switch, they wouldn't let her! According to my sister the conversation went like this:



"Hello, I need to talk to my counselor about changing my schedule."



"Do you have an empty space in it?



"No, but-"


"Then you can't change it until the second week of school."


The poor girl had to miss out on orchestra for a week and who knows if they've changed her schedule yet. But the good news is mine might be changed tomorrow, I filled out the form during Spanish. Speaking of Spanish, the funniest thing happened today! I was sitting in class trying to make sense of the imperfect tense when we suddenly hear, "TWEEEeeeEEET! Tweet! Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!" (That's a whistle, not a bird, folks.) Our class is in one of the portables and the noise was coming from outside. Even though I couldn't see out the window from where I was sitting I recognized the sound immediately - it's the whistle command that the drum majors use to get us to start marching. I leaned over to see out the window and sure enough, there was a block of freshmen and one of our drum majors teaching them to march. Well, RE-teaching. Let's just say they need all the practice they can get. Not that we didn't when we were freshmen. And freshmen have band during the same period I have Spanish. Anyway. Ten seconds later, "TWEEEeeeEEET! Tweet! Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!" Everyone looked around and kind of laughed. There were some "What is that?"s. Seven seconds later. "TWEEEeeeEEET! Tweet! Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!" By this time the class was laughing, and there're only like 2 or 3 people in band in that class so most people didn't know what it was. Me and my friend were looking at each other from across the room and cracking up. Everyone eventually figured out it was the band, and they were right outside on the pavement near the portables. This went on for maybe 5 more minutes and people started to get annoyed. Then, "GREEN! ..... One!...Two!" Then, TWEEEeeeEEET! Tweet! Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!" People were talking:

"Hey, there's a game tomorrow, isn't there? Is the band playing?"
"They better be!"

I assured everyone that they would be. Our teacher got sick of the class talking and she ran out and asked them to either move or not blow the whistle anymore. It worked, I guess. No more tweeting.

Well, I feel a lot better just having written this post... better go to bed now, though.

Random things that I have been thinking about today.

-Distressed jeans... like, jeans with rips in them? They're okay, a bit overrated, but you know. But, the problem is, I fidget way too much, and I can't stop picking at them, and before you know all the white threads are gone and they look dumb. I am trying not to do this to the pair I just bought, and failing.

-Fantasie Impromptu doesn't even sound recognizable unless you play it up to tempo, with both the left and right hands. And that, my friend, is seeming pretty close to impossible. I'm hoping I can have the whole piece learned by the time I graduate from high school in 2 years. No, seriously.

-I hate it when a teacher makes you write a whole essay in one class period; I never finish on time. I'm kind of a perfectionist, about some things at least, so I spend too much time thinking and rethinking what I should say and how I should say it. Then I either flat out don't finish, or the second half of my essay is really stupid because I wrote it in like under 10 minutes. The reason I am thinking of this is that this is what we had to do on our first day of English when we didn't even have a teacher. They finally hired the teacher, and she seems nice... she just graduated from college so she's really young. She said that she'd read all our essays and I'm not looking forward to getting mine back.

-I'm ridiculously excited for the football game this Friday, the first one that band is playing at!!

-This crazy thing happened with my piano teacher a few weeks ago. A while ago, maybe a few months, I was going to play a few songs at church. I wanted to play this piece that I had learned a LONG time ago but I couldn't remember what it was called. I remembered a few bars, and I knew that if I saw the sheet music I would recognize it. But unfortunately most of my sheet music had been packed away in some box downstairs, because of the remodel. The box had been misplaced, which let's just say I was not too happy about. I ended up playing another song. I still couldn't think of the name of the song, and if I'd been able to I could've probably printed sheet music off the internet or something. A while later I somehow stumbled across the name of the song and immediately recognized it.
I was telling this story to my piano teacher, but while I was telling it I temporarily forgot the name of the song again. She said, "Is it classical or jazz?" I told her it was classical, and she said, "Was it Norse Song?" AND THAT WAS THE SONG!! All she knew about it was that it was a classical piece, I hadn't hummed it or described it at all. And I must've learned it with her at least 4 years ago. It could have been any of dozens of songs!! It was pretty cool.

-I'm not one of those weird people that gets USED to getting up early after having done it billons of times. No, it just gets worse. And worse, and WORSE. So, goodnight all.

First Day of School

Well, my first day of school was today. I'm EXHAUSTED. I hate hate HATE getting up early. It's by FAR the worst part of school. I swear, I would enjoy school five times as much if it started, like, 2 hours later. It went pretty well though. So far all my teachers seem good... except for Advanced Composition American Literature, because they don't know who's teaching my class yet. At first I thought it was going to be the teacher I had last year for Honors English. In fact, I switched my schedule to get into his class. He's a really good teacher... he tells the funniest stories. Some people don't like him because he grades tough, and it's true, he does. But I feel like it's good for me to have that challenge because English is one of my best subjects. Anyway, there was some last-minute thing and now he's part-time dean of students, so he's only teaching a few classes, and not the one I'm taking. The school just recently interviewed to fill the position and they haven't decided who's going to get it yet. So I'm kind of disappointed. But, oh well.

I actually remembered to bring my saxophone today, because our new band director said we'd be playing on the first day. But, I left my mouthpiece and reed at home. I took them out of the case because I borrowed someone else's saxophone while mine was getting fixed. Then when I got it back I forgot to put them back in. So I just sat there awkwardly while everyone else rehearsed the fight song, and Star Spangled Banner, and Disco Inferno. It was annoying because everyone kept not watching the director and speeding up. Which is my musical pet peeve. (Actually, I have lots. A related one is when you're at a concert, or some event where there's a crowd that starts clapping to a beat, and people CAN'T clap on the beat, they always speed up.) Anyway, I had the urge to grab my saxophone and start playing REALLY loudly, ON the beat. But, of course I couldn't.

I got a new pair of shiny silver flats, but they hurt my feet. They're just a little too small, because they're a size nine, not a size nine and a half, and American Eagle doesn't have half sizes for shoes. In fact, I can almost never find size nine and a half, and it pisses me off. I am NOT a size nine. I am NOT a size ten. I'm a nine and a half. The other day I went to Fred Meyer and found a cuuuute pair of blue and white sneakers. But they had pretty much every size but nine and a half, and as usual, nine was too small and ten was too big. So I asked the lady to call another store and see if they had the size. She called them and they had the same shoe but they didn't have the size either. So THAT store called a million other Fred Meyers, and when they called us back not only had they not found it, but they had dicovered that it's Fred Meyer STORE POLICY not to carry any half sizes above size nine. Ridiculous!! But apparently they're in the process of trying to change the policy.

I better go to bed soon. The past two nights I've been REALLY tired but haven't been able to get to sleep for some reason. What's with that?

Fall is coming...

I took my dog, Sally, (50% basset hound, 50% golden retriever, 100% adorable) for a walk with my mom and sister this evening, and I realized that today is the first day that has looked like fall. I've never been able to pick a favorite season, but I really love fall. Here in western Washington state, it's less of an extention of summer, and more of a prelude to winter. Much of the time, the weather is best suited to a mug of hot chocolate and Beethoven. (Of course, you never know what to expect with our bipolar weather, where 80 degrees one day and 50 and drizzling the next is nothing out of the ordinary.) Anyway. Fall means:

• Wind. I love, love, LOVE wind. It's so... exhilarating!
• New fall clothes!
• Fresh apples from our tree in the backyard. You have not tasted an apple until you have had one of these.
• Pumpkin farms!
• Pumpkin ice cream! Mmmmm.....
• Football games - standing in the bleachers with the band freezing our you know whats off, having the time of our lives.

I've just noticed another sign of fall. Colder weather + playing your saxophone for the first time in too long = chapped lips. :( Time to break out the Burt's Bees. But for now, time to go to bed...

As much as I don't want summer to end, I'm actually really, really excited about this year. I'm taking my driving test in a couple weeks, so I'll have my license. I'll be an upperclassman. I'm not going to say I'll get into All-State band because that would definitely jinx it. I'll have to start thinking seriously about college, which is both exciting and scary. Then, there's band. Much of this blog will probably be about band. This year it's going to be a lot different. Because... some stuff happened last year, and our band director basically got fired. So we have a new director this year. The stuff that happened last year? Sucked. But there's nothing we could do about it, and I'm trying to see it as an opportunity for new, good stuff to happen. I'm really optimistic that this is going to be a great year for us.

I guess I'm going to bed now...

What I am doing with my vacation

Or, "The post that will probably not interest you if you're not a band geek."

I spent my day organizing music for pep band, and putting it in flip folders. I will tell you what this entailed.

I got to school at around 10:30. There were oh, maybe 20 people that had come to help. I just realized that first I'm going to have to explain what a flip folder is. Imagine a bunch of little sheets of music, each with a different song, that are about the size of a sheet of regular paper folded in half. They get put into little "folder" things with plastic covering both sides, which are hole punched and get attached to a ring, which gets attached to a plastic square the same size as the sheets of music. (Yeah, I suck at explaining things.) This is a flip folder. You attach it to your instrument with a thing called a lyre, so that you can have music to read during football and basketball games.

Anyway. Due to a... lack of organization last year, we ended up with a pile of music - random songs, parts for all different instruments, all thrown together. Our first job was to sort out the music into separate songs. We spent an hour or two grabbing stacks of music from the pile and sorting them into piles of all the separate songs on the floor. Some songs, we aren't planning to play this year. Those got sorted on the other side of the room, and were dealt with later. When we were done sorting, we had to put the piles into score order. This meant sorting each individual pile into piles of the parts for each instrument, and then restacking the pile, starting with flutes, clarinets, etc, etc. This took quite a while. Then, we took the songs that we're playing this year and brought them out to the cafeteria, where we separated the instruments again and arranged each song, with stacks of different instruments, on part of a table. We all took flip folders and got assigned an instrument to do. We went around to the tables and slipped that instrument's part into the flip folder, behind the plastic. There were maybe 30 or so songs, and they had to go into the folders in alphabetical order. If there wasn't a part for a particular instument, we told someone and they wrote it down. When we were done with a flip folder, we would go back and do another instrument, until all the flip folders were done.

Problem was, many of the people helping with this were freshmen, and they had never used a flip folder before. (Oh! For anyone who has actually gotten this far into the post, I'm a junior in high school.) They didn't know that you're supposed to use the front sides of all the folder things first, and then flip it over and use the back when you're somewhere in the middle of the alphabet. Otherwise, it's a pain in the butt to find songs. I guess we didn't explain this clearly enough... it would cause LOTS of frustration later.

When we were done with this, many people left. There were 6 or 8 of us still there. The next thing we did was looking through the completed flip folders to find parts that we had run out of part of the way through, so that we could make copies. While the copies were being made, we went back to the band room and took all the songs that we're NOT playing, and put them into yellow envelopes with the name of the song on them. Then we put them back on the shelf, in alphebetical order. Only like 2 people helped me with this. I guess it wasn't that hard though.

When the copies had been made we went back out to the cafeteria and laid them out, and looked through each flip folder to see what parts it didn't have. We put in the parts that were needed and put the finished flip folders on a different table. This was perhaps the worst part, because almost EVERYONE had screwed up and used the back sides of the folders before using up the front sides. Many people also hadn't left spaces for missing parts, even though we had told them to. So lots of the time we had to take out almost ALL the music to make space for a missing part and then put it back in. Even though we were told not to worry about the order as long as all the parts were in there.... it was a MESS.

By that time it was 6, and time for marching practice to start. I go to the bathroom, and then walk back to the band room. I see my friend who hadn't come to help and she goes, "You're late!"

But on a happy note, I won a drill down, for my first time! I'll save the drill down explanation for another day.

No more organizing for me, for a long time!

So, I guess I'm starting a blog.

I'm restless. I woke up at 12:30 today, after having a dream that I cracked my oboe reed in school and started cussing up a storm. I got a detention for cracking the reed, not for the swearing. I have to get up early tomorrow and help organize flip folders for band (9:30 is early, don't judge me) and should probably be asleep right now, because I'm one of those people who need a LOT of sleep. But that's impossible, because I got up so late and am not the least bit tired. So, I decided that now would be a good time to start a blog.
Why? Well, that's a great question. I've always felt the need to analyze why I do things, or feel things. What better way to organize my thoughts than a list?

1. I like to write. Simple enough.
2. I love to read other people's blogs.
3. I feel like I need to put my thoughts out there more. In real life, I don't talk a lot. I don't share my feelings and opinions often. I figured this would be a good way to do that, without having to worry about the consequences of saying something that will piss someone off.
4. I think it will be fun.

That pretty much sums it up. I don't know how often I'll write...it might be less often once school starts, because I think I'm going to have to force myself to get all the stuff I need to do, done, before I do stuff like this. Because I'm a HORRIBLE procrastinator, and otherwise it won't get done. Anyways, we'll see. I think that now I am going to attempt to get some sleep...