Strange,
irrelevant details have been prevalent in my head these past few days. I was driving behind a car missing its right
brake light, and the car behind me was missing it’s left
headlight. The same right-brake-light-less car in front of me was a Ford Tempo from
Friendly Motors in
Muskegon. The car itself was an interesting shade of
teal. As I turned off
that one street and west onto
Lakewood, I soon came up behind another Ford, this one a
450-something-or-other -- and the exact same
teal hue of the previously mentioned Ford. Coincidence? Probably.
We had our district MSBOA Festival today at WOHS, same as every year. I was intimidated into volunteering to be a guide for a few of the visiting bands. Becky Malis and I were assigned to the first band of the day – Holland Freshman. They were scheduled to perform at eight. I waited for them to arrive at the south entrance, but they never showed up. Turned out they had already gone into Warm Up a half hour earlier. I was yelled at for a good fifteen minutes by our dear beloved Mr. Christopher. Seeing as how he’s the busiest man on earth, fifteen minutes of his time is a lot. It was not very good quality time, however. Becky soon arrived on the scene and bailed me out by taking the little man’s wrath upon herself, since she had gotten to school even later than I had. We escaped arm-in-arm and ran off to help guide our band.
This went on all day. We waited at the door for our specific band to arrive, showed them to the West Balcony where they were to leave cases and coats, and then took them down to Warm Up at their scheduled time (half hour before performance). We were then expected to keep an eye on stage and let the director know when the previous band had completed its concert, thus allowing for the next band’s set-up crew to get working on counting the number of stands and lovely padded blue chairs set in symmetrical arcs around the director’s podium out in front of the judges. We had to make sure our band got to the auditorium at their scheduled performance time, of course, and if anything was running late, we were immediately blamed. No one took into consideration the fact that we couldn’t let the next group in til the one before was finished – how were we to control the length of their performances?
After our band finished its performance, which we were to wait patiently through, we led them to the Sight Reading room, in which we sat for twenty minutes or so for that whole ordeal. Listening to a class D Freshman band sight read music is extremely painful. I tried not to wince too openly.
We led (well, “guided” would be the appropriate term) the cattle (er… band) back up to their balcony, where we waited with them til they were prepared to leave. We were then sent to tell their charter buses they were on the way. It was snowing outside, of course. We then ran all the way back to our band and said the buses were waiting patiently. Becky and I waited while they slowly assembled themselves in a long line, and then we led them through the exit and out into the snow, holding the doors wide open and letting the dime sized flakes form layers on our uncovered heads. It’s was great fun.
This went on from 7:30am til three in the afternoon. We managed to find time to run to Blimpie between bands and eat while waiting between performances. Overall, a stressful day.
I got home around four, talked with my brother for awhile, and then took back off for school after changing into my beautiful black trash bag concert dress with the nice elastic sequin belt that I prefer to use as a headband, hippie-style. It makes Mr. C incredibly angry, and after the misery he put me through all day, I was ready to take any revenge available.
Our performance went extremely well. We’re always the last band to perform, being AA and of high reputation. We played almost perfectly in most stuff but could have done better in sight reading. We ended up getting straight Is – it’s on to Regionals next, I believe. Maybe it’s State. It’s all the same to the performers.
Went out to eat at Applebee’s with the girls afterwards. We made general fools of ourselves and played games involving guessing the color or people’s underwear. It was entertaining, as always. Of the six different desserts on the menu, we ordered five.
After fully satiating ourselves, we were off to watch the new version of The Exorcist on DVD. It was much more scary than the original. The scene where possessed Reagan runs down the stains upside down and drooling blood was particularly frightening. We then were forced to watch In and Out to lighten the mood before heading home for the night.
Upon arriving at my house, I noticed my brother’s car was missing from the driveway. Seeing as how it was well past midnight, and he is still stuck with an Operator’s License, with which one cannot drive past the hour of twelve in the morning. I thought some emergency had come up, so I ran inside to see if my parents were around to tell me what was going on. Turns out Adam had snuck out, the devious little bastard, and I had accidentally blown his secret. Oops. Maybe now he’ll give me back that hundred dollars I let him borrow a month ago.
But now I must prepare myself for the long drive tomorrow to Albion, home of Pam, and from there the equally long drive to Ann Arbor, where our loving boyfriends reside. Wish us luck.