For Sarah (and mom and Ryan)

The CMU Saga

Well, here 'tis. The next part is the third paragraph down.

Friday came around and we were s'pose to meet at the school at 8. Basically the time I'm at the school anyway. So I got ready as if I were getting ready for school. I arrived at the school later than I would have liked and grabbed some breakfast from the cafeteria and smuggled it down to the band room. I don't think I would have had to smuggle it, but it's nice to think that I was smuggling. Instead of leaving at 8 like was planned, we all piled onto the bus around 8:15 and were on our way at about 20 after. Since there's roughly only 16 people in the jazz band, there was plenty of room on the bus, but for some reason everyone crammed into the back. I planned on listening to my CD player the whole way, but it was being dumb and turned off after we hit a huge bump. It didn't just skip, it turned off. It wouldn't turn back on. I was irate. Upon our arrival, we left our instruments on the bus and headed inside. We weren't to play until 2 and we had arrived at 10. So we had some free time. Joel, Ronnie, Jessica, someone else, and I went to the library that was only a few buildings away and spent about an hour there. That place is huge! I think I may have posted about it before, but whoa...I love it. Plus, it's quiet. Ronnie and them didn't like the silence, so they left. I don't understand how people can't enjoy complete silence. In my opinion, silence is more than golden, it's bliss. But anyhoo...After the library, Joel and I headed back to the main building, where we were dropped off at, and headed down to the Down-Under Café where we were to meet up with everyone. We made just in time to listen to a group called the Jazz Bones (I think...) play. It consisted of around ten trombones, a drummer, and a guitarist. It was wasome. After we had listen to the trombone goodness, we headed off to the Malt Shop. The Malt Shop is a nice little restaurant that's just off-campus. They had excellent pizza and I had to buy a slice. Then we watched this kid play some wicked DDR. I couldn't even go through the steps in my head it was going so fast.

After we were done watching the intense DDR, we headed back to the rendezvous point. Everyone was right where we left them when we had left for the Malt Shop. Joel wanted to look for someone that had been playing in the Jazz Bones, so we went around asking where the person might be located at. Someone informed us that he might be found at the Music Center, which was six hundred miles away, so we set off for that place. As we exited the door, we ran into Amber. Well, not literally, but you know what I'm talking. She looked lost, so we asked her to join our expedition. For some reason she seemed embarrassed walking with us. I don't know how whistling 007 before running into an elevator is found embarrassing. Speaking of the elevator, when we got to the MC, we headed to the stairs, because we figured that Joel's buddy would be in Dr. Lindol's office which was on the second floor. We found, however, that the stairs were roped off, so Joel decided we would use the elevator. I guess the stairs were broken and of course we were allowed upstairs. When we finally did realize that we prob'ly weren't s'posed to be up there, we headed back to the University Center (which I just learned is the name of our rendezvous point) because it was about time to get set up to play. Our bus arrived again and we unloaded our instruments and got sent to a small conference room to warm-up. After we warmed up (and found out that Amber had misplaced 40 some dollars), we headed to the place where we had to play. It took forever for Elliot to set up the percussion equipment though, but that was alright; Elliot's an insane drummer, so he could have taken all the time he wanted. After we got set up, we played through our three songs. In my opinion, we played them well. Following that, we were herded to another room where there was a lady with a strange apparatus that gave portrayed an extremely radiant light. I heard someone say the name of it was a...kamurah? I don't know. (Those last few sentences are compliments of Ross and Ryan) We went back to the foyer of the UC and organized a way to get our instruments out of the way of other people. We came to the conclusion that we could disperse the instruments amongst various parental vehicles.

After we had put everything away, we headed back, once again, to the UC foyer where there was a lounge area; this place had a sofa, a few nice, comfy chairs, and a big screen. Joel and I sat around there for a while with everyone else and pondered on what we should do. I wanted to head back to the library, but Joel wanted to go listen to a jazz band that was performing. We decided we would go to the library for a while, then go listen to the other half of the jazz. On our way out, Jessica asked if we were going to the jazz performance because she wanted to go with someone. So I told Joel he could go with her if he wanted and that I would be fine going to the library by myself. After the library, I headed to where they were going to distribute the awards and then found my people and sat down with them. There was another jazz band from the university that played between each award; they sounded awesome. The awards were given out in this order: Outstanding Section, Outstanding Soloist, and Outstanding Band. They got the Section award for Class D and said something about how some guy in Texas would be happy and the people from my band started going crazy. I didn't understand until later that the person mentioned was a guy from AuGres. Then the CMU jazz played. Then Ryan won the Class D Soloist award. The CMU jazz played again. Then our band won the Class D Outstanding band award. It was awesome. We then tried to get out of the auditorium; it was packed. Somehow, some of us got split up and went the long way around the building to get to the bus, that was fun. We then decided we would go to Pizza Hut to celebrate. As we pulled up to a stop light on the way there, another bus pulled up alongside us and held up a trophy that they had won. We replied by holding up all three of our "Most Outstanding" awards. The other school didn't seem so cocky anymore...At Pizza Hut, we all took seats in the back and promptly became to loudest group in the restaurant. Being as how Ronnie and Joel kept calling each other on their cell phones and BethAnne drinking her tea, I don't see any reason why we shouldn't have been loud. On the back of my placemat, there was this guy with a flag on a different planet and some aliens, so I decided I would turn it into a miniature war scene from Halo. It turned out superbly. Then in the maze, I drew a bunch of little dots, approximately five ghosts, and a little circle dude that had his mouth open advancing on a bouncing strawberry. All-in-all, the hut of the pizzas was fun, mainly in part because the Band Boosters paid for it all. Thank You! On the ride home, I sat with Ross and Alecia and watched Dude, Where's My Car? on Ross's portable DVD player. It ran out of battery power half way home though, so I didn't get to see all of it.

Hmmm....That's as far as I remember. Well, there you have it.

Semper Fi