Saturday, August 23, 2008

Back

I have missed you, dear blog, and very awesome blog readers.

Camp was very time-consuming, I must admit. Then I recovered from camp, then recorded our school marching band practice for the 2008 field show (Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Phield Show). I'm still in the process of convincing my parents that I can handle band, as I have recently been invited to join our marching band even though most people have already learned the field show. Hopefully my dad will be convinced when I tell him that I got a 2300 on a practice SAT today (if you're out of the loop, a perfect would be 2400).

Gnarls Barkley's Crazy is pretty awesome. I'm currently listening to it.

Alright, now for some awesome camp pictures!

While I'm waiting for them to load, let me fill you in.

Saturday: Arrive & audition
Sunday: Dance
Monday: Indian Bowl (staff performances)
Tuesday: Dance
Wednesday: Skit Night
Thursday: Jazz Night! (4 hours of nonstop jazz)
Friday: Ensemble Night
Saturday: Special Dinner & Dance
Sunday: Final Concert.

Yay, pictures loaded!

We always stop at Memory Lane on the drive up to camp.

Two lovely girls from our "pentagon" groupie. They both go to the same school which happens to be our rival school. Our colors are blue and yellow, and theirs are purple and gold. :) I was thrilled to see them wearing our colors (though it was just the camp shirt), and they were, well, kind of awkward wearing our colors.

Pentagon! Front row: Kindle (braids + scarf) - violin & me - violin; Back row: Laura - clarinet, Suzy - trombone, & Maiya - clarinet (though she would make the perfect stereotypical flute)

The light shines out from Maiya's head.

We love this kid. To show our affection for him, me, Kindle, and Maiya decorated his hair with Fruity Cheerios. Doesn't it look so amazing?

So those are the highlights of camp. Oh yes, there's also Choptox. :)

It's kind of a long story, but here's the gist: Skit night rolls around (Wednesday) and we decide to do a reality TV show based upon our cabin. We have 27 girls in our cabin (we're the largest, but we're divided into 3 rooms). Since it's band camp, we have stereotypes of each instrument (i.e. strings are really brainy, flutes are preppy, trumpets think they're the best, etc.). As a commercial break, these two (HILARIOUS!) girls go on stage, one of whom has a trombone. She buzzes feebly and hardly makes a sound. The other girl says, "Lips too small to buzz that trombone? Then try Choptox!" And then we have another girl, dressed as the amazing Andy Martin goes on stage and endorses Choptox. Andy was actually there at the performance, and we were told later by one of the people with him that he was dying of laughter.

By the way, Andy Martin is seriously AMAZING. I feel so privileged to have met him and told him that I'm his biggest fan. I look terrible in this picture, but I'm overjoyed that I got it:


This man is seriously amazing. I'm so lucky to have met him. And I'm seriously practicing violin so I can be in his jazz band next year at camp (he instructs the top jazz band of the camp) and be one of those rare jazz violinists. Oh yes. His daughter looks just like him too. :) It's pretty awesome. His son doesn't look as much like him as his daughter does. And, get this, her name's Andreina. Her brother's name is Andres, so it's like a whole family of Andys!

One more quick thing: after the full orchestra performed Akademische Festoverture (Brahms), we got a standing ovation. We were the only group to get one. :) We've got skills.

The Final Word:
+ "You're too good not to be heard." -Vince Gomez

Friday, August 1, 2008

My yarn came! :)


I'll bring my yarn to camp, and cast on in exactly a week (well, five hours + a week). I'm doing the Afghan Marathon for the Ravelympics 2008, if I haven't already mentioned it.

So yay!