Day 11

Date: May 25, 2011

Time: 11:00pm

Playing on iTunes: otherwise known as "Forget You" by Cee Lo Green

Birthday girl, Vanessa, with her birthday cake glasses

Today was a VERY interesting day. Started off with a Cadets Pit going on a trip to Starbucks for our section leader, Vanessa's, birthday. We got the Cadets bus to bring the entire pit down there bright and early and I got my favorite drink there; a Double Chocolatey Chip Frappucino.

Iris at Starbucks

The entire Cadets pit!!

The schedule of the day was going to be a little bit different from a normal day...no ensemble. So the pit was going to have three full blocks to ourselves to work on music. After lunch we got back to the rehearsal site and broke up into sectionals to practice on our own for a while. After about 10 minutes I was taken away to get my uniform fitted. Took a few tries to get the right pants size but it looks GREAT! I cannot wait to finally wear the marroon, white, and gold on the field for the first time! Upon returning to the rehearsal site, we were about to start to practice a warmup chart and our instructor got a call from an administrator with the Cadets. Apparently there was an NFL player at the Starbucks down the street and they (admin team) got him to "tweet" (a form of notifying people about something via the social network Twitter) about YEA! and to vote for us in the Chase Community Giving Campaign. This was a great opportunity for us because we just started to get celebrities and athletes to tweet about us. So the pit was asked to break down, pack up, and go down to Starbuck's to show the support that YEA! has and that he should get people to vote for our organization. We were at Starbucks from 5:30p until 10p (close), then we got moved to the conference center on the Pitt Johnstown campus.

Earlier on in the day George Hopkins sent out this email:

CADETS STOP REHEARSALS!!!!

In an unprecedented move, the Cadets will stop all rehearsals at 5:30 pm today! 

That's right .... no more practicing.

Instead, the corps will be sitting in lobbies and coffee houses across Johnstown logging on to Facebook and assisting in the final 6 hours of the CHASE COMMUNITY CHALLENGE.

George Hopkins said " The Cadet kids have been a 10 for the last week but we need them tonight. We are close to second but close to fourth, and who knows what is going to happen.

There are some non profits on the mix here that seem to have the ability to pull votes quickly. So, in the spirit of working until the end, and making a difference, and doing all you can, the members and the instructional team are logging on tonight"

Please join with the Cadets.

Vote for the Cadets 

Vote for all of the Corps 

and send this to any and every friend you have. Our goal is to end with 18000 votes or more. if we can do that ... we will be ok! 

Go here for all of the corps http://www.march5.co/

Go here for Youth Education in the Arts --- http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/222052456-youth-education-in-the-arts

and please ... go now !!!! 

And now we're sitting here watching ourselves slip into 4th place. We're just barely holding on to receive at least $200,000. Not really sure how PetFinder.com can just overtake all of the organizations and get 7,000 votes ahead...I think their office is making a profile for each one of their millions of pets on file and just having those animals vote. Sounds reasonable, right? But hey, kudos to them for doing all the work to get all those votes. All I can say is that this last 6-hour Facebook block was very tiring, entertaining, and showed me how annoyed some people can get of constant prodding of voting and sharing.

Voting ends at midnight tonight. Until next time.

Quote of the day: "Step back from everything you have going on in your life and take some time for yourself. It's healthy."