Date: May 22, 2011
Time: 11:10pm
Playing on iTunes: "Better Off Alone” by Alice Deejay
Spring training is really starting to kick in. The hours are flying by, yet at the end of the day you feel like the day you feel like 12 hours was 2 days. Definitely messing with my mind a little bit but I’m excited to go on tour in a couple more weeks.
I am not in this video but there are 5 of my friends from UMass in this drumline that you see. It’s pretty incredible how many people from one school come to represent an organization such as this. There’s 5 in the drumline, 6 in the pit, 1 in the brassline, and 1 in the colorguard. That’s a total of 13 people from UMass out of a 150 person corps. That means that a little less than 1/10 of the corps is from UMass. I’m so proud of all of them with all the preparation they have put into auditioning for this corps, making it, and getting ready for the season. Not to mention all the hard work they put in 12-hours a day every day for the summer now and coming up.
This morning, the pit got up at 5:30a to take the 20-minute walk down to the 24-hour Super Wal*Mart so that we could all get things that we needed that we may have not gotten before spring training. Such as clothes, sunblock, paper, pencils, ponchos etc. Here's what I got for my "bag of essentials" that I put in my mallet bag (the bag that hold my mallets for my instrument). There's some bandaids for whenever I get a blister on my hands, sunscreen stick for my nose and those hard to reach places, a lighter for changing string on the instruments (the keys are held on by string), and chap stick...self explanatory.
This morning, the pit got up at 5:30a to take the 20-minute walk down to the 24-hour Super Wal*Mart so that we could all get things that we needed that we may have not gotten before spring training. Such as clothes, sunblock, paper, pencils, ponchos etc. Here's what I got for my "bag of essentials" that I put in my mallet bag (the bag that hold my mallets for my instrument). There's some bandaids for whenever I get a blister on my hands, sunscreen stick for my nose and those hard to reach places, a lighter for changing string on the instruments (the keys are held on by string), and chap stick...self explanatory.
Vibe sectional |
Today in ensemble, the goal (as I mentioned before) was to finish the first piece with all the music and marching (drill) on the field. We did accomplish this and it sounds absolutely amazing! Although there were a few bumps along the way between the pit and the corps. There was a some miscommunication every so often about where we were starting and ending during different repetitions. I go very frustrated and became a little distracted because of my frustration but I know that tomorrow when we do another ensemble block we will all know where we are supposed to start and stop to maximize rehearsal time. I knew that going into this process that there was going to be some challenges and going to be some frustration, but the most important thing is how you calm yourself down and just do it without worry about little things.
And AGAIN, another 3-hour Facebook block tonight. We only have a few more nights of this. We’ve been in a constant battle against PetFinder.com. They seem to be gaining all their votes during the day, but we gain all of ours at night. So the battle is give and take, but since we’ve been in first the entire time, we’re still ahead of them. We started off over 1,000 ahead of 2nd place but now it’s down to around 150-200 votes. So as you can imagine, we’re in a grind to keep the lead and pull away from the competition. We all just know that if we win this, our season is going to be absolutely great so we really want to make sure we come out on top. That $500,000 is going to be very essential for this organization in the future. For all that money going into the public school music programs, all of those programs will donate and help out with our organization. George Hopkins estimates that for the $500,000 we give out to the public music programs, we will receive around $3,000,000 back in donations/sponsors. I’m not sure if this is true, but he seems to be a very smart and financially stable man so I’ll trust him with this, and I also feel that giving the $500,000 to those programs will be the most beneficial way to distribute that money. Here’s to high school music programs!
P.S. I'm absolutely amazed by the nature out here. Now that I'm outside all day everyday, I get to see the clouds and beautiful sky all day. I never really appreciated how beautiful clouds are, so be ready for lots more pictures of clouds.
P.S. I'm absolutely amazed by the nature out here. Now that I'm outside all day everyday, I get to see the clouds and beautiful sky all day. I never really appreciated how beautiful clouds are, so be ready for lots more pictures of clouds.
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