Saturday, December 29, 2007

Greetings from Pasadena

I'll be living in Pasadena for the rest of the year. Kinda has a cool ring to it.

We got a hotel here for the 29th-31st which will make life much nicer (i.e. no hour and a half drive every day at all hours). We learn things from previous experience.

Disneyland was on the 27th...we sounded pretty good and it was a fun, albeit long, day. Our first Bandfest performance was today and went fairly successfully. We have the final two tomorrow followed by megga laps at Dodger Stadium on the 31st.

I'm dead tired, but I love this stuff.

Since I know you all want to see our wonderful faces on the 1st, here's the info:
  • Channel 5 (KTLA) for the best (local) coverage. If you don't get it, ABC would be my second choice.
  • We are entry number 45 and will pass TV approximately 9:00 (give or take 10 min or so). You are looking for the Pasadena City College Tournament of Roses Honor Band.
  • I can be found in rank 13, one off center to the right of the block facing forward. Tiffany is next to me on the right, Holly and Jon are left guides, Lauren is a right guide, Casey can be found on the right side of the block in the third row of trumpets, Mitch is just left of center also in the midst of trumpets, and John, Josh and Joey are in the tubas (can't help you much more there).
Happy New Year!

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Winter Break

It's amazing: three weeks off. Band, school, finals, and college apps (with the exception of a few things) are done. This whole "stress free" thing is really nice.

On a whim (and a random comment by Dr. Reti) I decided to make everybody at school pet rocks for Christmas. Thanks to my crafty mother, they all are outfitted with bows, hair, etc. Thanks to me they all have weird names.

That free time won't last long. Rose Parade practice starts up tomorrow and is nonstop until the 1st with the exception of the Dec 23-25. We set the block last week and unfortunately I'm not a center again this year, but one off to the right (closer to cameras at least). We're doing some good music and I encourage all to come to Bandfest...it's pretty amazing/fun.

I saw a neat story the other day about a girl on a cruise who had appendicitis and needed an emergency appendectomy. Seeing as the ship was 500 miles offshore that was a problem, so the Navy flew her off the deck of the cruise ship to an aircraft carrier and the surgery was a success there. Pretty cool stuff.

Thanks to our wonderful war in Iraq and the wonderful political idiots running the county the new budget is complete- with deep cuts for scientific education and research. Way to go folks.

If you have 10 minutes, there's a pretty funny clip from Judge Judy about an eBay scammer. My favorite quote: "You may weigh more, but you're not going to be smarter than I am in one finger!" The plaintiff got scammed out of $400 in goods and gets a $5000 settlement. Sounds pretty good.

That's it for now...good luck on last minute Christmas shopping.

Sunday, December 02, 2007