Rain of Fire

CMEA: Saturday

• Alarm went off around 11. Lolled around in bed for 10 minutes or so (for me, 11 on a Saturday is pretty early) before getting out of band to get dressed.
• Stuffed a very fast early-lunch down my throat, figured I didn’t have to be at school right at 11:45, spent a few more minutes eating. Wasn’t planning to have food again until after 3.
• Out the door by 11:45.
• Got to school comparatively early again. Walking to school this year wasn’t as fun. Last year we had to be at school by 7, and at 6:45 on a winter morning, the streets are dead quiet and it’s awesome.
• Band members are in cars and on their ways around 7:10.
• Arrive about 40-50 minutes later. Spent a few minutes wandering around the SF School of the Arts campus looking for our classmates.
• Bought cookies. Claire owes me a dollar.
• Found out CMEA accidentally swapped our time slot with Jazz Band’s. Also found out the middle school pulled out because their teacher was both pregnant and recovering from a surgery?? Eep.
• Watched one high school’s performance, then left to go into the warm-up room.
• The high school coming off the stage wished us good luck as we went on. They were nice people. Had a momentary scare with the bass amp, which wouldn’t turn on. The tech guys didn’t know what was wrong with it. Mr. Bryant helped us find the power button.
• Stolen Moments: E. I DON’T LIKE THEIR VIBRAPHONE. The mute bar shoves the keys up, which is annoying, and the notes don’t ring at ALL. Whereas our vibes (<3) rings for a quarter note length, every whack on this set was like a staccato. The song rushed a little bit. Ziyad’s solo was amazing.
• Little Darlin’: S Ziyad and I spent the time backstage being scared of the buzzing sound set. He also mentioned that he quoted my Four solo - I, being oblivious when nervous, didn’t notice.
• The Way You Look Tonight: S Back to the pushy vibes. My part in this song was extremely boring. The sax section didn’t play their soli blind this time.
• Sightreading: S This was the part I was nervous about - having not played the piano in one of our performance songs this year, I ended up doing the sight-reading. Mr. Bryant picked Harlem Nocturne, which was fun to play and easier than I had anticipated. I TOTALLY KNEW THAT THE FIRST MEASURE WAS A DRUM FILL. Had a brain fart while Mr. Bryant was counting off - for some reason I thought it was already the second count, so I played a measure early and played it wrong. Hee.
• The examiner really liked it. He didn’t mention anything about my early entrance (Mr. Bryant gave me the *AHEMwinkwink* look.) The horns were really great. The examiner did, however, mention that he might have to dock for our three trombones all wearing different ties. I said it was for variety. He said he’d buy that.
• The examiner also mentioned that sight-reading was a simulation of a professional studio recording situation, and that we should pretend like we were being paid $50 an hour to be there. Rafey(?) suggested he should give us all a dollar. I mentioned that we also accepted cookies.
• Band photos, both professional and silly.
• Couldn’t stick around to see Jazz Band, had to go home to practice for my lesson. Went home in Aidan’s car and forgot my tie with Jesse.

Downtown Restaurant: Saturday

• Alarm went off around 8:50 - lolled around in bed for about 15 minutes before deciding that I should get going. Got dressed for band again, ate a minimal breakfast while listening to Tansen’s alarm go untouched.
• Sped through my song’s chorus a few times before leaving (crammed last night for it). Out the door and heading to Corwin’s house by 9:20-ish.
• Tom was already there when I arrived. Corwin had already finished teaching the math formulas. Ah well, I probably should have gotten up earlier.
• Went through a couple of the previous AMC tests before settling down on one to discuss the problems. Reviewed those and a few geometric formulas before I had to leave for BART.
• 11:20-ish. I had a fun time trying to guess where BART was in relation to Corwin’s house, despite having checked on GoogleMaps earlier, and used Albany Hill as a landmark with one eye on my watch.
• Walked into Downtown Restaurant at 11:50. The middle school jazz band was standing up to their applause. Walked into the back room to dump my stuff, then jumped back out to say hi to Mom, Sim, and my piano teacher while our Jazz Lab combo got set up.
• They were amazing. I still have their first song stuck in my head, but I don’t know the name.
• We played Moanin’ first. For a song we’d never really worked on that much, it turned out pretty well. I had a momentary brain-lapse (multiple times), but I didn’t crash the comping during the solo section. I did, however, repeat one too many times.
• Played the CMEA songs, this time without the vibes.
• Woohoo!
• Listened to Vocal Flight’s first song, ran to Tapioca Express during their second, and back by the end of their third song. A nice change of pace from all that jazz. :) TapEx got my order wrong - I ordered a large passion fruit Italian Soda with small boba, and they gave me a small soda with large boba - but I didn’t really care enough to go back in a get my quarter back.
• The Jazz Band combo was unbelievably awesome, with two members from last year and four new. Karl is an amazing writer.
• I’d just realized I had a LOT of homework waiting for me at home, so we left during the transition to Jazz Band. Phooey. ):

Whee.

HECK YES! Oddly enough, Science Bowl was almost an exact parallel of Wondercup - first and third place (minus the other three teams in Wondercup). Awesome job, guys!

Sucks that CMEA Jazz had to be on the same day though. :/ Now let’s hope that neither sciences nor music have to take a hit because of the budget cuts.