1 day... 2 blogs... you must have done something right...

Woot… what's up? oh right.. you can't answer… hey- today this guy was standing outside the UC preaching, he had a really big group around him at one point… about 50-60 people. He said that most of the girls at UT were prostitutes… and I’m not really sure I disagreed with him. I stayed and listened for about 30 minutes, it was really fun. He really does know what he was talking about. Lots of people were just mad in general about him being there talking, they would ask him lots of questions and try to prove him wrong. This one guy quoted a scripture and the preacher guy called him a liar and looked up the verse the student had quoted and showed him where he had misquoted it. It was kind of funny… I mean, I definitely disagreed with this guy on how he was going about his message, but I disagreed even more with some of the ignorant students that were yelling at him. Oh well… MY JACKET IS HERE, but I can't pick it up downstairs till 5pm… and that makes me mad… because its here… and I want it… grrrr… I guess that's only about 45 minutes from now. I’m looking forward to Frisbee tonight… I’d like to think that all this running I’ve been doing has made me a better ultimate Frisbee player, but its hard to tell… I know my endurance is better than it was before, but I think my bursts of speed are still about the same… and I’m not slow or anything… its just my stride vs. a 6’4’’ josh Scholes’ stride is not good… and I can't help that… I can throw well… I remember I didn't start throwing the side arm throw till last year, and now that's the main thing I throw… I’d say it’s even almost more accurate now… so I’ve gotten better…


The bluecoats announced their program for next year. I got to listen to some of the music and I must say I think its really cool… its nice to know that just because I can't be IN the bluecoats, they will still carry on and do their thing… I absolutely can't wait till I can go to the Sevierville show and watch them practice, and bring the contra section pizza and watch them devour it… because that's what I would have done if someone game me pizza… PBJ and Kool-Aid gets old when you have it every meal…

But yeah… I can't wait… I also can't wait for the banquet a week from this Friday… I really do miss everyone a lot… I’ve been in one of those moods where I just wish I could go back to this summer… and I look back and remember how hard I worked, and how difficult it was practicing so many hours a day… and how heavy my instrument was… I woke up every morning thinking I was still a baritone player, like I had been my whole life, just to remember that I had switched to contra… that was a rude awakening! As far as missing people… its more than just being in the same living space with the same people for 75 days in a row… it’s the idea that you all believed in the same thing, you all had the same goals and purposes… you all worked as hard as you could for the benefit of the group… THAT is what makes you family… not just spending time together… its so hard to understand if you haven't actually done it… most people would experience this if they were on some sort of spots team… I guess would be the closest thing, but seldom would they spend over 2 months of spending 24 hours a day 7 days a week forming the bond… and its such a sad feeling to have to leave that when its over.

I didn't think I would cry finals night, and I wasn’t going to… I wasn’t… only the girls would cry, right? We walked off the field for the last time and I felt great… it was a good show… all my work was not in vain… we came together in a large group and we stood there in silence… and slowly one by one… people started the waterworks… but I was cool… until ian our drum-major got up to talk. This guy was always very serious and seemed to always be in control… someone you would expect to always keep it together, if you will… he got up… said “look around you right now…” and he stared weeping… and I say weeping, because he was crying so hard that he couldn’t speak… he eventually got out a “remember this” and by the time he said that everyone was crying… I don't mean all the girls, I don't mean the wimpy emotional guys… I mean everyone… I mean guys that would call you gay because you couldn’t do as many pushups as they could… I mean the staff member who told you every day that you weren't fast enough… and yours truly… it wasn’t something I could control… nobody could control it. I started… and I couldn’t stop crying… I couldn’t talk. I went to get a drink of water thinking I could get away from the crying and just concentrate on my thirst… that didn't help… I just stood there thinking how awesome everything I had been through was… and how great it felt to be bonded to the people around me… I came up to Dave (the head brass guy- the one responsible for letting me try playing contra as a way of me getting in) and tried to tell him “thank you for letting me do this”… I tried once… nothing came out… I tried again and I was able to get out the “thank you”… the third time I got out the rest of my thought… and he smiled at me and shook my hand… he knew I was thankful… he told me I made a big contribution to the brass section, and I don't think he thought he would be telling me that at the beginning of the year when I was just a “3 out of 5”… just average... and it made me feel good to hear him say it because I could tell it wasn’t just a formality for him to tell me what he did… he meant it. I came up and hugged Kevin (head visual guy) and he told me he thought I did a great job and that he was proud of me… and it was really cool… it was over so abruptly… between all of that happening and us leaving to go home… there was actually very little time… my last memories of most of the people are of us all standing around together crying… it was really beautiful… and I know you can't understand… and don't expect you to because its not something that you can just get from reading... but I tried…




gotta go! Its almost jacket time!