Therapy: Session 2 [Personal]

// 61

(shoutout to me for publishing this literally 3 weeks after this happened)

so! marching band state championships was a thing! and i'm going to tell you about it!

we left for state on thursday. (by left i mean that we live 300 miles away from where the championships are held so we get to take a 5 hour bus ride there). we stopped about 15 minutes in to have a three hour rehearsal at a stadium in the town i live. it was pretty fun. cold, but fun!

i got to sit with dawn on the bus and it was real fun. for the ride, she pretty much just played on her phone the whole time and so did i. we would switch occasionally. it sounds boring but it was fun just to be with her. god i love her so much.

we stopped in denver for dinner at a mall! dawn and i got pizza. it was actually very good.

we got to the hotel at around 7:30, and then we went down to a meeting room and did an annual tradition of paper plate awards!

here's how it works:

you get someone's name on a little strip of paper, and somebody gets your name. you have about a week to find out information about that person and then present them with an award based on what you find out about them.

for example, i got this kid who used to march clarinet but now marches mellophone so i gave him the "awesome double sectioner award". this year a freshman saxophone gave me "biggest dinosaur enthusiast". which is accurate.

and! we found out that the judges that would be judging us were staying at the same fucking hotel! which means that if we were being loud at three in the morning there was a strong possibility that there was a judge in the room next to us.

then we went up to our rooms to sleep! dawn tried to smother me with a pillow (twice) and the two other girls in our room were very scared. as they probably should be.

onto friday! we got up quite early and got ready and stuff and then went down to eat breakfast. me and dawn were one of the first people to get there which was actually really good because after a while it filled up so bad. that's the bad thing about band having 150 people in it.

dawn and i went back to the hotel since we had about an hour until we had to leave. we watched one of those cheesy hallmark movies and made fun of it.

then we boarded the buses and headed off to a high school to have a three hour rehearsal. i wore wayyyyyy too many layers and got very hot after a short period of time. but! we did have a beautiful view of pikes peak while we were rehearsing.

then we left and stopped at a mall for lunch. dawn and i went to a chinese food place that had the best orange chicken that i have ever fucking had.

sometime between arriving back to the stadium and performing i saw someone i knew! here's a little fun story. for basically my whole life, i planned on going to a real nice high school in Denver. we'll call it school A. but roughly two years ago i moved very far and now go to school B. well, here's something cool: when i was in fifth grade i learned flute in a tiny band. in that tiny band there was a girl named alyssa who at the same time learned clarinet. alyssa and i went to different middle schools but we stayed really close because we were in the same girl scout troop. anyway, I've texted alyssa a few times because she joined marching band at school A. last year, school B didn't compete against school A because we were in different classes, but school B got switched classes this year. which means, i got to see school A several times which was really awesome. i kept telling people "THAT'S SCHOOL A WHERE I WAS SUPPOSED TO GO!" and no one cared but i told them anyway. i actually saw two really old friends - i could recognize them by name - but i didn't say hello because i knew they wouldn't recognize me. but i also saw alyssa! she was walking one way and i was going the other way and i kept going "alyssa! alyssa!" but she either didn't hear me or didn't recognize me :(