I should have broken up this week into two posts

Yeah I was actually planning on posting about my week on Wednesday before the trip, but I figured I wouldn't have that much to talk about after the Texas trip. Well, lesson learned and I was quite wrong. As for why I'm posting on a Sunday, it's because my Law professor is gone with DECA this week and we are not meeting. Along with that, Jazz Band has the day off tomorrow because we spent the whole weekend being jazzy. So basically my only class is math and I figured it would be stupid to add an extra day that would consist of "so far nothing has happened except my math class." Ok, with that out of the way, how about I jump into the week?

Tuesday:
I had school as normal, but had to skip my trumpet lesson so that I could make it downtown in time for the Mariners game. I took the bus to near dad's office and met him there, then we walked about 10 blocks to Safeco. The game was really good. We were in the upper deck, but it was still cool. When Griffey ran on the field for the first time, it was absolutely crazy in the stadium. They had obviously planned on cheering for Griffey taking a while, but it lasted longer than they thought it would, so they had the next guy in the batting order run out so they could get on with the show, otherwise Griffey would have gotten cheered for until well after the game was supposed to start. Every time Griffey had an at bat, he got a standing ovation. It was really cool for me to see my favorite professional athlete back in Seattle. Another cool thing about the game is that it was my first professional sporting event that I was ever at when it went into some kind of overtime/extra innings. It only lasted into the 10th until we won, but it was still cool because I had never been at a game when something like that happened before. After that, I had to hurry back to SCC for a 2 hour jazz band rehearsal until 10. So if you were reading carefully, I didn't really spend that much time in my house that day.

Wednesday:
I spent the early afternoon doing homework, then contemplating whether to post, but eventually deciding not to because I didn't think I would have enough. As I now realize though, it would have been better to get this stuff out of the way. After Steven got back from his special lecture with Ashley, we proceeded to join a huge-ass Runescape group in a PvP server and we just dominated everything we came across. Steven and I got some good loot, but not a ton because in a group that size, it's hard to be the guy that deals the most damage.

Thursday:
I had my classes as usual, then Chris (lead alto), Steve (lead trumpet), Dan, and I went to Gordito's, then the airport. We met up there with everyone else and then checked in and waited for the plane to arrive. One of our instruments was a big 1.5 foot long, 6 inch diameter " the metal enema" shaker. Jim (conductor) had some fun times while getting that through security. Anyway, the plane ride was cool. I sat next to Dan and I spent the flight playing Fire Emblem and he read a ton of this textbook on music producers. Our flight got in at around midnight. After that, those of us that didn't drive the rental cars got to wait an hour and a half at the airport for the rental cars to show up. After we got to the hotel, we went out to a diner nearby. On the way there, this girl trombone made a joke about what the University of North Texas college radio station's callsign would be (KUNT). During the meal, Jim asked everyone if they wanted to go "See UNT." After he said that, the girl and looked at each other because we were the only ones that caught it at the time and we both just broke into laughter. Nobody else got it until later. The waitress there was really nice and she had a voice that was the voice you get when you smoke cigarettes for about 150 years. Anyway, after that meal, we all went back to the hotel to go to sleep. I guess some people were jamming downstairs in one of the many conference rooms in the hotel, so our bassist, guitarist, and Dan jammed with them. I was with the two "older" guys in the band. Not that they're really old, but they're the oldest guys in the band. It was nice though because that meant I was in the mature room, which is really handy when it comes to sleeping.

Friday:
We listened to some groups perform for their competitions earlier in the day, then we all split up to go to our respective "Master Classes." Steve, Chelsea, Jim (since he's a trumpet player irl), and I went to our trumpet one. The guy teaching was knowledgeable, but tried to crack too many jokes for my taste. I did learn a good amount from that class though even if it was basically what my private lesson teacher has been telling me for a while now. After that, we had to warm up for our set. We were doing good in there. When we got on stage and performed, we didn't do as well because the setup was funky and we couldn't hear the drums. The other two trumpets were competing with each other to lead the section on being in time, while I just thought "Fuck it" and I played in time with the trombones because it felt right. In the end, our clinic judge said we did very well. We didn't do perfect I know, but it was still nice to hear the guy say we did so well on our songs especially since we're a two year band amongst all these great 4 year university bands. It was cool to be invited to this thing and to be compared to all the other bands. Not much happened until later in the night. We had tickets to see the North Texas University one o'clock band. The unfortunate part was that seating was limited and if we wanted good seats, we would have had to sit through the jazz vocalists (eww). I popped in and out a bit as other people did throughout (not what she said). During that time, there was a boozer going on amongst our band. About half of the people were legal. When more and more people joined in, I hung out with Myles, our lead tenor who's actually a really funny guy, since he also doesn't drink even though he's definitely old enough to. We went and watched the UNT faculty perform and then some buzzed band members showed up and hung out with us. The one o'clock band was excellent as usual even if they took way to many encores. They had a really hilarious bass player that made a sex face while he played and he hunched over his bass and thrusted himself at it when he played, so it really looked like he was humping his bass. So while all that was happening, off in other regions of the hotel, people were getting drunk and whatnot.

Saturday:
Around midnight, a bunch of us went into a vacant conference room for a late night jam session. Some cool people from Tennessee, Florida, and California showed up and jammed with us for about 3 hours. Eventually, the other people got tired and the session broke up, but it was cool to just be able to play and solo a bit for 3 hours. Steve, Megan (one of the bass players), and I went on a beer/David is thirsty and wants milk or apple juice or something run. It was unsuccessful, though we did discover a Steak N Shake that I was very excited to see. After that, we went back to the hotel and picked up some more people and went to STEAK N SHAKE!!! for a nice 4:30 am snack. The lady there was the only waitress on duty at the time and she was really cool. We later referred to her as big momma because she was a whole lot of woman. After going back to the hotel and hanging out in the hall for a while, I finally got to bed at 6:30am. I woke up at 10:57 (needed to be in the lobby at 11:00 if I wanted to go on a tour of the UNT campus). I saw the clock and I thought "Oh shit!" and I got up and dressed as quickly as I could and got to the lobby in time. The campus tour was cool, especially because we stopped at 7-11 on the way and I got a slurpee for breakfast (I ate very well while I was there). It was a nice enough campus. The squirrels are insane and the ants are as well. There was a lot of eye candy in the gym there. Jim decided to have a 3-point contest while we were in there and he missed his first shot, then on his second shot, he said "Man, I haven't played basketball in like 5 years" and proceeded to swish a three pointer. For lunch, everyone got together and went to a really good barbecue joint recommended to us by big momma. I wanted to go back and give her another tip for that suggestion, it was a great place to eat. Later in the day, all but four of us went to the Rangers game. It was really fun to be there because it was a nice stadium and we got to root for the royals. Our thing was to do the clap pattern from the opening of "working at the car wash" that goes clap.......clap.......clap...clap clap clap clap clap. We would say Royals over the last 2 claps. At one point, some guys behind us decided to yell "Suck" after we said our thing which was pretty funny. We did it again, planning to say "not as bad as the Rangers" right after they said suck, but they didn't bite that time. In the fifth inning, if the Rangers scored, we would have gotten free tacos, so we switched to Rangers fans for that inning. It was very funny when we did our clap thing but instead said "Rangers" and the guys behind us said "Suck" before they could realize what we said. Everyone nearby had a good laugh about that. Unfortunately, the Rangers suck and we did not get free tacos. About 3/4 into the game, a severe weather warning was issued which I guess is a suggestion to head downstairs if you're in the upper deck, so we did. People stayed up there, but I'm glad we didn't because we were able to jack some sweet vacated seats on the third base line where we proceeded to annoy everyone as we cheered the Royals on to victory. The sweetest part was that the Rangers came close to winning before their hope was completely destroyed. After that, we went out in search of a tex-mex joint and found a good one.

Today:
After we got back to the hotel, we went and found a jam session going on. Most of the stuff had been packed up, so only piano's remained and maybe a stray bass here and there if you were lucky. We came across a vocalist and a pianist and a bassist and a drummer playing together. They were really good and more hot vocalists showed up, so the three of us that shared a room (me, our lead trumpet, and our pianist) decided to hunt down another room to play in. We were soon joined by our Bari player and we jammed for about four hours since we had to leave at 5 in the morning anyway. It was fun because we found a room with a bass and a conga. I would have hopped on the bass, but I suck even when there are frets, so I was totally lost. The conga was fun to play though. Eventually, the four of us just practiced soloing and it was really helpful for me at least to learn more about soloing. I'm slowly getting better and hopefully when I increase my range more, it will be better for soloing. We went straight from jamming to packing up to leaving. It was pretty boring from there. I fell asleep on the plane, then played Fire Emblem for the last hour or so. When I got back here, I had some homework to catch up on, but not much else.

Well that's that. I'm going to have more time nowadays. I still won't be good to go on Saturdays, but during the week I will. I'm going over once a week though hopefully to help work on my aunt's house or my grandpa's house because we're getting closer to the big move and it makes everyone's lives easier if I can come over in the middle of the week and take care of some odd jobs here and there. I think I'm going to be digging up a brick walkway this week. Anyway yeah, talk to me if you want to do something. Other than that, peace out.