Parties (Team Us vs. Team Them)

What would the beginning of summer be without parties? Not quite the same of course. After the fantastic kick-off at a friends house (note the previous entry), it could really only get better. A few days later I had some friends over to celebrate my very-belated birthday. Due to unforeseen circumstances of outrageous busyness, it was impossible to have a party in the same month as my birthday. But that doesn't mean we are not gonna party!!! So I chose a random day and was all like "you guys should be here on this day" and actually a lot of people came! We started off by hanging out for a bit while put on some tunes and amused myself with the Xbox (its complicated). Once we got everyone mostly in the same place, mom busted out the game of Things. The game of Things is a pretty hella tight game in which a card is chosen with a "Thing" on it, and everybody writes their response down on a small strip of paper. Theses "Things" can range from "Things you shouldn't doodle on" to "Things to do in a blackout". Whatever the card, responses are hilarious and memorable. Of course we then had some food. And what would a party be without Ultimate Sport Disk? NOTHING! Because Ultimate Sport Disk is the bomb!!! One of the most fun parts of playing the game is getting to the field, in this case by cramming into the party bus for the short trip to Robertson. Once the second Ian arrived, we naturally split up into teams and started running around, ultimating it up, and having a great time. Initially, Team Us was doing very well against Team Them with our power players John, Ian, and Claire, and in fact everyone was doing quite excellently under the scheming direction of Coach Zanie. But, tragically, both teams lost some of their players and after some negotiation we were forced to give up the massively tall Ian to Team Them. Although the new Team Us was still an excellent group, Team Them won over in the second half despite valiant efforts by Kevin and Claire to score and inspired attempts by John and myself to overcome Ian's tallness. Finally, Team Us made an agreement with Team Them to unify into one team and get in the party bus to return home and play Rock Band. All of you should know that there are few wins more epic than playing Rock Band. I would say that the most significant sign of progress that day was how we moved out of playing the original Rock Band in to Rock Band 2. This brought a whole new realm of fun that occupied the remaining party goers much longer than I expected. But whatever, it was a wonderful time and quite a success.

First three days of summer

Wednesday was the last day of school. I had a band practice and went to my drum lesson. My drum teacher gave me a whole bunch of music for the percussion camp that I will be going to in Oberlin later in the summer. But there were a lot of mallet pieces that I cant practice at home. So I texted the band director and asked her if I could borrow the band's marimba for the summer. The next morning, we picked it up, wheeled it around the school, and somehow managed to fit it into our van. It was quite a feat of engineering. Of course I love nothing more than to add insturments to my collection, if only temporarily. It was not two days ago when a friend of my mother's lent me one of his mandolins, to my great amusement. But the Oberlin percussion institute is serious business and I must get to work. Then again, another band practice was necessary in order to prepare for the next day's gig. Lets talk about that for just a second. A nice freshman girl asked us to play at her annual end of school pool party, not particularly far from our house. Once we tracked down Jay (a trick we've been getting quite good at), the show started out pretty well. We got through a number of more mellow tunes, and then started the more exciting ones as I had planned. But we barely got through "Mary Jane's last dance" before a policeman showed up in the driveway asking us to turn down. It was our very first time having the cops called on us. And in the middle of the day, too! We couldn't help but be proud of ourselves. I even wanted to take a picture of us with the policeman for our scrapbook. We never actually did, but there was another opportunity when he showed up for the second time in the middle of "Dancing Shoes". Apparently this girl has some seriously sore neighbors. I took the opportunity to go to my next appointment, after having packed up and left the scene before it was to late. A friend's graduation party was the place to be, for sandwiches, cake, and hanging out with music teachers, at least for a little while. I might have stayed longer but there are always more plans to be made. I headed off to another end-of-summer party. Myself and a bunch of friends were toasting marshmallows, taking pictures, playing games, and making bad jokes all night long. At one particular point, the entire party wandered up the road to a nearby playground, then through the woods on a trail that happened to lead to my front yard. But there was absolutely no way of getting into the house, short of scaling the wall and climbing through the upstairs window, a method which has failed many times in the past. Unfortunately my crazy dance party would just have to wait. We walked up the road, down, around, and, after a few other prepositions, found our way back to the official party location. That was when the bad jokes and ridiculous games really begin. It is a given that we must run around in the dark, or in my case just fall in the dark. I honestly fell so many times it was out of control. There was sliding, hopping, tripping, jumping, half-flipping and a bit of face planting. It was amazing that I made it out alive, and it was 1 in the morning at that!