3 Months in Which I Did Not Learn the Euphonium (Part 1)

Upon joining my high school concert band I realized that I had made a terrible mistake. In previous years of band there had always only been two or three percussionist. Now there were six. My friend who had also joined with me, planned on joining the percussion section and found herself in a similar predicament. There were two drummer who had seniority over us and two other first time drummers.

Around the second or third day of class the music teacher approached me and my friend with a proposal. The band was much too small to be able to support six percussionist. He wanted to know if we would consider playing a different instrument. I only knew how to read percussion sheet music, which had no scale and my friend had no experience with sheet music at all. But with the chances of us ever being able to play anything interesting in the percussion section were next to nothing. We decided that we would be game to learn a different instrument.

At first I was a little excited to learn a different instrument. Percussion was fun, I was good at it but it always seemed so different compared to the what all the other kids did. I was excited to learn just about any other instrument. My first pick was saxophone or clarinet. Those looked the like the most fun to me. Unfortunately things did not work out as I had hoped they would.

My high school band was not huge. There was only around 25 of us total. Breaking it down there were about 10 kids in the woodwind section(saxophones and clarinets ) and 10 kids in the brass section(trumpets and trombones). And then us in the percussion section.

The discussion about what instrument we were interested in playing went something like this:


Band Teacher: What would you two like to play?


Me: Saxophone would be pretty cool.


Band Teacher: We already have a saxophone player though.


Me: Okay well what about clarinet?


Band Teacher: We already have three of those.

At this point I was starting to become a little concerned. Was he going to do this for every instrument that someone was already playing? Though the band was small almost every instrument already had representation. Was he just not going to let us play anything?


Me: Well then, what can we learn?


Band Teacher: Have you considered playing the euphonium? 

No. No I had not considered playing the euphonium. For starters I had no clue what a euphonium was. When he said euphonium my mind jumped to something that would come out of a Doctor Seuss book.

 I would have actually been pretty okay with playing this thing.

My music teacher seemed very excited about me and my friend leaning how to play the euphonium. So in turn we became a excited if not a little wary.


Me: What is euphonium?

Band Teacher: It a brass instrument, it a bit bigger and lower sounding that a trumpet. 

About now all my enthusiasm was slowly leaking out of me like I was a balloon with a hole. I'm pretty sure that I may have even been making a similar noise as I slowly breathed out the air that I had been, unknowingly up to this point, holding. I also was noticing the frankly huge case that was sitting next to my teachers chair. Up until this point I had just assumed it was a random instrument case laying around as instrument cases tend to do in music classrooms. Now I realized we had been tricked and trapped.

It's like mini portable tuba.

I intend no offense to any euphonium players out there, but to my young high schooler mind this was a horrible instrument. It was huge, and suspiciously looked like a tuba, something of which I have never even thought about wanting to play. I wanted to play something classy like a saxophone or something snazzy like a trumpet or something like a flute. Anything but this monstrosity that he had just whipped out of it's case.

Me and my friend are now looking at each other with panic and horror. This is not what we had thought was going to happen when we agreed to learn another instrument. This was the absolute worse scenario that we could have possibly conceived.

Spiders

Spiders don't bother me, really they don't. I think they are beautiful and a necessary part of the ecosystem. I wish no harm upon my eight legged friends. If one gets in the house I carefully scope it up with a cup and piece of paper and toss it outside. It might not thank me for throwing it outside into the cold, but the other option is for me to squish it or let my dog it eat, I don't want them in my house. Because there is actually one thing that freaks me out about spiders, well two things.

The first thing is that they have a nasty habit of dropping down from the ceiling and getting up in my face. One of all that's just rude, I don't hang out is spider's webs and drop in on them while they're trying to watch Doctor Who. Two, even it there wasn't a spider, if I walk into something and feel like I'm getting tangle up in something I can't see, I'm going to freak out a little. Spider web may have many uses but I don't want to be caught in the stuff.


The second thing, and more importantly the thing that I like least about spiders is that they are sneaky little assholes. Spiders should make some kind of noise when they are around just to let you know "yo bro, i'm a spider and I'm creepin up your pillow right now."

Last night I got jumped by this guy

This image is to scale.

I was sitting in bed with the lights out typing a note into my phone when i felt something on my arm. Instead of just brushing it off without a second thought, I decided that it was a good idea to shine the light from my phone on to my upper arm where I felt the itch. I freaked out.

There was a four or five inch spider climbing up my arm and was almost sitting on my shoulder, six inches away from my face. I lost all common sense for a minute and tried to use my phone like a baseball bat to knock it across the room. Which failed miserable, because then I realized I most likely only knocked the spider onto the top of my blankets and it was obviously going to come back for round two.

I was wrong. Freaking out even more think the spider was going to end me and my family, I jumped out of bed and hit the lights causitouly approaching the bed. At first I didn't see anything so I gingerly picked up my blankets and started to shake them out a bit, feeling a little worried, because I wasn't finding anything. I was trying to be hopeful., Maybe I had knocked him across the room? About this time I felt another itch on my shoulder closer to the inside of my neck.

Through all of my flailing and smashing the spider had never been dislodged, it was still firmly attached to my person and seemed content to take up residency on my shoulder. My shoulder had no vacancy though, so still freaked out I brushed the eight legged intruder off my shoulder making him finally fell off. 

He then proceeded to crawl under my bed where I couldn't get to. My compassion for spiders at this point was a zero. This one jerk was ruining it for them all. After about five minutes of searching for the jerky spider I gave up. The chances that I was going to find a spider the color of my carpet at midnight only using the light from my cellphone was slim. 

Fearing the spider would later decided to come out and once again jump me, I blocked off all the underneath areas around my bed with extra blankets. Silly yes, Did I feel better? A little, but not really. The rest of the night my dreams were plagued by dreams of armies of spiders crawling on me while I slept. At one point I woke up extremely convinced that the spider had laid eggs over my bed and it's children were now creeping over me while I laid in bed.

I should have just slept on the couch.

Completely Spider Free!

4GYPEBC5SNVX

People Skills

I don't have people skills. However today I found out that I'm fantastic at pretending that I have people skills. While going door to door with my little sister to help fundraise for her school(she really just wants to sell enough stuff to get a tablet computer) I smiled politely at people, made small talk, agreed with everything that they wanted to tell me, and was general an outstanding person.

It was exhausting. We only walked around for an hour and a half, and I don't think I've ever talked to so many strangers in a row. I don't know how everyone else does it all day long. We can't all be faking it can we? Though it would be pretty hilarious if one day we all realize that everyone has been faking being happy and amiable. We would probably all just stand around feeling sheepish for a little while before realizing it was probably better that we didn't realize that everyone was faking. And such is the fate of the world.

 This guy realized what was going on in the middle of his acceptance speech and decided to end 

his speech with "fuck everyone, I got here on my own, no thanks to you idiots!"

Because while it may be tiring and irritating to be friendly to someone you don't know or don't want to know, no one wants to spend any time with someone who is a complete asshole from the moment the conversation begins.

It's days like this that I realize I don't want to go outside and run the risk of engaging a stranger in conversation. Even if that means my skin becomes bleached and pasty from the glow of my monitor. At least I won't get skin cancer. Probably.

Dreams Rock

I had an amazing dream last night about the Lion King. After Simba found Mufasa lying at the bottom of the gorge, it turned out Mufasa only had a concussion. My dream self saw this as super obvious and instead of leaving him down their me and Simba fixed him up so he was as good as new.

 Every single time I watch this movie, I tear up. After 17 years that pretty impressive.

The dream ended there but I'd like to think that together Simba and Mufasa went and beat the living day lights out of Scar. That would have been a way better ending.

Not so Lazy Sunday

Sunday is suppose to be a lazy day right? Right? Apparently not. I don't do anything right anymore. Thats what makes things fun though right? I sure hope so.

I went and saw Lion King in 3D today. It was pretty darn cool. Absolutely everything that I was expecting and more. The Lion King is one of my all time favorite movies. There was a bunch of parents with kids in the audience but there was also more than a few teenagers and older that were there without kids. I think bot are supper cool. My little sister got to see it in theaters, which is something she would never have gotten the chance to do for Lion King or even most of the hand drawn Disney Movies.

 There was a Lion King Game made?? Why wasn't I made aware of this?!?!

Hmm I felt like I did a lot more today, but I guess it was just a lot of running around. Tomorrows Monday, which means lots of homework. Which I am REALLY not looking forward to doing. Blarahahrgrr

HOT DAMN, right as I was about to put the labels on this post I realized what the other thing was that I did today. DOCTOR FREAKING WHO. I don't know how I forgot about that, especially with all of the crazy shenanigans the Doctor, Amy and Rory got up to in this ep. I was completely enthralled for the entire show. Nothing like turning the one thing that the Doctor uses most against him. And I was also raging hardcore at the end of it. It was something that I never really though could happen and always the thing that I was half expecting to happen each time the Doctor put Amy and Rory in terrible danger, especially after the who Big Bang Two thing. They all just made it out of that one, and usually that seems to signal a change of Doctor or Companions but they just kept on trucking. Which I was glad for as I really like Amy and Rory and the 11th Doctor certainly has grown on me.
But now the next Ep doesn't seem to have Amy or Rory and that makes me a bit sad, because I really freaking like the two of them, especially Rory in the last couple Episodes. He's had all sort of moments and development recently. I expect they'll be back in a couple episodes, maybe after a bit of River, but really I'm not looking too much to next weeks episode.

And completely unrelated to anything I previously wrote.

This song is pretty BA