Homecoming 1998!!

This entry is modified from a letter to my friend Katie...I figured it had been a while since I had updated here, and thought I could write about this :-) ...my very first experience at homecoming. And it's my senior year, so it's also my very last experience at homecoming. Ah well. read on...

Homecoming 1998...well, homecoming was interesting. First off was the friday football game...I won't go into too much detail on that cause we lost 6-47 against another school from our county (and our one touchdown was made in the very last minute of the game!)...but the seniors swept the float and hall-decorating competitions (yeah! I didn't work on anything, but it was still cool)...

Saturday morning...I got out of bed at 10:30 (bliss! sleeping in for the first time in three weeks...and I've been seriously sleep deprived! I could've slept more, but I had things to do!), so I got dressed, and drove over to the flower store to pick up the buttoniere (whatever the spelling is)and then I went home, ate breakfast and went off to school for marching band at 12 noon.

We had a competition...my band director said on Friday that we should be home by 6:30 at the latest (bleargh), so we practiced our show a few times on the football field...this was our first competition, and my band director said we had to get at least a 70 (an excellent, 2nd highest) rating to be able to do well on the competition that really counts in two weeks (on halloween :-P )...anyways, the thing was in stephen city, VA which is about a 1 hour and 45 minute drive into cowtown (we saw many many cows on the drive there, but it was pretty), and then the bus drivers got lost, so the trip took about two hours and fifteen minutes, and we got to the competition only a half hour before we were scheduled to go on (which is virtually no time when everyone has to change into their uniforms, assemble their instruments, march over to the warm-up field, warm-up, and then go compete) but we managed it somehow. So we did our thing, it was okay, not the best we've ever done it, but it was all right.

The plan, according to what my band director said on friday, was to get back on the busses and drive right back home without waiting to find our scores or if we placed or anything, and he would just leave a drum major to pick those things up so everyone else could get back in time for the dance. And so we all got back on the busses, changed out of our uniforms, and waited. And waited. And neither mr robinson or any of our drum majors came to the busses. And we waited there for 40 minutes! Finally they came back (he decided to wait to find out our scores...we got a 73), and we finally got on the road. And then about an hour into the trip, we had to make an emergency rest-room break for one girl (she sprinted in and out of the bathroom...good thing she's on the track team, cause I think the flute section would have beat her up if she took very long :-) ) And we FINALLY got back to school at 7:40. Our dinner reservations were for 7:45 and the dance started at 8.

So I went home, took a quick shower, and drove over to my friend adrienne's house where everyone was meeting, got dressed up there (she had pushed back the dinner reservations till 8:30), and it turned out I had forgotten the damned buttoniere at home (but fortunately my parents saw that in my rush to get out of the house, and so they drove over to adrienne's house to deliver it to me)...then we stood there and had cameras flashed at us for about 10 minutes (I'll scan a picture if they come out...everyone looked quite interesting, and I like my dress, and I got a very nice corsage from my date Patrick)...

So we went out to dinner at this french restaurant...and we walked in the door (party of 7), and the lady was like, oh yes! Walk right this way...so she leads us through the main dining room, through a smaller dining room, out the back door, across the street, and into this other little buiding where only one other group of people were sitting (is it just me, or does this place have something against teenagers? yeesh! And we were dressed nicer than most of the other people in the freaking restaurant! another building my ass :-P ) Anyways, since I'm a vegetarian and they didn't have anything vegetarian on the menu, so the waiter said they could just mix up some vegetables and put it on pasta for me. And the first course was this little thing of potato soup in an espresso mug (it was okay, but they took it rudely away before I had finished it. They didn't even ask! I was looking the other way, and whoosh! my soup was gone) And my dinner didn't have any pasta in it, but it was okay...just basically all their vegetarian side dishes on one plate. But that was cool cause it only cost me 13 bucks, compared to everyone else's 22-27 dollar meals.

And by then it was ten o'clock, and the dance ended at 12, so we went there. Most other people I knew arrived at pretty much the same time we did. We got there, and the bushes outside the school were decked in pretty white christmas tree lights, and there was blue paper on the walls of the gym to cover up the bleachers...it looked pretty nice, but according to adrienne, not as nice as in previous years. When we got there, they played about 4 rap songs in a row, so patrick and I (neither of us big dancers) just kinda stood there...all in all the music for the night pretty much sucked. They played the obligatory electric slide, macarena and ymca (I was praying that I had missed the macarena, coming there two hours late, but of course I didn't)...patrick and I walked out of the gym during the macarena, refusing to participate ...they played that brian setzer orchestra song I hate (the lyrics are grating! "jack and jill went up the hill to get a...pail"...horribly annoying! Very trite! I just don't like that song!)...nothing else I really liked The theme of the dance was "Time After Time," so the last song they played was the one of the same name. You woulda thunk that of course, they'd play the pretty original slow one, this being the last song and all. But they played the techno remix! Augh! And it sounded like crap! Augh!

Afterwards we went out to silver diner for coffee, and tried to figure out what to do...no one had any ideas, so we just went back to adrienne's house...half of the group went home, and the rest of us just sat there and talked. And I spent the night there (didn't get to sleep till 4), went home at 11, and slept for half the day! yay! All in all, homecoming was pretty interesting. I don't think I'll go back next year, though. I didn't like it enough to go back to high school once I've graduated!

In a side note, I'm almost finished with reading _A Clockwork Orange_. This is a quite interesting book...if you're looking for something else to read, I highly recommend it. It deals with some extremely interesting topics of humanity...just go check it out at your local library :-)

Quote of the Week!
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"If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now." ~Zaphod Beeblebrox in _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_

Link of the Week!
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The Unfficial They Might be Giants site (www.tmb.net)! come here and read my 4-17-98 and 8-28-98 concert reviews! Even if they didn't format it at all...even though I sent them the html to make it look pretty :-P But I'm still on there! :-)

Pic of the Week!
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The people in Eddie From Ohio...one of my as of recent favorite bands...I saw them twice in a row! And the percussionist Eddie (guy on the bottom) went to my high school (and no they're not really from Ohio...Northern VA)! Click on the picture to go to their homepage to check them out.