dianaschnuth

I’m leaving tomorrow evening after work to head off to the Drum Corps Associates finals in Scranton PA. Rehearsal is on Friday, with a brass ensemble performance that evening. Saturday we rehearse some more, and head out to the stadium in the early evening for our competitive debut.

Deep down, I’m nervous and excited… but I’m having one of those *meh* sort of days today, so I’m not excited about it right this moment. I’m feeling like I wish I could spend the long weekend with my husband instead. I feel like I haven’t practiced enough over the past, oh, entire summer. It feels like the end of the semester, when I know that no amount of cramming will make me pass the final exam. But I know that when I get out there, in front of whatever crowd there may be, under the lights (if they have them on yet), I’ll be excited and happy to perform and I’ll feed off the energy of my corpsmates and the audience.

*checks Google maps for drive time*

Um.

OMFG.

Since I’m not taking time off of work tomorrow for a travel day, and my ride is swinging past Toledo around 6pm, we’re not going to get to Scranton until TWO O’CLOCK AM. *facepalm*

I have made a bad decision. Shoulda just taken my last remaining half-day of personal time, I guess. Ah, well. As I recall, the guy I’m rooming with for the weekend isn’t leaving until after work, too, so he’ll probably be getting there around the same time. So, the plus side is that I won’t wake his ass up. The minus side? I’ll only get maybe four or five hours of sleep before breakfast and rehearsal.

Damn, damn, damn. What a double-edged sword this senior corps thing can be.

When I aged out of Junior corps, I would have given anything to be able to keep marching. Now that I’ve found a way, I find that I’m not entirely sold on it anymore. It would be different, maybe, if Aaron were into it too, and came with me. As it is, on drum corps weekends, I have to choose the corps or my husband.

I don’t know how much longer I can force myself to have to make that choice.

One more year, maybe.

*sigh*

I’m still pissed at myself for my lame rehearsal yesterday. The entire rehearsal wasn’t lame ? the corps made some fairly decent progress overall ? but my own personal performance was sub-par all day. What really gets me is that my poor performance is entirely my fault; I can’t just chalk it up to a bad day. It could have been avoided had I actually practiced during the past two weeks.

It had to be painfully obvious that I hadn’t practiced ? at least, it was obvious to me. My endurance was pathetic. I could barely play by the end of rehearsal, and my lips are still swollen, even today. I tried to admit it and shrug it off at the same time by admitting to my closer corps friends that I’d been working on the website instead of practicing my mellophone.

The truth is, I did neither.

My practice gloves smell like sunscreen and sweat. I reach into the horn case and put them on. I lift out my mellophone, still shiny from the bath and polishing it got Saturday afternoon before the performance.

That shine was the first thing, back in the summer of 1995, that made me truly realize that I was part of a drum corps. I remember being on the practice field at the Memorial Day camp, looking around the circle of horns warming up, and seeing the sun shine bright off the silver. It spoke to me somehow, made me realize that I was part of something I’d never dreamed I could do.

Now, standing in the basement of my house, I pick up my LakeShoremen horn, blow some long tones and lip slurs to warm up, then play through the show, opening my music to look at a few bars in a couple songs that I can never seem to get right. I run through the trouble spots again, then warm down with “Contact,” the horn feature.

It’s up to me now. This isn’t Junior corps, like Northern Aurora or Bluecoats. No one is going to make me practice. If I want to perform better at DCA than I did at DCM, I need to apply myself. Now that I’ve tasted performance again, now that I’ve roll-stepped out onto the turf and seen the stadium lights flash off the silver horns, now that I’ve heard the applause again and been congratulated by one of my own for a job well-done, now I can find the impetus to practice on my own.

How could I have thought of leaving? I’ll have to take time away from LSM eventually, I know… but not quite yet. There’s plenty of time to have kids and stay home on weekends. For now, I’m just starting to remember why I love this activity.

I don’t think I’m quite ready to ask the Executive Director or the Assistant Director to look at my LSM website redesign ideas. I’ve put my first three Photoshop comps on one page with notes, and I think I’m going to wait until I have an even half-dozen before I give them the URL and ask them for a critique.

However… I think I’ll let you guys have a look-see and let me know what you think of the designs I have up so far. Leave me some feedback, good or bad, in the comments here—maybe I can improve on my next three comps.

Oh, and I’d really appreciate it if no one, ah, *appropriates* my layout ideas? I’m really proud of myself for coming up with the second two, and I may recycle any layouts I don’t use for the LSM site. 😉 Not that I think that any of my regulars here would swipe my ideas, but I get 30 entire hits a day, and that means that there are about 20 strangers reading this shit. o.O