My trip to Nashville.

Wednesday
Happiness members got together Wednesday morning over break and had a group breakfast at Perkins. I realized that breakfast food is the greatest food of all time. Because I never grew out of being a picky eater, most of the time I struggle to find one thing that I want to eat at restaurants. Anything with vegetables is off the table, I only eat beef, chicken and turkey, and ketchup and cheese sauces are the only sauces allowed. At Perkins, most of the food meets my requirements for eating, so I had a lovely time. I even cleaned my plate.
After our lovely breakfast, we all had a morning practice in the black box at Kennedy. The practice was what we refer to as a "run-through" which is just doing the show start-to-finish minus the costumes, which are really a hassle to put on. Our director, Mr. Ziegler, told us to take the practice and the upcoming competition seriously, but we really found that hard to do. Nationals is really a huge deal, and its always stiff competition. None of us thought we could win, so we really were shooting for third or fourth place. Third or fourth place would be good enough for us and I'm sure it would impress people at home. Third in the nation isn't bad at all, it's definitely better than any other Kennedy activity has done.

Thursday
2 a.m: arrive at Kennedy. I figured my best strategy for this was to just not go to bed Wednesday night. This proved really difficult. I think my natural sleep cycle favors me waking up earlier than most people and going to bed early. I wake up every morning for school at 5:29 am and try to go to bed around 10. So from 10-2, I struggled to keep my eyes open and function. Sleeping on the bus is crucial because it passes the time. Being awake for an entire 12 hour bus ride would drive you insane. I survived until the departure time and immediately passed out on the floor of the bus. Fun fact: sleeping on the floor of the bus is weirdly comfortable. I think knowing that its the best position you can be in makes it really relaxing. I woke up around 7 am very confused. I forgot that I was on a bus somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Around 7:30 all 70 something travelers attacked a McDonald's somewhere in Illinois. I was lucky enough to be one of the first people in line so I got my food quickly. McDonald's hashbrowns when you're starving = delicious. We got back on the bus and after some abuse of nyquil, I fell asleep until about 12. Then, we watched the wonderful film that is Baby Momma. Seriously, you watch the most random movies on show choir buses. It helped pass the time. Once we entered the Nashville area, we we are really excited and the torture that is a 12 hour bus ride was almost nothing. The first view of the hotel was astonishing. The Gaylord Opryland hotel is bigger than you can even imagine. I've been to Las Vegas numerous times and never seen anything so big, in fact I could'nt even get all of it in view for a picture.
We got our rooms, fixed our appearances and headed over to the Grand Ole Opry to watch some of the womens division show choir. I hate watching womens groups. Its hard to enjoy show choir when you're at a high level of performance. When I was younger and in bad groups, everything looked amazing to me. Now, you can't really appreciate other groups when you know you're better than they are. It sounds awful and cocky, but that's really just how it is. We were greeted at the Grand Ole Opry with some people who worked at Red Bull and were giving out free cans. It was great. After watching the groups, we went back to explore the huge hotel. For the most part, we hung out in the atrium and just enjoyed how pretty it was.

Friday
Wake-up time was 6:30. We all were fed a quick breakfast of granola bars and juice and then had to go to a practice outside the hotel on a large empty balcony by the Opryland convention center. We worked on making there were no crucial problems with our show for about 30 minutes and then were told to go get our costumes on and hair and makeup done. We got on the buses for a quick ride to the Grand Ole Opry, which was pretty close by. We watched a lot of really good groups. Almost all of them had huge sets with lights, fog, and many costume changes. It's really intimidating to watch lots of good groups with all of these additions knowing your group doesn't have any of that. One group, the Fairfield Choraliers, was especially scary to watch. They were the first group that could really sing. We left the auditorium after their performance to get ready for our own, scared. The performance went great. After the curtain dropped, we all screamed from excitement because we knew it was the best we had ever done. My favorite part of being on that stage is that in the front, there is a circle of wood from the original stage where performers like Elvis Presley and Hank Williams performed. At awards we were the last group announced to perform for the finals. We all got really nervous before the made the announcement and started to worry that we hadn't made it into the top 6. On the bus ride back, Mr. Ziegler told us that we were currently in second place, not far behind the first place group: Fairfield. We were fired up because we never thought we could even place that high. The rest of the day was spent shopping and exploring the hotel.


Saturday
The wake up call was 6:30. We were the last group scheduled to perform in the finals. We had breakfast and practiced again like we did the day before. Mr. Ziegler gave us some things that judges had specifically asked for and we tried to put them into our show. We were nervous and not very confident we could actually beat the first place group. Most of us had came to terms with second place and were excited by the idea. We went back to our rooms, got costumes, hair, and makeup ready. We got on the bus there in silence and nervously waited to perform once we got to the Grand Ole Opry. Groups are given about 20 minutes of time to warm up their voices and go over parts of their show before they perform. We had a guest with us; the man who created happiness back in 1968. He told us about how proud he was of what Happiness had become and explained to us where the yellow jackets came from: he went out to get a travel jacket for the group and was only able to get them in yellow to represent the school colors. When he showed them to the group, they were less than pleased, but wore them anyway. He made the members sign a contracts saying that they would only wear the jacket when at a Happiness event and to wear them with pride. We were all inspired and wanted to make him proud of us. The show went well, but we didn't all feel the same confidence we felt after yesterdays performance. I was so nervous for the results I could barely talk. Before the announcer said who the second place group was, we all held hands and braced for the announcement. When he said that second given to Fairfield, a feeling of relief and excitement overcame us that cant even be described. We were the national champions. The rest of the trip, we were too excited to worry about anything else. Being number one is a great, great feeling.


word count: 1328.

nashville pix 2

One of the views from inside the hotel.

nashville pix

Our Director, Mr. Ziegler, calling our choreographer Damon Brown to tell him the news that we won. He held the phone out to us, we screamed and he said "I think you know how it turned out."

dot dot dot

covered my word count yay

Locker DRAMA

Lately, there has been a lot of drama surrounding religion at my school, with a select group of students duct-taping posters to their lockers with bible verses on them. Not only have I heard over a dozen complaints from friends of mine personally, but a friend of mine had one put on her locker without her permission and wrote a post directed towards the young lady who supports the motion of taping posters to your locker. Personally, I don't really think it's a huge deal when done with permission, but some of the locker tapings occurred on random lockers, making the owner of the locker feel like a victim of some sort of religious rampage. 

(Side note: some people printed out Harry Potter quotes and posted them on their lockers to make fun of the recent bible verses being pasted on lockers.)

In regard for efficiency, I will give my friend’s blog the name of “Blog 1,” while the bible verse girl’s blog will be entitled “Jesus” Let’s begin.

After having a quick look-over of Jesus, I realized that the majority of it was centered around the person themselves – along the lines of “I’m a good human being who sets an even better example. Do what I do in life.” As you read through her posts on the blog, you realize bible verses threaded in here and there in the posts. If the owner of Jesus ever reads this, let me tell you – people don’t appreciate religion being stuffed down their throats, and neither does my friend, who owns Blog 1. I don’t think I need to stick up for her, though – she’s done that to a great extent through her own words.

Now let me inform you of something else. The constant quotations from the bible and references to religion get in the way of your credibility. A lot… No joke. People will see the constant quotations from the bible as  you having a skewed perception of reality – not a God-inspired stroke of genius. So there’s your credibility down the drain. And in blogging, you have three essentials:

- Credibility

- Content Quality

- Morale/Attitude

You've kinda already lost #1. I’m about to explain to you why you’re going to lose #2. Content quality on a blog is simply that – the quality of the content you produce. I understand that this blog is meant for the use of a class, but the issue is that you’re using it in other ways. That’s completely fine with the rest of society, as long as you do not incorporate content that would otherwise bash someone’s happiness or pride. There are no laws that say you can’t have an opinion about someone or blog about how wrong their choices are. You can feel free to do that. All I’m saying is that, in order to better your reputation as a blogger (and a human being), you might want to have a little decency and not bash people for doing what makes them happy. After all, we were taught in Sunday school to love all people equally, regardless of their choices in life, or how they look, or act? You’ve successfully contradicted yourself. Hypocrisy is a big minus when it comes to saying something intelligent.

- Credibility

- Content Quality

- Morale/Attitude

I think most would agree, through the above evidence, that your blog has a very biased morale, and a relatively self-centered attitude.

- Credibility

- Content Quality

- Morale/Attitude

#YOLO

Recently on twitter I've seen lots of people using the hashtag #yolo. It means "you only life once". Yolo isn't a celebrity quote or supporting any campaign, its simply an inspirational tag. The phrase is meant to encourage people to step outside what they normally do and try something new, because you only have one life and you should try new things etc. etc. etc. When I google searched the phrase, I found diverse examples of #yolo
Sometimes, it's used in a joking way, like the twitter account @yolojokes, which describes ridiculous situations and then ends with #yolo. I think yolo jokes are funny, kind of. Its not exactly what the phrase is supposed to be but more of a weird twist on it. I see a lot of people my age retweet these.
Por examplo:

One of the weirdest things I found when I searched google was "YOLO Restaurant - You Only Live Once". I didn't believe that someone opened up a restaurant called that. The tagline "you only live once" for a restaurant is actually kind of appealing, I could imagine a restaurant with lots of diverse weird options for you to try because... well... you only live once.
I took the phrase and applied it to my own life last night. It was storming, pretty badly. I was in my room listening to the rain and thought about how nice it would be to be out there and just run around in the storm. I immediately laughed off the idea because going out in the storm is something that people just don't do. Then I thought, that's what #yolo is all about, doing the thing that you wouldn't normally do for the sake of experience. I put on some slick sweatpants and an old sweatshirt and walked outside in the rain. It was bad and within a matter of seconds I was immediately soaked, but it was fun. The weather outside is so warm that I wasn't frozen, I felt refreshed. In fact, it was weirdly magical. I kind of made the connection between my spontaneous decision to go outside in the pouring rain and an insane person. It kind of seems like schizophrenic activity, but I promise I'm just trying to live in the moment. #YOLO.

March Madness according to my 9-year old brother

My 9 year old brother, Cole, knows a lot about basketball. I come from a family that is basically basketball 24/7. My dad played for Kennedy in 1984 when they won state, he started every single game. He got a lot of scholarships and could've played for Iowa, but chose the University of Illinois. After playing basketball for a year there, he decided he wanted to go to Coe College and played basketball and football simultaneously. Now he's an assistant coach for Kennedy's mens basketball team. So basketball is basically his life. I played a lot of basketball when I was younger but never really kept going with it. My Dad has influenced my brother a lot. I'm really proud of my brother because he's really very smart. He uses a lot of his knowledge for sports statistics and playing in general. Last year my brother entered his bracket into my Mom's office tournament and won the entire thing, beating out 200+ adults. He won $150 by predicting the final four and the overall champion. So I decided to ask him about a couple games. The following is my attempt to capture his rambling as best as possible.


North Carolina vs Creighton

"North Carolina, easily. They're my favorite team. Harrison Barnes will do the job for North Carolina on offense and John Henson will do the job for North Carolina on defense, they're the best players. Doug McDermott is Creighton's best player because he plays the post really well. He... umm... gets really big and scores... he does this power dribble and he scores! North Carolina has better uniforms because they're blue camouflage but that's only like one of their five uniforms. John Henson from North Carolina will do sweet dunks and if you're asking about 3 point shots.... Reggie Bullock when he gets the ball he isn't afraid to shoot it. Creighton could only win if Harrison Barnes gets hurt."

Kentucky vs Indiana


"Oh wow Kentucky is gonna beat 'em by like 500 points. They have Anthony Davis and he's gonna block all the shots and the point guard Miller is going to get every 3 pointer he shoots. Indiana is a good team but they just can't beat Kentucky. Nobody but North Carolina could beat Kentucky. Kentucky has sweet uniforms solid royal blue with white numbers! I only kinda like Indiana's uniforms but they look saggy. Jordan Holes is Indiana's best player because of his ball handling. Cody Zeller is a really good post because he rebounds really good, his brother is Tyler Zeller and he plays for North Carolina. Kentucky has an advantage because they're a little closer to Louisville.


He got bored and distracted after that and walked away.