I think I need to just forget about the month of October

My son is in band.  He is becoming an excellent trombone player, and it has pretty much become one of his passions.  Everybody knows about how important football is in Texas High Schools.  Not to diminish the level of importance in any other state, but Texans really have very few other reasons to live.One of those “other reasons” is High School Band competitions, that gives the rest of us a reason to live.

Now, according to nearly every football player I have spoken to, you choose football when you want to participate but without all of the work.  Band begins at our high school the first Saturday of August.  That first day they begin the preparations that they should have begun in June as individuals but most of them haven’t.  They run.  They do sit ups, push ups, and other forms of torture.  And they get used to the 105 degree temperature with 85% humidity.

While the football player do have two a day practice, the band has one a day, it starts at 8 AM and it ends at 5 PM.  They usually get about an hour for lunch.  In the morning they do the outside stuff because it is nice and cool, it usually doesn’t hit a hundred degrees until about 9:30 or 10, so that is comfortable.  That is when they run, and do their physical training.  The afternoon is indoors, but they play their music from 1 to 5, then they are told to go home and practice at least another 30 minutes to an hour.  These folks work hard to get their music perfect,  their motto seems to be to practice it until it is perfect, the to practice until perfect is the only way that they can play it.  I wish that we could get some of them to carry that level of perfection over to some of their own subjects.

The reason that I am mentioning this is because Saturday started at 8AM and ended at 3 AM because that was when we got back from the competition that lasted until 11:30.  It was the Bands of the Americas marching competition in San Antonio Texas, at the Alamodome.  Our kids placed first in the Music Caption Award and first place in the General Effect Caption Award, and won second in their division.  When the finals rolled around we walked away with 5th place out of 50 bands from Texas, Oklahoma, and Mississippi.

This has been going on since the first Saturday in October.  Friday night football game, and getting home Saturday morning from 12 to 1 am, then Saturday there is a competition.  There were 2 competitions in the Austin/Cedar Park area, one in Pearland down around Houston.  This one Saturday was in San Antonio, and this weekend is the final competition of the year in Conroe Texas.  So far we have 2-first place awards, 1-second place award, and 1-fifth place award.  We will see what next weekend means.

October is going to be band month. Nothing else.  I can sleep in November, because nobody is ever busy during the Holidays.

see you later.