sometime at the beginning of january at one fateful band practice DeAnne (the pipe major) made a great big giant deal about solo competing. of course my first impulse was to ignore this speach because that is what i usually do. But then when Jim (a grumpy old fart who tells everybody what to do) cornered me, i gave in. So for the next month instead of my usually playing once or twice a week if at all, i began playing every chance i got and going to jim's in salt lake and DeAnne's in cedar hills for lessons. i even took my pipes to school to play on lunch breaks! Well all this training and hard work caught up to me because the tuesday before the competition i got horribly sick. i couldn't talk or breath and my head wanted to explode and my lungs wanted to crawl out of my chest! But i had told everybody i knew and their dogs to come to the concert and i had worked too hard to compete to give up. So with an exploding head, i braved the concert and it was fabulous!
Well the next day was the competition. i woke up at five and got myself over to the barclays to get a ride. Well it so happens that the wonderful people i was getting a ride to Davis county with were also giving two of the judges a lift. The piping judge heard hacking up a lung an thought i had swine flu and he would not stand by me even though i reassured him it was nothing more than a horrible no good very bad cough. Well i went to the competition and played my tunes and then waited around anxiously for my scores. Turnes out i got fifth place in one and first place in the other one! who woulda thought?? Well i was really very exited about this but i didn't act like it because after two solo events and my throat trying to suffocate me and i was not a very happy girl. and to further my distress, there were two more band events that are five times more exhausting! but we got first and second place in those, hurray, hurray! Anyway, by the end of the day i just wanted to curl up in a ball and die but some very good things came out of it too. I don't have any pictures from the competiton because i was relying on someone to email them to me but they never came. and sorry this post is so forever long!
