Another Day in the Country

I had to drive to Abilene today, but I decided to take a detour and experience some country roads. These were taken with my new cheap sony cybershot. Obviously, I'm still getting used to it but I'm pretty pleased. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. It was an enjoyable little rest stop. :D

I Hate Losing...

we got third. Second I could have dealt with, but third? Seriously? And could we have had a worse judge judging GE. Ridiculous.

Not to mention that a random monsoon happened while we were there. I got hailed pelted in my face and was soaking wet until I air-dryed.

AND I severely disagreed with someone on staff.

If it wasn't for the kids, I would have left. Sometimes I think I prefer the kids to adults.

So now I'm "celebrating" by having the day to myself and meeting up with an old friend tonight.

I love mail!!!

There's something about receiving mail that makes me giddy. Maybe it's the thrill of knowing someone took the time to hand write a letter rather than taking the easy way of email or a phone call.

I received this from my friend Jason. I think it's funny how he put the USA on my letter. It's just so old school. I wish I had lived back in the days were letter writing was predominant. Where young girls awaited letters from their soldiers overseas. When everyone knew the post master or the mailman. What happened to those times?

Obsessive...

I have to admit, once I dive into any/all things Hurricane Ike/Gilchrist related, I can't stop. It's so hard to break away. I want to know everything. I want to know everyone's opinions. I want to track down the people who leave ridiculous comments about how people deserved to die because they didn't evacuate or how Gilchrist and Rollover Pass doesn't matter because their land in Crystal Beach is better. I've been looking at articles for the past two hours. I'm about just to have to shut my computer to make it stop. Why do I miss it so much?

Short and Sweet

I realized I've kept up my food blog like I thought, but not so much this one. Every time I want to write, it's like an epic novel. I've decided anytime I have a thought, it's going on here. Much like updating facebook status. So sometimes I might have one sentence posts. But don't worry, because I know you love them so much, my standard 3 page long posts will still be on here. ;)

Hi, I'm Amanda and I'm a Band Nerd...

it's true. I was one in high school. I took band seriously. I volunteered for everything possible. In eighth grade, I was the color guard helper. My freshman year, I volunteered for drum line. My junior year I campaigned like a mad man to become band president. After my successful election, :-D, I worked hard to pull off the best band banquet ever. I became a music major in college (for a year). I joined a student group just for performing percussionist. I marched drum corps. My sophomore year of college, I started teching high school lines. At first it was just my high school. Then, the unthinkable happened. I actually got hired by someone else not my alma mater. I started working at schools across the state. I TAUGHT drum corps. NOW, at twenty-six years of age, I still teach band. I can't get away from it. It's a part of my life.

That's me in the red shirt, don't pay attention to that bass drum.
I'm teaching with an indoor drumline at a school in the Houston area. This Friday is STATE CHAMPIONSHIPS. I'm a little excited and a little nervous all at the same time. You see, we, the staff, have been working on this program since mid-December. It comes up in conversation at least once a day. I have no had a free weekend in 2009 YET. It's all been dedicated to indoor. Last year, I taught with the same staff, different kids, different school. We won EVERY competition we went to. Except of course, championships. It was a total killer. Those kids worked their little A's off and they deserved it. The hooker school that got first at championship was a bunch of tools and acted like because they were the bigger school and bigger name, they should have gotten it simply because they had for the past 5 years or something ridiculous like that. F'em....Anyways, I'm still bitter about that. Not even gonna lie. These are my kids from last year. Notice how only two of them are smiling; the rest were fighting back tears.


I'm so nervous that it could happen again this year. It's been almost an exact repeat of last year. We got bumped up to an advance class. We've won first every competition, except for one. I'm hoping that's our only second place we get this year. There's nothing worse than to look in the eyes of a kid who's been defeated/disappointed/had their spirits crushed. We have one last rehearsal tomorrow and the big show is Friday evening. I hope this one has better results!

Everybody's Gotta Get Away Sometime...

so says Pat Green. This has been a crazy stressful week. We've had more than one work "emergency" pop up, actually three to be exact. One of which involved me driving almost 8 hours to get to Waco for an hour meeting. I've also recently undertaken the position of fighting to keep Rollover Pass and Gilchrist alive which involved driving to High Island Monday night for a meeting, getting elected to the Board of Directors for the Gilchrist Community Association, then racing back from Waco to attend the Galveston County Commissioners Workshop hearing about closing down Rollover Pass. The implications of it's closing brings a fear to my heart that can't even be explained. If the pass is closed, I feel that Gilchrist will never be able to fully recover. In turn, I feel that Bolivar Peninsula will no longer be the way it was (which is something 86% of Crystal Beach can't seem to understand). Today, after my way home from that meeting, I got stuck on I-45. Not just a little bit of traffic, but stopped. I might as well have put my car in park. I then took the first exit ramp, which naturally was three miles down the road. By then it was 5. I spent the next 40 minutes trying to go 8 miles. It was painful. It wasn't helped by the fact that a friend told me, "Well I would NEVER go that way." There's not many other options to get from Galveston to Pasadena other than 45 genius. Thanks a lot. By the way, if you want to keep your life, you should probably never tell me to NOT do something when I'm in an already bad mood. Just a helpful hint.

FINALLY a good song came on the radio. I rolled down my windows and tried to enjoy it. The cool breeze. The warm sun. The wind blowing my hair. Ahhh. It was just what I needed. I decided to continue my windows-down driving with a little Pat Green, because those two ALWAYS go together. Coincidentally, it was also a part of the drive that I finally left the neighboorhoods and 47 stop lights in a row. There was just a wide open field.

Baby's just a little bit tired of the city,
Billboards and bullshit got her down,
Seem like you need a little hill country,
A Little back roads driving, little bit of the old top down.

That's EXACTLY what I needed. There is few things that can bring more joy to my heart than good music on my stereo, sunny day, all my windows down and a country road. I realized I began to get frustrated because, not to brag, but I can find twenty alternate routes down back roads to get from point A to point B without using a highway. However, there were none, I was trapped. In the city. With no grass. And no cows. My version of hell (well one of them). Suddenly, I was imagining one of the many routes I could take home to Gilchrist. There was always a small road I was eagerly waiting to discover that would make my afternoon. I just can't tell you how much I love driving out in the country. So next time you get frustrated, put on your favorite music, roll down the windows and just start driving!