Sangria and sake

I'm giving myself 15 minutes to write before I jump into everything I have to do today. Last night was a girls night out with 3 of my good friends. It had been too long! As much as I hate to say it, we are kind of like the Sex & the City girls. I'm a Miranda (the independent, career-minded one), in case you were wondering--I just seem like a Charlotte at first glance. Anyway, we spent the night sipping sangrias and martinis, talking and laughing about guys, jobs, and dreams, and doing a little dancing. The boys admired us as we passed, but to my surprise, they left us alone. It was fantastic! I really missed those girls. Tonight I get to see other people it seems like I haven't seen much lately and I have an excuse to wear my Hawaiian dress (luau theme). Why have we all been so busy lately?

After next weekend, things should slow down a little bit. I'm excited about the Japanese Festival. It's an honor to be taking the leader's parts on songs and I think I'm playing them adequately, but I wish he was still playing them instead. I'm kind of proud of myself, though. I just realized that next weekend will be the first time I've ever done a solo dance in front of a big group and all of a sudden, it's no big deal. A solo anything used to make me cringe because it meant that everyone would be looking at me and I couldn't convince myself that they were paying more attention to the other person. Now, it doesn't even matter. I have bigger things to worry about.

I'm proud of the new kids, too. They were decent when they started, but I notice a huge difference in most of them between try-outs and now. I think drilling the parts and not letting them skate by with mistakes really helped. Bad habits are hard to break, so it's best to keep them from forming in the first place, even if that means being picky while they're still just learning a song. When I put it that way, I'm surprised that was a new approach. Anyway, I think it paid off and I think it's going to be a good show, complete with costume changes and well-organized drum movements. It really is a group effort. Someone (an audience member that's somehow affiliated with the group) recently commented that they could always tell the new members from the old members at the festival, but that should be especially challenging this year. We are gearing up to kick some ass...