The Blog of Many Melodies

My family and I are vacationing for the second year in a row in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. The six of us (Mom, Dad, Adam, one of mom's coworkers/my third-grade teacher , her mother, and I) are staying in the same cabin we rented last year. We stopped for the night in Ohio on Thursday, then arrived here after a loooong drive yesterday (traffic was slow, but for no particular reason...). Adam, Dad, and I went to Great Smoky Mountains National Park this morning and looked around for a while; we were going to go for a hike, but decided to wait until later next week when there are hopefully fewer people. I also explored my inner photographic talents, bahaha...I'll have to post some of the beauuuutiful pictures I shot from the car's sunroof and window today (lots of great shots of blurry trees). xD It's now after 6pm and the ladies are still out shopping, so hopefully, instead of dinner, we'll mosey on over to Marble Slab Creamery for some ice cream (it's been a frequent stop for us on previous trips). I hope everyone else's Spring Break went/is going well!

As a side note, I have to toot my horn a little bit... Solo & Ensemble was last Saturday (the 27th); I performed in three events: a duet with another trombonist, the school jazz combo, and my solo. The duet was early in the morning (8:20am); we did very well and received a I rating (highest possible) with straight A-pluses on the scoring sheet. Our jazz combo also got a I and we got some good feedback about improvisation sections after we played, which was great. Finally, my solo was in the early afternoon. Since I'm a senior, I had to play under the Proficiency III scoring, where I play my solo, five scales chosen by the adjudicator, and a sightreading exercise. My solo went well (and since it was fairly long, he cut me off at the PERFECT spot, because I didn't want to play the shaky ending portion), and scales were good (I was especially worried about the minor scales, but took them slowly and thankfully didn't mess up), but sightreading had strange rhythms and time signatures that tripped me up a bit. The judge was impressed, though, and much to my surprise, I received a perfect 100 rating, the highest possible score at State Solo & Ensemble. Because of that high score, I was also chosen for the Michigan Youth Arts Festival Honors Orchestra, in which I'll perform in May.
(One more side note...a few of you knew about my Eagle Scout project to do some landscaping for the local office of the American Cancer Society. I haven't been able to personally confirm it, but my mom told me last night that she read it was closing and moving to Lansing (state capital), which means I have no project and two months to find and complete one (it has to be done by the time I turn 18 on June 13). xP It had better not have been a late April Fool's Day joke.)