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Stage Band came second, but only cause friends had a singer. The aduticater went SINGER!!! tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick and they won, even though there band was really sloppy and we played tons better according to the everyone...except the aduticater :-(

Concert Band prob came about third, but we don't really know. They only give out first and second. But again, everyone said we were good. Hobart Wind symph won and Ogalvie came second. Stupid Ogalvie girls. Simon had them all actually singing their tunes in one section. And they were all in harmony and it sounded really good and the aduticator went tick happy again and they beat us :( But at least they deserved it!

The next event on my calender: Arts Evening on thursday :)

Estedfords

Estedfords tomorrow! Clarence is only in three sections - with Junior Concert, Senior Concert and Senior Stage. Junior Stage is too embarrasing, so Mac decided they couldn't compete ;)

I'm in both Senior groups and we're gonna win! We have to win! Especially Stage. We're in a section of three - us, Friends and Newtown. Newtown should be sinch and Freidns is only one of the most expensive schools in Hobart. You know, no biggy!

Concert's got a good chance too. Except we've got a really bad history of forgetting everything we've worked on when we get to estedfords. One of the pieces we're playing is absolutely awesome, so if we can pull that off, Mac reckons we're in with a shot.

Smile!

I'm in a happy mood today. I don't really know why, but its good. It's sunny and warm (for tassy anyway) and I had a really good music withdrawal last period. And it was with all da grade 10s and Simon made me play music I'd never seen before and I didn't fail too much :-) and Sam said that I'm gonna have to play 1st trombone in concert band next year and I said I'm gonna be playing 1st flute and then Cris said I'm gonna be the best at both so I'll have to do both. Like, at the same time. Which is kinda stupid, seeing as I'm actually good at flute, whereas at trombone there just isn't anyone else. But yeah, I was the only grade nine there and I felt really included which makes me feel special cause back when I was in grade 7 these people used to hate me!

I'm happy today! :-)

Birthdays, Band and Bikes

Well, here I am. Back in Tassie. Back in the world of cold and rain and disfunctional sunshine that doesn't make you warm. *sigh*

It was Mum's Bday on Wednesday, and she had a really good day (I think). I got her Boggle (which she's now addicted to) and a little box which said 'Why we love you...' and contained messages from her friends and family. Thx to anyone reading this who contributed! :-) I also took the others shopping, and Beck got her an ABBA CD (cause she got so excited wheneva I played ABBA in the car in Queensland :-), Kez got her a crossword book and Ray got her a scrabble dictionary.

Its my Bday 2moz! 15! It sounds so old, but on the other hand its not that special. It doesn't let you do anything much. It doesn't let you drive or drink or anything. It just means things cost me more (like the cinema) :-(. But it does mean I get pressants! And a party! My party's on Saturday and Its chocolate themed. We're gonna play The Amazing Race round Howrah and Bellerive and then come back here for food and party games :-) Its gonna be so much fun!

We're back at school, and Mac's making us have 2 band rehersals every week, so we're really good for NZ. The extra one last week was at 7:30am! But just about everyone was there, and we worked really well, so I guess we'll do some more of them! Apparently Newtown does them once a week! Poor Newtown Boys! It was so wierd though, going from band to school! And I was a bit tired all day, but who really cares.

And I couldn't play Trombone all week last week. Cause of my elbow.

On Monday, so thats the day after we got back from Queensland, it was a public holiday. We went for a BBQ at Talosa St park with the Walkers (Jacqui's family) and the Franks (friends of Jacqui's family's). There's this massive mountain bike park that we went and rode round and it was awesome and I didn't fall off! Yay! But then we went riding around the bitumen road to visit all the little playgrounds. And then I did fall off.

I was going down a hill, and I was coming up to a speedhump. I was slowing down for it a bit, but then I hit it. And my tire burst. And I flew over the handle bars and hit the ground on my stomache and totally winded myslef and slid for a few meters before I stopped. It looked so specky! But Bernard was the only one who saw, cause the other were all up infront.

Anyway, apparently the look on my face was like, 'oh. I fell off.' Like it was enevitable. And at first it was cool. Like, nothing hurt and I'm always fine so I assumed it'd be the same. Then I looked at my hand. Blood. someone pointed out me elbow. Blood. I looked at my top (It was a really nice purple one with butterflies) Holes! And my jeans! Holes! I was devistated. But then I started to hurt. My grazes started stinging. My shoulder started throbbing. My knee started doing a wierd mixture of both. I must have landed so badly! But I'm getting better now. Just about everything's scabbed over and my shoulder's fine again. But for a few days there everything was very painful!

Misc

Grandma came and Grandma went. I survived. I slept (or not) in the twins room. I officially hate thin foam matresses.

Jacqui met Grandma, and she pretended to be all nice and sweet and grandma-ish. She even refrained from giving out sloppy kisses and biting ears! But then, on the other hand, Jacqui is starting to doubt the survear-ness of my grandma problems. Which rate 11 on a scale of 1 to 10.

I only got into one big extended arguement with her. It started cause we were watching Australia, and she was saying how the stolen generation wasn't actually like that. How the Aboriginal mothers were happy to send their children of to English schools. How they wanted their kids to learn the valuable life skill the Europeans had to offer. How the Kids were fighting for possistions. Says Grandma.

Um, no. What kind of mothers want to send their kids of and never see them again? And they were learning! They were learning how to survive as an Aboriginal. They didn't need white-people schools! With reading and Writing and Maths!

But no, says Grandma. Aboriginal mothers are different from us. They don't mind who's looking after their kids as long as their being looked after. They were happy to hand their kids over to the church!

Hmm, yes. That really makes sense. Stupid racist old fool.

I was at band all day today. As in, I wasn't at church today. And we were talking about it infront of her before she left. And she started lecturing me on being a good christian! Cause she can really talk, can't she!!!

I could go on and on about this forever, but your probably all sick of it as is, so I'll stop.

I went to band today. We're really progressing! We've got 5 pieces working well and another 7 that are getting there! New Zealand is becoming more and more realistic!

I'm going on grade 8 camp next week! If you remember, our grade 8 camp was really bad, but this one's gonna be awesome! It goes for two nights (not one) and its and Spring Beach (rather than Orana) in Orford (not Lauderdale)! They get to do absailing and kiaching and rockclimbing and all these other cool things. And we're going as leaders! Me, Jacqui, Kelsey, Ellen and Emma! We were picked over a bunch of grade 10s and several other grade 9s! Pretty good, don't you think! :-) And it gives us a good idea of who they're gonna think about for prefect!

And finally, we are of to Queensland for 16 days over the June Holidays! More details coming soon!

Car Wash

All that time ago on election day, we had a carwash at school to raise money for our band tour to NZ. I just found these photos on my camera when I was getting of all the photos of our eater break. Mum took them when I wasn't there! Enjoy!

My band friends washing cars. :-)

Chris being a freak in a wet suite and lifejacket. As usual. :-) See the guy behind him with the red and black shoes? He used to have light brown hair, then he tryed to dye it dark brown, and it went red. Lol :-)

The BBQ when Dad was working there.

Chocolates

I'm selling chocolates at the moment - fundraising for band tour. I sell them for a dollar each, which means I make 40 cents of each chocolate. if you sell then for the RRT (recommended retail price - $1.20), then you make 60 cents a chocolate. But you sell more if you only sell em for $1. I don't know why I'm telling you all this. I guess i'm just bored.

I got ten boxes of chocolates on Thursday arvo last week. There's 48 chocolates in each box and the ten of them cost me $288. When I've sold them all I'll have made a profit of just over $200. Pretty good, hey? and I've already sold 106 of them with Rachel's help.

I've got Caramello, milk chocolate, White chocolate, Pineapple, Cherry ripe, Crunchie, Summer Roll and Honey Nougat Roll. I'm having to be really careful not to eat too many myself - but its so hard when your constantly looking at them!

Life

What a boring title for a post. Life. but thats what its about, so I guess I should warn you of the boring-ness of this post by giving it a boring title.

Band's started again. Which is good, except that senior stage is way too hard and I'm the only one on my part so I need to be able to play...scary.

On Saturday morning Dad and I went fishing at Dunnally. It was tons of fun, but I wasn't even supposed to be there! The plan had been for Dad to take Rachel and Jordy and Mum! But Jordy couldn't go, so then Rachel decided that she didn't want to go. Then Mum decided that she really couldn't leave us kids at home for the morning...the twins didn't want to go, so I got to go again yay!

Oh yeah, I went with Dad to Dunally the weekend before. We caught 55 flathead, a squid and 3 sharks. the sharks were awesome, but unfortunately its a shark safe place thingy. So we couldn't keep any of them :-( the biggest one was 1.5m long-ish and it was mine!!!

Anyway, on Saturday we only got 44 flathead. Still a lot, but not quiet as good as before. We were out till 1:30, cause we didn't know the time cause my fone went flat :-) It really good, though, cause it was sunny the whole time! (the time with the sharks it started raining on us while we were cleaning) It takes a long long time to clean that many fish! Over an hour!

On Saturday afternoon we went to Clifton beach (our local surf beach). I took my friend Lucinda with me and I knew Loren was gonna be there cause we were texting. And then Louisa and Caroline were both htere too! So we had an apsolutely awesome time in the waves, body surfing and boogie boarding and everything else! It was really hot but the sun of the morning had dissapeared. :-(

Sunday we had a church bbq, which was cool. We played soccer with tunnel vision. Like you know how when your a kid you make binoculars out of toilet rolls? Well, we were playing soccer with these things on! Its fun to play and even more fun to watch!!!

Monday was boring, just a normal day. Mr Hird was trying to explain factorising and expanding and all that. He took half an hour and still no one got it! So then I had to explain it to everyone again. And, strangly, it only took me 5 minutes and everyone at my table understood! He must be a really hopeless teacher, even Jacqui had npo clue what he was on about!

Today was an activeties day and grade nine (my grade) went to glenorcy pool. It was awesome! Glenorcy has the most awesome slide and we could go on it again and again and again. We also got to play on the foam floaty mats and just muck around with our friends all day! It was so good! And did you know that bogans stop being bogans at the pool??? Its seriously amazing! They were, like, NORMAL PEOPLE! Who would have guessed? It was even possible to have conversations with them and some of them are actually really nice! I reackon we should go to the pool more often! :-)

I hope you aren't all asleep. But thats my life at the mo.

Bored

Its five days since my last post and I'm utterly bored right now so I'll tell you some utterly unimportant details of my utterly uninteresting life.

Mr Hird is getting worse - I actually tryed my hardest to understand what he was saying yesterday and only just managed to make sence of it. Not cause its particularly hard or confusing - just cause he's a bad teacher. Then I had to explain it to my friend Jacqui who is also one of the smartest kidsin my year and my friend Allicia who is really going to struggle with maths this year if Mr Hird doesn't pick up his game. We were the only ones who bothered to work. Mr Hird didn't even seem to notice that the rest of the class did nothing all lesson.

Um, what else can I say? I was dissapointed with Sunday night's Dr Who. I thought they could have done a lot better. It just wasn't freaky enough. I hope part two is an improvement.

Band starts on Thursday, which will be good cause then I'll at least have something to do.

TOUR!

Tour. Its all over now. It was so much fun and I got so tired and its good to be home and I can't wait to do it again next year!

I won't tell you too many boring details, I'll just post a lot of photos with a few bits of writing.

We spent a lot of time on busses. A LOT. 5 hours on Sunday arvo. Almost 2 hours on Monday, about 3 hours on Tuesday, an hour and a half on Wednesday and 45 minutes-ish on Thursday. We filled in this time talking, listening to Ipods, playing Yatzee and catching up on our sleep. In this photo you have Loren and Jacqui with the Ipod and Griggssy and Hill leaning over the seat.

On Monday we went surfing! Well, we also played at St Marys Distric High; but surfing was way more fun! In this photo we're getting ready to paddle out to the beach with the waves.

Here we are surfing. The waves were huge and it was really cold and Lorens feet turned blue - but I didn't have a problem cause its the first time I've ever experienced the wonder of wetsuits!

I even stood up on my board! It was only for about 2 seconds, but still - it was something. And it was so much fun trying that no-one really cared about actually being able to surf!

This is our band playing at Dodges Ferry Primary. We played at schools all over the east coast - St Hellens, St Marys, Swansea, Triabunna, Orford, Dodges Ferry and Sorell.

Me playing in the band at Dodges. It got a bit boring playing the same pieces over and over again, but the kid's reactions were amazing! They listened so carefully and they really seemed to enjoy hearing our music!

In this picture we are playing 'A Musical Fairytale' by RT Honeyman. Its a really cool piece because we tell the story of a king and a prince and a princess and it really funny! Zac tells the story and we accompany him with tunes to help tell the story. All the primary school kids love it - but Simon won't let us play it to any high school kids. :-(

You are probably wondering why we are banging on a window. Well here's the answer - Hannah's Ipod dock was inside the room and we were stuck out side. Mrs Ross confiscated Hannah's dock because it was 'too loud'. Which is kinda hard to believe, seeing as it wasn't turned on. So we protested. We banged on the window and we yelled at her and we sung out of tune Xmas Charols with Sam accumpenying us on Cornet. Then we sang Amazing Grace and Sconnie kept yelling at us cause he didn't get how we all knew all the words. I don't get that either. Our whole band was there protesting and we just about all knew the words to Amazing Grace! Amazing!

Anyway, the teachers thought our protest was halerious. They recored it on thier cameras and they teased us with the dock and the Mrs Barrot went to the grade 10 boy's room and stold their complementary milk out of the fridge. Then she drank it in front of all of us! So we started chanting 'milk, milk, milk, milk, milk!' And banging all our pots and panns. Simon decided then that we were making too much noise and got us to try negotiating. That didn't really work. We tryed negotiating by ourselves, which didn't work cause Ms Ross and Mrs Barrot just laughed at us. Then Simon helped us. He took Griggssy into the girl teachers room and Briddy got in too. Then she yanked the door open and we all got in. We grabbed the dock and Sconnie grabbed Mrs Ross's Ipod and then we ran out. But we forgot the cord for the Ipod dock! So then we spent another half an hour trying to get the cord for the dock back. We eventually swapped Mrs Ross's Ipod for Hannah's Ipod dock cord.

On Thursday arvo we played at the Orford fair. It was so cool cause everything was free! Free ice-cream, free popcorn, free sausges, free facepainting, free EVERYTHING! I was in heaven!

Here you have Kelsey, Briddy, me and Hannah after several free sausages, a free ice cream, a free bag of popcorn and free face-painting. But then we had to go play to provide Orford with free entertainment. :-(

Anyway, tour was awesome and Simon sais that we were good so he'll take us to NZ next year!

TOUR

We leave 2moz! I seriously can't wait! I'm nearly all packed and I'm going to see New Moon 2nite! Ray went with Jordy last night and she said it was really good. The guy who plays Jacob (Taylor somethin) is really hot - so much hotter than Robert Patterson (Edward Cullen)! When Ray was there he took his top off and half the girls in the theatre like screamed or sumthin!!! I won't do that. I'm not that retarded! I'm going at 6:40 with Jacqui and Loren and Sara. Just about everyone else has already seen it.

Oh yeah! Thats right! I was talking about tour! Well we leave at 12 2moz and I'm starting to get nervous! Everyone sais its really fun and I got the right people in my room (Loren, Jacqui, Hayley and me), but still, I'm nervous. I'm sitting with hayley on the bus on the way up to St Helens. 5 hours! definately the worst part of tour!

Band, Band, Band

Anual Bands Concert last night. Junior Concert Band is over for the year. Gotta learn my Junior Stage Band charts. Senior Concert Band rehersal tomorrow night. Junior Stage Band playing at Clarence Celebrates in 2 weeks. Band tour in three days.

As you can see, my life is full of band, just like always. I had my last performance as a member of the Junior Concert Band last night. We played 4 pieces at Clarences anual bands concert, including Walk Like an Egyptian. I also played in Junior Stage Band on Trombone. We played 4 pieces; Twist and Shout (which I can't really play), Stand by Me, Fast Break and Happy Together (of the Smiths Thinly Cut add 'If you like thinly cut - we do - then these will be the chips for you - the chips from who? - the chips from Smiths, the ones you love, so happy toge-ther' Its also in Shrek and The Simpsons Movie).

Senior Concert Band played three pieces, and I got to play Timpini in one of them! (timpini is the wierd tuned drum and I can't tune them so i had to get Dylan to tune them for me).

We got out of the whole day of school yesterday to practise for the concert and we get the whole of next week of for...

TOUR!!!

If any of you actually care what we're doing on Tour, tell me in comments. Not that your likely to have read this far down this increadably boring post anyway. Anyway, Tour will be absolutely awesome and I'd love to tell you but I don't want to bore you to death.

Not all bad...

Ok. So we didn't rock at the estedfords. But neither did we fail. We just weren't as good as Clarence should be.

The Junior Stage band got a merit. The Junior Concert band didn't place. The Training Band got a merit. The Senior Stage Band came second. The Senior Concert Band won. That sound fairly normal...FOR OGALVIE!!!! Not for us. We're better than that. We should be better than that. We have to be better than that! But we weren't. :(

There's always next year.

Friday

Today was the best day ever. Well, just about. Get this! We only had to go to half of homegroup, then we went to a Senior Band withdrawal. Then a break. Then a Junior Band withdrawal. Then a break. Then sport. Then Stage Band at lunch. Then...guess what?...another withdrawal!!! How cool is that day!!!

Btw: a withdrawal is where we get to skip class to do band practise. Sometimes its with the whole band, sometimes its just your section, and sometimes its an ensemble group - like our Flute Quartet in 4th period today.

Today we missed Woodwork, SOSE and Maths. I hate SOSE and Maths, so thats makes it even better.

Did anyones Friday beat that? I bet it didn't!

Awesome!!!

We had our last rehersal b4 the estedfords today and Junior Concert Band sounded AWESOME! Even Simon couldn't find anything wrong with us! After our first piece he juust said, 'you're gonna win.' The grade nines in the next room (who never seem to say anything nice) even said it was sounding great!

Estedfords are on Monday, so i hope we don't lose our awesome-ness before then. :)

Estedfords Again

Well, we are coming up to the next lot of Estedfords. This time I am playing 4 times. With the Junior Stage Band, the Junior Concert Band, the Senior Concert band and my flute quartet.

I hope we do well, but I don't think we've got that much of a chance.

To start with, the aduticater's mostly deaf. So he'll be judging a lot from how we look. And we can compete with places like Friends and Colegiate when it comes to playing - but when it comes to uniform they are way out of our leage. Which is really not fair on us.

Plus, the Junior Stage Band seems to have gotten worse. I think its cause that band used to be all grade 8s and now we've got grade 7s aswell. Which means that our sound has gotten way worse, even though we now have more players. But I've definately improved! :)

Junior Stage is playing Happy Together (from Shrek), The Peanut Vender and Stand By Me (which we played last estedford too). We were hoping to play Twist and Shout, but we didn't get there.

Junior Concert is playing Into The Clouds, How Can I Keep From Singing, and probably Friend Like Me (from Aladin). We want to play The Final Countdown, but Simon said no, because its not technical enough to do any good.

Senior Concert is playing Sabre Dance and King Across the Water. If we manage to suddenly improve we'll also play The Greek Folk Suite, which is really hard cause its written in 7:8. So you have to count one-and-ah, two-and, three-and; one-and-ah, two-and, three-and.

You're propably asleep, but oh well. I don't have anything better to do this arvo than bore my reletives to death.

Retard.

I'm really hate retarded kids. I really really hate them. I know we're all ment to be exceptant and everything, and I would be exceptant of them - if they went to there own schools and didn't mess up our schools. I mean, Clarence is messed up enough already without some stupid retards messing it up even more.

At lunch 2day one of the retarded kids went mental. Someone said something to him and he just lost it. I don't know what was said to him, but he really went off! He started bashing up twwo grade nine boys - both at once. Mrs palmer (who's my English teacher) tryed to calm him down, but then he tryed to hit her too. Thats the story I heard, but even if it wasn't that, it was something else pretty serious, cause they locked us all away in our home rooms untill they could catch him.

Half way through lunch there was an anouncment that we all had to go to our home rooms for an 'attendance check'. It was fairly wierd - the principal, who usually spends her whole life in her office, sent the message over the PA, so we all knew it was something out of the ordinary.

The most anyoying thing was that we were in the middle of a band rehersal. And we still had to go back to our homerooms. Personally, I think we were a lot safer in the music room with Simon (Mr Reade) and Miss Badcock and Sam (a grade nine boy) and Dylan (he's 18 and he helps out with percussion) than stuck in home group with Mrs Burgess. Stupid teacher. She wouldn't even let us look out the window so we could watch them try to catch the retard.

The school had to call the kids family to come and get him cause they couldn't manage to calm him down enough to catch him. It took 20 minutes before they let the school out of lock down.

My question is; If this kid is retarded enough to be a threat to the whole school, then whats he doing there in the first place?

Band Camp

From Monday to Thursday last week I was on a Band Camp. It was tons of fun, but it would have been more fun if the weather had been nicer. We were staying at Orana Guide Camp, on Lauderdale beach, and we all had our bathers with us hoping for a swim. But it only stopped raining once, and even then, it wasn't exactly sunny and warm.

I thought I'd share a few photos with you, tel you a bit about it.

This first photo is of my friend Loren, with Dylan, one of the Tutors. He's 19 and he's a percussionest. It was both their birthdays on the monday, Loren's 14th and Dylan's 19th, so we made them cakes. Me and Loren and Kelsey and Hayley made two huge cakes at my place on Sunday afternoon. There was enough cake to go round aproximately 65 students and 10 tutors with leftovers.


We also decorated the cakes. In this photo Loren is standing in front of Dyaln's cake (which looks like it belongs to a six-year-old girl) and Dylan is standing in front of Loren's cake (the chocolate one with 'loren' written on it).

Here is a photo of them blowing out the candles of there own cakes.


The next photo is of the freaks I had to share my room with. These freaks are also known as my friends. Jacqui wasn't there for this photo, she came later cause she had sailing monday-tuesday.


Sammy is up the top in the blue hoodie, she's a grade 7 and she plays percusion. Loren is in the pink, she's one of my 4 closest friends and she plays trumpet. Kelsey is at the bottom leaning over everyone else. She plays bass clarienet and can be really nice...when she feels like it. Halyey is the other one. She's one of my three closest friends and she plays flute and trombone, like me.



Pillow fights! Sammy's arm is smashing a pillow into Loren and Hayley is about to, too.


And here's a photo of Jacqui durring a pillow fight. She's also (as you all probably know) one of my three closest friends.

Our room was such a mess! We had stuff everywhere! We even pulled our matress onto the floor so we could jump from bunk to bunk with out risking hurting ourselves. At one stage only really skiny people could get in and out of our door.

Anyway, it was tons of fun and I'll go again next year, as long as my friends are going again.

Holidays

Well, this is the first day I've spent at home for the whole of the holidays so far. I've been on Band Camp, I've been at Lake Leake, I've fallen out of a boat, I've gotten covered in mud, I've stayed up till half past two in the morning; all in the space of 7 days.

More soon. And photos.

My Finger

On friday in sport we were playing Fitball-Basketball. Thats where you play basket ball with one of those bit fitness balls. Anyway, I hit the ball and my finger must have bent some way it wasn't ment to, cause it really hurt.

I didn't think there was anything wrong with it, it just really hurt, so I kept playing. It wasn't till I was back in the change rooms that I actually looked at it and realised it was swelling really badly.

You probably think its slightly wierd that I got injured and didn't even look at it. But I just expected it too stop hurting and be fine in 5 minutes. And there was only another 10 minutes of class so it wasn't till it was still hurting after that I decided there was something wrong with it.

I had an ice pack on it for all of lunch and then I went to maths. I couldn't write and it was still really hurting (and I hate maths) so I went home. I had my fingers bandaged together for the rest of riday and mmost of Saturday. By Saturday night they were feeling a lot better, thogh they were still swollen and a fairly impressive shade of purple, and I had to face a really hard decision - band.

I'm in senior band. And senior band has Sunday rehersals. Mac likes to remind us constantly that these Sunday rehersals are fairly essential. We do so much more work on Sundays because we aren't all tired and silly. We consentrate more and just sound better. So it was just my luck that the Sunday my finger was recovering we had a band rehersal.

I went and I played. My finger seemed to be coping OK, but it was starting to hurt more by the end of the 3 hour rehersal. I turned out that it was a really bad idea to go to band because by Sunday night my finger was hurting tons again and the swelling had gotten worse. But it's getting better again now and I hope that this time I'll help it to stay better.