Marching Lumberjacks and other news
Well,
I am pretty well settled into a routine here at Humboldt State University and I am loving it, for the most part. My top priority has been academics and while I haven't been quite the scholar I would like to be, I haven't done too bad either. I am trying.
I have joined a band. Here at HSU we have a band called the Marching Lumberjacks (HSU's Mascot is the Lumberjacks.) When you think of a marching band, most people see musicians marching in military formation with military uniforms. HSU Marching 'Jacks are nothing like that. Standard band uniform consists of a hard hat, a yellow t-shirt with "Kiss our Axe" on the back, red suspenders and green Ben Davis work pants, one guy wears a kilt. Instead of a baton, the band leader carries a HUGE double bitted axe. In addition to "traditional" band instruments, they have someone who plays electric bass (with an amp strapped to their back) and, occasionally, someone who plays the keg (beer keg.)
Now, most of you know that my primary instrument is piano, but I am playing an accordion in the band. That's right, the HSU Marching Lumberjacks now have an accordion player. When I saw how wacky the band was, I thought "I bet they'll take me." So now I am lugging my 120 bass accordion across campus twice a week for practice. I practice on my own an additional two or three days a week. I wish I could do more but I have schoolwork to think about. I do not know the tunes well enough to perform with the band so by my own choice I am sitting out most of this fall's gigs, but I hope to be playing with the band in the winter.
I am doing my darndest to make friends and I actually think I am not doing half badly. It really helps that a) I am living on campus so that I see my classmates out of class, and b) my Dad brought me up to be very outgoing.
By the way, I've changed the way comments work on the blog. You will now have to type in a visual code (it will give you a bunch of letters that you have to type in manually). Click on the Post Comments button and you can leave a message anonymously. It's an extra step, I know, but hopefully this little gimmick allows you to post while preventing people from spamming me, which happens. I am getting a little bit of spam and it's annoying so I want to see if this cuts down on the spamming.
I may revert to Andrew Sullivan's system (http://www.andrewsullivan.com/), which is to ask that any comments be emailed to me and I will post the most interesting ones, but that's an extra step which I would rather not do.
We'll see, but in the meantime, the posting is still functioning, so why don't you guys discuss it on the blog?
John Imrie 1149 Pepperwood 355 Granite Ave #1149 Arcata, CA 95521
http://thesloop.blogspot.com/
posted by John Imrie at Sunday, September 25, 2005
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