Day 74

July 7th

Yay, day off! I slept in and had my usual Oatmeal in bed :) Then after some lounging, I went shopping and bought some much needed cleaning supplies and snacks. I also bought milk for my tea and Oatmeal. It's been interesting drinking tea without milk. I have been buying the ones that I drink without milk, but I have some Earl Grey that I would love to put some milk into! Then I ran off to lunch and spent most of the afternoon talking to mom and Dustin. After showing off the summer dress I bought and watching some TV with the guys, we went for supper. After supper Stevenson and I went on a 2.5 hour bike ride and explored the richer end of the city. We found the Prime Minister's house and other huge mansions. We also found the Rideau Hall property and ran around in the sprinklers there! Then we found a really nice view by an ice cream store and explored that area by going down to the water (Ottawa River) and walking around. On the way home, we biked past a really nice waterfall. When we got back, I introduced him to MASH! Ottawa is so beautiful!

Day 73

July 6th

Another extremely hot and humid parade this morning. We even did our uniform inspection inside to minimize the amount of time spent outside. I decided to go into the air conditioned band room when we got to the drill hall this time. It was like a fridge in there! Thankfully no one went down today! Not only am I getting better at playing on the march, but I am getting better at playing really loud too! I listened to a few videos that ppl took of the parades and you really can't hear the bass very much. Also, on my days off I hear them doing a quick practice on the parade square and I can't hear the bass much then either. I heard at lunch today that for the rest of the week we won't be doing the full dismount because it's just too hot. We will simply walk behind the West Block of Parliment and finish up over there. When we got back to our rooms this afternoon, we were all happy to notice that the air conditioning had been fixed! We got to have an afternoon rehearsal in comfortable civis (normal clothes) and we voted to start at 1 instead of 1:30. I really don't know what ppl are complaining about here. I think this is the easiest job ever, if you can beat the heat... I spent some time before supper watching a few episodes of MASH. I miss that show lol. This evening I went to salsa class #2 and we basically did a huge review of last week and did the half turn in more detail since we only spent like 10 mins on it at the end of last class. There were 3 new ppl who showed up which was great, but slowed it down a bit. I don't mind the extra practice and I learned a bit of "styling" on the half turn. Basically it's when the ladies shoot their arms up or to the side to make it look good. Then I decided to do a power walk all the way back to Carleton. I was pleased to have done about 7km in 1hour and 10mins. When i got back I had a shower and made some organic chamomile cirtus tea. wow, that is good!

Day 72

June 5th

This parade went really well for me too! It was sooo hot outside that I sweat through my tunic...things to do in life, check! The only bummer was that the other Euphonium player went down today. She has been here for 5 years and this was the first time she went down. I just remember not hearing her come in for the pipe tune and then I saw her on the grass. We had a concert rehearsal in the afternoon and the air conditioning was not on. So that plus the extreme heat in the morning (I think it was 30? It got to 32 by noon) made my body turn my planned 45min nap into a 4 hour nap! crazy! I wanted to go swimming and then out for sushi, but that didn't happen. I also slept through the supper time, so I made oatmeal. Thank goodness for my little stash of food here :) Then I watched some TV with Stevenson on his computer while polishing my boots, and now I can't sleep and it's 12:30 and 25 degrees in my room. Well, I better try.

Day 71

June 4th

Happy USA Day! lol We played a lot of Sousa on the march this morning. I was a bit nervous about the march while in the band room, but as soon as we stepped off I felt great and was playing a lot! I was able to play the Washington Post without taking any breaks and made it through most of El Capitan too. I felt great on the hill and I think this was my best Parade yet! We had a nice long break in the afternoon before getting ready to go on the evening gig. We met at 2:30 and took off for the US Ambassador's House. Wow, the houses there are HUGE and the whole property was beautiful and also HUGE! There were food/alchohol tents set up everywhere and they were organized by origin. There was mexican, Polish, Greek and American? There were probably more but I didn't look at all of them. There was also a dessert tent with cheese and fruit. I have not had real cheese since I started this job, and I really miss cherries, grapes and strawberries. We played our set and then we were given 45ish mins to go mingle and eat! I had 2 glasses of wine that take effect quicker when you are sweating and mildly dehydrated. There were so many cameras and news stations there, it was crazy! When we got back, I went rollerblading with Stevenson and another trombone player (can't remember his name!) who were on their bikes. We got downtown and bought fruitopia from McDonalds for $1! I got the large and I'm sure it was at least a litre. Then we were set to do the same rout that I did yesterday, but faster! We went to the Champlain bridge and went a little further to the big island where we skipped some stones and I waded in the Ottawa River. The water was really warm, probably because it's so shallow. When we got back, I was tired. So I did my boots and drank some tea. I'm amazed at how much I am drinking here. At home I can get away with not drinking anything all day, but here I drink litres and litres every day. 2 full glasses with every meal, tea in the evening plus anything they give us before parade. Oh well, I watched another episode of Hell's Kitchen and went to bed shortly after that.

Day 70

July 3rd

Ok, So the march up to the hill was great today. I was playing lots and thinking wow, I've never done so well on parade before! Colonel Bogey and other marches that have pretty good euph parts, it was a good march up (no face smashing lol) Then we started 10 Provinces which we play every morning as we step onto the hill. At least most ppl like the piece, it has enough key changes and the instrumentation is pretty clever for a march. Well, I realized that I forgot to add that piece to my stack in the morning, so I tried to play as much as I could off my heart. I think I have about 20-25% of it memorized which is pretty good for me because I suck at memorizing and never actually tried to memorize it anyways. We did our counter march and stood at attention for the guards to do their thing. After a few minutes of standing, I was starting to feel nauseous like I did the first time I wore my forge cap for an inspection. I kept breathing deep, wiggled my toes and did all the things I could think of to make the feeling of vomiting go away. We played our first inspection tune and I was still doing pretty good, but the pipe tune was when things took a turn for the worse. We played it through 1.5 times and I played it all the first time and then had to stop because I was getting dizzy. On the D.S. I just stood there and breathed. I felt better and thought I was good to go again and started playing....baaaaaad idea! Then I got really dizzy and tipped back/left but caught myself. However I did not catch myself on the tip forwards and I went down :[ The two most common reasons for going down are: hung over/still drunk or "bear bite". I had bear bite and learned that you can actually adjust your bear while on parade if you really have to. Too bad I learned that the hard way (after going down) I was so mad when they took me off the hill because after I had my bear off for about 10 minutes, I felt so much better. I was a little shaky, but that's all. I took the bus home with the rest of the band and thought I'd get made fun of, but they were really helpful and gave me all kinds of tips on how to not get bear bite. Then they complained that we are never told how to not get bear bite or not faint due to circulation loss. Oh well, I had to go to MIR when I got back to Carleton just to get a clean bill of health. Then i had lunch and we had a short rehearsal for tomorrow's gig. I tried to record the Amazing Grace with pipes on m phone, but the piper was not very good :S Hopefully things go better tomorrow! We got off early and relaxed in our rooms before heading off to the beach for a few hours! Then we rushed back for supper and I decided to go off rollerblading on an adventure. I took the canal downtown as usual and decided to go West this time. I eventually found a path near the war museum and realized that it was the path that I saw while getting kitted out on BMQ. It's called the Ottawa River Pathway. So I kept going and found some ppl who were feeding bread to a flock of Canada Geese. The Geese got so tame that they let us touch them! It was soo cool, babies are very soft and the big ones are a bit scary but they let me touch them anyways! So I continued down the path until the Champlain Bridge and went up to take a look. (see picture and try to find Parliament!) When I got back to Carleton I checked and my trip there and back was 25.6km! Not too shabby :) I polished my boots which sucked because when you go down, you really scuff them up on the stretcher and everything. Then I made some of the "Organic Earl Grey Tea" that I bought from the tea shop and watched Hells Kitchen online, it was awesome.

Day 69

June 2nd

I got up pretty early today considering it was a day off. I was up by 8:30 just doing things on the computer and making breakfast. I could have gone downstairs for breakfast, but I didn't want to leave my bed or change my clothes :P After surfing the web lol I took a nap and went to lunch. I spent the afternoon cleaning and doing my kit (boots etc) and realized that one of my drawers is broken! I will have to send in an action requesst for that. I think it was broken all along because I can't fiind the screws anywhere. I spent the rest of the afternoon working out my schedule for next year and I'm planning on applying as a sub to the RETSD because it looks like I will have M/W/F off school! On T/TH I will be taking Spanish, German and Wind Ensemble. Now all I have to do is arrange my lesson time and I'm set. I will also contact the music office to see if I need to take a second ensemble or not. I have a feeling that will just mess things up for me :S After figuring out all that and when I can take students etc, I went down for supper. After that I was off to practice and ralized that I had hard core Parade chops! OH NO! I was so tight and couldn't make anything sound relaxed or start notes when I wanted to. It was very frustrating. I eventually figured things out and did a lot of buzzing. Then I took a break and went back to get some work done on my audition pieces. After about 3.5 hours of practicing, I realized that I should be doing a lot more buzzing and long tones on a regular basis so I don't sound like poop by the end of the summer.

Day 68

July 1st

What an exciting day today! We had our regular 10am parade and also the Canada Day Parade for the Queen :) Here is a youtube video that summarizes things nicely: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An9G7JX_PiE We marched out from the East block of Parliament at 11:45 to get in position for the Queen's arrival at noon. We waited for a bit and I think the Prime Minister arrived first in a black car of some sort. Then the horses came and apparently they got a bit freaked out when they walked past the guards because they could smell the bear skin and hear the clicking of the boots as they came to attention. I could see a bit of disorganization, but it was corrected quickly. Then the Queen got our of the carriage and we played God Save the Queen followed by one inspection tune as she walked through the Guards ranks. Sadly she did not approach the band :( Oh well, we also played O Canada in there somewhere too lol The crowd was huge and apparently some ppl were grabbing at the musicians who were in the outside ranks! We marched off soon after the inspection and avoided horse poop on the way out :P All together a really fun parade and there were so many ppl there! We didn't march through the streets at all because it would have been impossible. When we got back to Carleton we were dismissed for the day! We had lunch and those who had to work tomorrow did their boots and such. I lounged around and skyped with Dustin :) Around 4:30 a group of us went downtown to start looking around at what was happening. There were a lot of ppl and a lot of garbage. I feel sorry for the clean up crew. We walked around to see what was going on and eventually met up with more CG ppl, had a bit of supper and chilled on the Hill while waiting for the fireworks to start. They started at 10pm and went for about 20mins. Not bad, but I think I'm sick of fireworks and they all seem the same to me now. At this point the streets were packed full of ppl everywhere. We decided to walk back to Carleton because it was waaay faster than taking the bus. I hung out with Brian in his room while we waited for more ppl to come back for a shack party, but apparently the party was at a pub somewhere. Oh well, I learned a lot about the band and previous members and such instead. Also, I learned that the band used to have 2 monsters that would torment the band while on parade. Basically band members on their days off would wear this monster suit and follow the parade downtown. There are all kinds of pictures on facebook too! All together a great day, Happy Canada Day!!!