State S.O. '06 (I)

So, since my long promised Regionals post never made it up, I figure I better post about State. This post shall even have pictures eventually...prolly tomorrow nite, since the picture computer is shut down for the night and i'm too lazy to start it up again. Be advised that really these long winded Science O posts hold little value to anyone but me and my memories. I suppose you all know that though, right? So here we go.

State has been long in coming. Ever since the near disaster at Regionals for Senior High, we've all been working hard to at least make a reasonably decent showing at MSU. Junior High, having done INCREDIBLY well at Regionals had hopes for Nationals. Last Friday found the various building events once again at school, with the exception of Scrambler, because the launcher, dubbed Cleopatra, was at Coach P's house. I was trying to get Amos to help me do runs in between sanding his woods project, which was due today and had little to no hope of being finished anyway.

The air in the shop was filled with LOUD, mostly offkey singing of various songs..."He stopped loving her todaaaaaaay...", "The weekend's hee-ere...", "What hurts the most, is bein' so-o-oo close..." and Drew's song that I can't think of right now, as well as Lets Play a Love Scene from Fame, the play Maggie was in that I'd gone to see the night before with Abbs. This last one was the most irritating to Amos, as he didn't know it so he couldn't sing with me. We were laughing our heads off, realizing that nowhere but Science O could we so totally just be ourselves, without worrying about what other people thought. Its def. one of the best feelings in the world. There aren't a whole lot of people I feel more comfortable with than the Robot and Mission Possible guys, come to think of it. I guess once you've seen eachother at 1 in the morning trying to get something to work, or seen eachother bawling after losing an event...you don't get a whole lot closer than that.

Our best time so far had been a perfect 35 second run. We had been really happy with that, and were aiming for it again. Our first run that Friday afternoon was 36 seconds, which I was thrilled with. Unfortunately, it went down hill from there. After that one good run we couldn't manage to get below about 45 seconds without major problems. The frusterating thing was that it was all just STUPID stuff that we were messing up on!! Finally around 9:20 we did one last run, and Amos left around 9:30. As is tradition, Christie came to sleep at my house. On the way home, we stopped at McDonalds for ice cream. I kept trying to drive THROUGH the place, but for some reason Linz and Chris weren't too crazy about the whole idea. We made it home by about 10:30, which was easily a new record for the night before competiton!!

Christie and I looked at pictures of banquet last year, trying to get ideas for our dresses for awhile, reminiscing of times past. She got in the shower, and I studied for my Food Science event. We stayed up and talked for awhile, but I was sleeping by midnight, which was also def. a new night before competition record, considering that that night before Regionals I didn't get HOME until one in the morning!!

Unfortunately, the alarm went off waaaaaaaay too soon, at 4:45. We had to be at school by 6 sharp, and I still had to shower. By the time I got out, blow dried my hair, dragged Christie and Linz out off bed and upstairs for breakfast, we had about 20 minutes. Somehow, though, we made it to school only 5 minutes late. The bus left around 6:20, again only about 5 minutes behind schedule. The busride down to MSU alternately crawled and sped by. We were all anxious to get there, but as most of us were frantically doing last minute studying, the ride didn't seem quite long enough. We pulled up to team camp at about 7:45. The first events started at 8:45, by which time all the building events were required to be impounded. Amos and I impounded Gwinniper, and then Melvin and I headed off to Food Science.

Now 'tis 11:30...more tomorrow!!