St Patrick's Day Blitz

Now that this mess is over again for this year, I can finally get to blogging about it. If some of you wonder if I went overboard with the irish coffee again this year, worry not because I didn't even get any this time. :( Not that I went overboard last year. To put it bluntly, I took exactly one of Scott's irish coffees last year and one sip was enough to make my head spin.

Anyway, there was a school show on the evening of the 16th that I was requested to play in, by one of the teachers organizing the event. Of course, I never let down an offer to perform for a new audience, so I agreed. (On the other hand, it does often take me a lot of sucking up to me to get me to do these things in the first place.)

I learned the piece about three weeks ago, but fiddle music is notorious to me as hard to play properly, simply because of its looser style. (In fact, if you can't play loosely at all then forget it. It sounds like a machine.) So I did try better by memorizing the piece, but it became a fight between remembering the jumbles of notes and the frantic fingering of the left hand. Whatever. I played it well enough.

Getting to the show by 7 when it started was impossible. I mistakingly believed that the cursed bus I boarded would bring me downtown with just as much time as the other line I usually would take. This bus' transmission broke down, about 10 minutes from the destination, and we spent half an hour waiting in the middle of Vanier for another. (Don't ask me why I couldn't get out and walk, because if you know Vanier then you'll understand.) Then I waited another 15 for the transfer at the destination. Thus, I arrived at 7:30. Fortunately, I was slated after the intermission, which meant I was not in trouble. *PHEW*

I was a bit disappointed by the number in attendance, considering the size of the school and its vast, vast wealth of talent in the student pool. Many of them were wonderful irish dancers, while during my high school time there numbered exactly 1 (Danny's niece). I was most appreciative of the teachers and their lending of time, talents, and dedication. From my experiences at all the high schools I worked at and attended, I now understand better the school spirit that lacked in my own rather bland and often painful high school experience. Above all, it reminded me how much high school will mean to the students, as it gives them such greater lasting memories than their future years of perhaps less-than-stellar jobs will provide.

I was quite tired yesterday morning, having slept very little and felt slighted by mum who didn't even remember me telling her that I was performing that night. She thought I was asleep the whole time so she went off to play mah jongg again that evening.

We were provided free breakfast at school so I took advantage of that by sleeping in an extra 30 minutes unintentionally, then spending the remaining 10 minutes of my time preparing to get to school. There are 350+ students at school, so getting in line was a big nuh-uh until later, so I spent even more time starving while watching them eat and go crazy with the green.

I asked if the teacher organizing the show from the previous evening if he needed me to play during the breakfast, as some of the performers would do. He seemed pleased that I would offer to do so, and he did make use of this offer at the very first opportunity. So I played again that day, in front of 400 people who barely even knew me a month ago, and now considered me either a pe(s)t teacher or "that funny asian woman on the violin."

Like I mentioned in the previous post, VRAK-TV was sending a crew to school to film them in the St Patrick's Day celebration that morning. Everyone was abuzz and incredibly anxious to get a glimpse of their favourite hosts. When they arrived, everyone screamed. And they didn't stop screaming.

They screamed through the teachers' choir peformance. They screamed through the irish dancer. They screamed throught the student band. They screamed throughout the bingo game. Then the cameras left and the bingo game ended and everyone ran away. I suppose you can only have enough school spirit to last 2 hours.

I don't think I could take any more noise for a while. Felix suggested last night for me to go out to celebrate, but I seriously don't think I could have done it even if Jorghnassen came over and asked (and I'm not into drinking like Felix is).