LifeScouts: Parade!

Listening to Coco's Big Bang Theory over Skype
Looking forward to seeing him tomorrow!

    This seemed like the most logical LifeScouts post to do next, considering part of the story was told in the last one. I've actually been in three parades, though. One was the homecoming parade for my high school, which was the band's first real rehearsal marching together for the first time. The next was the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, which despite being really neat, and something cool I can tell people I was involved in, was one of the most miserable experiences in my life. I did see the Cheetah Girls (for those of you who even know who that is) on their float right in front of us, and that was cool, being fourteen and a Disney freak. The third was the Christmas parade in Atlanta, which was neat being back in my own state in a parade that was televised and important. But still cold and miserable. I know I must sound like an absolute spoiled brat - "I've been in three parades and I'm still complaining about it all!" - but it was a lot of hard work up to that point, a lot of stress and yelling and injuries, and then we were all awake at three a.m., in the sleet and frigid puddles (our shoes were not water proof, or cold-proof), walking for blocks and blocks and blocks. In my opinion, it wasn't entirely worth it.

LifeScouts

Listening to Bust a Move by Young MC on repeat (because I want to drive myself insane. No, I'm going to use it for a school project so I have to keep listening to it.)
Thinking about how incredibly relieved I am that this stupid summer course is almost over. One day left, guys. One. Day.
    So, I don't know if any of you frequent YouTube like I do ("frequent" here means "visit every twelve and a half minutes"), but there's a dude called Nerimon whose real name is Alex Day who's pretty cool. And he makes entertaining videos. He also started this thing called LifeScouts. Which is also pretty cool. Just kidding, it's actually pretty awesome.
    The concept is that you're sharing stories and experiences with people by reblogging these little badges and describing how you "earned" them. You can also buy physical badges, but as I don't wear pin badges or have much use for them, I prefer the rebloggable badges. Plus, I realized something. I'm horrible about starting things and not sticking with them. And I love to write and really need to keep myself doing it, so I thought what better way to keep blogging than to tell you (the general public of the internet) a story every time I can't think of something to write?
    So here's the first one:

Empire State Building!

    My freshman year in high school, I joined the color guard in the band. Now the band at my high school was pretty intense. They were third in the nation my sophomore year at Grand Nationals. That being said, they run the program like the military. They have multiple week long rehearsals in the middle of the summer in the middle of the day, outdoors, where kids were dropping like flies. Oddly I didn't pass out until I quit color guard, but that's not important. The band was selected to march in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which is in New York City, of course. We all got to go see multiple landmarks, the Empire State Building being one of them, where the most memorable fact that I learned was not the number of floors, or how long it took to build, but that if you throw a penny off the top and it hits a person in the head on the ground, it will kill them. Then the next day, I woke up at three a.m. to trudge through ice and snow with a giant freezing cold metal pole, get trampled by a fat trumpeter, and fall on some spectators during our big performance. But I still caught my flag from the toss after I got up! 

Engaging

Listening to the rain outside. Flood warning in effect for my area. ha ha. Weather Channel humor.
Craving some strong black tea.
    So I guess I should mention that Corey and I got engaged. I'm a little late, and I do apologize, but this time I was actually hesitant to blog about it; I didn't just forget. I wasn't sure I wanted to share the whole story since it's very personal and special to both of us. But I thought really long and hard about it. I have quite a few blogs that I follow closely, and when you consistently read someone's thoughts and opinions, you feel like you know them, even if you don't personally. And I would be bummed if any of them withheld such a big life event from their faithful readers. So I'll just give the short version and a pic or two to keep all five of you in the loop.

    I knew it was coming sometime this year, I just didn't know when. He'd started asking what kind of rings I like, but to be honest, I was expecting it around the Fourth of July when I'm going up to visit him. I was not expecting it to happen at the beach with his whole family. He asked me to go with him to find his brother Bretticus and his girlfriend Robbie who had gone down to walk on the beach. What they'd actually done is go and hide to take pictures. The whole proposal didn't go entirely as planned, but nothing ever does for us. For goodness sake, we got the flu right before we went down to Disney World this Christmas.

    It was super cute and unexpected and perfect for us, and he managed to keep it a surprise the whole time we were down there until we actually started walking down the beach and he started acting all nervous and goofy. Then I figured something was up, I just wasn't sure what. Maybe a picnic on the beach for dinner? Nope. Proposal!