Well, it's about time I wrote another one of these. So I believe I will go into detail about what I did on Sunday. As many of you are no doubt aware, this week is Armed Forces Week, and Buffalo has the second-best in the nation celebration. Naturally, the Civil Air Patrol was there. I had heard of the ceremony a couple of weeks ago, but hadn't yet made up my mind whether to go or not. Then, last Thursday, Captain Maternowski (my squadron commander) told me that there was an opportunity for her to drop me off from Buffalo at the Akron airport. From there, I would fly to the Jamestown airport with two seniors. This would be my orientation flight, and double as my prize for being Cadet of the Month of April.
However, Sunday morning, the weather was windy enough that the O-Flight was cancelled (drats!!) and so I went up to the Armed Forces Day ceremony along with 6 other cadets, a visitor, and two senior members, all from our squadron. It took probably an hour and a half to get there.
There was another squadron there, and a lot of other people--Boy Scouts, AF JROTC, Marine ROTC, a Canadian colorguard, Veterans, et cetera. Basically, we did a lot of standing. We didn't stay for the whole thing, but we stayed long enough to hear the 21 gun salute. I thought that it would be 21 guns exploding at once, but they fired 21 guns, separately, not sparing a single one. I counted. It was cold. And windy. And I was in my short-sleeved blues uniform, so I shivered the whole time. I was able to wear a fellow cadet's jacket, but I was still cold. Probably Buffalo had an earthquake Monday morning, generated from all the shivering.
After we shivered and shook for an hour and a half, we hopped in the van and drove off to McDonald's. There, we got lunch, and drove home. This was when Captain Maternowski had the radio on, kind of quietly. Suddenly, a cadet lieutenant sat up and said, "[*Bleep*], turn that up! I think that's (insert guy's name here; I forgot it already)!" She did, and he started singing along with it. Then, he turned around and made some sort of comment to me about the singer. I think it was Ray or Roy something. I said, "Who's he?" He about had a stroke. "You don't know who he is????" (Apparently, the singer is some famous rock icon.) So they had a jolly time finding about how much I really live in a cave by asking me the names of various bands and singers. Naturally, I hadn't the faintest clue who Kiss or Poison or any of the many others were, and they were all practically having myocardial infarctions and going into cardiac arrest. It was really funny, because I have no desire to listen to that stuff, and I can't understand someone whose life is so controlled by a little iPod or MP3 player. There are better ways to go deaf!
So anyhow. We kids have all been practicing singing for the Mother/Daughter Banquet, which is this Tuesday. I'm having a ton of trouble with one of the songs that Jessica and I are singing. Thankfully, it's the song that everybody cries through, so it'll be the best one to mess up on. Seriously, if I see one dry eye in the audience during that number, I am going to duct tape half an onion under that nose. Then I will be laughing so hard that I will make mistakes, but it won't matter, see. There's one problem, though, which we might not be able to work around: There is a cold going around, and Jessica nearly lost her voice. It's getting better now, but I think I'm coming down with it. I just hope I don't lose my voice. But, the only song they really need me on is the song that I have already established won't matter if we mess up on. Regardless, it will be a unique and learning experience.
I shall try to get pictures form both the Armed Forces Day thing and the Mother/Daughter Banquet and post them here.
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