Regionals

This weekend was the Region 3 Invitational National Qualifying Tournament. It was pretty fun,actually. I guess I'll give you a rough day-by-day high and low-lights list.

The tournament started on Wednesday, so bright and early at 5:30, I stumbled out of bed, bleary-eyed and no tail in sight. I needed to get down to Renton by 9:00 because extemp rounds started at 9:30, and we had articles to file. When I got down to the church, I discovered, along with KK, that Calvin had printed out an entire stack of papers that needed to be filed before the round. Can you say 'panic'? Extemp would have gone rather well had it not been for the fact that Mr. Shane Baumgardner, one of the extemp powerhouses of my region, had been in my room all three times. I kind of psyched myself out. This excuse is not saying that I would have done better if Mr. Baumgardner had not been in my room: It was an extreme miracle that I qualified to Regionals in the first place. I then had a debate round, which was interesting and not entirely pleasant. After coming out from about four hours worth of analysis and argumentation, I was greeted by an onslaught of inquisitive friends. Questions flew over my head like flies over a particularly ripe cheese. Keep in mind that I was operating off of very little sleep, and you'll understand that moving from a nice, quiet debate round to a noisy circle full of friends did very little for my sanity and comprehension. It was completely overwhelming. And naturally, Grey and Ophelia were at the very heart of the culprits, and I mean that in the best possible way. I skipped the social event at the Space Needle because I needed sleep, and getting up at 4:30 the next day was not conducive to sleep.

Thursday was chaos. Rounds started at 7:30, after announcements at 7:00. There were four debate rounds plus three speech rounds, and by the end of the day, I was pretty well exhausted. On the plus, I ran into quite a few old new friends from last time around.  All Thursday, I was pretty bummed that Mrs. Hudson hadn't done her speech about hats. Oh, also, I had a judge who refused to make eye contact with me in my OO. It was a little jolting, because no matter what I would do, this parent WOULD NOT look at me. She was even staring at the other judges, but I was apparently too horrific to look at.

On Friday, I got in a huge discussion with some other debaters about the Big Bang theory, Old Earth and New Earth Creationism, and Biblical interpretation. It was CJ and I against the world. Well, not quite as melodramatic, but still, it was a good argument. It's probably cemented my status as a resident freethinker even more firmly, but I happen to believe that "any society that looses its troublemakers goes downhill," so I'm comparatively alright with that.

On Saturday, I woke up with my eye swollen shut, so I got to wear an eye patch! Also, on Saturday, I had a dandelion fight with a TP debater I had just started talking to that day. We figured out that if you walk upwind of your target and shake the seed head of a dandelion, your target gets a face-full. This started an all out war, which was absolutely amazing, except that Mr. Owl got a video of it.  We found a Rubik's cube, and I solved one side almost completely, but I got stuck with the last square. Mr. Owl got the last square in place, and then claimed to have solved the entire thing. It was a lolwut moment, if I ever saw one. :D Calvin was awkward with CS as usual, but it was still kind of entertaining hanging out with them. I will never view Coca-Cola in the same way again, nor Axe, for that matter. See, the original Calvin, whom I shall refer to as StickMan for the rest of this blog, brought a can of Axe deodorant spray with him, and on Saturday, proceeded to stagnate the air for a twenty-foot radius around him. Bell was sleeping a couple feet away, and StickMan got the idea to spray Bell with the Axe. He creeps over to the sleeping debater, and thoroughly marinates him with the stuff, and Bell didn't even wake up. It was hilarious, amazing, etc.


And throughout the tournament, I had a very fun time imitating Theresa Hudson's accent, who was running Regionals. I hope she didn't over hear me, though. ;P

B