Speechletes unite!

The Battle Mountain speech meet was amazing! You all should ditch soccer or dance or whatever and come to the Platt Canyon (sp?) meet. Here's the day's timeline (with ballpark times - I wasn't really keeping track):

4:00 (am of course!): I wake up to a mysterious sound coming out of my radio. It takes me a full five minutes to figure out that my alarm clock has gone off, and that I actually set it to ring at such an unholy hour for a reason. This is seriously how incoherent I am in the morning.
4:05: Upon figuring out what the alarm clock is, I get up and get ready for the meet.
4:25: I argue with my mother over whether I'll really need a heavy overcoat and extra socks for the bus ride.
4:30: I call Mo's family with Mum's new cellphone to see if it actually works. It does.
4:35: Riah's family takes me to school. I try to stay awake until I get to P2P so I don't seem totally rude. (Really, this was a challenge for me.)
4:50: We get to school and hop on the bus. Everybody else arrives within 10 minutes.
5:00: We leave P2P. I start to wake up.
5:10: Mr. Schafer and two of the seniors give me a crash course on value debate, which happens to be my first event and which I happen to know nothing about.
5:25: We all talk about completely random topics such as famous opera stars, actors who lived horrible lives and died in their fourties, and scientific notation.
6:10: Everyone except Moriah and Mr. Schaefer crashes and falls asleep. I doze.
6: 20: I fall off the bus seat and decide that the floor is more comfortable than the chairs.
6:30: I get back on my seat. Everyone slowly starts to wake up.
7ish: We get to Battle Mountain. It might be more like 8ish, I'm not sure. I'm going to pretend it's 7ish for the sake of my timeline.
7:30: Everyone changes into their formal clothing. Mo realizes she has forgotten her skirt, and Cindy saves her life by providing an extra one.
7:55: Mr. Schaefer gives everyone their codes for the morning events. We search the school for the rooms we're supposed to be in.
8:00: I go to the value debate prep room for round one, and get my first topic. My wave spends thirty minutes madly coming up with contentions for our resoultion: "When in conflict, is it better to fund a preschool program or an athletic program?"
8:20: I run out of ideas for either side, and spend the next ten minutes trying to organize my thoughts so I can actually use them.
8:30: We are released from the prep room to go debate.
8:35: My opponent shows up; we flip a coin, and I get to choose sides. I pick affirmative.
8:36: We debate! I don't totally blow it, but I'm not brilliant either. I decide that my opponent is either very stuck up or very awkward at this. I muddle through my arguments.
9ish: We finish the debate, and go back to the auditorium to wait until round 2 is posted. Mo comes back and tells me about her CST round, which I'm sure was amazing.
9:45: I go back to the prep room for my second debate. We spend thirty minutes madly coming up with contentions for our next resolution: Is it moral to ticket drivers who talk on their cellphones?
10:15: I do my second debate, and end up arguing the affirmative side. The other girl is REALLY GOOD and talks really fast. I muddle through my arguments again.
10:45: We go back to the auditorium and sit around waiting for round three postings.
11:30: I go to the prep room and get my last resolution.
11:31: Everyone freaks out because the topic is "Is it moral for Bush to continue funding the war in Iraq?"
11:32: We quiet down and spend 28 minutes madly coming up with contentions for our debate.
12:00: I go to the debate room and wait for five minutes while the judge from the last round finishes her notes.
12:05: We debate! I get very lucky and get the affirmative side again, which is the side I had MUCH better arguments for. I think I won this round.
12:35: Yay! We're done with all the morning events! We eat lunch and practice for humor interp.
1:30: Round one of humor interp. I am okayish.
3:00: Round two of humor interp. Just for the record, my piece is all about how ridiculous credit cards are. I read it, and there's a girl and her dad sitting on one side of the room who are just laughing their heads off the whole time about it. I'm thinking, "Gosh, I must be better than I think I am!" and am feeling pretty confident. Then the round ends. The girl comes up to me, still lauging, and says, "My Dad works for VISA." Oh. My. Gosh. I can't believe I read that piece to someone who actually works for a credit card company. But it's all good.
4:30: Round three of humor interp. I'm okay, but everyone else in that round is REALLY GOOD. Oh well.
5:30: Yay! We've made it through all our events, and neither Mo nor I threw up the entire time! This we consider an achievement. We all sit around and socialize.
5:45: We do about 10 rounds of impromptu duet acting. Lexi and Josh represent P2P and are amazing with their response to their prompt: "An intense game of hungry, hungry hippos." Or something like that. Anyway, they manage to be one of the few groups that isn't eliminated by the boredom gong. I'm not even going to try to explain that.
5:55: Awards for impromptu duet acting. Lexi and Josh win first place! Obviously, they were way better than everyone else, but we all know how brilliant they are at acting.
6:00: Awards ceremony. P2P totally cleans up with a million awards. I'm not even going to try listing them all. Go P2P! Mo gets an excellence award for her mad creative story telling skills. I get excellence for humor interp, and by some miracle, 2nd place out of 26 competitors for value debate! Considering I was learning how to do value debate on the bus this morning and it was my first time, I think that's pretty good, although I'm sure luck had something to do with it.
6:25: Everyone compliments everybody else on how amazing everyone was.
6:30: We leave for the long busride home.
6:40: Mr. Schaefer gives us back out comments from the judges. Apparently, I won all three of my debates, and averaged a score of 49 out of 50. I am pleased. :)
7:30: Dinner. We refuse to listen to TB's insistence that we eat at some soup place called Zappapos, or Mizappos, or something like that, and go to Subway instead. TB is very annoyed.
7:42: Lexi manages to spill soda all over Kate. No idea how this happened.
7:50: We get back on the bus, and it's snowing! First snow of the year!
8:00: We talk about everything from the meatpacking industry to unjust treatment of minors to cloning to sleep deprivation to what a horrible teacher Mr. Cegelski apparently was. Cindy falls asleep.
10:05: We realize that Cindy has completely crashed - she falls off her seat and fails to wake up. Little wonder - apparently she got something like 3 hours of sleep last night. Poor Cindy!
10:10: We get back to P2P, and try to wake up Cindy. She opens her eyes, but has difficulty recognizing us, and can barely stand up, although she insists she will drive herself home. We leave TB to argue with her over the likelihood that she will fall asleep at the wheel and crash her car.
10:15: Dad picks me and Riah up, and we go home.
11:00: I fall asleep.

Wow, what a day. Speech is so much fun! You should all join. Those of you who are on the team should come to the Platte Canyon meet next Saturday!