Hello all, and welcome back to this week's journal! We just got out of music practice with Caleb. Our concert is coming up in just two weeks, and we're all really excited about it. That being said, we have a lot we have to do to prepare for it. We know all our songs, and now it's time to play them to perfection. We started practicing with amplification this week for our first time on Monday, and it was pretty horrible. It took some getting used to, but by today we had something worth listening to. We ran through almost all of our songs today. A few small groups or individual fellows are playing their own pieces, and each of them was absolutely delightful to hear. When Austin played his classical guitar, we were all held spellbound. He thought it was terrible, but we all loved it.
There have been a few hiccups with the concert, but we've managed to get them sorted out. The biggest one happened about a week ago when the Sunrise Theater called us to let us know that we were double booked and that we'd lost our time to perform. We looked at several other venues around the area and finally settled on the steadfast Sandhills Presbyterian Church. We changed the fliers to reflect the new information and spread them around the area. That's what we were doing last afternoon, after music. Three cars left for three different locations: one to Carthage, one to Aberdeen, and I'm not sure where the third went, only that we ran into them at the end of the day. Anyway, I had a great time in Carthage with Chris, Austin, and Jake. Most everyone we talked to was only too happy to hang the fliers in their shops. We covered everything from the local barber's shop to a photographer's studio and even to a sketchy pawn shop at the edge of town. I hope people come from everywhere we advertised, if only because the final audience would be so diverse.
One of our final stops was the Carthage Shooting Sports gun store. The man behind the counter had a lot of questions to ask about the concert, unlike most of the others who hung it up almost immediately. However, his questions were good, and we have a few ideas for our next one because of it. After five minutes of discussing Bob Dylan, guns, Presbyterianism, his singing voice, and modern music, he shook hands with us and agreed to put it up. If he's the only person who comes to the concert, I won't be disappointed.
A few other noteworthy things happened this week. First, Laura finished recording The Core, Leigh's new audiobook. It'll take a few months for the recording to be fully finished, but the rough base is done. We're all pretty excited. Next is our math game. We settled on a final name for it: N2K or more correctly, N²K: the National Number Knockout. The business plan is done, and Leigh and some of the others have been testing it on the local community. Finally, when we were in physics on Monday, David came running into the room and in his no-nonsense manner yelled, "THERE IS A DOG CHASING A DEER IN THE LAKE." Mrs. Bortins was the first one out the door, and we all followed right behind. We ended up taking the boat out to herd it towards land. It escaped the dog and we all cheered; it was quite a nice break from the usual class period. Mrs. Bortins is going to test us on what we've learned next Monday. It'll be good to see whether the last few weeks have been productive.
All in all, while lots is happening, we're taking it in stride as the usual for a week here. I think Mandala is starting to wear most of us down. Everyone is really looking forward to the respite afforded by Thanksgiving break. I hope the excitement for the concert will carry us through until we go home. In any case, we'll push through and go home in just a little while.
Last week, Mrs. Bortins told us to go watch Gravity for our astronomy class. We're going back to discuss it this evening. I have a feeling this is going to be a good class.
Until next week,
Barnabas Holleran
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