State Piano Contest 2011: DONE!!!

Well, I made it.  The State Contest is finally over.  Yesterday was smooth sailing, which should have been a red flag to me that today would not be as smooth… we had problem after problem it seemed today.  Which started at 8:30 this morning–30 min. before the judging was to begin–when one of my judges called and said she couldn’t get there because her car wouldn’t start.  Yikes!  I already had students lining up to perform at her room!  Luckily the new V.P. of Contest had arrived early today and she agreed to step in and fill in for the missing judge.  If she hadn’t been there I honestly don’t know what I would have done–I was already severely short-staffed with volunteers and I didn’t have any one else I could even ask.  But it worked out.  She’s a trooper and didn’t complain at all (even though she had to judge yesterday too, and had planned to have a day to just relax and oversee things today…)  And luckily I didn’t need her for anything since I’ve done this long enough that I feel pretty capable on my own.

Which was a good thing today, because we had a lot of “stuff” to deal with:  students showing up too late, or too early, or accidentally performing in the wrong room, or having the wrong information from the teacher, or volunteers not showing up, or the parking garage entrance gate malfunctioning…. there was a lot to deal with today.  But, like I said–I made it through.  And I was able to fix just about everything so people left smiling.  I even ran into my student today as I was running back and forth.

Speaking of my students… I had 6 (actually only 5 of them performed b/c one decided not to go last minute) students in the Finals and I was able to check their scores tonight before coming home.  It looks like 4 out of the 5 won!  How very very exciting–I just have to get confirmation tomorrow that I read the results correctly and then I get to pass along the wonderful news.  It’s nice to know all of the hard work really paid off.  🙂

And now I’m just waiting patiently upstairs for Tim to finish his Men’s Bible Study so I can go down and find myself some supper.  Since I had to stay and clean everything up, I didn’t get home in time to eat before the guys came at 7:00.  Then, I’m off to bed, so I can get up (not as painfully early) to head to the MMTA office to spend the day tomorrow tabulating and mailing all the results.  Yippie.   But I have a really good amount of volunteers that have agreed to help tomorrow, so I am very optimistic that things will go smoothly and quickly so I can come home and see Tim & Chloe.  I’m always amazed at how quickly this weekend flies by

Oh, and I am happy to say that I even remembered daylight-saving time this morning.  🙂  It would have been a terrible start to my day if I had forgotten that and showed up an hour late…