After coming off of a long weekend in Nashville, we were given Friday off this weekend. Many members used the time off as an opportunity to go out and enjoy the night, others used it to work and make some extra money, and several took the night as an extra bonus night to work with guards they teach. This weekend’s rehearsal may have been one day shorter, but short is not the word to describe the really great progress we made with changes for the first part of the show for Saturday’s rehearsal. With that said, there is never a dull moment when we all get together every weekend, and this weekend was no exception&
       Saturday morning started at10 am at the Douglasville National Guard Armory. Many of us were excited that we would be staying the night at the armory allowing for more time to sleep as well as hanging out together. However when Lindsay Brooks, Becky Finch and I arrived that morning at our usual 45 minutes to an hour earliness, it became clear that the planned “sleepover” might not happen. Let’s just say that next years show will be entitled “Prison Break”, inspired by what Becky so quickly pointed out as a prison just across the street from the armory. Once the rest of the guard arrived, we all moved into the armory to get ready for rehearsal.
       Once inside the armory, another thing became clear, there were a lot of things in the space that we needed to rehearse and having a floor as big as we have this season, we needed all the space we could get. Instantly and almost without a word we all knew what we needed to do to clear out the space. Like busy worker ants we all worked together to moved tables, chairs, basketball hoops, generators, lights, cabinets, an entire army recruiting table, a door, a gigantic framed American flag and finally a Pepsi machine. With that done we opened the floor, a perfect fit, our floor was exactly the size of the entire armory.
       After a nice body warm-up we moved into the first part of the show tweaking things here and there. Bit by bit we worked with each section in the beginning of the show reshaping and re working each part. At around 2 we broke for lunch and enjoyed it all together in the cafeteria. Becky being the caring young English woman that she is wanted to make sure that the prisoners next to us were having a nice lunch as well so she peaked out the window and waved at them.
         After lunch it was back to rehearsal and more manipulation of the first part of the show. Adam taught the flags some new work and the weapons cleaned some more. A new addition to the weapon line this weekend was Stephanie (one of our staff members) who was marching Herbert’s spot who was out this weekend for a dance recital. Stephanie did an excellent job learning all that work so fast and was really nailing her seven’s.
       Dinner came and went; many of us enjoyed having the use of a microwave and hot food. Many enjoyed TV dinners, home cooked pastas, the ever popular Ramen noodles, and as always the classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Once dinner was complete we all had the opportunity to learn choreography from local Atlantian, Jay Jernigan, a former student of Adam Sage. Jay jumped right in and gave us some exciting and intelligent choreography in the beginning as well and the ending of the show. We ended the night with a few runs of the first part of the show and after some direction from our newly appointed housing coordinator/weekend marching member Stephanie, we all made our way back to Kennesaw for the night.
       The next morning we were back at the armory at 10am sleepy as usual but after a warm-up from Jonathan, we were ready to go. The rest of Sunday was spent reemphasizing the new parts we had learned and strengthening the first part of the show and in the end some people were on completely new equipment then they were last weekend, or as Adam said, “not everyone can be a fireman…” As a whole the work done this weekend was really good and should be exciting to see. Next weekend is another weekend of rehearsal each weekend bringing us closer to WGI.