9:52 a.m.

Cozy in my canopy bed, I hear my familiar "Victory!" ringtone. Puzzled, I fumble around my bed to grab it, open it up, and see that my friend Elisabeth is calling me. I didn't answer because at that moment it dawned on me the huge possibility that I had overslept and was late to Pride rehearsal. Sure enough, it was 9:52 a.m. 9:52?!?!?!?!? I fell out of bed, grabbed my Pride attire (which I thankfully set out the night before, woke up my roommates with the ruckus, and dashed next door to see if Felicia was awake. Seeing her door open, I was shocked that she hadn't performed the usual game-day ritual of whoever-is-up-first-call-the-other-person. As we saw each other, she yelled "I just woke up too!!!!"



AHHHH!
I don't think I'd ever gotten dressed that quickly. With not a look in the mirror or having brushed my teeth, I grabbed my jacket and clarinet, and Felicia and I dashed out the door, slipping on the wet floor (I'll get to that explanation later), hearing the maintenance people yelling for us to slow down, calling our section leaders to tell them what happened, hauling it down 5 flights of stairs, and breaking into a brisk run in a very freezing morning all the way to the stadium.

In a total of 8 minutes, I don't know how we made it to Pride before the whistle was blown. With cramping legs and growling stomach, I marched through my last home game day rehearsal completely in a daze. What had happened???

Well, at about 5 o'clock in the a.m. last night the residents of Couch were alerted by the calm voice of the intercom man to make it downstairs because of a fire alarm. Groggy freshmen and the few crazy upperclassmen (including myself), wrapped in blankets and with sleepy eyes, ventured across First Street to camp out in the bottom of Walker. Apparently through word of mouth we found out about someone on the 11th floor setting of the sprinkler system, which in turn flooded the elevators and stairwells all the way to our floor on 6.

About an hour and a half of sitting on pool tables and discussing whether or not we had time to make it to Crossroads and back before they allowed us in, the friendly staff allowed us to make our ways back upstairs. Herding a couple hundred of people up one stairwell was quite interesting, and we finally made it back to our flooded-elevator-lobby floors.

It took me a good hour to fall asleep because I was starving, which made rehearsal so hard because I never got to eat breakfast. And I had only been awake a good 10 minutes before rehearsal started, so I never had time to get used to the idea of it being game day and yadayada.

Anyhoo, stories like this make days like today memorable. It's also quite challenging to know that I can make it out of bed, change, and get to the stadium in a dash under 10 minutes.