If you will . . .

I need sponsorships, if you will...

If I'm going to be marching with Crossmen this summer, I'm going to need to find a way to pay for it.

As I've mentioned in my previous entry, my family doesn't have a lot of money. It's going to be really hard to pay my way this year. (Not that it was exactly easy to last year either.)

I'll be going around to local businesses and people who are family friends to ask for help, but I don't know how much help I'll be able to get. Last year I got a little over $300 in sponsorships/rehearse-a-thon money*.

This year is going to cost more than last year. (Even if I was with Blue Stars.) I'm trying to find work in order to pay part of it myself, but it's still not going to be enough. I need whatever help I can get. I have to fly to every camp because I live in Texas, not Pennsylvania or New Jersey, and the trip from home to camp is something like a 24-hour drive. (Okay, according to Mapquest it's 20h 7min.) Flying from Texarkana never costs less than $300 a flight, I assume because TXK is a regional airport and the only two airlines it flies are Continental and American Airlines (American Eagle operated flights).

So I added up approximate airfare costs (going with ~$350 a ticket) and camp/tour/other dues & fees associated with the corps, and my total came out to around $5000.

And that's just the fees/dues alone. If I want other money to use for things such as bandaids, or tampons, or whatever I might end up needing during the summer when we make our Generic-Superstore runs, I'll need more money than that. This money, however, I plan to provide of my own earnings. So don't worry about that.

I suspect this summer will end up costing me between $5000 and $6000. I don't plan to spend much other money aside from dues and fees, but there are always times that you just might need something. (i.e. toothpaste or a pit stick.)

So... if you will... please sponsor me! In any way you can help... I seriously appreciate it. :)

Rehearse-A-Thon = one of the fundraisers Blue Stars does every year, we send out letters asking people to donate a few cents per minute that we march (total 1000 minutes) on a specific day of hell weeks. More than half the sponsorship money I got came from this, but it didn't help pay my tour dues because R-A-T was money to be raised in addition to the tour fees.

Way too much shit is going on in my head.

I'm really happy that of the responses I've read so far on the Blue Stars forum they have ALL been positive and not negative. I am incredibly happy about that!

But I'm tired of looking up airfare to fly from Texarkana to Philadelphia and trying to find the cheapest flight. I'm tired of having to pay AT LEAST $300 for a flight because Texarkana is a *regional* airport and for some reason this makes it cost more. And I can't very well drive to Dallas or Little Rock and fly from one of those every month. The money I will save just doesn't make up for the drive I have to take, in my opinion.

I am having a hellacious time trying to find a job here since I won't work foodservice and most other places aren't understanding about needing the weekends off for drum corps. I have classes to take in the spring. I have plenty of shit that I have to do.

It's going to be damn hard to pay for drum corps, mainly because of airfare. It's going to cost me somewhere in the neighborhood of $5000 for drum corps this summer. That's more than I paid for my car. That's almost as much as tuition was for my one semester at Henderson this fall. That's more than my tuition and books will cost for community college in Texarkana.

I don't know where I'll be able to work, since I won't be 18 until February. Practically every available position anywhere in this ridiculous city you must be 18 or over to work. I'm just not old enough yet. This is looking slightly more sucky as I think about it more.

I just need a way to pay for corps, school, gas for my car, and any shit I might need aside from those things between now and... sometime.

And my knee hurts. If I have less mobility in my knee from these stitches, I'm gonna be hella pissed off. I'm going to take it up with a lawyer and Henderson State University. Before I had it looked at by a doctor, it bled for four days. Then I had to have stitches put in it, and I can't move my knee much anymore with the stitches in it. I have a hard time getting in and out of any car. I have a hard time going up and down stairs. I have a hard time sitting down and standing back up about half the time. Shit, sometimes I have a hard time even walking. It's ridiculous.

No shit I should have had a doctor look at it before I came home last Thursday, but I had to be totally out of the dorm by 5. They took at least a half hour of my time when I had to go withdraw from the university because they didn't tell me everything I needed to know in the first place. I had to get ALL of my shit out of my room and in my car, and get a RA to inventory me out before 5. There was no way in hell I could have gone to a doctor for my knee and been out of the dorm by 5. I'd have been charged some ridiculous amount of money for being late out of the dormitory.

Basically, I'm just tired.

If drum corps was free, it would be FUCKING AWESOME. However, drum corps is *not* free and therefore I have financial issues.

As long as my sister is in her external fixator (google Taylor Spatial Frame if you want to know) and has to go see Dr. Paley in Baltimore, we're not going to have a lot of money.

As long as my older siblings are enrolled in a private Christian university in Oklahoma, we're not going to have a lot of money.

As long as my family has to pay for gas so we can get places, we're not going to have a lot of money.

As long as I want to keep marching drum corps, we're not going to have a lot of money.

Basically it just boils down to this: I don't have that much money.

Yes, I live in a big house. It's a nice house. There are 6 people living in it. We can't live in a smaller house. There just isn't enough room.
Yes, I have a laptop that I got new in late August. Doesn't mean it cost a lot of money, and I traded my desktop computer for it after my mum's computer crapped out.
Yes, I have a cell phone. I got that mainly so that if something bad happened to me while I was travelling, I could get in touch with someone somehow.
Yes, I have nice clothes. We shop at outlet stores a lot, and Target a lot. Sometimes I get expensive clothes but I'm not going to be wearing a different size than I am for a LONG time.
Yes, I have a car. It's kind of crappy and it has its own problems. I hate driving it because I have shit depth perception.

~Pirated from Chelsea~

Post a memory of me and you. It can be anything you want, just so long as it happened. Then post this to your journal. See what people remember about you.

Come on, guys, this will be awesome. Do it!