Busy weekend of diversions as school terms come to a close

There was the big Tri-State school band competitions, Million Dollar Parade and final evening concert, and then there's the Shewey recital this Sunday.  I've got a bunch of vids to produce for this blog on that account, so I'll kick things off with one of  the highlights of the recital.  It's the season for school recitals before summer vacation kicks in, so I'll be in the process of adding what I can work in.  And yeah--my apologies in advance for Blogger's dismal video shortcomings in its insistence on low-res-only videos.  It still sucks.

Highlight from the Tri-State evening concert and a tribute to videographers everywhere. Yup--everywhere.

Ever see a smart phone substitute for sheet music? No? Then watch this unusual encore after the well-deserved standing O...

Next is the beginning of the Tri-State music festival's Million Dollar Parade, which doesn't leave the impression that a million dollars has anything to do with it.  I'm posting it so that you can get a sense of directional orientation before I post more of the parade later.  This thing used to occur at about 11 am until recently, when Enid also instituted a First Friday downtown event and nobody had to peer at silhouettes in the setting sun to see the parade.

Now, it's a bitch to get a camera set up decently, and whether in the am or pm there has always been a band timing/co-ordination problem which now occurs at the corner I eventually walked over to, then had to shuttle between that and my first position where I was facing east.  To get a shot down that crossing street, I would have had to shoot directly into the sun, so bear with all those shortcomings, please.  Here we go...

The direction the camera is facing in that last shot is toward the south, where the reviewing stand and announcer are.  The next vid shows why it wasn't a good idea to be situated closer to the reviewing stand.  If I had been there, I would have missed the YWCA Walk A Mile In Her Shoes people, which exited the parade route right at that corner...

In short, that was a bunch of guys marching in blazing red high heels, some of 'em in drag, some of 'em dressed like The Village People (yeah, that's a different Y, huh). But it was an anti-sexual assault march and, in my view, a worthy cause.  And if you'd been standing near the review stand, you'd have missed the whole thing.  But if you had been standing on the street they marched on, you'd have been looking straight into the sun unless you were looking straight south--in which case the sun would still have been in your periphery.

Well, that's enough for tonight, folks. Tomorrow is another day, ha. :)