Warning: This is a Shaina ramble... Only read if you are bored out of your wits, extremely curious, or just plain crazy. :o)
So I'm going through my email account that I've had since... Well, I don't even know! Third grade, maybe? But anyway, it's my main email account, so of course, I have everything SNC-related sent there. For some reason, I decided to sort all 4,000+ emails that had been sitting in my inbox, and as I was shifting through everything, I found the email that started it all: the email that opened my eyes to Straight No Chaser. The subject line reads, "FW: Fractured 12 days of Christmas (this is very good)", and it was sent by my piano teacher at the time. It dates back to Friday, December 21, 2007, and she wrote, "Hope you enjoy this great rendition of the 12 days of Christmas from the mens chorus at Indiana U."
Then, I see that I registered for the old sncmusic.com site the very night I attended my first SNC concert: Thursday, December 18, 2010, at the Largo in LA. And boy, I remember that night well! It was the last day of my winter finals, I had just finished my French final, and my mom and I had decided to go to the concert venue WAY early to get good seats. It was first come, first served, and we got some GREAT seats. Front row, house left. :) There was a couple hours' gap between the time we got our seats and the time the concert actually started, so my mom and I walked on over to this French bakery down the street from the venue, Boules, where I had the most amazing French croissant. ^___^ We got back to the concert venue early, and I remember taking a bunch of pictures outside of the venue before we actually went INSIDE. I also remember that it was right across from a place with a BIG NEON SIGN that said "Naked Ladies." Of course, who'd pass up making a quip about that? Not Charlie. ;)
And of course, since I've started writing this, in the wee hours of the morning (aka. 2am), I remembered that I had told myself that I would keep a journal of my SNC experiences. Didn't work, but what I have in here is something I would've forgotten, had I not written it down:
"I went to their second Los Angeles concert on Thursday, December 18, 2008 [I think they had two shows at the Largo that year] for my Concert Choir final/report. I went back to their YouTube video of "Twelve Days" because I was performing our own version of the song, and I saw that they had scored a major record deal. After reading up and visiting the MySpace page, I saw that there was a concert here in Los Angeles, and I got really excited! I knew that I wanted to attend this concert, and I had the perfect excuse! I told my mom that I wanted to go to this concert for my report and also said that I wanted that to be part of my Christmas gift. (Heehee...)
"The concert was absolutely amazing! I had so much fun, laughing and absorbed in the show, that I forgot to take notes. As the show progressed, my little notepad sat in my lap, forgotten and empty. It was by far the best way to end the semester. After the show, I took pictures with the group, bought a CD, and got it autographed. Then when I got home, I finally took those notes! :)"
I got a 98 percent on that paper. In my opinion, it deserved a hundred, just because it was written about Straight No Chaser. Whatever.
Also as I read this, I see that I used the term "Chaser" in my very first blog post. Which leads to this question... Who coined the term "Chaser" to describe SNC fans? Just curious, as I never really figured that out... Anywho...
As I continue to look through my old emails from the sncmusic.com site of yesteryear, I see that I would receive email notifications after someone posted after me. I miss that. I also miss having a blog of my own to write on and being able to send private messages to users. OH. But the discussions were the BEST. It was during the year 2009 that I first met Dave, Kathy, and S on that site. I remember an Erin trying to bribe the guys into coming to her college (was it Ohio State?) with cookies. Of course, S would be the one to jump in on the discussion (seriously though, S's cookies are ah-mazing), and Dave followed not long after that, with lures of steaks. And, I think Kathy had her own cookies to offer. Somehow, this HILARIOUS discussion brought up cheesecake-producing cows, alcohol, and mentions of naked ladies. (Umm... Not by me? I wasn't very witty then.) That's what I miss the most; our discussions on there were so much fun, and had I known that it was going to be erased, I would have saved it... -sigh-
It was also on this site that I posted pictures of my very first Straight No Chaser books. Haha, I remember getting the email that Randy had commented on the blog that I had posted them on; I may have had a mini freak out session. ;) Wow... That feels so long ago...
And now, only slightly more than a year later, here we all are. I've been to two more concerts since that 2008 show, I'm a proud Chaser, SuperFan, and SNCTwitterbug, and I have met the most AMAZING people through this group. I saw Mike I. and Steve Morgan perform, then bow out; I heard about Seggie and Tyler and remember wondering, "What the hell do they look like?" (We hadn't really gotten any pictures for several weeks, and I was curious!) I've seen a soundcheck, I've had the honor of spearheading the first SNC podcast ("SNC FanChat"), and I've gotten "special privileges" that I only partly utilized because of my inherently shy nature. I've introduced friends to this group, I've obsessed over this group, and I've had amazing and rewarding experiences because of this group.
Ahem. End sappiness. Well, it's almost 3am. I'd better get to bed. :)
This has been a late-night reflection, brought to you by Shaina Eng.