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So, this is Palatine High School’s homecoming weekend. As such, tonight was the Royal Rally, a long running tradition at PHS. Last year, I missed my first PHS Royal Rally, I think because it was the same night as Hoffman Estates High School’s homecoming game (one Chris wanted to attend). Well, I made time to make it to this year’s Rally because I wanted to know what it was all about. After work, I went and ran some errands, then returned to the school so Adam and I could get dinner. About a half hour before the Rally started, I got back to the school to pick up a digital camera and a radio, then off to the Rally I went with Sue. Almost immediately, we were met by a yearbook student. Apparently, some planning was not done on their part. They had a battery with no juice, and they wanted to film parts of the Rally for the yearbook DVD. So, all of a sudden I’m running up to the office to temporarily switch batteries with the yearbook student, hoping that I would actually see that battery come back before the end of the night (I was pleasantly surprised to have been given the battery by the student at the end of the Rally). Now, it’s about five or ten minutes until the Rally starts. I’ve already found out that the dual media floppy/memory stick digital camera I had was not being recognized as a removable drive when plugged into my computer. So, I knew I had to conserve space on my memory stick if I wanted to take the high-res pictures (by the end of the night I had taken about 80 pictures, but deleted about 10 of them because they didn’t turn out well). The Rally started with the PHS drum line. They had a pretty good performance, followed by the introduction of the rest of the PHS marching band, the cheerleaders, the poms squad, the flag squad, and some other “spirited” people. They came into the gym on both floors, then congregated on the main floor as they finished their entrance into the gym. At this point, I’m thinking this is just a really long pep assembly that invited the local community. The just slightly more than enormal pep eassembly excitement continued with the introduction of Pirate Pete and the varsity football team, as they ran through two lines of poms and cheerleaders diagonally across the main floor. The actual PEP squad came out afterwards and riled up the crowd. I hadn’t been to a pep assembly in a while, so I can’t copare the feel of th crowd tonight with any other assembly, but the PEP scquad seemed to really get the crowd going. This is where things get a little fuzzy in my memory, because I was doing a lot of running around the gym to get various vantage points for photos. Some of the events tonight included a weird race between the various school organizations (the Varsity Club won, I think), the introduction of the new members of the PHS Hall of Fame, and performances from the cheerleaders, the poms, Orchesis, and the band. The theme of Homecoming this year is Pirates of the Caribbean, and they definitely kept to that theme with a performance done by students and Chris Weisse, a friend of ours and assistant drama director at Conant High School. Chris helped choreagraph, and performed in a fight between the Pirate from PotC (I forget his name) and himself, a bad pirate, presumably on the side of CHS (our opponents in this year’s Homecoming game and the school I went to six years ago). This band of buccaneers or whoever they were came in during the skit with a real caged cougar (Conant’s mascot) and took over the “Pirate ship,” holding Pirate Pete and Principal Steiger hostage. Part of the skit involved holding the music director hostage, who called for playing the CHS fight song to appease the captors. This is where I almost instinctively stood up as the CHS fight song was played by the PHS band. Four years of indoctrination in school and several homecomings since graduating, it was hard to resist the temptation to get up and mouth the words, “Cougars! Fight, Fight, Never Die! We’re Rough! Tough! Conant Cougars Got the Stuff! Goooooooo, Cougars!” But I did manage to resist and stayed seated as I took photos of the action. So, yeah, the fight scene involved several studetns and other people, like Chris Weisse. It very well done, considering there was only one or two weeks of training done with the kids by Chris (who is certified in stage combat). Anyways, my mind is drifting. I’m going to bed. I need to be up early to try to get tickets to the Third Eye Blind concert at the Park West. Good night.