And so it begins.

Last weekend marked the first official tournament of the speech and debate season.

Not only that, it was the first official tournament that anybody in our league has had.

Like, nobody else in the country had a tournament yet.

Isn't that special?

There were no speech events - just debate. So that was 2 very long days of debate -- with my psychotic, half-insane debate club. :D

We spent 5 hours in the car (yes, our entire club.) (Granted, there's only 4 in our club) driving down to Eugene, Oregon - listening to Veggie Tales, Revive, Irish Pub music, and creating debate examples based off of things we saw outside the window.

Because we all had school-ish such things going on that day, we didn't leave till 4:30pm. This means that with a 5 hour car ride, we didn't get there till like 10 pm.

And, at 5am the next morning, tournament insanity began!

Because it was just debate, there were extra rounds. My friend Paul and I were also crazy (or perhaps ignorant...you never know) enough to try a new form of debate which we've never done before called "parliamentary debate." Styled after, of course, the British Parliament.

So combined with that and the usual amount of debate, I debated a total of 11 rounds, which is roundabouts of 11 hours of debate.

11 hours.

That's 11 hours of having your ideas beat to a pulp, and then having to muster up the brainpower to attempt to beat their ideas to a similar pulp.

With no speech to balance it out.

So at this present moment, I am thoroughly out of my mind, and fear I shall remain so for quite awhile.