[Carolyn_Grace]

Items on my "essential" list for competitions, besides the ones already mentioned:

1. Clipboard! ...preferably one bought brand new at the beginning of the season, or one that has been "refurbished" with colorful duct tape and stickers. My own scouting notes are quite interesting (less robot-esque and more people-watching...), and a clipboard is completely necessary for this.

2. Purple pens ...my team is Purple Precision. If you're Marjie Jenkins, your pens will all be pink. Basically, a pen with your meaningful color of choice.

3. Permanent marker ...for those random sightings of awesome people. Awesome people can be defined any way that you like it. I've outgrown my "OMG it's DEAN!" phase, but I still adore talking to Mr. Flowers given the opportunity. He is such a gentle person. I also like to have a marker on hand for when I run into friends that I haven't seen in a while.


And, it's been discussed already, but DEODORANT!
I can NOT emphasize this enough. Please, please, please reapply every two hours, or more as needed. I know of a friend who carries Febreze to competitions with her, just in case she needs to freshen her team up. Bringing deodorant can greatly reduce your chances of random sprayings of Febreze.*

...*I do NOT condone the random spraying of strangers. It was just a funny scenario. I mean, imagine someone walking through the pits just randomly spraying some of the unfortunate people who forgot their deodorant. The safety advisers would have a field day, poor Green Shirts.