Le Weekend

Well, Friday wasn't bad. Last day of normal co-op work before I train my replacement and then commence part time work 2 days a week for the summer and fall. Went to a Pirate's game that evening with Dad and Daniel, the Sames family, Nick Shuch, Mike Q and Nate. The game was okay, and the 'rates ended up winning; the food was quite good and reasonably priced; Daniel's torn-up-napkin confetti was super sweet, and Nate's pictures were great fun. But the greatest part of the night was the fireworks show after the game. The stadium was packed for fireworks night, and well it should have been. It was, to the best of my recollection, the best fireworks show I've ever seen. We were close (they were launched from the river), it was long, and there were many instances of well-planned timing that put up fantastic visual spectacles over our heads. Picture a background of long-glittering gold sparklies with bursts of red splashing in front, climbing up higher and higher with each blast. I do believe I could never tire of moderately-spaced fireworks shows. Pictures in the parking garage waiting for traffic to clear up were sweet!

Saturday was earthy and satisfying. I slept in, entered 2 month's worth of transactions into my checking account balance Excel sheet, started some laundry, straightened up my room, and then helped Daniel plant a bunch of flowers in the front. Good to work outside, with my bro, who is the best guy ever. Mom and Dad went out for a date that night, and Daniel and I determined that we would rent "Blues Brothers," hit up CVS for discout Easter candy, rush back for the Simpsons, and make cheesy grilled tortilla burritos for dinner. We did items 2 and 4, but Blockbuster had relocated and it was the WEEKEND, dorks, so Simpsons weren't on! But "Back to the Future" was on TV so we watched that, and I delighted in it's no-holds-barred comicbookish stereotypes and camera angles and suspense. Can't beat the Doc's hair, Marty's gagging 80's coolness, Biff's belligerent badness, and of course, the Delorean :-) Fun night with Daniel. He kept showing up this weekend :-)

Sunday was cool, though it started out rather tipsy. I arrived ready to play acoustic, found the band reshuffled, and I directed Mom via cell phone through the jungle of cables in the basement to my electric guitar stuff to bring. So I ended up playing electric, but wasn't set up till the last few songs of practice. Worship was a bit rough for me, but oh well. A couple times I was playing straight-up chords and could think about the words. The sermon was about God's omniscience, and Joel did a good job with that fundamental doctrine. I'm not sure yet how it needs to apply to me right now. Perhaps in seeking my satisfaction in God rather than all this other stuff fluttering around.

I was surprised and delighted to learn that a big group of folks were ditching the food court and driving to the West Mifflin Taco Bell for lunch. Back to the place of so many Sunday lunches in the past. Having Nick Shuch around brings back those old days, which has lent a pleasing air to my hangings out of late. Lunch was pretty good, and pretty enjoyable talking. I like being able to make people laugh, though I wonder if I fish for laughs a little too hard sometimes. Oh well. Who cares? (I say that in a fear-of-man-crucifying way, not in an uncaring way) It was cool to have Matt Hertzog there, though his Christ-figure hair and beard kept raising my mental eyebrows.

"Do You Hear What I Hear" just came on in my Bing Crosby playlist. Dude, that song hits me right down in my chest. Something about that melody. Ahg. Takes me straight to Christmastime.

After lunch came the best part of the weekend: doing frisbee with Daniel for an hour or two in the back yards. Yards. He stands in our yard and I go in the Benson's and we throw it between us, over the fence and bushes, trying to steer clear of the grasping branches of the Benson's big tree, angling away from the woods (most of the time!), motoring it uphill to Daniel, or floating it high above me to jump for. We've done that for many hours in golden summers of the past, so it was delicious to be out there again, sharing remarks and way inside jokes, bare feet on the Benson's grass, shirt off in the warm blowing air, blue sky open over the valley behind me, that sweet sweet feeling of a frisbee whipped off your hand, spinning to its destination sure and true, soaring through the air like a perfect spaceship, riding the billows, floating over my head and coming down to meet me as I leap for it. And that beautiful hang up there in the air, up with the frisbee in its territory, up for a tangible lingering, before my feet come back down to the ground. I very literally feel like I'm standing on the air when I jump like that, and I wouldn't give it up for much of anything. Frisbee with Daniel is perfect in so many ways! He's the funniest guy I know, we can both throw and catch quite well, there's the perfect balance of obstacles and free space, there's good grass, and we have yards on both ends to chase long-winded throws into. It's a perfect balance of challenge and doability, and it brings out all the years we've shared together. Excuse me while I go write a song.

[The song is written. I'm trying to optimize verse 2. After frisbee we went for a picnic dinner and bike ride in South Park, once again exactly reliving the old days. Except today at dinner we talked about plans for the future--projects on the house, Dad's retirement, my job... Ice-cream at Handels (Snappy Turtle in a waffle cone. Consistent, eh?), short Bible studies in the family room as Daisy lolled around on our laps, and now here. Early morning, black dirty feet, impending sickness, visceral sentimentality, tirelessly cute beagle snorting on the couch across from me. Another song on paper and tape. Keep 'em comin--I'll take all I can get.]

--CA

New Song!

Major huge boo for it being 2am right now.

Major huge yay for, in the space of two hours, writing and recording a song from scratch. And the recording is good! I love my Parkwood more and more every time I use it, and the thoughtless ease with which I can use the new computer makes a bigger difference than I thought in my subconscious mind as I go to record. The ol' Rode NT2000 has always been perfect, and continues to put out the sweetest signals I could want. And perhaps the nicest thing of all for recording?....The quietness of the new computer's fan! So stupid and lowly, but when I can crank up and compress recorded signals without getting this fan sound blaring, I can do a LOT more.

So, the song. It's called "Slips Away," I think, and I wrote it because I walked over to the couch thinking "I should write a song." I sat down, plunked for like 30 seconds, and then, somewhat springing from the Coldplay and Switchfoot I'd been hearing that day, I started singing this. Before 2 lines were out I had grabbed a tape recorder, and I recorded myself doodling around and figuring the song out as I played. No virgin ideas or guitar parts were going to escape me this time! And they didn't, and when I formulated a quick structure and a sweet double part, I headed downstairs with a clear enough idea to start recording without losing it all. So I did, and here you have it: Slips Away. And I even played some extemporaneous solos without botching them! Overall it was a great recording experience, and I was able to get the music in my head into the computer exactly as I had envisioned it, even with some added bonuses. THAT is recording at its best.

Also, if you want to look at my overall music site, go here. Other cool songs and blurbs about them.

Let me know what you think of the new song! I thought about putting the lyrics up, but I'll wait and let the song speak for itself. Maybe I'll put 'em up later if you want.

I'm so tired I feel sick in my stomach. Or maybe I've just been awake long enough to need a fourth meal. So much for studying for my physical chemistry final tomorrow at 6pm. Oh well. I made my choice when I went downstairs, and I would rather have this song and a B in that class, if it comes to that.

SLEEEEEEEEEP

You know, I was thinking: in the olden days people used to come a lot closer to not getting the food and water they needed to survive. So when Jesus promised the Samaritan woman water that would spring up within her, leaving her never thirsty again, that must have been pretty attractive. But today that promise doesn't do much for me. It's been filled by the water company :-P But rarely if ever does mankind eliminate one great felt need without replacing it with another different one. So what is comparable today?

You guessed it: sleep. What if someone offered you a bed that if you slept in it once you'd never be sleepy again. Never have to go to bed. Never feel tired. Dude! That would be pretty much the best thing in the world! Such is the force of analogy Christ used to show the grandeur of the new covanent He was bringing.

--Clear Ambassador

P.S. I just bought a 10-inch Remo clear ambassador drum head at Guitar Center today. Yay for buying my alias!

A 10-minute Post

10:07pm

Saturday I slept in and then ate Mom's great pancakes. Then Daniel and I met Justin for a delightful lunch at Taco Bell. We left him there, outside his car, while his keys, his iPod and his dessert resided in his car. Ouch. Then on to Iva Mae's, where we joined Nate, Pierson kids, Shannon, Lisa and eventually Sarah and Thomas in doing work in and around the house. The rain cleared up for us, it was much fun working, I was chipper, dinner afterward was great, and overall it was greatly satisfying, draining, and wheelbarrow-loads of fun. Then Nate and Sarah congregated at our house for practice with Daniel and Lisa and Shannon congregated for hanging out with Mom and me. Stuck around till 1:30, recording stuff for fun downstairs. Highly unusual day, and good.

Sunday Daniel joined Piersons, Calanos and Rutman in voyaging to the Butler church to do the service. He stuck with those folks till like 9:30 at night, joining a frisbee game in the afternoon after they got back. I played acoustic at church, Mom and I got a tasty lunch at Roxy's, and that afternoon I slept. Then in the evening I started devouring "Cash," Johnny Cash's autobiography, and then got absorbed in the Switchfoot website till like 3am or something.

Monday I didn't get up on time, but oh well. This week is my last time to put in overtime, so I plan on doing as much as I can. I worked 2 hours extra Monday, and as I was holed up in the EOC, in a dead silent room fussing with an outdated computer and gangly weather station software, the idea flashed into my mind of popping in on Akron instead of going home. I calculated it in Excel back at my office, and it only costs $15 more than going home. So I called to make sure the Hoffmans would be here, and headed north instead of south on 60. It felt so good to go to Akron--'twas wonderful, and I was treated to a beautiful sunset as I drove west down the nearly empty highway.

Dropped in on the Hoffman's, and Steve "flipped out on the inside." :-) I thought it funny how normal and nonchalant it felt to be in Akron on a random Monday night. 'Tis no joke a second home. Hung out a bit, ate dinner, and then Steve and I went to Brian's to hang out and spend the night. Talked, watched a movie with Nick, and then the Chima boys went to sleep. Steve and I stayed up a couple more hours talking, which was great. Then bed, then eyes popping open at 7:15am to see my cell phone lying flipped open beside my head--the only evidence that the alarm had gone off and my fingers had silenced it. First time I've soundly slept through my blaring cell phone alarm. Bummer.

Today I worked another 3 hours, getting home about 9:15. Showered (yay!), wrote this, and now I'm going to read "Cash" in bed. It's confirmed--I'm working part-time at NOVA over the summer and fall, "As much as I can get you," according to Tom. Yay for paychecks!

10:17pm

--Clear Ambassador

Switchfoot and Johnny Cash

Well, I really should write about the weekend and all the cool stuff I did, but all I want to write about now is how I've spent all evening reading Johnny Cash's autobiography and reading Switchfoot's tour journal. I've spent all evening with people talking to me who until know have just been voices singing to me from my speakers. There's Johnny Cash, talking about writing these songs, his childhood, not making a mystery of anything--just talking about stuff like I would. Hanging out in Memphis with Elvis, meeting a great piano player who's probably famous now, seeing one of his song titles and being brought back to the cold rainy day in Germany when it came to him out of the blue as he plucked his $5 guitar. Then spending an hour and a half reading "The Daily Foot," daily blurbs from Carl Diebold, who apparently owns the video company who does SF's videos. I'm in October '05, and they just got to Chicago after going around the west. What is just stirring me up inside is that I'm seeing what their life is actually like on tour. Basically, the bus, the venue, and tons of radio stuff. Every city they stopped at Jon and some or all of the guys would trek to some radio station's little studio, Jon plays "Stars" acoustic and talk, and they do tags like "Hey, I'm Tim Foreman of Switchfoot, and you're listening to Greg and Diana in the morning on WWKZ 93.6." They get driven everywhere in busses, vans and shuttles since they have no cars. They were excited when there was a Target across from the gas station and they could do some shopping, 'cause all they ever really see is the venue, the hotel, and the radio stations. A couple times they found out there had been a radio contest and the winner got to have SF play at their house. So they ride to some random house and play in a livingroom packed with 60 people, Jon playing acoustic, Chad playing a box, and Jerome displaying his amazing tambourine skills :-) The pedestrian roll of their lives is punctuated by "The show," when they walk up the stairs to the stage and, in Carl's words, "a fire is lit under the band's feet." The writer's blase familiarity with the stage, the show, the band, setting up shoots for music videos, radio spots, being on Jay Leno and other such things which the rest of us only see on our screens or hear in our speakers is tantalizing and mesmerizing to me. One night Nickel Creek was playing at the venue SF would hit the next day, so they popped in to the show, and when Carl stopped in at the band's bus that night Jon was talking with one of the guys from NC. So the next day two people from NC go to the show, and they bring them up for "Shadow Proves the Sunshine" and they play violin and mandolin for it! Like, dude! So now Jon's buddies with Nickel Creek. And he's played on a hundred radio stations, and he just seems like a charismatic guy who thinks deeply and randomly, and can just pop out songs and jokes... I dunno. The more I find out about Switchfoot, the more I respect them, and I dunno...the more they seem like me and my friends. And that's what's unsettling me right now. All I read, from Johnny Cash to Jon Foreman, just makes me want to do that myself. I can totally see being a Jon Foreman if God continues to bless my songwriting and musical development. I could honestly see Pure Boss opening for Switchfoot on their next tour and doing a kick-butt job at it. And when I tell people about the SF concert and hear Jess say "That'll be you someday, John," and hear Mrs. Harvey look at me and say that God will give me songs like that, I start to think maybe I could actually be something, actually touch this world that is mostly a fantasy, singing to me with perfect music, seemingly removed from real people and real life. But those brief moments of hope, those times when this possibility pops up in my heart as something that could happen, I don't let them go. Even as part of me reserves in the unspoken depths of my heart the possibility that some day I could be singing my heart out in my songs before crowds, drenched in the colored lights that lift you out of this world, those thoughts seem stupid and foolish when I think of talking about them to Mom or Dad. Just to picture the look on their faces as I pour out these grandiose dreams, while I sit here lazing my life away, studying Chemical Engineering, crappy at most of my instruments, and doing absolutely nothing to genuinely pursue moving towards the music industry. And as Dad put it, "You're just not that good." When I set these dreams next to Mom and Dad they become ridiculous (as in, worthy of ridicule) and I'm ashamed of even letting myself think for a moment seriously about them. But still, in that corner of my heart, is the knowledge that these artists I listen to and love came from a real life like mine, and the weight of their music, the quality of what they did, won over the crowds, the gigs, the radio stations, and the studios. And honestly, I just wonder, if these thoughts are as infantile and stupid as I usually come back to feeling they are, why is God seeming to stoke them? Maybe I shouldn't be reading this book, or the tour journal, but second guessing the past relative to God's will is pointless and rather theologically incorrect. So here I am, and this desire in my heart is burning away, at times hurting almost more than I can describe. So I say to myself, should I start seriously working towards fulfilling this desire? Switchfoot worked the local circuits and the lowly tours for years and years before "Beautiful Letdown" started really jacking them up. Am I prepared to do that? John, look at yourself. Nobody gets to where these great icons in your mind are without years of hard hard lowly work! You ARE foolish for thinking of the end product without the ploughing, sowing and patient watering that goes into it. But I cannot picture turning my life into that--the local band that's dinky but you throw your life into it...then the almost unknown band that opens for some bigger band on tour, then, glory from heaven, they get signed by a real record company! THEN you hit the recording as a newcomer to the industry, doing what your told, working away, and THEN you hit a serious tour and start courting the public in city after city, drive after drive, away from home and church, surrounded by an industry soaked in sin, begging you to inflate in your own ego. Me? Doing that? Doing even a part of that? Pure Boss? Yeah - stand back and laugh at me. I scorn myself along with you. I'd like to take the sensitive artist line in the first half of the movie--*sniff* "Laugh at me now, but I know the music in my soul will take me there"--but that's a movie, and this is cold hard real life: the most unforgiving, most unromantic, most dry and withering machine ever known. Those nights on stage, this perfect music playing right now from my laptop, is an escape from this real world, and those that become the ones PLAYING that escape are unspeakably far between. It's stupid to think I could do that. I'm stupid, I'm lazy, I'm not skilled, and I'm inflated with ridiculous pride because a few good friends actually like a few of my songs and a few people actually like my band. I'm so, SO far from professional musicians that one can but laugh at the preposterousness of it all. And the corner of my heart keeps burning.

Which pretty much just leaves me praying a very confused, half ashamed, self conscious prayer. Lord, I don't even want to ask about what I want to do, it sounds too stupid to even say out loud, but I do just pray that you would do Your will through these feelings that are all stirred up right now. I see them leading in one direction, but You may have totally different ends in mind, and I just pray that you would accomplish them. If this is meant to be a raw nerve that never really heals, a thorn in my side, then please use it to mature me as you designed it to. If it's leading to something different that what I picture, please bring it about. Just do Your will, I pray! That's all I can want, because seeking anything else will lead me to heartbreak, terrible struggle, and gnawing hopelessness. All of my music except tired licks on acoustic guitar is totally dependent on You--You can give grandly, or you can withold barrenly--so I can only hope of doing what You want with it. If you want to take me or Pure Boss anywhere at all, it's going to have to come from you. Just help me follow what you want me to do NOW. Now as in right now, as in getting up on time, as in having devotions like I'm supposed to, as in not sinning in these painfully obvious ways, as in serving Mom at home eagerly, as in investing in the geode riches of family and true friends, as in not being a stupid, blow-off, lazy, half-cocked, childish kid. Whatever of that picture of how things should be in my mind is actually how it should be, Lord, please help me to do it.

Right now what I would like most in this world would be to send an email to the guys in Switchfoot proposing Pure Boss open for them, they check us out, like the fresh happy music they see, and we tour with them. If it wasn't the real world outside this room, I think that could happen. Beyond that, I would at least really like to get to hang out with Switchfoot, and especially to talk to Jon Foreman for awhile. And I would really like to be Johnny Cash's friend. He just seems like he was an amazing, deep, rather non-pretentious man, and reading his book is like reading what I would write if I had lived what he lived.

Anyway, enough ramblings from the delusional loser. These things were burning so hard, I just had to write them out as fast as I could type. I may edit it later, or I may leave it as the unvarnished product of the sum of my mental and spiritual capacities at the moment of feeling.

I point my finger up, for up there is the only thing I can end this post on or put my mind to rest with. God. Nothing is too ridiculous or improbable for Him to do, and nothing can make humble real life as scintillating and rich as He can. Either road is sufferable only in Him, and He has many other roads in His mind than those two I can see. Thank goodness. Thank God.

--Clear Ambassador

* * *

2am: I just read through Jon Foreman's lengthy ramblings about "Nothing is Sound," including blurbs about each track. Real quick, he said himself thing after thing that I have thought myself about these songs, this album, and the music. That was way cool. Mostly, though, I was literally stunned into mental silence as I read the following:

"Anyhow, here's a tune that was written on new years day 2004. I pulled an acoustic demo of the song together and threw it on the pile of songs we had for the record. We loved the way the vocal sounded on the demo- raw and honest so we kept it. To sing a song about the new year in march just wouldn't sound quite right, so the vocal on the record is the first time I ever sang the song: 1/1/04."

The vocals on that song have consistently been one of the most affecting and personal parts of the album to me. And that was the first time he sang it! No words could express what that means to me. Unbridled, unaltered, untouched; that first shot at a song that you never ever get back again. Caught on tape and put into the album. Breathtaking. Heartaching.

Friday was long

So, I got up at 5:39am! And then I made the quality decision to go back to sleep. And woke up an hour and a half later. I can rarely think of a time my body has been so heavy as when I first got up. I felt ineffably better and fresher at 7:15 as I dressed and assembled food for breakfast. And to record what I recorded last night was well worth the price of having to stay at work till 5.

I had written out a tight list yesterday of things I needed to do today, so I got to them as I ate some pizza and sipped CVNDP for breakfast. I mostly put together an outline of ideas for what I could do if I did part-time work over the summer and fall. Then I calculated the new retention time in the 002 lagoons if we dropped the level 2 feet to expose the outfall pipe to put in a reinforcing resin sock. It would go to 4.5 days, which isn't long enough.

The normal Friday pilgrimage to the Midway at 11:30 didn't happen, which was ok with me because I was still full from the pizza. At noon Tom decided to go, so I went with him, and I asked Georgia to make me like a half-sized salad. She did (Bull made it, actually), and it was perfect! Good lunch, and nice to hang out with Tom. I love the Midway :-)

In the afternoon the biggest thing I did was go talk to the guys at Dylark for about an hour regarding the tote project. I got some enlightening perspectives from some of the operators, which I consider possibly the most important aspect of designing a process change. The operators know best what works and doesn't, and how things are carried out practically. Then I ditched the last 3 items on my checklist for the day and wrote up a 2-page summary of the 3 options for implementing totes, even crafting a concise matrix of options versus pros, cons, costs and implementation logistics. Good to get that stuff down on paper.

I was planning on going to the Grover (now Caldwell) care group that evening, and since the Quinlisks are gone (Their Aunt in Columbus died) I thought I'd call the Caldwells and see if I could bum dinner of them. Turns out it was a good thing I called 'cause care group was at their house instead of in Bethel Park! Saved me a lot of driving. So I headed to the C's at 5:15 and got to catch up with them a bit. It's funny--in past semesters I've gone over to their house about once a week, but this semester it's like every single day has something that must be done after work, leaving no days to go chill with them.

Care group was pretty good. A bit slow perhaps, but that may have just been me, 'cause I started getting a bit drowsy. It was providential that I was there 'cause Mr. Taylor would've been the only one doing worship. It was nice to use Katie's guitar and play along with him, and people said it sounded good. It was nice to hang out and talk with folks afterward, and me and Mr. T talked about music and recording and I played him the two versions of "On My Side." Then home, and I had to figure out a detour on the fly since they were shutting down a section of the parkway after 10pm. It went better than I expected, and I got back on the highway at Carnegie.

I called Steve-O on the way home and got the rest of the story on the encounter with Ryan Cabrera in New York. Many Akronites have been on a 3-day trip to New York City this week, and today Nick saw Ryan Cabrera (pop star) shopping, and he and Jen, Christin and Emily hung out with him a bit. Pretty cool! New York sounds awesome, and I really want to go hang out there and play my guitar for money and film a music video with Pure Boss.

At home Wes and Nate were hanging out with Daniel. So I joined in, and we ended up going to Applebee's for half-off appetizers and good conversation. Great time, lots of laughing, and we made our waitress laugh a lot too :-)
Nate, after much talk about the sad state of world society: That's it, the four of us are going to the Moon to start civilization over.
Daniel: But we have no women!
Me, pointing to Wes and Daniel: That's right! You and you, you're out.

When the last people in the restaurant started getting ready to leave we cleared out, pushing open the doors into the warm humid rain. Nate headed home. Wes and Daniel are upstairs heading for bed, and I'm feeling sorta deep subtle tired, like I don't want to go downstairs and remix "On My Side" like I've been wanting to all day. I'd rather brush quick, lay back on the couch, watch a Simpsons or two and let myself go to sleep. Probably not a bad idea.

Today was a long day, but it didn't so much feel so. Work was pretty good though I got tired at points, lunch was nice, hangin' with folks at Care Group was cool, and Applebee's with the dudes was great.

I wanna go to New York, but mostly I want Pure Boss to be the opening band for Switchfoot on their tour :-) There is no other earthly thing I can think of that would be better than that. Maybe perfect health and a couple trillion bucks, but lots of money seems to end up sucking, so I'll take Switchfoot.

I also want to buy Ozone (hard core mastering plugin) and make a pro-quality album. At least that's one dream that I'm actually working towards and that will most likely happen. Coo'

--Clear Ambassador

Thursday was sweet

Quickie here since I've spent all my evening recording. I got up on time again but got out later 'cause I showered. Hateful time-consuming showers! Grr.

Work was good. Finally met with Tom and got a big list of things that need to be done...right before I left for the day. Oh, the irony of it all.

Had a pity party with Jess on the way to class 'cause neither of us could go to New York with everybody else from Akron. Yay for cell phones making drives go by fast.

No more Cherry Vanilla Dr.Pepper slurpie at Seven Eleven. BUT....they had Coke Blak! So I got a ridiculously overpriced bottle of the coffee-cola "fusion beverage," and was incredulous to find the coke flavor analogous to the dumb little gummy coke bottles I ate as a child. Heck, you ARE Coke! Can't you make your coke flavor right?? And I learned at the dentist yesterday that Coke is the third most corrosive drink for teeth. The other two? Gatorade and Red Bull. Yessir.

Ate my pizza scrounged from meeting leftovers at Nova and gave up on the final homework problem. The units of the permeability constant were totally bizarre, not to mention he never actually talked about permeability in the book, and I don't think there's "pyrex gas."

Class was good. The last lecture. Reaction kinetics, and I knew it all already, basically. Last lecture of the class, and Dr. Yates' last lecture at Pitt. He's moving to the University of Virginia to start working in astrochemistry. Pretty crazy sweet for a 71-year-old! We had bananas and double-stuffed Oreos for snacks. He gave me back 7 points on problem 2, bumping my exam 2 score up to an 88, with which I am content. We're flirting with a B here....we'll see :-/

Got Daniel a Coke Blak on my way out of Pitt and talked to Lydia Heymann on the phone (sorta). I randomly decided to find out what was down Bouquet if you don't turn right on Bates, so I did, and ended up pretty much tooling down whatever roads I felt like, following a newfound sense of Pittsburgh direction, and eventually coming right out onto second avenue halfway home! Yeah man!

Came home and went downstairs to record. I thought about setting up a metronome and laying a good steady guitar track for "Nail-Pierced Hands," but instead I played around with drums on "On My Side." I wasn't really planning to record anything serious, but I ended up fine-tuning a good drum track, after which I wanted to put down some bass. So I ended up crafting one of my best bass parts ever over about 20 takes, hunched there in the big chair in front of the computer. And dude, I have fallen in love with my little ART Tube Levelar, a guitar pedal-shaped real tube compressor I picked up for $25 used at Guitar Center. It gave me the bass tone I have cried for for the past year. I still am amazed and overjoyed when it slides down the fretboard on the recording and doesn't lose any volume. Amazing! I love that little pedal!

And then I grabbed the atrocious little no-brand Les Paul imitation guitar Rick Reynolds gave me, and ended up laying some solid, creative guitar tracks. Once again, the Tube Levelar gave me a crazy sweet fat steady tone. I kept one of them that was played kind of on the fly and has some mistakes. The tuning might be a bit off, and regardless, I'll probably redo it, but I like what I played. All in all, what I recorded this night stuns me. The drums sound like real drums, the bass sounds like real bass and a real bass PART (something that has eluded me), and the guitar has that beautiful Les Paul tone and some sweet low-level accents. The bass and acoustic are intertwined harmonically, creating a musical sum greater than its constituent parts. Basically, God dropped another amazing recording in my lap, and I have there on the hard drive something I've spent the last 6 months wondering if I could ever make.

So I'm pretty happy! And Mike Q's new pictures on Flickr made me happy too 'cause there were sweet ones, amazing ones, cool ones, weird ones, and interesting ones. And some of me, which is always a plus :-D

Tomorrow Dad leaves for a 5-day trip to visit Grandma Sweetie in Texas. I'll go to care group right from work. But most importantly, I'll get up at 5:39am.

--Clear-recording Ambassador

Wednesday has 23 minutes left

The big news of the day: I GOT UP ON TIME!
Yes, when the alarm blared at 5:30 I carefully hit one snooze, and when it blared again 9 minutes later I got up and got moving. I think mental resolve can make a 100% difference in waking up, which is why discovering that I can leave at 7:30 and the world won't end really cut the legs out from under my timeliness this semester. But this morning I got up, and it felt good to leave a little after 6.

At work I did the daily logs and data, waited to meet with Tom (which we never did), cleaned up various loose ends, and tried to move ahead with the totes project. It was supposed to be a co-op lunch day, but everyone either couldn't make it or was gone, so I went to the Midway by myself to sate my growing craving for the the cheesy, ranchy, french-fried, vegetable-mediated deliciousness of a cajun chicken salad. It lived up to all expectations, and as I sat alone at the table I worked on the manual update project and then planned out the tracklist for my album. It was significant, in my mind, to come away with 11 tracks in a specific order that I'm fairly confident in. It brings focus and boundaries to what I need to work on, and gives me that important first step from which to work from now on. I wonder if this album will really happen, and if it will be any good outside my circle of friends. I wonder how much I should charge for it.

I was planning to work some overtime ($20 post-tax per hour!), but then I remembered (thank goodness) the dentist appointment at 6:15. So I left at 3:54pm, stopped by home, and swung by Best Buy to get a firewire card and inspect car subs before hitting the dentist. Subs are expensive. My teeth are in bad shape. 6 cavities to get filled on 2 different visits. Bad news to be sure, but far from unexpected. I'm glad to have gone this long since my last cavity (years and years ago), considering the amount of pop and candy I enjoy on a regular basis. Dr. Qualk said nonchalantly to "switch to diet," at which I snorted a laugh. Perhaps some day I will drink fizzy water loaded with caramel color and bizarre chemicals, but for now it's sugar or skip it. And I'm doing a lot of skipping it. It's a matter of brushing during the day, which is why I'm bringing a toothbrush to work tomorrow. And flossing, which is do-or-die for preventing cavities.

At home I ate dinner, watched a funny Simpsons, paid my PA state tax balance, and hit the homework. I'm very happy to say now that 6 of the 7 problems are done, and to the best of my knowledge they are right. The seventh I leave for tomorrow since it involves diffusion, which is different from what the other problems were about. This P-chem stuff really is pretty cool. I punched some numbers on a lark, and informed Dad that there are roughly 5 times 10 to the 28th power air molecules (21% oxygen, 79% nitrogen) hitting our kitchen table's top surface every second. That's 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or Ten Octillion. Every second. And all those molecules, smashing into everything all around us constantly, bumping us with an octillion little bumps every second, are "air pressure." When you suck out some of those molecules from the inside of an empty pop bottle, the octilllion ones on the outside keep hitting at the same rate, and that force crumples the plastic in with unstoppable firmness. It's interesting to contemplate the blase reality of the effects of such abstract concepts as flux of particles through a mathematically-defined area (which is the number of molecules hitting the table per second).

So now I've written this post, which I thought would be short 'cause I really didn't have much to say and didn't want to be typing for a long time. But of course I found plenty of things to say. I wonder why I can say so much with so little provocation, while it seems like pulling teeth to find out from some people what their major is. Speaking of teeth, I'ma get novicaine shots three Fridays from now when I start getting cavities filled. My two mouth shots as a kid are one of the very few scarring memories of my childhood. Since the day the dentist probed around in the deepest untouchable regions of my jaw with his needle and the shot came out the tip and pounded into some unknown tissue, I have feared and hated the prospect of cavities. It was sufficient motivation to get me to brush, of my own volition, basically every single night of my life (save a few bizarre nights in Akron). If you've read my blog much at all and I've communicated my life with any degree of competency, you should appreciate how stunning this is. I can't even make myself read the Bible every day when I know the eternal fruit it would yield, but I'll get myself up out of my warm drowsy bed while my limbs cry for sleep when I remember I haven't brushed yet. If I don't do it I'll end up getting another shot, so brush away. Now I've gotta make flossing have that same import (which it once did), and I've gotta feel the connection between drinking a can of pop and my enamel decaying and the needle being sunk down again into the inside of my mouth.

Jars of Clay is amazing. Not a lot of their songs are huge stand-out five- or six-star jewels, but as I play through their albums in iTunes I keep raising my head and listening and thinking what a sweet song this is. Even stuff I can't recall at all, once its coming through the speakers, seems like I've known and loved it all my life. And their last two albums, with rich lyrics written by real Christians to boot, are nearly matchless. Even Audio Adrenaline seems cheesy compared to "Amazing Grace" or "Come and Let Us Mourn Awhile."

If I could live anybody's life right now, it would be Jon Foreman. He's doing exactly what a huge part of me cries to do. He writes songs that pierce my heart, he has a killer band of hilarious, skilled guys, he puts on personal, musically rich, freely experiential concerts, and millions of people across America can sing his songs by heart. Oy. Well, my life is in God's hands, and that's not a sad thing, 'cause He knows far better than me what will work out.

Now it's Thursday. And late again. Keeps happening. Oh well. I'm getting up at 5:39 this morning.

--Clear Ambassador

Tuesday was Bluesday

When I woke up this morning the first thought in my head, other than the low level hating of myself for screwing up another morning and failing to rise promptly, was like a gunshot, especially after the cacaphonous hour of three different alarms going off in the haze of my sleep.

This is not a joke.

You know how some things you can put off and shrug off because they're not that serious? Well, I sat up in my bed and saw that I have been living my life this way, but it's not an optional activity or something I can do over again. This is the one shot at youth I have, the one blind chance to set the rest of my life in stone, and here I am laying in a tossed and turned bed, an hour off schedule for the morning and a couple years off schedule with anything meaningful. So I got up fast, kept hating myself, did 40 push-ups, skipped a shower and went on with the careening routine of getting out the door in the morning. Spilling the oatmeal all over the front porch on my way out really helped everything along, and I got so pissed at God I just threw out my hands and said "Can't you just let me get to my car?? I'm already an hour late! Can't you just let me get going?" Such was the honest voice of my heart, and until that heart changes, anger will continue to blast out through any level of piousness or good feelings towards God and others that may exist at the moment.

Being me, I wasn't just angry and miserable all day. The commonalities of life continued on--fighting slumber on the drive, Starbucks Frappuccino, working on the totes project, crafting burritos for lunch, and struggling through the DMR. My mind was just strained and misfiring all day, and I ended up printing several pages 3 times before I remembered what to fix and remembered to fix it before printing it again. At one point I thought, "Geez, I could just see myself driving home and forgetting that I don't have enough gas to get home, and driving myself out of gas on the way." So when I finished the report I drove to the Sunoco and tanked up and got some snacks. Snapple Rain (Still good. Sooo good!). $2.85/gallon! It cost $39 to fill up! That was hard to swallow. But I got 30.3 miles to the gallon, which I was happy about. Then back to the plant, take the chlorine reading, drop off the charts at the filter plant, and swing by 002 to get the strip chart. I was disappointed to see that the chlorine day tank had been filled, ruining my measurement for the day, but I was even more ticked to see that it was because I had put the sign on the wrong side Monday, so it said to fill it. Ugh.

I stayed till 6:15 to make up the last of the hours from taking last Friday off. Even though I was scatterbrained I had kept myself from getting too sleepy in the morning, and I got some good work done on projects. I also read reviews of "Plans" by Death Cab for Cutie during lunch and learned about the band, which till then had existed in a vacuum in my mind. I read the lyrics for the album too, and marveled at their piercing honesty, startlingly clear meanings, and the poignant pictures they conjure up. I like Death Cab a lot right now, so much so that I wonder how long it will last, and how good they are in the long run.

The drive home was sunny, but I kept the windows closed 'cause the vents kept it at a nice temperature. I played the Matthew CD's, but spent more time in the comfortable groove of thinking with the talking in the background than really listening to it. I hate it when I do that because it can be so gloriously meaningful when I really have a good listen to those CD's. But oh well. We don't have epiphanies every day, and I certainly haven't been cultivating a quiet focus on God lately. As in all areas of my life right now, sowing and reaping looks pretty bleak. How can I fill all my time doing so much stuff, and seemingly have no real fruit on the way? If I could just make myself do all the dry dull lifeless motivation-less things that should be done, I would have a crop in the works that would thrill my heart and justify my life. Hm. I hadn't planned to say that last phrase, but it's what came to mind, and I think it's very accurate. It shows brutally clearly that this discouragement isn't in line with the gospel and isn't in humble acceptance and joy of Jesus' mercy and salvation. My mind revolted at the prospect of letting myself go that way as I thought about it at the front gate on my way out. I marveled at that moment at how fiercly feelings can resist the gospel when they take a turn away from rejoicing in it.

I was glad to check my voicemail and find that Tony couldn't make the guitar lesson tonight. That gave me an unobstructed evening, so I formulated this list that now must be done since I did this first 'cause all kinds of stuff was coming to mind:

• Do some Elliptical and stretches
• Run and fold the rest of my laundry
• Finish unpacking from Akron
• Take a shower
• Write about today
• Go to bed

One down, five to go. Fun down, strive to go.

I guess I'm going to try to address this "slough of despond" today by narrowing my music choices, doing Elliptical, going to bed on time (which means not doing anything on the internet and not writing or recording my song in the works), reading some Bible before bed tonight, and realizing, as I do, that feelings are not objective reality. I doubt I'll go gung ho at this sin and read and study the Bible and fill my mind with worship music and take a day out to fast and pray and start reading a book by John Piper and memorize some key verses. Is that bad? I could try, but I can envision absolutely nothing but pitiful failure within less than a week, and I don't want to go down that "convince yourself you're really going to do it only to fail and undermine your confidence further" road again. I could try, I certainly agree those are all great things to do, and anybody decent should do at least some of them and really actively fight their sins, but I honestly think I would not do them and nothing would change. So I take a step more with how life seems to be flowing, trusting, I think, in the for-real person of Jesus Christ and what He seems to be doing and supplying in fact right now. Perhaps I'm totally wrong and drifting in childish lazy spineless weakness and unbelief, but I feel and see no other plausible, honest course. We'll see what tomorrow brings, and wonder how much is sin and how much is just feelings.

--CA

Monday has come and past

NO
MOON
LANDING
PROJECT!!!

Thus begins the week of blogging. Yes, you heard right! I figured, if you looked over my blog, you'd think I've bought in heart and soul to the lie that you work through the week just to live on the weekends. I don't really understand or feel it all right now, but I know that God doesn't call me to live out meaningless drudgery 5 out of every 7 days. So I figured I'd write about what I did each day this week, to give an idea of what real life was like between the crazy weekends :-)

Today was a light day at work. Two thirds of the plant took the day off, so Andrea and I were the only representitives for Responsible Care. Then she went to the Credit Union and I went to the EOC to work on the weather station, so too bad if you wanted a permit signed or a waste manifest :-P I took forever getting all the petty charts and logs organized and interpreted and entered into Excel from the long weekend. Then I focused on developing a procedure for downloading data from the plant's weather station. Got to spend an hour sequestered in the magical mysterious Emergency Operations Center which lies behind locked doors on a deserted second floor. I was an "Authorized Personnel Only" person! :-)

I was going to stay late and make up the last of the hours from taking last Friday off, but then I remembered it was a choice between the two certainties of life tonight: do taxes or die. So I came home at 4:30. Now, I'm really starting to get ticked at the Pirates . . not because they can't win but because their games totally clog up the inbound traffic on my way home. Shoulda been a breeze; instead it was a booger. Ah well. I didn't listen to Bible CD's or music, but instead my mind wandered all over and I kept bringing it back around to praying for people and requests that needed to be addressed. I hate telling someone I'll pray for them and then realizing 2 weeks later I never did. It was sunny but not hot. I took a crazy map-guided route home, popping out by Applebee's so I could cash my check at Shop 'n' Save. Then back home for dinner at 6:15 and realizing I'd forgotten my dentist appointment at 5:45 :-( I suck at life. We talked about plans and Dad had some comments on Sunday, and then I hit the taxes. Filed 'em online with some company--free Fed and $10 state, and not a piece of paper to be touched or mailed. Good deal. I'm amazed again at the amount of money God is letting me earn right now, and at how much of that the government takes away :-P The social security tax is KILLER! What a sick bloated government, yet still it functions, and life goes on better than anywhere else in the world.

Finished taxes at 9:30, sent out an email about working at Iva Mae's Saturday, scanned my web outlets (Facebook, email, statcounter, Flickr), and put in some time checking Pure Boss' email and fiddling with our Myspace. Never again will we miss a gig because nobody checked the email! Ouch ouch ouch.

Now I'm blogging this as quick as I can type and eating Oke Doke and drinking fruit punch juice. Caedmon's call plays in the family room system, Daisy is flopped out in the huggle chair to my left, and everybody else is upstairs in the quiet dark. Now to check out Sarah's Italy pictures, maybe shower, and hit the sack. I'm so sore from volleyball, frisbee and pull-ups it's crazy. My knees are ok, though. Oke Doke is good.

--CA

Quite the weekend!

Woot woot! I had Friday off, I did recording, I got sleep, I saw Switchfoot, I played my sweet lovely new guitar, and I ran my legs off for hours with friends in the comfortable April air. And I guess it was Easter too :-P

Compared to Easters of the past when we would go on pronounced family vacations, this one has been very low key. It sounds bad to say, but the only thing that really made it stick out to me was that I had Friday off, and we had special music and a skit at church. I guess I'm lost in my own whirling world. But Mom came through, as she has in every Easter. As I was drifting to wakefulness Saturday morning around 11am Daniel was like, "You know, there's Easter baskets and stuff down there once you're up." I'd forgetten, dude! Sure enough, down on the coffee table lay the Easter basket that hearkens back to deepest childhood memories (Oh, how magical those Easter mornings were). This year, though, we got hit by the Bulk Bunny! A lone basket lay upon a mysterious blanketed pile on the coffee table. Beneath we discovered Sam's Club flats of Sun Chips, Starbucks drinks, fruit punch, candy bars, cashews (yes!!) and gum. Sweet! :-) Heh - how things change.

Saturday was hardly a part of this weekend at home 'cause at 2:30 I went to the Quinlisks and rode with Nate and Shannon to Columbus to see Switchfoot. That whole adventure is totally removed from the rest of the weekend in my mind, like a superscript or something. Friday was kind of the bulk of the weekend for me. It was glorious all day Thursday remembering that there was no early morning waiting for me around the clock. And the day itself was glorious in laid-back good times bolstered by some satisfying productivity. Mom woke me up at 10:30 for a great breakfast of sausages and waffles, and after cleaning up and collecting ourselfs Mom went to Curves and Daniel and I headed out for some shopping. We hit the thrift store first and had a great time sorting through the random cheap clothes and picking out sweet stuff (like a perfect AE orange rugby shirt for two bucks!). I got a comfy suit jacket, which I've been wanting to find for awhile. Then to the mall to get resistors for our busted subwoofer, check out Lids, hit up AE, and drink Vault. Goes down like a soda, KICKS LINE AN ENERGY DRINK!! Vault - get to it! :-P Ooh, and we popped into Hot Topic and I found a perfect chain for my ring. Yay for a new non-rusty long-enough chain! That was a great time--driving around the warm sunny air, through the familiar hills and stores of our chain-store metropolis, picking up sweet stuff and being brothers. Golden times, and it wasn't even Saturday :-)

Friday night everybody else went to Youth Parent Care Group, so I swung by Taco Bell and picked up Mike, who was chilling with the crew who had watched Narnia at the Maxi Saver. We came back here and he helped me record drums for 3 hours, running the "R" "W" and spacebar keys like no other :-) We were working on "Nail-Pierced Hands," which I'm redoing because of terrible vocals and many mistakes in the existing version. I got my snare sounding dry and poppy after much fiddling, and we worked out the mic'ing pretty well. I was excited about the kick drum--it sounds better with no effects than any I've ever recorded! Unfortunately, I think we're gonna need to redo it 'cause the acoustic track I threw down turns out to be rushed. Arg for not having a well-developed sense of timing, and generally sucking at drums. How ironic that I'm the drummer in my band! That recording time was pretty sweet, and it was great to have Mike there to help and make it much more enjoyable. Any time I record I'm so happy, 'cause I always want to do it but I often lack the initiative to make myself go down and work at it. Thursday night I recorded a new song I wrote recently, and that was sweet. New Parkwood, new recording computer (finally working thanks to Eric), simple song, solid vocals...everything recording should be. Anyway...

Ah, the Switchfoot concert. It was funny--my other concerts had been huge deals, much-anticipated and very planned. This one was just sorta hoooking up with Nate a week ago and being like "Sure, I'll go see 'em with you." It was also different 'cause I didn't have to drive, and we didn't have a big group of people. Both of which were good in their ways. Just much more low key than my previous concerts.
We drove for 3.25 hours, we found a Chipotle, we walked back, we scooched into the crowd, and the opening band came up in about 15 minutes. They were similar to Coldplay, and though the guitar parts were fairly creative and the overall sound was pleasing, it got old after 5 songs of the same droning emo stuff. Then the long long wait for the sound people to get everything ready for Switchfoot. At last the lights went out and the music stopped, and everybody started cheering. The 5 guys whose music has been with me and in me for years were walking up on stage 20 feet in front of me.
The defining characteristic of this concert was LOOSE. Unbelievably loose. Though when the band all came crashing in on the main parts of songs they were tight and powerful and slick, those parts were constantly alternated with loose, open stuff. Every time they came to a bridge Jon wouldn't go right into the singing like normal, he'd back off, wander around the stage, sometimes start up some little vocal part, and eventually get back to the mic and go on with the song. He talked a ton between songs, walking around on stage, talking to people in the audience, talking about songs, and just being himself (as far as I can tell). Having seen them in September, it seems like they've toured so much that they've ditched all the slick impersonal rock show stuff and just get up there and play their music for a couple hours and hang out with the fans. Jon kept pulling his in-ear monitors out, taking off his guitar, carrying his mic stand around, and sticking it out over the crowd and letting us sing. My favorite example is when he got to the first chorus of "Dare You To Move." He had been playing it just on acoustic, and when he got to the chorus, which normally comes in with a big crash, he ripped out his in-ears, stopped singing, and just played and listened to the whole crowd singing. How personal and free! He just seemed to be into the music--listening to it, feeling it, savoring the crowd, crying out and singing out what was inside him. At one point in "Twenty Four" he sang a line of a prechorus or something and said real fast "That sounds good, that sounds good, do that again" while motioning with his hand to the band. So they did those 2 lines again, then then they went on with the song. I love stuff like that! It's like what I would do if I was up there. Soak it in, feel it, sit back and rest in it, experience it! A rock concert is such a fleeting, mysterious, otherworldly thing, it was great to see someone throw off the normal routines and just live it and love it. When they got to the bridge of "Meant to Live," the very last song, he stood there for a second, hesitating, and then just ditched his guitar, grabbed his mic, hopped off the stage and walked through the crowd, as everybody sang the bridge. When it got to the chorus that normally goes crashing on, the band kept it quiet, everybody sang, and he wound up sitting on the railing in front of the stage, singing into his mic and looking around at everybody. Way cool! Even though I rather despise the stereotypical screaming "Oh, I touched him!!!", I have to admit it was really cool to press forward and stand right next to him as he walked by. There's just something indescribable about being right by a person who has created something of such broad popularity that means so much to you, and is normally just sounds coming through your stereo. There he is--the guy who sang those songs that live in my soul! The guy who wrote them. He's a real guy, and there he is--soaked in sweat and short of breath, right in front of me. Though I will say that I refrained from sticking my hand out and touching him like everybody else was doing. That's just weird :-P And yes it's stupid and stereotypical, but I was quite bummed that my cell phone was out of memory so I couldn't get a picture of him right there :-P It hurts--'twould have been a sweet sweet pic.
The drive home was pretty nice. I talked a lot, trying to work through and express all that was stirred up by the concert, and listening to how it hit Nate and Shannon. Eventually I curled up on the back seat, having said all I could say, and drifted away, happy that there were others around me who were active. I woke up for the gas station around Wheeling, but curled right back up when we got back in. A few minutes later they were waking me up and saying we had arrived. I was and still am weirded out at how fast that time went. I must have fallen dead asleep, 'cause it felt like no time passed at all. But regardless, I dragged myself and my bag into the Quinlisks' dark house, shut off the light in Mike's room, wondered where Matt and Ryan were, and disappeared into the cot's warm embrace. Quite a nice little adventure, and though it hadn't been glowing in my mind's calendar for weeks before, I still came away deeply affected, as I often am, by Switchfoot's people and music. It just hurts me how good their songs are, how deeply they affect me and other people, how personal they are. Somehow the only way to reconcile this seems to be to do the same thing myself; but I'm not Jon Foreman. I don't have the skills or the dedication to take it to a national level where you have tens of thousands of utter strangers loving your songs and knowing them by heart. I dunno. As much as their music is inside me, it hurts me that I'm not doing the same thing. I can hardly imagine that God would ever bring me to a place like that, touring with a real band, and I really can't expect that of Him, so I'm left aching to do myself what means so much from others. But don't get me wrong--God is amazingly, perfectly good. I say unhesitantly that I want nothing other than His plan, which will most likely never include something like what my heart aches for. It's just an ache; a yearning of my heart to do something...a brush on the nerve that's designed for heaven.

And moving right along, I slept through my snooze Sunday morning and rolled into practice apologetically late. Playing second acoustic was fun, and I loved having space to play different stuff and a guitar to play it on with ease and quality. The youth's skit was well practiced and well performed, and Mr. Pierson's sermon was a heartfelt outreach to those who like Thomas doubt the reality and effect of Jesus' physical resurrection.
After church the Behrens and Schuchs congregated for Easter lunch at the Quinlisks. Chicken Parmesian baby! Tasty food, and nice to sit at the little table and talk and laugh with our fellow little-table-people. Then we hung around playing guitar in Heather's room and I set up her guitar strap, taught her 4 of the best chords on guitar (open E stuff), and wrote down the chords for "You Were Everything." Ice-cream cake finally arrived (once it had been picked up in exchange for the frozen lasagna first procured :-P), and after enjoying the delicious blend of heavy ice-cream and mediating frozen crust, we headed for a park in Bethel Park to play volleyball on a real sand court. The Pierson clan showed up (all three generations), and we played 5 great games. Volleyball is cool 'cause you get to enjoy who each person is as you all stand around and then try to work together for brief spurts of activity. My team cleaned up 4-1 :-)
And as if that wasn't enough, most of us headed to Quinlisk Park around 5:30 to play frisbee with folks who had been at the Calano's for lunch. We ended up with six on six, and battled out a fierce, intense game to 15. My team got beaten under pretty bad, but we fought back and tied it at 14, only to lose to two eeked-out goals at the very end. I got pretty frustrated, as I almost always do when my team just can't win, but it was still a lot of fun, and high quality play. Then we kicked around the parking lot for ages talking about a bunch of confused hypothetical plans. Eventually I gave up on it and let Heather drive my stick shift around. She did much better than before, and my clutch never got roasted like it once did :-) She even drove home from the park, woot woot!
And if you thought the hanging out was finished, HAH! Everybody bustled over to Get Go and picked up a bunch of snacks, and then we sat around the big table eating macaroni & cheese and hot dogs and taking pictures with Mike's camera. And speaking of Mike, I must stop here and bow in awe to Mike's amazing hair :-D He had kept running his hand backwards through his hair all day, and running fast, and the two had shooshed his hair up and backwards, making this amazing flow of poofed-up hair with a big part in the middle. It amazed me every time I looked at it, and it made him look quite different. Way sweet man! :-)
That was pretty fun sitting around the table, taking pictures and being picture taken, and at the end I busted out some Switchfoot songs on the guitar, and then Mr. Q threw us out :-) Quite an extended day, and when you put that on top of the whole concert voyage since the previous afternoon, and stick that all after this sweet free day Friday, it made for quite a weekend. It was fun hanging with the Quinlisks, uniquely augmented by the Schuchs, and joined at points by the Piersons, Middelmans and Calanos. And Nate. Who's just the coolest dude ever :-) Good times in Pittsburgh, and one of those weekends that makes it seem like weeks since you've been to work. I'm definitely bummed that I have to go to work tomorrow, especially knowing I'll be dead tired in the morning and probably get there late and have to leave late and screw up the whole second half of the day and still have to shut down my life and go to bed on time so I'm not dead Tuesday morning and maybe get sick from not enough sleep. Arg, the grind of full-time employment. Somehow, it's how everybody lives their lives, and it's what life is going to be like. But somehow, I just wonder. I dunno. We'll see. Less and less I'm feelin' the be-and-engineer-all-my-life prospect, though it seems pretentious to think God will do something different. We'll see. It's 100% in His hands, and I'm as interested as anyone to see what's around the calendar in the coming years.

Mmmm, tiredness descends, and I still must shower. I'm thinking about closing my eyes right here and curling up on the couch....it would feel soo good....but I'd have to shower in the morning, and everything would be screwed up. Maybe just close my eyes for a minute, though.....

--Clear Ambassador

YMCA Concert (finally!)

Well, wow. The much-touted, twice-postponed YMCA concert has gone from the realm of fearful expectation to 20-20 hindsight and vivid memories. Here's the short story, as related in a text message I sent at 7:10am Saturday morning:

24.5 hours awake.
20 straight hours
working on concert
stuff. 2 sunrises.
Good morning; I'm
going to bed.

And for the long story...
I got up at 6:30 Friday morning, Nate, Shannon and I left at 7:45, we got to the Hoffmans at 10:15, and we started working on stuff for the show at 10:40. At 7:40 the next morning I was also at the Hoffmans, the sky was light, all the speakers and cables and equipment were in their normal places, the big gym at the Y was bare and waiting for someone to start banging a basketball around in it...but much had happened in the interim :-)

I'll skip all the painful deals of loadup and setup. Basically, Nate was a HUGE help (he made it happen, IMO), and Shannon, Steve and Brian all worked very hard. We filled my wagon, the Chima's Bravada (sport ute), the Hoffman's minivan, and a monstrous gutted conversion van Mike had borrowed from First Assembly. Loading it all at the Hoffman's was a lot of work, so when we got to the Y and I heard people talking about "up" when I asked where the gym was, I was almost disbelieving. Sure enough, all that stuff had to be taked down a long "U" of hallway and up either stairs or an elevator. Help from some of the folks at the Y helped a lot, but it was still a long, strenuous process. It left my muscles teetering on the verge of cramping, my shirt sweaty, my feet and knees battered, and the gym full of stuff.

So far my fervent prayers during the past two weeks had been answered. We were in the gym, it was about 2 o'clock, and Steve already had the stage up. Everybody kept at their tasks, and the rig started coming together. The drums arose on their 3-foot platform like a glittering white monster, the stage got clothed in its black garments, racks and boards congregated at the sound booth, and soon a living creature of a thousand tenticle wires began to crawl through our gear. It was happening! The weekend was here, we were in the gym, and it was getting put together!

The happy times evaporated 'round about 5:30 when the 1400W power amp didn't work, everybody started drifting aimlessly, impending showtime leaned over and pressured us like a heavy weight, Screaming Silence (the opening band) arrived, and good honk, nobody's even sound checked the drums yet! I frantically took over the sound booth and started yelling orders while Mike troubleshooted other problems, and basically careened through that last hour or two with my brain bursting and confusion all around me. But finally we were done, Scott said we still had 10 minutes till 8 o'clock, and I surrendered. I left the sound booth, said hi to some folks, and ended up holding Elisa's new baby for awhile, which really helped calm me down. She was very cute, and from what I heard she was movin' to the music during the show :-)

In that brief interim between setup and Screaming Silence starting I got to collect my thoughts, and as I sat in my car changing into my All Stars I struggled with the realization that hardly anybody was showing up. I had been suspicious of the 200+ people the Y said would come, though the fliers handed out at the local 1000-student high school had excited me with the possiblity of this really being a big show. Now I was looking at maybe 25, 30 people, standing there dwarfed by our monster stage. I kept the thought at bay, though it had to brush through my mind to some degree: the concert was most likely bombing. I suddenly realized how nice the CoGA benefit concert had been, with its automatic draw of 150 school attenders and parents, and I figured local bands just have to deal with this, 'cause not every show's going to be big. So I faced the apparent failure, laced up the faded blue canvas, and went back up to the gym. Screaming Silence fired up, and the show began. (And I scurried to the sound board to help Scott fix the myriad sound problems that immediately started screaming out of the speakers)

One of the things that really juiced up the night was the 10 Pittsburghers who came to the show. Dad and Lisa drove 2 cars from Bethel Park, arriving a few minutes after SS started. Having friends from the 'Burgh brought a fun depth to the evening, and I was excited for them because, other than Dad, none of them had seen anything of Pure Boss except our album. It was cool to get to show them what I'd been up to all these weekends :-)

SS played a great set--lots of energy, some excellent songs, and great stage presence. We took a dragging 25 minutes to switch over things for Pure Boss, and finally we rounded up the necessary people, the music stopped, we were introduced, and I hopped up on the stage and walked over to the bass amp in the darkness. Strap over my head, chord in the jack, power up the amp, and grab my pick. Brian test-fired a couple guitar chords and I heard something about "ready to rock" from Steve's mic behind the drums. So we stood there on the stage, feet at chest level with the audience, silence and screams from the fans filling the gym. Look at Brian, smile, and start jumping up and down in time. He hits the chords, I come in with the bass line, and in a few moments the lights come on and we're playing -- trying to hit the right notes, trying to move around, trying to look up and look happy, and not really realizing at all that I was playing a rock concert with a band.

To me the show seemed to go pretty poorly. We kept losing bass or guitar, which utterly butchered several of our carefully-wrought arrangements, and from what I could see there was basically nobody out there, and they weren't moving around at all. The one encouragement was Mike's head, far above the masses at his feet, which I could see moving up and down and bobbing around. I appreciated his energy, but pictured him dancing alone in a bored scattering of people. We had lots of dead time between songs, and had to keep covering for technical problems. When at last we crashed the last crash at the end of "Ohio" and I stood up behind the drums, I was pretty discouraged. For two songs, "Beautiful Day" and "Hit the Wall," I had really "felt it" and had a great time. For the rest, it seemed like varying degrees of failure.

After the, as I staggered around talking to different people and starting to tear stuff down, God began to utterly change my impression of what had just happened. I brushed off Wes's ecstatic praises as his typical overstatement, and though Heather seriously said it was good, their opinions couldn't counter the weight in my mind. Then as I sat surrounded by cables fiddling with something or other, Mike came over and said "Dude, Screaming Silence couldn't stop talking about how much they loved you guys." I was stunned. As he elaborated (Mike? Elaborating? *gasp* :-P), my disbelief slowly had to give way. Heck man, Screaming Silence is like a real band! Those guys are good, and I respect them a ton. They're in a different league than us, in my mind, and here they were, raving about our show and starting to plan when they could hook up a concert with us. As Mike talked, a great weight lifted off my chest, and in its place came the glow of realizing that God had done "above and beyond all I could ask or imagine." I had asked plenty, pouring out prayers for the past two weeks, and here before my eyes, flying in the face of dying bass and lost guitars and trashed setlists and dead power amps, God was answering those prayers. I had lost faith and lost heart, but God's overflowing goodness came anyway. The glow of that moment of realization still sweetens my heart when I think of it. I don't know if we'll play with SS, or how big we'll become, or if we're even honestly any good at all, but right there God blessed us, and for that I am amazed and grateful.

Finally everybody left, the glow settled back in my mind, and teardown began to stare at us with bleary, bloodshot eyes. The warm humidity of the afternoon had given way to a blowing wet cold that chilled to the bone and some light driving spit from the sky to boot. The halls must be walked another 40 times, the cumbersome and overabundant gear must be hauled and loaded once again into the cars, and the poor girl from the Y had to wait around till we were finished to roll up the flooring and lock up the gym. Time rolled on meaninglessly as I worked alone carrying and loading most of the conversion van. I fought the weight of those speakers and boxes with a blind desperation, hunched there in the van's gaping metal interior. Everyone plugged away, especially at the staging, which took so long to move downstairs. Mr. Hoffman almost broke his wrist wheeling one load out, which was pretty scary. The one real bright spot in this time was when Lauren and Tori (sp?), who had stayed very late helping, swung back by and dropped off a bag of Chalupas and a flat of Dr.Peppers. Oh, gloriousness! The food made me realized the hunger I had been ignoring, and that sweet crisp enlivening Dr.P made me wonderfully happy.

Finally Scott, Diana and Philip left, we finished up the last bits, and closed down the Y. I sipped my Dr.Pepper as I drove home, one in the caravan of 4, and on the strength of that caffeine I went the rest of the night and morning. We unloaded everything at the Hoffmans, but compared to the trek to the gym, hauling stuff 10 feet into the garage felt like doing hopscotch. Then I settled down on the livingroom floor and started pulling, separating, winding, sorting and storing Mike's cables. We had to get the studio operational that night since Mike was going to Aero Team all day Saturday and Scott needed to record the soundtrack for the Easter dance program the following weekend. All Mike's stuff had been a disaster with all the practices and gigs of late, and now was the time to get it back in order. Mike worked on the rack, Steve and Brian kept unloading in the dark driveway, and I sat and plucked and wound and placed and sorted and set aside and organized. After some indefinite period of time all was unloaded and all the church stuff was set aside, so Mike, Steve and Brian drove to the church and wired it all back up. That was the time of stasis, when I basically mildly enjoyed the craziness of the situation. I was up ridiculously late, after having done a ridiculous amount of work, and still having a daunting amount left to do, and I liked that. Rarely do I work hard or do hard stuff, so I was content to let the silence pass by in the sleeping house while I kept plugging away. If it sounds like I'm impressed by myself and the work I did, well, I am :-P It's so dumb - even when I actually do something somewhat impressive, I'm so impressed by it myself it's ruined. Ah well - I'll never be Ken. Regardless of all that, that time really was pretty weird, and especially tearing down at the Y was pretty rough. Overall, though, I enjoyed the work and the weirdness, and was in a mildly happy and zone-out mood that morning. The strangest moment, when the magnitude of the time and work really hit me, was when I took some tools out to the garage and heard birds singing. I walked out to the doorway, and indeed there was the sky, lightening blue at the treetops. It was a new day, but it came after no break from the one before it. As only my second all-nighter, that was quite an odd biotemporal realization, and I savored it.

The work concluded up in Mike's room. Steve had gone to bed a couple hours before, down with a hurting leg. Brian had helped and helped, and at last it was down to Mike crammed behind the studio rack and me handing him cables as he called for them. We told Brian he could go and worked on, Mike babbling like a pothead and me handing him cables while moving as little as possible. At last the final patch cable was popped in and the studio was together. We pounded fists, staggered about a bit getting ready for bed, I sent the text message, and at last Mike retired to bed and I retired to a hot shower. The grand show was over, and the night I could not imagine had been done. Yay!

That morning Brian and Steve had soccer, and Mike was a ref for one of the fields, starting at 10. I decided that if 2 band members had to be up at 9:30, so would the third. Amazingly, after less than two hours of black dead sleep, I arose feeling rested, and feeling like there had actually been a night and today was a new day. Funny how the body works.

Soccer was cool, and I'm glad I went. Brian scored a goal, I got to talk with friends, and I got to be a windbreak for the poor freezing girls who had only hoodies in the bitter wind. I also got to go BACK and pick up Steve after he had ignored all attempts to wake him up on time :-P Ah well, I still love 'im. I got to meet Pepper, too - the Turner's new dog. Cute puppy. Sharp claws and teeth! After soccer the Hoffman household slept from noon till about 7pm. I arose from my impromptu power cable pillow in the livingroom at 6:30, smiling at the strangeness of a house full of sleeping people at dinnertime on a Saturday. Not much happened that evening at all. I don't remember if we had any kind of dinner, but I remember around 9:00 everybody watching the Chronicles of Narnia in the den. I wanted to do nothing at all except watch some brainless light movie--definitely NOT Narnia. I wandered around for a few minutes with absolutely nothing I wanted to do, and finally settled down on Steve's bed with a bowl of frozen fruit and an acoustic guitar. After an hour or so he came up and joined me, and we plunked around until about 11.

Sunday was pretty nice. Church especially was great. I was able to jump right into worship surprisingly easily, and I had several great purposeful conversations with folks. It was new members Sunday, and I was heartened by the joyous, love-filled testimonies shared by several of the incoming folks. It reminded me again of our ordination by God as His church, individually members of His body. I was spurred to consider what I could do to strengthen this church which God has put me in about 1/4th of the time. Great time :-)

Lunch was ok, though it was with a group that embodies everything socially that I am not. So I didn't say much, listened to the small talk, analyzed the Bose woofer above our heads, and heartily enjoyed the appetizer platter.

Back at the Hoffmans I entertained thoughts of going to the Murphys or somewhere and hanging out while Steve did these chores and stuff he had to do. But I ended up helping him load all the staging back in the van and put away the drum stuff. Then he and Mr. H left for the church and I became possessed with an inclination to do something purposeful to serve this family that had hosted me so much. The dirt-tracked entryway that had originally inspired this thought was already cleaned up, so I turned instead to the morass of Steve and Philip's room. All the laundry went in and on the basket in the corner, and I set up the whole drumset, getting it out of the basement where it really couldn't have stayed. It felt to good to do something and work some more, and seeing the wide open carpet and gleaming drumset in the room was immensly satisfying.

The day was capped off by me and Steve going to the Chimas to be with Brian and watch the video his parents took of the concert. It was fun, as always, to chill in the Chima's sweet house with its funny inhabitants. Mike arrived after an hour or so, and the four of us (plus Nick) watched the video in the basement. It was pretty nerve wracking, constantly fearing a mistake, waiting to see how it went, how it sounded from out front, what we looked like. I was tired from the suspense by the time the video was over, and then we sat around and talked and talked and talked about what to change and what we could buy and things we could do as a band. Finally my brain was overloaded with important things that I could do nothing about at the moment, and I asked if we could just stop, and please not watch the video of the benefit concert. It was rather overwhelming thinking about all that we could and should do to improve, but it was good to talk about it together. I just keep submitting it to God and praying that His will be done, not mine.

Monday morning was another wake-up-early-and-go-to-work-from-the-Hoffman's routine, and in two hours I found myself back in my homey office at Nova, dull from the weekend and staring at a stack of turbidity circle charts. I called Mom to let her know I had survived the weekend, and proceeded with the day. I caved to my craving for fatty, salty food and went to the Midway at noon for a salad and Dr.Pepper. I brought some work to do, and after finishing I hunched over a notepad and wrote out everything that was on my mind. Everything we had talked about with Pure Boss, financial stuff, projects at home...all the things that weigh on me and take up my brain's RAM. I felt better after that brain dump. And as I thought about all that was represented by those three pages I saw that I must pray hard for God to show me the priorities that He wants me to work on.

Aight, it's 2:15am, I'm sleepy, the couch is soft, and tomorrow I don't have to go in to work! I'm going to brush as quickly as possible, without disturbing my sleepiness, and curl up here on the ouch and close my eyes in sweet surrender. This is quite a detailed post, for better or for worse.

Good night,

--Clear Ambassador

Hair Pain (well, roots, but ya know...)

I have discovered a new kind of pain! When one wears a driving cap placed low on their brow and then pulled backwards to a normal orientation, one's hair apparently get's pulled back under said cap. Wearing this cap in such manner all evening leads to hair that grows forward standing straight up on one's head. Touching said hair elucidates an unsettling achy sensation in the poor roots, which have been yanked around like teeth with braces. It's like a surface headache that goes away as soon as you stop touching your hair. Ineffably odd, and something I never would have thought of.

I just hope I don't still have this regiment of hair standing at attention on the back of my head in the morning...

--CA

Crazy Horse Tacos

Hey! I had a weekend in Pittsburgh! How crazy is that, eh?

It all started when I drove through the greying wetness of post-rain Pittsburgh to a Mexican restaurant off Carson Street, there to join fellow collegiates in supper and laughter. More laughter than supper, but we ate a lot too. Plans shifted all over prior to that dinner meeting, but they ended up with Mom and Dad at home getting pizza, my car at home with a flat tire and recently-dead battery, Daniel at play practice at the Church office, and Ken who knows where out West like he always is.

I woke up Friday morning having slept a good hour or so extra. It was bright outside, and after two weeks of dedicatedly trying to sleep more I arose rested and refreshed. I put on a bright blue Hawaiian shirt to celebrate the delightfully warm air that blew on my face as I walked out to my car, and that shirt pretty much represents my mood all day. I truly enjoyed being that chipper and saying funny stuff and being friendly with folks at work. Plus I got to walk around the plant for two hours tracking down all the waste drums in satellite accumulation areas and correlating them with the in-plant inventry printed off of the Waste EMS database at the beginning of the month. A cajun chicken salad with ranch and a Dr.Pepper at The World-famous Midway perked up the midday and packed my stomach tight, though I still find room for a piece of pizza left over from the lunch for the air FSA auditors. The traffic on the way home was jaw-droppingly bad, and I finally resorted to following the little squiggly lines on my trusty AAA Pittsburgh Metro Map to try getting to Becks Run Road a little bit quicker. Didn't really help much, but I felt a little less hopelessly trapped on the clogged roads. I felt sorry for the poor wet biker dude stuck on the Parkway.




Katie and Sarah, Mike and Shannon, Nate and I. That was our dinner crowd. I was still chipper and full of funny comments (according to my self assessment and Nate's laughter), and it was really nice to hang out with this solid group of folks. I almost got the veal tongue taco, but settled instead for a Pambazo (or something like that) that I'd never heard of. It was ok, but the tail end of Sarah's burrito which I tried was fantastic. I definitely want to go there again. OH, and the cantalope "Fresh Fruit Water" was amazing! Musta been blended up frozen cantalope and water..maybe some sugar, but that's it. Straight-up fruit, bursting with genuine cantalope flavor the way God made it. Ahh--exquisite! The conversation was basically a long string of serious questions followed by real answers and lots of joking :-)

Then we retired to the Calano's abode, in whose living room we wiled away the night with balderdash, ice-cream sundaes, crazy antics, and Elmo's Book of Love :-D Balderdash is a great game, and we had our fair share of crazy words and crazier definitions (An ox cart used to haul hard coal). I came down from my Two-Dr.Peppers-and-a-Pepsi caffeine high round about 11:30, and was half dead to the world after that. Mike laid around on the floor by the couch and was weird. Katie texted everybody from Mike's phone. Sarah yelled as only Sarah can. Daniel sat by the play pen with his freshly cut hair. Rebekah took a far second place to Sarah's dominating 33 points. Nate was Nate, in all his joviality. We finally wandered out the door around 1:30 am, bemused and relaxed.

For Saturday and Sunday I'm gonna pretty much copy and paste from an email, with a few streamlining edits:

Dude, Saturday was totally a malesh day :-) I slept till 1:00, and after lunch I pretty much just layed down on the couch and let Daisy sleep with her head in my hands until Dad was ready to give me a haircut. Then Nate came over for dinner (Grilled teriyaki salmon to die for!) and we talked for a long time, then Jonathan came over and he and I jammed downstairs, and then we pretty much layed around in the family room and watched funny video clips and random basketball games until 1am. So much for the huge list of stuff I need to do on my precious weekends at home :-P

I thought several times this morning about the conference in Wadi Natrum [in Egypt] as I played acoustic guitar for worship. It helped me remember that worship is not about me but about God, and that this stuff is real and exciting. But mostly I was consumed with the firey pain coming from my left hand fingers as I had to keep mashing them into the strings. I had jammed out on electric for hours the night before, and my digits were tender before we even started practice :-/ Ah well. We got through, and God was worshipped and extolled.

Mr. Pierson preached a great sermon on evangelism, based on John 1:43-51, where Philip goes and gets Nathaniel and brings him to see Jesus, the Messiah they found. I have always liked what Philip says after Nathaniel asks "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" He doesn't rattle off all the good things about Nazareth, or argue his logic, or whatever. He says "come and see." Come and see! You ask how God can be good if 9/11 happened? Well, good question. Just come to church, and see what you see. Come on over for dinner, hang out with me, look at my life, and see. Ah, what simple freedom! "We are bringing people to a Person, not to a set of religious beliefs" was a great point. We've got an Easter service coming up, to which we are encouraged to invite folks, and a survey about peoples' beliefs about the resurrection to give to folks. Should be quite interesting.

After church we had a worship team meeting at the church office to officially commence Ryan's reign as leader of the team. It's great to have this change force a fresh look at what we do and why, and to have Ryan's diligence and organization come into play with a schedule and such logistical aids. Nate and I are also being drafted as 3rd and 4th string worship leaders, which is cool. I'm especially excited for Nate--he's gonna make a great worship leader! For now Ryan and Rick are taking most of the load, and Ryan will be conducting some "musical interviews" for folks who are interested in joining the team. Aahhh, fresh blood and fresh stirring! I'm highly expectant for the coming months with the band.

So, that's pretty much the weekend. I've been sitting here on the couch in the family room since getting back home, watching some Simpsons, writing the email above, listening to some music, and wishing I had Daisy sleeping next to me. Mom and Daniel are on their way to Chicago to chill with Grandma and Grandpa for a week, and they took my little beaglet with them. It's amazing what a psychological difference it makes when you remember that there isn't a little tail-wagging big-brown-eyed soft-eared dog waiting for you at home. I mean, Dad's nice and all, but...it's just not the same :-P

I think I'm gonna go fold some laundry, run another load of darks, straighten up my room a bit more, and put my two beds into an "L" shape along the walls, rather than the parallel configuration they've been in for the last year or two. It's already 8 o'clock (good gravy!), so that'll probably finish the day off. It has been a lazy weekend, I've gotten almost nothing done on my to-do lists, but I had great times with the ever-deepening and ever-richening friends at Providence, and I enjoyed the indulgent relaxation that will soon enough be impossible to find.

Anotherweekofmylife, here I come!

--JPB