The Blog of a Lifetime

OK, time to talk about last weekend. It was in Akron. Well, I was. Everybody else was still here, living another weekend with me totally gone. I remember realizing that one moment: huh. When I'm in Akron, everybody else in Pittsburgh is still doing their normal stuff! That would kinda stink if Daniel was gone all the time like that.

Anyway, this weekend was weird. Weird because work was over so I felt a bit free. Weird because almost all the grand band plans I had formulated and stated for about a month evaporated three days before my planned arrival. Steve was working, Brian was rehearsing for the show, the Saturday Morning Soccer League was having its season-end tournament... So, I kinda killed a lot of time until Sunday afternoon when we practiced. But, although in one view a lot of time was wasted, I've gone a long time without just sitting around and catching my breath, so I think there was still a low-level productivity to the weekend.

I came up Thursday night, but only after spending hours downstairs playing my new USA Strat through Doug (my kick-butt 70's Fender Bassman 100 tube amp) and recording what I came up with. Then I was all sorta happy and late-nighty at home and I still had to load all this music stuff up and drive two hours to Akron. *sigh*. But I did, and the drive was sweet. I listened to Second Corinthians, which is a great letter, and enjoyed the dark semi-isolation of night highways. That night I pretty much just said hi to folks, helped Steve with his paper, and went to bed at about 2:30.

Steve stayed up all night writing the paper, and when I arose to the screaming cell phone alarm at 6am I proofread it for him before going to prayer. Ah, finally I made it to Friday morning prayer! I got there way late, but still got in on a lot of good praying for the church, conferences, people, etc. Pastor Jim prayed for me at the end, and he hit two topics that I had been struck by in my half-day "retreat" Thursday. Strength in the inner man and knowledge of Christ. Cool!

After prayer was one of the cool blue highlights of the weekend. Not a blaring HIGHLIGHT!!!, just a nice cool enjoyable time sitting in Starbucks with Craig and Jessica sippin' a double-shot white chocolate mocha and talking, gazing out the window as the fresh spring sunshine filled the awakening day. Jess mildly spaced out, filled with thoughts about the drama show that night, while Criag and I covered a lot of ground regarding music and movies, and a few bits of real conversation I threw in :-) After we finally pulled ourselves out of the big comfy chairs and left, Craig and I decided to go Jen watching at Quiznos. So we spent half an hour hanging out in an unopened sub shop, taking pictures, leaning on the tables, and distracting the employees from their jobs :-) At the end Jen filled my water bottle (hers that she gave me) up with DR.PEPPER from the fountain! Oh wonder of wonders!

Friday afternoon I pretty much slaughtered a bunch of time at the Hoffmans while Steve worked for Arlea-Dettweiler Landscape. Hung out with the dance girls, played guitar, watched some Cirque do Solei (sp?), and eventually migrated to the studio in Mike's room to listen through some old reels and try to get the bass for "Summer Song." Three hours later I'd heard some weird weird stuff and STILL hadn't gotten the bass right once. Arg. And the skin was getting shredded on my lefthand fingers. So I gave up, and we started moving towards the CoG Academy drama show, which commenced at 7pm. A Taco Bell/ATM run later I was on my way, looking forward to seeing what my friends were putting on.

The show was great, in my opinion. Certainly not a professional production, but who'd expect that?? It was a solid melodrama (which means the audience claps and boos and cheers and stuff), but the people playing the parts really made it shine. Brian, Jen, Tori, Ethan, Adam... they were hilarious! The singing wasn't too bad, and a lot of the acting was pretty good. Overall an eminently enjoyable evening. And of course I hung around till the bitter end helping tear stuff down. Then I grabbed Steve-O at the H's and met Brian and Nick at Applebee's for a crazy late dinner with Jess Arlea randomly showing up. Once at home we just went to bed. More and more these days I'm getting super tired late at night and just want to sleep. Perhaps I'm getting old.

Saturday was...soccer, frisbee, Murphys and music. The soccer tournament was from 10 to 1, and by the third and championship game it was pretty intense. Pretty chilly, too, unfortunately. But fun to watch. Then 9 of us got together for a sweetly competent and competitive game of ultimate frisbee in the big sunny park. Three dudes doing public service joined up for awhile too, which was fun. Great game, and much fun. Man, nothing can compare to the aerial dynamics of a thrown frisbee.

Dan and Justin Murphy had no ride home, so I took 'em, and we stopped at Zack's for ice-cream. At the Murphys I talked in the entryway for awhile, and then Mrs. M made pancakes and eggs and I was invited in to partake--welcome sustenance after a draining game. So D, J and I sat at the table and ate and talked, and then went outside and played basketball. Ah, the sweet feeling of jumping up, floating on air, and rolling the ball off my right hand, watching it arc down to the rim. Good times. Once we were good and tired and sunburnt and crusted in sweat we came inside, rinsed off, and then came the third highlight of the weekend (the play was number 2): sitting on the family room couch with Jess, playing guitar and singing worship songs while Dan plunked along and Mrs. Murphy read and listened. I haven't gone through a worship notebook and played songs in ages, and this time it was complemented with Jess's sweet voice. Man, we had some nice harmonies on some of those songs! We've gotta play a coffee house sometime :-)

Eventually I left/got kicked out as Jess had to get ready for the cast party. So I cruised back in to the Hoffman's gravel driveway and Steve and I started working on recording again. I finally did get the bass right, and then we came up with a perfect jammin' prelude track for Summer Song. That was good, but we both fell asleep in the den as we came up with it, so it didn't get recorded. Mmm, sleeeep...

Got to church 7 minutes late Sunday (arg, I HATE being late for church!!), but worship was great (bearing the fruits of Thursday's retreat) and I had some good talks after the service. Original lunch plans fell through, and Steve and I ended up hitting Taco Bell and then packing up for band practice. I was pretty mentally dead, but lunch was still nice. See, Stephen is the kind of friend that I can be mentally dead around, but it's not a problem, sitting there at the table in Taco Bell, not saying anything.

Band practice was the fifth highlight of the weekend (worship was the fourth). Finally we were doing productive band stuff, and FINALLY we could start to address the issues that had tortured my mind after the YMCA concert. We randomly played through a bunch of our standard songs, concentrating on slowing the tempo down. Some of them were overslowed, but in general we could play them much better and easierly (?). And we hashed some sweet jams around Summer Song, too.

As practice was winding down Lancer (Mr. Chima) started grilling pork chops, and he invited us to join them for dinner. That was a corollary highlight with band practice: hanging with the Chimas as a family (minus Rachel). They're a very funny bunch to talk with (funny as in humor, not as in weird :-P), and they were recalling olden days, which was cool. I smile to think of Brian as a 9-year-old :-) At last I foot-draggingly packed up my car, played some 2-on-2 and pulled out the driveway. I still had to swing by the Murphys and collect some owed dough and return some borrowed CD's, so it was about 9 o'clock by the time I set out in earnest for home.

I stopped by the highway on the road back from Akron, with nothing but darkness for miles around, to write a song on a whim. The song was pretty cool, capturing that post-trip dark highway driving mood a bit. Then I got seriously messed up trying to get back to 79 after a stop in Cranberry and ended up going a stupidly long way around on the irritatingly exit-less turnpike. Very irritating. Alas. After all the grand spiritual whatever and fun times with friends, there I am, angry as all heck in my car, over something that, viewed from an objective perspective, really only cost me $2 and 30 minutes. You probably have no idea how discouraging it is to, time after time after time after time, drag myself down into the God-resisting misery of anger about circumstances. And it doesn't feel like I'm dragging myself, but rather that I'm being dragged down by the stupid %&*$ that's happening to me for no reason on earth. It just gets really hard to apply Jesus' all-atoning death on the cross.

But don't let a scummy end drag down a nice trip. As I look back over the weekend in my mind I mostly remember that mildly warm, wind-blown, sunny feeling sitting there in Starbucks or playing frisbee in the park. Relaxed, not super busy, with people I really enjoy. Now I just want to come right back and spend a weekend working hard core on band stuff! With New Attitude, worship team and other commitments, though, I'm not sure when I can make it back. 's OK, though. God will bring me back in the right time.

The weekend has come and is gone,
And real life keeps plugging along.
I said my good-byes,
And I hoped that I'd find myself back on the road here again.

--Clear Ambassador