Kennywood!

Today I had to pick the greater of two goods. There was a church picnic with Danmybro and other sweet people, but there was also an invitation from the Caldwells to go with them to Terry's company picnic at Kennywood. As I'm sure you've guessed from the title of this post, I chose Kennywood. Church picnics are sweet, and after the service I sorta wished I'd chosen that, but I haven't been to Kwood in years, and I tend to shun that which I'm not familiar with, so I went for the adventure. And it paid off, 'cause we had a SWEET time!

I played bass at church, which meant that I didn't have to leave till 8 o'clock, which was a boon. Playing bass was lovely. On such songs as "On My Side" and "Roll Me Over" I have been learning smidgens of what true bass playing is, and those smidgens have been intoxicating (well, not quite, but they were SWEET). It was great to put those into practice and play with Tim (who's playing basically every week now, and getting the feel of it). Nate's cool. Then sermon (I found my notebook AND remembered to bring it, so I took notes!), final song, diddling till they put a CD on, talking, changing quick, and heading out to Kennywood.

The Trib had the big huge pavilion and we were a bit early, so we sat down right by the awaiting food tables and partook of the FREE POP FOUNTAINS (ooh, such a dream of my childhood) till feeding time. The double burger was all I could ask for in a double burger. It was one of those nice times with folks where you have enough time that you can both catch up on each others' lives and just talk about whatever comes up.

Soon after finishing, Katie and I were itching to hit the rides, so we departed and left Mr. and Mrs. C to their boring adulthood :-P The lines all looked hideously long, so we settled for the racer, and it ended up being not too bad. As we clacked up the ramp and rocketed down the track I suddenly remembered how sweet rollercoasters are! It's a rush like few things provide. It's funny - I kept having this picture in my mind...amusement parks with all these people standing in line and going on rides....they're basically places human creatures come to get physically shaken and jerked and wooshed around for excitement. If you imagine being a huge giant and looking down on this little city and these little creatures going and riding these little machines and staggering away from them laughing and breathing hard, it's kind of funny :-)

But I was happy to be a little creature getting wooshed around. We hit the Racer, then the Thunderbold, then the Pitt Fall, and then Phantom's Revenge. The Pitt Fall was a LONNGGGGGG line (as represented by those highly effective and original repeated letters), but it was quite an experience, and Katie's favorite ride of the day. You look up as you're getting hoisted up, and that little pole seems to go up forever into the precarious blue sky. Ahhh. We both walked away from that one a little jelly-kneed. The Phantom's Revenge was my favorite - the line was wonderfully quick, and the ride was powerfully fast. I could hardly believe how fast we went down those drops and turns! Good ride! After TPR we hit the Exterminator, which was the longest line of the day. BUT, once we got inside the building I was well occupied studying the huge control panel they had up front (the schtick is it's like you're going into a blown powerplant infested with 8-foot rats). I could hardly believe it at first, but it was indeed a real control panel from a real plant. Nobody would come up with a "Methanator CW P7 High" indicator light on their own :-) [CW = Cooling Water] I felt uncannily at home around the big dirty transformers and the ancient analog control panel with big honkin' indicator lights, process diagrams and dials. There's a place exactly like that at NOVA, and it's creepy and sweet. I couldn't quite figure out what kind of plant it had been taken from. There was a methanator, then CO2 and H2S strippers, then steam stuff, and lots of diagrams I couldn't see well enough to read. Plus the stinkin' line kept moving! It was cool, though. And the ride was CRAZY. I forgot the little cars spin as you go, so that was quite a rush. Good ride :-)

After the Exterminator we met up with Mr. and Mrs. C (Shall I call them Terry and Cindy? Hmm, that sounds so crass) and Terry said we should go on the Pittsburgh Plunge. So we did (there was no line) and got soaked! It was pretty funny, though, and then of course we had to do the Phantom again to dry off. We did a spinning swing ride after that, and that was enough for Katie :-) So the C's headed out, but I hung around for awhile longer to do some more spinny rides. It was pretty strange to be by myself there, and I would have given $20 or $30 easily to have Daniel there. But I wanted to get myself whipped and flipped around some more, so I pushed through the awkwardness. Oddly enough, though, I found myself getting slightly nauseous. After doing the King Kahuna (an indescribable combination of rotating seats on the end of a giant rotating arm that freeze at certain points and flip upside-down as the arm rotates) twice in a row, I had had enough. Finally I realized it was 'cause I was hungry--I'd had no food for 7 hours. So, all you amusement park patrons out there, don't run on "E"! The drive home was rather light-headed, and the seat seriously felt like the seat on the King Kahuna.

I came home to a house long bereft of Daniel, fairly long bereft of Mom and Daisy, and newly bereft of Jonathan. Dad was finishing cutting up veggies and doing some stuff on his laptop. I dinked around on my laptop till I felt decent enough to try some watermelon. I knew I needed food, but the prospect of that was quite unappealing at the moment. After watermeloning myself and talking to Mom on the cell phone (Grandpa gets out of the hospital tomorrow!) I was ready for food, so I started like all good men do . . . with extra-virgin olive oil, a quality non-stick skillet over medium-low heat, and diced sweet vidalia onion! Then the diced red pepper and tomatoes, and some taco seasoning to make my improptu salsa-like amalgam of flavor and deliciousness. WHICH was then incorporated into my John Behrens George Foreman Grill Quesadillas of Delight! I was humbled and grateful once again to have such quality ingredients and tools laying around for me to use at my whim. It'll be rough when I have my own place. But sweet, too, in a way.

So then I sorta watching the Manning brothers battle it out while doing AIM and writing on people's walls on Facebook. I'm still not a fan of the "news feed" on Facebook that shows everybody every single little thing you've done on Facebook. I just don't like having it all laid out in print like that. There was something about looking through friends' profiles and seeing what was new and what people were writing that was fun, low-key and winsome. Now it's all eerily spelled-out and you can keep tabs on who people look at, who they write to, what they delete, on and on. Facebook is still cool, but it used to be cooler. Them dudes took a gamble, and I don't think it's working. We'll see.

Um....yeah, I'm still not really having devotions, and I'm trying not to be totally fatalistic and discouraged about that. Care group last night was good. Hebrews 10. Therefore, since Christ shed His blood to open the way, let us DRAW NEAR to God! HOLD FAST to these things, and CONSIDER how to stir each other up. Draw near. Hold fast. Consider. Especially, draw near. Like Mr. Q was saying, if we can do that, the rest falls into place. It's hopeful, too, 'cause the way is wide open, as sure as the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, we just need to draw near to God. He's there to be drawn near to, no matter what has been going on for the last day or five years, and you just need to believe that and act on it, not get yourself into shape, or even "feel" like its true. It is, dude, so go on ahead.

OK, yay, I've written in my blog! I decided to ditch what has passed unchronicled and write about what I had ideas about: today.

I thought about starting a Facebook group to the effect of "I'm not informed enough or smart enough to have meaningful political opinions," in reaction to the bloated and self-important political rantings of my stupid peers. I can discuss ideologies to a small degree, I can believe, apply and act on the Bible, I can apply its principles to abstract situations in logical exercises, but I really have little or no ground to criticize or badmouth any political figures. Perhaps I'm apathetic and a terrible citizen and worthy of disdain from my politically-active and informed agemates, but I just think people and situations are too complicated to blabber about, and most of them don't affect me in ways I can (or decide to be able to) change, so it's just grasping (or shouting at) the wind. OK, there, there's my political rantings :-)

I'm happy about the coming weekends - Yellowcard concert with Daniel and Akronites, Chicago trip with Katie, Sarah and Nate, Pure Boss concert(s???), and then Steph's arrival and our visit to Grove City. Homework?? What homework? :-) :-/

Oh, I found out Friday afternoon that I have to take a hum/SS elective to graduate. And add/drop ended that day. Beautiful. So I freaked out, found History of Jazz, found it was full, talked to people, thought I could still get in and all would be well, and then found out Saturday that I couldn't get in. So now it sucks and and it's a big pain, but hopefully I'll end up in "Intro to Performance" and it won't be awkward or deleterious that I missed the first 2 weeks of class. Ugh.

I was sick this week, too, so I missed 2 days of working out. Plus I got stung eight times while mowing Al's lawn on Wednesday. Two separate yellowjacket holes, four each. They hurt for about an hour, but they have been itching like mosquito bites from hell for the past three days. The three on my right wrist were constantly forcing themselves into my consciousness all afternoon, and there's nothing to do to make it better. Oyg.

Got Jars of Clay's new album "Good Monsters." It's growing on me fast, and I already REALLY like tracks 2 and 3. Jars are fantastic.

Enough. Good-night!

--Clear Ambassador, back again