Good Days

Today was pretty much an amazingly sweet day, and it follows on the heels of another really sweet day - both of them making good use of my current freedom.

Yesterday I got up before 9 and Mom and I went to the Strip District to buy vegetables. We stopped in at a coffee shop on the way to Stan's Produce Market and I found FOUR new flavors of "Oral Fixation" mints - a windfall in the mint collection department! I also got a latte there. It was not the latte of a child. They roast their own beans, and they do it remarkably...thoroughly. It pretty much left the taste of a cigar in my mouth.

We got about $40 of veggies at Stan's, and we were home in plenty of time for Mom to leave for her lunch with Jere. I spent the rest of the day working on "All The Things That You've Done." I finished up the drums first, and I think after that I heated up some soup and casserole for lunch and did some devotions. I picked up "My Utmost For His Highest" on Friday (at lunch during jury duty) and so far it's been cool - challenging my conception of what a Christ-centered life looks like. After the nutritional and spiritual vittles I hit the electric guitar. Other than a break for dinner with Mom, Dad and Jonathan, I basically flipped through the various parts of the song and laid down a bunch of different guitar parts. It was pretty fun sitting there, dialing up whatever tone I wanted to on the GT-6 and enjoying the benefits of my increased electric playing of late, but I have a sinking suspicion that I'll end up deleting everything I did once I get vocals and bass down. That's how you learn stuff - waste a day recording parts in the wrong order, and never make the same mistake again :-

So, Monday was sweet. Up in the morning, veggies with Mom, recording (which is kind of like doing school work - rewarding, but hard to get myself into), and a quiet time. That night I did laundry and watched "Clear and Present Danger."

Today I got up at about 10, ate some frosted shredded wheat while packing up my backpack, and headed out for a day in Bethel Park. It started out with a two-mile run with Kayte Bell in preparation for the grand 10K this Sunday. The sun was out, the sky was bright blue, and it was mid 70's - a perfect day to be out and about. I bummed a shower and some lunch off the Piersons, sorta made up for it by helping carry in stuff from Sam's Club, and headed out for a 1pm meeting with Mr. Pierson. It's always fun talking stuff over with MP, and this was no exception. The myriad filaments of Youth Camp 2007 are starting to come together now, and after another meeting or two, I think we'll be pretty good to go.

I had a 8:30pm meeting with Mike Q and Katie Calano, so I had time to kill. I had a very nice quiet time in the empty meeting room and then hit YC stuff in Joel's now-vacated office. Kickin' back in the chair, typing emails, shuffling papers, eating jelly beans, and letting holiness soak into me from fully-stocked bookshelves lining every wall . . . good times :-)

I made a Taco Bell run at 4pm and took a little break at 8. It was nice sitting there by the open window, listening to the T clack by every few minutes, bare feet on the carpet (or propped up on the desk :-) ), working away productively but not stressfully. Mike and Katie arrived on time and we commenced a very enjoyable time of talking through all the plans so far, coming up with ideas, writing stuff down, and laughing a lot. I got a ton of input and new thoughts from them, which I wasn't expecting, and I think they both came away with solid pictures of their jobs and YC as a whole. That was a lot of fun, sitting up there in Joel's office, going over stuff, planning stuff . . sorta like we were adults, I guess :-)

And now I'm home. I made myself a delicious browned parmesan hawaiian egg amalgam for a fourthmeal (I'll sit down and tell you about my amalgams sometime), ate it whilst watching some TV, and now I've written about these days and I'm ready to retire as much on top of this life as it's possible to be right now.

And like Oswald said in one of the pages I read today, when we are lifted up higher in God's things, it's not like a legalistic pinnacle where we cling to one tiny point on the edge of plummeting, but rather we reach a broad table where it is easier to move about. I like that picture of Christian growth.

--Clear Ambassador