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

My Dwive Home

by John Bewenz


I got a flat tire. Very sad.









So I had to spend a lot of time trying two leak plugger thingeys and then putting the spare on. I was happy that it was warm and sunny outside. But the spare tire is dinky and I had to drive all the way home on the highway at 50 miles an hour.



That was sad.









But I had a Mountain Dew Live Wire from Wal-Mart, and that made me happy!








So I drove on in the sunshine. The sun was going down so it was very pretty outside and I liked it.








I looked forward a lot because that was the direction I was going...








Lots of people passed me because I was going so slow. I felt bad because they all had to get around me.









My class started at this time, but I wasn't there because I was driving because it took so long to fix the tire. I got there 50 minutes late and came in the back.








The sun kept going down and made long and longer shadows.








Even going slow, I still liked my car. It's a Mazda.









It was probably interesting for everybody passing me--looking to their right and seeing this college age guy in an anachronistic brown leather two-snap driving cap munching a sub, contentedly motoring along in a cool sports wagon at 53 miles an hour. Then we hit the rush hour traffic and we were no longer contentedly motoring. I've been in enough traffic and was feeling happy enough that I was still content, but you could hardly call what we were doing "motoring." It wasn't as bad as I expected though, and I always liked it when I could go over into the left lane and drive with the fast people, 'cause "fast" in that case was more like 30mph.

Class was good even though I missed stuff at the start, and I answered a question and the professor really liked my answer and said so like 3 times. And when he was leaving I called out and reminded him to take his wireless mic off 'cause he would have left with it on and we would have heard all kinds of stuff! The two guys in front of me laughed and turned around and talked to me for a sec 'cause he had left it on once before and walked out of the room and we could hear him talking through the speaker in the classroom. Then we had a teacher evaluation survey, and I was the last one to leave. I said to the nice girl who had to wait for me "Sorry 'bout that. Survey people always hate me :-) I actually think about what I say!" And she smiled and said "have a good night!" and I said "you too!" and walked out the door and sang "Folsom Prison" loud in the big tall hall. In the bathroom I was still singing and when I hit the low note it happened to resonate with the room at that point and sounded really loud and sweet, so I felt powerful like Johnny Cash and smiled. Then I walked over to the other side of the room and it didn't resonate anymore so I didn't feel powerful anymore. But I still had my sweet hat on, so I was still cool. Then I went outside and did hackey sack by two sidewalk lights for half an hour until I could barely lift my foot any more. I didn't get 20, but I got 18 once, 17 several times, and 15 a bunch. It felt really cool to hack again, and I felt light on my feet like I was defying gravity with my sweet moves. Probably how dancers feel when they're in the groove.

On a different note, I just came upstairs from playing guitar for 30 minutes in the pitch black in the basement with my eyes closed. Closing your eyes is a great way to practice soloing because it makes you learn stuff by feel, strengthening your tactile awareness for playing rather than going from sight alone. I'm playing two solos for the concert coming up, and some pitiful results at past attempts are driving me to work on it so as not to be ashamed before the crowd :-) Apostle Paul's lingo is in my head from listening through his epistles for the last week or so. He sounds like quite an interesting guy, no-holds-barred, sorta like me in that way. Hearing his letters read out loud (on CD) makes them seem much more like letters, and I'm thinking of them less and less like "Booksss in the hooollly scripturrrzz of the Lorrrrd" (spoken in the pious drone of the preacher from the Simpsons). By hey diddly ho they're just letters, I say (Ned Flanders there). Also, all that electric guitar was played quietly through my big Fender amp, meaning there was no distotion and not much extra gain or sustain beyond the natural vibrational life of the strings. That's a great great way to work on solos because it forces you to play and hear and USE the notes, not get lazy with a bunch of wacky cover-up sounds from some crazy distortion. I think hearing a bunch of BTO and CCR and Doobie Brothers on random shuffle the last two days has helped, too. I got up to about 160 songs today, out of like 2936 or so. 10 hours down, 7 days 14 hours to go!

This whole post has been written in the lyrical style of Mike Quinlisk because I read his blog last night and it made me laugh because it was funny. I was bored going so slow on the highway, too, so I took all those pictures. It was really pretty and warm and I had my windows open and played Switchfoot, and enjoyed everything except when I hit that one pothole with the spare tire. Ouch for skinny tires.

I have the screw that was in my tire sitting on the passenger seat. It's more than an inch long, and it's a really sharp wood screw. I'm trying to think of what to do to it or with it, since it's probably going to cost me about a hundred dollars to fix what it caused.

Mountain Dew Live Wire is very good. Buy some today at your local Wal-Mart for only 97 cents plus tax! $1.04 for 20 ounces of orange happiness!

Night y'all. Time to pray for Palestine and CoG and take a shower and sleep. I should shave off my goatee, and BTO is sweet.

--CA

Good-bye Grovers

Well, yesterday was another Sunday in Pittsburgh, but it was also a sobering milestone in our little church's life. Eric and Bethany Grover--care group leaders, worship leader, founding member, one-third of the leadership team--are leaving. For several months now it has been clear that God is leading them to move to New Jersey to help a church which has just become a part of Sovereign Grace Ministries. There's no doubt it's God's plan, and Eric, Bethany, and all of Providence Church want nothing besides being a part of God's plan to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ and build up His church. I've been gone so much that I haven't had to face the reality of their departure, so it was strange to realize, as we all sat in the cafeteria eating lunch and sharing encouragements and thanks with them, that next week they wouldn't be here.

As Mom remarked later that day, it was as good a send-off as you could wish for. Eric preached a sermon about the Kingdom of God and giving ourselves to that purpose, which is his passion and the reason they're willing to leave and we're willing to let them go. After the sermon Mr. Pierson came up and interrupted Eric's preparations to lead "Your Great Renown" to close the service. To express our gratefulness for the ~700 times Eric has led worship here (not even counting the hundreds of care groups he's played for) we gave him a new guitar amp to replace his battered Roland. And of course, it's a shame to plug an old guitar into a new amp, so we brought out the new guitar we got him too :-) I suppose it may have been an emotional moment for people as Eric led us in his song "Your Great Renown" one last time, but I was pretty much consumed with the low levels in my headphones and then the no levels at all when they fell off my head. Such often are times of worship when one is playing electric guitar.

The luncheon in the school cafeteria was nice. Good food, TONS of desserts, getting to talk to folks, and then people coming up and sharing stuff with the Grovers, bearing witness to the many works of God in and through their lives. I thanked Eric for the time he gave helping me set up my recording stuff, and the example of patience he showed as the CPU gave us endless trouble. I also appreciated the months when we met for lunches down at Pitt and he listened to the stuff going on in my life and prayed with me. In the end, when I think of Eric, I think of what I've said to several people in Ohio when they ask "so, when are you moving to Akron?" I say I'm not planning to, even though Akron's a blast, 'cause there are people in Pittsburgh like Eric Grover who cut my pride no slack at all. He's not mean by any means, but he just won't be impressed by me or cater to my ego at all. He has kept bringing my high flying electric guitar personality down to earth--doing all for the glory of God. Even his memory will serve me as a marker of focus on God, and that's what real friendship is all about. I will miss the Grovers (though not as much as many whose lives have been more tightly knit with theirs), but I know the effects of their lives here will continue bearing fruit for God, and I'm excited to see what God does as Ryan takes on leadership of the worship team and our care groups get re-formed.

This is now the second pillar of strength we have sent out from this church (The Praters leaving several years ago was the first), which I find interesting. God does seem to be using us for "church planting" in that way, but not quite as we might have expected. He alone knows what's coming next as we've got a crop of youth approaching adulthood. Michael, Jonathan, Ryan, Daniel, Justin...where will we be in five years? I don't put anything past God to do, so we can only walk on and see where He leads.

Bye Grovers! Great is the God we serve!

--Clear Ambassador

The joy of chemical names

Good gravy! Did you know that 2,7:3,6-Dimethanonaphth [2,3-b]oxirene,3,4,5,6,9,9-hexachloro-1a,2,2a,3,6,6a,7,7a-octahydro-, (1aalpha,2beta,2abeta,3alpha,6alpha,6abeta,7beta,7aalpha)- metabolites are CERCLA regulated substances?? Me either 'till just now. Man, that changes everything!

This easily takes the award for the most gnarled and ghastly chemical name I've ever come across. I've never even seen, let alone been taught about the alpha and abeta nomenclature in there! Heh - the common name is probably something like "Red Dust" :-P

It's funny to see the kind of contortions we get ourselves into when we try to name the chemicals that God put in this world. We can hardly even adequately describe most of the stuff around us!

--1,2-dimethylclear-[2alpha,2abeta-tris-nonylambassador]phosphite

Orange Street Weekend

Ah, what a sweet weekend! If you're wondering how the gig at The Orange Street went, it went GREAT. If you're wondering what The Orange Street is, it's essentially a teen club in Akron. Like a normal run-down joint where local bands play, just minus the alcohol, and they finish up before midnight 'cause of the curfew on under-eighteeners. In other words, the perfect place for Pure Boss to play.

Basic chronology: I took a half day Friday, got to Akron at 2:45, we set up and practiced for 2 hours in the Chima's barn, then frantically packed up the cars, figured out our outfits and drove to the OS. Set up our stuff, finally the sound guy hooked us into the system, we sound checked, waited around, then played, then hung out and watched the 5 other bands play (minus the one we missed while getting dinner at Taco Bell). I go back to Chimas, we hang around and watch a movie, I play myself sleepy on acoustic guitar, we sleep till 11 or so in the basement, wake up and get moving, Steve comes over, we set up again in the barn, and then practice for hours getting ready for the YMCA concert. Lunch break (Yay Lance for bringing pizza!), set list creation, running through setlist, then yet another tear-down and load-up-car routine. Dinner with the band at Baja Fresh, then I'm on the road home, arriving at said place of residence at 11:04pm. Hard to believe that was all just 34 hours. Felt like a whole weekend!

The Orange Street is a great place - scroungy, dirty, beaten-down stage, dusty stacks of speakers reaching up to the low ceiling, bank of dusty orangey yellow lights glaring down on the stage (leaving mysterious dark corners behind the speakers), and a very disconcerting stairway at the back leading down into corroded bricky darkness. Gives me de jibbleys, as Strong Bad would say. Basically, it's exactly the kind of place you'd expect to hear loud, harsh-sounding pounding music from local bands. Honestly, though, it wasn't that hard core. Some of the bands were really mild (i.e. lame!), and most of the crowd was pretty benign.

We pulled up out front, parked, and just sorta walked in the door like, well, um, we're playing here tonight, but we don't know how anything works or who to talk to or what to do, so we'll just walk in and put our hands in our pockets and look at the emo music people around and try to sorta look cool and not clueless 'cause we're actually playing here in a real music place :-) There were already maybe 20 people mulling around, mostly groups of high-school/junior high friends, some of 'em mildly goth looking. Finally I saw somebody go up behind the sound board, and knew I had found the man to talk to. We were cool, talked about how it works and what to do, and then we started bringing our stuff in and setting up on the stage (since we were the first band playing). It's a funny dynamic when you have a bunch of band people around, all playing that night, all checking each other out, but not wanting to look like you are, and all wondering how good the other people are, and either being egotistical and thinking you're awesome, or feeling pretty inept and out of place 'cause everybody else is probably better than you, and I'm sure they're all real bands, and we're not a band, we're just me and Brian and Stephen.

So we set up, and then came a time of being told that we had done all we needed to, and the sound guy would set up his mics and such for the house system, and tell us what to do. He was nowhere to be found, and it was past seven, when we were supposed to start, and geez, where IS he? Hmm...maybe down in the undisclosed depths of the basement.... but ah, there he is now, and yay, he's setting up drum mics! Oh, and at some point everybody who had trickled in (maybe 40 people) were told to go back out side and come in again, and pay and get their hands marked. So we herded out the door like sheep and made a little crowd on the sidewalk outside. How sweet to say we were one of the bands playing, and get to go in for free :-) No $6 from me, baby!

Finally he said we were ready to go, so we sorta walked through the folks grouped up in front of the stage and hooked up our instruments. It was kinda funny because the "stage" was about 2 inches above the floor, and everybody was basically standing in a mass 5 feet in front of us. Lights were blasting down on us from the ceiling at the edge of the stage, so we really couldn't see the people out there very well, but they were like right in front of us. Definitely different from a big tall stage in a big room. Cool, though, and very personal. We sound checked real quick at the directions from the sound booth, and then I was like, "so, we're ready to go?" in to my mic, and he gave me the thumbs up. Then, to the consternation and amazement of all present, I got up, Steve gave me his bass, and we switched our instruments! One guy was like "WHAT?? What are they doing??" :-) Brian leans up to his mic and says "Hi, we're Coldplay." And he and I start jumping up and down in time(no music yet). Up to this point I really didn't know how things were going to go--if we'd be stuck with a bunch of depressed emo kids who were too *cool* to have a good time and rock out, or if everybody would hate us, or what. The group of junior high girls who'd been gaggling around all evening seemed ready to rock, though, and when I looked over to the left where they were clustered and saw them start to jump up and down with us, I knew it was going to be sweet :-) Brian started the F - C - Gm - Bb progression, and the gig began!

Folk were indeed ready and willing to rock out, and we had a blast. It was so small and close that we could hear everything quite well, and we were very tight as a band. Brian rocked out like I've never seen before, BUT BUT BUT he didn't just mash the strings and throw his guitar out of tune and break strings and all, so we didn't have dead time. Steve sang well and got into too, hopping up on the kick drum and doing guitar jumps and stuff. And I could feel the low end from the speakers every time I hit the kick drum, which gave me a feeling of solidity and power that bolstered my playing a ton. We were very well practiced up, and since this was only a 30-minute set we played the best of our songs and kept them coming. We rocked out, moved around a ton, and each new song came in snappy and tight. As 5 family members told us afterward, we played the best that night that we ever have. And the non-family non-church people who'd never seen or heard of us before loved us! We sold SIX CD's, signed a bunch, got in some pictures, signed some pants, and when we crashed out the end of one song I heard from somewhere "Will you marry me??" :-P Girls do make the best fans, 'cause they get into it and rock out and scream at the end of every song. They were a geat crowd, and I muchly appreciated their participation. It was a great feeling when we finished the set and knew that we had played our best and kept it tight and energetic. So sweet! It was basically the perfect concert, and now I'll stop blabbering about it :-) And I'm not being proud in what I'm saying, like we're something great or anything. It's just that we've been beating ourselves up about how lame we look while we're playing, and how much dead time we have, and how our songs are crummy and our music is boring and nobody will get into it and we're just totally not like a real band at all...but it actually went off like a good band! We were the second-best band there that night, and definitely got the crowd into it the most. It was very encouraging, and just a lot of fun!

Four of the other bands were quite lame in various ways, but it was still fun to hang out and watch them. The last band, Templeton's Zeal, was...well, they could easily be a pro band, they just haven't gotten their break yet. The drummer was stunningly skilled (and rip, too), and the guitar player was obviously immersed in the school of Hendrix and Zepplin and the likes, and was bested by them by only subtle points of technique and skill. Seriously--he was stunningly good. The few of us who hung around to the bitter end pretty much just stood or sat at the foot of the stage and watched them in awe, happy to sit there as long as they would play, watching something so much better than we could ever play or think of playing. Very cool, and they were really nice guys, too.

It was cool spending the night at the Chima's house and practicing there Saturday. I've wanted to get to know Brian's family better, and it was cool to go to Akron and not be at the Hoffman's house (no offense at all--it's just something different). Jake and Tojie are great dogs, big friendly black labs, and their house is sweet. We practiced in their barn, which is like an unused 2-car garage out behind the house with carpets on the floor and couches around, and record covers up on the walls and random speakers and drum sets and stuff laying around. The perfect place to practice, even if it was 40 degrees and chilling. I kept wiping condensation off my mic, and poor Steve and Brian had a deuce of a time playing with stiff cold fingers. It was a good practice, though, and by the end we were ready for the YMCA gig--all 1.5 hours of it. I got really ticked at one point, sorta building on the fact that my $400 effects pedal had crapped out on me and we were getting ear-piercing feedback for no apparent reason. It's weird--sometimes I just get in this realy ticked mood while we're practicing. I actually think it's related to having that much loud music pounded into me for so long. It just seems to aggravate me for brief periods, even though there isn't a clear reason that meets the level of felt aggravation. Practice and setup and teardown and concert stress are providing many many times to work on not getting angry at stuff. Ahh, how good of God to keep providing instances for me to work on this besetting sin (strained smile of exasperated faith) :-D Ah well. Still good times, definitely.

After practice I wasn't ready to just drive home, so we swung by the Hoffman's, I found my leather jacket and iPod (thank you Lord!), and we piled into Brian's sweet Celica for a quick dinner. It was a great time at Baja Fresh sitting at the high table by the fake tree in the cool eating room chomping down tasty burritos and talking. Dude, we're a band! We're brothers, we've been through sweat and stress and lots and lots of practicing and hard work together, and we're coming more and more into agreement and unison with our purpose and commitment as a band. We know our songs really well, and there is a special kind of connection with people when you are all so familiar with a common thing. I love it when we sit down and plan out a setlist--going over the songs, talking about stuff nobody else would know or understand. It's cool, and very "bandy" :-) I drove away that night quite curious about what God is going to do with this brotherly bond we've got goin' here. See shall we.

It was a nice drive home that night. I was comfortable in the seat, tired but not sleepy, happy to be gently rocked by the road. It was better when there were no cars around. Even though I missed people, I was happier alone. I didn't turn the heat on. For some reason it was better to let my feet stay cold. And I didn't turn any music on either. Any sound would have been a tasteless intrusion. Left hand on the steering wheel, head leaning to one side, legs stretched out--every limb laying in peace, yet not motionless. From deepest childhood, the many nights spent falling asleep and waking up in a motor home rolling down the highway, the feel of a steady-moving vehicle is a comfort. Time kind of becomes irrelevant, and you watch the lane markings clip by and the dips and turns come and go, and you feel the road under the tires, and the darkness all around you is a warm, benign companion. Eventually I sat up straighter, put on Elvis, and warmed up the car, but for a long time I was content with the stasis of the dark car and the spot of passing road in my headlights. I was sad when the city got closer and the darkness was broken by street lights and more cars. There is something restful about darkness, and when you're not drowsy a long dark highway is a pretty happy place to be.

And below it all there was my mind thinking about how ironic it was that my primary "experience" of this experience was in thinking about how I was going to write about it when it was over. Ah well. It was still a nice time, and I arrived home as mellow as a bowl of chicken soup, ready to quench my brimming somnolence with slumber.

As I am ready now. Good night.

--Clear Ambassador

Ahh, Dr.Pepper

My blog has been very hospitable lately. As in, it's had lots of visitors :-) Many of them seem to drop by from searches for Dr. Pepper-related stuff. "Dr.Pepper song," "Drink Dr.Pepper be a Pepper," "Dr.Pepper pictures," and my personal favorite: "Amount of sugar in Dr.Pepper." :-)

Oddly enough, I was once trying to find that exact same information last semester. We were working on a project for transport, and I convinced our group ("Team Bloat") to make our project a heat exchanger to cool Dr.Pepper from 2-liter bottles. Heh. I spent one afternoon in the lab calling around and searching the net for the heat capacity of Dr.Pepper, and eventually for the degrees Brix of Dr.P (grams sugar per 100g solution). We eventually found it. So, buddy, whoever you are who searched for that, here's the dope:

Dr.Pepper has 40 grams of sugar per 370mL of solution, meaning it is 10.8 °Brix (A concentration unit common in the beverage industry).

The density of Dr.Pepper is 1.04 g/mL (4% higher than pure water)

The heat capacity of Dr.Pepper at 25 degrees Celsius (room temperature) is 3.94 kJ/kg K. But who ever drinks Dr.P at room temperature?? GOSH. At 0 degrees Celsius (cold as ice. That's better, baby!), it is 3.92 kJ/kg K.

And in case you were wondering, don't run to Wal-mart and look for a chiller for your 2-liter bottles of pop. What we came up with weighed about 500 pounds, was 8 feet long, and cost around $4000 :-) Just put 'em in the fridge, folks!

--Clear Ambassador

A couple other things

Mostly just go read the post below. But in addition,

• So much for knee therapy and push-ups while I'm sick :-( I was up to 64 with no form and 56 with my head not bent down. My knees are doing better, though I despair of my hamstrings ever loosening up.
• Probably the defining image of this trip is my sickness. The crazy cracking of my voice and the obnoxious pain every time I swallowed are the most present things in my mind as I look back over the weekend. That and Jen's water bottle :-)
  
• I spent the whole night tonight writing this blog. Malesh. I've wanted to write harder for awhile, and I'll do what I need to and make do with what I don't.
• I got home this afternoon to find I was locked out. The screen door had been bolted at some point, and nobody has the key for it. So I paced around, called Mom, and finally discovered that by unscrewing the trim I could loosen the stop of the bolt and get to the main door, for which I had a key. Happiness, even though it was a pain for awhile.
• I miss Daisy. I keep looking at the blanked balled up at the other end of the couch and thinking it's her, 'till I remember. :-(
• My typing has been super werid tonight. And that happened for real, as a true, uncorrecte example. Weird :-/
  

--CA

The weekend of a concert and a sore throat

I'm trying to think of where and how to start this post, and all that really comes to mind is "Sheez...another whole weekend in Akron!"

What was supposed to be a Friday night concert and short Saturday practice turned into a whole Friday afternoon to Monday morning extravaganza, setting me once again on the Ohio roads I'm feeling more and more at home on, and mixing me in yet again with the Ohio people I'm getting more and more familiar (like family) with. When I walked in to Covenant of Grace's vaulted little sanctuary for the second week in a row, Jason shook his head and said "Man, you really could take the new member's class!" And after going up for prayer after the sermon, and lining up with others who wanted the gift of prophecy, and standing arm-in-arm with Dr. Negi and Justin Murphy praying for each other, you could almost agree with him.

But it's not really like that, and I definitely felt a bit funny being there and totally missing another weekend of the life of Providince Church of Pittsburgh. I guess it was Eric's last Sunday leading worship (Ryan's leading this week), which was a downer to miss, and I didn't see his email about playing in the band until Saturday night. I definitely know I can't keep up this level of Akron activity indefinitely. It completely amputates the weekends from the rest of my days, and it surrounds me with people I feel very comfortable with but whom I don't actually know that well, and who don't actually know me that well either. It makes me do and say a lot of things I don't do or say with the folks in Pittsburgh, and it lets me be something I can't really be here. But it sure as heck is fun!

Like Steve said last weekend: in some ways these are golden days of our lives, and we'll look back on them fondly yet sadly when they're gone. Jobs, families and responsibilities will soon enough blow away these random, somewhat wasteful, free-wheeling times. But as Dad is quick to point out, they bring with them deeper and more lasting joys--the things God made us for as men and women. I do think there is a special, God-given pleasure in the freedom of youth, though, and I bet it touches on a hint of the feeling we'll get when we arrive in Heaven, and realize we don't have to consider time any more(!!). So, I'm enjoying these times very much, even as I know they can't go on for long.

And you know what else? I have learned a TON about people and life through my adopted citizenship in the rubber city. I never knew how atypical Mom is as a representative of the females of the species until I became Mrs. Hoffman's "#1 son." I didn't used to know how to hang out with people who wouldn't talk seriously about meaningful things. I did not realize how little I knew about people, and how much of them was actually there under the hasty-yet-certain judgments of my over-eager brain. I hadn't seen as clearly how people really do change, and how they change without me lecturing or badgering or teaching or reprimanding them. I didn't realize that I was not above erupting in spouts of real anger towards my brothers and pets given the right provocations and miscommunications. I did not realize how much God has blessed PChOP with a peaceful life and a gloriously smooth transfer of senior pastorship. I didn't know how much fun it is to have an 11-year-old brother around to babble and help with stuff and hang out with whatever's going on. And honestly, I just didn't have nearly as much respect for other people. Even as I've been somewhat puffed up by the mystique of ignorance and the apparitions of talent, I have been deeply humbled and profitably deflated in Akron by seeing my prideful judgements proved dead wrong and people, totally apart from myself, changing and growing and being real. It's hard to describe exactly, but it has come from a year of experience, which gives it a practical vigor that money can't buy. It's cool, and I'm happy to find myself a fool :-)

So...this weekend in particular? Heh. The concert doesn't even seem like the same set of days. But it was, and here are the shining moments in my memory as I look back:

Walking into the big gym-type building (simply referred to as "Mull Ave.") and seeing, rising before me like something I shouldn't be around, a huge black stage and glinting drum set, and a mountainous sound booth crowned with a 15-foot-high projector. It looked like Switchfoot should be playing, not me and Brian and Stephen! Dude, Stephen's stage, which was just stacks of rough-sanded boards and flanges and pipes last week, was covered with black flooring; the edges had black fabric down to the floor; all cables were run underneath, and it all rose two or three feet above the room. And there sat our subs, products of such imprecision and agony, in brooding black, crowned with stacks of speakers. I was awe-struck as I walked up to the stage, there in the dark echoing empty room. I began to realize that this concert was actually going to happen, and it was actually going to be a pretty good show :-)

Mike arrived at Mull Avenue a few minutes later and juiced up the system, giddily eager to show me how it sounded. He powered up whatever amps and EQ's resided in that moster rack of his, and soon enough the opening strains of "Beatiful Day" started coming out. He pushed up some faders, and the whole room seemed to come into line with the sound waves. I started to praise it, and he shooshed me. "Wait 'till it really comes in." When the bass and drums came crashing in with Bono's voice on the chorus, I finally realized that what we had made WORKED. And moved air. I shook my head happily as those boxes of wood we put together pounded the air in that whole building and sounded good! That was a happy moment--the feeling of a creator seeing his creation succeed. (And I was only like 2nd string assistant creator. Mike did the hard work.)

Major shining moment: sitting behind the drums, pounding away like I have for dozens of practices down in the Hoffman's basement, and realizing as I looked out between the cymbals that there were a couple hundred people out there jumping up and down and screaming to our music! We were finally here! We were on a big stage, the sound was working, there was enough low end, we could hear well enough to play together, and there were other people who were actually enjoying it! And in the haze of residual smoke machine fog and the glow of stage lights, those fans looked pretty cool, and it really seemed like we were playing a concert :-) Now, *cough*, most of those folks knew us as friends and would probably love whatever we did, to some degree, and there were at tops 200, and the sound wasn't perfect, and between every song we had to kill time while Brian tuned or swapped out his guitar after busting another string...but still, we played, we had a blast, and they had a blast. I guess from a Godless standpoint that's really what rock bands are all about, and it was quite an experience.

Let's pause for a few details and lowlights :-) I woke up Friday morning wretchedly sick. I ached unbearably, my head was on the edge of dizziness, and the back of my mouth began that hateful swelling--one of my least favorite feelings ever. I still got up super early, though, and got to work at 20 to six. I finished the DMR and a few routine items, croaked with Jane a bit, and then staggered out to my car at 11 o'clock, dreading the hour-and-a-half drive ahead of me. It ended up being ok though, mostly because of the sunny sky and the Advil I took. I got to Mull Avenue at 12:30 and from then till 4 or so I and an ever-increasing group of people prepared and set up for the concert. We sound checked and practiced early in the afternoon, and then the other bands practiced. And we started getting worried, 'cause they were really good and we felt pretty sucky and lame. But alas. We're creative and original, we're only 3 instruments, we have a lot of fans who love us and know our songs, and we're really not hung up on ourselves. The other bands played, starting at 7, and did rock the house, but not so much so that we didn't hold our own (according to people we asked). I was sick all day, but still sang and played. The teardown afterwards would have been abject misery, but Jen pushed me into a couch and brought me water and made me rest, which probably kept me from getting totally washed out. Nevertheless, I was up till 2am loading and unloading hundreds of pounds of gear in the bitter cold night. Teardown sucks, and that night was perhaps the lowlight. But really it was all fine.

Sleeping in Saturday was blessed. Sleeping in till 2:30, though, was a bit much! That left the rest of the day basically taken up with Brian getting here, trying to round up him and Stephen, and making two trips to Mull Avenue to get all the stuff. Bless 'em, though, Bri and Steve did the first trip themselves and let me and Craig take the bass amp to Lentine's and go to the Hatterie. That got me moving enough to help with the second trip, despite my plaguing dizziness and painful throat. It's getting to be more and more fun to hang out with Steve and Brian as a band, and Brian even sorta regretted setting up dinner with other friends when he realized we could have hung out and had taco salad at the Hoffmans.

I loaded up my plate with this huge taco salad, eager to dig into Mrs. H's great food and give my body the nourishment it needed. I pushed it away 20 minutes later, one-fourth eaten. My energy had given out and my appetite had died at the foot of my cold. I eventually finished it, but that night I was really under the illness, and made for bed as soon as possible. "No, I'm not watching the Bride!" *more whining from the den [:-)]. Come watch the Bride!* "Sorry, I'm sure it's a great production, but I'm going to bed." And so I did with the firm resolution of desperate need, and so I procured nearly 10 hours of sleep while still getting up at 9 o'clock Sunday morning. The time between 11pm and 1am sucked, though, 'cause I just couldn't sleep, and tossed and turned under the sleeping bag, and drove Brandy away, and poured sweat, yet got chilled as soon as I got out from under the covers. Rarely can I not sleep, and I did NOT enjoy the experience. [I don't know how you do it, wood elf.] THAT was the lowlight of the trip, no doubt. Not a fun time. But finally I took calcium and B, and was asleep pretty soon after that. Yay for witch doctor drugs!

Church was good, but also kinda weird, as I said above. I almost played one of my recordings from my iPod for the offering music, but we didn't have the right adapters :-( Rebekah was on spring break, so she was there, which was an unexpected bonus. Got to hear more about the upheavals at PHC and God's accompanying grace.

Another good highlight was going to lunch after church. I asked around and kept asking, and finally rounded up Steve, Mike, Jess, Jen, Craig and Chad for Chipotle (Brian man, you missed out!). It was very much like last summer. We got our food and sat around a double table outside (yes, outside!), and with one question I started a productive conversation which lasted the duration of the dining. We mostly hang out in rather superfluous ways, so it's always good to hear what God's doing in our lives. We'd all gone up that morning for prayer after church, so we went around and shared, if we wanted, what we'd gotten prayed for. It's just cool to see God making changes, showing us previously unseen sins, convicting us of areas that need work, and blessing us with His Holy Spirit in real ways. Like I said there, in ten or twenty years we're going to be the people leading the care groups and preaching the sermons, so if we don't start getting real with this stuff now, when will we? It's good stuff :-)

Sunday was the marathon day. Church, lunch, loading up and setting up for practice at the Chima's, practicing hard for four and a half hours, hanging around in the Chima's house for a long time, going back to the Hoffman's, unloading more, helping Steve with his paper, and finally turning down more appeals to watch "The Bride" and going up to bed at 11pm. Practice was definitely a highlight. One of Brian's neighbors and her little daughter, huge Pure Boss fans, came over for it, and ended up sitting in the chilly garage for all four and a half hours watching us play and singing along and dancing around the driveway :-) It made us enjoy it a lot more, even as we dredged up 6-month-old songs and hammered through tough arrangements like "My Plea" and "Fly From Me." We're still amazed that they stayed the whole time! We're very appreciative :-) Hanging out after practice was fun, too. I had been thinking lately that I'd like to spend some time at the Chima's and get to know Brian's family better.. and we did! Mrs. C graciously brought us hot chocolate out in the garage, and when we came in later she heated up turkey for us and got us pop. That was hotrockinawesome, to say the least. We planned out the set list for the Orange Street gig this Friday and then sat around the kitchen table with Nick and bantered for like an hour. Brian and Nick are some funny guys, I tell you what.

My throat was raped from that practice, and the rest of Sunday was spent with pain at every swallow and rasp in every spoken word. It's like that now, Monday night, and I just pray that as I eat well, sleep tons, drink lots and lots of water and try to talk little, my body will get itself back in shape for this Friday. I sound like my voice is changing :-P

Monday morning I got up in time to be at work like normal, but called in and said I'd be late, and got another hour and a half of sleep. No messing around--this cold is going DOWN! Sleep is good, and was a highlight of the weekend. I think for a few days there I actually got enough sleep, and wasn't tired during the days! Kinda crazy. I'm going in to work late tomorrow, too, for the same reason.

For now, the house is empty, and I've been pretty lonely tonight. I've been sadder leaving Akron these last few times, and especially now, as Mom and Dad are in Orlando and Daniel's in Chicago and Daisy's at the Quinlisks. I'm sorely missing the bubbly company that surrounds me over there. But that means I'm setting myself less on God. So I'm letting myself feel the loneliness, and taking it to Jesus, offering it up and praying that He will be that to me, and much more. It's easy and attractive to fill yourself with happy friends who like you and fun things you do, but if there's nothing else beneath that, you're gonna feel the pangs of emptiness as soon as it's taken away. Such I have felt, and feel a bit now, and so I go to the Jesus that John wrote about, to the Jesus magnified in Hebrews, to the Jesus who sends the whole universe fleeing at the sight of His face in Revelation, .. to the Jesus who stood there in the dusty temple and told the people standing in front of Him "Before Abraham was, I am." .. to the Jesus who immediately reached out His hand and caught Peter as he started to sink on the waves of Galilee. Ah, may I come to actually know you, Lord! Thank You for Akron, and may Your will be done there, and here, as it is in Heaven. Amen, and please help my cold to heal very fast :-)

--Croaky Ambassador

The show must go on

I'm sick (but thankfully not as sick as Shannon), and I'm heading out to play a concert tonight.
:-) for the concert
:-( for the sick
:-) for leaving work before 11am (worked late last night, got in super early this morning).
:-( for the crazy aching everywhere
:-( for having to drive an hour and a half
:-) for the rig already being mostly set up at Mull Ave
:-) for smiley faces

--Sick Ambassador

New Song!!

Well, after wishing I could write some more songs, I have written one! And guess where it began? Correct--the bathroom! That plumbed source of all inspiration led me to begin singing whatever came to mind at the end of the workday today, and soon out popped this little jumpy melody and some words. So I spent the drive home composing it and recording little snippets on my cell phone. Here are the words. Think Death Cab meets Coldplay meets Keane, with a dash of the Beatles...

Time after time, time after time looking out the door.
Time after time, time after time what's he waiting for?

But you were always on my side,
I couldn't tame you, I couldn't blame you;
You were always on my side,
I couldn't trace you, I couldn't chase away your plans for me.

Back of my mind, back of my mind it's been pa - id for.
Back in the time, back in the time that he ca - me for,

'Cause you were always on my side,
I couldn't tame you, I couldn't blame you;
You were always on my side,
I couldn't trace you, I couldn't chase away your plans for me.


I've had several thoughts about a bridge or alternate section, but it's already dangerously similar to lots of modern stuff, and those additions would push it over the edge. I'm hoping to soak it with layers of vocal harmonies, of which I've had multitudinous ideas.

Praise God He's on our side! What unmerited mercy!

--Clear Ambassador

Stuff I like right now

Flipping through some old old memories ("The Behrens Home Gazette" archive) made me consider again the nature and purpose of this blog. I want to remember what I'm like right now, not just what I'm doing. So, I'm going to list some stuff I really like right now:

I think I like and respect Switchfoot, Jars of Clay, and Johnny Cash the most right now. "Nothing is Sound" is just stunning in every way--lyrically, compositionally, arrangements, recording, production... Jars of Clay just delights my soul at a deep level with their God-glorifying songs (especially "Redemption Songs" and "Who We Are Instead") and good-enough-to-respect-and-love music. "Redemption Songs" is one of the only albums I'll play when I'm feeling depressed or emotionally sensitive. It takes me the right places, and it's enjoyable (vs. basically all worship music). I'm also excited to be liking in a functional way Bela Fleck, Nordic Roots, some oriental stuff, and Elvis. I'm loving Elvis, after the subwoofer weekend in Akron!

Dr.Pepper continues to be a delight, and Cherry Vanilla has taken equal footing with it's progenitor. CVNDP has its good days and its bad days, but I keep coming back. We also discovered a great new drink last weekend: the "Pure Boss." *roughly* 2 parts silver rum, 3 parts Dr.Pepper, and 2 parts Mountain Dew Live Wire. Virgin ain't bad either, but leaded is amazing. Truly transcending its components. Good scotch, VSOP cognac, Killians and JW Dundees are also very enjoyable. They justify their little two-carbon hydroxy molecule.

I really truly do like good healthy food. Fast food and freezer meals and such just aren't meals! Real meat, real grains, and especially REAL VEGETABLES are just plain critical. And because of this, I think I'll probably always eat pretty well, even though I most definitely enjoy and partake of junkfood. When it's time to really eat, go for food the way God made it. Veggies make a uniquely-satisfying snack, too, if they're good quality. Mom's cooking is just amazing. It's good not because of the easy cop-outs (salt, fat, sugar, butter, salt, and more salt), but because it's REAL food! It's like scotch versus pop. Pop tastes good because it's sugar water loaded with a single, cartoonish artificial flavor. Scotch is good because you can taste the oak barrel it was aged in, the charring inside of that barrel, the grain it was brewed from, and the myriad complexities that developed as that blend of biological molecules aged for 12 years. Such it is with Mom's cooking--you marvel at how good real meat, real wheat, real vegetables, and real herbs can be, especially when put together. Thanks so much Mom! You rock :-)

One of my all-time favorite things is contact from people on my stuff online. Whether it's comments and view on my Flickr pictures, comments or visits to the blog, or postings on such sites by others, it's always exciting to see what other people say and do. I really don't miss AIM, though, which is nice. I wonder if other people care as much as I do about comments and stuff.

I really really like doing stuff on Excel. Even if I wasn't paid $17 an hour to do it, I would happily hunch over a keyboard and figure out a solution to some need using Excel and the marvelous depths of its commands and capabilities. The type of thinking required to harness the bland blind little functions and exploit the drag 'n' copy capabilities is just delightful. I was SO excited when I discovered the INDIRECT command. I ran into Tom's office and just sorta blurted it all out. I've looked for that function for years! [He interrupted me suddenly and asked "When are you graduating?" with tilted eyebrows. Another indiciation that I think God wants me to work at NOVA after I graduate] I don't know how this will relate to my career, or what I should do, but I just love it. Remember the stuff I set up with LOOKUP for Tier II monthly reports? Ahhhh :-)

I like my car, but it's filthy freakin' dirty inside and out, the clutch is wearing out, and I'm always nervous about the skinny performance tires and expensive alloy wheels. Plus it has crappy traction, which really ticks me off. When you decide to sacrifice the clutch and the gas mileage and gun it, though, it can really tug. I used to get 30mpg while working, but now it's like 28.5. Probably because I go to and leave work an hour later than I used to, and I spend a bunch of time in traffic. Ugh and I hate myself for staying up so late and screwing up everything :-(

I love love love playing with Pure Boss! I care about concerts only insomuch as I wish I could transmit the joy and energy of our practices to other people. There is nothing like the feeling as I squeeze out from behind the drumset after a set that went really well. I love Brian and Stephen and am respecting them more and more as for-real people, friends, and in Stephen's case, a real brother.

Hanging out with youth is way cool, as always. God is chipping away at my pride and coldness in this area, and underneath is more freedom, joy and richness in relationships. It's not all good, 'cause of my terribly self-centered mindset, but most of the time it's a blast. Akron is obviously super fun, but Pittsburgh is sorta cool in a deeper way. It's cool to see folks becoming more serious, relationships becoming more meaningful, and activities becoming less limited.

I really haven't done much with music other than Pure Boss. No time at home period. I got a new recording computer, though, 3.2gHz, 160 gig hard drive, 1 gig of ram, and a QUIET FAN!!! Ahhh, it's gonna be incredible once it's all set up and I have time to use it. Acoustic guitar is cool, and I'm finally at the place (have been for ~6 months) where I can sit and plunk around on it for as long as I want, and not be bored, frustrated, or irritated at what I play. I was thinking today that I want to write again. Other than Daniel's song I haven't written anything in months. We'll see what happens. Recording is almost hard to enjoy because of the limitations of outboard compression, preamp quality, sonic isolation, and acoustic guitar. With the right intangible, indefinable, unpredictable SPIRIT, though, I can still get sweet stuff.

I DON'T like Physical Chemistry. Not because I hate the subject matter, but because I hate turning my mind to it in the midst of all this other stuff going on. I've reached the point now where I'm saying "Screw the homework, I'll take a B." We'll see. I do the bare minimum and get right back on with life after class. Ugh.

I like taking pictures. Freezing and preserving one instant of time lets you get sweet effects and makes stuff look really cool.

I like American Eagle--coolest clothes I know of, and they have some good clearances.

Daisy! Of course! Heh, every day the wonders of her cuteness are as fresh as the day we got her.

I really really like the gospel of John. The dialogues are just stunning. What Jesus says, and the situations He said it in, are just riveting. And the Pharisees are so crazily contrary to everything they purported to stand for, it just shows the utter hopelessness of the human situation without God opening our hearts. Ah, it's an amazing gospel, and I like focusing on Jesus Himself, the person, in whatever comes up in life.

OK, enough. Still have 5 of 8 homework problems to do before 6pm tomorrow :-P These are busy days, future self. I feel like there is no time whatsoever during the week, but I'm also starting to apply the rigorous discipline and prioritization of work to home, and it yeilds surprising results.

Oh, and I also enjoy working out, even if it's just knee exercises, push-ups and thera-band stuff up in my room. The muscular effort feels great, and, I dunno . . . it's just nice to not be anemic. I'll never be a beast, but at least I'm not "without form and void" :-P

--Present Self :-)

Workend of Week

I was there from Thursday afternoon till Monday morning.

We built two beeeg subwoofer cabinets.

We built most of 8 sturdy sections of stage.

We ate bags and bags of chips, bottles and bottles of pop, and bags and bags of candy. And several great hearty meals graciously and generously prepared my Mom #2 (Thank you Mrs. Hoffman!).

We practiced fiercly on Sunday and our band knit together in deep ways that night.

We just worked really hard and really long! My jeans are coated in wood glue, my jacket is choked with sawdust, my body is drooping from late nights and strenuous days, my expectations are missing hang-out time with friends, my head is bursting with concert prep, my second house and second family are seeming ever more like home and brothers and parents . . . and I'm going back Friday afternoon :-)

Once again, check Flickr for pictures. They will give you a good idea of the chronology and events of the weekend. At least go see me drilling into my ear and check out the slick-looking sub cabs :-)

I will journal some chronological details in the next few days to bring this trip to distinction in my future memories, but for now, this really sums it up. Go look at the pictures!

--Clear Ambassador

Update from the co-op

Some news from work:

• Last Friday I sent my 150th email of the semester.
• Today I stapled the best staple I've ever stapled.
  No joke! I had removed a premature staple and was now restapling it correctly. But I never like the gaping holes left behind a rescinded staple, so I tried to line it up the new one to go in the same spot (always hard to do). *Squint* . . ~aim~ . . . #chunk# ..I looked at it, blew away any stray flecks, and breathed aloud to the listening stacks of papers and the watching computer screen, "I dare say that's the finest I've ever stapled." My friend, a forensic engineer could not tell that manifest had been stapled twice!! *sigh* I can now retire at the top of my profession.
• The best part about work this Friday is that it won't be!
  (Meaning I'm taking Friday off to go up to Akron and get ready for Saturday's big concert.)

Peace

--Clear Ambassador

Those who want it too much...

Right now I'm seriously butting up against discouragement and hopelessness. For the last few days, building on the last few weeks and months, I've seen lack everywhere I turn: I go to work and fight my confounding laziness; I go hang out with folks from Church and see my cold unfriendliness and disconnection from people; I go home at night and see a room full of stuff mocking me for not cleaning it up and taking care of it; I go to class and see tight social circles that I am utterly removed from; I wake up in the morning cursing myself for staying up hours and hours too late and sleeping an hour later than I'd hoped; I hear music, and my heart cries because I can't make music that good; I go downstairs to record, and walk away deeply frustrated by the limitations of my equipment and mostly the grinding limitations of my musical abilities and skills; I look in the mirror and see the blackish-blue below my eyes and a face covered with zits; I talk to Dad, and I see a life that should be strong and upright for God, and is instead hunched over like I am now in my chair, corroding away in its own feelings and neglecting what's of true importance.

The challenge is to look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising its shame, and is now lifted up at the right hand of the Father (Hebrew 12:1-2, roughly). This is true. And it can make me happy, or joyful. But still these areas seem to go on unaddressed, and I wonder right now about the overall state of my life. Still, it's true.

Something I've seen poignantly lately is a life principle, a staple of good stories (and probably an ancient Chinese proverb :-P): Those who want it too much can't have it. I always think of Hank the Cowdog on this topic, especially that night in the house when Little Alfred was going to give him a strip of bacon, and he tries so hard to get it that he wakes up the parents, they go skittering into another room to hide, the bacon disappears, and Drover ends up chomping it down. Hank craves the bacon like none other, but he's so calculating and (falsely) smart in getting it that he screws it up, and quiet, dumb little Drover (who isn't nearly as dumb as he or Hank thinks) opportunistically and simply nabs it.

This analogy doesn't cover all situations, but you get the idea I hope. I want to travel the world. Reading Kayte Bell's accounts of her times in Cairo right now has made my heart ache and yearn for the rich, challenging, paradigm-shifting experiences she writes about. I so wish I was that kind of person, that I had done such things. Semester at Sea could have been like that, but I conducted myself in semi isolation the whole time, both from my shipmates and from the people in the countries I visited (Getting back to that coldness and disconnection I mentioned above). Basically, I want to travel so badly that I can't imagine God actually letting it happen, 'cause I'd go nuts with pride and idolatry over it. And even from a humanistic point of view, I'd be trying to make myself into something, trying to prove something to myself and others... I don't think I would enjoy it and enter in to it like I should.

Ugh. I'm always up above stuff, looking, thinking, analyzing, calculating...and that seems to take a lot of things away from me, even as it brings some benefits. It's just hard for me to enter in to almost anything--joking with people, chilling with a group, traveling somewhere, recording music... All are stunted by the intelligence and analysis that are trying so hard to procure them!

The spiritual version of this is basically that when we seek our own way, for pride, selfishness, idolatry and self-glorification, we screw everything up, we can't enjoy what we craved so much, we mar God's gifts, and we ram up into God's resistance of the proud. The only solution, the only place I can look around here that doesn't lead me to despair, the way out that the World doesn't know, is to just drop your pride and your quest for glory. Why do I want to travel? Because I deeply admire those who have traveled and lived in other countries and I want to admire myself that way. Why do I want to be a popular, cool, person in groups? Because I'm not like that, and I think people who are like that are way cool, and I want to be way cool myself. Why do I want to record great music down in my basement? Because I have an almost mystical wonder at the people and processes who make the music that stirs my soul, and I want to be the object of that kind of wonder myself. Every one of these areas roots from me trying to make much of myself. Period.

All around me I see people getting and enjoying what I really really want. There are more examples even than I have given here. But I am coveting my neighbor's things, I'm worshipping another god before God Almighty, and I'm wishing to be worshipped myself. I think I'm feeling the weight of God's resistance right now, and my bright mind also sees clearly the worldly wisdom that says that those who want it too much can't have it. Or, put more simply, "too smart for your own good." (Though that brings into question the validity of the purported smartness, methinks.)

I see the solution, but still I struggle to let this glorious picture of myself, which is rooted deep deep in my soul, come crashing down. What's left of me is a piece of lazy, unimpressive, unaccomplished, unskilled and unadmired crap. But dangitall, that's what I am (till I see Christ and so become like Him, hallelujah!), and it's frikkin' not about me! Don't you see that, idiot? Geez. So I return to a prayer I came up with earlier this year, and that apparently I haven't been praying nearly enough :-)

Lord, help me to enjoy You making much of Yourself.

--Clear Ambassador