New Attitude 2006

Ahh, New Attitude :-) It's interesting - my past Na's have been very good times, but I was a fairly lowly tagalong, in the shadow of social greats like Matt Duncan and Eric Grover, feeling mildly left out but still having a great time (I've gotten very good at that over the years). This Na I was smack in the middle of a drastically different set of people. I didn't hang too much with the older singles crowd from Providence (Domenica, Lisa, Joel and Cindy, etc.), but instead I ended up in a core group of me, Daniel, Heather Q and Jess Mittelman, and mixed that up plentifully with the emerging singles scene from Pittsburgh and Akron. I was older than pretty much everybody I hung out with, and the entire conference was suffused with the invigorating enjoyment of hanging out with young people. We wrung those four days of every moment of craziness and experience that we could, for once (for me at least) stringing ourselves out heedlessly on caffeine and disregarding the human body's need for sleep. And I regret nothing but the last two hours of the all-nighter Monday night (Tuesday morning, actually) when everybody went to bed and I felt weird and had nothing to do and it was getting light. When I think of New Attitude I think of Jess Mittelman, Daniel, Heather and Justin, the food court, the circle screens, the weird snappy snare drum sound, the street between the Galt House and the Hyatt, Mike Bullmore, imitation lucky charms, pop cans chilled on the AC vent, and the hazy glow of the streetlights Monday Night.

Spiritually, New Attitude was the gospel Red Bull I had hoped it would be. Josh Harris, Mark Dever and Mike Bullmore laid out the call to applying and understanding the gospel Saturday night and Sunday morn and aft, and Sunday night CJ paced the stage and poured out his heart, bringing us to our knees with his stirring presentation of the gospel itself. He seemed like the Apostle Paul, crying out to us from the storehouse of passion God has given him. Then on Monday we were informed on the Holy Spirit and deeply challenged to evangelism. Josh Harris capped it off Tuesday morning with a summary of what we'd heard and a perfect portrayal of how the devil will try to kill the seeds that had been sown and how we must, in that moment of failure and despair, hold fast to the gospel. Hold fast to the gospel. Hold fast to the GOSPEL.
On Monday afternoon I went to Mike Bullmore's breakout session about feeding on God through prayerful meditation on the Bible. IMO it should have been a keynote session :-) It left me with no excuse to not have regular morning devotions, great expectations for such devotions, and a simple, eminently doable plan for them. Thank you Mike! I'm looking to get up at 7:30am, devote for 30 minutes, and then rush to get ready and head to Pitt. Oh Lord, may I at last gain some measure of success and consistency in this area!
My family group was great. We were small, but they put together the community groups (150 or so people, of whom 15 family groups are formed for personal application and discussion after the sessions) by geographical area, so I knew or had some connection with almost everyone. Our leader was a champ, and our group was solid, and Jocelyn seemed a lot like me which was funny.

Some moments and experiences of interest:

- Catching up with the two PChOP vans on the way down, though we had left 2 hours after them!
- On the elevator ride up to my room immediately upon arrival having a totally random woman say "You're from Pittsburgh, right? [I'm freaking out inside] ..John....Behrens?" She turned out to be Sarah Kearney's Mom whom I'd never truly met before. So bizarre!
- Plunging my head into the swimming pool after wandering around the Beatles festival Saturday afternoon and getting very hot.
- Great conversation with Akron girls over dinner at the food court Saturday night.
- Playing guitar by the street outside the Galt House with Justin, Steve-O and Craig Saturday night, and then retiring to the empty lobby on the 25th floor for drowsy hanging-outage.
- Talking with Justin as our legs got rained on outside the Galt House waiting for the pizza to come for the PChOP pizza dinner Sunday afternoon.
- Going out with some of the older singles from Providence Sunday night and getting, appropriately, bourbon.
- Sitting at the bottom of the cavernous Hyatt between 2:30 and 4:30am Sunday night and writing a song, as I boldly claimed I would as we exited the Calano's room. It ain't a bad song, either. The only people around were hispanic hotel employees and the occasional small group returning from the bars.
- One such lady running over upon hearing the guitar and having me play a song. I pulled out "Blackbird" by the Beatles, and she was smitten. I got $6 for one song! :-) (We only made a total of $4 and some change Saturday night, all four of us!)
- Hanging in the Akron girls' hotel room with a ton of folks for lunch Monday since everything was closed 'cause it was Memorial Day. I had to work hard, but I did get some profitable conversation in :-)
- Swimming with Daniel, Jess, Luke and Matt H Monday afternoon.
- And that most magical of all times, those glorious timeless hours in the humid glow of the orange sodium-vapor lamps surrounding the square block of grass across from the convention center Monday night. I honestly don't even know what time we were there for. I just know that we sat and sang worship songs by the fountains for a long time and then played frisbee for hours in the lovely rectangle of grass. The temperature was perfect--I never once thought of us being outside. It was like that lit up block was our house. We ran barefoot onto the roads to get frisbees, we tore across the grass with our shirts off, we wandered around the fountains, and we sat at the tables and benches talking and playing guitar softly. We're outside? It's 3 in the morning? It's downtown Louisville Kentucky?

There is much more I could detail here, but I will leave it at this, hoping that these skeletal and emotional accounts will spur my memory in the future, and impart to my readers the feel of the conference. It's funny--I can get totally full of the people memories as though I spent the weekend hanging out, or I can get enveloped in the spiritual memories as though I was buffeted by a gale of quality teaching in isolation. But in God's great goodness those two were mutually inclusively present in one radiant weekend. And there I will leave you--gazing at this wonderful loving God who blessed me with such fun and such a merciful buffet of digestable truth, and most of all, who crushed His Son for me. He crushed him. Christ stood there mutilated, hated and beaten with the ferocity that MY perverse sins deserved, alone, with no answer from the Father who turned away from Him. I will never have to know the bottomless anguish Jesus experienced, and right now (and always) there is no obstacle to me freely coming to God, praying to Him, talking to Him, and being loved by Him. Thank you New Attitude, thank you Josh, thank you CJ, thank you GOD!

--Clarified Ambassador

New Attitude Parody

Hey hey!

Well, I still haven't had sufficient temporal freedom to justify the time it will take to write up the New Attitude trip, but I did come up with a parody of "Crooked Teeth" by Death Cab for Cutie. Mostly it came from the line "And kids strung out on homemade speed," which I kept thinking of as "we were kids strung out on lots of caffeine." :-)

The song is on the web HERE, and the words are below. Not everything may make sense, but I think you'll get the idea of the crazy good times and crazy good teachings we got:

It was one hundred degrees as we ran in the dark and played Frisbee
And we just didn’t care, we just stayed up all night
And refused, to stop, to sto – op

And we saw we’d made a horrible call
It’s a holiday, nothing’s open at all
So we hung around in a hotel room
And ate food

‘Cause God gave us some truth for our hearts
The teaching was good, every scriptural part,

‘Cause you can’t do nothing at all
If you don’t hold the gospel strong,
No you can’t do nothing at all
If you don’t hold the gospel strong

Yes, we played on deserted streets,
We were kids strung out on lots of caffeine
We had hotel rooms, but we did not sleep
At all, woo hoo, woo hooooo

And the pop, and the candy and treats
Tasted mighty fine, but they were bad for our teeth
And the elevators were filled with Beatle freaks and guitars

All those dudes came to louvul to speak,
Now the conference is done and they want us to leave..

And you can’t change nothing at all
If you don’t hold the gospel strong,
We’ve got churches, care-groups and songs,
Keep the gospel center and strong

So, there ya go :-) I know I know, I left out the third verse, but whatever. I figured it'd get tiresome, so I kept it succinct. Enjoy, and thank you Lord for New Attitude and for the truth it presented!

--Clear Ambassador

MySpace

Duuuude. I got a MySpace! Don't worry--I haven't sunk to a deplorable level of juvenile peep dependency. It's a MySpace Music account, and I realized today that it would be a really smart way to get my music out on the net in a place where people are looking at artists. So, here's the link. Here we go....

http://www.myspace.com/johnbehrens

Peace and love,

--Clear Ambassador

Lost, Hank, the grad, and other points of interest

Hey! I finished the 2-hour season closer of "Lost," read Ken's funny comment, Daniel came back up from the basement 'cause he missed the first part and didn't want to spoil anything, and now we're both on our laptops and I'm playing Oasis, which I haven't listened to in a long time even though I like it a lot and I actually made an effort to learn several of their songs on guitar so I could be cool and play them for people since most people don't care about music except for catchy songs, which is really irritating for musicians and really profitable for the music industry which I think is a strangely-setup filter for what music meets the public ear.

Homework is settling down into somewhat of a routine, and I'm a few days behind, leaving myself having to stay up super late typing up reading response questions due the next day, having to beat down the craving for sleep which has grown quite strong these days. I seem to be significantly slipping in my ability to be productive late at night, unless I'm caught up in something engaging like recording or watching Simpsons or reading Kayte's blog. Could I jack myself up on caffeine? Perhaps, but I despise the feeling of empty energy caffeine gives me, and what I know it's doing to my body. Which makes the ridiculous boom of hypocrazy quadshot megamonster green ox killer energy drinks quite nasty to my mind.

I guess it's time to write about it. Maybe a bit. I feel like an addict. I can identify with Johnny Cash's accounts of his addiction to amphetamines on more than an intellectual level. I'm an addict to doing what I want. I will throw plans and clearly-understood needs and consequences to the wind and just sit and watch TV or lay back and sleep, or go putter at something light and easy. It may not sound serious to you, but I have honestly felt trapped many times in these past months. Trapped by my own lack of willpower. Trapped by some switch inside that just decides to not do what I should, time after time, seemingly impervious to logic, reason, compulsion, encouragement, even desire. I won't write any more, but if you want to know exactly what this has been like, listen to "What a Night."

I've been listening to Hank Williams a ton. Though what I've heard on "Hank's Place"--the XM old country station--leaves me disenchanted with the genra in general, Hank Williams' work has stood out like a clear light. He is one famous, touted figure who deserves his renown. I can't confirm or deny the allegations of his fundamental influence on all following country music, but I can say that the 30 or so songs I have are clever, somehow non-cheesy (or maybe just cheesy in a way that works), sometimes sublime, sometimes profound, and....well, his concepts and words just work out perfectly, every time! "Move it on over" is about the singer moving into the dog house after his baby changed the front door locks. The verses bring out all kinds of funny aspects of the situation, incluing my favorite lines: "Now remember pal, before you whine / This side's yours and this side's mine." And "I'm so lonely I could die" contains some of the best lines ever, and perhaps the shortest summary of country music ever: "And as I wonder where you are / I'm so lonesome I could cry." Oh, and his steel guitar player is SICK! Really skilled and very tasteful. The songs, the performances, the arrangements, the recording quality...they all align into music for the ages.

I got a parking ticket today, only a few minutes after my meter had expired, and only a few minutes before I got back to the car. I was sad for myself and the cops because I had really tried to put in the time I needed, even adding a quarter beyond what I anticipated to be safe. I spent extra time on campus after working out, though, and they were apparently right on the ball. I'm sad 'cause I wish they could have ticketed me when I was really bucking the system, not when I was trying to do the right thing. $16.

I got Chicken Green Curry and General Tso's Chicken and a Thai iced coffee at the trailer for lunch. The curry was amazingly hot, but the flavor amazed me every bite. Their iced coffees are delicious, and a third the price of Starbunks. Mmm, craving iced coffee.......

Oh yeah! Daniel had a sorta graduation ceremony Monday night! It was the Family Instructors of the South Hills (FISH) year end get-together. Dinner at a building in South Park and an open-ended time for us to do whatever we wanted to celebrate Ice Man's passing from the real of the home schooled. We didn't put a lot of preparation into it, but the frenzied work at the end was worth it 'cause it was a great time to realize what's happening, step back and think about what's happened, honor Daniel, Mom and Dad, encourange fellowing homeschooling families, and have a touch point for an otherwise under-the-radar event. I got to perform my song about Daniel (which most of you have heard) and my song about Mom (which none of you know about), everybody got a few minutes to talk, and M & D gave Daniel his plaque from Grandma and Grandpa. Daniel's talk was just a few words about the gospel, in accord with I Cor. 2:2--knowing nothing among them but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Cool and mildly shocking. It was a good night. My guitar fell off of a table and got a rather bad bash on the front edge. It made me sick and sad as I sat on the table bench hugging it, adrenaline coursing through my body, my mind's eye filled with the slow-mo picture of my beautiful sweet grand new guitar slipping and sliding towards its fall.

New Attitude is Saturday. I need it. It will be fun. I hope I can be cool and fellowship and hang out with people and not be sourly striving for popularity or satisfaction from others. I'm looking forward to getting to know Tim. I hope there's a good way to hang with the Akron people and Daniel's room over in the Galt House.

Tomorrow I have no lab (alternate team set's week) so I have nothing but reading response questions to do until Short Stories at noon. Coo'

I still am blowing copiously and frequently from my nose, and clearing my throat with unusual productivity. Stupid lingering grinding inconveniencing mucus production! Just heal, stupid body! Funny. I can jump higher, do more pull-ups and one-armed pushups, lift more relative to body size, and out-wrestle most people I know, but I pretty much have the weakest physique and composition. Any little thing seems to mess me up worse than everbody else, and for longer than everybody else. And that's on far better food and more sleep than a lot of my peers. Ugh. Wusha. Ah well. Malesh. Or more like mish afim. To understand this feeling (applied to more than physique), listen to "Slips Away."

G'night! Ugh. Too many exclamation points and smiley faces. Good night. There. The sullen cool in-control voice. The "I'm not really this over-excited dorky impressionable attention-desperate geek" voice. Pfft. Screw that, though I still try it sometimes.

--Clear Ambassador

This weekend, in no particular order,

I got a haircut and shaved my beard.

I watched 4 episodes of Lost and became engaged.

I watched Mission: Impossible III at the Waterfront with Ice Man and UK.

I played drums at church.

I ate Lebanese food for lunch today.

I composed and recorded another song.

I continued to support the Kleenex industry.

I kicked around in the Wal-Mart parking lot with my brother and two girls at midnight.

I saw pictures of a blimp hanger on fire.

I had an intense passionfruit-flavored energy drink.

I ran sound for a wedding (I seriously forgot about the whole wedding until just now!).

I discovered that the Hank Williams song "Honky Tonkin'" has only one chord, E, except for one beat of a B7 at the end of the chorus.

I saw a Cubs catcher sock a player right in the head.

I coordinated teardown for the second week.

I don't know when I'm going to do my homework for Tuesday :-(

Because we're doing Daniel's homeschool graduation shindig tomorrow night.

I wrote a lot about myself here :-/

It finally got sunny today after about 10 days of cloudy rain, but it's still in the fifties! Strange. Weather this year has been unorthodox.

The sermon was about fellowship being, in many respects, the lifeblood af a Christian life. I want to be more purposeful and others-serving when I'm with church folks.

Several times this weekend I felt like the outside loser grasping at crumbs of common ground with the cool people and milking them too much.

I sang "Before the Throne of God Above" in the shower and it was great, and I'd like it to be my theme this week 'cause it proclaims and gazes at the glory of Jesus Christ with soul-stirring brilliance.

--Clear Ambassador

Lazy Days and Fun Weekend

Hey there future self! It's been awhile, eh? Well, I've been busy lazing about doing nothing and enjoying the heck out of myself. In a way. The enjoyment of the moment--collapsing on my bed and watching Simpsons--is soon soured by the regret and nagging uneasiness of the tasks left undone during that time. So while my mind and body are fairly rested and *happy*, my room has gone from clean and open to cluttered and discouraging. I haven't finished the BHG project for Mom, I haven't been having regular quiet times, and that clutter in my room, besides cluttering my room, is mostly things I need to deal with--forms to fill out, receipts to enter in my checking account balance, letters to file, laundry to do...

I've been realizing that I need to take sharp heed to the tempatation to wait to approach God until I'm making headway on those things--until I'm measuring up to what I should be. One of the few things I have done is pick up where I left off in Numbers on my journey through the Old Testament. There I came across a poignant picture of the gospel: After reading through pages and pages of Israel's astounding rebellion and doubt (in the face of jaw-dropping physical displays of God's blatant reality) Balaam, asked to curse the nation, receives this word from God: "I see no wickedness in Jacob; I observe no iniquity in Israel." Balaam's three blessings are basically God bragging about Israel to Moab. They are His chosen people, and look out anybody who tries to touch them! He was proud of them, He protected them and avenged them, and yes, He delighted in them. Not because they were worthy (not by a long shot) but because He had chosen them.

Such it is exactly with me. I'm wholly as bad as Israel in my heart and actions, but God, to display His glory and power, has chosen me and justified me, and now proudly states, "I see no wickedness in John; I observe no iniquity in John Behrens." I'm very glad that New Attitude is in less than two weeks. I anticipate its powerful refreshment of the basic truths of the Gospel--refreshment I need and am praying for.

As far as what's going on, well...lesee. Last week was the first week of class, but my Short Stories in Context elective hadn't started yet, so I only had the pillar class, "Reactive Process Engineering." I napped a lot, wrote and recorded a lot, and lazed around in leiu of the press of full-time work and a class. This week I've been buckling down a bit more and slowly girding up the belt of homework in the evenings. Plus I got sick on Tuesday, dang it. Stupid sickness. I couldn't even really feel it coming on like I usually can. Just Tuesday afternoon I started feeling crappy, and the next morning the roof of my mouth was swollen and my nose was running like a faucet. Hateful. It's on its way out now, though, thankfully. And it shall not shake my working out. MWF last week and M this week, and I shall pick it up again next Monday. It's sad how weak I am compared to when I ended last fall, but oh well. And I'm doing my best to stretch my stupid tight weak hamstrings, hoping to get them flexible so my knees can be normal. And working on my shoulders, gently, to strengthen them and get rid of that weird tendon stuff that racked me a month ago. I've got a crummy body, and that's a fact I've had to face these past months. Daniel can get beat up and banged around and be ok, but me--one good fall and some joint is all messed up for the next 2 weeks. Heck, even normal scrapes don't heal right! You can still see plain as day the rings around my ankles that got worn off from the ice skates New Year's Eve. Rrrg. Oh well.

This weekend was hedged behind and before with dental appointments. I got 5 cavities filled Friday, on the left side, and 2 on Monday on the right side. I had to face on of the few (as in maybe 5) true gut-wrenching fears of my childhood--novacain shots in the mouth. Double whammy. But they came and went, and though my mind still contorts itself in all kinds of jibblies when a needle is stuck in me, I'm not that worried about them any more. But I still won't give blood. *shudder* I think God will need to give me a lot of grace when I start getting old and have to have all kinds of nasty medical procedures done to me. Cross that bridge when I get to it. Now the left side of my mouth is very sensitive, and I wonder why and if I should call up the dentist. I'll give it some time, and we'll see. Pop is bad for teeth. But I love it so :-(

The weekend itself was cool. Friday Daniel and I had a nice dinner and talk at Taco Bell and then met Nate at the Southside Works theater to watch "United 93." It was a moving and gripping film, and I rejoiced in the simplicity and realism of its treatment of 9/11. We walked to Caribu Coffee in the grey drizzle that has covered Pittsburgh for the last 10 days and sat in its warm outdoorsy decor and talked and sipped great mochas. Nate's one swell guy :-)

On Saturday....I don't recall much in the morning/afternoon. I think I worked on the BHG project more. Anyway, the big event was going to the Pirates game that evening. Jess and Steph, and then Heather and Matt congregated at our house and then we headed downtown in the minivan. Triple date :-P It was fun to hang out with this crew and to get to know Jess and Steph (Jeph), with whom I haven't spent much time. The 'rates lost, of course, but it was close enough to maintain some interest in the game. We mostly got food, ate it, took pictures, danced to the silly stadium music, and watched the mildly retarded people in the rows below and above us. Pretty sweet and funny people.

The evening didn't end with the last out of the 9th, though. For a PGP we granted Heather's request to try Cold Stone at the South Side Works. It was indeed open, so after getting our concoctions we walked to the fountain outside the Cheescake Factory and sat on the benches for a long time, joking, making funny noises, running through the fountain and watching other people run through the fountain. Gotta love those late night random hang-out times. And Matt made everything pretty funny. He's like Brian Chima--whatever he does is funny, and he can make things light hearted and funny that wouldn't be otherwise. Gumby. One in a million. At last we walked back to the car and returned home in the darkness of Sunday morning. Good times.

I played electric on Sunday, and since I broke a string on my normal Strat I was forced to use the new one I bought last week at Guitar Center. It's a sweet instrument, though the lack of a humbucker at the bridge is limiting sometimes. In general the worship was fairly rough, so I didn't get to think about the songs or the words too much. And then I pretty much slept through Dave Harvey's sermon (he'd come up to surprise Jere Harvey for Mother's Day. Cue the "awwww" :-)). When I was awake enough to listen it seemed like pretty solid stuff on denying ourselves and following Christ. Which is the antithesis to the self-serving laziness that has been dragging me down of late.

After church all normal people went and did stuff with their Moms. But Mom and Dad had opera tickets, so Daniel and I were left free. After teardown we hooked up with Steph and the Quinlisks, who likewise had no immediate Mother's Day activities, and we went to Panera for lunch. Poor Steph went to the wrong one, and it took about an hour for her to make it to ours. The bagels were good, and the Dr.Pepper was great, though I got burned out on it by the end of the afternoon. After eating and talking we wandered outside and strolled through the dollar store, the Eckerd and the pet store in that strip. I found Vanillamyntz Thinnie Tinnies, which in itself would make any week. But in addition, they were $0.18 per tin! So I bought nine! :-) I truly could hardly believe it was true. What joy! Finally around 5 o'clock we went out separate ways. Daniel and I picked up some good steaks and mushrooms at Shop 'n' Save for dinner and got home about half an hour before Mom and Dad's return. That night we had a fancy dinner and Mom and Dad got their presents. It was Dad's birthday too. Fifty years old. Kind of interesting to have your father be that old. Fifty is definitely past the midpoint of life.

So, I think that's the weekend. I made a CD of a well-ordered collection of my best recordings for Mom and Dad, and I'm working on the BHG project for Mom. I've got several recordings in the works, and in the last few weeks I've written two that I'm pretty happy with. School seems to promise a fairly comfortable and mildly enjoyable work load, and the only tension apparent is the difficulty of fitting working out and NOVA into the same day. Tomorrow I walk around the plant with Bob Wasileski for 3 hours and we tag abandoned equipment. I'll catch lunch at the Midway too, yay! Then Uncle Keith shows up from, of all places, Akron. He's got a new customer there, so he's been in my second city all week and he's chillin' here for the weekend before returning next week. Saturday I'm running sound for Leah and Doug's wedding. Next weekend is New Attitude. The next weekend is a likely Pure Boss gig at the Orange Street, and the weekend after that is the big dance show. Then I think the next week is Youth Camp!

Tomorrow the alarm will go off at 7am and I'll hit it four or five times until about 7:45, at which time I'll scramble to get dressed, pack my backpack and get some sort of breakfast before leaving at 8:20 or so for Pitt. I'll drive because I'll be going to NOVA right after class, and since it's summer I can find parking. NOVA till probably 4:30, as soon as I can leave, then back home to UK and Daniel for whatever we want to do.

I've been a bit more adventurous this semester so far, specificially in going places on campus that I've always wanted to go. I've gotten lunch at the trailers once and I finally went to the "Salem's Halal Meat Market" on Bouquet, which I've seen a hundred times. Good food, and cool European pop. I like myself when I do stuff like that. Perhaps I'll even go the Carnegie Museum some afternoon, or stop by the Phipp's Conservatory on my way home. Or maybe even go to that dingy looking Hungarian food place in Hazelwood. Ooooohhhh.

For now it's shower and bed. Yay I've caught up on the blog!

--Clear Ambassador

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--Clear Ambassador

What a Night

Well, I haven't posted much in the ol' online journal, but that's because I've been spending my time doing what I did tonight: writing and recording songs. And I'll take as many songs as come to me. I've gone through a poetry streak, a writing streak, and now apparently a song writing streak. And each new evening after I sit down with the Parkwood and work the song out I grab the guitar, hop downstairs, and record it. And the new computer and guitar let me do that quickly, casually, and good-soundingly. Major yay for that. Something I've wanted for ages and finally have.

So, tonight I was actually driving to Shop 'n' Save to cash my tax refund check when the first line of a chorus came to mind. It was a wonderful night tonight--warm, dark, and I didn't have to get up early the next morning. So after using the ATM I drove up behind Wal-mart and climbed up the ridge overlooking the slag pile. That point is the highest land for a five mile radius at least, and as you crest the ridge the entire Pleasant Hills / Century III / Route 51 shopping area opens up before you like a dramatic movie shot. I sat up there, clutching car maintenance receipts in the ceaseless wind and writing down lines as they came to me with the pen I use to write down gas mileages on receipts. The result is the song below.

To listen, go HERE.

What a Night

(Chorus)
What a night to just sit here and let the warm wind blow and not make me cold
And what a night to hide high in this darkness where no one could see or could know...
I'm alone

(Verse 1)
And what a night to stay inside and watch the TV screen and waste my time
And what a night to take a drive down well-kept roads in a smooth blue car that's mine
And what a night to think about my life and what I'm doin' with it now
And what a night to wish that I had some good way to lay it down (chorus)

(Verse 2)
And how discouraging it is to honestly take stock of who and what I am
And how unsettling to think of how my life and love look to the Son of Man
And how do I do what I know I should
When I don't take God's helping when I could? (chorus)

(Verse 3)
And now the rain begins to fall as I sit here and look at all the shopping malls
And honestly the wind has made me more than just a little chilly, yes I'm cold
But something doesn't want to go away
As I stand high above this land and say

Oh what a night to just sit here and let the warm wind blow and not make me cold
And oh what a night to hide high in this darkness where no one could see or could know...
I'm alone

And oh what a night to be dreaming of all the great things that I wish I could be
And oh what a night to walk down to my car and drive home to the way that things are

*****************

Those last two lines came to me as I stood up, ready to clamber down the loose dirt slope back to the Mazda, parked by the big blank back wall of Wal-mart. In a way I consider them some of the best lines I've ever written. Finally I've captured that night feeling, that wishing-I-could-do-something-extraordinary feeling.

Hope it is somewhat as meaningful to you as it is to me...

--Clear Ambassador

Classes Return

So, today saw the return of classes. Intermediate Physical Chemistry robbed this spring semester of co-op's typical respite from the oppression of homework. I was busier than I think I've ever been before, and after a 5-day weekend, the business starts back up again. 13 credits of classes plus two trips a week out to NOVA promise a continued absence of breathing room during the week, and frisbee games, recording with Pure Boss, trips, camps, conferences and summer fun promise a dwindling number of unobstructed weekends. I've honestly been feeling trapped this weekend as I contemplated the irresistable flow of classes coming to sweep away my time from Monday until mid August. I've serious thought through the possibility of taking this summer or fall off. But if I did I would have to take three semesters to get to graduation, and I only have a scholarship for two. I just feel like I need a long period of open time to catch up. Catch up with my room, devotions, family and housework, recording and practicing music, and sleep. This entire past semester has felt half cocked--over before I was ever really ready for it.

Now, when I start to go on like this everybody laughs and says "welcome to real life." Thanks to Dad I know that the fullness of supporting and raising a family is what God made men for, and though it precludes the individual pursuits that excite me now, it satisfies and justifies at a deeper level. So, though I may not feel it now, I'm willing to walk on in this life as God brings it. That said, I feel unsettled about the prospect of life careening on like this. There may be nothing in this beyond me just needing to make better choices, but I'm not sure. I wonder if I'm not cut out for an eight-hour-a-day job. Engineering used to be pretty enjoyable for me, as I worked and studied, but now it seems more like something to get through and over. I got a B+ in P-chem, which for me is an earned failure because I didn't want to work hard enough in the class. As time goes on I feel less and less inclined to a normal job in engineering, not just because of preference, but perhaps as a matter of competence and necessary dedication. Perhaps. Could teaching be the answer? Something more exotic? Such speculations are presumptious, I think, unless God starts bringing them up in a more serious light. Engineering will provide a stable base for a home, and so far it has paid for the amenities that draw me away from it (I just spent $1600 in the past 2 months on music stuff).

So, I sit here and wonder what will become of my life, and if I'm destined to look back over it and see satisfaction somehow sprung from years of unrelenting responsibilities dragging me along.

We got out of class an hour early, I most likely hooked up with a solid homework group partner, I worked out, and I got lunch from the trailers on Bigelow. I called off work and I'll go in tomorrow and Wednesday. I'm going to lay back now and doze now to ward off the sickness I can feel nipping at my heels. Hank (Williams Sr.) sings to me, Daisy snoozes in the chair, and Mom and Daniel are at Readers and Writer's Club--the last one ever for Daniel. I wrote a new song last night, and I think it's good (as opposed to the ones I wrote over the past week, none of which you'll probably ever hear). And don't worry, I'll be writing about the weekend soon. It was too unusual to leave undocumented.

Trapped in many good things,

--Clear Ambassador

Trackin' to Akron Again

I'm stopped by the highway
On the road back from Akron
There's nothing but darkness
For miles around
I'm stopped by the highway
There's no one beside me
My friends are behind me
As I'm homeward bound

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

I'm back on the highway
On the road back from Akron
I think of what happened
In the days I just lived
I'm back on the highway
The headlights will guide me
To the beagle beside me
At home once again

The weekend is gone
And real life goes on
Till I find myself back here again

The weekend is gone
Till I find myself on the road trackin' to Akron again

Short Story

Dr. Pepper. That's my topic, and apparently I'm here to write a short story about it. He was never really a doctor, but I didn't let that bother me. He made me feel better, and ultimately that's what doctors do. Fountains, bottles, cans...they follow me wherever I go, and I know that no matter how low I get, how lost I feel, there's a bubbly brown friend to pick me back up again. Like that one day back when I had the red Plymouth and I'd just finished college in North Carolina.

It was the spring of '79. Ugly cars, weird clothes, nasty music. The road to South Dakota seemed to get longer the more I drove it, and outside Blakesly, Iowa I called it quits and rolled into a mildly undangerous-looking motel. It felt pretty weird--out there in a random spot on the map, uprooted from my house in Charlottesville, on my way to what I hoped would become another home. I'd always been anchored to one spot, a house, or even a ship for awhile, and now I was enjoying this new free feeling, even as it left me feeling a bit lost.

So, what do you do in a new town? Once I was up in the morning I walked outside my room and squinted at the blank midwest summer sunshine. Bikes. I could really go for a bike ride right now. Hm. Rent one? Where? Buy one? With whose money? Alright, scratch that. I'll take a drive with the windows open, and see what's cookin'.

Heh. I'd like to tell you I met charming people and fell in love with the winsome locality, settling my roots in a new home, welcomed in by the good souls of meat 'n' potatoes America. Sorry. Go read some fiction if you want that :-) I drove around, blinking blankly at the boring buildings and finally deciding that if you weren't born here, you'd probably never know or care that it existed. So I stopped at a gas station and scoped out the shelves for the perfect snack to suit my fancy. Skittles...make me too thirsty. Candy bar? Ditto. Pop. Soda. Whatever they call it here, I could go for one. And what else, I mean honestly, besides the Doctor?

So, the only thing I took away from Blakesly Iowa was a 10-cent bottle of Dr.Pepper. That and a good night's sleep. And a new certainty that I wanted to live in a city :-) The road wasn't quite so long after that, and later that day I pulled in to Dave's house, more than happy to see a face I knew. South Dakota, here I am!

Here's to the Doctor, bubb'ly and cold,
Here's to the beverage in bottles of old.
Here's to the flavor that keeps us refreshed
Here's to the soda that we love the best!

--Anthony Lawyer

New guitar, woohoo!

Praise the Lord with the [guitar];
Make melody to Him with an
   instrument of [six] string.
Sing to Him a new song;
Play skillfully with a shout of
   joy.
For the word of the Lord is right,
And all His work is done in truth.
He loves righteousness and
   justice;
The earth is full of the
   goodness of the Lord.
---Psalm 33:2-5

I've gotta share my joy, and I figured my best bet was with some guitar-type folks :-)

I stopped by Guitar Center yesterday for a strap, and came out with a Strat. USA Strat, to be specific. $1200, you ask? Used for $800? No sirree! Beat up, corroded, dented and dinged, custom hardware, unidentified random holes drilled in the body....for $400. And it still has that clear sweetness and solidity of a US Strat that keeps people buyin' em. It's metallic red with an aluminum pickguard and stuff for locking tuners (woot woot!).

I've cleaned it up a bunch, and tonight I put new heavy gauge strings on it and plugged it to "Doug," the '70's Fender Bassman 100 that I picked up at the Midway. Fender + Fender + cranked to 10 = sweetness. Sweetness + recording stuff = sweet mp3 :-) Mildly sweet. I can see now I rushed everything. But ya know, the spirit is there. So, hope y'all enjoy some recorded ramblings from the Behrens basement...

Click to enjoy recorded music

The goodness of the Lord, as manifested in vintage all-tube distortion :-)

--JPB

---

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Le Weekend

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--CA

New Song!

Major huge boo for it being 2am right now.

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

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

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

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

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

SLEEEEEEEEEP

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

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

--Clear Ambassador

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

A 10-minute Post

10:07pm

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

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

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

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

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

10:17pm

--Clear Ambassador

Switchfoot and Johnny Cash

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

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

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

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

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

--Clear Ambassador

* * *

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

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

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

Friday was long

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--Clear Ambassador

Thursday was sweet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--Clear-recording Ambassador

Wednesday has 23 minutes left

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--Clear Ambassador

Tuesday was Bluesday

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

This is not a joke.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--CA

Monday has come and past

NO
MOON
LANDING
PROJECT!!!

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

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

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

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

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

--CA