Friday 12.
Marooned. Drove across town to meet a fellow and look at the car he listed on Craigslist. Mike Alongi left me in his debt by driving across town from a different direction to give a second opinion. It was a maroon-colored 1993 Honda Accord four-door, two years newer than the one I had, with fewer miles. The owner listed it for $2500, which was a good amount for a high quality car of that age and mileage, so it was likely to be in pretty good shape. I was a little worried because the listing only showed one photograph of the passenger side of the car. It was also on the east side of town. I got there a bit before Mike or the owner did, and stepped out in the suburban drizzle to look at the car. As I walked toward it, I could see the passenger side, and it looked good. Toward the rear of the car, however, my heart began to sink. The back window had a Raiders sticker in the lower right-hand corner. I thought, well, I could scrape that off. But then I saw the blunt puncture damage below and to the left of the rear license plate in the trunk lid. Bad news. The trunk didn't seal properly. Looked like it had been badly repaired from a collision, and the listing had said it had a clean record! But then my mood changed entirely as I rounded the corner of the rear driver's side. All the doors and the fender on the left side of the car were black, and ill-fitting and dented. All the windows were rolled down... in the rain. I didn't bother to stay and wait for the owner, and I managed to intercept Mike before he got there, and take him out to lunch as a thank you for participating in my wild-goose chase. The owner of the car never called me to ask where I was. I think he must not have showed at all, or knew why I didn't show.
#RUBBERBANDFIGHT I tried to start a "rubberbandfight" hash on Twitter. Being that I am an amateur of the tweet, I think I should have put more thought into how such a thing might be accomplished. Almost no-one participated in shooting imaginary rubberbands at each other, which surprised me. I even tried to get Conan O'Brien's Twitter account to do it, but no. Most of my friends didn't jump in either. Only Quell returned fire. Note to self: two points for Quell.
As an unexpected positive externality to the failed rubberband fight on Twitter, a small rubberband skirmish broke out on my Facebook page, predictably, between people who had been at the wedding, including the Grove girls and Andrew's sister Sarah. Note to self: points for Lisa, Karena, and Sarah.
Saturday 13.
Saturday morning Bible study with the Fairhaven guys was canceled, so I stayed home and studied after the 6:00 AM fantasy baseball draft for my college chum Jeremy Purves' "Hitting the Bottle League." (I won the championship in 2008, but in 2010 I don't expect to even match the 3rd place ranking I achieved last year.)
Saturday night we caught up with the old "college group" crowd at Grace McCarthy and Katie Lanet's apartment. Trent couldn't come, which is just as well since Katie's new boyfriend Steven Pinheiro was there. But Peter came, as did Faith, and the girls' childhood friend Danni was there with her then-boyfriend, now-husband Sheldon, along with his pal Matt Ehlers. A good time was had goofing around with the newer guys, and overall it was a fun reunion and minimally awkward. Amid the highlights of the evening, such as our raucous rounds of Taboo, Matt and I discussed fantasy baseball and I agreed to sign on with his dynasty league. I think I will only be in two leagues this year.
Sunday 14.
Troubadour: Church, Churched, Was Churching, Have Churched, Had Churched, Will Church, Will Have Churched Helped Mike Alongi with worship music on Sunday. I was approached by a couple people afterward who said it sounded very nice, clearly with the added, emphatic, "you should come back next week." There was a very transparent concern among some of these folks, who are seasonal interns at our church and don't know all the history, that maybe I don't consistently come to church because there's something wrong. Who knows what they think? Backslider and without accountability? Maybe just a loner?
It makes me feel like their concerns are a little silly. I need God's grace like any other creation, but by that grace I persist, and am not less joyful or diligent for missing home-church fellowship occasionally. I tend to be there at church two Sundays a month, then out of town somewhere else one weekend a month, leaving the fourth Sunday of any given month to either help out in Oakland where my parents minister, sleep in and say heck with it, or visit somewhere else. Four weeks prior I slept in, and only went to the worship service, and had to leave promptly afterward. The next Sunday I was visiting friends in the East Bay and attended Fairhaven. Two weeks back I had attended the starved little Romanian church where my parents minister in Oakland, and helped with music. One week prior I was in Oregon, and now I was back home at Grace Bible Chapel.
An oddity about Grace is that if you don't go to the Breaking of Bread service at 9 O'Clock every week, people think you've left the church, and they feel bad, but they don't call to see what's up. They just give you quizzically concerned looks when you do inevitably reappear after your one- or two- (or in this case three-)week hiatus. The thing about that service is that it has changed. It used to be alive, but a lot of people have left, and it feels like a ritual, a formality. So I have not made it as much the priority as used to be my wont. I miss it, but thus far, attending the dead-wood versions of the last year-and-a-half hasn't brought it back yet.
Practice with Martha and the Chores, the current name of the ever-slightly changing lineup formerly known as the Summit Worship Band and the Fracehavenview Worship Band, was frustratingly bad. But practices have been so good most weeks, as we get ready for Summit and for John and Kaitlyn's June wedding, that one bad week will be okay. Tessa Devaul sent me a text afterward encouraging me not to worry that the practice was so frazzled, that it was okay and I'm doing a good job. Note to self: yeah you guessed it, 2 points for Tessa. The point, whether helping Mike, helping the Romanians, or practicing with the band, is to worship. In the end it's a mercy I didn't totally lose track of worshiping Him amid everything.
| WEEKEND SCOREBOARD | |
| Mike Alongi | 10 |
| Quell | 2 |
| Lisa Grove | 1 |
| Karena Grove | 1 |
| Sarah Keyarts | 1 |
| Tessa Devaul | 2 |
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