Auto, Beck, Drinks, Bible, Baseball, & Office Style

Wednesday 17
Worked. Had forgotten all about St. Pat's, so no green. I love my protestant types, but I find it mildly annoying they always de-emphasize that one. (I wonder if they celebrate that in England?) went to class.There is no set of words in my mind proper to the task of describing how I feel, brisking my way across that University campus twice a week. But, and this is perplexing, it's decidedly un-medical.

Went home and put on a green shirt (yes the green-shirt) and some shorts because it's been so happily warm.

Was thrilled to go drop a cheque by Mike's house to pay for my new car. It's hardly new but it will do for "new" in my world. It's a silver 1997 Acura CL 2.2, which has a sun roof, great sound, and motorized leather seats, all of which make me feel significantly upgraded, but also like I am one step closer to being the perfect old man. Downsides: two-door, automatic transmission. Sigh. I am determined to once again own a manual transmission vehicle within the next few years, but we shall see.


I dropped Mike a few hundred extra for all his troubles. I'm sure it cost him almost that much to hang on to that car while I was trying to decide whether to buy it, and I think he needs it a good deal more than I do. Besides, I may have decimated a chunk of savings, but I'm still debt-free, so I want a Dave Ramsey merit badge or something. I ain't braggin'. Well, okay yes I am.

Went to Beck and Heather's house with Trent and Peter. We looked at old photos of the glory days in college ministry when we all used to be at their old house every week, and the pictures of the trips to Italy and Romania, Mexico and the snow. It's funny how much their family glows. They always ask me to play a couple worship songs, and somehow I don't mind being put on the spot to do that when I'm with them. It's just a privilege to know people so sincere, genuine, serious, cheery and loving.

We fellows went back to my place afterward and each had a spot of black beer and Bailey's over conversation. None of us were quite sure what to do with the Irish Cream, and were surprised to find how sugary it is. I have a hard time imagining how anyone could ever drink that stuff straight.

Thursday 18
Workaday. Felt a mite dehydrated. Note to self: drink water when imbibing alcohol. Boss has horrible habit of leaning directly over me while pointing at the screen of my computer to indicate changes he wants. He has always done this, but lately he has done it much more. He also spits a bit when he talks, and he does not provide a towel. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that he is incredibly good at what he does. It just changes my comfort level. The main thing I do protest is when he approaches the screen with the business end of a pencil. No, boss, no! Bad boss!

Had promised old Vaccerelli we'd come visit San Francisco Thursday night. Tiny (Tim Nichols) came along, and we prayed before we got there and prayed after we left. A few drinks, a moment or two of serious metaphysical conversations mixed with amazing juke tunes and Phi-brand company. Good times in general. But we got back so late. I really need to get back to my 10pm drop-dead bed time.

Friday 19
Nothing really happened. Went to work, came home, worked on Bible study and homework, went to bed on time, etc. Had an outburst of poetic creativity for about a half hour toward the end of the day. It will publish tomorrow on The Tortoise Initiative.

Saturday 20
Got up at five, finished Bible study stuff, worked on draft preparation for Matt's dynasty league.

Drove the 45 minutes to Fremont, got there by 8, went to pick up pastries and coffee for the guys. Studied I Samuel till a little after noon. I think Erich Wieger, our Bible study leader, is a genius.

I think I drafted well. It was rather frantic because the Jeremys' (Walker and Cooper) internet was down, so I had to use the neighbor's wireless signal, which was weak. I lost connection every five minutes or so for the entire two-hour draft. Jeremy (Purves, who was at home in Modesto) took his turns slowly whenever I appeared to have left the draft, to try to buy me time to reconnect. Actually in retrospect it is hilarious, but at the time it was really frustrating, and I must have looked very comically flustered with that laptop, couched with an intense look on my face.

Went over to Tiny's house to consult with him about his growing "office worker" career. We discussed a possible website design and marketing strategies, which his employer badly needs, and also wardrobe. It really was fun to go through his shirts and explain which ones were dress shirts, and which ones were certainly not, and why. Then we had a lesson in pressing the shirts, and how to use starch. There were a lot of "whys" that I had never thought about and it was fun. His mother seemed amused at the whole process. We didn't get around to pants, or tying ties, or the fact that the six ties he has are terrible 90's and 70's crimes.

I went with Tiny and BJ (his brother) to see Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, which was an awfully dirty disappointment and too expensive. Note to self: never pay four dollars for a hot dog again, especially if they are out of relish.

Various Joyous Boredoms

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