Life's Frenzied Course

Some of you may be interested to know why I so rarely blog. Others may wonder what my day is like at Bible school. I will now attempt to kill two birds with one stone, as it were, and satisfy everyone's curiosity. This is an outline of a typical school day at Bible school, with stories thrown in here and there. Please enjoy. I put a lot of time into it.

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I generally get up around 6:30. Mornings are usually the hardest time of my day, partially because that's when I want to be in bed the most and partly because my blankets are really warm and soft. Also, I have a tendency to stay up late working on one of the many projects and skills I have set as goals to work on (including, but not limited to, composing music, working on the school website, reading a book from my lengthy book list, and...um...sharpening my Minesweeper skills). Despite the hardship, however, I arouse myself as best I can, do my devotions, and get dressed just in time for the 7:30 deadline: work meeting.

Work meeting takes about fifteen minutes. We get assigned our morning jobs (things like cleaning the dorm, taking the trash, and random small jobs like raking leaves) and pray over the day. If we finish before the breakfast bell rings, I sometimes play the piano for a while.

After breakfast and chores, there are fifteen minutes before the nine o'clock meeting. There's not a lot to say about that time, other than that there is always a really good message and that, if it's Wednesday, I play the piano for the songs (Jane T. plays on Mondays, and the rest of the time it's usually either Mr. T. M., Craig, or Aunt Elaine).

Class is the next thing on the agenda, and boy do I have a thing or two to say about class! First of all, I really enjoy it, as I mentioned in a previous post. There is so much to learn, and, with this group, it's often easy to have a great time doing it.

My first class of any significant length was “A Harmony of the Four Gospels,” presented by Professor Dan. That class was just the first-year students together, and we had a lot of fun. The most memorable time of the whole class was when we had an SMD, or something like that: a Student Moderated Debate. We, the seven first-years, were given a couple questions on a sheet of paper and told to discuss them on our own. We were to debate on the meaning and symbolism of the parable of the ten virgins and on the meaning and application of the parable of the talents. Fifteen minutes was the time limit for the whole thing. Well, never having come to an agreement on the meaning of the oil, we didn't get very far with the application. We were enjoying ourselves so much that we didn't notice the time, and class was over before we were halfway through the discussion. We continued it on the way to – and throughout – our lunch.

Late in November, I finished my next class: Acts and the Epistles of Paul (aka Paul's Life and Letters). Mr. M. taught that class, and I enjoyed it (surprise!). The ENTIRE student body took this class at once!!! Well, almost the entire student body: we were never actually all there at once, due to sickness and traveling. Still, the vast, vast, vast majority of us usually made it. Which leads me to point out that the entire student body of the school numbers sixteen. Which leads me to point out that it's quality – not quantity – that counts.

Throughout the year, some of the students try to keep a record of the more humorous and/or interesting quotes. Interestingly, most of the ones I've written down have come from the A & E of P (P's L & L) class. For example, when Mr. M. was teaching us about the dead in Christ rising first (I Thes. 4:16), he described it thus: “There will be a great shout, the archangel will cry out, and the trumpet will sound, and pop poppity, pop pop pop, the dead in Christ will rise!” And when he was describing someone who was new at something (whether a biblical character or a former student I can't recall), he said he “had some green stuff behind the ears,” presumably meaning that he was green and a little wet behind the ears.

The last class we had before Christmas break was Beulahology (the study of Israel) under my very own cousin Craig. It was a fantastic class, and I now know so much more about the Holy Land. For example, the study of it is the chapstick of the soul.

Some background is needed here. When Ethan from RI (mentioned in just a couple paragraphs in more detail) was at the school for a weekend, he showed the guys a video of Andrea making an extemporaneous speech about lessons from Napoleon Dynamite. It's a tremendously humorous clip, and you should watch it some time; but the long of the short of it was that ND teaches the importance of chapstick, which can represent the chapstick of the soul. Now, Andrea was cut off before she could explain what the “chapstick of the soul” was, but Craig took the opportunity in his class to explain that it was the study of Beulah! I never would have guessed it. Of course, knowing the origin of the term, the guys all laughed uproariously. The girls tittered politely and looked with querying gazes to the other side of the room. We explained later.

Beulahology wasn't all fun and games, though. I really did learn a lot. I know what the Cardo is, and that there's a menorah there. I know that Petra was carved from rock and was the site of Indiana Jones: the Last Crusade. I know that En-Gedi means the Spring of the Wild Goats, and that it flows into the Dead Sea (but nothing flows out). I know the regions of the land, the major cities, and oh so much more! If only my teacher knew about my blog so he could see how much I know!

Back to the schedule...

After class and lunch comes afternoon work. That can be anything from raking leaves to chopping wood to installing sinks to making apple cider to painting trim to washing windows. My favorite assignment I've had yet this year was when Ben and I had to crawl around under the men's dorm installing a venting system for the dorm dryer. The aria “The People That Walked In Darkness” from Handel's Messiah went around in my head nearly the entire time.

Although crawling around with a headlamp in a two-foot tall room singing an oratorio was fun, the most memorable work time came another time. My friend Ethan from RI stayed an extra day after the youth weekend in early November, and he, Ben, Stephen, Andrew, and I were assigned to do a lot of leaf raking and hauling. Leaf raking is a fun job because you can work super hard for ten minutes and then goof off in the leaves for a bit before you get a nice quiet tractor ride up to the Designated Leaf Dumping Area; plus, you can talk while you work, and when you have a different friend than usual helping you, it makes the time even better. We whipped up several enormous piles of leaves by the apartment building and then got some awesome pictures and movies of ourselves jumping into them.

Then we moved to the lodge, and the fun only increased. The lodge is designed much like a two-story motel, with an outdoor staircase to the second level. We piled up a tremendous amount of fallen foliage near the stairs. Can you see where this is leading? Ethan was, I think, the first to jump off the staircase railing into the leaf pile. It was a perilous feat. Gritting my teeth with anxiety, I stood watching as he cautiously climbed the precipitous rail, evoking memories of an audacious Anne Shirley walking the ridgepole of the roof. I knew it wasn't 100% safe, but I also knew that Ethan wasn't stupid; or was he?



Suddenly, with a great cry, he vaulted himself into the air, cleared the hedge, and whoosh! Landed safe and sound in the pile. (Did you like my deceptive foreshadowing?) Stephen quickly followed, and then Ben, then Ethan again. Finally it was my turn. Now, for those of you who don't know, I would not exactly call myself an acrophobe, but I do have this...er...hesitation to throw myself from heights that are anything other than diminutive. I don't like rope swings, I (presumably) don't like sky-diving, and I don't like the idea of jumping off railings. I spent all of two minutes gathering my stupid nerve, but finally I took the plunge. To my relief (if not to my surprise), I didn't kill or even hurt myself. But to my embarrassment, I instinctively plugged my nose. I just lay in the pile of leaves laughing at myself for a minute or two. At least it made a good picture.



One of the easiest things to do during work time is radio. Fairwood has its own low-power radio station, and five guys a week get to sign up to run it for an hour of work time. It can be really enjoyable to sit and listen to classical music, turning on the microphone every so often to say, “Good afternoon, and thank you for listening. You just heard Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, performed by Van Cliburn. Now we are going to listen to Isaac Stern play Humoresque no. 7 in G flat major, by Dvorák.” What is not so enjoyable is when you find that you left the microphone on during the song, and repeated those sentences over and over, practicing for when the song did end; and when you reach for the microphone switch to turn it on, you find that it was on in the first place and that you had been talking throughout much of a nine-minute piece of music. Not that that ever happened to me or anything...

Dinner generally comes after work, and after that is generally free time, which I generally use up by practicing the piano. The big exception to all these generalities is Thursday, when we have no dinner after work because there is no work. We have a few extra meetings in the early afternoon and then have an early dinner, followed by HOURS of free time. This time slot is when most of the students opt to go on the town trip to Keene to get whatever they need at Wal-Mart, Target, the bank, the grocery store, etc. This time slot is when I usually choose to remain at home and bask in the quietness and the lack of other things to do. I am the sort who is easily drawn out of reading or studying to sit around talking, and when there's no one to talk to it's so much easier to make progress on the things that are, in the long run, more productive.

With the exception of Thursdays, the only real variations of the schedule come in the evening. Monday evening we study; Tuesday we have sports; Wednesday we have “heart group,” Thursday we study, and Friday we relax and bask in the Sabbath peace.

The end.

Aaron and Me

Well, I'm back from Guys' week and the Fairwood youth convention. It was terrific fun. We camped, hiked, swam, had "special activities," watched Facing the Giants, played volleyball, sang, and worked. We played ping pong and volleyball. The food was delicious. Not all my friends were there, but I made some new ones and had a great time anyway. The meetings were excellent, with subjects ranging from putting on the armor of God and being clothed in humility to revival to being in the White Cavalry. That's about all I'm willing to tell you for now. There's just way too much to recap.

A few days before I left for the time at Fairwood, a little blogworthy incident came my way but did not make it to the internet...until now!!!!!!!!!!

I was sitting at the piano playing some classical piece when a little dark object on the carpet caught my eye. I glanced over to the left, and what should running around in little circles but an eensy weensy mousy!

I jumped up and tried to find a way to capture the little rodent without harming it. There were no jars or containers around, so I grabbed a tennis racket that was handy and half-heartedly tried to scoop up the little varmint. To my delight, the critter clung to my racket with a vehemence, even trying to crawl through the strings. I took him over to where I knew I could find a jar of some kind and made him a little house. I soon moved him into a much larger and more mouse-proof vase. He had everything a mouse could want: paper towel, cardboard, seeds, water... but it was not long before we noticed that he was not eating.

"Aha!" I said, "This mouse is not yet weaned!" So we fed him milk from an eyedropper. He crawled in a baby-mousish way across my hand, lapping up his dinner, and often sitting in it as well. It was great fun.

I had great dreams of the mouse becoming a sort of adviser and bosom companion, like the famous mouse Ben of "Ben and Me." Unfortunately, the mouse would not eat enough, or we did not feed him enough. The cold truth is that he died after a short two days of happiness. We hadn't even named him! We had discussed what we should name him, to be sure, but nothing was agreed on by all sides. Now that he's dead, it doesn't really matter. I think I'll name him Walter anyway.

This is Walter:

I Am NOT Impuissant!

As writer, designer, and editor-in-chief of "Aaron's Blog", I strive to achieve a fair balance of humor and meaning, pictures and text, and reality and fantasy. Of course, I don't strive very hard, necessarily, which explains the prevalence of fantastic pictorial attempts at humor throughout this publication. I would love to reverse this trend, but I keep running out of time and having too much school or work of other kinds on my plate to consider a serious post-writing session. For one thing, I have other things to write about for school if I feel like writing seriously, and for another, I'm slow at writing anyway. Sometimes I can design a new blog template in less time than it takes for me to write a page-long blog post. (I was going to say "full-length", but what's a "full-length" blog post?) Finally, how am I expected to find the time to write on my blog on Monday nights when I HAVE to watch 24?!?!? The question borders on inanity.

So, I am going to continue the trend.

This past weekend, I attended my cousin's graduation from the Bible school in Dublin. After the ceremony, I hung out with some friends on the front lawn and proved to them, once and for all, that I am not a light-weight, muscle-less, exercise-hating, athletics-shunning, geeky twerp of a weakling. I showed them, all right! I showed 'em my special flips! I twisted, turned, jumped, and glided, and when I had finished gamboling about, they had to admit that Paul Hamm would have nothing on me if I just worked out another thirteen hours a day and lifted weights while I did my school.



Of course, it is rather strange how my arms get so muscular and tan when I jump - perhaps even as muscular and tan as my friend Tony's (!) - while my face remains pale. Natural phenomena can be really perplexing sometimes, can't they?

Panic is...

...let me TELL you what panic is!

(Spell check says I should say "what panic are", but I didn't go through eleven years of A Beka Book Grammar and Composition just to lose my reputation for great noun-verb coordination by deferring to a computer! No, siree!)

Oh, yeah. Panic. I'll start from the beginning.

Well, first of all, as most of you know, I am a member of Chestnut Hill Chapel, a nice little rustic church in one of the prettiest parts of the prettiest state. (That'd be New Hampshire.) I have attended Chestnut Hill my entire life, and it is a wonderful church for many reasons. One of the least important is its tendency to produce superb bloggers. These bloggers include current members such as Bria, Cara, Ryan, Evan, Jill, Lindsay, Susan, Melody, Jenna, and Wesley, as well as former members such as Claire, Liane, Karena, Derrick, Carrie, and Darren.

Back to my story about panic:

Well, since last Sunday was Easter, Pastor Evan asked if our family could do any special music. In honor of a great family heritage of spontaneity, I quickly replied in the affirmative but put off the decision on what we would sing until the night before. By that time some of us had decided it was too late to do anything, and declared that they would not become involved in a musical piece that would bring shame to the S___ name by its obvious want of preparation. (They didn't say that exactly, but I'm using the Dan Rather approach. To paraphrase, "I know that's not what they really said, I know the evidence doesn't exist, but the spirit behind it is certainly, beyond any doubt, true.")

Despite all objections, however, Daddy and I looked through all his music books (I had exhausted mine of possibilities) for an appropriate song that we wouldn't have to learn. We settled on an old favorite: Michael Card's Love Crucified Arose. I'm never quite sure how to punctuate that title, but, as punctuation does little to affect musical pronunciation, I did not panic about THAT. (I'll get to what I DID panic about later.) I looked over the chords and decided to change some of them. Actually, I changed a LOT of them. As a music theory student and ardent fan of frequent and violent modulations, I implemented no fewer than four key changes in a two-verse and three-chorus song: C to D to E flat to F. It was SO MUCH FUN! I've always wanted to sing "Wonderful Grace of Jesus" raising the key one step per verse, but I can rest somewhat more easily having used pivot tone modulation in church by ear!

After the church brunch on Easter morning, Daddy, Ryan, and I went upstairs to practice in the sanctuary. Practice seemed fine, although we didn't do the whole song because people were starting to come in for the meeting. I wanted to check one more key transition before I went to sit down. Wanting to be unobtrusive, I placed my foot on the soft pedal of the piano. As I tried to press it, however, I was perplexed to find that the whole pedal assembly was wiggling more than the pedal itself. "How very strange," were, I am sure, the words which ran through my head. Curious as to the source of the problem, I dropped to my knees and looked at the apparatus. For some strange reason, I decided to press the sostenuto pedal with my hand and see what would happen. Well, what happened was that the entire pedal stand separated itself from the rest of the piano and fell to the floor with a crash.

PANIC!

At first I was afraid I had ruined Easter for everyone. How can Easter be happy without a good Easter service, and how can there be a good Easter service without music, and how can their be music without piano pedals?!?!?!? Then I looked at the end of the assembly, and lo and behold, it was not broken! It had merely come out of its socket, and in a matter of two or three minutes, my uncle and I had reunited the two pieces of the piano.

And that's how the boy saved Easter.

I Am Related to Prince William!

For all those of you who are so scared by my profile picture, I suggest getting Firefox and installing the Adblock add-on that I mentioned in a post last week. It will enable you to avoid being forced to look at Aaron van Beethoven while simultaneously affording everyone else the pleasure.

Now on to other and more important things:

This week was full of sickness and school. I'm glad it's over. At the same time, however, it would be nice if I could just keep repeating Thursday or Friday until I was completely finished with all my schoolwork so I wouldn't have all this blasted pressure. (Why can't I just graduate without doing any work?!?!? WHY!?!?!?!?) Of course, we all know what happened to the man who asked for a month of Sundays (supposing we all have read the Book of Virtues), so maybe I'd better be careful what I wish for. Plus, if we had a whole month of Thursdays, there would be no Saturdays on which to relax, and - possibly even worse - no Tuesdays on which to turn eighteen! Horror of horrors!!! I think I'll stick with the good ol' 365-day year.

Now, please humor me as I skip back in time for the rest of my post.

I had an OUTSTANDING time at the last youth weekend! It was terrific fun, and I don't know why I didn't think to write about it before now. Actually, I'm not sure I want to outline the whole weekend for you, so maybe that's why. I would still like to point out that it was a great time, with great meetings, awesome games, fun sports, and grueling competition. I still think that my team's snow church was better than Cara's team's snow "fruitbowl," but I had a good time anyway. One of my favorite parts was creating a TV commercial for Bruce's Canned Yams. Such fun! I'll have to try to get the video and post it.

Now I'm going to skip even further back in time to the game time on Friday night: one of the many fantastic games Andrea thought up was... the game where you have a label on you where you can't see it and you try to guess who you are. (If that game has a name, it is not in my vocabulary.) I took a while with Rush Limbaugh, but I took even longer with my next one. I had narrowed myself down to a member of the British royalty, but I still couldn't figure it out! Was I Prince Charles? Prince William? Prince Harry? Prince Andrew? Prince Phillip?

"No! What gave you such highfalutin' ideas?" laughed Andrea gaily.

But what other princes were there? Was I actually a duke or a lord? I was beginning to run out of male royalty when my dear friend Ben said, "DO YOU EVEN KNOW YOUR GENDER!?!?!?"

Oh, right...

I asked whether I was Queen Elizabeth, and know what? I WAS! I had never known it before.

The Changing of the Colors

As you can see, we have got at least some of our Christmas lights up now. Furthermore, we've started to get out our Christmas music and, in case you hadn't noticed, my Autumn template has given way to a Christmas theme. To quote Kermit in the Muppet's Christmas Carol, "There's magic in the air..." (By the way, that's a really annoying song, but I used the quote anyway because it's apropos.)



The following photos were taken of a campfire at the recent youth weekend at Fairwood.

Why Have I Not Been Posting?

Well, there are several reasons. First, I have been busy (so what else is new?).

Second, a good bit of my computer time has been spent perfecting little details with my link list.

But, for today at least, the most significant reason is that I have felt like this:



...and have been doing this:



I am definitely starting to feel better, but now I have to work on the Powerpoint presentation for tomorrow's church service. So, once again, I have absolutely NO time to blog. Nothing to write, nothing to show, no one to listen...but Aaron never complains! Not every blogger can be an Aaron!

Boston Red Sox!

Well, very few of my pictures came out well. It was pretty dark and it's hard to catch any movement with a slow shutter, or any light with a fast one. I don't know enough about camera settings to know what would be optimal, but fortunately, I did get a few that were OK. Here they are for your benefit.  : )

By the way, if you want to read about what happened, Ryan posted most of the major details here on his blog.

In Which I Find Myself Busy as a Bee

I have never been so busy in my LIFE as I expect to be over the next couple weeks, and especially the next day and a half. This is always the busiest time of year for me, but this year takes the cake and eats it too. (Mixed metaphor intended.) The sources of this nearly incredible surge in activity are numerous. However the largest source BY FAR is my VBS overhead for Chestnut Hill. Allow me to elucidate. Our church is having a one-week camp (Vacation Bible School) for kids aged 4-12, or something like that, and I am the official creator of the Powerpoint presentation containing the lyrics to the songs that said children are to sing. One problem: I based all my work on the presentation I built for VBS two years ago, and just recently - about two hours ago, in fact - I found out that the one from last year had far more songs, and they were in a different order (this matters for reasons to hard to explain at 11:32pm). AND I CAN'T FIND THE FILE FROM LAST YEAR!!!

Here's how I felt when I found out I couldn't find the file:



So I have my work cut out for me, especially considering I only have tomorrow to work on it, and I have to work tomorrow and go to church and go to a VBS planning meeting. I'm swamped!

Once tomorrow is over and VBS has come and gone, I will have one day to recuperate. Then it's off to Fairwood for a "Young Men's Week." That will keep me busy until Wednesday or Thursday; then I shall head off to Block Island for a celebration of my mother's 50th birthday party. Then there's Fairwood's Family Convention and then there's leftover Chemistry and Math and Reports. Ugh.

In other news, my long-lost wallet has been found! I know most of you probably never knew I lost it, but I had, and it was most distressing. It turned up on Daddy's boat the third time we looked. I am so relieved and thankful! It was very much an answer to prayer It's especially nice to have something so relieving happen when I am in the midst of feeling excessively overwhelmed.

Follow-up from previous post:

I have decided to defy the public slightly by not reading an Agatha Christie. Vacation is over now, and I have read probably twenty Agatha Christies before anyway. I am only slightly defying the public, however, because I read the second most voted for book: Miss Buncle's Book. I enjoyed it quite thoroughly and highly recommend it. The only annoying thing about it is that I had to get it from the Milford library since the local library didn't have it. The annoying thing about THAT is that the Milford library is not clearly marked. In fact, I went into the wrong building the first time. A sign right over the door said "Library," but apparently it was mistaken: it was the Milford Planning Center. Some guy who mistook me for his buddy redirected me to the real library, across the street. I went in and, after several wrong turns, found my way to the Adult Fiction Section and made off with my prize. Cara, Ryan, and I were on our way to New York to visit some friends, and Cara read the book aloud on the way there and back (a ten hour trip, and she read for about six hours total). I finished the rest last night.

We had a great time in NY, especially playing Quaker with Klara, Becca, and Ruth. I got some great video and audio clips with my digital camera, but alas, they are on a different laptop and it is too late to transfer them. I may post some of them this week. Then again, I may not.

Back to another subject: I think I will continue to go with the public's opinions for my next couple books as well. I plan to read LOTR, Animal Farm, and The Prince and the Pauper in that order. I am notorious when it comes to following through with reading lists, however, so we shall have to wait and see what happens.

By the way, when I went to get my camera to take my "how I felt" pictures, this little guy was sitting right on the doorstep. Isn't he adorable? I think I shall name him Thaddeus for no particular reason whatsoever.

My Weekend

In case you're incredibly distraught, disappointed, or otherwise upset about the fact that I have not posted in FOUR WHOLE DAYS(!!!!), allow me to assure you that the reason is not that I'm lazy; it's not that I have nothing to say or show, and it's not that I hate blogs. It's not even that I'm too busy 100% of the time. It's just that our blankety blank internet connection wouldn't let me upload any pictures! Grrrr. Just wait til Thursday.

Four days is not actually a very long time, but it has been much longer than that since I actually wrote an interesting post with more than pictures or a few quick notes. It's time I actually wrote something interesting for a change.

You may have noticed me lamenting in my last post the fact that I would not be able to go to the youth weekend at Fairwood until the second day. And I lamented rightly, too: I MISSED ULTIMATE FRISBEE!!! ("Let the bitter tears I'm shedding witness my distress...") Nevertheless, Cara and I sacrificed our ritual Sabbath sleep-in so that we could get over to Fairwood by the end of breakfast. None of my close friends were there this time, but I still had a good time. We had a number of relay races and the like in the afternoon, and I enjoyed myself to an unusual extent considering the fact that my team lost all of them. All, that is, except for the Great Fairwood Baking Contest and Scavenger Hunt. We made the best-tasting and nicest-looking brownies in the second shortest amount of time. It was quite a pleasant surprise.

In the afternoon we had three activities to choose from: hiking, watching "Narnia", or playing games in the parlor. I opted for the parlor games since I was too tired to hike and had already seen "Narnia" twice. We played Pictionary and Catchphrase, and I had a fun time.

Cara and I stayed for sports that evening, and I enjoyed them for the most part. We played warball first, and I am SOOO bad at warball. I have a horrible arm, and I can't catch. I can dodge, but who wants to just dodge the whole time? I did manage to get a few people out, but far more people got ME out. Nevertheless, my team managed to pull off the victory most of the times we played.

We played basketball second. I made a grawnd total of one basket out of about five tries, but I wasn't surprised or disappointed because offence isn't my strong point. Besides, my team won the first game without my getting any baskets at all, and my one basket in the second game saved us from defeat. (I'm sure you were very anxious to hear all this.)

I despise kickball. We left early. I was glad.

I went to Craig's senior composition recital in CT on Sunday! We got there just a few minutes early in spite of taking wrong exits and highways a couple times. All the music was wonderful, but I especially enjoyed the choral pieces. I had to keep reminding myself that Craig had written all the music.

Not Your Ordinary Sunday

Church was good in every way today, with about thirty-five exceptions. Well, OK, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but we had so many difficulties today that it was funny! Allow me to explain. The first disaster came about in the congregational music, for which I was responsible. Someone had requested that I do All in All for one of the songs, and I rather ambitiously decided to do it as a round. I divided it up into parts and put it on powerpoint, and had Daddy and Ryan lead. Unfortunately, we didn't have much time to practice, and the song kind of fell apart. Nevertheless, it was hardly much better than I had expected.

Next we did the song Saved, Saved! which went almost without a hitch (I made a small mistake in the second chorus). The third and final song that we put together was Thank You, Lord which went fine on my part; however, after the second of the three verses, Daddy's laptop decided it was tired of changing slides and refused to respond to any keys at all, with the exception of the Ctrl-Alt-Del combination. I was slightly startled when I started the third verse and nobody sang. I have counted the verses wrong once or twice before and either stopped or continued at the wrong times, so I just kind of finished the verse off right in the middle. I felt rather embarassed until someone explained that the slide hadn't changed. We skipped the last verse and finished off with a final chorus, and I was all done with the leading. Whew!

The service was then turned over to a lady from Bedford named Meme Stephens, who shared a number of songs she had written and recently had put on CD. She sang a couple songs with guitar, and then started to sing one with a track from her new CD. About halfway through the song, the CD stopped. Just plain stopped. We could find no explanation for why it stopped, but it did. She played it with her guitar instead, but the sound wasn't working very well, once again without explanation. The volume was coming across very quiet, but every time the volume was turned up, the sound was distorted. The crowning touch came immediately after the congregation watched a DVD put out by the Christian organization World Vision. When the five-minute clip finished, Uncle Alden opened the player to take the DVD out--and it slipped down into the machine. After church we got out a screwdriver and took half the sound system apart to get it out.

The last glitch in the service was when the pastor asked for a hymn. I went up to play since Lindsay wasn't there today, and found that the song was one I had sung perhaps once or twice in my life and had certainly never played. It was fairly easy, though, and I managed to make successively fewer mistakes with each verse. Then church was over for the week. The end.


P.s. Happy birthday, Cherilyn and Duncan!

P.p.s. I recently read an article online that began something like, "Police said the murderer escaped from prison last Thursday and began a thorough investigation of his escape as soon as his absence was discovered." Hahaha.

P.p.p.s. I was listening to Sean Hannity as I was about to drive out of a parking lot today, and some ad came on with a loud honking noise that really startled me because I thought someone was honking at ME. Then, on my way out of a gas station getting onto 101, it happened again, and I was just as startled and not a little annoyed. Grrrr. (Sean Hannity was great, though!)

Long, long post

Wow! What a weekend. I would normally just write what happened as it came to my head, but since I have SOOOOOO much to write, I’ll try to write everything strictly in chronological order.

Evan came to my house at 8:45 on Friday morning and drove us and our luggage to Chestnut Hill Chapel in our van. There we picked up Melody Fulone. We then drove straight to Fairwood with the rest of the Fulone family following behind in their van. Mr. Knowles had the first meeting, which was at 10. He introduced to us the theme of the convention: friendship with God.
After the meeting we went to sports, where Diane Randall divided everyone (about twenty girls and five guys before Tim Brown and Josh Littlefield arrived on Saturday) into four teams of six or seven. I was on team one. Elizabeth and Clyde were the team leaders, and the other members of that team were Tim Brown, Shannon Randall, Kate Knowles, Katherine and Klara Holscher, and Philip Reed. Each team’s points were added up throughout the weekend. The points came from almost anything, including sports, games, and extra-special conduct certificates (for things like helping with the dishes, setting up chairs, etc.).

Back to the subject of sports: on the first of the two sports times we played blind volleyball; wizards, trolls, and hobbits; and basketball. We might have played some other games, too, but if we did I don’t remember them. Blind volleyball is really fun. A large rubber ball is used instead of the normal leather one, and large sheets are hung on the net to obstruct each team’s view of the other side. Wizards, trolls, and hobbits was fun, too, but it was very confusing at first. Jeff Turner made it up. The game is a mixture of scissors, paper, rock and octopus or red rover or one of those games. Each team decides which type they will be (wizards, trolls, or hobbits) and faces off against the line in the middle. Wizards beat trolls, trolls beat hobbits, and hobbits beat wizards. If one team is wizards and the other team is trolls, the wizard team chases the troll team back to their side of the gym, and all the trolls who the wizards tag joins the wizard team. When everyone is on the same side, that side’s original team wins. The concept is pretty straightforward, but it’s hard to remember whether to chase or run when the other team reveals what they decided to be. Fortunately, I don’t think I need to explain basketball at all!

After lunch and another meeting (which Evan had), we were able to go play Ping-Pong and other games in the Fellowship Room, which had been temporarily made into a recreation room for the youth. I played a lot of Ping-Pong matches over the weekend, and to my surprise and delight I won more than half of them! I beat Ben three out of four times, Joseph one out of two, and Devan one out of one. The only people I played that I didn’t beat were Jeff Lyman, whom I played twice, and Tim Brown, whom I played once. I played Around the World two or three times, but, although I came in the top four each time, I never won. We were allowing three misses, and once I got to the end with Zohrab Najarian, and he was one miss ahead of me. I got him once so we were equal, but he won in the end. I played Rook for the second time in my life. It’s much easier to get the required foursome when you have dozens of people to ask. We had to end the game early, and my partnership (Kate Knowles and I) lost to Andrew Bean and Devan, but I had fun anyway.

We played TONS of games on Friday night and Saturday. Andrea was in charge of Friday night games, and we played song pictionary, the friends game, and Famous Friends charades. I had a really awesome time with the song pictionary, but I got a really bad headache that lessened my enjoyment potential. I took two Advil and felt better in time for Sabbath treat. I still enjoyed the other games, but I didn’t feel well enough to really participate.
On Saturday morning, Claire had us play a bunch of team games which were loads of fun. We first played a marshmallow toss game. That was kind of gross and messy. The next game Claire thought up was called skit in a bag. Each team was given a bag and had twenty minutes to think up a skit to use the props in. Team One (my team) acted out a spoof on the story of David’s mighty men who risked their lives to get him a drink of water. Instead of water, however, David craved Tuna in our skit! That was one on the most fun parts of the day for me. Next we had to draw all our team members’ faces on balloons. Each team got points for how many of its balloons were guessed correctly and how many of the other teams’ points it guessed. I drew Klara.

The next game time on the schedule was a Quiz Bowl, hosted by Chad. I had fun with that. My team won all three rounds for first place, and then played the team leaders as a bonus. Fortunately the bonus round didn’t affect our score, because we lost 15-5. I knew a lot of the questions given, but Zohrab, who was on the other team, was much faster at pressing the button.

The final game session was later in the afternoon. Craig hosted it, and everyone played a bunch of games that were, to me, somewhat harder than the others. In one game the members of the team had to line up in order of whatever he called (e.g. shoe size, hair length). There were some relay races: putting spaghetti in a bottle, and eating items pulled from a paper bag in the shortest time. But what I thought was the most fun game of all that Craig thought of – which, by the way, my team won – was the cheese curl toss. One volunteer wore a shower cap and a trash bag poncho and had his head covered with shaving cream for thirty seconds. Then the rest of the team threw cheese curls at his head for two minutes, and the winner was the team with the most stuck in the shaving cream. Shannon, Team One’s volunteer, had one hundred thirty-seven.

The meetings were really good throughout the weekend. As I mentioned above, the theme of the weekend was friendship with God. There were six meetings in all, not counting Sunday worship service. In that meeting five people were baptized! Allison Knowles was baptized first, and then Uncle Neil, who was having the meeting, asked if anyone else wanted to be baptized. Andy and Jane Reed, Alex Hersey (a friend of the Randalls) and someone named Josh (who is a friend of the Lymans) all came up. It was very inspirational.

Sunday was also my birthday. I am now 16!!!!!!!!!!!! I am going to get my license in about two weeks. Mama took me to a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore that afternoon. Chad was in it. I enjoyed it a lot, and Mama did too, but I think I still like the Pirates of Penzance better. No matter! I had an awesome birthday. I got a stack of 100 CD-R’s, so I don’t have to worry about buying them or getting them from Daddy’s office any more when I need them. I got a really nice pocket watch from Mama, too. Daddy gave me an office chair from his office for my room. Cara gave me a huge, beautiful kite, which I can’t wait to fly, and Ryan gave me an electric pencil sharpener that works incredibly well. Before I had to go down two flights of stairs and back up to sharpen my pencil well, but now I can do it right in my room! Bria is going to bring me a present from the UK, so I haven’t got hers yet. Another few of my favorite presents were the special editions of both Spider-man and Spider-man 2, CD labels, and a hand-knit ear-warmer from my Grandmother.