Repeats

Today was excellent. How many times have I started with "Today was..."

I had lots of fun today. If I had a dollar for ever time that sentence has come out...

So... If I had a cent for every so...

Okay, I'll give up on being original tonight. When I'm writing at night, of course I'm going to be tired and of course I'm going to be looking back on the day. A constant's gotta show up somewhere.

Man, I really am tired.

Today's Highlights:
- Church in the morning. Great, original, sermon from Ryan. Well illustrated. Well executed. Held attention very well with captivating visuals, an 'A-Grade' oral presentation, but also a seemingly very spirit-led sermon. It was honest, true, and consequently well received. I appreciated and enjoyed it both.

The worship was also more heartfelt than usual. That meant a lot and established a proper atmosphere for engaging in God's presence, enabled by his graceful implementation of power. Without him, none of it really would have went down like it did. That's what worship's all about. God helping us to glorify him with all that we've got. He blesses us with the ability worship, why not use it wholeheartedly? It's one of our best presents, better but similar to the ones we get on Christmas.


- Call of Duty Black Ops Multiplayer with Cado Potato. That was pretty awesome, some nice brother time. I think it's also the second time I've seriously played Xbox this year. Spent more than twenty minutes in a row on, anyway. I don't play very many video games, save Skyrim recently. But I think that's coming to a close soon too, I've just got a few quests I want to finish up on. Isn't quest a pretty gorgeously geeky word? I think so. The quintessence (another one.. but one I like.. looks much classier in adjective form quintessential) of geekdom (another) in life as well. Isn't as well just a geeky way of saying too too? Whatevs. And that.. I don't think Miles Davis would say any of these things.

The beauty of it was in the time spent slaughtering artificial intelligence with the Tater Tot, or even letting him (fine, I was trying my best and he still beat me) bring the slaughterhouse to my screen. So.. that was awesome and we played about up until Sarah Wood showed up for a bit of a worship rehearsal. Which leads us to our next point:

- Worship Session with Sarah Wood and my mom. That was cool. Sarah and I spent most of the time getting used to playing with one another, which was admittedly a solid use of time. We were pretty well in sync by the end of it, despite our musical differences. We're of a very different mind in that respect, I believe, but this is the kind of difference that's actually good. I don't buy into all the Embrace-Diversity propaganda that the school system exudes, but this kind I'll probably let slide. Synergy is a terribly peppy word, but it's got a good concept behind it.

So with that in retrospect, we've established a fairly decent song list that I can currently remember none of save maybe We Fall Down or Awesome God, neither of which I am one hundred percent certain we are doing. Whatever.

- Youth Group with Long Hill. I don't think I was the only one who loved Capture the Banana. One stool, one banana (at a time... at first,) and two sides of a gymnasium. Two overtly overaggressive teams. Several players prepared to duke it out to retrieve the scrumptious banana.

Before that was 4-Way Capture The Flag, epic in and of itself, but not as worthy of remembrance as the other. Both were very much enjoyed, but I don't have as much to say about Capture The Flag without falling into the trap of bragging. Don't really want to toot my own horn, I feel terrible afterwards.

Umm.. I'm typing with my eyes closed I'm so tired so please forgive me if things get incoherent. I might fall asleep like this now that I think about it.

Numbers were called out one by one, then like two by two, and then, well, whatever John Salo's pretty little heart desired. I played a mostly defensive game, once even completely hurding the stool to block the other team. Jimmy Donaruma or John Salo called me a flying ninja.. maybe both. I just recall Jimmy accusing me of railing Dan Folta. Dan enjoyed it, or at least said he did, bless his heart, and reassured me (fortunately) that I did not in fact hit him in the tenders. I would have felt terrible if I had.

I was also glad it was him who took in the "epicness" as he called it. As he also claimed he was. It would have been terrible if I had collided with some poor young girl. I kinda picked him in the air really, because I knew he could take it. Like a Dark Knight, you know. Somebody had to take it, so why not let the strongest and most capable. So I might have been a bit extreme, but I think most everyone involved thought it was fun. Or insane at least, and that's always fun.

Dan ended up taking a banana home.

I ended up "playing defense, coach!"

A few rules were broken, apparently. With music blasting full volume, 2 and 4 sounds a lot like 2 to 4. Somebody else heard it that way at least. So I wasn't the only one to think 3 had a place on the field. I would have proudly taken the punishment for my actions. No penalties existed in such a chaotic game, however. I don't think anyone knows who won. We pretty much just all had a great time. That was what was good about it =).

So tired.

Well, best not stop there.

Matt Webber with his magnificent arsenal of voices, captured the story of a bear who could smell, a rabbit who could hear, and a worm that could see, and the ways that they argued amongst themselves in a way that his predecessor Theodor Geisel himself would have been proud of. He then captured it in a way I know his heavenly father is proud of. So, his analysis brought us to the depths of distraction, to the essence of our general relationship with God, to the real life applications of such concepts. Whether engaged in music or movie wars, "Have you seen this?"'s or "Have you listened to that?"'s, or just "I totally got an A+ on that," we have almost all fallen into this kind of trap. Matt so expertly wove this together that I have to admit I was fairly impressed with such a White Knight.

I also offered afterwards my services as a worship leader on behalf of the Trio. Sean Gawgs seemed to approve, and I called Josh as soon as I got home to get him aboard as well. The three of us united in one of the most beautiful things three individuals can perform. Looking forward to it, although it probably will not be this week. The Trio will lead. The Trio will flourish. The Trio will submit. The Trio will give their all.

So yep, that was youth group.

I promised Mom 9:05. Including our brief post facto discussion, the sermon part lasted until around 9:25. I felt bad as soon as I saw the clock so I pretty much booked it out the door without saying GoodBye to anyone. My bad. Sorry if I was rude.

Umm.... too tired to really go on.

Came home.

Hit Facebook.

Hit the couch.,


Watched Ocean's 11. Or the last fifteen minutes anyway.

Talked about stuff with Mom for quite a while.

Went to the computer.. About to go to sleep.

1:06 AM..

Tomorrow's Monday will not be fun. Everything comes at a price.