Bringing the Drama

Today was the big Crescent City Classic. Like usual, I parked in Lakeview and walked over to the park to catch the shuttle. One thing I noticed today was how different everything looked from 2006 when almost every house was vacant, and now almost every house is back to normal. I walked up to see the shuttle bus pulling away for the 2nd year in a row, but also for the 2nd year in a row a bus showed up after 7:30. Last year I pretty much did the race anonymously, because no one I knew was on the bus or at the company tent after the race. This year though I knew a few people, including my friend Mike and his wife, Meredith.

We made it down to the Quarter to start the race and I noticed who I was determined to beat. I had a list when the race started, beat the guy dressed as the fleur-di-lis, the guy dressed as the bear, the soldiers carrying packs, and the runaway prisoners. The soldiers were for real, but we’re not sure what they had in their packs. Anyway, so the race starts (I’m in this picture somewhere I think) and again walkers had sneaked up to the front and are walking 4 and 5 wide. I hate that, it’s like people that just coast in the far left lane because they can and have no care for anyone else. I didn’t curse or anything, so I felt proud of myself for that. Really though, the 10 year olds pulling a cooler of root beer need to start further back. When we ran past the murder scene, nobody said anything, I wonder if people knew. I DID!

I think the magic distance for people who think they can run is about 2 miles. Once we hit 2 miles a lot of people started walking. Going down Esplanade was nice because it was so shady. I didn’t see the people giving out hot dogs this year but apparently there were mimosas along the route. I missed those! I got in sight of the finish line and was going to sprint as far as I could. As I’m starting to sprint, Troy from the youth group comes up behind me and pats me on the back and says “good race!” I then said “You better run faster cause it’ll be embarrassing when I beat you!” Then he completely left me and became a dot rather quickly. I crossed the finish line in 60:30. not bad for not having run longer than 4 miles since November and really not running regularly in the past couple of months. I might have broken an hour if it weren’t for the slow first mile or so because of the walkers/slow people.

The after party thing was kind of cool. I got some free G (that’s what they’re calling Gatorade now) and my shirt. I was trying to find the company tent and I saw a guy who looked like Sean Payton. I wasn’t sure though, but then as I walked away I realized it was. Too bad, I could have told him i beat him too! None of those people I mentioned earlier passed me, another goal accomplished. The company tent ended up being behind the Abita truck, so I got a couple of free beers since there was no line. That’s a good reward for finishing early, easy access to beer. I got it mainly cause it was free and I was standing there, but it tasted SO GOOD! I think I may have changed my stance on post race beer. Shortly after I got my beer, lines formed. Score one for me.

The company tent was cool, and I stayed longer than I did last year. I guess having people to talk to changes things up. I ate more food this year too, so I definitely got my $10 worth. I walked back to my car and made it home in time to catch the 2nd half of a soccer game. Awesome.

tonight begins Part 2 of the 2009 Ryan Adams road trip. from the first waking moments of today though i felt spent. it’s been a long week. the drama leading up to tonight’s show was mind bogglingly dumb. my 4th backup person to go with me bailed yesterday. here’s what happened, at least what i was told. on the way back from the BR show last week, i got into an argument with girl X over something about church and youth group. girl Y was driving, but was not involved. apparently in the two weeks since then, girl X has harbored bad feelings towards me, but instead of talking to me about it, has talked to girl Y. girl Y feels overwhelmed. girl Y was going to be my 4th backup for the show tonight, but emailed me yesterday to tell me she didn’t want to go anymore because she feels it would be hurting girl X’s feelings. not that she had too much going on at work, not that she didn’t have the money, it was that she really wanted to go but because of all that’s happened didn’t feel comfortable going to a concert with girl X. i’m not in high school anymore, and neither are girls X and Y. unfortunately, no amount of discussion could get girl Y to put everything aside and go have fun tonight. none of it makes any sense to me. when there’s a bigger picture going on (like carpooling to work, or going to a concert) i can put those things on hold in spite of how i feel to still accomplish the bigger picture.

coming through in the clutch though, Chad’s going to accompany me in the 5th row. expect some badass pictures as a result.

last night i got home and was set to do homework for my grad school class that’s due by the end of today. i hate this class. the videos for the classes are fine, i follow along and understand what’s going on. then the homework ends up being slightly off, and it’s not easily discernible how to take what we learn in class and apply it to the hw. i get home after going to the gym, and eat dinner. i check my email and facebook (to make sure that crazy lady hasn’t sent me another FR) and one of my fellow youth counselors tells me the big summer trip this year is in trouble. so i start to listen. the trip is to a youth conference in DC, and it’s one i went on back when Geoff Moore still played with The Distance.

i had found an alternative than renting a bus to get up there, and figured when i heard the per kid price, i thought that was before all the fundraising we were going to do. i heard only 12 kids signed up, and my first thought was to present to the kids at the next meeting how awesome the trip is going to be and why they should go. if we still couldn’t get enough kids then we could just do something else. i talked to one of my youth leader friends in Nashville (who was on FB at the time) about the trips they go on during the summer, and they sounded awesome. way better and cheaper than the DC trip i thought. then i found out that the per kid price was AFTER the fundraising. then i found out that the new youth leader booked rooms in DC that are either non refundable or close to it. apparently there’s a 25% penalty for canceling. so now we have a trip that’s too expensive and we’re behind the 8 ball with the hotel rooms. i googled to find out if there was a way to get out of this problem, but i couldn’t find one.

hopefully by the end of this week there’ll be an alternative option, or at least a new option instead of what we have right now. non refundable rooms are a TERRIBLE idea for a youth trip. what if not that many kids go? what if more kids go than you planned for? what if you want to change everything and go somewhere else?

i wish i could quit my job and do youth leader stuff full time. i think it’d be way more fun than my current job. i didn’t feel bad about not doing any hw last night. hopefully we can get this summer trip stuff worked out and the kids can have an awesome trip, whether we get to go to DC or something else. i’m kind of leaning towards the something else, cause after talking with my Nashville friend, i think that trip would be better. and it’s cheaper!

at a counselor meeting last week at church, i was chosen to be the captain for the adult team that will take on a team of youth on Super Bowl Sunday in a game of flag football. it wasn’t really something i lobbied for, but mainly was looked at and asked “so we need a captain, will you do it?” i sent out an email last night to the people who have signed up and explained a little of what we’re going to do, and what our expectations should be (WIN!). tomorrow night it’s supposed to get down to 31 degrees, but we’re going to have practice starting at 7:30. i told the team that if they didn’t want to get out on the frozen tundra, that would be okay.

i talked with my friend Brett this afternoon about what we could do, and how we could apply some real football ideas to the game in a couple of weeks. i think we have a good plan, so hopefully tomorrow night we’ll figure out who can play what position, and we’ll be able to get after drawing up plays and adapting schemes. i thought this year was the first year we were having this game, so i wanted to set a precedent, but apparently they’ve had a similar game before. last year apparently the adult team got blown out. not this year. the key to winning the game i think we be having a plan, like what plays to run and what defense to play. not sure how many parents will be playing, because right now i have a few people from my young adult SS class, one of which has jr high football playing experience. i’m confident we can pull it off, and i hope to get that message across to the team.

on my way home tonight i stopped off to buy a football. do you know there are multiple types of the same size football? i’m not talking 2 or 3. there were 8 or 10 different kinds. i had a suggestion from someone so i went with that one. but seriously, 10 different kinds of footballs? at the register i was behind a guy who was with his two sons. one of the sons wanted his dad to buy him some cold weather warm up gear. the dad refused and told him he was already at the register, plus he had some stuff at home for the kid to try on. the son didn’t like that, and started whining. he was like 13! his brother kind of shuttled him away, cause the dad was about to go off. i kind of looked at the football i was buying and tried to act like i was really interested in the box. i managed to avoid making eye contact with the dad after all that went down.

so tonight the youth group broke into 4 groups and each had $50 to go spend to buy Thanksgiving dinner for one of 4 local families. i helped out by driving. i had my ipod in the car, and let the guy sitting in the front seat, Troy, control it. he started going through the music on my nano, and he recognized Family Force 5, and told me he loved Death Cab. then as we’re going down the road he says “i don’t know some of these bands, Mute Math, Notorious B.I.G., Oasis….” i could understand MM, cause while they are local, they aren’t that well known. but seriously, Biggie and Oasis? i explained Notorious B.I.G.by mentioning 2Pac, who Troy knew, and then gave a short summary of the whole east coast/west coast drama, but i couldn’t remember who got shot first (it was 2pac). i told Troy that Oasis was big when i was in high school, but now not so much. they’re still around though, but i don’t think anything they’ve done was as big as the album Morning Glory is on. i felt so old explaining that. at least i didn’t admit my rap phase i went through in college, not that he’d have understood what i was talking about. (sophomore year, i remember watching the video debut for Victory with about 12 other people in our apartment. i think we were all disappointed.) of course i also go to talk about how i went to see Death Cab, and then about how i went to see Paramore, which made me feel a little bit more up to date on music the kids like.

about the Thanksgiving stuff, the 4 groups were divided evenly between the two walmarts in town, and we were tasked with also coming up with a menu. walking around with such a large group was a little awkward at first, but everything worked out really well. we had just enough money to get the turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, green beans, and a dessert. it was a great night. those kids are awesome.

on Saturday i went into NOLA with some youth group people to participate in some mission work. it was me, one other adult, and three kids from our church. we were meeting up with people from other youth groups to do some stuff in the 9th ward. they broke us up into different groups to go do 4 different projects and mixed up the groups so different people from different youth groups would meet each other. i led three other guys to go move mattresses in preparation for a giveaway next week. basically we showed up at a flooded out gym at a church, and moved mattresses and box springs inside to stack up against the wall. the mattresses were donated from a hotel in Dallas and are going to be given away to people in the neighborhood in the next week. initially we started with an 18 wheeler full, so it was a daunting task at first to see what looked like an endless trailer full. in addition, there were supposed to be 10 people to do the job, but we only had four due to the small number of people helping today. we got it done though, even though we were undermanned, and had some fun along the way.

however, it wasn’t all total awesome fun time. we’re a united methodist youth group because we’re at a UM church. i get that. we got shirts today with a GIANT UM logo. at lunch we had to read these devotionals that were like a page and a half long. then when we got back to the church we originated from, they had a whole worship service, complete with communion. it just seemed too complicated to me. the shirts, i can deal with a logo on the shirt, but a huge logo? the devotional at lunch, reading that sheet of paper, just seemed a little much. when we finally got to the prayer, the kid that said it said a great one. why couldn’t we just have gone with that? then after, the worship service, we had been out all day doing work, we were tired, and yet i felt like i was sitting through a service that was for the leaders to make themselves feel good at leading worship. the first song had lyrics like “I am free indeed” and yet i was sitting there thinking i was trapped and not free! there was also this part of the service where the different groups got up to the front to talk about their project, so i went up there when my group did. the leading pastor asked us a trick question almost. we’re up there and all talked about our day and how hard we worked, and the guy asks us if any of the people there at the old gym were members of the church we were at. we had no idea, but we didn’t think so, which we responded with, but then he says “well, there was one lady who was a member of the church.” dude, what was that for? i should have asked him that. we finally were able to leave at 4:30.

the main thing though was going out there helping people. i was proud of the guys i worked with, and of all the other kids who showed up. i just wish the adults involved wouldn’t have made the rest of the day so jampacked with irrelevant stuff.

so yesterday one of my readers from the DC metro area sent me this picture of the aforementioned Seth from 1994. observe him as he plays the guitar on the right side of the picture. the man in the white tshirt was our old associate pastor from the mid 90s, while the rest of the band members remain unidentified. obviously you can see how Seth has changed over the years.

in other news, i went to a show last night with Paramore, Phantom Planet, Paper Route, and Jack’s Mannequin with a few people last night. i got home around 12:15 and didn’t set an alarm. the result is that i woke up at 8:49 am and arrived at work at 10:25 am. as comparison, i usually wake up about 5:30 am and get to work by 6:45 am. oh well, guess i won’t be leaving early today, but hopefully i’ll get home in time to clean up in case people come over to watch the saints game tonight.

(the show was pretty fantastic btw, and i’ll post about it later.)

this past weekend i went on my first excursion as a youth counselor. it was a back to school retreat in panama city beach, FL, to a place that the junior high group goes to every year, noah’s ark. i didn’t really get involved until high school, so i had never been. it’s basically a retreat center on the beach, which operates year round i think. my sister had been in 1994, and she had a blast. it was her first youth group trip, so of course those are always the BEST TRIPS EVER!

anyway, i rode over there after work with one of the other adults and a couple of the kids, and we made it there around 10:30 on friday night. we stayed up playing rock band since my friend brett had brought his 360. i got to sing ‘Gimme Shelter’, which apparently was foreign to every kid there. i used to really dig rock band and think it was impossible to say something bad about, but then when you’re trying to go to sleep at 3:00 am and all you can hear is the tap tap of someone playing the drums, you realize how annoying it can be. EVERY song sounded the same, and it was like water dripping into a faucet. (tap tap, tap tap, tap tap). the dorm we were staying in wasn’t that great, but that’s what youth retreats are all about. the thermostat in the guys’ room was up around 78 apparently the first night, so it was ridiculously hot. i fixed that for saturday night by turning it down to 70. the beds were rusty old bunk beds, but thankfully no one fell off of any and no top bunk came crashing down to the bottom. everyone got ‘enough’ sleep, which is really all you can ask for.

saturDAY a couple of the other ‘counselors’ and i went and rented motorbikes. i didn’t bring any shoes, and i didn’t really want to wear a helmet, so i got a moped. plus i kind of saved $30. the other two got motorcycles, but they didn’t go much faster than my moped, in fact, i passed brett on the beach road on my moped. we had fun riding those around, and i actually went faster saturday then i had when i rode a moped for the first time in Fairview, TN. i had it up to 42, and it kind of started shaking, so i slowed down. i about crashed into a parked truck, and almost hit a car that was stopping at a light, but hey, it was fun. i did get to ride one of the motorcycles, and it was really hard to shift with flip flops on, but i did get the hang of it.

saturday night there was a reunion concert for all of the old praise band members at noah’s ark. they have college kids come every summer to play in the band for all the youth kids that come, so there were a lot of people from various years there. mostly the 1981 band played, which was interesting. a couple of the guys who led the 1991 band kind of MC’d the event, and a band from the mid-90′s played too. the mid-90′s band sounded great, very full and loud. i texted my sister to find out if there was anyone she wanted me to get a picture with, and she suggested two people, Seth and Karen. so i patiently waited until one of them was announced to be playing on stage. finally i heard Seth’s name, and figured out he was playing bass. after the show was over, i went over and told him he was my sister’s favorite and got a picture with him. funny how one guy playing for only one summer at a retreat center can be remembered years later, and he said me telling him that made his night. awesome. don’t mind the hair, it was after a day of riding on a moped, wearing a helmet, and general beach effect.

Sunday we got up and threw the frisbee around on the beach. there was no swimming because of the strong current, but the frisbee was good enough. it was the first time i had been to the beach in a while. it was gorgeous to be out there. we drove back to the church and then i was able to hitch a ride home. i didn’t meet all the kids this weekend, and i’m terrible with names, but i did get a couple of facebook friend requests as a result, so i figure i’m making strides.

so yesterday i went to early church at 8:15 am and was again subjected to another boring sermon. i’ve been pretty frustrated with my home church, but have tried other local churches to no success. so i have started going to my home church since i am also helping out with the youth group. it’s not only that the sermons are boring, but most of the subject matter is low hanging fruit type stuff, and i expect more. also, it’d be nice if the pastors didn’t read all of their prayers instead of just speaking from the heart. more on this later….

i got home and made french toast again, and took Adriene‘s suggestion for the strawberries ON the french toast. i didn’t exactly do that, but i did buy powdered sugar to use on half the french toast, and the other regular syrup. the strawberries were placed on the plate as a sort of Maginot Line between the two. if there was an Iron Chef French Toast, this would be one of my five dishes.

i went to youth group, and part of the evening was spent playing charades. not only charades, blind folded drawing charades. when coming up with the topics for the other team to draw, i used movie and tv show titles, like Field of Dreams (which one of the dad’s COULD NOT DRAW) and Reading Rainbow (which the other team got right). however, other suggestions were harder for the kids including Rocky Balboa. i heard more than one kid go “who is that?” WHO IS THAT? WHO DOESN’T KNOW WHO ROCKY IS? oh, that’s right, they were born AFTER the original four movies came out. ouch.

while at church, i was invited to the newly formed young adult group. i’ve been in young adult groups at the church before, even tried leading them. we never got support from church leadership, and the last time i tried to lead one 3 years ago, nobody came. so i had kind of given up, but apparently a new group has formed, and they have a similar opinion of the current pastoral leadership. i’m going to see about it, but i’m not going to get my hopes up.

i came home to a roast in the crock pot, which was the first time i had used my crock pot ever…..even though my mom had given it to me at least a year ago. the roast came out fabulous, and the folks who ate it enjoyed it. success! (sorry, no pictures)

in other news, i’m going to get new glasses (!!!)…..story about that tomorrow.

so today was awesome….and not because i was able to relax, watch a movie, and do laundry during the day. tonight at youth group, we played kickball. after shaking off a botched defensive play where the ball hit me in the face, i was able to make a couple of good plays and drive in a few runs. though, the all time umpire guy made some questionable calls and we lost. after a pretty good dinner, we made tie dyed shirts. i have no idea how mine will come out, but it has purple, green, and gold, and tomorrow after i hose it off and wash it with some salt, i will be able to see the finished product. i think i’m getting the hang of this counselor thing.

i got home to see Clemson was down something like 51-35 to Maryland. it only got worse, because i watched normally good shooters not even drawing iron. yuck. then they were down 20. TWENTY POINTS! what the hell? slowly, they started to chip away. a turnover there, a 3 pointer from deep there. all of a sudden after another turnover and dunk, it was tied with 45 seconds to go! a good defensive stop and they got the last shot….give it to the freshman Oglesby with a guy in his face….BOOM! Clemson wins 73-70! harkening back to how upset i was when unc did a similar thing to Clemson at home, i can feel for the Maryland fans. but wow, what a great feeling to win like that!