Last night was our area churches' 'Fifth Sunday Sing'. Everytime there's a 5th sunday, they all get together and sing to each other. Sometimes theres some goods ones, sometimes it's a joyful noise.

Anyway, some people decided that our newly-formed praise band should lead some congregational singing. This was a sort of pre-cursor to us leading sunday morning worship next week. As far as i could tell, it went over very well.

Quite possibly the coolest thing, however, was this:

(Preface: One idea behind the hatching of the praise band was that it might bring in some more people. Our church is rather small and the average age is probably 50 or so.)

While mark was unloading his drums, a guy saw him and pulled up outside the church to ask him what was going on. Apparently he had just moved up here from the Myrtle Beach area where he attended a church that had a band. Mark told him that we were just getting started, and that our first actual church appearance was tonight. The man thanked him, and said that he would be back that evening. And he was. We talked with him for a while afterwards. He said he really thought it was cool and that he was going to come next sunday as well.

Now, i'm not all about the idea behind christianity being getting people in your building on sundays, nor do i think finding a service you 'like' is the most important thing, but i thought this particular incident was pretty cool.

~PS

And no, i'm not talking about wanting to write a song and not being able to think of anything.

I'm talking about being able to remember a song that i've written.

Sam & I played some of my stuff at a little coffeehouse this evening and, for the second time he was able to tell me how my own song went better than I could.

So i'm trying to figure this out: how come i always forget my songs when i go to play them? I'm pretty sure it's not nerves, because i wasn't nervous. I'm pretty sure i'm not old enough to be senile. I'm pretty sure i haven't put any of my songs in a pensive. So what then?

And why isn't turnabout fair play? I played with him on a couple of his songs, and there's at least 3 chords in one of them that i still don't know.

~PS

So i've discovered that being a regular rp GM has given me some sort of complex.

Last friday at the coffeehouse, Sam brought a new board game we'd been wanting to play - Dread Pirate. It's a fun little game, but for some reason, it just wasn't enough. Maybe it was because we were supposed to have had an rp session that night that was called because one of the players couldn't make it. I was already in the GM-use-the-rules-as-you-like mode.

Really, all Sam & I did was tweak a couple of the rules for realism - something i do all the time while GM-ing, but it's not something normal* people generally do when playing board games.

Since that time, Sam & I have thought up several other variations on the game and have grand schemes as to how involved this game could possibly get.

*This topic seems to be recurring - e.g., the Chicken Nugget Thesis and Photoshop Toast v1.0

~PS

This afternoon, Sheri and I went out to eat with Ginger and Kevin (who's been in town this weekend). We had a great time, but when it came time to pay and leave, it got a little confusing.

We were each given a seperate ticket. Kevin had a $15 gift card to be applied to the total bill, and then we would split the rest. I asked how much Sheri & I's were. Kevin said it was something like $13 and $9, but that when he took the $15 dollars off from the gift card, we all had a $40 ticket to split. I gave him a $20, but was confused. It's sunday. I don't want to do math.

Then Ginger looks at me and begins to explain:

"Look, we got hit for 53 points of damage. The gift card gives us DR 15..."

Suddenly it was all clear...

~PS

A few months a few people in the church decided we should start a praise band with some of our resident musicians. We had our first couple of practices this week.

Thus far, we have Mark (drummer), Sam (guitar/vocalist) and James (djembe). Then there's me. I insisted to Mark that we have a bass player. At first we thought a friend of Sam's (Ben (aka Leroy)(it's the hair)) was going to come and play bass for us, but his schedule has proved to be a formidable foe. With him out, it was up to me. I enjoy playing bass with a band, so i wasn't at all bothered by this. I was (and am, really) willing to procure a bass for this project, but it turned out that Mark had one that he brought for me to play. It's pretty nice, though it was having some technical difficulties.

I gotta say, i miss playing in a band. We had a lot of fun. I have discovered i'm not very good at playing bass and singing harmony. yet anyway. Mark let me take the thing home with me, so i've got it to practice.

In theory, we're supposed to lead worship on Feb. 5th. This...this will be interesting. Mostly because it will be about 20-50db louder than the usual service. I fully expect at least 1/3 of the congregation to complain about this.

~PS

...i'm pretty sure i was out of it.

Anyway, we're back in TN again. The world seems to be returning to normal after it's brief yearly lapse. It's a bit of a weird thing to get back into a routine after being out of one for more than a week.

Our trip was a good one though. We got to see just about everyone we knew in IN and OH. There are some photos of it in the photo gallery.

We are, however, having a bit of difficulty finding places to put all our new stuff. Our game shelf that wasn't quite big enough now really isn't big enough.

When you can describe your closet by saying 'what goes in doesn't come out', it might be time to clean it out. It sounded like a good new-years-resolutiony kind of thing to do, so i did it. I think i have equalized the Gross Gifts Gain by getting rid of a bunch of junk, so i think the collective mass of the rabbit hole has remained fairly uniform through the season.

~PS