Mark's Blog: Episode 50

Before we get into my real entry, I just wanted to note that this is my 50th post on this blog. Yay for milestones!

Okay, first off, Rachael, shut up. I happen to actually have stuff to do now and then, so I can't post every day . . . and you think MINE is bad . . . check out Rae's some time. Or the Train Station. Or Jessica's . . . but then, she doesn't come on here any more, so you wouldn't be able to find hers probably, unless you were looking for it. Because I only give links to people who visit my blog.

So anyway, all this to say, don't be angry. Because that's not fair. As a wise man once said, “It is better to live life than to spend hours writing about it.” Or something like that.

Now, we left off last week with our hero returning from Dance, after discovering that there was a surprise recital the next day. This week, we continue our story, jumping ahead to the next day, and the dance recital itself . . .

It was a cloudy, gloomy day in Redlands. In the early morning, a red car arrived at our hero's driveway, to take him to Yucaipa to perform a tap dance for children.

Then, suddenly, our hero decided to revert back to normal typing.

Anyway, after Rachael and her mom picked me up, they took me to Heartland Player's Theater in Yucaipa, where Didi was doing a theater camp for children. We were to perform for them.

If you were unaware, my dance class consists of two classes: Jazz & Tap and Ballet. I, however, am not in Ballet. So, since we have these two classes, we have two routines. The ballet routine was performed first, so I got to watch, point, and laugh. No, seriously, they did a good job. But I did get to watch, as opposed to actually doing anything.

Then it came time for the Jazz & Tap routine. Since that class is kind of two classes in one, we just picked one of the two styles to do a routine of. It happened to be Tap. So yeah . . . there's really not a whole lot to tell. I suppose it went well . . . I messed up miserably, but no one noticed (except probably Katrina, our teacher, but she was nice enough not to say anything). I actually asked several people if they'd noticed my mistake, and I got a “no” from all of them.

So yeah . . . not really anything else to tell there, except that Dr. C took me home, but that trip was rather uneventful. Due in large part to the fact that Dr. C actually has a sense of direction . . . *sigh* It's no fun that way . . .

Anyway . . . nothing else really happened until Thursday. On Thursday, Biola had orientation for the STAR Torrey program, which is the High School thing I'm doing, if you didn't know.

Dad was down in a place called Sun Valley that day, which isn't too far from Biola, so he was just going to meet us there. Mom and I left around 2:15, intending to get there at about 3:15 or so, be bored for three hours (and eat dinner), then go. But we wanted to leave that early to avoid traffic.

Didn't work too well. We got there at about 4:00, so Dad was there grading papers when we got there, and said he'd been grading and walking around for like two hours (he had gotten there early . . . poor him). We decided then to drive around and see what there was for dinner.

So we went to this shopping center nearby, which had a Sizzler, a Carl's Jr., a Subway, and a Coldstone. We weren't, however, hungry, so we thought, “well, let's drive around a bit more and see if we can find anything better and get more hungry.” So we did one biiiig circle and ended up in the same place, half an hour later, to eat at Sizzler.

We ate there, and it was good, and then had nothing else to do. Then, suddenly, I remembered something. “Rae said that Kent did a mural at Biola,” I said. “We could go see if we can find it.”

For those of you who don't know, Kent is a muralist that Rae was working for over the summer, and will be working with during the coming school year. I think. AJ or Rae could explain it better than I. In any case, he's a very famous muralist, apparently, and since I had no idea that he was, Rae suggested that I look at the mural he did for Biola.

I was expecting it to take us quite a while to locate it, but it turned out that Dad knew right where it was. So there went my plan to take up a lot of the remaining time.

Anyway, we found the mural, and I was impressed. It's called “The Word,” and it's a picture of Jesus holding a Bible. And . . . yeah. It was really cool. He's kind of looking up into the sky, and somehow the eyes really seemed powerful to me. And . . . well, it's hard to describe. It was really good, though.

So we stood there looking at it for a few minutes, then decided to just go to the place where the orientation was and wait. We waited for maybe 20 minutes or so, then at long last they said, “Okay, make a line right here.” We did. We waited maybe 10 minutes or so, then someone appeared at the head of the line, and it began moving. We were, thankfully, near the front, and got in pretty quickly. We then went to get our packet from a girl who reminded me of Rae. Then we sat down and started looking through it.

It contained a handbook, a bunch of papers, and a CD-ROM. We looked at it for a while, then concluded that everything was there (there was a checklist on the screen at the front of the room).

The orientation was supposed to start at 6:15. That time came and went, the room not even half full. Finally, at 7:00, it began. Pretty basic stuff, they were just telling us to talk to other students with respect, giving us the general idea of what we were going to be doing. And telling us not to start The Fellowship of the Ring the night before class. Which was a good idea.

Anyway, after a while of that (which was pretty boring, although it was informative), they called up the Tech guy to teach us about the website and stuff. He rocks. I wish he was a tutor. At the start of his speech, he actually gave us permission to throw stuff at him if he got boring. How awesome is that??

Anyway, he was a really funny guy, who made lots of entertaining comments as he explained all this stuff to us. He also informed us that our writing lab was not going to be graded by the tutors, but by cold-hearted Slovakian mercenaries. And, to demonstrate how it worked, he submitted “blah” as a term paper topic.

The orientation ended at about 9:20 or so, and we took off. Dad went straight home, but Mom and I went to Fullerton to see AJ. We got there and went to Target to get them a housewarming gift, then called them to insure they were home.

It turned out that they weren't. They were driving home from Ikea. So we hung out in our car for a while, then parked, then hung out on the sidewalk for a while waiting for them. They pulled into a parking space about twenty feet from us, then called us to tell us they were back.

Oh, by the way, “they” is AJ and Doug. In case you were wondering.

So anyway, AJ told me on the phone to go over to them if I could find them. I replied that I was staring straight at him. He hung up. Then we basically watched them unload one thing, then saw their new furniture, then left because they needed to unload and set up their stuff. So it was really exciting.

On Friday, not much happened until that night, which was, of course, the start of a new weekend of Oliver. On Friday night itself, there wasn't a whole lot that happened, at least not worth writing about.

Saturday, however, now that's a different story. AJ, Rae, Jessica and Tim (who I'd never met) were coming to see the evening show, which of course makes the day worth writing about in and of itself. But wait, there's more.

After the first show, in which nothing out of the ordinary happened, we had a dinner break. As usual, I was staying at Lifehouse eating food brought from home. So I was hanging out on the back patio eating, with Taylor, and Spaghetti and Amanda, and Justine, and Jazzi. We were talking about random things (mostly Taylor and I telling horror stories about the other to the other people there) and eating. Then . . . THEN the cool thing happened. Jason (who plays Bill Sikes, if you didn't remember) went out to dinner, but came back quicker than usual. And he brought with him something very cool.

Jason, like me, and Spaghetti, and so many others, is a Star Wars freak. He showed this by wasting $300 on really fancy lightsabers. Sure, it's a waste of money. But holy cow, they were awesome. He had two (which sold for $120 each, so it was slightly less than $300). It probably seems to you that anyone who paid $120 dollars for a toy lightsaber is insane. These, however, were not mere toys. Well, technically, I guess they were. But they were the closest thing you can get to the actual props they used in the movies. They're exact replicas of the lightsaber handles, with polycarbon blades that lit up. And the really cool thing about them is that although they are just solid colors when looked at regularly, if you take a picture, then they look like real lightsabers, with the white center and everything. So we were watching Jason spin them around through a camera phone, and it looked like he was spinning a real lightsaber. It was so freakin' cool.

Then he decided to be nice and let some of us play around with them (after making us agree to the contract of “you break it, you buy it”). They rocked. I still can't get over how cool they were, obviously. And, as if that wasn't enough, I was the only person there (other than Jason, of course) who could twirl them properly, so Jason thought I actually knew what I was doing. Which, compared to a lot of the other people there, I did.

It would've been indescribably awesome if Taylor hadn't come in and chastised Jason for letting me use a weapon, then take up half the stage dancing and preventing us from messing around properly. Seriously, though, it was awesome. It was also cool to get a picture (although it was someone else's phone, so I didn't get one, but I got to see it) of Jason cutting off Doug's head with lightsabers.

Actually, one of the coolest things was just looking at certain people holding them. Dave (who plays Fagin) looked like a stereo-typical Jedi Master, with the white, somewhat messy hair, and the beard. He looked awesome. Doug looked very evil with the Darth Vader one (there was a Darth Vader and an Episode V Luke). But the coolest one of all was Katrona. She's a little . . . um . . . 6? 7? Somewhere around there-year-old girl. She picked up the Vader one and started swinging it around. It was so funny to watch (in a cute way, not a making fun of her way).

Then, to top things off, Wayne walked in and Jason immediately held both lightsabers to his neck and freaked him out. That, too, rocked.

Eventually Wayne cut in our fun and made us put them away, but it was still fun while it lasted. Then came the second show. Which would've been good, had it not been for the fact that I had to use a different pair of shoes, and they were a weird material, and slipped out of my hand. I had been hoping to hit Megan and Nick when AJ was there, but I failed. *hangs head in shame*

Anyway, other than that, it went really well. Well, that and the fact that Jessica didn't come for some reason. They never did tell me why . . . in any case, after the show we took the cast picture (it was quite funny, actually . . . AJ & Co. only left when Wayne made an announcement basically telling the audience to scram). I guess it was fine, although it meant staying in the horrendously hot Sowerberry costume. But I survived anyway, somehow.

Then I went home and slept. The next day, which was Sunday, the house church was meeting in Big Bear, so there was no way I would make it back in time to get to Lifehouse, so I finally agreed to bow to my friends' requests and go to Trinity. I went and sat with a bunch of Lifehouse people, then went out to lunch with them.

But first thing's first. I know that at least one of you (*coughAJcough*) wants to know how Trinity was, so I'll tell you. I'll describe it the way I described it to everyone else: I was both impressed and disappointed at the same time.

I was impressed because it was a far more personal atmosphere than I expected from such a big church, and I really liked the speaker. But I was disappointed because of the way they did things. They had different services for different age groups. They had “Big Church” (I think that's what they call it . . . Megan or David or someone can correct me if I'm wrong), which was a regular church service, then they had “Body of Believers” (or BOB) for high schoolers (and I assume similar divisions for younger children and college students and so on). So it seemed more like a youth group meeting then a Sunday morning service to me.

As I said, though, the speaker was really good. He had recently graduated from college, I think, based on what he said. So he related with the age group well. And for some reason it took him like four tries to say “citizen” . . . but it served as a handy icebreaker.

The worship wasn't that good, I didn't think . . . although I must admit I've never heard an electric guitar solo in church before . . . but I didn't know any of the songs they sang, and I only really liked one of them.

So, to sum up, I enjoyed it, but I prefer the house church. I probably will go again, though, sometime . . . whenever the next time is that the house church isn't meeting or I can't be there for some reason. To be honest, I liked it better than the River, so I'll probably be going there instead when the aforementioned times happen.

After church, I went to lunch with Megan, Rachel, Sarah, David, Jeremy, and Katrina. It was . . . interesting. Jeremy managed to humiliate all of us by standing up to clean himself three times, and by spilling cracker crums all over the table . . . and I tell you, there was something in those crackers . . .

Anyway, after lunch, Rachel, David, Sarah, and Katrina went home and Megan's dad took her, me, and Jeremy to Lifehouse.

Then came the show. Again, nothing really out of the ordinary . . . although Megan became overly obsessed with making the perfect batch of blood and then showing it off to everyone . . . in any place other than Lifehouse, I would've been very disturbed by it. “Hey, look! It's the perfect blood!!”

After the show I went home, and Dad and I got pizza and watched The Matrix. Then I spent the rest of the night messing around wasting time.

Today I got up really late and have done nothing of any lasting value, save write this entry. Soon I shall probably start installing some of the STAR Torrey stuff on the computer.

But first, comments:
I HAVE RETURNED, AFTER A LONG ABSENCE . . .:
Rae: Oh, gee, thanks . . . it means so much to me to know that I have friends who are willing to take my stuff . . .

Stephen and Cormack: Well, next time I see you, I'll be happy to show you all that I know, but it isn't a whole lot.

Rachael: First off, thank you for your compliments on my poem. However, it was not referring to the Earth in general . . . And secondly, all I meant by my remark was that you have a very unique way of talking, one that can take some getting used to. Which isn't a bad thing at all, it just takes us lay people a little while to get it.

AJ: Yes, I read The Last Question, I forgot to tell you. I really liked it. I'll talk to you more in detail when you're there to respond. . . . I want to learn to fight with quarterstaffs, but they're relatively advanced, I think, so Josh wants me to learn more basic stuff first. . . . I meant to categorize it, but I forgot, that's all.

ONE OTHER THING:
AJ: Thank you, thank you . . . and don't be mean to Rae, she had no way of knowing what it was REALLY about.

Rae: Then again, maybe there WAS a way for her to know . . . I'm a bit confused.

Rachael 1 and 2: Boy, sometimes Mark wonders if one has a life other than reading his blog . . . And yes, I've seen The Incredibles. I own it, as a matter of fact. . . . And I'm afraid that the semi-intelligent discussion happened online, so no, there's no way for me to prove that it happened, other than to present you with a witness. *gestures* Megan? Care to back me up on this?

Stephen: Ah, but who'd want to read YOUR blog when it is so overshadowed by the brilliance of MY blog? . . . sorry, that was a bit mean, even for me . . .