Jesus is our Anchorage of Hope

That was the t-shirt slogan for Crown of Glory - Anchorage, Alaska, my group's hypothetical chruch in religion class. We had to come up with witnessing opportunities and fund-raisers, and somehow most of our plans revolved around Elliott Kasprzak. Haha - I love Pastor Clark.

Over a month has gone by since my last post, including Christmas and New Year's, and I still can't think of much to write about. It's kind of like I've lost all my memory capabilities. Certain things stay on my mind for far longer than they should, but then I'll try to remember something that happened mere days ago, and I can't. If someone asked me for any one thing from this past Friday, I seriously am not sure I could think of one.

Although I do remember a little about Thursday. Hard to forget something like this. A little background - Our undefeated, 3rd-ranked boys basketball team had a home game against the single-loss, conference undefeated Marshall Cardinals, ranked 4th in D3. School pride was running high, and our plan was for a "white-out" in which all the Lakeside fans wore white to, I don't know, intimidate the other team or something.

(As it turned out, the white-out wasn't so well planned, because everyone was wearing jeans, so it looked like a mass of white and different shades of blue. I laughed at them)

I had pep-band before this game (and during half-time), and it was pretty exciting. The energy was high, and I would be playing "Dance, Dance" before my largest crowd yet. I even brought out a chair to jump around on. I came out in style with my $2.00 thrift-shop outdated Patriots Drew Bledsoe jersey, and we started playing. Eventually, we hit the National Anthem, and directly after, they started naming the Marshall players. The band thought it to be perfectly convenient to put away their stands and instruments. To do this, they had to cut inches away from me, considering I was set up so close to Evan on the drums. I figured it to be fine at first, but the Marshall player intros were winding down, and I had to play for ours, directly following. I was planning a cool jump off the chair to coincide perfectly with the music, but lo, the band members kept squeezing past me, and I had not room to execute the jump. Even after we started playing, people were bumping into me, and I messed up a lot. On such an easy song too.

I was really pissed. All these people inconsiderately knocking into me, while I was playing so loud and alone that everyone in the gym could hear easily when I messed up.

I cooled off a bit thanks to Evan and the good sir Jordan Hanke, and we headed back out for halftime pep band. That was pretty uneventful, so afterwards I took my bass and case and left the gym.

Now, because this was such a major event, the locker area was locked off, and I had, consequently, nowhere to put my bass. I entered the atrium (the snack bar/cafeteria area outside the gym, for those of you that don't attend Lakeside). I was a bit frustrated by the fact that I had nowhere to put my stuff, so I kind of dropped it on the floor by all the coats, and went to sit down with some of my friends. Right as I was dropping my stuff, some janitor came by, saw what I was doing, and essentially said "get out" and gave me the old "thumb pointing behind the head" gesture.

I could not believe it. I was putting my stuff where there were coats everywhere, and this guy just decides to toss me out of the game because of it. I suppose I can understand the high security because the tension of the rivarly was so high, but this was a pretty harmless deed.

But what could I do? I know I could have easily argued with the guy, but I just kind of said "alright", picked up my stuff, and left without incident.

I was fuming mad. Most of you have probably never seen me so mad. I've probably never seen me so mad. But rather than going off on someone who didn't deserve the brunt of my frustration (which unfortunately, I've done too often), I just got Evan and he took us home.

Of course, I didn't leave without placing my anger on the team. I put a curse on Lakeside, that we wouldn't win the World Series in the next 100 years (haha). And I guess it worked, because not only did we not win the World Series, we lost the game too.

On a serious note though, I'm not sure if I'm going to be coming back to pep band again, at least for a while. It was just too frustrating, and I don't need a catalyst for anger.

And to conclude the story, I did what I usually do to cool myself down - I played mindless video games and listened to music (in this incidence, it was college football - a practice as Kansas State against Morgan State, and Something Corporate's "Leaving Through the Window") and I have to say it worked pretty well.

Which takes us here. Meaning that I don't know how to end it. Oh, I think I should say something about all the Camp things I've been doing. The New Year's thing was pretty fun (even if I felt sick for pretty much the entire weekend...wow, so much dew), and so, of course, was the youth service at St. Mark's (Can't wait for the next one), and the staff party, which was really fun. Truly. I wish we could have more of them.

And here's a positive note to end on - Seattle's going to the Super Bowl. If you don't know why that makes me happy, I'm sure I could list them for you sometime. I like making lists.

...Sometimes.