Today was a great day. I woke up at 6:45AM, thinking it was kind of early, and noticed my alarm clock blinking. I fell asleep last night with my nightstand pulled closer to my bed, and I must have pulled the power cord out of the wall for the clock just enough to reset it. So, in my "just woke up" stupor (which is never really that bad), I reset my clock time and the alarm and went back to sleep.

I woke up again when the alarm went off at 9. I felt refreshed and rested and I got out of bed and started getting ready for the party. I spent some time cleaning the house (more straightening, really) and then headed out a little bit after 10AM to go to my apartment. I wasn't sure if anyone would get there "early" (before 11AM) and I wanted to be there waiting on them, you know, because I'm such a polite host and all. And they are offering to help me move. Even though I only have two couches to move, and they're light enough I could probably move them myself.

I sat around in the apartment by myself which was actually pretty boring because there was not much to do. I passed the time by catching on my blog reading from my phone. I love having a mobile smartphone where I can do that on-the-go. My dad showed up right at 11AM. I wanted to wait a few minutes to see who else would show before we started moving the couches, but my dad was ready to work so we moved the first couch. As we were loading it into the truck, Andrew Stoeber and Brian Schlarb showed up. We let them load the second couch onto the truck. You know, so they feel like they helped. My friends Dan Sims and Rachel Richards showed up right as we finished loading the second couch.

There was literally nothing else to load up. We were done in 5 minutes.


Everybody followed me to the house, so I had this long chain of cars following me. I took this picture on the Interstate, which I thought was pretty impressive.


A lot of people showed up to the post-moving party today. We got the couches unloaded and in place, and started playing Rock Band almost immediately.


In total, 17 people came over today, which I'd say was a pretty impressive party. I asked my parents to go pick up some pizza while I hosted the party. As people came in, I tried my best to give introductions since I had people from my various "circles of friends" come who had never met each other before.


My sister, Gina, came over today and brought one of her cute little beagle puppies, Henry, with her. Having that dog in the house made me want to get a dog. I guess I'll have to ask my landlord about that, who also happens to be my mom. This dog loved people and getting attention, but constantly looked like he just lost his best friend. Happy dog but a sad face, at least in photos.


After we all had opportunities to play Rock Band, I organized a Rock Band Competition, which was fun. Some people had left by that point so we were only able to organize three bands. My band, "RimROCK!" was awesome. We named ourselves that because that's the name of the street this house is on, and I thought it was fitting.


There were two other bands, "The Dry Heaves", and "The Awesome Band". We tried our best to keep score but I think people found out that I didn't have a real prize so we all sort of lost interest in the competition and just started playing for fun again.


People started leaving slowly around 4pm. Mark and Melissa (some of my friends from SourceLink, where I used to work), were the last to leave. Clay hung around for a while and helped me arrange the living room like I wanted it. I wasn't really sure how the place would look with the couches so when we brought them in this morning, I just had Brian and Dan place them anywhere they'd fit, which worked for the party, but it wasn't want I wanted.

We tried a few arrangements and eventually came up with this.


After settling on the setup (which I'm still not completely sold on but will work for now), Clay and I went to get some dinner. He lives like 5 minute down the road so he knew the area better than me. I drove to Fairview Road and we looked around for places to eat. I found a Moe's. You can guess where we went. And don't guess like Hardee's or something. We got some Moe's and brought it back to the house to eat while watching a movie. I was a little disappointed in the quality of my burrito from this Moe's. Hopefully it was just a fluke.

Tim joined us and we watched "Iron Man" in the living room. That's a fun movie to watch. When it was over, Clay looked at all of the pictures I took today with me on my Macbook and we talked for a while and then he left around 8:30pm to go home. I played some Halo with James Brush and a few of his friends online for a while but then decided to call it a night.

Overall, a great day! I was glad that so many people came over. I'm sure my neighbors were starting to wonder if this was going to become a regular ritual, what with the 20 cars in the driveway and cul-de-sac and whatnot. I'm just excited that I can play my video games and watch television at a reasonable volume and use my sound system without getting yelled at by the neighbors.

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day. I should have gone back to the church and finished all of the light plots for Sunday, but I just didn't feel like it. I'm not really sure how tomorrow is going to go. My friend Tyler, who is on the schedule for lights, has been sick all week and may not show up on Sunday. I also found out tonight that Ben's whole family is sick so he will be at home taking care of them. It may be one of those mornings where I run 3-4 different things at once. We will see. It doesn't really stress me out that much anymore, but I don't like letting that become "the norm" that volunteers are exposed to, because it only emphasizes the point of view that their job function isn't important when one person can simply do 3-4 positions if someone doesn't show.

I am looking forward to tomorrow being a great day of worship with our focus on the cross. I hope that people enjoy the metaphor and are reminded of why we do what we do.

Later,

Joe