Today was a good day. I say that a lot. I'm a really optimistic person. It takes a lot for me to consider a day to be a "bad day". Every day is a gift from God, right?

I woke up this morning at 8:30AM. I felt so nice and warm in my bed. I fell back asleep and then woke up and laid in bed staring at the ceiling. Before I realized it, it was after 10AM. I jumped out of bed and got ready for work. I made it to the church just in time for the worship planning meeting.

Everybody but Brian was there today. We talked about last Sunday and then Charlie touched on where he'd be preaching from this Sunday. Matt talked in detail about the plans for the stage and worship set, with the cross being the only thing on stage with all of the band being to the side or on the floor and out of focus.

After the worship planning meeting, Matt, James, and I went to Matt's office to have our usual followup "tech talk" where I basically ask questions about Sunday like "Are there opportunities to do IMAG/camera work?" "How do you see the lights looking during this song?" and "Are you going to eat that piece of chocolate?" You know, important questions.

We ended up going out to the worship center to look at the stage and decide where we wanted to put the band. The three of us discussed a few options but ultimately decided on only having the cross on the stage and having all of the band on floor with everyone else in the room. It should look pretty cool on Sunday when we have only the cross lit up.

When we were back in Matt's office to finish up the meeting, Art came by and asked if I could give him an overview of the audio/video equipment in Room 202. I think he tried to use it on Sunday and something wasn't working right. Art, Paul, and I went upstairs and after they explained the problem, I explained why it behaved that way and how to make it work next time.

Matt, James, and I went to lunch together today. We headed out toward downtown Simpsonville. Matt drove and I lost the "shotgun" call and had to ride in the back of his Malibu squished next to the baby carseat. It wasn't too bad though. First, we stopped at Horizon Financial so Matt could drop off some financial papers. Then, we went to lunch. There's this great Mexican restaurant, Anita's, on Main street. I had never been there but it was so good. I had a quesadilla and Mello Yello. That's right, Mello Yello. James asked me how I knew they'd have that to drink. I figured, they didn't say they didn't have it, so that was enough for me to ask for it. After we ate lunch, Matt ordered a sopaipilla for the three of us to share and it was really good. I had never had one of those before. When I asked what it was (while we were waiting for the dessert to arrive), Matt told me I had to wait and be surprised. Instead of doing that, I just pulled out my cell phone and looked it up on the internet. Nice try, Matt.

After lunch, I wanted to show Matt and James "the house", so we headed over, since it was just down the road anyway. The house was really cold because Tim hadn't left the heat on. It was literally like 50 degrees. I thought it felt great but Matt and James were freezing. I showed them all of the rooms and then when Matt saw Rock Band set up in my living room, he said, "Well, we're already here, let's play a song".


If you look carefully in the background of that picture, you can see the smoke detector that I installed by myself on the wall. Yep. And if you're not already impressed, then I guess I'll reveal that it's really just two screws put into drywall anchors and it's hanging on that. It took like 2 minutes. But if you didn't already know that, let's keep pretending that I'm an awesome handyman.

Playing just one Rock Band song turned into playing three songs, and we were there for about 20 minutes. I played the drums so that James and Matt could play the guitar. We played "Baba O'Riley", "Livin' on a Prayer", and "My own worst enemy". We left around 1:45 and headed back to Southside. When we got back to the church, I started working on setting up to shoot video announcements for Sunday. We figured with the different stage set and everything, that'd it just be easier to have video-based announcements. Matt wanted to shoot "something natural" and decided to shoot out in the cafe at the front of the building.

Shooting in the cafe is one of my least favorite places to shoot since it has a bad echo, all of the cafe appliances make noises, and people are always coming in and out of the doors near the cafe. And, of course, the copious amounts of daylight that pour in from the big window in the cafe.

But other than all of those things, the cafe has a beautiful decor and looks really nice. James and Andrew helped bring out the gear to set up the lighting while I checked with Dawn really quick to make sure there was nothing else scheduled for the afternoon out in the cafe.

With James and Andrew helping, we were done setting up within an hour. At 3pm, I had to go to a meeting with Lindsey and Kerry to talk about putting some of the Liberia partnership videos on the website, and to talk about a ministry highlight video for Habitat for Humanity. I met Lindsey on the way in to Kerry's office. When we came in, I found Kerry reading my blog, which I'm sure added to the excitement of his day because my blog is fanstastic. Don't lie. You totally agree.

During the meeting, we talked about the Habitat for Humanity build coming up in April and some ways to highlight and bring that information to our congregation. Then, we spent a few minutes talking about the LAMP videos and putting them on the website. At 3:30pm, I had to cut the meeting short and go out to the cafe to shoot the video announcements.


Shooting the video announcements went pretty well. We finished shooting them in under an hour, which is pretty good given the location and the script. When we were done (around 4:30), Sue came in to the cafe followed by my aunt, Marlyn, who came by the church to get a disc of the pictures that I took at Rolling Greens on Saturday. Apparently everyone there has been talking about all of the great pictures that "the photographer" took and they want copies.

Matt also came in to my office when we were done taping so that I could show him the announcement slides from Sunday that I made in After Effects. While simple, it's kind of the direction I want to move in for pre-service announcements (instead of doing them in PowerPoint, which just looks boring and uncreative). He liked them a lot and challenged me to continue to be creative with what I make for stuff like that.

James helped tear everything down in the cafe and put it away. We were done in 30 minutes. I went to my office to work on a few things and then went upstairs to see how the Vapor music practice was going. Their drummer backed out on playing tonight and they had asked Andrew to play for them, which meant he wasn't around to work on the stage setup as much during the afternoon. I listened to them play for a few minutes, talked to a few other people, and then went back downstairs. Andrew came down and Nate came with him to help get some of the stage work done.

As I was working in my office, my friend Brian stopped by and showed me his new Macbook which looked really sweet. The new models are made from one solid piece of aluminum so there are no seams. It looks nice. It kind of makes me wish I had waited like three months before I bought my Macbook. Oh well, that's how these things go.

Dan showed up right at 7pm to help with the stage setup. Andrew had to leave around 7:30 to go upstairs to play for Vapor. Tim came in a few minutes after Andrew left and we were done with the setup around 7:45pm. We did a quick soundcheck and then worked on setting up the cross in the center of the stage. I got out a drill and screwed the cross into the makeshift base that we have for it, while Tim and Dan held the cross so it wouldn't fall over. It's a pretty big cross so it tends to get top heavy. It kind of puts things in perspective for you though, if you stop and imagine what it must have been like for Jesus to carry a cross. I lifted it off the catwalk and down to Tim and Dan by myself, but it was hard to move.

We finished up a little bit after 8pm. I closed up everything and went home. Home being to the apartment. I basically drove there, grabbed my laptop and some clothes that I didn't need to keep at the apartment, and headed to "the house". I stopped and picked up dinner on the way over. When I got to the house, I had Tim help me bring in some of the clothes and things I brought over, and then we watched tv in the living room. I eventually turned on the heat because even I started feeling a little chilly with the house falling below 50 degrees.

I spent some time tonight organizing the closet in my bedroom. I also set the wall plate in the living room for the extra coax and ethernet feeds so that it looks nice and neat now. Things are coming together one piece at a time.

It's 11:30pm now. I've still got to drive back to my apartment, because that's where my bed is. I could sleep here, but I need to take a shower and all of my bathroom stuff is at the apartment. So, until Saturday, I'll probably continue to drive back and forth... spending the evening at the house, and then driving to the apartment to sleep. It sounds lame, but, I don't really mind.

Later,

Joe