Entries this day: HoustonRally

HoustonRally

10:02pm CST Sunday 16 January 2000

(adapted from my diary)

Friday 14 January 2000 9pm

Houston Rally 2000. Bang we are here after such a short drive! We in this case = me, kT, and her sister Allison. Upon arrival, they bounced out of the car and I sat gently munching my chicken sandwich from Sonic. This is one of the first rallies in a long time that I also didn't bounce out of the car. Maybe the first ever.

5:30am 15 Jan 2000

I'm so tired. Sitting by the bathroom = the only light in advisors' area. So so so so much fun watching Jason and Kris at Play (perfect Play with no ego, no plan - just delightful Play) with a big frisbee ring thing. Micaela and I sat for over an hour watching them, talking to any other youth who happened to sit by us for a moment.

Registration was a bit slow as many of them had to be typed into the computer. Wende spent like 6 or 8 hours at the computer I'm guessing as people trickled in from around the district.

Jason and I took off for Walgreen's before we registered and got gum for our talent show. We talked about stock purchases and stuff. He has a goal to turn $8000 into $25,000 this year.

5pm Saturday 15 January 2000 (I am 10888 days old today!)

Just talked to Bryn, including my intent to phase out of YRUU in April 2001 and attend school in Santa Monica. Bryn described how she has noticed my change (phasing out) "you're not the same Rob that I first met.."

Interesting is that she intends to attend school maybe in California. "Why are you following me, Rob :-)" she asks.

Double interesting is that she will probably be in Australia in a year. What if Jason and I could arrange to visit her next summer?? Crazy fun possibilities!

Big interesting conflict with Jason and Kris not wanting to pay / register for the rally but finally each paid and all is good. Jason (and maybe Kris) is conflicted between 18 year old adult status vs give up some rights to attend rally.

I'm glad he chose to stay; we still get to do our gum talent show thing. I'm thankful for that.

YAC meeting has been productive. We debated a lot on contraband bags. My idea was to just keep it simple and put them in each car where the youth rode. YAC is trying to take on too much and solve all possible problems with it. The whole idea is to help make it easier for the smokers to ditch their cigarettes and not smoke during the weekend. However, there was some concern about liability and whatever with where to put the bags.

Played a stomping game of Ultimate where basically Sean (sp), Patrick and I crushed the other team 10 to 0. Not entirely fun but okay because the other team was not willing to trade players and spirits stayed happy.

5:15am 10889 days old Sunday 16 January 2000

Big fun sittin' out at table with Jason, Kris, Micaela, while we did not attend the worship. We instead talked smack about rap/hip hop and Kris did his impression of the "107.3 106.9 the Blaze" audio tagline at the new station in Tyler.

Me and Jason talent show was well received and worth the wait (the original idea was before Tulsa rally in June). We started with a few Chicklets, describing how they could be used to help smokers not smoke. Added a double bubble, added Rug Rats cartoon gum, added paint by numbers gum, added some Tear Jerker Sour Balls gum, added some bunjee gum, added 6 feet of bubble tape, some band aid gum... Hugemongous giant wad of gum in the end super saturated with sugar and drooling with saliva, almost choking with monstrosity. So so so ridiculously funny. We didn't have a good ending per se but just kinda got up as some other gum seeking youth pounced on the stage to scavenge through the pile of unused gum we dropped.

The rest of the talent show was poetry and stuff and Rocky Raccoon sung my Steve but played on guitar by Kris, as Steve broke his arm bicycling. Also, Nancy did her duck/bar/grapes/nail joke.

And to top it off for me, Jason wrote/improvised a song for me. Something with chorus "I want to grow old with you." So perfect. So touching. Thank you, Jason.

Then: Silent Football. Good game, about 15 players, many of them were new to it. Nathan lost due to extaneous sloppiness. Although, I did give him 4 penance points for brining in two players (4 penance points out of 5 to lose didn't give him much room to work with), including Nancy who didn't know the rules.

The game was pretty close. Two other players had 4.5 points when Nathan lost. Props to Daniel who kept playing hard and dramatically got better during the game.

10:39pm Sunday 16 January 2000

Sean (who played Ultimate with me) greatly thanked me for Silent Football! He was inspired to bring it back to his church. Yay!!

Closing was nice, lots of peeps out in the parking lot after stuff was cleaned - just talking and hugging and taking pictures. Closing circle included smashing a wall of shoeboxes as a symbolic "breaking down the walls."

Drove kT and Allison to their home, then I went to Wende's and slept. Ironically, I locked her gate key in her house so she can't get in to her complex. We'll try in the morning.

With Love
- Rob permalink