Entries this day: Breakfast Morning_worship Theme_speaker Workshop jason laptop lauuryn_interview mmmmmm music night_bank_boredom quotes worship zz_silent_football

Breakfast

8:34am CST Saturday 9 November 2002

Kellie at beside me during breakfast, put her hand on my shoulder, "Rob!"

I looked ... careful not to look at nametag... "Kellie!"

She introduced me to her friend Krista from Toronto who met an um-friend online in Springfield, so she's visiting to see what's up. Reminded me of having met Crystal at the church in Springfield.

I noted that Irene met Nick online and they are happily married in Australia. So it can happen.

She asked specifically how stuff was going twice of me, and the second time I mentioned the chaos around me regarding my desired attendance at Houston Rally.

Morning worship

8:19am CST Saturday 9 November 2002

Brilliant parable where a rabbi told the head monk that "one of you is the Messiah." So each of them wondered "who could it be?" and all started treating eachother with more respect, just in case he was the Messiah. And, "just in case I am the Messiah," each person began to treat others with the respect a Messiah would give.

Ended up that the place became more vibrant and began to grow again, as visitors felt revered. The monestary grew and flourished. This was the gift of the rabbi to the monestary.

8:52am

Nathan (with a goatee!) and LaUURYn just walked in. :-) Great to see them again!

- - - -

An interesting point is being made that our news media headlines are all poopy, but our religious hymns have lines of hope and love and beauty.

9:03am

Okay, that was a bearable adult worship. A funny thing is that just as we got into the song "Now let us sing," with the men singing the low and women on the high parts, with people groovin' and movin' and having a great time, the song got to its fourth verse and ended. A youth version would have gone until the song ran itself out, with people just shouting a word to use in the last line before the verse started. So strange to have the energy of the room just beginning to be riled up and then... bang no energy, that was too scary, let's sit down.

9:13am

Haha: "... will get to keep this plaque for a year until we award the 199--, uh 2003 anti-racism award."

- - - -

Ironic that after six years of work, she is getting an award and I am getting kicked out.

- - - -

Wow. My mom is getting an award. Good job, Ma!

For serving two congregations for a while and newsletters and columns and stuff, always promoting UU principles.

Theme speaker

9:51am CST Saturday 9 November 2002

Fear: "well, it's better to just bide my time and not cause too many problems during my term as treasurer or president..."

"Forget it!" she says

We take risks out of a sense of mission and vision. That we are called to do more and become more than what we are.

Workshop

10:45am CST Saturday 9 November 2002

Meara's dad Joe chose either Eeyore or Piglet as his favorite super hero.

Rick: "My favorite favorite superhero is Josephine."

Josephine (in her cute voice): "I'm eating an elephant."

Josephine had chosen Power Puff Girls as her favorite.

Debu chose Scooby Doo as hers, and Josephine goes, "he's a cool cat."

jason

12:13pm CST Saturday 9 November 2002

Jason is here!!

Big Climb On Rob hug and funniness hearing how he carefully chose not to barge into the meeting all "They've got it all wrong; listen to me this is how it is.."

He has the fun challenge of presenting the youth opinions at the meeting regarding the possibility of moving SWUUSI. All of the youth opinions are valid and beautiful. Some are eloquently written. Some more passionately use first amendment rights.

Jason understands their points and I'm glad that such a smart well-spoken guy as Jason will present them. Awesome.

laptop

3:04am CST Sunday 10 November 2002

While walking past the window from the kitchen to the hallway, Jay, a guy who worked in the kitchen all day was all, "I'll give you this bag of grapes for your laptop," as he held out a rather large bag of grapes.

"Okay!" and I handed him my laptop and got a bag of grapes!

Walked around to the other door, munching grapes with glee and saw Kate Robinson who was all, "where'd you get those grapes?"

"I traded my laptop for them!!"

.... blank look .... "That's not a good trade. You should probably trade back."

So I did, and that's how I traded a bunch of grapes to get my laptop.

lauuryn interview

12:22pm CST Saturday 9 November 2002

I'm sitting in a chair beside the lunch line, which features 70 people or so. I'm choosing not to stand in the line, but waiting for it to diminish a bit.

1:19pm

living with kT is interesting.

Recently, Lauuryn and kT tried to go to the mall. Lauuryn likes taking Lamar, kT likes taking I-35, so they went on 183 and got thoroughly lost. So they went on I-35 the other direction that it's not in. Lauuryn wanted to call Nathan, and kT was all, "no, we should know Austin better than Nathan." so they didn't call them and found it after an hour. kT bought a pillow and underwear.

And, Lauuryn & kT were not late to the YA potluck which featured only Nathan, kT, and Lauurynn.

She and kT have lived in their apartment for a long time, and have nothing on their walls, and though their large kitchen table has 5 chairs around it, they've only used 1 chair at a time. kT's room smells like cookies and feet. Lauuryn's room is the size of a shoebox.

Though they live in student housing, their neighbors are 40 and have a baby. Domestic violence reins, for the father locks out the baby and mother outside on the balcony.

Their other neighbors habitually smoke and play games so kT & Lauuryn can't keep their door open without the place smelling like smoke.

kT ranted long and harshly for a survey, telling them where they should put sidewalks and stuff.

kT hates having people within a mile of her when she rides a bike.

Did you see the headline? "This year UT has hired 3000 more students to stand in front of kT's bike."

This weekend, Canadians are coming to visit kT, including those with whom she has hooked up.

Lauuryn said, "if it was me, I'd say 'look this is the pillow is the pillow I've got, so either sleep or don't sleep'"

For the next question in the interview, I should ask Lauuryn "what is Nathan's new entreprenurial idea?"

Nathan is going to make these bumper stickers that will make people around them smile. "Smile I love you" and "you are beautiful." These were produced by a stack of bumper stickers that he got in college "Al Gore is a pain in my gas" which he has cut and paste into the message he wishes to convey.

"What's it like to have Nathan living in the same city, instead of just the same country?"

Really really good. And it makes kT make fun of herself because she only hangs out with her roommate, her roommates boyfriend, and her roommate's boyfriend's roommate. And it makes it hard to have dinner parties of 12 people when Lauuryn parades in with all these people, and something about cable.

And Nathan and Lauuryn have seen every movie at the dollar movie except for Lilo and Stitch because Nathan is really rich and he makes Lauuryn play Dance Dance Revolution until she cries and cries that she doesn't want to play anymore.

Though she has taken dance for 12 years, and Nathan is Nathan with his funny looking feet [and mismatched socks -ed.] he can play it better than she.

His feet turn out and he walks on his toes.

Matt Kime does a perfect impression of how Nathan walks, but no one else can do it [except Nathan -ed.]

Also, Nathan is a grownup, which is good because he has a job, but he won't wear real ties, only clip-on ties. He owns fourteen clip-on and one zip-up tie.

"Did you hear the story about how kT and her mom saw me walking around the construction area, and by the time they got back, I was gone, but they left me a note on my car?"

Maybe.

"Why is kT so angry all the time?"

She's not angry all the time, she just gets angry easily when people make her angry, which is a lot. Because kT is just really impatient when she drives and people get in her way and her car is like, "please don't hurt me" and she's like "shut up."

kT's car got hurt while parked under the freeway, and someone drove their car off the freeway and knocked a part of the guardrail onto her car and broke the windshield and stuff.

mmmmmm

8:38pm CST Saturday 9 November 2002

So much funny stuff!

So much awesomeness!

Saying hi to Jason's mom Kathy who was looking for Jason and when I found him for her in the YA meeting, they were discussing how to get Ice T as a speaker at a workshop. Other options included Coolio, oh shit I forgot, but it was a funny list. Claire has the notes.

Hilarious with Rosemary stealing my nametag to become me, and Edward talking about more cartoons and Krista (sp) joining me and several youth to watch Anthony explain in terms of circles and French flags (no green available) how he could dilute his genes over some generations to have offspring 100% Italian, and suddenly a game of pictionary breaking out of that including Sam drawing an instantly recognizable hangman thing so he changed it and just drew until what he was drawing begin to look like what we were saying and then saying, "yes! that's it!" when someone said, "intestinal system of a worm!"

Dinner talking to Jim, a minister at New Orleans' new church, telling me how he's been practicing yoga off and on for 33 years, and who noticed me sitting all yoga-like at the service this morning, and finally, finally me finding someone who described the same type of thing that I experience of being able to listen to a higher self, a spiritual connection to god and know what needs to be done. He said he might be sitting in meditation and suddenly know he needs to leave for the city council meeting right now, and not know why, but know that he needs to play some role there, whatever it may be.

Then talking to The Real Frank Roesler Experience, who is taking statistics classes and who wants to do something in statistics and to Claire Sexton, who just got back from a several week trek to Europe on Euro-rail pass, staying with friends of friends in different houses and sometimes in hostels and having a blast and a half.

Talking to Cindy from Amarillo, which is 3600 feet elevated on a big flat arid plain where they have to plant trees and import water to have anything but a desert. Then answering questions for Crystal and Krista and Kellie, some about what the heck I am doing in the world (who is this Rob character anyway?) and answering questions about YRUU and can I come to Springfield (I'd like to be the Knight In Shining Armor, but YAC can handle it) to help?

And now I'm basically caught up. Dance tonight.

music

9:22pm CST Saturday 9 November 2002

So I went to the musical performance and found it to be jazzy and bouncy sometimes, slow and sultry sometimes, smooth and bluesy sometimes. Danceable most of the times. I whirled around a bit with Frank and just perfectly twirled out of his hands and bowed to him *just* as the song ended. Couldn't have done it better had I ever heard the song before.

Danced around alone for some songs, with a variety of styles (one per song) and suddenly remembered that Claire is one of the three chartreuse buzzards who sitting in a dead tree full of ants at San Antonio some years ago! So I've run around the church looking for her and was suddenly inspired to tell Nancypant's grape joke to Heather, the cutest chef in the world.

Suddenly taken by sadness and realize that all my bouncy energy may be just covering the sadness that is burrowed within me about leaving YRUU, possibly prematurely, and fear around my western state adventure, which is totally ridiculously silly, but I do need to start contacting some mofos that I think I may find along my journey.

Sigh. And here I am.

night bank boredom

10:55pm CST Saturday 9 November 2002

D'oh!

I just realized that Janette asked me to deposit her check for her. I forgot. I doubt the banks are still open.

I just woke up from sleeping on a set of chairs near the band. What was their name? Something like Jimmy James and the New Turk Band.

So sad that Edward and Casey are bored. Bored! How can they be bored when there are so many people to talk to and so much space to sit thoughtfully or meditatively, and so much paper on which they may draw or write.

An infinite number of games and activities await, and they feel bored.

quotes

11:16pm CST Saturday 9 November 2002

When Lilly saw Matt she was all, "holy shit dog, you need to eat!"

11:24pm

I helped Amy and Josephine design the worship. Josephine pretended to not feel very loved, so I said, "aaww Josephine, I like you.." in a fake mocking tone. She goes, "thanks, whatever." HAhahahah!

1:00am

After Kate from Little Rock had a drink of Groovy Juice: "Takes like shit. Thanks." and the thanks was not meant sarcastically.

worship

12:20am CST Sunday 10 November 2002

Worship was lovely. I cried a bit during it, thinking about how these are the last times that I'll hear Amy on her harp for a while, how these beautiful youth will continue to fight for the right to play, worship, lead, learn, chill as they wish, how very soon I will be saying my last goodbyes to some of them forever.

How beautiful today that I was able to handwrite both sides of a page with answers to questions asked and questions unasked for Leigh(sp), a new advisor. After I expressed my appreciation for that gift, she expressed thanks to be the recipient.

Fun ticklefight broke out with Katy, Susie, Joel. Joel pinned Susie with Katy on top of him, so I chose to join and pulled both Joel and Katy off, and was nearly able to pull them both onto me, but couldn't quite. I discovered that Joel is more ticklish than Katy. Fun stuff.

Maybe Silent Football now.

12:57am

Matt and Jared just made Groovy Jice for the Arkansas youth. Jared drank six ladles worth, where one ladle is a single serving.

zz silent football

2:44am CST Sunday 10 November 2002

Had been talking with Steve Caldwell and Ellen, one of the advisors from Little Rock. Steve went to sleep about an hour ago, and I continued chatting with Ellen, telling old talent show stories (root beer guzzling (Austin Roth, Nick Carter, Shira, me, at OKC a couple years back), gum chowing (Jason and me at Houston 2000 I think)) and answering questions in general.

Got off onto Silent Football discussion somehow, and she asked how to play. I gave her quick version of the rules (and let me tell you, if people will sit quietly and pay attention, the rules can be described in about 5 minutes) and even described the wormholes, and was able to show how Sam could fwap to her, and then I shrug and the football lands on the chair. (Assuming Sam could play while snoring, and a chair could play while just sitting there)

I appreciate her listening to my stories.

She went to bed and now I am going soon too.

3:09am

Okay, I'm going to bed. It appears that I'm the last one standing.