Forgiveness

I am struck tonight with how God is never done teaching me things.  Even when I’m certain that I’m in the right in a conflict.  God still has this powerful way of being able to say, Yes, you’re in the right on this one.  But that’s not the issue here.  You still need to forgive the other person.  My plan here is greater than you being in the right.

I’m overwhelmed tonight.  I’ve been carrying this pain and this burden for half a year, and I feel like I’m really making a step forward in letting it go.

Upward Basketball

New experience #1 of 2013: kindergarten basketball coach.

 

I’m still not sure how I felt about the whole experience.  It went as well as herding cats can go.

 

The first thing I felt was immense relief when I walked into the gym and saw the color of the shirts on the other coaches.  Dark blue with a light blue accent.  We never know the colors in advance, and I was really worried they’d be yellow.  It sounds petty, but I really don’t like how I look wearing yellow.

 

I have 11 kids on my roster, and they all showed up to the first practice.  I handed out the boxes which had their jerseys, etc. inside.  I introduced myself as best as possible to the players and their parents.  This is open to the community and to other churches, so I actually only knew two of the kids (twins), and two other families (but not these specific kids).

 

We had an hour, and I took up a little over half of it with drills.  I was very thankful for the website that had a scripted practice regimen.  It made me look so much more organized, which I was really nervous about given that all the parents were there watching their future NBA players.  We broke for a devotional (just a get-to-know-you exercise for week 1) at half-time and then started a game.

 

We play man-to-man defense, and organize the kids for that by putting colored Velcro strips in the shoulder of their jersey.  So the kids just had to find their color on a kid with the other color jersey (the jerseys are reversible for easy team division).  I had one kid always sitting out, but rotated a new one in every five minutes.  I have about three pretty solid players for being 5 years old, one who’s afraid of the ball, and the rest are pretty middle-of-the-road.

 

I had one crier, over the fact that he didn’t always get to hold a ball.  Thankfully I have his older brother and sister in Awana, so I know the family, and the Mom trusted me just grabbing him and distracting him into practice.  He did fine once the game started.

 

Hands down my favorite part of the morning: being called “Coach.”  I cherish being called Uncle Karl by a number of my Sunday School kids, but this was a new level of cool.  I think it’s because I never saw this as a possibility for me.

Year in Review

As I was wrapping up the last few months of this year, I was reflecting on how I’ve felt closing out past years, particularly by looking at my past Year-in-review blogs.  What I disliked the most was being relieved that the particular year was finally over.  I didn’t want that to be my mindset anymore.  I want to celebrate what’s going on now, not just be waiting for rest “just up ahead.”  So I decided that 2012 was going to be a banner year, and that I would be happy about it coming to a close only because of the wonderful memories it contained.  Yes, some horrible things have happened this year, two in particular, but here is not the place for dwelling on that.

One overarching highlight to this year is that I finally got around to doing a lot of things I’d been putting off for a few years, things like household repairs.  No more waiting.  Life is now.

What have God and I have gotten done this year:

·         Survived a tonsillectomy, kicking off the best year of sleep in my adult life to date

·         Joined the singles small group that my Fresno church started
·         Unrelated to the above note, met an awesome girl with whom I had almost nothing in common, we dated for a few weeks, and then she got a job transfer to Denver.  It was a short-lived but valuable relationship in that God showed me that His spectrum of relationship compatibility is much bigger than mine.
·         10-year high school reunion
·         Took first place (among 7 guys) in our church’s 10K
·         Coached Sparks for the Awana Games this year, completed and started another year as Games Director.
·         Per my Garmin watch, ran over 400 miles this year
·         Completed five half marathons, but only two Rock ‘n’ Roll races (my goal was three to beat 2010)
·         Completed my first year at my new job
·         Survived being on the other side of the audit table.
·         Two unsuccessful attempts at half dome.  Oh well, I tried.  Next year.
·         Emceed for VBS
·         Acquired a cat in June
·         Lost a cat in October (I am not discussing this further)
·         Celebrated four years of home ownership on September 1.  Oddest fact: I’ve removed three interior doors (two closets and one bathroom).  Doors just start to get in the way when you live alone.  This has been my longest stint of no roommate, a year and three months so far.
·         Started (and ended) an ASL class taught by a friend in my church.  I enjoyed my three months in it and would have liked to continue, but I have other activities I want to pursue in 2013.
·         Attended the annual AgOne Foundation BBQ in Madera as a guest of my auditors.  I was great to become more connected with the Ag community here in the Valley.
·         Took Aislynn on my Fresno church’s Father/Daughter campout.
·         Orange and then Purple belts in karate (February and November, respectively.
·         With the help of my friend Mike (plus Phillip and Seth), did a valve replacement on my engine
·         The wedding circuit ramped up again this year: attended four after seeing them trail off in the last couple years.  Yeni & Megan, James & Amy, Jordan & Molly, and Daniel & Hanna.  Only caught one of the garters.
·         Celebrated the signing of a new and better bank deal at work and oversaw/survived the horrific implementation process.
·         Acquired a lot of new-to-me furniture this year.  Still trying to figure out how to arrange it all and what to give away.  A little more furniture matches than before, which I’m not thrilled about, but I’m accepting.
·         Did the most Christmas decorating in my house to date, but still didn’t get outside lights up.  So close!
·         Set a new record for shortest time in Orange County: 17 hours.  Really wanted to come down for the VBC Christmas service, but I had Christmas caroling in Fresno Saturday night and work Monday morning.  Beats the previous record of 22 hours in 2005 for Joy’s late notice baptism.
·         Hosted a Christmas craft day for 17 kids in my home
·         Completed my first year in my own Spades group (while continuing to regularly sub in two other groups).  My group has seven singles who got tired of waiting to get married so they could join a group.  So we just find enough single and/or married friends to fill the tables each month.  For December, we actually combined with another group I sub in for a massive Christmas Spades night at my house.  It was so much fun!
·         Published my first Christmas letter!

What’s in store ahead:

·         Taking a seminary course.  This is just a sample course through Corban University’s School of Ministry.  After this I’ll decide if I want to pursue the full degree.  If I do, it may lead me toward a career change into ministry utilizing my finances background.
·         Coaching Kindergarten Upward Basketball at my church.  This one’s a big stretch for me.  I played basketball on a home school team during my sophomore year.  I was probably the most disciplined but least talented guy on the team.  I’d do whatever the coach said, but lacked that natural rhythm on the court.  But our children’s pastor assures me that the Kindergarten team is just about teaching them a few fundamental skills and having fun with them.  I'm still skeptical.

For 2012, my goal set last year was to gain a better understanding of God’s ministry plans for me.  I feel good about my progress in this goal.  I finished another year of teaching Kindergarten and serving as Awana Games Director.  I enrolled for a seminary class.  I’ve helped several friends move or with home & yard work.  Another thing I’ve been trying to do is help single moms in our church.  It breaks my heart to see husbands/dads give up on the responsibility they “didn’t realize” they were signing up for, particularly what it does to the kids.  I had signed up with Big Brothers Big Sisters, but didn’t really feel like I could work with the structure of that program.  There are a couple single moms in my church, so I’ve been informally helping them out as time allows.  I took Aislynn on the Father/Daughter Campout with our church.  Noah got a turn to spend the night in my spare bedroom.  And just a bunch of afternoons/evenings at my house or around town doing errands with each of the kids.

I’ve been holding this post back (drafted on 12/29, now 1/3) because I haven’t been able to figure out where I want to direct my focus for 2013.

I have some smaller goals: I want to do well in the grad school class(es) as I take, however many there end up being.  I coasted through some of my undergrad work and didn’t learn as much as I could in some of those classes.  I also want to make some healthier eating choices.  I run off whatever junk I consume, but I’d like to be more disciplined in portion-size and healthy choices.

I keep pondering a question my friend Terry asked me back in April.  If you were to look back on your life ten years from now, how would you evaluate your life?  In some areas I think I’d be very proud of myself.  In other areas, I should really be doing better.  Details on that are for another blog post, but I want to be more content with my retrospective review by this time next year.  Too vague, I know, but that’s all I’ve got for right now.

The Interrupted Christmas

This Christmas was yet another reminder that God is God and I am not.  I spent this Christmas sick.  Very very sick.

I came down with it on Sunday evening.  I knew it was coming.  I had pushed too hard the week prior, not getting enough sleep one too many nights.  I kept it away by sheer force of will, which usually holds it at bay a couple days and gives me time to fortify my immune system for the attack.  I figured it wouldn’t be too bad, that I’d feel a little “blech,” and be over this thing no problem.  I was wrong.

Warning: complaints of maladies for this entire run-on sentence/paragraph: worst sinus pressure ever experienced, spurts of sleep lasting no longer than 70 minutes (but usually only 15-20 minutes) at a time, ear infection resulting from inability to sleep, vomiting, loss of appetite, inability to focus or concentrate, sensitivity to light, hallucinations, bumping into walls, coughing, sneezing, headaches, chills.

God has graciously given me short-term true memory of physical pain.  I remember surgeries and illnesses and merely knowing that I was in excruciating pain, but I don’t recall the depth of the pain sensations that I felt in those instances (I think it joins how I can have people describe disgusting things while I eat and not be phased by it).  But I do remember only once or twice having any significant sinus pressure with any head cold, and that those instances were minimal compared to this.  That was the base of all of this.  My body couldn’t handle the pain from it and wouldn’t let me sleep through it.  Then every time I’d wake up I couldn’t remember if I was in my bed or on one of my couches and almost crash into something trying to re-orient myself.

So I clearly did not go to my church’s Christmas Eve service.  I didn’t go to Daniel & Hanna’s place for dinner with their families afterward.  And I didn’t go to Matt & Barbara’s on Christmas Day for dinner and games at their house.  These were the plans after making Christmas Dinner at the children’s hospital with Haig & Valerie were canceled because of Valerie recently having wrist surgery.  I couldn’t watch T.V. or read.  It was miserable.  I have never seen time tick by so slowly.

The funniest part of this whole thing is that as I was spiraling downhill on Sunday night, I watched an episode of The West Wing, the one where the president is approving pardons.  The hallucinations mentioned above were related to this.  In my stupor of not sleeping enough for coherency, I imagined that I was the president in the show and was being prodded by my senior staff into granting pardons in my ill-minded state (“Just four more, Mr. President.  We’ll leave these right here next to you.  Just sign them.”).

On Monday afternoon, I was running low on all my sick supplies.  Living alone, it only makes sense to have an arsenal of feel-better food and meds on hand so I don’t need to go out on a store run when ill.  But I still managed to run short.  So I texted Greg, one of the few friends I could on Christmas Eve, and asked if he could help me out.  Greg however is without a driver’s license currently, but I figured he could at least do the driving part of the store run if I could wait in the car.  It was rough, but I made it.

Restocked on tuna, waffles, Gatorade, 7-Up and Afrin, I crashed and endured another miserable night.  But finally at 7a on Tuesday morning I fell asleep and stayed asleep for three blissful hours.  I woke up and my sinus pressure was finally reduced, and everything else had settled into a common cold.  This I could handle.

I stayed in and continued to rest, but was now able to focus and concentrate.  I slept about six hours last night, but still woke up congested this morning, so taking a sick day today, Wednesday.

Probably the roughest Christmas yet, but oh well.  Somehow missing the expected celebrations didn’t mean as much.  I poured a lot into the preparation and had some great time with friends leading up to it.

Car Repairs

Back in September, when I took Aislynn on the Father/Daughter Campout, I had my car looked at again for various minor issues I was having, the most notable being a cloud of white/bluish smoke that would come out the tailpipe every time I started it up cold.  The mechanic diagnosed it as needing a valve replacement and head gasket, with an estimated cost of $1,800.  But he also said he didn’t know if it was worth doing to the car since it was still running fine and was likely to still pass smog.

I was deliberating over what to do, and decided to run the scenario past my friend Mike, who’s very savvy with cars.  I ran the details past him, and he said everything sounded legit, but he also said that while it’s a long job, it’s a doable do-it-yourself job, and he offered to do the work with me.  He enjoys working on cars, and likes helping educate people about their cars.  I was thrilled.  I would like to know more about my car, and I’d also love to save the money.

So I acquired the parts he told me to, he bought the service manual on my vehicle (1999 Toyota RAV4), and we planned for Thanksgiving weekend to do the work, starting Friday at 9 a.m.  We were hopeful it could be done in a day, but had Saturday for overflow just in case.

Friday morning I drove to his house, and we got started.  He showed me how to disconnect the fuel line, drain the coolant and the oil, and walked me through removing various pieces from under the hood.  This was going to be a beast to put back together, but we were both enjoying it, and I was learning a lot.  I’ve seen parts of my car that I never knew existed.

Foolishly, I had committed to play Spades Friday evening, with this ridiculously optimistic idea that we’d be done by then.  Around noon or 1 I was starting to clue in, and texted my friend Josh to ask if he could take my place so that we wouldn’t lose momentum working on this.  Mike and I had a couple trips out for tools, which was impressive given Mike’s plethora of equipment.  Thankfully Mike’s brother Phillip and our friend Seth kept stopping in amidst Black Friday shopping and errands, so I was able to give them money to grab us lunch.  Mike and I did a dinner run on one of our errands out.

Heading into the evening, we started to get to the challenging parts of piece removal.  We hadn’t even gotten under the cams to the valve springs.  One of the pieces anchoring the engine block to the frame was in the way of getting the timing belt off.  That piece was wedged in so tightly that we couldn’t get a socket wrench in with enough clearance to loosen the bolt from either over the hood or underneath the wheel well.  And there was enough of a lip around it that we couldn’t get a box wrench around it.  We finally got it off by buying a smaller socket wrench head that would fit in the small space.

At a later point, we needed Phillip’s brute upper arm strength to break the seal between the timing belt pulley and the engine cams.  We were grateful he was around, even though he was pestering us as to when we’d give up to come watch the Grinch with him.

By then it was 10 p.m. and we were then stuck with figuring out how to get the idler pulley off to free the back plate of the timing belt.  I came up with the plan to run home (Mike only lives 6 miles from me) to save Mike doing another trip, and then him picking me back up in the morning to start again.  Around 11, I received a text from my friend Greg asking me what I was up to, and I asked him for a ride.  As much as I could have done the run, this would save me an hour of sleep.  So we called it a night at 11:30 and Greg took me home.

This morning, Greg picked me up (he only lives down the street from me thankfully), we did an Uncle Harry’s pick-up and he dropped me back off at Mike’s at 8:30.  The morning went slowly as we ran into obstacle after obstacle in continuing to take pieces off.  We even had to borrow his dad’s air compressor to create a seal in the engine so the valve seals wouldn’t fall down into the engine once we got all the way in to our work area.  By 11 a.m., I was getting to the “what are we gonna do?” concern point.  Mike is the Facilities Coordinator at our church, and I’m teaching Sunday School, so we both have to be there, and he often has afternoon commitments.

Then I had the idea of borrowing a car from my parents.  I could take Amtrak down tonight, pick up my dad’s extra car, and drive back.  That way I’d have continuing transportation through the week for work as needed, and we wouldn’t have to put the car back together unfinished only to tear it apart again later.

Around 3, we ran into a problem of needing a valve spring compressor.  Mike has the new “universal” one that’s shaped like a wine bottle opener, but because my springs are recessed, we needed the old c-clamp style.  As we soon found out from O’Reilly’s, Autozone, Pep Boys, Harbor Freight and Sebring’s, no one makes or carries that style anymore.  It looked like we were sunk.  We even started thinking of people at church, but the one name we both came up with now lives at Hume Lake.  On a whim, I decided to call my neighbor Haig.  By some miracle, he had one.  He used it once, back when his sons (my age) were in jr. high.

Before Haig had come through, I had successfully made arrangements with Mom to borrow the car.  When we got back to Mike’s house with the valve spring compressor, we sadly learned that this style only works if you take the whole engine apart, and we were trying to get away with taking the top off.

Well, God bless YouTube.  Some videos had already helped us this weekend, but this one was the miracle worker.  Some kids playing heavy metal music had recorded a video of how to make your own vsc with a 3/4" socket and a pen magnet.  We were saved.

But then we realized that this tool is only half a tool.  It helps us get the valve springs off, but will likely not work to re-insert them.  So I booked a ticket on Amtrak, and found a sub for Kindergarten teaching tomorrow.  Mike drove me home to pack and dropped me off at the station.  He’ll keep looking at YouTube videos and the manual tonight to figure out our next steps.  Right now it looks like we’ll need to order a part online.

I haven’t taken a train/bus down to Orange County in a long time, probably since my college days.  The nice part is not having to be attentive to the drive.  I dozed off and napped from Fresno to Hanford.  And now I can just sit here chronicling this weekend’s adventures.  This is kind of nice.

Men's Retreat 2012 Day 3

Woke up, took a shower, packed up, and went down to breakfast.  No new snowfall  this morning on my car, but a decent layer of ice had frozen the towel to the windshield.  So I decided to walk rather than wait for the car to thaw out.

This breakfast was amazing.  Lots of great options at the main entrée bar, but an omelette station was set up as well.  I put back two heaping plates full.  I should have gone for a second omelette, too.

I sat with Adrian, one of the college-age guys, at breakfast.  While we were talking Nate C. came up and asked Adrian to pop his back, so I asked him to pop mine too.  I was lamenting having to go pay my chiropractor to unlock me again after I’d just seen him Thursday night.  I think it was a combination of the extensive driving and a softer bed than I’m used to.  I love that cracking sound.  Adrian probably got six or seven vertebrae on me.

Instead of group devotions, Sundays are individual devotions because some years, a lot of people leave Saturday night, so some groups can be significantly dwindled.  This one was on Psalm 73, where the author is in anguish over the perceived success of the wicked, but then comes around to remember God sovereignty, and that following Him is worth more than any earthly temporal success.

We started the morning session with worship, and then invited our weekend host Sarah up to talk about the developments with Hume.  They’ve opened up an east coast location to reach kids on that coast as well.  Overall, I think it’s a great idea, but too much expansion in a non-profit always concerns me.  I was excited to see the video on it and get some information that the first run of it had gone well.

Justin then wrapped up Job with God finally chiming in.  A convicting question this morning was What if God’s answer to my personal plea for relief in some circumstance would mess up the universe?  This message made me think of the movie Bruce Almighty.  While crass, it had some very insightful points.  When Bruce lassos the moon for his girlfriend, it creates a tidal wave overseas.

 

Another point Justin hit was how God doubled the replacement of everything lost, except for Job’s children.  Doubling the original lost children would have been crass in making them seem replaceable.  And at the same time, there was no restoration of lives lost.  God didn’t come back and say, “Just kidding!”  The lost was real and difficult.

We took communion as a group and spent some time in prayer before being dismissed.  We loaded up the car, ate lunch, and then took off the chains.  The roads within Hume were thawing out, so we decided to start sans chains and put them back on when needed.  We only hit two mild patches of ice, and I was going slow enough that we held our traction and arrived safely back at my house.

Another great retreat.

Men's Retreat 2012 Day 2

Melatonin has to be one of the most wonderful pills in the world, next to ibuprofen.  Now having my tonsils out, I sleep better camping and/or in the mountains, but I still tend to wake up a few times in the night, but it’s easier to fall back asleep now.  Now that I’ve figured out melatonin will work for me (it didn’t as a teenager), it just helps keep me asleep through most of the night.  Six glorious hours of sleep.

We woke up to a beautiful thick blanket of snow.  Absolutely breathtaking.  I was glad I remembered to put a towel over my windshield to make the car that much more ready to get started in the morning.  I love having a vehicle up here.  I know the exercise is good for me, but I just enjoy the freedom of being able to drive back and forth from all the location changes we make throughout the weekend.

Saturday morning we have small group devotions over breakfast.  I was a little disappointed in the breakfast though, which shocked me because I have never had unpleasant food or insufficient food options at men’s retreat.  The egg bake was vegetarian (apparently there was a meat one that went early), and the pancakes and monkey bread were both pretty dry.  But the bacon, the fruit and yogurt were all pretty decent.  It just surprised me to need to depend on the fruit and yogurt bar.

I don’t typically enjoy the small group devotions we have at retreat, but it feels somewhat heathenish to say so.  We’re matched in deliberately random groups for the weekend, and it’s nice to bring a variety of viewpoints to a Scripture passage, but it’s difficult when we haven’t had any significant bonding time to have a trust in sharing with the group.  Some guys I would know very well, but there are always a few new faces.

The morning message from Justin continued in Job and discussed the wager between God and Satan.  Job’s trial went through the fingers of a loving God.  It was not out of God’s control.  God didn’t and never doesn’t see something happen in our lives and say, “Oops, sorry, my bad, wasn’t watching on that one.”  We were challenged with the question Who/what do I worship in the midst of adversity?  After a rotten day at work, do I come home and read my Bible and spend time with God, or do I veg in front the TV to unwind?  Also Is there anything about which I pray, “God, please just don’t take ______?”  My home, my job, my car, my intellect, my health, my reputation, my friends?

After the morning session we went to the small group challenge.  In the past we’ve created BBQ sauce recipes, built birdhouses, geocached, etc.  This year it was a series of circuit obstacles.  Marc is blind, so they added the element that during each phase of the challenge, a different member of every other team had to be blindfolded.  The first challenge was a relay race across the room to spin around a baseball bat four times and tag the next teammate.  I decided to get my blindfolded turn over with.  I went second in the relay because the first person had to carry the bat across the room (not a good job for a blind person).  I couldn’t spot, so I was depending on someone else physically stopping me or yelling at me to stop when I had turned four times.  I was SO dizzy afterward.  Other challenges included eating a lemon, flying paper airplanes, lighting a fire and frying an egg on top of a coffee can, making a three-man pyramid to reach the highest point as possible inside the Ponderosa dining hall sans furniture (two guys climbed up the support beams however), chugging contents from a random grocery store jar (ours was nacho jalapenos—I was no help), hot dog eating contest (I gave up after three because Daniel Y. was already on eight, and I didn’t see the point in making myself sick), and Pictionary.  Our team wasn’t dead last, but somewhere in the bottom half of the twelve groups.

Lunch was a remedy from breakfast: hamburgers with bacon, mushrooms, and chili for topping options.

The snow had wiped out two of our optional afternoon activities of Suzuki four-wheeling and the Screamer, but we still had the giant swing option.  It didn’t start until a little later, so Dave A. and I sat and talked at lunch for quite awhile.  He’s in my Sunday School class, but I really hadn’t gotten to know him that well yet.  He and his wife Lisa have a 16yo son, and they came back to Campus because they weren’t feeling connected in their former church and they wanted a youth group for their son to get connected in.

I had some trepidations about this swing, but I knew that I had passed on a few activities over the years at Hume that I usually regret not doing.  So I went to check it out.  A cable connects two trees, probably 50 feet up.  Two cables descend from the original cable and merge into one, which is strapped to your harness.  You have to climb up five rungs on a ladder to get strapped in, and then they remove the ladder to suspend you in air.  Another cable is attached, and that feeds through two pulleys, up to the height of the first cable and then down to the other participants, who run out to ratchet you up.  There’s a rip cord on that last cable, and you have to pull it to release yourself into the swing.  Absolutely terrifying to start, but awesome by the second swing when centripetal force takes over.  My biggest fear is falling, not that I would actually be harmed, but the actually feeling of falling.  So I know I have to push myself, and I’m so glad I did.

The really nice part of this activity is that it was very quick and done.  I stayed to help ratchet up other guys, but it didn’t absorb the whole free time like other activities have in the past, like paintball.  I went back the cabin and talked with Sam and Chapman for awhile.  Chapman left to study, and Sam and I were reading, but then we each dozed off into some nice naps before dinner.

Dinner did not disappoint.  Seasoned broccoli, mashed potatoes & gravy, roast beef & carrots, and chicken.  Dessert was chocolate brownies with caramel baked in.  I sat with a few guys in our church’s Men in Action class, and we talked about their hypothetical elder assignments, their case studies of the “messy” situations that can come up in a church that the elders need to address.  Jeff’s was being the only elder who knows something significant about a potential future elder, and Lee W.’s was being the lone dissenter on an elder decision that went horribly wrong, and having church members come up to question him about it.

We started off the evening meeting with some video footage of the giant swing.  My screams were the star of the show at the evening session, along with a few of the other guys they taped.  We’ve also had this four-part YouTube video series they’ve been playing just for laughs: “Guy on a Buffalo.”  Tonight they showed part 3 and we were left with a cliffhanger.  Short ridiculous video segments.  The evening meeting was about when Job’s friends came on the scene, and was entitled “How to Be a Lame Friend.”  Justin touched on some what-not-to-do’s, particularly with someone grieving.

Pastor Mike came up afterward and asked us to get in groups of 2-3 and pray over some specific needs.  I grouped up with Daniel T. and his brother-in-law Vadim.  Two really great guys it was a pleasure to pray with.

Afterward most of us headed over to the Ponderosa Dining Hall for our evening snack.  Last night’s had been some coconut dessert bars, which I even tried just to make sure I still didn’t like coconut.  Very disappointing considering the variety of snacks they’ve usually had for our evening hang-out time.  There were eight pies awaiting us when we arrived.  All banana cream.  I like banana cream pie, but I was bummed not to have some other choices, especially for the guys who don’t like that type of pie.  They brought out a plate of chocolate chip cookies later, but they weren’t warm and fresh like in years past where they keep them under heat lamps all evening for us.  Yes, we’re spoiled up here.

Lee S. got a game of Spades going, and we all taught Kyle how to play.  Kyle was my partner, and I was grateful when Dave A. came over to watch and ended up coaching Kyle.  We played three games of four hands each.  Kyle and I lost pretty miserably on the first game, but came back strong in the second and third.  Other groups had other games going too, but we were the last ones standing.  I’ve never been the one to turn out the lights in the dining hall.