Burning the Candle at Both Ends

Good day to you! I'm on lunch right now, so thought I'd blog for a bit. I have had a weekend without much sleep!

Friday Night
Lets start with just after work. I popped into the church to meet "Harriet". Basically when Mark is leading worship, we have two extra monitors on stage. Since Jen became pregnant, she found out that the unborn baby shouldn't really be subjected to noise above 100db (fair enough really -that's quite loud). She brought the sound-meter on-stage and found out that we were at about 110db!! "Harriet" and myself were meeting up to try and get rid of some of the excess sound - which involved giving the drummer headphones (we have an electronic kit already to help with the noise - a set of Roland V-Drums), as opposed to a big speaker. This also had the added bonus of being able to give the guitarists the spare monitor (which would be facing away from Jen). Finished that at about 17:30, and had to go home, shower, pick up Phoebe and get to youth for 18:00. Impossible? I didn't think so, until I got home and discovered my step-dad was still fitting the new bath, and the water was still switched off!!! Noooooo. I can guarentee that a *lot* of deodorant and aftershave was used ;)
Then; youth came, youth saw, youth conquered. Yup, that's right - youth happened as normal. We didn't really do anything much afterwards. I completely forgot that it was Phoebe's birthday on Thursday (I even reminded myself on Wednesday!), but her and some of the girlies went for a curry at about 21:30, so we were down a few helpers towards the end. Luckily that was quite close to the end, so no harm, no foul. We didn't really do anything afterwards (just chatted for a bit), so everyone was home before midnight (new record! LoL).

Saturday
On Saturday I had to get up early and head for the city centre. Some people from church were doing a prayer walk around the city centre and wanted to kick it off with a few songs of worship, and had asked Mark and myself to play our guitars. I picked up Tom, went to Maplin's on Gloucester Road to get a mono-jack to stereo-jack converter (for all you PA people). We met by the fountains in the city centre and started singing in the rain. Was quite fun, but I wasn't impressed that my guitar got wet :-S ach well, no pain no gain! LoL

After that, I left my guitar in my car, and Tom and I went into Sound Control (so I could get some strings and an extra tuner for home...which is currently sitting next to my other tuner at church. How dumb is that, LoL). On the way we met a homeless guy called "Josh" who had just come out of rehab and straight onto the streets - if any of you out there have time, it'd be great if you could pray for him :)

Met up with Adam after that, wandered around town for a bit and then the three of us went back to Adam's and watched Ocean's Eleven while I re-strung my guitar for church on Sunday. Can't wait to see Ocean's Twelve now!! It had better be as cool as the first one or I'm going to...uh...sue George Clooney!

Went home for a bit, had a shower, and then went out. A friend from uni ("Jim") had just got a house in Taunton with a couple of other guys, and they were having a house-warming party..so I drove down to do some catching up! I intended to leave at 11:30ish, but I made the big mistake of trying the punch - whew - it had some kick to it! I decided to wait for the alcohol to clear my system, and tried to make my getaway at about 2am, but one of my friend's drunk housemates was trying to make me stay. When I finally got out the door, "Jim" was thanking me for coming, and offered me some coffee...which I thought would be a good idea, so went back in the house...LoL. Drank my coffee, and ended up leaving at about 2:35am. Motorway driving at night is soo cool; no traffic! Got home and hit the hay (finally) at about 3:45 *shudder*

Sunday
Got up at 08:45 - I had to be at church for 9:15 to briefly sort out some PA stuff for Mark - had a shower which bizzarely woke me up, and went to church. I was really, really awake, but couldn't really concentrate for very long. The guitar playing was quite cool. Since Mark was leading with an acousitic, it meant I didn't have to worry too much when I messed up cuz Mark could carry it through. It was also fun trying to do some picking (which I can't really do) over the top of what Mark was doing.

I went home and got a couple of hours sleep. My parents had cooked a roast lamb, and had it ready well before I had to go to church (a rare occurance!). Mmm, hadn't had that for soooooo long. Then went to church where we had "Let Us Entertain You"; our monthly evangelism meeting. Our dancers danced at a church in Easton once, so they came and danced last night, as well as this young guy singing some songs (he had a really great voice!).

After church a bunch of us went back to Nige & Esther's for a game of Risk. My brain wasn't really working, so I just decided to be awkward for people and make it hard for them to take continents (as opposed to having a plan). Unsurprisingly, I died after my second go, so I went to make the teas. I stuck the kettle on and watched Risk for a bit more. Went back to the kitchen, made 3 teas and a coffee. As a I was almost finished, I noticed that all the water I had used was cold! I found this incredibly funny (I get in a really silly mood when I'm over-tired), and told everyone, who didn't find it quite so funny. This time I decided to actually plug the kettle in and re-made the teas.

After Nige's I went 'round to Phoebe's to watch the Superbowl with; Phoebe, Tracy (Phoebe's Ma), James (Phoebe's b/f), Pierce (Phoebe's Bro) and her older bro Jesse (and his g/f). James was itching to place a bet on it, so Tracy got us to make a bet that didn't involve money; if the Eagles won I'd have to drop off/pick up James & Phoebe from the cinema. If the Patriots won, then James would have to come and help out at Youth. It was a pretty good game...slow start, but had some good stuff in it. I don't really watch American Footie that much, but know enough to enjoy it. A couple of years ago I told my Dad that I wanted to learn the rules so that I could know what the heck it was about, and we ended up going to a game (after watching several on TV) - so I saw the Green Bay Packers get knocked out by Atlanta which was cool (not that GB got knocked out, but going to the game!). Anyways, the Eagles went ahead 7-0. Then the Patriots came back to draw, and then go ahead. At half time, the Eagles had pulled back to 14-14. The final score was 24-21...to the Patriots! Woohoo! No driving for me!! It did make the game more interesting..was good fun. Tracy made a huge mountain of chilli, potato wedges and rice, as well as having masses of crisps. Mmmmm. Lots of fooooood. Food goooood. The game ended at about 3:30am...ugh. I must be mad. Normally I start work at 07:30am, but I'd managed to swap with someone else, so I ended up getting into work at about 08:40 this morning. Surprisingly I am still feeling quite awake! I really don't know how....all I know is that I need to get to bed well before midnight tonight. Must..not..go..out..after...worship..practice.

Ahhh, well that was my weekend. Stupidly small amounts of sleep, several hours of driving, and guitar playing. OOoooh, I saw the new VW Golf advert. It is possibly one of the best adverts ever (as are all Golf adverts :-P). It's got footage of Gene Kelly doing "Singing in the Rain", and they've computerised it so that he suddenly starts break-dancing! How cool is that!???

Ugh - Lunch time over. Time to work :(

Listening to: Franz Ferdinand - "Take Me Out" (Franz Ferdinand)