Long Fun Weekend

Actually it was the same size weekend as usual, Friday night-Sunday, but it seemed long. Friday night I went to Dave's for fun game of Risk with Dave, John, and Aaron. Aaron and I managed to hold on for a long time before being ignominiously wiped out by Dave at around the 4 hour mark. This was more miraculous on Aaron's part since he spent most of the game hanging on by a thread while I spent most of it in power. Nevertheless his thread was slightly stronger. Dave then conceded the game to John, but it was an open question who would in time, if they had another few hours to seesaw.

After sleeping in most of Saturday morning I dropped into the office in the afternoon before being invited by Jason to see X-Men III. I saw it the previous Saturday but it was worth seeing again with a friend, especially for a matinee. This time I understood the bit after the credits and I had fun hanging out with Jason. Then it was home to watch the Animatrix. I had planned to do this with some pizza and line's Red on Friday before accepting the challenge of world domination. The Animatrix is a collection of animated shorts based in the world of the Matrix trilogy, some of which were prequels to Reloaded, some of which were independent. They were very interesting. Some of the animation was beautiful and a couple of the stories were very good and even touching. A lot of it was weird. While I was watching I got a call from another friend who was getting together a group to watch a midnight showing of The Godfather in Antioch. In the middle of the night it takes about 35-40 min. to get to Antioch. I went and we sat in the balcony. I don't remember actually being in a movie theatre with a balcony before, though the Highland Park theatre has a couple of smaller theatres on the second floor. Anyway it was a good time watching the movie and funny when Dani shouted at somebody who was worrying in an annoying manner whether a character was dead, that she'd find out in about two minutes. The movie ended around 3 a.m.

Sunday we had a good sermon on II Cor. 1:8-11 on why we pray. The three reasons John gave were because prayer acknowledges our dependence on God, prayer leads to a release of God's power, and when we pray and God responds He is glorified. After the service we put stickers on a few thousand bottles of water that we will give away at the Libertyville Days parade this Saturday morning. The stickers have the name of the church and the website and say that they are a free gift, no strings attached, just like God's love. We'll set up a few stations with buckets of ice and bottles of water and we'll also send people through the crowd up and down the parade route with wheeled trash cans full of ice water giving them away to anybody who wants one. Last year we offered a bottle to a police woman doing security on a street corner and she told me we were here favorite float in the parade. Just a rolling trash can of ice water on the side walk and a bunch of cheerful people. I'm looking forward to Saturday. After that it was over to Aaron's with a big crowd to cook out, play badminton, ping pong, Scategories, and/or sit and talk. That evening those of us who were still straggling around ended up heading up to Kenosha to go to Fazoli's for supper. Then since we were up there anyway we went to Steve's family's cottage which was torn down and rebuilt over the fall, winter, and spring. That place is nice. Steve's really looking forward to having a bunch of us up there for jet skiing and games. You could tell he was proud as he showed it to us. When we got back it was straight to bed. I was definitely wiped out after the weekend.

Monday was back to work and then to the housegroup last night. We studied Psalm 76, particularly focusing on God's sovereignty and mercy and on fulfilling our vows to the Lord, doing what we've said we'd do. Andrew led us in some hymns for worship and then we had a good prayer time. It was a good night.

Quote from the weekend:
"What's a film strip?" One of the consequences of hanging out with people several years younger than you is that they occasionally make you feel old. A book came up in conversation on Sunday afternoon and I mentioned seeing a filmstrip of it in elementary school and a college graduate asked the foregoing question. I was stunned, but he was serious.