Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Speaking Of...

I'll be away next week to help my grandparents move from Florida to their new home in B.C. I'm flying down to Florida very early this coming Saturday (April 29) with my dad. We'll be packing all of my grandparents' belongings into a U-Haul truck and then we're leaving early Sunday to drive to B.C. The trip will take us about five days to complete whilst my grandparents fly there. My dad and I will unpack everything once we get there, take a day to visit family and then I fly home alone late on Sunday May 7. (My dad's staying in B.C. for an extended visit.) I'm using up five vacation days for this trip and then I'm back to work to the next morning. This will the the longest road trip that I've ever done and I'm really looking forward to it.

Speaking of family, congratulations to my brother. He's taking over the basement in our house and he moved in this past weekend. That apartment is ginormous, I tells ya. My brother has his own porch overlooking the Thames river and a private entrance so he's off on his own again. I'm going to miss the little guy 'cause we've been living closely together for several years now.

Speaking of congratulations, and to follow up on what I said here, congratulations to Terrance Arsenault and Gina. They became engaged a couple of weeks ago. Terry recreated their first date, which started at GTA (my church) just over a year ago. He asked her while I was there practicing with the band for the Easter performance and I got to celebrate with them just afterwards. God bless you both!

Speaking of Easter, the musical play that we did at church this year was great. I played percussion with the band, as I mentioned here. There were three performances but it wasn't quite a packed house in two of them so there were a little over 1000 people that saw it, I think. More importantly, some of my friends got to see it and a lot of people that don't usually get to visit a church came out as well. My favourite part was actually at the end when we cut loose with a celebration song and I didn't have to be so reserved while I was playing anymore.

Speaking of the Easter thing, I had one extra practice every week for the preceeding month and a half in preparation. I also play percussion on Fridays at young adults at Open Door and I play percussion regularly for Saturday and Sunday services at my church. That comes to a total of three or four times per week that I was playing congas. Unfortunately, I think that took a toll on my right hand because I had a fair amount of shooting pain in it this past week, never mind the worse-than-normal swelling in my fingers. I think I've been abusing my hand a little too much lately. Heh. I s'pose I'll get to rest my hand during this upcoming trip, even if I'll be physically spent otherwise.

Speaking of being physically spent, I had a jam-packed schedule this past weekend. There was also a heavy metal (screamo?) concert at my church on Sunday afternoon with ten bands playing, headlined by Exodus in Peril. I took several kids along that have become fans in recent months and we had a great time. We arrived there at 3:00 pm, waited for an hour for the doors to open and we were there until about 9:30 pm. My ears were pretty much fried by the end but it was so cool. The second last band, Asher, had a female as the lead vocalist and they had a powerful performance. (Where's their band site?) It was a tough act to follow but then Exodus came on and blew the doors off. Nothing like having two mosh pits jumping around, with an encore song demanded by the crowd.

Speaking of this weekend, I also managed to find time to hang out Richard on Friday night after YA and then I watched Inside Man with Joel Timmerman on Saturday night. (It was the second time I had seen that movie. It has a lot of swearing but the plot is genius and the actors are captivating.) It was good to spend time with my buddies again and catch up on things.

Speaking of old FCCC people, I'm planning to go camping again this summer in the Bruce Peninsula at the same camp site that we went to last time. I'm looking at going for three days and two nights (Friday through Sunday) on the third weekend in July. I'm going for my own sake with my Little but y'all are welcome to join us. Get back to me if you're interested.

Speaking of...speaking of, I'm all done!

7 comments:

Lori said...

Jamie, put some of that ice you love to chew on that hand/tendon of yours... (I sense a bit of irony here, heh).

Abe said...

Camping with the old FCCCers in the penninsula would be sweet!

Anonymous said...

Uh, Jamie? Dave's like 20 feet from you. You're either overly sensitive about his "moving out" or you're just not that good at math. ~L

Aleah said...

Whoa...that was a lot in there! That's cool that you get to go on a road trip, I'm jealous! Didn't Exodus in Peril's drummer leave? (he goes to my church...that's just what I hear). Camping would be sweet. I think my parents are going camping this year. Exciting stuff!

Anonymous said...

Jamie,
I think you should change your Bruce camping weekend to any other weekend and come camping with the young adults from July ~14-16th.
Andrea

Jamie A. Grant said...

Gee, I dunno. Two different groups of young adults, coming from four or more different churches? That's so crazy, it might just work...

I need to get confirmation on Open Door's camping plans. Where and when? The crucial bit for my old gang was the particular Mennonite camp site that we visited before. It would certainly be interesting to do it all together. Of course, my main purpose was to spend the weekend with my Little teaching him about camping so I may end up going on two different camping trips for the sake of my Little.

Anonymous said...

um yeah. that's what i was referring to. you should do two trips. YA is on the third weekend, so you should rebook the other. ;) We're always open to having a few guests on the trip, but I don't think we would like to be out-numbered by groups of others or we will lose the identity of it being a ODCF young adults camping trip. And your Little will have more fun on a trip planned for him.

I'll let you know the details of our camping trip -we have a planning meeting tomorrow.