I had a pretty great Sunday & Monday. Allow elaboration to take place:

Sunday morning found me asleep on the floor, in my sleeping bag, dreaming fitfully for better days. Last weekend I was in Chicago for the Pitchfork Music Festival, getting my fill of the indie bands. On Sunday, I sprang rather slowly up from the floor of my destroyed room (I’m moving soon… so soon), and hit the alarm several times before being reminded by my brother that church would be starting in a few minutes. I roused myself from the desirable mists of sleep and made my way to Covenant in time for some worship, communion, and a killer message from the Rev. Dr. Michael Malanga.

After church, I hooked up with Kevin & Nealy Cray at the Grace Brethren Church picnic, had some delicious potatoes, bratwurst, and tomato/mozzarella salad, and chatted about Nealy’s medical anecdotes with Jeremy and Maria over at DQ. We wished the Crays safe passage back to Minnesota, and then Jeremy and I scraped together our Lake Erie crew.

We gathered Danielle, Lisa, and Rebekah, and headed up to Crane Creek State Park, right on the Lake. There, we filmed our latest and greatest ketchup commercial entry, giving the false interpretation that Lake Erie was the ocean. After getting shell splinters and dancing around to imaginary music while the camera rolled, we headed back to Bowling Green.

Jeremy, Danielle and I hit up Chipotle, then unloaded the props from our shoot (a trunk, a fishing pole, a book, hats… etc.) and I went home to meet up with Mr. Ian Deters. We put together a bed in my room. After a good talk with him, I finished a bottle of wine, chatted with some long-lost friends on AIM (which I pretty much never get on to, anymore), and then passed out on my *new* bed.

Monday found me groggily coming to (the wine was still… uh, with me). I drove to Panera at 7:45am and packed Briana, Rebekah, Gabby and Paige into the Mercury Grand Marquis for the trip up to Livonia, MI. We arrived at the Rotary Park in time to register our team name (The Red Eyes), and mingle with some of the other stores that our friends worked at. We marveled at the obscene levels of team spirit exhibited by some of the people there. We wondered what else there would be to do.

Planning is not the strong suite of whoever it was designed this fiasco. Basically, there were beverages, but they had to make a special trip to get ice to keep them cold. There was lunch… but it was comprised of $5 Hot’n'Ready pizzas… and they were ALL pepperoni (from what we could tell). We competed first against Perrysburg, headed up by the shrewd Adam Fogle, a man of many distinct talents and abilities. He had trained his team well… and, though we gave them a really good run for their money, in the end, they beat us by one point.

After we were eliminated (in one 7 minute round, no less!), the other activities we had to do were… oh yeah, NOTHING. There was literally nothing else to do at this park. We had swings and picnic tables, tennis courts and open grass… but nothing much else. We foolishly had presumed that this ‘company picnic’ would be fun. We were wrong. And so… after having our cheap pizza, we left early and headed west to Ann Arbor.

We parked and wandered the streets of downtown Ann Arbor for about an hour or so. We visited an awesome chocolate/coffee shoppe. We wandered around looking at books, comic books, restaurants and board games. We found smelly candles and interesting greeting cards. We returned to the car and drove home.

Upon our triumphant return to Panera around 4pm, we were debriefed, paid, and turned loose to go back to our regularly scheduled lives. After dropping by Qdoba (ahhh…), I set about planning Gentlemen’s Club (which was comprised wholly of Josiah, Jeremy, Ben and I), and then came down to my (still trashed) room to write this blog, talk on the phone for a long time with Tess… and now… go to bed.

One day, I’m sure that I’ll read this chronicle with great interest. Right now… the bed is screaming my name again. Peace.