'Freak and' Rhymes 'With Weekend.' A History.

Easter weekend, "The One with the Vigil," as we call it these days, was packed full, pressed down, and overflowing with activity. Like most weekends around here, really. I planned on taking tons of pictures all Saturday and all night, but for some reason, it slipped my mind. So, sorry about the lack of visual aids, all of you raised in the last thirty years or so. You'll have to rely on your wits for this one. Allow me to elucidate the weekend's events. Using links to demonstrate things you might have missed. No rickrolls today. I promise.

On Friday, I had been planning to start the Easter fast at noon, watch last week's Lost on my family-provided laptop and a' that, but Nicholas IMed me and wanted to go to lunch, and who am I to refuse a man a friendly lunch appointment? "Not me," said the me. Especially when the friend's took a week's vacation (against his will, Pappa, against his will!). I tell you the truth, it was a good time.

Twice since Nick's left working at our blessed corporation, we've had a chance to go out at lunch,. The first time was a substanative and spontaneous excurstion to purchase a tie so I could participate in a late announced interview. We used to hang out a lot more than we do now, But since we moved north, those times have grown fewer and far between. Even with us working together, I think we hung out less. Back in the day (twas four years ago, even!), we lived in the same apartment complex, and besides all the poker and games we played, also sometimes Nick would drive in his black Kia with the band stickers on the back, and we would jes' go and talk abut life and relationships (although we were not Freshman at the time, if ya believe it).

This last Friday felt like all those old times. Freshnostalgic like spring. For the life of me, I cannot remember where we ate, but I think I had a little too much. But since I wasn't planning to break the fast until Sunday, it didn't bother me. I am a huge fan of what Tim Keel terms conviviality, that is, intentionally and hospitably eating meals with people. Even if I eat little (wish that happened more), I still love the experience eating food with someone. Back in high school, I had some friends who, at a party, would always go out and grab food from some fast food place (Taco Bell, ima lookin' at you) right in the middle of the thing. I'm rarely offended, but that always rubbed me the wrong way. Spend the same money on something to share, man. I'm no Slow Food evangelist, but I think the way our culture does food is too personal, too individual.

Maybe like everything else these days, we've made what and how we eat a product of being consumers. I think 'you are what you eat' equates with 'who I am is what I buy'. And that individualistic view of food, where I'd rather get something I want than something to eat and share with someone else bothers me. We need more steaming communal pots of stew, I say. Bring back stone soup. Or at the very least, a roast boar, and, like, ten onions. And partridge? Bring the partridge.

I had a good time with Nick. There's nothing like, after a long absence, slipping back into a worn and treasure friendship that fits like it's tailored. Like when we go See Harmonie and Jason in Emporia. Good friends are like good wine: the more you drink the better. Wait. I'm not sure that's how it goes.

So, that Friday night, Jill and I went to the Tenebrae service for Good Friday, and on the way in the door, everyone was handed a rock to hold, but we weren't told what we'd do with it. I was sort of hoping for a symbolic stoning, but no suck luck. Perhaps the one of us without sin should have started, but he sneaked out the back when it started, I'd guess.

While we waited in the half-light, I studied the rock. Mine was a dark gray and roughly triangular, with one corner cut off. On what I considered the back side, because it was flatter than the 'front,' I rubbed a drop of wax off with my fingernail, wondering if this rock had been part of a candle ceremony at some point - a prayer vigil, or a Christmas Eve service where the room starts dark and then as each person lights their candle from the person in front, you all learn you're the light of the world, or sumsuch metaphor, and it's beautiful and flickering.

At the end of the Tenebrae, after all the side candles had been extinguished along the spoken road to the cross, we did a kind of reverse communion, everybody shuffling out of the row instead of in, and to the back of the sanctuary on a symbolic pilgrimage, and then down and along the aisle, even going front row to back row instead of back to front like usual. Instead of taking bread, dipping it in wine (it's really grape juice) and eating, we laid our rocks on the altar to show that we were sinful, we are part of the darkness. I'm a big sinner, so I put my gray rock right smack on top of the pile, next to the Christ candle that someone finally blew out at the end of the service as part of the ritual.

That's the the Christ candle we cantors were supposed to relight at the end of the vigil to signify that he had risen indeed. But the band was warming up rather loudly Sunday morning, drowning out our balcony playing and singing, and we had to shout out out the final reading in a lull, rather than cradling it with the Christ candlelighting between a version of Page France's Chariot that Sam had added some hallelujahs to at the end, and Sam's Easter song Rising Son. Neither of which we got to sing due to the band practice for Sunday morning starting so early. So a night's-long practice of discipline ended ten minutes early in the lee of a sound check. (And yeah, that's an odd use of the word 'lee,' but I like it.)

Back on Friday, having left our rocks at the altar, and awkwardly filing into our rows from the same end we came in, only the first person to leave was the first person back, we left the Tenebrae in sombre silence, as we usually do for those kinds of things. Adam and Sam and I stood outside our house for a few minutes, talking about life and relationships (also, not Freshmen at this point. Sam went to dance, and Adam we home, and Jill went to bed early, but I downloaded and played through a game called Polarity that is a short platformer that plays with magnetism in some interesting ways. But I still got to be with plenty of time to sleep. Or so I thought.

Over eight hours later, I woke up tired for whatever reason, and Jill and I headed off to Olathe (getting gass and a drink treat on the way) to Nicholas and Martha's apartment to help them move to their new place. As we moved our center seat from the van into their apartment so we could fit in some of their longer furniture, Adam joked that his parent shoul dhave come up for the weekend, since they ending up helping Nick and Martha move in the last time. But it didn't take long to brim the vehicles we had, and we were able to just escape lugging their cyclopean bedroom set on the first trip, so we headed off to the new place. Amanda and her crowd went for their drink treats then.

Now, the new house, is a delightful place, a good location for them, and pretty roomy to boot. Because I occasionally (re: frequently) complain that the living spaces we dwell in are too small , the Jill seems to think that I'd think that Nick and Martha's place was too small if we moved in a similar layout. But I don't think I would. They have four carpeted living spaces besides their bedroom. So there's no need to be concerned about people sitting on a hard floor. And if one of the rooms got full of people, we could easily move to a second room. Plus, the TV wouldn't be in the main living space, which would rule. But Jill usually knows me better than I do, so I could be wrong about all of that. Maybe I'd feel cramped. But I still think their house is frickin' sweet.

From there, Adam and I headed to the game store (31st Century, buy some games), while Jill helped Martha paint their new yellow bedroom not-yellow, to meet Jeremy McKean and Dan and Sam for some good ol' fashioned hardcore gaming to celebrate Jeremy's Christmas. But Dan was late because his wife's Dreamcast broke and he had to go buy a new one because she had her heart set on busting out Skies of Arcadia again, and also because that is what husbands do sometimes, even if it means leaving their friends in a lurch.

After waiting a while for Dan, Jeremy and Adam and I decided to see how far we could get into a game of Starcraft: the Board Game before he showed up. Not through the first turn, it seems. So Dan finally came, but Sam was delayed in his theater furniture acquisition geas, so we decided to play the already-mostly-set-up Starcraft: the Board Game so we could play something else when Sam finally arrived. But by the time Sam showed up, and watched the last few turns, and we even ended the game a turn before Jeremy was oh-so-likely to win, we didn't have enough time to play any of the games we had with all five of us. Which is pretty much the same thing that happened the last time we played a nice, long board game - Sam had a theatre thing, couldn't make it, and so missed out on the start, only coing in over half-way through. After an hour of waffling, considering whether to buy another board game that we could play in two hours, or just call it off for this week, or whatever, Adam and Jeremy and I played one last game of Starcraft, and then Adam and I rushed off to vigil, hot the heels of Sam who had left early.

I got my aforementioned nap in, and then Austin and Jake came over to hang out for a bit before the art show at the church because the main doors were locked when they tried to get in. It's kind of an odd combination of people to show up at my house, if you think about it. Austin was my free-spirited drama class friend from seventh grade who told me in my yearbook to keep never combing my hair, she liked my individuality so much, who then became one of the Seven Muses of my Ten Percent Society in high school. As old and dear a friend as I have. And Jake is a guy who went to my church, but I really never knew that well, but he did go to Belarus on a missions trip at some point, but I'm not 100% sure I was there at the time. He hung out with Brett some, and then came to our group some, and then lives at the guys' house over on the east side of Kansas City some, a block or two from the corner street sign that Heet Mob shows in the 'KC (It Goes Down)' video as representative of "the block [in Kansas City] that might hurt you." Jill was watching Underworld 2: Gratuitous Sex Scenes, during my nap, so we turned that off and headed to the art show after getting some pictures of Austin's new cute short hair. Which you can see at her Facebook, should you know her well enough to be a Facebook friend. Which is very possible considering she is cool, and many people like her.

We had to go in the side door, it turns out, as the front one was locked, and it also turns out that I was a little disappointed in the Body of Christ art show. Most of the time, I am blown away by the quality and quantity of art at the gallery showings at church, espeially the lemental Faith one last year, but there weren't a whole lot of pieces this time, and only a couple really grabbed me. Usually there's a lot to see and a lot I love, so one off night, and I guess I start complaining.

I liked Beth's photography piece; something struck me about her choices of images and their composition, and I also really liked the concept and layout of her poem. Mostly words and phrases I am excessively familiar with, but putting them in a poetic format made me think about them moire distinctly. But that is the point of poetry in my opinion - make the strange familiar, or the familiar strange.

I also liked the interactive grid of stylized woodcut (?) prints of body parts, labeled in Spanish, and hanging on pegs. You were supposed to take one, and as you did, it revealed different other ones beneath it. So, someone would take blood, or the spirit, or the skeleton, and a pancreas, or the intestines would be be revealed for someone else to take. All to represent the different kinds of people in the body of Christ. Too many of one, and the less popular ones would show en masse, so people would take those to maintain balance. I have the skull, and Jill took the eye. We'll hang them at home sometime here. They also had a really good strawberry puree punch, and given the concomitancy of the gallery and the room we read the gospels in for the vigil, I hit that stuff pretty hard all night.

Then we vigiled. Ben Anderson was there, and Jess Lempkin was there, and Beth was there, and Phillip, and Tim Bridgham, and John Raux, and Lukas, and Dave Blattner and Sam and Jill and Adam and me, and you were there, and you where there, and Bert the farmhand, even. I made that last one up.

After the vigil, like I said, I took a nap, and Jill tried to take a nap but didn't. As she lay in bed, she decided to wear one of her fabulous vintage sun dresses from her collection. But when she got to the closet, she found they were all too small. Which is cool for her because she's been trying to gain weight for a long while now, and only this last year has she been able.

But we made it to church, and Tim gave a good sermon on what the gospel is and how he hates the pressure of preaching on Easter. Jill and I broke our fast with communion, and served communion, and then we were out, saying that he was risen and responding "INDEED."

Our house was pretty messy, so we all (save Adam who was sore exhausted) headed over to the guys' house (on the corner of holy-crap-a-bus-crashed-here-call-U.P.I. and Walrond) to have bacon and turkey bacon (from Jill and me) and hash whites (browns take forever) and pancakes (from the guys) and eggs (from Sam) and all kinds of good Easter bread (from Austin) and juice (from Dave). All of which Brett and Jake cooked (except the bit of bacon Lukas the Austrian ate) which amazed Austin who has not been around long enough to know that the guys in our group do most of the cooking. So she sang some songs because it was Easter, and asked if we knew any good Easter sing-along songs, and we didn't, except for original Easter herself songs like that hips song from Shakira or Mouth, which we didn't think were quite appropriate for the situation.

But it was a good morning breakfast with family, the kind of mornings people are always looking for in bad poetry, and Brett (I think) said that we all should pretty darn well have a community house going by the time he gets done with college in two years, and I thought it was a grand idea. At the very least, a series of community houses, I think. Not as something to seek out in and of itself, but something still worth doing. Something prophetic, maybe even, to use an overused word. Something that says that the way we do things in our society isn't quite right, and not to be too idealistic,but that sometimes God can change people and they can live peacefully with each other. That sometimes people gave give themselves up for other people as a way of life. There ya go -breakfast on the bottom, hope on top.

After that, we took Sam home, and Dave home, and us home, and slept for longer than we intended because, I think, I turned off our alarm before either of us heard it. But then we went out to Olathe for Easter late lunch with my parents and sisters and the Fords (there is an overlap here, see if you can spot it). We had deviled eggs made the way I like them (no mayo, yes mustard), and burgers and hot dogs. Then we did our Easter egg treasure hunts made by my Dad, and then he did his, which was much harder, made by Jeremy Ford hisveryself. While he was doing that, we played a game of Settlers of Catan. My dad's prize for solving his hunt was playing spades, but since we were all going over to the Fords for Reign of Fire RiffTrax watching, the decided to go there and play there, since we were getting close the time and some cleaning still needed to be done.

But since we were in Olathe, we also went over to Jill's parents house, and we watched the drama that Jill's mom had written and directed that had been performed that morning at OBC, which made me tear up, and Nick and Martha showed up, and we all hung out for a while until I started sending text messages to Jill that we really needed to go to Jeremy and Juliet's because it was time.

From there, we went back to Nick and Martha's to get our center seat that Jill hadn't had a chance to retrieve on Saturday. At first, I said I didn't want to go now, that I could go later in the week, but Jill made the very good point that we would just keep putting it off, and maybe never get it back, considering our track record of personal sundry item retrieval. And I've learned that when the Jill gives advice, it is good advice, and should be followed. So we go that back in the van, along with our two tubs of back-of-the-car stuff that someone had put in another car when we were putting big things in, but we had to take out of that car because it they were not Nick and Martha's moving crates, just our car paraphernalia. We were going back and forth carrying the seat to our van and some clothes to their car, and once we had the seat in and they were inside the apartment, we took off like banshees. Or, more accurately, like two people who were about to go somewhere else, and knew that the other people they were with were also about to go to the same place as well, so there was no need to wait or anything.

As we turned onto I-35 from 119th, (which I always, always type 199th and have to go back and change) Amanda texted me to ask if we were coming, and I foolishly interrupted Jill's and my conversation to call her to say yes. But luckily, over the years, my museJill has learned that sometimes I just do things like that when people call, and there was no argument or anything. Bring in Ripley.

So, a little after six, Easter evening, we rolled up to Jeremy and Juliet's apartment building, late, but not SO late since we'd heard that the original start time had been pushed back to 6:30. After much hemming and hawing about what to eat, Juliet came up with Runzas, and we went with it. Runzas are bread dough stuffed with ground beef, sauerkraut and onions, which once baked, you dip in mustard. And although his may not sound appetizing, to you, here on the cold internet, even Nicholas, who hates sauerkraut, likes them. We also, for the real kraut haters, decided to make some pizza flavored ones, with cheese and pepperoni, which never really turn out as good as a hot pocket, even, but are better cold than the real runzas.

I made a shopping list, and some people went to the store to buy ingredients. While they did that, my dad's reward spades game went down in the bedroom, only Austin sat in for Jeremy, while some of the rest of us played Soul Caliber III on the mode where you fight with randomly dressed characters with random move sets. Jeremy hasn't played the campaign mode much, so our move sets were pretty limited, and we didn't have as many costume piece options as we'd like, but it was still a good time seening what absurdity would come next. The highlight was a gentleman fighting with tamborines who did slinky dances as he did. Tthis would not be so bad if he hadn't been wearing pants short enough to make Richard Simmons blush.

The ingredients purchased, Amanda and I set ourselves to make the runzas. Which involved mixing by hand ground beef and sauerkraut and onion flakes in a large bowl (kind gross/cool) and then opening cans of dinner rolls (apparently Price Chopper dinner rolls are not meant to be removed from the packaging without extreme force. A couple of people helping went as far as banging them soundly on the counter edge to no avail.), flattening the rolls, filling them with the hand-mixed filling, closing them up, and then placing them on the baking sheet. The pizza ones were considerable more messy given that they included spaghetti sauce. I can't be held responsible.

The runzas were cooked, and eaten, and distributed so that everyone got their fill. Spades was won. Soul Caliber III reminded us that even after all this time, a sword still desires truth. We got to the real entertainment of the evening: the RiffTrax. Now, the Reign of Fire Rifftrax is really, really good. The best of the series that I've seen. In fact, I've seen it 4 times already. So instead of watching it with Jeremy and Juliet and Jill and Adam and Jake (but not Brett, he had a paper to write on violence in movies, which I have now read, and think is good) and Austin and my parents and Nick and Martha and Amanda , Sam and I played Arkham Horror with the King in Yellow expansion which he gave me for Christmas, but I had yet to play. But first we sorted ot the other two expansions, so we could get a real King in Yellow experience. We didn't quite finish by the time the movie was over,but we were getting beat up int he game, so we didn't mind so much packing it up.

We made our goodbyes, and Jill and I went home and crashed hard. Didn't recover until Tuesday at least. Another typical weekend done.