Well. Today has been a long day.

Getting up was sure fun today. Actually, it wasn't that bad. I had some oatmeal for breakfast, so while the water was boiling, I ironed my clothes. I wore my khaki pants with my creme shirt, blue blazer, and bow tie, or as I call it, my "professor's outfit." Brandon picked me up ten minutes late, or in Brandon Time, right on the dot. The directions we were using, emailed to Brandon by Lily, were perhaps the simplest directions that could have been given that still got us to the destination. Lily must have been in a hurry, because the directions said no more than:

Take 80 east
Get off at Sierra College
Sierra College turns into Hazel
Community Center is on your left, Greenback is South

So the marvelous directional duo we are, managed to come up with a list of reasons why we weren't going to get there.

1. Get off at Sierra College- Sierra College is a community college, so therefore it's pretty big. There was one exit that was clearly labeled as an exit for Sierra College, then the next exit was Sierra College Boulevard.

2. Once we got off at Sierra College Boulevard, we needed to know which direction to go. With our clever deductive skills, we decided to turn left.

3. Sierra College turns into Hazel. Usually, when something like this is written, you expect that the street name will change pretty soon. It didn't happen until about 15 minutes down the road. As Brandon put it, "It's like saying, 'Take I-5 to Mexico. I-5 turns into Guadalajara Avenue.'"

4. Orangevale is out of our range of maps. Not surprising, since Davis is as well.

There were probably more, but I just got to distracted from the Guadalajara joke. Finally, Brandon just tells me to check the other cars for professing people. Automatically, my bun radar was set to 'scan.' Sure enough, the car next to us contained the Frandsen couple. As it turns out, they were lost and following more buns too.

So after we got there, Brandon and I quickly threw our stuff down on some empty chairs. Later on, we decided that it would have been better to find some chairs closer to the front, since we were amidst crying babies and deaf old people who's whispers can be more accurately described as 'mild yells.'

What I heard of the meeting was very good. With phrases like "IS THAT JOE ALEXANDER? IT LOOKS LIKE JOE ALEXANDER" being whispered the row back, I managed to correctly asses that it was in fact Joe Alexander. Fortunately for me, even without my glasses, my good eye closed, hey, even with both my eyes closed, I could asses that it was Joe Alexander. No yelling needed.

After Joe, who's thoughts circled around the question "How does the enemy get into our lives?", spoke Larry Taylor. Larry spoke about our focus, or as he put it, "What is the center of our life?" Taking the meeting was Harry Brownlee, who aside from the awesome quote of "So you're a worker? That's great. I don't care." spoke on several topics, among them our friendship with Jesus, humility, and walking.

Lunch was pretty great. As a starving college student, the Greenways had enough foresight to make me a lunch. Real food never ceases to be delicious. Actually, the best part about lunch was the socializing. There happened to be plenty of people there I knew. Besides the normal, expected ones, there was Grandma, Ed and Sheri, Kathy and Rodney, Stan and Moriah, the Shannons, and a whole lot more too. But what was really special was when Larry Blair came up to me telling me that he was meaning to talk to me for a while. It turns out that Sean professed in the same meeting that I did. Also in this conversation did I learn that Ryan Miller professed that meeting too. So afterwards I had to share that with him. Anyway, I could tell that it was really touching to Larry, so it meant a lot to me.

The afternoon meeting was great as well. Among many of the highlights was the kid in front of us drawing a huge swastika in his notebook. It was doubtful he knew what he was doing, since he drew the points in a counterclockwise fashion. But it was still a weird site to see in meeting.

Derra started the meeting with thoughts on the feeding of the five thousand. Following her was Margaret Blair, who spoke about fruit-bearing plants. Walter Pollock took the meeting, speaking about the parent/child relationship as well as sacrifice.

After putting away chairs, Brandon and I were notified that there was a small get together at Shari and Miranda's. After not a whole lot of deliberation, we went over there. Brandon, with a pang of kindness, thought it would be nice to bring something, perhaps to snack on. So while on the freeway, sounding like we're going Mach 7 due to leaky window seals, he calls his mom to see if she can think of anything. Of course, the things his mom thinks of are elaborate desserts, so we end up bringing nothing.

Oh yeah, it rained. Everything is wet.

At Shari and Miranda's were Stephanie and Amanda Hill. Apparantly they stayed the night there, since they made a mess of the bathroom. I don't know, maybe that's just a girl thing. Anyway, we had a pretty good time playing rowdy professing activities, such as spoons and cranium. Around 7 or so, the girls needed to get on the road, so Brandon, Russel and I headed off too.

Back at Brandon's place, not a whole lot was going on. His roommates actually seem pretty cool. They seem like the kind of people I would hang out with if I had the choice. Anyway, they're all on an IM floor hockey team together, and they had a game at 9. So that's why we went to their place instead of just dropping me off. It was cool though, since they have sandwich fixings, whereas I have a banana. And a bottle of water I kept from lunch.

Also, they needed a goalie, so on the way home, Brandon called Riddy to see if he was interested. He jumped on the bandwagon with so much enthusiasm, it could be said he was driving it.

At 8:30 or so, 6 of us hopped into AJ's truck, everybody wearing clothes designed for sweating except for me, still dressed up with my bow tie. They dropped me off at my place first, which is about 4 1/2 seconds away from the ARC, their destination. After getting changed and whatnot, I asked around to see if anyone wanted to watch their game. Sarah wanted to, but was taking too long, so she told me she would meet me there. I never saw her. Apparantly she was walking in as they were walking out though. I'll have to ask Brandon about that.

After watching their exciting floor hockey game (5-4, Puckin Awesome - their team), I went to the fitness center and rowed for 2000 m. I am sore.

Back in my dorm, I'm writing this. I didn't get a chance to hang out with Amy, since she was busy with track stuff and whatnot. It was pretty funny though, since her first night here was spent with the track team, one of the (every single) activities where drinking is more of a sport than anything else. So she seemed to be in a state of shock when she called. But hopefully we can do something tomorrow. That ought to be puckin awesome... wait... I probably shouldn't say that.