Another new experience at Salt

We're lucky here in Iowa City. You never know what will go wrong with tech. Maybe there will be confusion, and the set-up team will have to go without breakfast (that was a long morning). Maybe things will be forgotten in the storage unit. Maybe the storage unit door will come off the track. And then there's last night.

During practice, the light board's power input jack decided to fail, so we were forced to have minimal lighting that nobody could control. Then later, the surge protector on the power strip that the sound board was plugged into started tripping, so there was a scramble to plug some of the stuff in across the room.

Everything was going okay when opening worship started. However, about halfway through the opening set, the sound cut out. Luckily, the Holy Spirit wouldn't let us down, and the crowd never missed a beat, getting ahead of the band for a couple seconds. After some quick work by our drummer and my roommate, they got all the instruments working again, and the rest of the night went without a hitch.

That's why we're so lucky here. Everything that can go wrong with tech might actually happen, but we still have all we need for a great night.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. To update everyone on this post, my foot is still swollen, but still no pain. That's right, my foot has been swollen for three weeks without pain. Weird, huh?

Impromptu Family Weekend

This past weekend seems to have been family weekend at Veritas. 3 of the 5 band members' parents were in town, my dad was in town, my roommate's dad came down for church, the two band members who finally got their first day off from being in the band were with family--one here, one visiting them--and there was at least one other pair of parents--other than the usual families that come every week--at church on Sunday.

However, the "family weekend" is just a side note for this post. The main part of this post is in regards to tech for the service. It didn't start off very well. Shortly after arriving at the hotel and beginning set-up, the light people--which includes myself--noticed that two of the six light stands had been forgotten at the storage building. About an hour--and one text and one phone call--later, the other two light stands arrived. Setup went for the light people from then on.

The CG team--in charge of the projector and the "cheater screen" for lyrics--had their own problems with set-up. The room was oriented differently--we're still trying to find the "best" set-up for chairs and the stage--and the projector had to be really close to the screen, so they had to zoom in a lot.

Other than that, set-up was a breeze, and practice could begin. Around the hour-forty mark, one of the singers suggested that we needed a keyboard (it was an acoustic set--djembe, two acoustic guitars, a stand-up bass, and an electric guitar). Luckily, they had accidentally packed the keyboard that morning. However, this caused a couple minutes of delay to set it up and do sound check. Also, we had only 5 people on stage! No problem, we'll just have the djembe player also play the keyboard--sometimes both at once.

Things continued on with near constant tweaks on how to play the individual songs. The lights decided to stop listening to the light board at one point, causing confusion as to what was wrong and how to fix it--it fixed itself, and we still don't know what went wrong.

Around 10, the pastor that was speaking showed up with what he wanted to be projected on the screen during his message. This soon presented another problem. Because they had to zoom way in to get readable lyrics, the message slides wouldn't fit on the screen. The band was also still working on how to best play the songs.

At 10:15, the doors opened for people to come in and sit down. The screen problem was still being addressed, but the band had settled their discussion--mostly because there was no more time to practice.

The service went off without a hitch. God showed up at the right time, and all the problems were solved. If I hadn't been there for practice, I wouldn't have noticed anything wrong--or even that one of the band members was playing two instruments at once.

Favorite Things about Veritas

Lately, I keep noticing that I've been saying "That's one of the things I love about Veritas" a lot lately. I feel that these things need to be shared in handy-dandy list form, so here we go.

1. Veritas is "small" so it feels a lot like a family--sorry, C-stone, 2000 people may be a little too big.
2. Veritas is church in a trailer. This means we're not focused on having the biggest, fanciest building, but on the people.
3. The staff is small. There's no big, complicated hierarchy to figure out. Officially, the staff is 6 people. They delegate as much as they need to, but you'll see them helping out any way they can--I know at least one of them has pulled all-nighters trying to organize things.
4. Veritas is very well organized. Children's ministry and welcome team are organized (essentially) for the next year, and tech is a week ahead, so you know where you're assigned every week.
5. Veritas is church in a trailer. Yes, I know I mentioned that already, but another bonus of it is the fun we get to have setting up and tearing down--joking around at 5:30 in the morning because someone is late, trying to figure out the "perfect" trailer pack job, trying to beat the record for fastest tear down and load-out (and we've broken it every week--1:06 pm this past week), wondering what it'll be like when the snow starts to fly, eating taffy and cake for breakfast (with water in Budweiser cups), etc.
6. Tech/setup/teardown crew is like a family within a family. We've got our "mom",  and the rest of us are basically teenagers. We goof around, push ourselves (and each other) to work harder and faster, and then tease our "mom" when she worries about us getting hurt.
7. The pastors are just regular guys. Combined, they help out with setup and teardown every week--many times both of them help.
8. Weekly game nights/afternoons. 'Nuff said.

Anyway, those of you in back in Ames should totally come visit. Every weekend. For the next 3 months. Or whatever.

Anyway, I need to sleep. I've got a Spanish quiz in nine and a half hours.

P.S. Ames-ers, you should come to Veritas this weekend. I miss you.

Pain is a Quitter

So, I probably should have posted this earlier, but I kept putting it off. You'll see why I say this post has come late soon. To start with, my Facebook status on Wednesday night was (Kalk) "may have to wear socks for the next couple days......in a row........I just had to try to get a running start and fly up those stairs. But at least it's awkwardly swollen." That might not make a whole lot of sense now, so I'll fill you in.

This past week (and the next two weeks), Salt was kicked out of the Blue Moose and into Third Base--aka The Fieldhouse--another bar owned by the same people, and in the same general area. The stage area in this bar was downstairs--this fact becomes important later in the story--and it has two bar serving areas there (so we even had one or two bartenders working at Salt--with the sound/tech booth in one of the bars). Anyway, the men's room was down a few stairs and a long hallway from where we were having Salt. About 7:50, I went to the men's room, and decided to get a running start at those stairs so I could go up them in a hurry. Big mistake. When I put my left foot on the first step, I didn't get far enough onto it, so when I put my full weight on that foot, it slipped off, twisting my ankle and banging my right knee on one of the higher steps. Being me, I didn't tell anyone and continued about my business through the worship, the message, and the closing worship.

Then came load-out. As you may recall from earlier in the post, the place we were having Salt was a floor below street level. This meant we had to haul everything upstairs to get it into the trailer. I was doing okay until the big case had to come upstairs--one that we had to have FOUR guys on. I was one of the upstairs guys, which means my job was help lift the wheels above the next step while the bottom guys shoved as hard as they could. Many times, it was hard for the upstairs guys to get our feet out of the way before the shove from below. Near the top, my grip slipped, and I dropped the case on my left foot. That stopped me. I paused for a bit to collect myself, then soldiered on until the case was upstairs. At that point, I bit down on my arm to muffle the scream.

I kept going, helping load everything into the trailer, then from the trailer into the storage unit. When I got home, I took off my shoes and socks (because I hate wearing them) and saw that my foot had a huge lump on it--which was in a fat line. Apparently, the slight compression from wearing socks helped a lot, because I couldn't stand the pain after taking off the socks, so I slept with socks on Wednesday night.

Thursday morning was bad, because you can't wear socks in the shower. Then I had a decision to make. Walk a total of five miles just to go to Spanish class, or miss the test review? I decided to go to class, but I took my acetaminophen just in case. It was hard. By the time I got there, I was thinking I might have to call my roommate for a ride home after class--his first class started two and a half hours after mine ended. However, the pain lessened as the class went on, and I went ahead and tried to walk home. There was no pain. I soon started joking that my foot had given up on trying to get pity from me, and walked faster. I got home and took off my socks. No pain, but still swollen.

As I write this, it's still swollen a little bit, but no pain. It only hurts when I put pressure on the swelling, or if I rotate it from normal. And that's the story of how pain is a quitter. Or maybe I'm just insanely stubborn. You decide. (There's a poll up, if you want to let me know your opinion on that.....or there's always comments)

Creativity

Normally, I'm not a creative person. I'm a go-with-the-flow type guy. But every few weeks, I go on a bit of a creative kick. Sometimes it's "I want to write" or "I want to 'draw'". Right now, I'm on a bit of a photography kick. By most people's standards, I haven't really taken a lot of pictures on this kick, but for me, I have. I wouldn't say I'm good at any of these art forms. I would say that, at best, I dabble, and at worst, I waste time and energy, but I've got those things in abundance, so whatever.

Today, while sitting in English class, I got the urge to take some pics of the interplay between light and shadow in the room. So I did.

Then on the way home, I saw some beautiful clouds. Of course, I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to take a picture, and some woman laughed at me. Like I care.

In mostly unrelated news, my English class doesn't meet on Thursday, so I'm done at 11 that day.

Easy like Sunday morning?

Here at Veritas, the phrase "easy like Sunday morning" is an oxymoron. When you've got college-age people going to bed at 9 on a Saturday, you know Sunday morning has to be intense.

As I type this, I've been awake for nearly 12 hours, and it's a quarter to four. Sunday starts off with a shower and getting ready at four in the morning for load-up at 5:30. When everything was loaded, we headed to church-tel Vetro (as someone called it this morning) and arrived at about 6. Set-up was the next hour, and then band practice at 7. I didn't have much to do after set-up, so I was just hanging out. When church started, I had to leave, because this was my first week doing children's ministry. I got to wear a name tag on a lanyard and everything. I wasn't fully comfortable, but hopefully I'll get better next time.

Anyway, I'm sleepy. I may take a nap soon... or I'll procrastinate on that and just play games on my computer.

Are you sure this is a good idea?

Tonight was another Salt in a bar, and somehow, I'm now on the tech team. Before I get to that, I should take you back to Monday. It all started before connection group. I got a call asking if I could help out with the tech team so that burnout wouldn't come as quickly for them, and I said yes. Then yesterday, after my English class began, I got a text asking if I could be at the offices to load up for Salt set-up at 5:30, or the Blue Moose for set-up at 6:00. My class ended at 5, so I said I couldn't make it--though that was mostly an excuse because I suddenly felt hungry. After a little thinking about my motives and the situation, I sent another response saying I'd try to make the Moose.

-----I'm going to break into an unrelated story for a sec, please bear with me-----

Since my English class is two hours on Tuesdays, my teacher lets us have a break about an hour in. Near the end of the break yesterday, one guy asked if the lights could be turned on (my teacher, believed by much of the class to teach while high, always has the lights off) because he was really tired. After a short conversation, my teacher suggested that he just go to sleep, and began to talk about the artistic nature of sending someone to sleep in class. Don't you wish you were in that class?

-----End English class randomness-----

Anyway, I checked the map on my iPod to see how long it would take to walk, and saw that it would only take about 40 minutes, so I figured I'd stop by Mesa Pizza for a slice before going to the Moose, since it's about two blocks away. After the walk--and dinner--I hung out outside the Moose until other people got there, then helped with set-up.

Today, after classes, I was feeling tired, and I kinda wanted something I had bought the night before--Smirnoff Blueberry Lemonade (which I don't like quite as much as the Mike's Hard Lemonade I had about a week ago, but it's still good)--so I mixed a bottle of that with a 24-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew--luckily I had a Nalgene bottle that was just big enough to contain the 36 ounces of liquid these made (and I liked this concoction as much as the Mike's). Yes, I had a drink before Salt--and another one afterwards, while writing this post--but I finished the drink before finishing the post, and this one had no Dew mixed in.

...So, back to the story about Salt. I went early to help in any way I could. When it became time for final practice, I was told that I'd be helping with lights--even to the point of running them for a song or two. This led to a discussion on running the lights, and I was thrown in to try it out. I was worried, mostly because I tend to get really into worship, and didn't want to risk breaking anything, so I wrote a note on the back of my hand saying "Note to self Back up if need to rock".

I got to run the lights during the closing worship, and nothing was broken or detonated, so I'd call it a success, which shows you how low my threshold of success is.

Things learned from MMP

This morning was MMP, and I learned a few things because of it.

1.  It's getting to be dark at 5:30 in the morning.
2. This week isn't starting off well. My teams went 0-5 over the weekend, I forgot about the homework due today, and I left my biology lab notebook in my apartment. Yet I can still go to MMP with a smile on my face, a spring in my step and a song in my heart. This is because I have the most important thing in the world. That's right, I got my MacBook Pro. Just kidding, the most important thing in the world is the one true King. I did, however, get my MacBook Pro today.
3. There's a roundabout on the corner of Summit Street and College Street. I found that on the way from MMP to classes.
4. I shouldn't sing the first song that comes into my head when I get up before the sun. It can only lead to singing Lion King songs all day.

Well, that's all I got for this post. I need to finish setting this bad boy up.

One of this world's great evils

....is package tracking. As stated in my last post, I've ordered a Macbook Pro and an iPod touch. Apple was kind enough to allow me links to Fedex so I can track them as they head here. Of course, the first thing I did was to check Google Maps to see what it would say--both are being shipped from China. The driving directions included a jet ski and two kayaks, and said it would take 37 days.

Anyway, I'm reminded of an old xkcd comic by how I'm acting in regards to these packages. For those that don't remember it, here the comic I'm talking about:

By the way, they got to Anchorage, Alaska earlier this afternoon. I think it'll only be a couple days before they get here.