My Long Christmas and Newyears Week

Well. I ran the sound system for the Christmas eve service. It was a mess! A funny one in retrospect, but rather bothersome at the time. I set most of it up with the help of a techie from SIS (my school, and where we had the service) on the 23rd, but there was this irritating buzzing noise from one of the mics. So, on the 24th, I went hunting for a way to get rid of it. I knew where the school kept the extra mics and equipment, unfortunately, they were all behind a locked door. Well, no problem. Locked doors are only a minor problem out at SIS, there are dozen ways by one. However, I didn't have my normal school equipment with me (my ruler) so I couldn't get in. However, you can climb over the back wall of the sound room from the boys bathroom and get in. Problems involved: wall is very high, around 4 meters. No problem. The walls in the shower block are two meters high, easy enough, and there is a ledge half way to help with that as well. Problem two: nobody ever cleans the tops of the walls. I mean, who ever looks there? The tops of the walls were very dusty, and I was wearing black pants and a black shirt. I assessed the situation and decided to take off my pants and climb over (here I must comment in gratitude to boxer shorts). I got my shirt dusty, but it was heavily patterned, so with a quick few brushes It was invisible. So I scrambled up and over the first wall, and then up and over the second, and faced a four meter drop down into the sound room, with very weak shelves to catch me on one side, and light bulbs sticking out of the wall on the other. Needless to say I did it very carefully. I got down safely, found the mics, and opened the door (all doors at SIS, when locked, do not open from the outside, but will open from the inside. This door was no different) and then stoped. Wait. The entire orchestra is sitting up on the stage, and I don't have my pants on, and I need to get back to the boys bathroom to get them. I looked up to analyze the reverse climb. Yes, the shelves were stable on the outsides, they were basically just a pile of cement bricks. I didn't exactly care to do the reverse climb (which was a sight harder than the first climb) while carrying a box of mics, so I set the mics outside on the floor and then started to climb back over. This is where things should have gone wrong, however, I got lucky. I managed to get back over the wall, only getting marginally more dusty than I was already, find my pants again and retrieved the mics. I live for crazy things like that, and nobody even noticed any dust! At any rate, Fate decided that I hadn't done enough in the service of the church that night: The entire sound system was up, running, beautiful, and clear. (I mean crystal clear, except for all the echos, which were unavoidable because of the design of the room. It was not designed with auditorium in mind. The ceiling is composed of several large triangular panels that incidentally reflect everything I have been able to launch at them with the exception of several very sharp darts (One of my friends' darts is still stuck up there, 7 meters off the ground. This is a big room) Including sound waves. Alright, so everything works well, but the sound is a little goofed from the acoustics of the room. Oh well, nothings perfect. This is where Fate kicks in. In marches the Ethiopian choir. All well and good. They sing a song or two every Christmas for the edification of the rest of the church, despite the fact that nobody understands what they are singing about. Then this bozo with a keyboard shows up and demands to be plugged in. Only one problem: no cables. So I rerouted some things and told him he could plug in to my equipment, that I was letting the orchestra use as a monitor. He wanted complete and total control, so he blasted the sound on his organ thing, and nearly cracked my amp open. I turned the master volume down, but my monitor was not connected to the sound system controls. Bad. At any rate, despite all that, the service was relatively clear, I got several compliments for the clarity of the sound. If it wasn't for my uncle it might have been much worse. My uncle runs the sound for his church, and I get to sit in the sound booth when I visit his church, where I learned how to do some things clumsily.

Anyway, that was the sound system mess. This is not where the story stops. Christmas dawned bright and early, and I had a wonderful Christmas. I am using the wireless mouse my brothers gave me even as I type. Well I would be, but I'm typing. But it is a really nice mouse. Ergonomic and everything. It works really well with age of empires, as it has two extra buttons that are very useful for idle villager and town center, for those of you who have played the game. What I want to play now is Mechwarrior 4 Mercs, but Jeremy up and went to college, so I can't. Ah well.

Camping at Hodeida has fallen apart. This year the Erskines, Kappers, Pahls, Libersomthingorothers (German name, unpronounceable), Mufurahs, Hudsons and McCulloughs went. Of those families five actually had youth group age kids, and only two had high school age kids. It was also short, lasting three days, and it rained. Twice. There is a long story about that, however, this post grows to ponderous lengths, so I will not include it here. The raft this year was a success! We went from being the only people not to make the wreck, to being the only people to make the wreck! We were not the only raft either. Tal is going to have a fit. He leaves and Abe and I beat the V's, and then we make it out to the wreck without him! I can't see that I blame him either. It took us an hour and seventeen minutes to go 4.4 km with the wind, and 4 hours to do it without it. Mr. Erskine designed the raft for us, and Jonathan and Timothy went on it, and I must say that I was skeptical, but it worked, and well. It was a brick! square and hard. It worked though! 9 truck inner tubes, 19 meters of 4cm by 4cm lumber, a huge pipe, a 2x3 meter tarp, and a kilometer of rope, and we made the wreck. The last 400 meters was purdy nasty. The water was choked with seaweed: the prickly type. Jonathan was howling. Good (if a tad nasty) fun. The wreck has disintegrated to the point of dangerousness though, so despite the fact that I have actually gotten to the wreck, I have never been on it. Bummer.

The way back was interesting. We had gotten very wet the night before, (it rained for 4 hours or so), and the mountains were full of fog. We were only going about 30 km an hour, and at that rate it was going to be dark by the time we got to Sana'a, so we decided to stay at a hotel. This was the 31st of December. The Coxes were having a new years eve party, and it was going to be good, but instead we spent it at a hotel with a bunch of Australians who got drunk to the sound of an Aud and drums. (pronounced sorta weird with a guttural in the first syllable Aood, or maybe Auood. Whatever). The Yemenis did their traditional synchronized knife dancing for us, and I abandoned the cause and went to bed. There is a lot of knife dancing here. (People who have been in Yemen and seen these dances will laugh at the description I gave.)

At any rate, this post is now at ridiculous lengths, so I will briefly conclude. Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!