Saturday

Was fantastic. Talle and I woke up, found something to eat, and wandered around downstairs for a while, and then left for the pool with Melanie. Normally I really don't like water very much, its just not normal for water to collect in huge holes. I can swim, its just that I don't like swimming. Showers no problem. Drinking water, no problem. But swimming? No thanks. Normally. But when you throw Talle at a situation, everything becomes really fun. Shrieking through 10 cm of water in the kiddie end, to diving off of the "high" dive (all of three meters), "spamming" the water slides (new hard core coaster boy lingo courtesy of Talle... basically means to ride them over and over and over, getting slightly more water logged, stripping a little more skin off your back, being refrigerated a little more on the way back up, and having a blast the whole time), and discovering the waterfall kiddie area. The waterfall actually falls from a good 5 meters up and the water is moving by the time it hits you. It sorta feels like a massage. By someone who is more used to marshal arts. Its actually pretty cool, especially since my back was in some weird state of limbo from dragging all that garbage around in Chicago the previous day. Very cool. If you stand in it, it becomes very easy to imagine that you are casting some very large and powerful water spell. (Product of a gaming nerd imagination gone to a pool).

When we had tired of all that, we simply hung out in the deeper end of the pool and tried to dunk each other surreptitiously. I got both Jeremy and Melanie, but Jeremy got me back. Melanie didn't try... In some ways I can't blame her either... even though she swallowed a lot of water. I was rather ruthless in retrospect. I don't think she was very happy with me after that. When everyone had finally had absorbed enough water, we all got out left for home.

Once there, Talle and I took off for Ignite Chicago. Rock concert. We got tickets and wandered into this huge baseball stadium. Alexian Field (I think). We wandered in, chucked a Frisbee around for a while, and then we noticed that musicians were getting onto stage, so we wandered that direction, not really thinking that we would actually be able to see anything. When the crowd had reached critical mass, we were right at the front. We could see everything. It was pretty cool. Pretty loud for that matter as well. The stage was boarded by these two gigantic piles of speakers. There were two stacks of speakers on each side. Each stack went all the way to the top of the light stand which was some ten meters up. Whenever a new song started, I could see the foam on the front of the speakers blast outward from the vibrations. It was a blast! (both literally and figuratively...) I saw three artists live who I liked and had appreciated music for the past several years: Rebbecca St. James, the David Crowder Band, and Casting Crowns. Some very cool music.

The songs were very well played, and a nice mix of songs that I had heard and others that I wasn't familiar with. The David Crowder Band was really funny. They had a monitor board go out, so they couldn't hear what they were playing (yeah right, they were right behind those huge MASSIVE SPEAKERS OF DOOM! yeah. Couldn't hear it. Meh.) At any rate, David Crowder got up on stage and started signing things. Water bottles, sandals, it was funny. Then someone decided to hand up a dollar bill and he pocketed it. Water bottle, sign. Balloon, sign. Dollar bill, pocket. This went on for a while and eventually people realized that the money wasn't coming back which was really funny. Then came the yellow hat.

The Yellow hat. David Crowder signed it, and was about to hand it to somebody in the crowd when this guy gets lifted up on people's shoulders and yells "Its my hat!!!" David Crowder looked up, and then back down at the hat, then back at this guy who was somewhere off to our left and behind us a little. "Your hat? Ok." Then he looked down at the people right in front of the stage. He didn't have a mic on, but you didn't need a mic to hear what he said. His face is really expressive. He has all this yellowy hair that stands out from head and chin like he has been partially electrocuted. It pretty awesome. Looks a lot like mine used to before Mom was brave enough to light into Elmo. (Long story there...) At any rate, you could just hear him say "can you carry me?" And then he starts walking across the crowd towards this guy while carrying this yellow hat. No kidding. It was sooo funny. He would take a step, fall forwards, stagger, wave his arm over his head, wave the arm with the hat for balance, and then try to take another step. He made it about 3 meters out from the stage before he fell over and the crowd surfed him over to the yellow hat guy. The manager had the crowd part for him, but only after he had them make a tunnel. I don't think the crowd liked that manager very much.

At any rate, David Crowder managed to make it back up to the stage without further mishap where he proceeded to throw water bottles to the crowd. Its really funny to see people struggling and screaming over a little bit of sentimentality. Like an empty cardboard box that a rock star threw in their general direction...

At any rate, it is now tomorrow... So I shall bid you all, with the greatest of regrets, adue (feeling Shakespearean anyone? Its what happens when I get sleep deprived.) Ha! G'night!