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September 06, 2009
My Two-Week Summer - Part 2: Music Men
And now for part 2 of my posts about my too-short summer. As I mentioned in my last post, the plan was for Alex to come down to State College for a visit, and that then I'd ride back with him all the way to Wisconsin. I'd originally hoped that he'd be able to make it a bit earlier, but he wasn't able to get here until late afternoon on the 15th, just in time for a bite to eat before worship band rehearsal at the E-Free church. It was a jam-packed couple of days with Alex here. Right after rehearsal we stopped by the Toms' place, as Ryan & Sarah were in town visiting because Sarah graduated with her PhD. Then after being there for a little bit we went to the Hollemans to say hi to my former roommate Tim, who'd flown in for the day for his PhD graduation as well. It was great to see both of them again.
Church on Sunday morning the 16th was great, and the worship set was a lot of fun to play with Alex and everyone else. There were a couple songs where we were switching back and forth between instruments, me between piano and keyboard and Alex between electric guitar and piano, but because we had a full band we were able to keep everything going seamlessly without any breaks between the songs. We got some good feedback about the music and the song choices too. :-)
After grabbing some lunch we went up to the Creamery because it was such a nice day and everything. It was almost too nice, because we kind of lost track of time a little bit. You see, the E-Free church was having a baptism service at someone's house at 3pm that afternoon. We were primarily going to go because Kerrie was getting baptized. Back when I thought I'd be going back to Wisconsin right after comps, Kerrie was rather disappointed that I wouldn't be around for her baptism, but once plans changed, she was really glad I could be there. Anyway, Alex & I didn't get out to that person's house until about 3:15. I didn't know how promptly the service would be starting, but it was just beginning when we got there. 
If we had gotten there 10 minutes later we would've missed Kerrie's baptism, and I would've felt terribly about that--especially since I was mentioned rather prominently in her testimony. Yeah, it would not have been good had I been late and missed that. In any case, it was really cool that Kerrie got baptized and that I was able to be there to see it. :-) It was fun to swim a bit and play catch with Alex for awhile afterward too. Then after PSCG Bible study, David D came over to my apartment to hang out a bit and have a drink with Alex & me. And on our way home from Bible study, we swung by Sue's house (a woman from the worship team at E-Free)--she made cookies for Alex & I to enjoy on our two-day drive! That was so nice and so unexpected! So it was another busy day, but another very fun day.
Monday morning was a bit stressful, as I was frantically trying to pack for vacation and to get everything out of my Mazda so that we could go sell it. Definitely should've gotten all the crap unloaded from the Mazda before the weekend, then maybe we would've had time to go for a run together or something, but oh well. In the end we got all that taken care of, went onto campus to have lunch with Eugene, got Alex a Penn State hat to balance the Michigan hat he'd recently bought (haha), and then made sure to get an oil change and a bunch of other maintenance done on Alex's car before we set out on the trip. It was a good drive, and we spent Monday night at Valpo. We were able to stay in the dorms there for free, because Alex knows the head resident and most students hadn't moved in yet, but a couple of Alex's friends were there. Interesting how I'm 25 and I keep spending occasional nights in college dorm rooms, haha.
On Tuesday morning the 18th before we left Valparaiso we decided to climb up to the roof of the Chapel of the Resurrection, the largest on-campus chapel in the world. We'd originally hoped to climb up there back in May when I visited, but someone was practicing the organ, so we wouldn't have been able to do it without anyone noticing. But this time there wasn't anyone in the chapel, so we were able to set up the ladder, go up the other ladder, and crawl through the catwalk to one of the skylights. We didn't actually go out onto the roof at all, and didn't stick around up there very long, for fear of a Valpo campus security guy driving by and happening to spot us up there. But it was still pretty cool, and something neither Alex nor I (obviously) had ever done before. After the roof-climbing, we both enjoyed playing a few songs on the Steinway up in the balcony. A pianist can't ever turn down a chance to play on a Steinway, after all. ;-)
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After that we hit the road again, a bit before lunch. We got to Cumberland in time for dinner, and my Dad took us out on their new Ranger for a tour of some of the trails around our property. I hadn't even been on some of those trails either, so that was pretty cool. It was kind of sad to see the lake as low as it was though. Hopefully next spring it'll come back up. After dinner Alex continued on to his family's home in Mahtomedi, MN (only 80 miles from my family's house, which is why it's so nice for us to carpool back to MN/WI when possible), and I stayed with my family to spend some time with them. It was good to be home again.
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Well, that's all for now, until the third (and probably final) installment of my vacation recap, which will be loaded with pictures from a trip up to Minnesota's North Shore with my parents!
Posted by Jared at September 6, 2009 04:30 PM