Return of the Wyld Stallyns

Wyld Stallyn basketball is back! Yes, it’s intramural basketball season again at Penn State, and the meteo grad crew is back for more — though hopefully this season we’ll actually win a game, especially since this year we’ve gone to the trouble of having a couple of pre-season practices. 😉 Our first game of the season was Thursday, and the first half did not go so well. A streak of six or seven consecutive possessions on which we turned the ball over without getting off a shot did us in, and the other team shot some insane lights-out percentage, en route to a 31-12 halftime lead. We settled down in the second half, took better care of the ball and played better perimeter defense, and actually outscored them (slightly) in the second half, making the final tally 48-31, being led in scoring by Ethan and Dr Markowski. So we were fairly pleased and encouraged overall, since we eventually showed that we could play with what was a pretty talented team. As for my line?
8 minutes, 0-2 field goals, 0 points, 2 rebounds, 2 assists, 0 turnovers, 0 fouls
Meh. Those stats are unofficial of course, and only to the best of my recollection. At least I wasn’t a net detriment to the team! With my skills, that’s about all I can ask for. 🙂 Game 2 is coming up this Thursday.
The worship team at church just got a lot more high tech. Out with the old monitor system, in with the new. The old setup involved monitor speakers by each of the musicians on stage, so that we could hear the other instruments and vocalists better from where we were sitting. These were often turned way up, and added a lot of extra noise, some blasting straight out into the sanctuary, but most of it being blasted at the wall at the back of the stage and then bouncing back into the sanctuary. So on Saturday the old system was removed and the new system (which was graciously donated by somebody, I don’t know who) was installed and wired up, just in time for worship (band) rehearsal (which took 3 hours, largely trying to get used to the new monitors!).
So how does the new monitor system work? Well, now each musician has their own personal mixer, into which we can plug in headphones. Yes, now we’re all wearing headphones while we’re playing music on stage at church. 🙂 Ashley & Emily thought it looked like we all had iPods on, hehe. Anyway, each mixer/monitor has 16 channels (6 vocal, 2 auxilliary, piano, guitar, bass, 2 drums (right/left), 2 mix and pastor/CD/DVD), and we can change the volume on each channel, and also the left/right balance in our headphones for each channel. And then you can group channels together (say, all the vocal channels, so they can all be turned up or down collectively rather than one by one), as well as save up to 16 groups of settings on each personal mixer. It’s pretty slick! It took a bit last night to figure out how I wanted to have the mixer channels set, but once I did it was great! I could hear everyone else quite a bit better, and I think it helped us all play better with each other. And another unforeseen benefit: improved acoustics in the sanctuary. As Pastor Tober was listening to us rehearse last night, he noticed that we sounded noticeably better, and we figure that it must be that we don’t have all the old monitor speakers blasting sound as well anymore. I’m really excited to use it more in the future, including this coming week again.
For Bible study with PSCG in the first part of this semester, we’re listening to and discussing a 6-part sermon series by Phillip Jensen (of Saint Matthias Anglican Church in Sydney, Australia) on the Sermon on the Mount. I studied this same sermon series back in 2004 at the Sunday evening Bible studies with Monash Christian Union when I was studying abroad in Melbourne, so it’s really cool for me to get to hear it again and introduce everyone else in PSCG to Phillip Jensen’s wonderfully entertaining and incisive Gospel preaching. Of all the pastors/preachers I’ve ever heard, Jensen’s my favourite. But anyway, we had 17 people at Bible study tonight at my place, which was really exciting! We haven’t had that many people in awhile, so it was really great to see, and is giving me great optimism for this semester.
Oh, and if any of your property is destroyed in a month or two by a falling satellite, don’t say I didn’t warn you!