Geek Weekend

We had the first Geek Weekend party yesterday, which consisted of many friends coming over to worship at the Altar of Entertainment for several hours. We watched Firefly; not the whole series (although we feasibly could have), but most of it. Despite the hour-long socializing breaks between discs, we managed to stuff 11 epsiodes down our television-gluttonous gorges. It was freakin' lovely. Good friends came to hang out, sit on our couches, eat our food and watch far too much TV in one sitting. This is pretty much the reason we have the place that we do. Yes, my eyes are tired and my legs are cramped, but it was a successful day of fun geeking.

A Dilemma

As many newly married couples find out, our friends don't contact us much anymore. There is the unconscious attitude that the married folks are busy being with each other, and don't so much want to be bothered. I've been that way myself with friends who have gotten married, and even with friends who have had children. I assume they have too much on their plate to get together. In any case, that ends up leading to a dull social life for the newlyweds.

Part of the problem for me is that I'm a suburbanite now, and most of my friends are city folk. It takes an Act of Congress for either of us to get out to each other's location, and it makes for a bit of a problem. I have a lot of suburban Mensa friends, which is freakin' awesome, but since I used to be a city person, I'm not so used to hanging out with them. Time to change the social circle. Heidi has a lot of friends here in the 'burbs, but they are under the "no time" impression.

This is exacerbated by the fact that we don't have a church home yet. When I was at First Free, my social schedule tended to revolve around my serving schedule. I got a lot of interaction through that, and being the inrovert that I am, that was pretty good for me. Admittedly, I was serving 2-3 times a week, but that was good. I like serving, I like getting to know and hang out with people who serve in similar manners, and it just tends to be a lot of fun.

However, since we don't have a church home, we are relegated to one-shot serving opportunities, occasional local dinners, etc. These are good opportunities to get to know people, but it generally is a random assortment of people that are significantly different than us. I have no problem mixing with people that are different than me, but there's not much of an opportunity to really bond with them, and that's what's missing.

So here's the quandry: there are two churches that we're considering, and that makes for some interesting problems. I like to serve, and I like people (usually). At Willow Creek, it's a freakin' monstro church. There are serving opportunities galore, and it's a very art-friendly church. They have great music, great preaching, great drama, even great set design. However, we have attempted serving there, and A) people either don't care to get to know you or they are just difficult to connect; and B) they're REALLY disorganized. Both issues would likely be less of an issue in a production environment (sound or music or drama), but it's a bit of a challenge to get into those groups.

Harvest Bible Chapel is also a great church. It's a lot more organized, and Heidi has a lot of friends there, which would make it easier for me to get friendships going. The music is pretty good, the preaching is freakin' AMAZING, but they're not particularly creativity-friendly. Neither of us have really "served" there, but from what I understand, they are much better at administration and thinking through things before they're implemented. I could certainly do sound at that church, and I'd be pretty good with it (and they do have a really nice sound board). And doing that, I'd probably hook up with some good geeks. Their small groups are much easier to get into, and the church, while still pretty big, is of a much more manageable size. But it's still a church in which creativity is somewhat stifled, and that's a huge bug up my craw.

So that's where we stand right now. It's becoming more of an issue, because, for the first time in my adult life, I find myself sitting around and watching TV because we're bored (as opposed to watching a freakin' fantastic show that I would pay to see). Meh, I'm sure it'll come together eventually, but it's a bit of a quandry.

The Big Flu

This weekend, I had the worst bout of stomach flu I've had in my adult life. It could have been food poisoning, but everybody I was with came out of it fine, and I was still pretty quivery the next couple days (up to today), so not sure what-all can be made of it.

In any case, I went to a brew at Mattox's place, and hung out with him and some other folks, and had some good chat time. It was my first time witnessing an all-grain brew, and it was certainly fun to watch. It will likely be fun to actually do one of these days, but we'll see what happens. Afterwards, Heidi and I met some other folks (Richard and Libby and a friend of theirs) for dinner at Red Rooster, a fabulous French restaurant in the city (I cannot recommend this place highly enough, even considering the rest of this story). Afterwards, we went to a party that Tracy and Kristin were having at their place, which seemed a lot more fun than I was able to appreciate. About twenty minutes into a good conversation with one of the guys there, I was pretty sure I was going to be sick. I figured we should go, as throwing up in a friend's bathroom during a party... not so good. It was good we went when we did, as we weren't even out of the city before I had to stop to take care of my dirty sinful business in a Jewel bathroom. Before we got home, I needed to puke again in a church parking lot. Over the next five hours, I ended up eliminating pretty much everything that was in me, out of whichever orifice was most convenient. I'm still a little achy from the violence of the sickness, but feeling significantly better.

As we were heading home from my mom's last night, Heidi said, "Well, except for the puking and the vomiting and the nausea and the explosive diarrhea, it was a pretty good weekend." I couldn't agree more.

Clothe Our Naked Tree Day

We had our first party in our new place yesterday, and it was a raging success. Heidi traditionally throws really good Christmas parties, and I'm good with supplementary planning, so between the two of us, we had the place decked out for a good party. But the proof is not in our hands. The people at the party had a fantastic time, many of them staying for about a half hour after they said, "We have to go." We have a few Chicago friends who showed up, and they get the A for effort; driving from Chicago to Schaumburg in weekend traffic to Capitalism-land before Christmas is a trip not to be undertaken lightly. The bulk of the party were Heidi's friends for church/school/whatever and my Mensa friends.

Heidi's traditional centerpiece for her parties is the undending supply of cookies, and her wassail (apple cider with cinnamon, allspice, orange, orange peel, cranberry juice, red wine, and a few other bits n peices in there). Matt brough over the remains of the champagne he made for the wedding, and we had the chocolate fountain out for the first time. We're good with a spread individually; together we are nigh unstoppable.

We started with a relatively naked tree. It had a few lights up, and a ribbon, and three ornaments. Most people brought an ornament (really nice ones, too!) and put them on. This is awesome, because now we have a lot of ornaments to use year after year, but also we have memories that will be with us decades from now, with each ornament we put up. It's humbling to have a tree with so much love and care on it.

So yeah, first party, a heck of an accomplishment.

Officially a Suburbanite

I like the city. I miss being in the city. Whenever I go into the city, I want to be there for a while. It's the vibe, the closeness, the depth of the place. Moving out to the suburbs was a change of pace, one that was not particularly welcome, but made a lot of sense at the time. I do love the home we've created, one that we couldn't have created in the city for twice what we're paying now, but it's in the 'burbs.

I figured I'd be able to maintain a tie to the city by staying at First Free, my church in the city. But the sense of community was difficult to maintain when I was living there, and being this far out, it would be borderline impossible. As if to say a semi-permanent "goodbye" to the city, we've officially decided to go to Willow Creek, a much more local-to-us church (and I believe it to be the largest church in the world as far a building square footage). It's a great church for creative people, but small group community is practically essential with a population greater than some towns. I'm hoping it will be less of a challenge to maintain friendships here; meh, we'll see what happens.

Fortunately, like most suburbanites, both Heidi and I like going into the city. Unfortunately, it's going to be a challenge to maintain the city-relationships I do have, as city folk tend to fear the suburbs. Two of the most adventurous people I know in the city both said, on separate occasions, "Here there be dragons" about areas pretty darn close to where I now live.

Sure, the best relationships will stay, because that what good friends do, but I expect to lose touch with a lot of people whose company I really enjoy. Admittedly, I'll be creating new relationships at the new place, but I guess I'm just not ready to let go of the old ones.

So my last real tie to the city is gone, one that I've had since I moved to the Chicago area. I'll miss it. A lot. Might as well buy an SUV now.

On the weekend

I've been trying to figure out how to write about the weekend, yet it's difficult as this weekend had a lot of stuff going on, and not much time to write. I'll hit some pertinent points. I'd like to expand on them, but there's that time thing.

Saturday:
I watched Cinderella Man while I was working on the Reception party favors. I remember a theatre was offering a refund of the ticket price if you didn't like the movie. It was that good, and that unnoticed. I still didn't see it in the theatres (more for time reasons than anything else), but thought it was funny that Russell Crowe was playing a boxer (due to the stories that he beat up paparazzi). But here's the thing about Russell Crowe: he's a phenomenal actor. I have never seen a Russell Crowe movie that I didn't like, and most of the ones I've seen, I love. This is one of them. It's the true story of Jim Braddock, a boxer in the depression. It's really about his struggle from one of the rising stars of boxing to complete failure at almost everything, to his struggle back into a lucrative, if dangerous, profession. I might write more about it later, we'll see.

Anyway, Heidi's bridal shower was Saturday, and I wasn't planning on going (as it's a chick thing), but it became expected of me. We got a good haul from the loot, and we ate a good meal. But it ended up being freakin' exhausting, which led to a nap.

In the evening we wanted to relax, so we sat down to watch Everything is Illuminated. I didn't even hear about this movie until it was on DVD, but it was really good. It's about Elijah Wood (wearing glasses that magnify is already freakin' enormous eyes), as Jonathan Somethingorother (not his actual name, but I can't remember it), a Jewish man who collects everything around him. He has a wall in his room where all the personal effects of his relatives are posted, but he doesn't really have anything of his grandfather (who passed away when Jonathan was very young) but an amber necklace. His grandmother, on her deathbed, gives him a picture of his grandfather, and another woman, who evidently helped them leave the Ukraine to come to America. He goes on a quest to the Ukraine to find out who this woman is, and is guided around by a very quirky grandfather and grandson. I can't go into much detail, but it's a brilliant film.

Sunday:
Went to church, our outdoor baptism service at Foster beach. The weather was the most beautiful I've seen in probably four years. The temperature was perfect, the sky had all these fluffy clouds where it wasn't pure blue, and there was a lot of wind. I like wind, a lot. I can't tell you why, but I love it. Eventually the wind died down, but it remained a perfect day. I had to stay down in the city, as we were playing D&D that evening, so I had a lot of time on my hands. I took an hour plus long walk along the Evanston path by the lake, and then went to see Little Miss Sunshine. I wanted to see The Illusionist, but it was playing an hour later.

Little Miss Sunshine was another fantastic movie, filled with unique and wonderful characters. There's a lot about this movie that I'm still processing, and I'll likely see it again several times, as there's a lot of depth that doesn't quite come across with the firt viewing, but most of the acting in it was complex and deep (Greg Kinnear doesn't do complex so well, but he's still a really charismatic presence). The evnts in the show are pretty predictable, once you understand what kind of movie it is, but the show isn't really about the events, it's more about the daughter in the show being the binding force in an otherwise dreadfully dysfunctional family.

D&D was a good time, hanging with some people that I don't get enough of a chance to be with. I really value my time with them, and we had some good fun times. A good D&D game should read like a good novel, and I think we're on a good plotline, which would read well.

So it was a successful, if busy, weekend.

On brewing mead

I don't really have much to say right now, but I figure it's been too long since I've posted. I'm healing from the seizure.

But I did want to post about a rockin' walkthrough of brewing mead at Mattox's blog. For those of you interested in brewing, read this.

The Value of Friendship

Every now and then, you have one of those deep, fine powerful conversations that really make you understand why God created us to be in community, and wondering why we so very rarely "get it." I had one of those conversations last night sitting in the Hopleaf with Heidi and Mattox. One of those conversations where the gates are truly opened. It was wonderful. First off, the Hopleaf has spectacular food and even better beer. It's always a culinary adventure going there, but combine that with a great conversation, and that makes the week just that much better.

We were able to discuss the ultimate computer virus, repeat Monty Python's The Argument Clinic, complain about politics, discuss theology, talk about Italy, and, finally, pray. Now I'm used to praying with friends, but it's usually much more shallow and what-can-I-get focused. I think as a direct result of the depth of our conversation, we were able to pray for much deeper things, much more "real" prayers. That evening meant a lot to me. I feel more grounded, more in touch with myself, and more in touch with God. I feel more "full" for lack of a better term.

Inaction Jackson

Introducing Jackson Cash Patterson. Yesterday one of my best friends had his first child (well, his wife did all the work). This is Jason holding his newest addition to the family. Heidi and I managed to get over to the hospital to see him, and that is one heck of a cute baby. A lot of kids, they're nice & all, but not necessarily the most precious thing on the face of the planet. I'm blessed with a lot of friends with truly cute kids. He was a little bit early, so he's small (6 lbs, 5 oz), but he's healthy and his parents are excited to be of the parental persuasion now.

Yay Patterson family!

Singin for dinner

We had Heidi's friend-birthday celebration last night (which was an interesting choice, because it also happens to be the birthday of three other friends of mine). There were a whole mess of Heidi's friends who I sort of know, my friends who Heidi sort of knows, and Matt, who we're both pretty close with (but has about 12 years more history with Heidi than I do). Fortunately, we're doing as pretty good job of making each other's friends our friends. Anwyay, this was done at a fun little Vietnamese place, that has cheap Asian knockoff Karaoke. It took them a while to actually bring out the English songlist, but we made do with what we had. I was a little uncomfortable with getting up and singing, but once I did (actually, once Lisa got up and did "Fame" very flamboyantly) the stopper was unplugged and I was in full-on ham mode. My best performance was probably "Sweet Child of Mine" with Dan, despite the fact that I don't particularly care for the song. Towards the end of the evening Matt sang a song he wrote called "You Have New Mail" sort of to the tune of "A Whole New World." He sang it intentionally off key, and it had been more fun reading the lyrics. But as Lisa was the catalyst to get the party started, Matt ended up being the catalyst to finish the evening at a reasonable time. But in all, it was a fantastic time.

There will actually be two more celebrations of Heidi's birthday, one with just her and me, and one with the family. I'll post more on those later.

The celebratory events

So the doctor found nothing. Hitting the neurologist next (well, after the dentist, but that's unrelated to the tired thing).

Anyway, Heidi's surprise was this romantic little hole-in-the-wall French place called Red Rooster, which I'd link to if I wasn't so damn lazy. It was arguably the best restaurant I'd ever been to in my life. I had pheasant for the first time in my life. I had a hard time actually speaking for a while, it was so good. I just bounced and hummed and sang to myself as I consumed gamey fowl and a little bite of Heidi's Salmon in Cabernet sauce. Yesterday, I had leftover duck liver pate for lunch. At my computer. While working. How messed up is that?

Anyway, last night was just as cool, but for different reasons. A whole mess of people that I knew from a whole mess of different avenues came round to Cleary's and we all had $3 Guinness or Boddington's and most of us had $4 burgers (and these were monstrously huge burgers). Too many people here to list, and it wouldn't make a great deal of sense to most of my readers anyway (even the people that were there, as a lot of the people don't know each other). One thing that bugs me though, the Pattersons are expecting, so they had to leave early. Schmutzy had to come in on the Eisenhower, so he came a bit late. Those guys would get along really well, because they both are really weird, but they keep missing each other. Meh, one of these days, they'll get to talking, if they have to wait until September 2nd.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! A little recap on what's been happening the past couple days: I had a friend in town recently, my friend Chris who was my first roommate in film school, and just finished a stint doing assistant edition on Curb Your Enthusiasm. One of the great things about that man is that we don't talk for a year or so, and when we do, we just pick up right where we left off. And that guy can talk! We talked about a lot of stuff, more-or-less focused around women and films. Unfortunately, I had spent most of the night before in the bathroom with stuff coming out from both ends. The initial theory was that I had food poisoning, but I felt feverish most of the day, and barely ate anything (I think all day I ate a kudos bar, a slice of Chicago-style pizza, and half a slice of pie). He and Heidi, both being extremely social, chatted away while I slept a good deal. But the kicker that it wasn't food poisoning came today. I just got up from 13 1/2 hours of sleep. Now, those who know my sleep patterns know that it's difficult for me to get a full 8 hours, and that I hardly ever sleep past 6am, even on days off. I just got out of bed at 10am, and that's from going to bed at 8:30. I'm still a little zonked, but that may have something to do with spending more than half a day in bed. The Kudos bar I had for breakfast isn't really sitting all that well, but I feel a little better than I did yesterday. So, I guess this is good proof against overeating during the holidays. I have a little bit of work that needs to happen over the next couple days, but damn if I feel like doing it.

Holidays

OK, for some reason I haven't been able to post correctly for a couple days. Anyway...

Every two months, the leaders in the church get together for what's called the "Big Picture," where our pastor explains what he'd going to be preaching on over the following few months, so we get his perspective, and can plan accordingly. Normally everybody brings a few bucks and we get bad pizza. This time around, it was a Thanksgiving meal with everybody bringing something, and they had just finished working on their kitchen, so we came to their home. That was freakin' awesome. It was family, getting together to eat and laugh and have fun, and just talk about crap. I've been thinking about this for a while now, but I'm really understanding this in a big way now: I'm digging the fact that it's the holidays.

Perhaps it's the contrast: Last year, the holidays were not so good. My dad had recently died, and I was in a job that I hated so much, but felt so trapped in that it regularly had me thinking about suicide. Since my family all reminded me of my dad, all I really wanted to do was avoid them. Not particularly good source material for a pleasant holiday season.

Now, I'm past the worst of my grief, I'm in a job that's "OK," and I'm in love. I'll have a good holiday time at the Fisher/Austin-plex, but I'll also be celebrating with the Chen household, so my effective family time (and size) has doubled.

I don't much care for the Christmas materialism thing, but I'm also excited about giving out heaps of gifts to friends and family, and getting cool things (I can almost see that Xbox 360 set up in the Altar of Entertainment).

There's also the holiday parties that are beginning to happen. Since my birthday falls betwixt Thanksgiving and Christmas, I can consider that a holiday as well (as there will be at least two celebrations of it). But really, I'm just looking forward to sitting back, drinking some red wine, eating some chocolate, and laughing with some of my best friends.

Yay!

Friends & Frustrations

So I was playing D&D yesterday, and I'm beginning to come to some conclusions I don't want to come to. Let me 'splain. This weekend was one of the best I've had since well before my dad died. Heidi and I acheived a new level in our relationship (I'll write more about that later), and when I was working at church the following morning, we were joking around about a guy with the initials of ASS not being able to have monogrammed underwear, especially on the front, because then it would be confusing. When I got to Richard's house, I was in the best and most playful and silliest mood I'd ever been when I met up with these people. It was wonderful. What followed was a series of personal attacks that I haven't experienced at such a level since early high school. I mean, seriously, there were attacks about my physical appearance (and I'm a fairly handsome man these days), my laugh (which usually brings me into a crowd, for some reason it tends to separate me from this crowd), a whole mess of really juvenile things. None of it was intended to bring me down, I'm sure, and perhaps the contrast from my emotional state when I got there magnified the whole deal, but it really ended up pissing me off. A lot. I stayed the whole evening, but didn't have much fun, and left tired and crappy. And it got me thinking. When I game with the Mensa crowd, I have fun, I feel energized, sometimes a little shagged out, but still alive and happy to have done so. When I game with my friend Jon, I leave wanting more. I have a lot of fun, we all are really happy to be together, we laugh together and it's great. I leave happy and excited. When I game with this crowd, I pretty much always leave tired and annoyed. I have to think about it a bit more, because these are all peole that I do like, ultimately, but I may end up leaving that group.

HalloweeM

Every Halloween weekend (or at least as close as we can get it, since Halloween is actually today), Chicago area Mensa has their weekend-long Regional Gathering, called HalloweeM (Mensans like to put capital M's in where they don't necessarily belong). This was a weekend that was conditionally exquisite. I showed up about 9:15am on Friday and the hotel allowed me to check in early, so I proceeded to do so. Friday, I spent the bulk of the day playing the Dual Dungeon Duel, which was a D&D geekfest in which two competing teams played in the same dungeon, and then were magically transported into a massive arena and beat the snot out of each other. There were a few exceptional players, one of which was seven years old. Many (most of them on the other team, fortunately) you kind of wondered why the hell they were gaming in the first place. Y'know, some people just don't have the temperament/mindset for imaginative gaming, and get really confused about it, and subsequently really offended when you try to kill them.

After the festivities, I hung out for a bit around the free food and beer, and then went back to my room to get ready for the costume parade. Being as obsessed with pirates as I have been as of late, I wanted to have a clever pirate outfit (which, of course, included growing my hair out about six weeks longer than I usually do, and avoiding shaving for a very long time). But in Mensa, it is expected that not only do you have a clever costume, but you must also have a clever pun to go along with it. I generally don't think in puns, but I tried. During the parade, I had a sign saying "Corn $1," so I was a buccaneer. I sold it primarily because I was being Mr. high-energy actor at the time. Anyway, Heidi (who had just worked a 14 hour day), came in briefly, so she could see the costume, but she left really early. One thing though, my other eye was open under that eyepatch, and that sucked. I had double vision for several hours once I removed that thing.

Heidi spent the day with me on Saturday, and we didn't do a whole lot. We played a lot of games, went to one lectutre that was insanely boring (before she showed up, I went to an interesting presentation on Snowboarding, but this one, the guy just didn't know how to work an audience). We got a lot of good talking in, and and danced the night away (my friend Howard was DJ, and he was catering to us, I think). But we talked a LOT that day, and achieved a good turning point in our relationship. Actually, I guess a better phrasing of that would be: I achieved a good turning point in my insecurities. It was a little weird for her, though. She's used to marketing conferences where everybody is smooth and attractive, and in this place, everybody is quirky, and some people are lonely and weird and have no social graces at all. She, being an attractive young-looking Asian woman, got eyes from a lot of people and a number of comments that I'm very glad I was not in earshot of, otherwise there would have been trouble. That's the thing with Mensa. You meet a LOT of really cool, really unique people, many of which are fun as all hell. But with really unique comes the others, and there is a fairly high concentration of those.

Sunday, I left 'weeM early and Heidi and I hung out again and did a whole lot of nothing. We watched the best Singaporean movie ever, and that's not saying much. It was good, I enjoyed it, but it seemed like a really good student film. But in all, Heidi and I used this weekend wisely and got a lot closer. Life is good. Love is good. Mensa is weird, but I love so many people there, it kicks abundant ass.

Rhythm

For Mensa, I organize an event called The Long and Winding Crawl. Effectively, it's just going out and drinking at places around town. Last night we went to this place I wanted to go out and drink at for a long time, a place called Rhythm, which is either a bar with a drum-circle theme, or a drum-circle establishment with a bar built in so they can make a living keeping the place open. In any case, it was a huge kick in the pants. This is me bringing my and Heidi's drum down from the rack into the drum pit. People were quite pleased at my apprent new-found chestiness, so Dave, who shall henceforth be named Schmutzy, due to an inside joke that happened during a game of St. Petersburg several months ago, took this picture. Jeni, the drum queen/dancing dervish, took the picture below of me, Schmutzy, and Heidi (who's peeking in from my left, your right) while we were banging upon our drums. Today, my hands hurt. But I fully intend to go back there because that was such a hugely entertaining time.