Triple Helix

tony, unfortunately, is out w/ the flu and a fever. he made the attempt to wake this morning, but just wasn't able to. who can blame him? so the charge was set on me to get triple helix under way.

i got to church around 10am est and settled the kids down to practice. at first, we just kind of chatted, talked about what was going to happen that day and what was going on w/ tony.

finally, we started practicing. but my actors kept on having giggling fits and couldn't run through it once w/o giggling or out right laughting. it wasn't until around 11am est that they really buckled down and gave me two solid run throughs.

after joyce rejoined us from changing, we prayed a bit and waited for the madarins to finish up. the first few minutes that we were through the door was a mad house. i was runing between the sanctuary and our room getting chairs. i then had to run back to pastor andy's office to get a little cart. the stage, if you could call it that, wasn't what was ideal, but it was what we had to work with. throughout most of the service, i was anxious and excited for my actors. partly because i get to see one of my babies grow up and become a real production and secondly, to fulfill one of dave's visions for the drama team.

the performance was good. the only real issues were the voice projection. even in the front row, i had a difficult time hearing them, and they were mic'd too! this isn't entirely their fault. the mic's that they used weren't designed for this sort of task and thus are not suited for picking up a wide area of sound. the other issue was that crystal spoke a little fast. this was an issue during practice, but there wasn't much that we could do in such a short time frame.


soul purpose

after lunch, soul purpose met as it normally did. half the team was gone because of family, but i made my announcement anyway: soul purpose is splitting. those that were there took it a little better than i had expected. there were still the initial questions, but there wasn't as much resistance to the decision as i thought there would be.

afterwards, i tried teaching the kids about motivation and character's backstory. finding a motivation is difficult, i understand, but when asked for their character's movtivations, there were giving me descriptions of what the character was doing. after a few minutes, i started getting some headway, but i still wasn't getting verbs. the best i could get were adjectives.

not being able to think of a better way to explain it, i tried working on character backstories instead. again, i was getting very shallow answers from all my actors. frustrated, i started asking them individually, their life stories in an effort to get their minds thinking and working. it eventually became a time of sharing because i felt bad that i had asked only one person to share, so we went around and had everyone share. i felt bad, because i actually spent the most time on my story. not that my story was any "better" than any of the others, but there's just so much to it.

the sharing was excellent. it was very deep and meaningful, and i was impressed by the level of trust among the members that were there. although there were only six of us there, we spent over an hour sharing. at the end, i was convinced that the split was the right thing to do, if not for the sharing alone.


rockaway mall

after sp, q, todd, and i went to rockaway mall. at first, we wanted to go to palisades, but by the time we got there, we figured the mall would be closing soon.

the first place we hit up was electronic boutique. we were going to go to claire's to see if i could find a choker, but there were too many girls there at the time and forgoed it. at eb, q was looking for a new game or two for his gc. of course, i kept on looking at the new ridge racer box. i also showed todd the final fantasy x-2 strategy guide and showed him the girls. q eventually decided on getting ikugara, this vertical shooter.

we walked the rest of the mall, not really in search of anything. i stopped by hot topic to see if they had any chokers, but the only ones they had either had spikes or studs in them.

q stopped by babbage's and picked up a copy of super monkey ball 2. while he was there, todd and i fooled around w/ the xbox version of lotr return of the king. i had experience w/ the game, so i didn't have that much trouble w/ it.

on the way out of the mall, i stopped by cvs to get me some lip balm. my lips have been excruciatingly dry and cracked for too long, and i just wasn't going to take it anymore. at first, i couldn't find it. i was walking around the woman's cosmetics, but to no avail. this woman happened to over hear us and our quest for lip balm and kindly brought us to the lip balm section. i decided to pick up a stick of blistex pro relief. it contains vitamin E + C and spf 15. it was 3$ usd.

we stood outside the food court a while, trying to see if there was anything else that needed to be quested for. q was successful in his quest, as was i, although i failed at finding a choker. todd had nothing to quest for, so we decided to go to claire's and check it out. too bad they didn't have any i liked.

todd finally relented, and confessed that he was looking for audio cd's. we took him to the fye under protest that he was already bidding on them on ebay. of course, we didn't find what he was looking for. in failure, we left.

on the way out, q commented that he wanted to hit up an auntie ann's. but the stand was on the other side of the mall. i suggested that we hit up cinnabun instead. fearing that we wouldn't be able to finish entire cinnabuns, q and i split these cinnamini's which were just tiny cinnabuns w/ frosting on the side.

q had originally thought that we would be eating at the mall, but i suggested that we go back to my place because i had left overs. it turned out that i didn't have that many left overs. there was a bit of spaghetti and sauce. the guys ate the spaghetti which was alright 'cause i thought i could make more. after the water boiled, i looked in my pantries for any sort of long pasta and failed. i eventually decided to just toss in a bag of ramen w/o the flavoring packets. when the ramen was done, i added the meat sauce to it and tossed it in the microwave. it came out looking really nasty. todd described it looking like "bloody brains". although it looked kind of nasty, it tasted really good. i would argue that it tasted better than regular spaghetti.