fun with wheelchairs and video games

Mark's house got so fun this year.

Not that it wasn't fun last year because I did enjoy constantly playing basketball and watching American Idol.

Here are the four reasons Mark's house is awesome: slack line, Wii, guitar hero, wheelchairs.

Now I will educate you on these things. A slack line is this flat rope tied between two trees that people try to walk and balance on. Sort of like a tight rope I guess, but the slack line is only a few feet off the ground.

I remember seeing hippie kids at KU doing slack lines on campus sometimes. But now there's one in my own (not really my own but sort-of) backyard. The thing is, I'm awful at slack line. I can't even really stand on it on my own, much less walk across it. But it's fine because other people like Mark and Max, or Marx and Mack as Rachel Cavanaugh and I call them, are really good at slack lining. Those hippies.

Moving on, one of Mark's new roommates Steve brought his video game systems with him--the Wii and PlayStation 2 with Guitar Hero. I've actually only played the Wii once and I haven't played his Guitar Hero yet, but I forsee myself playing these games a lot in the near future. Especially when it's too cold to play outside.

Finally, my favorite part of Mark's house is the wheelchairs. Mark is storing crutches and wheelchairs for this organization called Crutches for Africa. So naturally, we are constantly playing on the wheelchairs on Mark's back porch. The other night I mastered the wheely, which was an exciting moment in my life. Last night was the best though.

The Gager brothers and Lantz were over so the four of us were wheelchairing together. Then someone had the idea that we should make a train of wheelchairs. Then we decided to take the train out to the street. We escaped out of the fence and headed up the dark street. When we got to a satisfactory spot, we all hooked on to each other and started our train down street.

But then a car came. We all got freaked out and the train broke as we all pulled to the side of the road. Meanwhile the hippie guys that just moved onto the street came out of the house and were all watching us as we tried to get away from all the commotion. It was awesome.

Basically, I never realized how fun playing on wheelchairs could be. I'm not sure if that's wrong or not either. Hmmm... But anyway, they're so fun that playing on them was the highlight of my birthday I think.

Speaking of my birthday, it was sweet. Saturday night we went to dinner with the staff, and Sunday the Wysockis made dinner and dessert and peoples came over.

I love those peoples. It was fun.

So I'm 25 now. That's weird. I feel about 18. Maybe. Also I need to note that one of my favorite birthday presents was a Bayside Tigers t-shirt from Angie. It is awesome. Good work Ang. And thanks to everyone else that gave me cool presents too.

Anyway all that to say this year is going great and I am loving it. But I've already said that probably. I gotta get ready to leave for my birthday dinner at the Gagers now...holla!

the fall: past and present

I'm tired today because I stayed up an extra 45 minutes or so last night looking at my old high school yearbooks. Mostly the one from senior year. This decision is a result of a few recent occurrences.

The first is that I went into Mr. Goodcents the other day (still not the same without Emjo), and I was wearing my Ted Drewes shirt. The guy at the counter says to me, "Oh are you from St. Louis?" So I said yeah and long story short the dude graduated a year behind me at Kirkwood High School. Weird. I didn't recognize him or his name though.

However when I was watching a Jay Leno that Mark had on his DVR the other night I did recognize someone. People from the show went to some comedy festival and had several different comedians tell a joke or say something funny for the camera. One of them turned out to be Nikki Glaser, who also graduated a year behind me at Kirkwood and apparently is making her way as a comedian these days. Weird, because she never struck me as all that funny. Oh, and she went to KU. Oh, and we were in To Kill A Mockingbird together in middle school. Awesome.

But I was mostly looking at my yearbook because I miss high school. I know I wrote about this a few months ago, so I won't really get into it completely. But lately I've been going to sports game after sports game and watching boys ask girls to homecoming and going to youth group and listening to first driving stories and I remember how freaking sweet high school was.

Last night especially hit me because I went to the Ralston Valley football game (on a Thursday night--weird, I know) and they were playing this team mostly made up of black players, which is rare for this area. And as insignificant as it seems, that little detail made me miss high school in St. Louis--especially high school football games in the fall.

I think I miss the simplicity of high school life. We had four years of high school, and when it was over, I knew I'd be in college for another four (or five) years. There were no decisions to really worry about. Well, most people worried about college I guess but I don't think I really did. Anyway I guess since I'm about to turn 25 I feel all these little pressures and worries that normal people don't have in high school. Like, when are you gonna get married? What are you gonna do next year? Why do you only have like 3 friends your own age and is that bad? You know, things like that.

I try to remember though, that those are mostly society pressures and I don't care about this so called "society" and what they think of me.

That being said, let me show you how sweet the beginning of the year has been.

That's me and Smiley, one of our junior boys at Junior High youth group the other night. We called this night banana night, which included an interview with "Banana Boy,"

A couple up front games of kids shoving bananas in their mouths,


as well as "Steal the Banana" and "Ultimate Banana."

Oh man. It was awesome. Especially since we all went to a high school volleyball game after that and Alan was still wearing the banana costume. I think there's like a prerequisite of being sort-of a weirdo in order to be a good youth leader. I'm fine with it.

Wednesday high school youth group was sweet too because it was "Man vs. Wild" night. You should really go watch the video Mark made from the night at www.youtube.com/highpointstuff because it was amazing. My favorite part, which you'll notice in the video, was when the students had to make "shelters" out of cardboard boxes and then see if the shelters could withstand the elements, which basically meant us pouring buckets of water on them and then shooting fans at them. I took great joy in getting them soaked.

I've lived here a little over one year now, and I can't imagine what it would be like to leave. I'm so blessed. And I'll leave it at that for now.

Satisfied Mark?