Trying to fit the Ocean in a Cup

Sounds, cool, doesn't it? Its from a song by Josh Wilson. He was the opener for Big Daddy Weave on Thursday. The song talks about trying to find words for God, to describe him is like trying to fit the ocean in a cup. I rather liked that comparison.

I started out Thursday morning by getting off work - at 1 a.m. I headed for home knowing I had much to do and needed to sleep sometime. Sleep ended up being an illusion. I managed to make it to bed between 3:30-4 a.m., which is earlier than I often get to bed, so sleeping wasn't happening real quickly. Finally I dozed off and too soon woke to my alarm set for a few minutes before 7. I needed sleep, so I set the alarm rather last minute and hoped to get out the door quickly. It almost happened -- almost. I figured I'd end up being a few minutes late, but close to 8 a.m. if traffic allowed. I had to drive about 45 minutes or so. After all, I reasoned to myself, it did snow and most likely the bus wouldn't be exactly there on time. They rarely are. We were supposed to be serving a full breakfast, which accounted for the early hour. I managed to get everything loaded into my car that I needed to take. I have a two door car with a convertible top, so I put the top down to make loading easier. The top decided not to go quite all the way down. I literally had to use all the force I could muster. 20 minutes later, I had the top up on my car, but the back window wouldn't go up. Fortunately after a couple of tries, the window finally went up and I was on the road. Now I was REALLY late, but I tried not to panic. I got on the road and made a call to let the person I was working with about my expected tardiness, and she hadn't even left yet. She lives further away from the venue than I do. I kept myself calm knowing somehow things had always worked out in the past, and that usually full breakfasts end up being brunch anyway. LOL Still, I made incredibly good time on the road and arrived a little before 8:30 which I could NOT believe. Lynn arrived shortly after with a few others. We were scrambling to get breakfast ready. There was no word from the bus yet, which meant they still weren't too close. AS it turned out we got word that the bus would be there about noon just as I was getting ready to cook up some scrambled eggs, so I decided to wait until they were closer before cooking them. We were well into fixing breakfast, so we just decided to start on lunch and serve both meals simultaneously. At noon, just as I was finishing up scrambling the eggs, the word came. They're here! :)

It was a fun and busy time of putting out food, serving, and meeting everyone. Everyone in the tour was extremely nice and polite and gracious, and thanked us lots for the food mostly with really cool southern accents. I don't think they could believe all of the food. LOL

After "brunch" we cleaned up a little and did some prep for dinner. Then I took a bit of a break and took a few snapshots with my point and shoot and found my seat for the evening, front row and just right of center. I think a few chairs were added and I was ended just a little more centered than when I started out, though.

Before long we were setting up for dinner. Dinner was at 5 p.m. and I could not believe how quickly the day was going. After we served dinner, and did a little clean up, I ditched the kitchen and went out to watch the concert. Just before the show started, one of the guys with security asked if that was my seat and I said "yes" so he said come with me. My first thought was, "uh oh, what did I do." LOL As it turned out, Josh Wilson wanted me to record his song, "Savior Pleas" on his little mini recorder. (I haven't done much video. I hope it turned out o.k. LOL I was a bit nervous about it.)

The concert itself was awesome as always. Josh demonstrated what a looping pedal can do, and sang 4 or 5 songs before Big Daddy Weave took the stage. Mike Weaver has a way of making worship fun and meaningful at the same time and that is one thing I have always appreciated about Big Daddy Weave (which isn't just Mike!) LOL I did my best to get some photos, although I was having some issues with clarity and exposure. You think by now I'd remember to check the ISO settings, but I didn't, so for most of the concert I was shooting at ISO 400. That means, basically, the shutter speeds were slower, so the pics weren't as sharp. I also had issues with my usually trustworthy 100mm lens focusing a couple of times and it even gave me an error message once (take out the battery, putting it back in worked.) Hopefully I will find some decent shots in the next day or two and add them in, so keep checking.

After the concert was over, I took pics of a friend from church with her friend who was in a wheel chair, so they let her at the front of the line. Then I went to visit and went back to the kitchen. I told Lynn not to worry about clean up and to leave whenever she wanted and I would finish up. Then I went and took pics of several people with Josh, bought his cd, and waited a while for a pic with him and then tried to get pics with the Big Daddy Weave guys and almost succeeded. LOL As it turned out, the guy in charge of maintenance (who does an outstanding job, btw)encouraged me to just leave everything as is for the cleaning crew coming in the next day so that the building could be cleared in a timely fashion. So, I loaded my car, helped a little with loading for someone else, and headed for home with Jimmy Eat World keeping me awake. I made a quick stop to my P.O. Box to find an Ace Enders cd I didn't recall ordering (was it a preorder at a show? It seems like I might have done that, but it was a long time ago.) At any rate, I am too blessed.

The only downside to the day, really (other than the car top incident) was that I was overtired and made a few comments I shouldn't have that came out even worse than intended. My apologies if I was stupid and rude to anyone. Sometimes when I'm really tired I should just bring a zipper. LOL O.K. That just gave me an idea. If it ever comes to fruition, I'll blog about it. ;)

Hope everyone has a good and restful week.

Peace out,
Melanie