Far more than half, obviously, but I figured in light of the protest over the last post I'd pick a less obscure lyric for this one's title. It's Mostly Unrelated Thoughts With Bullet Points time again, kids! Yay and yay (and yay)!

• Monday night Matt and I played one of the most fun concerts we've played in our time as CST, made all the more fun by the fact that we fully expected it to be at best an okay show. We were playing for the Coralville Farmer's Market, which generally means a couple of people are actually watching but mostly you're providing background music for the shopping multitudes. So we didn't concern ourselves overmuch with details like determining a set list or showing up early to set up or run through anything; we were expecting a low-key hour and a half or so of running through some tunes.
  
  Instead, though, the show turned into a little EWALU reunion by the Aquatic Center. By the time we were half an hour into our set there were 10 former EWALU staffers there, covering all the summers from '93 to '05 between them. Several people Matt and I hadn't seen for a very long time, too - if only for that it would have been a really fun evening. But on top of that we were playing for an audience that was (or at least seemed to be) really familiar with and into our music, and that's sort of an unusual treat for us; we're usually playing for a few close friends and several people who have no idea who we are. It's a lot of fun to have people singing along (and at least a couple of those attendant could have taken over vocal duties on most of our songs, I think). Sort of reminded me of the crowds at Legends when Storyhill would come to Waverly, although that's probably a bit over-hubristic. So thanks very much, if any of you concert-goers read this blog - the evening turned into quite a treat for Matt and I.
  
  
• Un-cool-ly, I was trying to sing the whole time through a badly scratchy throat that I've been dealing with for about three weeks now. If I had any symptoms other than coughing and voice raspitude I'd think I had bronchitis, but I'm sure it's just some sort of persistant cold probably exacerbated by fall allergies. It sucked immensely Monday night, though - my high range was a full fifth lower than it usually is and a lot of the CST repertoire requires me to use the far upper end of my vocal range. Yet another reason it was good the audience was already familiar with the music, I guess. By the end of the show I could barely talk. Then yesterday morning I had my full range back and I thought I'd come up with a new miracle cure - Having trouble with losing your voice? Force yourself to sing for two and a half hours anyway! But now it's as bad as it's ever been again, so apparently my career as a miracle cure inventor will need to wait a bit longer yet.
  
  
• Also un-cool-ly (indeed, far more un-cool-ly), for the last several months I've also had a great deal of trouble convincing my left hand that playing guitar is fun. Now, I'll admit that the left hand doesn't have a very glamorous job in the guitar-playing process. It doesn't get to actually make any noise or execute fancy flourishes like the right hand does, it just gets to press down thin metal wires, which is apparently unpleasant enough that it requires developing thick callouses to deal with. It starts out as the primary hand - beginning guitar players focus exclusively on the fretting hand - but eventually gets pushed back to secondary importance as the guitarist realizes that the right hand is the one actually making the music. So I'm not saying I don't empathize, but I think my left hand's passed beyond merely dissatisfied and into active rebellion and I find that uncool. For a while the hand was just fatiguing more quickly than it used to, but then it decided that wasn't a strong enough message and starting throwing in the occasional shooting pain across the back of the hand (only when I was playing guitar, though - apparently that's the thing that angers it most). Just this last summer it threw complete lock-ups into the mix, wherein my left fingers just sort of freeze for a while (that's only happened twice, thankfully). Now I certainly won't claim that the guitar-playing world at large would experience any sense of loss if I gave into my hand and stopped playing, but I sort of enjoy it so I hope that eventually my hand and I can come to some sort of accord. I've considered buying a left-handed guitar and learning to play that way to placate my left hand, but I'm afraid that would just make my right hand angry at me instead.
  
  I hope Mom still never reads this blog...
  
  
• Allow me to point your attention again to the NEW LINKS over in the LinkyList on the right. I notice that no one has yet written a review for Folksinging or Second Whisper and that people are reading the CST forum but not chiming in (or starting threads - really, people, anything at all you'd like to talk about). C'mon - putting your opinions on the Internet is fun! Particularly I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on the Folksinging issue on the forum.
  
  
• This is a really well-written blog entry. I completely agree, Carrie. Hooray for the passing of summer weather!
  
  
• It wasn't all that long ago that it was very simple being a Hawkeye football and Cubs baseball fan. You entered the season prepared to take deep satisfaction in whatever the team was prepared to offer. "Well, we lost 9 games - but remember when we almost beat Michigan?" "No team in the history of the game blew more leads in the ninth inning than we did this season - but wasn't it fun to watch Sosa hit 66 home runs?" Now both teams have become teams that are expected to do well, and I find that emotionally problematic. The Cubs are having an entirely Cub-like season this year, but because they were supposed to have the best pitching staff in the Major Leagues and a save-the-world caliber manager and therefore win the National League Central and make it to the World Series I'm very disappointed in how the season's gone. Once upon a time Derrek Lee's breakout year would have been good enough for me. The Hawkeyes are being picked in at least the top fifteen by every poll that's been released, and therefore I'm already primed to be disappointed if they don't make it to (and win) another New Year's Day bowl game. Anyone have any suggestions for some consistently underachieving sports teams I can root for?
  
  
• And finally, an amusing anecdote from my workplace. The computers on the inpatient units at the UIHC are out in places on the floor where people often walk by and can see the screens, and apparently there was an issue recently where a patient's family member walked by a computer that had been left with a browser window open to some sort of women-in-swimwear-oriented website. They found that inappropriate and said as much to someone in the administration, and so in typical University fashion swift and decisive action was taken - a screen saver was put on all the computers reminding staff to (and I quote) "Restrict surfing to offensive or objectionable websites."
  
  I search in vain for a closing quip to top that.
  

A couple of business items before I get down to the business of musing. As a compromise between accomodating those of you who've requested another "name that quote" game and those of you who've mocked me for using "name that quote" games as a way to duck having to actually write some sort of interesting content, for the remainder of my posts in 2005 (I've got 38 to go if I'm going to meet my once-a-week goal - yeep. I may have to Jason Fox my way through some of them) - or at least until I get tired of playing - the post title will be a lyric from either a Central Standard Time or a Storyhill or a Beatles song. You, oh Gentle Readers, get to play the name-the-lyric game with every post while still having something content-ful to read every month and a half or so! Exciting, exciting stuff; let it not be said we here at Meaningless Musings don't try to provide our readership with what it's asking for. Plus I just got to list CST with Storyhill and the Beatles, which I found immensely cool.

Also, you may notice there are a few new links over in the list-o-links to the right. Central Standard Time's music is finally available for purchase through a medium less cumbersome than printing out an order sheet, mailing it in with a check, and waiting for several weeks for us to remember to mail you your CD - Second Whisper and Folksinging are both available for sale through CD Baby. It remains to be seen, I guess, whether that'll actually translate into significantly more sales, but certainly it should simplify the process; I've bought a dozen or so CDs from CD Baby and been extremely impressed with how quick and easy to work with they are. If you'd be so kind, Matt and I would appreciate it much if you'd click on the links, check out the site (thus increasing our traffic, which CD Baby uses to help determine which of their albums are popular and therefore worth recommending), and write a brief review or two. And, you know, if you feel moved to actually buy a copy...

There's also a link to the new Central Standard Time discussion forum. I'm immensely curious to see how this turns out; I stumbled across it last night as I was looking through the administration page for our website to see what sorts of nerdly programming dealies (that's the technical term) the site supports with an eye towards putting a guestbook on the site. All that was required was to activate the forum page - it's part of the package deal we're paying for through the web hosting company. So stop on by and sign up for a username. It's very low-impact; they ask for an e-mail adress and your name and a username. I'm assured that none of it will ever come back to haunt you as spam, but if you're nervous there's no checkup system to assure that you're entering a valid e-mail adress or name. Let's see if we can't make it an interesting discussion forum. Any topic's free game, although I suppose Matt and I should probably reserve the right to censor anything egregiously offensive.

Thanks muchly. We now return you to your regularly scheduled post.

This is the first week after the end of summer camp up at EWALU (an aside here, just because this misspelling seems to be gaining credibility and if you can't rant about something like this on your own blog what's the point of blogging in the first place? Somehow the word "EWALU" has lost its identity as a cool acronym and is being widely misspelled "Ewalu." This is nothing short of wrong and should be fiercely mocked whenever you come across it. Thanks) and for the first time in seven years I feel a very strong, sharp sense of loss with the passing of the summer. I wasn't on staff this summer but I was around as much as possible. I spent a full week as a camp grandpa and another half-week after my whitewater(ish) rafting trip with Mark and a couple more isolated Wednesday nights, soaking up the experience of being back in the middle of a camp summer and trying to be helpful where I could. It was very weird for me to be at camp without a clearly defined role; I'm sure I ended up being in the way more often than I was actually helpful and I had to constantly ignore Rule 7 from The Introvert's Handbook ("Always assume people don't want you around") or I never would have interacted with anyone, since I didn't have any responsibilities that could provide initial interactions. It was painfully awkward and yet still completely worth the social discomfort. I'd forgotten how astoundingly, wonderfully, downright freaking awesome summer camp is. Being back out in the woods and singing the old songs again and watching the counselors with their kids and spending time with the kids myself and watching the magical social environment that a Christian community of college students creates was as energizing and recharging for me as it ever was. More so, even, since I wasn't coming to camp from a college environment that was almost as neat-o; I'm sure I drove the staff nuts talking about how much I'd missed being there.

This summer's was a very good staff, too. Extremely extremely good. Remarkably, they're also almost all first-year staff; a big crew of long-timers all finished their tours of duty last summer and turned things over to a bunch of rookies. Hopefully this group will end up being the next group of long-timers, because they're a really impressive bunch of Bible camp staffers.

And now the summer's over. If I go up to camp tonight I won't get to see the mime and hang out and watch Jesse play guitar with the summer staff at the Wednesday night all-camp campfire (Jesse had no problems with feeling awkward as a non-staffer being at camp - or at least he didn't let them stop him from jumping right in, if he did. I was immensely jealous of that) and sit around the remnants of the fire afterward talking until far too late. If I go up tomorrow there won't be a hoedown to play for. The staff is on their way back to college, and I don't even get to do that. Instead I'm back at work now, sitting in a clean, air-conditioned building with people who've all showered in the past 24 hours and who would look at me like I was crazy if I broke out into a song about what sorts of sounds a little green frog might or might not be expected to make. I'm also back in a world where what I do is more important than who I am and a world where the job is only done because of the money. The real world, I know, but it doesn't make me miss the one I was around any less. Greg's latest post describes the feeling very well, I think. And much more articulately.

On the other hand, though, I certainly didn't come away from my sort-of summer empty-handed. In just the few days I was there I made some new friends, learned a bunch of new camp songs (most of which I wouldn't replace any of the old catalog with if I was planning a worship service at camp (which I'll be doing in only a month and a half - yay and yay!), but a few of which were pretty catchy), got as close to a tan as my Norwegian heritage will allow - and re-learned a lot of things about myself that EWALU taught me once and I'd started to forget. Being an EWALU staffer is the one thing in my life that have no hesitation about saying I was good at. For four summers I was one of the leaders on staff and I got to go to bed at night knowing that I'd been part of making the campers' experience that much better. Even though there are only a few people around the place that remember those summers and even through the awkwardness of not really having a role it was still immensely good for me to be able to slip back into some of those old mental pathways. My attitude here at the hospital is much better (although I'm sure this place will grind me down again, given time), I've gone from thinking I'd probably resign as a youth director this fall to being extremely excited to try again to build the program and do some effective ministry in spite of the bureaucracy. I wake up smiling these days; I didn't do that back in May. If that's what a total of maybe a dozen days at camp as a non-staffer can do for me, I definitely need to figure out a way to log summer #7 on staff one of these soon-upcoming years. And maybe #8 and #9.

Smarmy, yes, but it's exciting stuff for me. I'll post more details of my vacation trips sometime later on (I have, after all, 38 more posts to post before Greg's birthday); this one I wanted to be more about the end of summer. If anyone from this summer staff is reading this, thank you for letting me be part of EWALU again. And I hope you're planning on being back in 2006.