friday night i went to a get-together at the Fox and Hound for carlos’s (the crazy mescan) farewell. he’s leaving the country, going back to colombia to live like a king. there were actually a *ton* of people who showed up; we had three tables, one of them looong with like 25 seats. all of the usual suspects were there: embry (carlos’s gf), brandon, cody, eric, marni, jerry (who antagonized, as usual, our waitress to no end ;-p) and jen, kevin and alecia, and several others, including a buttload of people from newman. i also saw fred (guy with the goofiest/loudest laugh i’ve ever heard who’s an old friend of eric’s) and his fiancee, who apparently works at dollar-rent-a-car. interestingly enough, she knew kelley pretty well as he worked there for several years, before coming down to the CP. small world and all that. anyway, we all had fun, and wished carlos well. he’s definitely leaving a lot of friends behind — but of course goodbyes aren’t forever… ‘los said he’s coming back to visit for new year’s and graduation.

then later on that night i helped out as a sponsor for this lock-in at our church. i drove out to matt’s house and saw a gajillion kids in the yard and house. i think the official count was like 49 kids, middle school through just-recently-graduated. so yeah, it was INSANE we piled all of the kids in a few vans and gas-guzzling SUVs to play lasertag. it was awesome… me and these two other guys who were also sponsors teamed up and formed ~THE TRIANGLE~ (all will tremble before the greatness of the mighty triangle.. or something similarly gay) — we were unstoppable, and dominated over the ineffectual kids. lol.. actually, we did a’ight, like 10th/11th/12th out of 30 or so (we had so many people that we played two separate rounds). i was a little trigger happy with my gun, though: i had about 1500 shots where most of the other people had 7/800! on the second round, the triangle coalition found a nice high spot from which to snipe *cough* camp. we were forced out of our position, though, by people like matt and haley who would stand in the same place and keep shooting us over and over! ah well, everyone had a good time.. we also played some rousing games of air hockey while waiting between rounds of lasertag.

afterwards, everyone drove back to berryhill and the old gym where the actual lock-in portion was held. there were a ton of snacks and pop and little quarter sandwiches for the kids (… ok, you got me.. _and_ the sponsors we played game after game of dodgeball for like 4 hours; it was awesome! at first the matches were just randomly distributed teams (people would switch back and forth between games), so we had a ton of people all playing at once. then we broke up into individual teams of 10-12 people and had a tournament. my team was team 1; we called ourselves THE OCHO (appropriately enough a reference from the movie dodgeball). it was just like old times playing in TU’s colin fitness center with ryan, levi, and jerry. of course it also evoked feelings of nostalgia from those ancient times of myth and lore as a kid at spiro playing in our P.E. building in 4th and 5th grade… ah, those were the days. i got a few nice shots in: i nailed daniel dolan at one point: he was one of the other team’s star players (and a baseball player, i think) and a formidable opponent.

after the dodgeball insanity there were several activities. some people played basketball, threw a football back and forth, or just slept in the gym bleachers. there was a ping pong tournament which i jumped in at the very end (matt gave me an extended bye to the semi-finals). i ended up playing matt in the finals, which was a great game until i stopped playing around 13 – 12 and matt leapfrogged ahead and won. i also took my xbox and several people played for a couple hours. around 6AM we called it a night/morning and everyone packed up and went to their respective homes to craaash. after zero sleep most of us were zombies by that point anyway. so, all in all, last friday was a whirlwind action-packed night.

this weekend was the world’s largest gun show, the wanenmacher arms show. saturday i went with dad and sunday with jason… it was ginormous, as usual. this year, though, it seemed a bit smaller for some reason. we overheard people saying there weren’t as many people at this one; there was still a ton of crap to see. dad bought some throwing knives and got me an early birthday present: a folding stock. i also got dippin’ dots and some beef jerky that was pretty good

on sunday jason and i arrived at like 3:15 and the thing closed at 4:00!! no one told us, and the only reason we found out is they announced over the intercom that there were 30 minutes left until close. it was very sparse when we first arrived… lots of people had already left and several were in the midst of packing up. so we complained (the primary reason was they sold us a *full-price* $10 dollar ticket like 45 minutes before the thing closed), and they took our names/addresses and said they’d send us free tickets for the next one. so yeah, sunday kinda sucked with regards to the gun show. jason still ended up getting a blowgun. but hey, at least the next one’s free ;-p

friday night i saw doom with keisha, carlos and embry, and some other TU people. i actually saw matt hunt and brad venable as well… hadn’t seen brad in probably 3 or 4 years (he was a prominent figure/big man on campus.. both figuratively and literally, and was there for most of my tenure at TU). i went in with the expectation that the movie would totally suck balls (in the words of the inimitable cartman we all know and love).. and i wasn’t disappointed. *most* movies based on a video game will by definition suck, in my experience. it was at least somewhat entertaining.. basically your run-of-the-mill zombies-and-people-trapped-in-a-space-station movie with guns, gore, and gratuitous special effects. only this one had THE ROCK with his blindingly white shiny movie star teeth. they are seriously freakishly WHITE. it actually reminds me of an article i remember reading awhile back on the onion.

thursday i went with emma/zane and drew/susan to the tulsa corn maize. it was fun.. basically they have a huge cornfield with random paths cut out, and the idea is to go with a group of people and scare the girls they also had a haunted trail with monsters and a dude who ran around chasing people with a chainsaw. at the entrance/exit they had a patch of pumpkins and gourds for sale. and you know the drill.. of course the girls wanted a pumpkin. i think zane got emma a medium-sized one for 10 bucks (you can get the same thing at reasor’s for like 3). i ended up getting some funky shaped gourds that looked pretty cool.. i think i got about 6 or 7 of them for 5 bucks. i may throw up some pics of them at some point. oh, one other thing: the people/person who organizes the corn maize apparently creates a different design every year. this year’s theme was ‘one hundred years of bedlam football’, which you can see an aerial shot of on the web site.

other than that, not too much going on.. i’ve recently been sucked into the TV show lost. kelley and chad (two of the guys i work with) convinced me to start watching it. it’s really a very good show, quite well done. i like the backstories for the various characters, and how they try to explain the attitudes, outlooks, and characteristics of the people through their past experiences. if you haven’t seen it i highly recommend it. the only catch is you absolutely *must* start the show from the beginning: lost isn’t a show you can pick up mid-season and expect to enjoy it, if you haven’t witnessed all of the events leading up to the current episode.