Creative Date

Well, my prediction of getting extremely busy extremely quickly has certainly proven true in the time since my last 'real' update (barring topics that start with P like Picard, Pirates and Personal Sleep Patterns). Classes are "off to the races" (Prof. Fanjoy's trademark phrase), although being a flight major I don't have a lot of actual homework. :) For this post, I figure it would be worthwhile to cover Saturday's creative date, my Summer Project application, AFTERdark, Perelandra, and maybe even some linkage if you're lucky.

While at Christmas Conference, I hatched a fairly ambitious plan to do a lot more creative dates than normal this semester with my cell group and managed to sell the idea to Sean and Matt (the two other guys involved with leading the group) and the guys from the group who were at the conference. As part of that plan, we hit the ground running this semester with plans to start having creative dates right away, starting with the one last Saturday and the next one happening tonight. For those of you unfamiliar with the creative date concept, it is simply a time where a guys' cell group plans and does something with a girls' cell group to foster fellowship between each other. In the past, Cary has gone for quality over quantity in dates, creating such extremes as the Murder Mystery Night date last spring (which took a month of planning and a ton of time), but now we're trying to do a lot more in the way of simple dates.

Saturday night we had our date with the Windsor Monday cell group. Several of our guys weren't able to come, but the numbers balanced out nicely with 6 guys and 7 girls. We picked up the girls at Windsor and took them ice skating at the rink down by the river. One of the only problems we had the entire date was that we hadn't briefed the guys very well on the logistics of how we were going to pay for the girls at the rink, so we ended up standing at the entrance with me in the front yelling to all the guys in the back of the group to tell them what to do and they, conveniently, weren't really paying attention, so it kind of reflected poorly on our planning and me as being in charge of the whole thing. Oh well, just one of those logistical bugs to work out on the first date of the semester and make sure they don't happen again. The good news is that the girls were very gracious about it and once we got past it everyone had a lot of fun out on the ice.

The only other problem with the date was that some of the guys have never been on a creative date before (and it's been a really long time for some others), so they kind of needed to be reminded after a little while on the ice that they were supposed to mingle with the girls instead of just staying as a pack. Once that was taken care of though, they did a fantastic job and were able to get to know the girls and spend time with them. We skated for a little over an hour before everyone started getting tired. When it came time to leave, I was skating around telling everyone and a certain rat by the name of SARAH WILSON was kind enough to tag me 'it' in our game of tag right after everyone else was already off the ice! ;)

Then we went to Vienna (a local coffee house) and were able to warm up while sitting around talking and getting to know the people we hadn't really met before the date. We talked about what we were thinking of doing this summer (including what projects some of us are applying to) and Jenna got really excited when Amy told her of some deal that might provide a way for Jenna to go to France for a month next year. After a while of hanging out there, we drove the girls back to Windsor, declared the date a big success and called it a night.
Now, how about some pictures?

This is the 'nice' shot of the group while waiting for the Zamboni to finish with the ice:

Here is a silly picture taken a couple minutes later:

It didn't turn up well in the picture, but the group developed a fascination for blowing "smoke" (the condensation from your breath) at each other or just up in the air:

Some of the girls leaning over the ice:

Susan, Erin, and Jenna in the back seat of my car on the way to the coffee house (Sarah took the picture):

Sarah and I in the front seat of the car while stopped at a light:

Naturally, we had to also take a silly picture of the back seat:

According to the official story we were stopped at a red light when we took this picture (I won't be doing or saying anything to dispel that account of it):
For those of you who just got worried there (parents, grandparents, long forgotten distant cousins, etc), yes, we were actually stopped in that shot.

I don't know why Chris had to tamper with this good picture by giving Erin the ears while we were walking to the coffee shop, but he ignored me when I said not to:

After the date was over I was back in my room and got a Facebook message from Sarah. Apparently she had been hanging out with Amy and Amy told her to send me a note to listen to a certain techno song by Daft Punk saying that I'd like it. I recognized it from an iPod commercial a while back that I had liked, but I never knew the name of the song. So I thought I'd pass it along to you guys. Technologic by Daft Punk. Look for it on Cdigix if you're in the dorms or to watch the music video done by a creepy robot (have to mouse over the picture and choose Quicktime or Realplayer):
http://www.daftpunk.com

Well, I'm afraid I'm out of time for today. Some other things came up while I was at work and couldn't finish the other topics I wanted to cover. Until next time, keep your stick on the ice.