Creative Dates #2 and #3

We must be nuts.
In the course of one week, my cell group managed to have three creative dates. The first one, which I've already told you about, was with the Windsor Monday cell group, the second was with the Windsor Wednesday group on Wednesday evening, and the third we had with Shreve on Saturday.

We planned to have our creative date with Windsor on the same night and time as their usual cell group so that as many girls as possible would be able to come. Because most of our guys were either on their way to Cary from other things or helping prepare the food, I went to walk the girls over from Windsor by myself. While we were waiting for the last few girls to show up, the girls asked about our plans for the evening and some expressed concern that Matt Chupp was the master chef in charge of dinner. I promised them that he would do a good job and not mess up spaghetti and, thankfully, I was right (I never doubted his cooking skills, but it would have looked bad if something had gone wrong after I promised it'd be good). I wasn't able to walk the girls all the way to the Music Room in Cary East where we were eating because Chris had a really bad headache and we had to stop by my room for some Advil, but I was able to call ahead and have Sean Valencourt come to the loading dock to walk them the rest of the way.

After a nice spaghetti dinner with garlic bread, I brought out my special surprise dessert that I'd been hinting at all evening. Clad in aluminum foil to keep its nature secret, I regaled the group with the tale of how their dessert had been personally brought to the United States by my parents on an 8-hour flight from Europe. Then I proceeded to unwrap the foil and show to the room the two bars of 70% Cacao European dark chocolate I was holding. After giving instructions to those who didn't know the proper way to each dark chocolate (and yes, there actually is a right way) for maximum enjoyment, I proceeded to pass them around so each person could take a couple of squares. For most, the chocolate was a big hit, and for a couple of others the part of the right technique of having it in small amounts was completely lost:
What you see here is Keri Bias with a whole square in her mouth:

Here is a similar picture of Justin:
Sean about to join them (I doubt there was any coincidence that all three people who committed this grievous crime were all sitting together): After dessert I stayed back with Sean and Matt Chupp to finish the cleanup while everyone else headed over to the CoRec to play some Wallyball. Sadly, a couple of the guys and about half the girls had other commitments that evening, so only a small group was able to come play with us. We played three or four games and had a lot of fun with the group that was able to come. Here are the faithful eight who stayed until the end of the date:

Jumping ahead a few days (past the weirdness of my Friday night plans and duct-taping Mike), we had our creative date with the Shreve cell group. Unlike Windsor and Cary, which have cell groups on multiple nights of the week, Shreve people all meet together on one night and then split up into smaller groups for actual Bible study time. That meant that we were going to have a big date, possibly 15-20 girls alone, much less the guys of my group. Because some of our guys weren't able to come (slackers), we recruited a couple of random Cary guys from other cell groups like Jonny Sieber (the pirate), John Cobb (my roommate), Mike, Cromer, and one or two others to join us so we wouldn't be quite so terribly outnumbered. As it turned out, there were 17 girls and 13 guys in attendance.

Because we didn't even want to think about the logistics of cooking for a group that size, we decided to have an event we had brainstormed on at Christmas Conference called Dress-Up Dining Hall. Everyone dressed up for the evening with the guys all wearing nice shirts and ties (we said no sport coats, but Jonny and Mike wore them anyway). After a tie-tying frenzy in the last few minutes before we left the Quad for the guys who either hadn't had time or didn't know how to tie a tie (guilty on both counts), we headed for Shreve. I have a strong feeling that anybody seeing us around that evening thought we were all Greeks, because you really never see groups of guys roaming around all dressed up unless they're doing something with their frat.
We met the girls in the Shreve lobby, and after basic introductions we walked over to Earhart Dining Court where a couple of our guys had gone ahead to prepare one of the back rooms for our private use. Some pictures of the group:
Table 1: Table 2:
After dinner, we went back over to Shreve to play games in the vending lobby behind the main office. Everyone split into smaller groups for games like Uno and Catchphrase, and then after a while we consolidated into one big group for a game of French Charades. For the sake of time, I won't try to explain the game here, but you can think of it as a cross behind Charades and Telephone (the game kids play where a message is whispered in people's ears as it's passed around a room and usually ends up wildly distorted by the time it reaches the last person). Only a couple people in the room had every played it before, but they all caught on really quickly and it was a riot. After we finished the game we declared the evening a success and headed back to Cary. A couple of shots:
A group picture before the games started:
The silly shot:
Jenga! Waiting for our turn in the hotseat during French Charades:
All eyes on me as I walk in the room (Kelly, center, is about to act out the three skits):
Kenny acting:
Matt acting:
Carrie acting:


In other news, yesterday was the official start of the annual tradition of Facial Hair February (aka "FebruHairy"). As some of you may remember from last year, FebruHairy dates back many, many years for Cru guys in the Quad and in the recent past has spread around to include guys all over Cru. The official rules (unchanged for at least the last two years, possibly longer) state that: "Don't shave your face for the entire month of February. Exceptions are same as in the past: 1) If your neck hair connects with your chest hair, by all means shave the point of connection, 2) If the upper cheek region is chaotic, you can shave it." Because I hopefully won't be able to participate next year ("hopefully" because I'm hoping to have job interviews), I'm definitely doing it this year. There is now a Facebook group with nearly 50 members for the guys participating and Amy Schott just started the "Women In Support of Facial Hair February" group for girls to join. Expect pictures at the end of the month.

Today's links brought to you by Google Video (and Josh Weis, who pointed these particular clips out to me):

Ghostly car commercial (watch as the car goes behind a tree and disappears). According to the description, the best part is that you can even hear the cameraman whispering in the background about it near the end of the clip (you have to really turn up the volume for it):
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3385579284690408654

The second link is a guy complaining about Mac computers. As you all know, I'm no fan of Macs, I consider them counter-intuitive and vastly overpriced. This clip rings very true in my experience with, as I call it, "Macintrash." LANGUAGE WARNING: There are a few profanities in the middle of his rant, so don't watch it if that's enough to spoil your enjoyment of the whole thing:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6553260189868317794

This video is just plain funny to all technophiles. Mocks the iPod fad with something called the iPod Flea:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6979065094299371478

Ok, one more before I resume studying for my test today (for the record, I wrote this post yesterday, but didn't get a chance to upload the last few pictures and post till this morning). This one is quite possibly most hilarious to college-age guys, but some friends and I all consider it a riot. So, here you have it: "Somethings that women can't do in public."
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=601898222402457606