Pi Girl

My work project is finished!!!!

Ok, maybe not completely finished. But, really, is any website ever truly complete? It needs to change and grow to be effective.

Anyway, this is what I’ve been working on for the past 2 months. And it went live today. On time.

In my world, that makes me a rockstar. Who has one really awesome kick-ass band to rock with.

As I’ve mentioned about a zillion times in the last few months, I am loving the music of local artist Jana Losey. She totally rocks. I’ve even gotten to attend 2 of her house concerts over the border in Lawrenceville, PA.

And speaking of her house, I noticed the scenery is looking awfully familiar in Jana’s latest music video that is coming off the new cd, due out in March. Check it out …

Did I mention I have an in and I already have this cd? And it is on heavy rotation on the ipod.

I’m way too tired to break down the whole weekend yet, but I thought you might want to know that Crystal Chords brought it to the chorus contest and we came in 9th place!

And now, I need some sleep.

It occurs to me that I wrote this exact same post one year ago, but whatever, it’s just as relevant.

So, yeah, the Crystal Chords rock my socks! Last night was our last rehearsal before contest this weekend. We had a great rehearsal, everyone was on and doing what they were supposed to. It was most excellent.

Then, Affinity sang one of our packages for the group. And it went really, really well. This week I managed to unlock a new secret weapon I didn’t know I had that has unleashed so much emotion, it makes How Deep is the Ocean 100 times better. If I can do that again this weekend, that will make me happier than any score a judge hands out.

So, we sang, the Chords liked us. They may be horribly biased, but I’ll take it! So, then they all took out their hankies, circled us and sang a rewritten tag of Oh You Beautiful Doll (one of our chorus contest songs, we use hankies as part of the choreo). They sounded so good and it was so sweet, they made my cry. Then they gave us balloons. And Treble in Paradise (one of our quartets) gave us teddy bears.

With love like that, who needs to worry about a competition?

Finally! The photos Jason took from the wedding are up!

The captions are all written by Jason, I haven’t had a chance to go in and change them yet (I know a few more names of people).

For the rehearsal dinner and watching Amber and Courtney get their hair done, here’s the Pre-Wedding gallery.

For the wedding fun, here’s the Wedding gallery.

It’s been 3 years since our fantastic wedding. So, we wondered how to best celebrate our special weekend when it came to us: let’s attend a wedding! But not just any wedding. It had to be a special wedding, between 2 crazy kids who are perfect for each other.

So, after 5 seconds of pondering, we chose to attend Amber and Dave’s wedding. After 2 more seconds of pondering, I agreed to be Amber’s bridesmaid. It took another second, but then I also opted for the privilege of singing for the happy couple during the wedding.

Sunday was the most awesome day, filled with special moment after moment. The ceremony was beautiful, I didn’t ruin the song, the homily was so well-done. The reception was a total blast. I danced so much, my legs are still sore 2 days later. Photos will be up sometime this week.

And to Amber and Dave - I am so happy for you. You bring out the best in each other and I wish you magic moments and special gifts to last a lifetime! It was an honor to stand up for you.

I had quite the exciting weekend. All of them really should get their own blog entry, but I’m lazy like that. Oh, and my camera really sucks, so it’s not worth it to make a whole photo gallery of Jim’s graduation, so I’m just sticking all 4 of the good photos in here; click on the photo to see it enlarged.

Friday - Relay for Life

When I heard the Star-Gazette was sending a team to the Relay for Life I was totally on board, until I realized this weekend was way too packed me to spend all night at the First Arena. What can I say? I’ve never been able to stay up all night easily and that was with the whole next day to rest. So then I heard the S-G was also setting up a table to sell hot dogs and pizza to raise money, so I volunteered to man the table for a few hours. Which really turned into 1.5 hours because I went by myself and I’m not a fan of walking through parking garages at night by myself.

So, I figured I would just sit at a table bored. But it was so not boring at all. And I kind of wished I had been able to spend more time there. For one thing, it was quite crowded. That’s always inspiring, considering every single person there had a cancer story to tell either for themselves or a loved one. And all of these people had colorful shirts and team names and set up team stations that were just as colorful. I was most amused by the walking colon, which I thought was a heart and Jason thought was a stomach. Lots of things to do and see while you walked in a giant circle.

The other thing that was nice was that they mapped out the course so it wasn’t just in the arena, which would get real old, real fast. Instead you walked through the arena and then all around the outside too. We were all curious to know how long the trek was. So, Dawn counted her steps during a rotation and helped. She counted 430 steps at roughly 2 feet per stride. Which works out to 860 feet and roughly 6.14 laps in a mile. However, since there were sometimes when she thought her stride was longer, we rounded it down to 6 laps in a mile. In case you wanted to know.

Saturday - Jim’s graduation from OCC!

Can I just say that I am so super proud of my awesome brother, Jim Cassidy? It’s been quite the journey, but Jimmy made it! He graduated from Onondaga Community College with an Associate’s Degree, cum laude even. He was so cute in his robe and gold cord. The photos are so bad, but we had a nice view of Jim from where we were sitting. Even if our fellow audience members left a lot to be desired.

Really, it was your typical graduation ceremony where the only thing you’re really interested in is seeing your loved one cross the stage and get his diploma. You know, boring speeches, bad audio moments, and watching 400 kids who you don’t know cross the stage. But hey, there were bagpipes!

They announced that we should hold all applause until all the graduates walked the stage, but you know that’s not going to happen. So the pockets of audience members got bolder as more when across the stage and you could see it was really ok to “woo!” your graduate. However, Jimmy was in the second row. So we weren’t all that vocal; I was the only one brave enough to woo.

Sunday - Jana Losey concert

I had the privilege to be invited to a special house concert for Jana Losey. That’s because her father works for the Star-Gazette and is friends with Michelle and Jason. And me, now. I just don’t get to see him all that often. Al likes to hold house concerts for Jana and this time all his S-G friends were invited.

Jana is based out of Ithaca, but her family lives in a big farmhouse in Lawrenceville, PA, which is where the concert was. She’s gotten a lot of love from the area, but she’s spent the last few months travelling around the States.

I was not familiar with her work, but I figured I would like it. And I was right. She is awesome. Both as a singer/songwriter and as a person. And she tells really good stories. She also has some interesting friends who tell really good stories. Anyway, I bought her cd and got on the mailing list so that I might be invited to more house concerts. But if you see Jana Losey coming to a venue near you, go see her!

I’ve been involved with youth ministry in the CNY Diocese since I was the youth being ministered to. When I was 12, I went to my first Thornfield conference and loved every second of it. And I was ever so grateful to the staff of that first conference. Heck, it was Bryan Calhoun-Bryant who branded Amber and me as the Twins, and he probably started the trend of mixing our names up (I still answer to Amber, by the way…). It was because of cool adults like Bryan that I couldn’t wait to be an adult myself and staff these conferences. And then when I was 21, I got to staff my first conference. And it was so much fun.

After several Thornfield conferences, I experienced my first Happening. I was 15 then. Happening will always have a very special place in my heart. I have gone to church my whole life and accepted that God was real and Jesus was his Son and, yay, He loved me. But I can’t say I really understood that love until I went to Happening. Everything changed for me from that point on. And I loved it that after my first weekend, we could be on the team to minister to our friends. Which made me see Happening from a whole new light because I found new ways to expand my horizons and discover my gifts. When I graduated from high school, I knew I didn’t have to give Happening up because there was the Prayer Community to support Happening. Except, as I discovered, as you get older, it’s gets harder to do PC. I kept it up a little bit because I sent my youth group kids to Happening and supported them in their journeys. But I knew I probably wouldn’t see another real Happening weekend again until I was old enough to be a “mom.”

To be a mom and dad, you have to be 30. When the Happening Committee met to find their next couple, *someone* (I’m looking at you, Kate) remembered that my 30th birthday just happened to be right before Happening #48. And so, almost 15 years after my own candidate weekend, I got to come back and bring Jason so we could be a mom and dad at Happening. It was awesome! These kids blow my mind, which they always do at the many conference I’ve staffed or all the New Beginnings I’ve staffed. But it wasn’t a case of older peer group ministering to a younger peer group; it was high schoolers ministering to high schoolers which changes the dynamic considerably. And all I had to do was sit at the old folks’ table and wonder where these fantastic kids came from. I could go on and on about Happening, but I think I’ll go the highlight route:

- As Kate predicted, the kids had as hard a time calling me Mom Erin as I did. Hope and Richard’s name tags all said Mom Hope and Dad Richard. Jason and I got Jason and Erin. Tee hee hee. A few kids who didn’t know me got into the Mom Erin thing, but that was ok. My favorite part was when Jason and I had to sign our names on notes to the kids, and he accidentally wrote Mom Jason and Dad Erin on a few of them.

- It was a little odd that the boys outnumbered the girls, by a lot. I can’t say I’ve ever seen that before. I’ve certainly seen the reverse. Very interesting. But the girls still outsang the boys on those gendered songs where the boys and girls all have different parts to sing. Ha!

- It was very, very weird to not be at Thornfield. It threw me off quite a bit. I like White Eagle and all, but it’s not Thornfield. I found myself saying “and when I was a kid, ..” or “when it was at Thornfield, we did …” It’s kind of hard when I know the script as it was written for Thornfield, and it hasn’t quite changed to fit White Eagle, or any other place for that matter. I know youth ministry can not be put on hold while we figure out what to do with the conference center, and I need to move on, but it was such a huge part of my growing up, it’s hard to let it go.

- Bishop Skip and one of my favorite moms, Mom Kathi decided that if I’m now a Happening mom, that must make them Happening grandparents.