My fight club chapter completed a group activity on Monday. Over the weekend (while I was away at homecoming) the guys all met to build a cardboard and duct tape boat. Everyone scrounged up as much cardboard as they could and wrapped it all in duct tape, and taped everything together into a boat. It was mostly done over the weekend, but we met again on Monday to finish it up (I helped build and add some outriggers to it to help with stability) and do the water test. One of the guys lives on Winona Lake so we launched the boat from his dock with Duke paddling. The challenge was for one of the guys to paddle it something like 100 feet and back, in the least amount of time, and preferably without tipping over. The boat turned out to be very waterproof and pretty stable. Duke’s time wasn’t great because he was fighting the wind a bit, and the paddles were not as waterproof as the rest of the boat, it seemed. But he did get there and back without any problems. The boat was bequeathed to another one of the guys, who let his daughters take it out on his lake. It still held up really well, he reported. 

Softball is over for the year. I never thought I’d say this but softball is over...finally. I was ready for it to be over a couple weeks ago, but I have had a lot of fun playing nevertheless. We played one game Tuesday, against FUM who had beaten us soundly a number of times during the season. This time we went the distance with them, and played well, but were never really in danger of winning. I myself had two all-star highlight reel plays at first base, one on a hot grounder coming right up the line and one on a sharp liner also coming right up the line. I had to run several steps to my left and reach as far as I could with my glove, but fielded them cleanly both times. The guy who hit the liner was flabbergasted that I robbed him of probably a triple. The girl who hit the grounder probably had a double if it got past me. My best plays of the season, saved for the last game. We were eliminated anyway, so just wait ‘til next year…

Beth went in to see Dr. Dick on Friday because of the month-long migraine and ear pains she’s had for a while now. Both of her ears are infected, which may help explain the migraines as well. The migraine pain was so bad that finally I took her in to the ER on Friday evening to get her some relief. We were there for a few hours at least, and she got a number of drugs. They don’t really know what will work for an individual so they have a cocktail they give progressively. By the time we went home, which was late, she didn’t have a headache any more but was feeling pretty doped. They had given her pretty much everything they had. Which was nice but the headache was back in the morning.

Both of the girls had their senior portraits taken on Saturday. We did the pictures over by Miller Field at Grace College, where they got some really good fall-type, foresty shots. They were both beautiful, of course, so I’m sure the pictures will be amazing. We will go see them in a couple weeks and pick out the ones we like.

Speaking of Fight Club, we also had a bonfire today at the church. Of sorts. It was one of the assignments for the week and I thought it would be fun to get together at FCC and use the fire pit that was built a few years back but seldom used. It was a kid’s Eagle Scout project, but it’s kind of out of sight from the building so it gets forgotten about. But Matthew and I put out the word and went over there Sunday evening, and found that for the past several years any time any branches or limbs have fallen off any of the trees nearby, they got thrown into the fire pit. So, there was plenty of wood there already. We just had to light it and it made a really nice big bonfire. Nobody had texted that they were coming, so we weren’t sure it wouldn’t just be him and me, but 3 other guys did come out for it.