The Fight Club mid-chapter meeting was Friday/Saturday. Not sure still why it needs to be at midnight, unless it's just because it takes away excuses for why you can't go. I carpooled up with 4 other guys. It was well-attended, maybe not as much as previous times I've been there (3rd time for me now), but I considered bailing myself because of the weather. It had been rainy for a few days, and projected to be rainy for a couple more. But they predicted a stop in the rain for several hours overnight Friday/Saturday and they were right, the rain held off. Which was good, because rain would have made things not good. The fellowship/cookout started around 11:00 as people arrived and went until around 12:30 when the worship service started, then the message, testimonies, and then...group activities. Again this time, the group activities were chaotic and not well organized. First was putting a wall made of pallets and boards back upright from where it had blown over a couple weeks ago, which was about 15 minutes for around a quarter of the guys there. Then we found out the assignment was building a prayer hut out of logs we were going to cut down in the woods. Not a big deal, but assembling the hut (stacking logs into a square with a peaked roof and screwing them together) was a job for maybe 8 men at most. So our squad, once we found out the what & where, cut down one tree and carried the log to the build site, then we waited for two hours without anything to do while the hut was assembled. We weren't out of there until around 3:45 am. By which time my attitude was not very worshipful. It would have made much more sense for the squads to all cut a few logs and then stack them up at the site for a crew to come back and assemble the next day or next weekend or something; that could have been accomplished in no time and you wouldn't have had some 300 men standing around waiting for the end. But, at least it didn't rain. So: the fellowship was great, the worship service was great, the message was great, and the group activities were terrible.

One of the Fight Club assignments this week was to bring a treat and a smiley balloon to a local business you've adopted to pray for. I adopted Canal Street Market and The Olive Branch, so I wondered what treat I should bring to a foodie place. In the end I made chocolate chip banana bread and brought some by both places. They seemed to love it! And they appreciate the prayers.

The youth group's Mall Derby was Saturday. Missy went with them, and her team answered the most questions...but the activity itself was cut a bit short by some middle school boys getting into trouble with mall security. No big deal, I'm sure that's not the first time it's happened....

Tournament time again! Here's my annual "way off" Final Four prediction: Champion Kansas, Duke, Tennessee, Kentucky. MSU wins one game and exits, unfortunately.

 Alex has gone back to college, spring break is over. I hope it was a relaxing week for him, or at least one where he could get ready for the rest of the term. He was able to get together with friends a couple times, and while he was home we got him appointments with his doctor and she upped his meds a little bit, which he said seemed to be helping already by the time he went back. He's been feeling kind of depressed, but thinks it may be due in large part to the isolation of being stuck in the apartment all the time. He also had his birthday party while he was home, same as usual where he has several friends come over to play video games all night and sleep over, while the girls bug out and stay overnight in a motel with a pool, and I get the pizza and mostly stay out of the way. I went to bed around midnight, and I hear they were pretty much up until about 3. Not as many guys over this time, understandably, but he still seemed to have a good time. For dinner Saturday he wanted to go to Flat Top Grill in FW, which is kind of his go-to. We went to church today but only stayed through the first service so we could hit the road to O'Hare. We got there in plenty of time, since we can't go through security with him there was no point in waiting there. He got off fine, and we did have Scott pick him up this time to spare him the $50 Uber ride to the apartment.

Alex is home! He is on spring break, which seems early to me. But anyway we got him tickets to fly home a while back and went to Chicago yesterday to pick him up. Everything seems to be going pretty well for him there, and he’s been told that after spring break they will be going back to in-person classes! Awesome, much better than last time being told that maybe they would be online only for the rest of the year. Anyway, he had a $50 Uber ride to Sea-Tac because Scott couldn’t deliver him this time, and he got in to O’Hare at around 3:00 Chicago time, but it was a little while before we got him because the airline information said he was coming to the wrong concourse so we were waiting in the wrong spot. But we finally got him and headed home, stopping at another Schoop’s in Valpo on the way, which wasn’t as good as the one in Portage. He’s pretty jet-lagged (barely could stay awake for church today), but he’s home!

Missy also has college stuff going on. Last Wednesday there was a day off from school for her, since the lower grades were doing testing, and the seniors were not. She wanted to go to Muncie and check out the town more so than the school, to see what was there, look for shopping and grocery stores and such. So I took a day off and she and Beth and I headed down there. We arrived around lunchtime and found a restaurant (IHOP), then did a whole bunch of driving around the town and walked all throughout the Muncie Mall. The mall looks like it has been in serious decline for a long time now, I think 3 of the 4 anchor stores are vacant and the 4th is a discount overstock junk store thrown together. Maybe a third of the stores are open. So not much going on there, but there was plenty of shopping elsewhere, pretty much everything she will need. Plus she’ll be living in a dorm so she won’t need to shop all that much anyway. Not a bad place to go to college, it seems to me, although definitely not as vibrant as Redmond, WA. Missy’s getting excited about going, I think the trip made her feel better about moving there. 

There was a Fight Club assignment to deep clean/detail Beth's van this week. I got into it with a vacuum and dusting cloth and wet cloths and windex like the van hasn't been cleaned since we got it. It looks pretty sharp now. I should do the truck too...