I just returned from a new spin on my listening parties.

Wes and I decided to get together to finally listen to mewithoutYou's Brother, Sister. My stereo is busted, so we racked our brains thinking about where to do it, and decided to go to my parent's house and have a listening party with my mom, who is a big mewithoutYou fan.

Wes brought the coffee, and Travis called and decided to join us. We gathered in the living room and put in the CD and started track one, only to find that my parent's stereo has been malfunctioning lately, as well.

So, what to do?

We decided the best stereo we had was in Erica's car, and what's a better combination than a good CD and a good autumn drive? So we put our coffee in travel mugs, started the car, put the CD, and drove wherever we felt so led.

We only ran into one traffic light during the whole album, which was one goal mostly met, and by the end of the disc we were completely lost, which was another goal met. We eventually found our way out of the winding country roads and made our way to Wendy's to pee and get Travis something to eat. (The new vanilla frosty is nothing to write home about.)

It turned out to be a wonderful experience that I hope will be repeated in the near future. Passing fields of goldenrod and corn, orchards and trees with turning leaves, big old churches with cemeteries, pastures with mountains in the background, I had to agree with Aaron Weiss when he sang: "I used to wonder where You are--these days I can't find where You're not!"

So anyway, the album is great. Watch a fun video of the last song on the album here.

For those of you who don't enjoy loud and raucous music but do enjoy good art, you should probably at least read Aaron's lyrics, because he's quite a poet, and here is about the only place I've found where you can do that, though be forewarned it's an annoying website.

I was starting to get over Sufjan.

Erica--and no offense to her--was telling me that an album full of leftovers, including three versions of the same song, is a little pretentious, a 5-disc christmas box set is a little excessive, and the fact that so many people are falling for it means he's overrated. I was starting to believe her.

But then we went to see him live.

Sufjan and his full band playing in front of a sold out audience at Tower Theater in Upper Darby exceeded my expectations and left me stunned. It was a band of 8 strings, 3 horns, a percussionist, two other helpers on guitars and various other instruments, and Sufjan changing from banjo to guitar to grand piano, and they played all the best songs with new full arrangements for about an hour and 45 minutes.

I was afraid it would be sloppy, haphazard. It wasn't. I was afraid it would be too short. It wasn't. I was afraid they wouldn't play He Woke Me Up Again, but they did. And it was wonderful.

Throw in some butterfly costumes (strange, yet somehow workable) and several homemade videos playing on the large screen behind the band, and it became even more perfect.

They started playing and all of a sudden, it didn't matter that the sound system was subpar, that our seats were in the nosebleeds, and that Ticketmaster charged us $7.50 in "convenience" fees.

And to think that the last time I saw him was with no more than 50 other people in our tiny little student union at Taylor. And the time before that was with no more than 100 people at a hole-in-the-wall bar in Philly. You'd think I'd be mad that he's so popular...and sure, some of those feelings creep up on me when I see little teeny-boppers giggling and putting on their new Sufjan t-shirts they just purchased like he's some sort of teen idol...but really, I can't get upset because I don't think there is anyone more deserving of the attention.

No but seriously, the music was downright beautiful... gorgeous... amazing... perfect... and I will even go ahead and say glorious.

With the help of a friend, I've been thinking about glory lately, and when Sufjan played a full-blown version of his song about Christ revealing his glory to his disciples on the mountainside, I couldn't help but think he was doing the story justice. In some small way, in the beauty of the violins and trumpets and grand piano, I think we were getting a small taste of God's glory.

The evening was a needed distraction from the stress of my job, a heart bursting with joy, a constant grin.

Even Erica agreed.

click

The most exciting thing to happen over the weekend, besides going to two weddings in one day (one of which included an extravagant New York City Italian reception run by the Mob, yes, seriously), was the unexpected visitor we came home to at 12:30AM Saturday night.

It was a long day of wedding bliss, a long night of dancing, and we were ready to go straight to bed. I walked into the bedroom to set down some things, turned on the light, and as I did there was a squirrel running figure eights around my feet.

Yes. A squirrel.

I screamed bloody murder and yelled to Erica. The rodent ran into the closet and nestled between some of my shoes. I had him in my sight. Erica grabbed an empty Arbonne box and a broom and handed them to be.

I tried poking and prodding and sweeping, but I couldn't get him out from between the shoes. I started pulling out shoes one by one, but eventually he disappeared and made it clear he wasn't coming out, and we were exhausted from the day, so we gave up. We closed the closet door, barricaded it, and went to bed, knowing full well we would have to face him in the morning. We turned out the light and I prayed out loud, "Dear Lord, please keep the squirrel in the closet tonight. Thank you."

We woke up Sunday morning and I put on my thickest, heaviest shoes. Erica said, "What are you going to do, stomp him?!" I said, "I will if I have to, but I definitely don't want to be in my bare feet, that's for sure."

I carefully opened the closet door. No sign of the squirrel. I slowly began pulling shoes out with the broom handle. After pulling out several with still no sign of the squirrel, I began to get confident. I started pulling shoes out with my hands (you know where this is going) and eventually got to my $10 gray WalMart sneakers. I picked one up and as I was about to throw it on the pile, I looked in the shoe and saw the gray fur. I screamed, threw it back in the closet, and shook uncontrollably from a case of the heebie-jeebies.

I said, "I think I'm willing to part with these sneakers," swept it in the box, closed it up, and ran it out to the dumpster.

Yes, I threw him away. What else could I do?!?

And boy I am traumatized. I can't approach the closet without nervous tension, and yesterday I walked out of the building and saw a squirrel dart in front of me and nearly jumped out of my clothes.

I mentioned the rodent to the upstairs neighbors. One of them said, "Really? There was a squirrel in the dumpster yesterday, too, when I threw out my trash!" I laughed and explained. I was just glad to hear he hadn't escaped yet.

I'm wondering if it's worth retrieving my shoe. Not if I'm going to run into him again.

Tonight was Back to School Night for the parents, and I just got back.

Last year I had three parents show up. Can't get much worse, right?

Well, I saw as worse as it can get.

This year was zero.

One thing that's new on my schedule this year is caf duty. I liked it better when I didn't have caf duty. Nobody likes caf duty. It's loud and stuffy and smelly and annoying and mostly hopeless.

Now, I've never read the novel Lord of the Flies, but from my understanding, it's about a bunch of kids on a desert island, and after a certain amount of time, everything turns to chaos and they all devour each other or something like that, a darkness-of-human-nature kind of theme.

Well, after having caf duty three times, I've come up with a theory that if you left 200 middle schoolers in a cafeteria by themselves unattended for a rather short period of time, the same thing would happen. I'd give them about an hour tops before chaos would ensue and eventually they would all just destroy each other.

I've been teaching my students about adding and subtracting integers. It's always tricky to learn that when you subtract a negative, it's actually just the same as adding a positive. That is, for example, 5-(-2) is the same as 5+2, or 7.

And when most of us learned it, our math teachers told us it was just like English class. I tried the same illustration...

"It's just like English class, guys. If you use a double negative in English, it actually means a positive. Like, if you say, 'I don't got no pencil,' that actually means you DO have a pencil."

I knew right as I was saying it that it would never work. Sure enough, one girl immediately interjected... "Whachoo mean, mister?! No it don't! I talk like that all the time!"

And when I gave the example to my ESOL kids, the ones still learning English, I remembered back to my high school Spanish days, where we learned that when speaking Spanish, often you DO use double negatives.

Time to find a new illustration.

I went to school today, not exactly sure why, and taught with chalk in one hand and a tissue in the other, souped up on all sorts of medications, nearly losing my voice by the end of the day.

Tonight, I think the fever is finally done with, but now I'm dealing with what I think is my first ever sinus headache. No wonder people complain so much about these things.

Let's hope I can recuperate over the next two days.

I hope all of you are getting pumped up for the new mewithoutYou album, Brother, Sister, which hits the streets on Tuesday, September 26th. The songs I've heard sound just as inspired and passionate and graceful as ever, especially 3 minutes and 28 seconds into the song O, Porcupine. It's going to be good, and consider yourself invited to a listening party.

Other new albums I'm looking forward to this month: The Album Leaf and Damien Jurado.

103 degree fevers feel even better.

102 degree fevers feel awesome.

Today's a sick day.

A new Sunday School quarter has started at church, and I've decided to broaden my horizons and attend a class that is mostly attended by people my grandparents' age. It's been interesting to mix with "The Oldheads," as Wes and I so affectionately call them. On my first Sunday there I heard all the ladies behind me complaining with each other about all of their ailments, how the rainy weather was making them worse, or how they were actually feeling pretty good lately and they praise God for it.

It's a new and interesting culture that I could talk about quite a bit, but not now. It's been a good, healthy, eye-opening experience so far.

(And please don't read this the wrong way. I DO like The Oldheads. And please don't be offended by my use of the word Oldheads. It's meant to be an endearing title.)

Anyway, we are studying the book of John there. During the first week, the teacher pointed out that every time Christ describes himself, it is almost always preceded by the word "the." The Word, The Light, The Way, Truth, Life, etc, etc. He asked the class what was significant about that.

The class and the teacher enthusiastically concluded that it is a word of exclusivity, that along with it implicitly comes the word "only." It says that Christ is the ONLY Word, the ONLY Light, etc, an idea that is highly criticized in this day and age.

I can buy that, but my grammar-nerd mind was in a completely different ballfield.

I didn't speak up for fear of sounding like a freak (not to mention it's tough to speak up when everyone in the room is at least 20 years older than you), but it struck me that the word "the" means Christ is using nouns to describe himself instead of adjectives.

Oh yes, that's what I was thinking. Stick with me.

And if Christ is using nouns rather than adjectives to describe himself, that means he's choosing to use metaphors and symbols and imagery rather than clearcut descriptors.

It's another addendum to the idea that God never comes right out and says, "This is who I am and this is how I work." If he did that, he'd be using adjectives.

There's something to this, and I know it's something we postmodernists care about deeply, the fact that God reveals himself through story and symbolism rather than an organized bullet-point list. It's all a very mysterious thing; I don't know all the implications of it--I'm still trying to figure it out--but I like it. Sometimes it's frustrating, I guess, because it means we have to work harder in this relationship with God, working to figure out who he is. But maybe that's the beauty of it; that cliche we've been saying (without really following) for all these years is true: It's not rules, it's a relationship.

So, while I agree that Christ is the ONLY way, truth, and life, I'm much more excited and intrigued about the fact that he's using nouns rather than adjectives.

I've started a new homework policy this year. It's a multi-faceted policy, really, but the meat of it is that homework will be assigned every night and every student must do every assignment every night without fail.

I had a girl in after school today, and I was trying to ask her why she hasn't done any of her homework so far.

We worked on some things, and when it came time to go, she communicated in one way or another that she was too scared to walk home and too scared to call her mom for a ride.

It became evident pretty quickly that she has greater things on her mind than homework. Evaluating algebraic expressions all of a sudden looked pretty meaningless.

Yesterday, Erica and I were such high-class-cultured-patrons-of-the-arts it was sick.

First, we went to see the Andy Warhol exhibit at the Allentown Art Museum. I really enjoyed it. I think it was my first time, at least since the age where it could be truly appreciated, seeing world famous artwork face to face. It is quite an experience, seeing Warhol's signature at the bottom of a print, and it made me disappointed to have missed the Andrew Wyeth exhibition in Philadelphia a few months back.

Second, we went to see a free performance of Romeo and Juliet in a big beautiful park in Allentown. This, too, was my first time seeing one of Shakespeare's works being performed live. I can't say I'm a huge fan, mostly because I haven't taken time to study up beforehand, which I think is kind of necessary with the guy, but the setting was beautiful (despite being downright frigid), and it was something out of the ordinary, which was much needed yesterday. The acting troupe was from New York, and while I'm no expert, I would say they were quite good. So the whole thing, especially the free part, was quite a privilege. And like I said, the park was absolutely beautiful, and when Erica and I have the second wedding we like to talk about (an excuse to get all of our favorite people in the same place again), it will hopefully be there.

It was a good day.

This morning we took two of our nieces out for breakfast at my new favorite restaurant, Billy's Downtown Diner. Upscale, big city diner atmosphere, with diner prices, but better food and more of it. It was great!

But while we were there, I SWEAR I saw Joe Edley, three-time national Scrabble champion, featured in the movie Word Wars. I'm not kidding people, this was HIM. Same GLASSES, same JACKET, everything!! It was surreal. I almost asked, but I didn't have the nerve.

I'm teaching on the fifth floor this year, and it gets pretty warm up there. Most of you know that I have a sweaty armpit problem to begin with, but when I'm teaching all day on the fifth floor in pants and long sleeves and a tie, my sweaty armpit problem is magnified considerably.

On Wednesday, I was teaching at the board and I heard some girls snickering. I figured they were laughing at my pit stains, and I chose to ignore it that day.

The same thing happened on Thursday. In the middle of teaching I heard several girls in the front row trying their hardest to contain their giggles. I stopped mid-sentence and said. "What. Are you laughing at my sweaty armpits?!" The entire class busted up laughing. So I raised my arms proudly for all to see, showing off some massive wet spots. The laughing ensued. I stood with my arms up through at least thirty seconds of straight laughter, keeping a straight face the entire time. I put my arms down and said, "LOOK. So I have a sweaty pit problem. Go ahead and laugh, but when your sweat glands mature a little bit more, and when you're dressed in pants and long sleeves and a tie, and you're working hard all day in a hot and stuffy room, you're going to have the same problem! And YES. As a matter of fact, I DO wear anti-perspirant deoderant, but it just doesn't always cut it for some of us." They kept giggling at me. So I raised my arms again and said, "Go ahead, take one last good long look, have one last laugh, get it all out, but after this, NO MORE." That really did it; uproarious might be the word to describe the laughter at that point. After a little more, they finished up and as I got ready to go back to the subject at hand, the girls who started it all in the front said between giggles,

"Mister, that's not even what we were laughing at, but now that you point it out...tehehehehehe!"