Today marks the first day of my last year at Clemson, and it looks to be a busy year. There’s a lot of work to do, a lot of fun to have, and a lot of life to live this year. It’s good to be back. My summer was pretty stellar too, but more on that later!

P.S. For those who were eagerly awaiting the song list from High School Beach Camp, no fear! It is coming. For those eagerly awaiting to hear about Ethiopia, you also shouldn’t fear. That is coming as well.

The feel of flexible plastic leaves a very distinct, chilling sensation on the skin. When this sensation occurred with my feet last night, I didn’t know what it was, I just figured it was a  breeze from the window being open or something. Then that sensation moved up my leg. As a lay there in that semi-asleep state, I started to become aware that there where a fair number of people in my bedroom, and from the sounds of their voices, and number of them were girls… weird. About the time the cool plastic reached my knees, it hit me: I was being pranked with good ol’ Saran wrap.

At first I was pretty ticked. My buddy Tim was on my bed helping to pass the wrap underneath, and I really wanted to tell him to buzz off. I had already been up late that night, and I just wanted to get some sleep before my speech this morning. He was lucky I was too tired to say anything yet. So I continued to lay their wondering why in the world I was letting myself be Saran wrapped, then I decided I would try and have some fun with this.

Step one was to move from laying on my back to being on my side. I knew this way I could create the maximum amount of room underneath the wrap, and give myself a little freedom. It also brought plenty of gasps and giggles from the offending crowd. From there I put on a little show of shuffling my feet or something every now and then to illicit the giggles from Tim, and to keep the wrap loose.

About this time, I began to try and figure out who else was in the room. From the discussion going on, I figured out pretty quickly that Carlye was there, and that she was likely the other culprit wrapping me up. I also know that Kevin Williams was somewhat involved from his sticking his head in the door and starring at me. I got a look at the camera girl’s head, but not well enough to identify her conclusively. I have a few ideas about who it could be though. There were various other people who I was aware of, a few of which were identified from the notes they left.

My worst fear in all of this was that they were planning to wrap me and then hit the lights and scream or something to force me to wake up and be social with these people I haven’t seen much of. I would have probably tried to continue to feign sleep as long as possible to avoid having to actually wake up completely. Thankfully, that didn’t happen.

What did happen is that they left the room to wait for the camera person to arrive, and I knew that it was my turn to have some fun. I started out easy by simply getting out of the Saran wrap and laying on top of it, like nothing had happened. Sure enough, this caused some amount of wonder in Tim and Carlye, and photos were taken. Then, they left again. I now decided to find out what time it was (~2:30) and to see what state my roommate was in(covered in sticky notes, but otherwise undisturbed). I then got cold and decided to get back under the Saran wrap and in my covers.  At this point Carlye came back up and placed the lovely “Where did the pineapple come from?” sign and proceeded to go back downstairs and tell everyone that “You won’t beleive this, but he’s back under the Saran wrap.” Which of course brought everyone running and more pictures were taken. I decided to do one more iteration of being out of the Saran wrap when Tim came to check on me, and back in the wrap when he tried to bring people up to see, but I decided not to take things any further for fear of being discovered. Finally everyone left and I eventually managed to go back to sleep.

I honestly have no clue how they expected me to sleep through all of that. The Saran wrap brought instantaneous consciousness to me, but they were being pretty loud as well. Maybe I’m just a really light sleeper, because my roommate did sleep through the whole thing, and was quite surprised this morning to find that he was covered in sticky notes.

A few notes:

• Setting up a camera to record my while I sleep would not have been a good idea. That would have given me way too ability to get back at you.
• Beginning to study for a test at 3:00 in the morning is also not such a good idea. I don’t know who the guy was who said that, but I feel bad for him.

So here is the set list and the answer key to the game. I don’t have much to offer for a prize except perhaps micah lee band stickers, but I will definitely do this again with something worth winning.

I Am Free – Ross Parsley
Lord of All – Kristian Stanfill
Jesus Paid it All – Kristian Stanfill
Rejoice – Chris Tomlin

Perhaps the funniest part of the night was that we spent the majority of the time tracking down one of the roadies for the band, instead of the band itself. The guy I went to the concert was on summer project with said roadie in Costa Rica for this past summer, and so this concert was largely a reunion for the two of them.

I also got talked into going to DCF this morning instead of Crosspoint. I had told a lot of people that I would visit DCF soon, and they held me to it. It wasn’t quite what I expected and it was really good. I always like seeing new styles of church and worship. The only downside is that I now have to catch up on Crosspoint’s John series online. Something I’ll have to do again when I go visit North Point Community Church later this month.

On another note, I finally have internet in my apartment. I never realized how much I did relied on the internet until I had to walk to the library in order to use it.

Here’s what the band played, in case you’re interested:
You Never Let Go - Kristian Stanfill
Rejoice – Chris Tomlin
Blessed Be Your Name - Matt Redman
Everlasting God – Chris Tomlin

On a side note: my brother won an iPod touch at one of the welcome back events at Clemson. How crazy is that?!