Transportation to the Beyond

It's blogoff time! Adam vs. Rachelle, FIGHT! This is like the old Street Fighter II games I remember playing at Justin Brandt's with his Super NES controller with electrical tape. I was a Chun Li fan. Not many people like Chun Li, but she was so agile! I think Jason would always play as the big sumo and just do his thousand punches all game until I ran into it. But my Chun Li could do that spinning upside down in the air that I loved. Did anybody else play this game?
So, as I said, it is a blogoff, so be prepared for the bar to be raised as high as an elephant's ---.

Thursday -- went to St. Aiden's Anglican church for a passover Seder meal. Getting there was funny enough. My car was piled full of people, made funnier because they were piled with funny food items. Jeremy was holding a tray of brownies that he cut about as good as a five year old, plus a loaf of garlic bread. Rachelle was holding, well, I'm not sure, let's say a giant piece of rhubarb. James was holding a bag of buns that my grandma made last weekend and Travis and I didn't get around to eating, a can of spaghetti sauce that we didn't use, and a thing of peanut butter cookies. So we start driving, the church is only five blocks away, and we start stalling. We must have stalled thirty six times in between. Stalling makes it hard to parallel park, let me tell you! So we get inside and I bring the buns for the potluck up to a lady in the kitchen. Then the seder starts. We sit at the table while the pastor starts to read from the liturgy. A group of designated men are supposed to stand up. They do. Number one is supposed to have a line. All stand still. Why is nobody speaking?! We sit in awkward silence for literally thirty seconds. Finally the bald one realises that he is number one and reads the line. We are called to dip the bitter herbs into the salt water. I could get used to this. Then we are called to make a mini-sandwich with the matzah bread and horseradish dip - a little tangy. Then a tense moment as an elderly lady passes out at the front of the church basement. An ambulence is called, and she is carried like the ark of the covenant on a chair to the door. After a while, we hear a report that she has regained consciousness and is doing alright. So we sing a Jewish song. And then is time for the potluck meal - our spaghetti goes a little slow, but there is a bountiful variety to choose from. But... where are the buns that I brought?! They have not put them out! My offering... my offering has been rejected! Is this proper potluck etiquette?
The service ends with a powerful time of us reading from the psalms out loud while climbing the steps into the main sanctuary. We find a pew and sing an a cappella song. A passage is read from Mark, up until the part where the disciples abandon Jesus. The book is slammed shut, and all the lights turn out. We sit in the dark, the stained glass image of Christ on the cross the only thing that glows in the evening light.
We recover at John Botkin's place, where we get there for the end of "Jesus of Montreal". I brought a bag of cookies that we had also failed to eat throughout the week. When I got downstairs, I saw they were already eating cookies, so I put the bag aside. We went upstairs to play a game of RACKO! with Chelsea, Melissa, and newbie Keith Tang. I have a brief moment when I think I am the worst RACKO player in the world. But I recover, and could have maybe taken the lead from Chelsea had not Keith called a RACKO! on the last hand knowing full well he would lose. Silly, silly, beginners. So it was late and time to go. I went to grab my bag of cookies.
But when I got downstairs I realized the bag had been taken. Taken! Oh, what cruel fate that is the stealer of my gifts! So after I cried for a while, and deemed myself fit to drive back to Rosenort, I left, going to drop Rachelle off on the way. And as we drove down residential Winnipeg (stalling a few more times) we looked up and saw the glorious northern lights slice across the sky, as if God was carving a chicken. They turned from green to yellow, making grand swoops and swirls, eddies in the black light opposite the moon. And I looked in my pockets for my bag of beans, in want of a plant that I could climb to the electric heights, but, like everything else, they were gone.