Serve Day, Canvas, and US Surf Open

Besides the usual weekly events - work, Wednesday pilates at church, Thursday class in Ontario, and homework, I had quite the weekend. Serve Day, when hundreds of churches in LA and Orange Counties join together for service projects in their communities, was on Saturday. I chose to help at an elementary school in Costa Mesa, and there was plenty to do. My first project was to spray paint two library carts black. The first cart was already mostly black, so that didn't take long to do, but the second was toothpaste green, so I had to use up three cans of paint on it. What a smell!

The principal had also brought out the piles of garbage bags full of the lost and found items from the last two months of school. She asked us to sort them by size, so that's what I spent the rest of the morning doing. Amazing what the kids will forget. If some of the jackets had been bigger, I would have "found" them!

As soon as we finished at the school, I hurried home, ate some lunch, and tried to scrub black spray paint off my hands and arms. Once I'd changed, I hopped back in my car and drove to church to hang my pictures for Canvas, Newport Mesa's art expo. Fortunately people were willing to share their tools, because I didn't know we needed to bring our own. Anyway, since I only had six pieces, it didn't take long to put them up, and then I wandered around, seeing other people's entries and helping with a few last minutes labeling crisis.

People began to arrive at the show at 3. Unfortunately for some of us, our work was hung inside, and for the first two hours there was no sign directing people indoors. With plenty to see outside, many of them never made it to us. A few more came our way when someone hung signs.









It was quite the event. I'm not sure how many people came through, but I know there were some mighty talented artists displaying watercolors, oil paintings, acrylics, photos, and drawings. Live musicians played both indoors and outdoors. At 10pm, we took down our pictures, and the display boards were moved outside so that we could hang the works again in the morning for church-goers to see. To hang the pictures back up before service, we had to be at church as close to 8 as possible, so after I'd hung my pictures and some others, I attended the 9 o'clock service, and when that ended, waited until 11 had started and then took the pictures down.



The timing worked out well, because this afternoon also happened to be the men's US Surf Open finals, and some friends and I wanted to see them. My friends met me at home in Huntington Beach, and we walked to the beach where some 100,000 other people had preceded us to the shore. We found a small patch of sand near the tide line and watched through the finals' end. The scoring computer went down just as the last two surfers, a French guy and an American, finished their heat. Poor announcers, they couldn't announce the results, because no one knew who had won. I think the American won.

We caught the tail end of the freestyle motorcross session, and then walked back home. A long day...