i thank you God for most this amazing day

It's an e. e. cummings poem.

Here's a pic taken on just such a day, at a Selly park. I was never very good at monkey bars.

I'm sitting in our cafe room, drinking decaf coffee and listening to the Weepies, staring out the window onto Bristol traffic and sunshine. It's five in the afternoon. Thoughtful.

Last night was amazing...a time to go down in Canvas history and pull out when things are discouraging. We all went to the Soak, and at some point I stepped back and realized that, between us, we knew most of the people in the pub. The usual music crowd, the CS guys, Patrick's surfer friends were there playing pool, some students Nat and Robert are friends with, and some randoms we met as the night went on. The place was packed. My good friend Jessie (and housemate from last fall) has been here a couple days on her way to live in France for awhile, which was SO great, and she took all the rest of these awesome pics. Transatlantic played at half ten; we did eight songs (a couple of mine, too) mid-open mic and drew everybody together. Really, really good set! Great reactions, as usual. I've never had so much fun.

Well, a couple of Robert's friends were there; they work at a radio station and asked us to play live next week, so that's on the calender, as well as hopefully a gig at the Gild on campus, which would be a completely new crowd of students from what we're used to.

The amazing thing is that this seems to be the connecting link between all our groups. Everyone comes together to hang out at open mic. We've been brainstorming about an end-of-term party to throw before Easter, and we've decided to try to rent out upstairs in the Pear--have TA play a couple hours, there's a bar up there, then get on the mic and invite everyone back to the house for free food. Please pray that this works. :)

Other things to fill you guys in on:

-A couple weeks ago Saturday we picked up trash around Selly Oak. We'll do it again in a couple weeks and invite people we think would care about that kind of thing...and, of course, just show the community that we care.

-Last Tuesday night about 15 guys (including ours) were here to play poker. The hallway smelled like man all night...but despite this, it was awesome. Guys met each other from different groups, they met Kevin and Robert, and some of them heard about what Canvas is and didn't freak out. Thanks God!!

-Tonight about 8 or 9 people are coming over for movie night. I'm a tiny bit nervous.

-Term ends at Easter, then students are off for 5 weeks to study and write papers until exams begin at the end of April. We're trying to plan some trips with some of our friends and definitely feeling the pressure to be everywhere all the time before a lot of people go home!

You should also know that the other day in a meeting, Natalie asked the four of us to make a list of all the students we knew between us (excluding students the big team know).

About 120.

Can someone say...God?