Archive Page 2
Inspirational
Here’s the thing. I was watching the movie Elf tonight with some friends after having a fairly wonderful birthday weekend. While watching the movie I couldn’t help but fade into memories of my childhood. You know, crying out for my parents in the middle of the night for something silly like a glass of water or something equally manageable, but for which I only wanted my parents’ help. I could tell you how weird it was thinking about all of that in light of the wonderful birthday card I received from my parents that drove me to tears. Instead I’d like to point two of my friends out to you and let you know they are an inspiration to me in how to live life against the grain. I’m not even sure exactly why they’re doing it, but they’re doing it. Living in a van in a Walmart parking lot while enrolled in school. One of them just started up a blog to hopefully document some of their adventures. I encourage you to read along with me in their journey.
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Republican debacle
I really don’t know what the GOP is thinking. I thought there were at least a couple of better candidates than McCain and was willing to see what would happen with him as the presidential nominee. His VP choice was a little shocking, but a bold move nonetheless. I’m not going to write them off just yet, but for a maverick choice McCain knowingly chose a woman from Alaska with little political experience and a somewhat questionable record as of late. And now this has come out. At the very least it’s going to make this race more interesting and will encourage me to look with even more scrutiny at all of the candidates…especially if anyone is running independent.
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Mother’s wisdom
My mom turned 60 last week. Here are the wise words that keep reverberating through my head: “Mylar balloons are the cause of a lot of power outages.”
Imagine that. A simple little balloon responsible for a power outage. I’m not sure how that works since the wiring is coated as one of my friends pointed out. He came up with a much better solution:
All we need to do is train a legion of soldier squirrels to chew through the wiring. And if the finger ever gets pointed in our direction for the spike in power outages we can just point the finger at our cute little friends.
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Summer
Summer, say hello to the fall. I always feel like that sort of introduction is necessary when school starts for everyone. School starting feels like it should be the beginning of fall. I’d like to blame the seasons for not playing along and changing properly with the school calendar. Or you know it always could be that the start of school keeps getting pushed up. It’s weird though since it’s august and I don’t think we’ve crossed the 90 degree mark too much. School has started, but I’m graduated and not taking classes. I’m in a college town, hanging out with college kids, but I’m not in college. Suffice it to say life seems slightly awkward right now and some cooperation from the seasons would be wonderful. Speaking of seasons, went and saw Jersey Boys, phenomenal. Music just isn’t the same nowadays.
Time with family and a nicely developing chaco tan have definitely been nice here towards the end of the summer. Oh man, end of summer. I should probably get working on polishing up some music for a wedding. That’ll have to wait till tomorrow.
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awkward restart
Many moons ago I promised a post or two about the Willow Arts Conference I went to. Then I had computer troubles that were probably, entirely caused by me. They have now been fixed by me with the help of a very detailed manual and guidance from mi padre. Rather than posting about the conference I’d rather talk about the present, but I will mention this not totally verbatim quote/idea, “We need more imagination in the church and how we do church. If we’ve gotten to a point where we are doing church more out of routine than imagination something is wrong.” Definitely some food for thought.
Right now, in the present, I’m lying on a couch in Chicago having a wonderful time with my family celebrating my mom’s 60th birthday. It’s been quite the event so far with almost all of her siblings flying in from New York for the occasion. There has been lots of walking and talking. Loving and mocking. And so far there hasn’t been a really gargantuan, classic family fight over paying the bill for anything. If you would like an idea of how crazy that can get ask me about the wheelchair rental incident sometime. Today we saw Cirque Shanghai Gold and tomorrow Jersey Boys. I’m pretty sure these two days will be my favorite of the year.
I’m tired and blogging again…hopefully. Just wanted to get something in the blogosphere before it pronounced me dead for lack of attention.
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Still not reviewing
Here’s my day in a nutshell. Wake up and realize power is out. Realize computer was plugged in without a surge protector. Computer now not completely reliable. I’m guessing something magnetic. Then it was time for more conferencing. Today was by far the best day in my book. As always more on that later. Decided to stay for lunch before heading to catch my bus. Woops! Missed the bus. No biggie, I’ll catch one of the two trains still leaving for Bloomington-Normal right? Wrong. Sold Out. What the heck is that. Welp, my ride is already gone I’ll catch a train back to the burbs where my ride will be heading. Got work covered for tomorrow and then realized my sister was in the city and I could’ve just stayed the night there. Awesome. Really I never got too upset with this whole process. I’m more aggravated with my computer turning itself into sleep mode and doing that as often as it would like at times than I am about any of the traveling business. Of course I’m wiped out again and will post later about the conference.
I typed this as fast as I could and it still turned into sleep mode before I could publish it. Sweet. 
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Arise 2/3 and 1/3 more
I’m only 2/3 of the way through the first day here at the ARISE conference at Willow Creek. So far it has been pretty awesome. I’ve seen lots of encouraging people…and by that I mean people I know and was not expecting to see here. This is just a quick update to show people I’m actually going to post thoughts on the conference.
…
Well I was in the middle of this post when the last third of the day began. I would post specific details and thoughts on everything except I’m exhausted because I just had food and changed a tire on the car I was driving today. I really don’t think it was flat when I left the conference and only noticed it after I had some dinner. Now I’m just in the mood to relax and not do anything so I’ll post more tomorrow after the Breakout sessions.
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Figures
An McLean County Animal Control employee backed into my parked Scion xB on Saturday. I really wasn’t all that mad when it happened and I’m still not. It wasn’t like I was expecting it, but I definitely was not surprised. It figures the weekend before a conference I’m supposed to be attending that this would happen. That I don’t normally park there. That I had thought about not parking there. I still am fine with it. It’s interesting when things like this happen. Some people people explode. Others implode. It’ll be interesting to see how this all works out in the end.
Since it was a McLean County vehicle I get to deal with McLean County insurance. Basically acquiring 3 estimates…and yes, they are all different. Pretty sure the highest estimate is the right one and pretty sure they are not going to give the okay on that one. Now it’s a waiting game and I’ll be waiting in the burbs. That is after my two train rides and wonderful mother picking me up late this evening. Hopefully I’ll get some good news about this insurance claim while I’m at the conference. Really I’m expecting bad news though because that is exactly the kind of disheartening distraction that could put a damper on my mood and cause me to lose focus at a conference that is meant to enrich me.
More on all of that within the next few days I hope…
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Hodgepodge
School done. Internship finished. Part time job still paying the bills, which are much cheaper now. I’m hoping this will equate into more free time to spend on a number of things. One of them blogging. I would also like to get back into running, reading, playing/writing music, and adventuring. Thinking about all of this is great and I hope some of it will actually come to fruition. I like doing lots of things and having things on my plate. It makes me feel productive, whether or not I actually am. The past year or so I’ve felt like I’ve been productive, but not for myself necessarily. Sounds selfish, but I’d like to do some things for me.
You can expect to hear me blog about the stuff above among all of the other random junk I usually talk about as well as a conference at Willow Creek I’m going to next week. I imagine I’ll have free time in the evenings even after hanging out with people at the conference and friends from home where I’ll be able to blog and give some fresh thoughts on what I’ve been hearing. You can expect that I’ll at least give an overview of the conference. Until then.
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Absence
I’ve been absent from the blogging world for an even longer time than normal recently. Some of this is due to lack of motivation and time. Partly it’s due to lack of any sense of what to write. No clue what is going on in general. Over the past few weeks I have been learning a lot about myself and what I turn to when I’m in need of direction. Where did I used to turn? What have I turned to in the past?
Today in church there was a resounding confirmation to the answers I have been given to such questions over the last few weeks. Randy preached as if he were a demon, a la The Screwtape Letters. This was in itself quite an amazing event to watch and hear. Incredible to hear truth amongst those who seek to subvert it. I was privy to what was going to happen during the sermon for the most part, but what happened at the end was fantastic.
Randy had finished and was making his exit when Simmons began singing “Praise the Name of Jesus” in the back. This was definitely something that was planned, that I didn’t know about, but exactly what I wanted to do in response to the message we had received from Randy. I would explain it more or describe the impact it has had on me more if I felt I could do it justice. I’m not really sure I would be able to give do it justice and I do not want this to sound like one of those “mountain top” experiences.
I have been thinking lately how much I and our culture rely on our experiences and our feelings about God. Today was one of those experiences and there were feelings conjured up, but it was one of the first times that the truth has mattered more to me than my experience or emotions regarding the truth. This is one of the reasons I am excited for this summer. I look forward to speaking, reading, and doing truth with people this summer. I suppose some would call it truth with a capital T. It surely is that, but it’s more. It’s fullness of life.
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