Untitled.

Today was a good day. Got up at 6:30 and and had a very leisurely morning. As in, I literally just laid on my bed with a blank mind for the first half hour or 45 minutes. No reading. No web surfing. Nothing.
At 8:30 I left the house and drove down to K-Mart where I parked for free (as opposed to the ramps downtown) and walked the 10 minutes to the office. At work yesterday I was invited to sit in on a board of directors meeting as a team of urban designers went over a powerpoint presentation of the latest and greatest Master Plan for downtown Rochester. It's pretty interesting, and I think they have some good ideas, but a LOT of it is based on the idea of less motor vehicles coming into the downtown area. The words "bicycles" and "cyclists" were used roughly 490 times in the hour long presentation. I was wondering why nobody was asking questions like "what about during the 7 months out of the year when the weather is too cruddy to use a bike in Rochester?" or "With the Mayo Clinic as a medical destination where sick and disabled people come, shouldn't we be taking into consideration the needs of their patients?"
I have a little bit more to say, but its highly unlikely that anybody actually cares to read about it (in fact it seems like nobody really reads this, period). So I'll move on.
After the meeting was out at 10:30 I walked back to K-Mart and bough myself a new leather-bound journal, which I am excited to start using! Keeping a daily journal is something I've been hit and miss with the last year or so, but I'm hoping to make more of a point to do it now that I have a fresh journal. I especially want to do it through the school year, writing out my thoughts on classes, relationships, being an RA, what God is teaching me, etc. Is there something ironic about blogging electronically about keeping an old school pen-and-paper journal? Hmm.
This afternoon I went on an invigorating and sweat-inducing 14 mile bike ride, covering a lot of southeast Rochester via streets, neighborhoods and bike paths. I stopped by the post office to mail a textbook I sold online, and then swung by Crossroads and said hi to my friends who are living and working there over the summer, and then got an email on my phone reminding me that I needed to take care of some things for Thursdays on First for tomorrow, so I came back home and did that. I was gone from 1:30 until about 4, and from 4-7 I relaxed and split time between Facebook, online news stuff (this story is particularly interesting) and the Bible. Read through the Old Testament prophet of Zephaniah and LOVED these verses.
Ultimate Frisbee is on Wednesday nights, so around 7 I drove down to East Park. Unfortunately we didn't have enough people to play until about 7:45. Unfortunately we only got to play for about a half hour before two of the 7 folks playing went down with injuries! Nothing super serious I don't think (a hamstring and something in another guy's side), but it was a bummer to have to stop because of that. Praying they're alright.
Tomorrow is another Thursday! I'm excited! Unfortunately the weather looks like it could potentially get kinda nasty later in the afternoon (as opposed to the morning, like last week, heh), so we'll see. :/ I'm optimistic it will be a great day though. You should come on down!

Another Monday post

Man, the weeks just fly by. Especially when I look and see that it's already been 7 days since my last post. Hmm.

Well, I guess a lot of things have changed, or at least happened, since my last update. Wednesday the 9th I played a sweet game of Ultimate Frisbee with a group of people, one of which I really knew, some of whom I vaguely knew, and most of which were total strangers who became friends by the end of the night. I love ultimate frisbee. Playing with people who love playing it makes it even better. I told myself going into it that I shouldn't push myself too much, that I should hold back on some of the crazier things I've been known to do when playing, and try to take care of my body and not break anything in lieu of Thursdays on First starting the next morning, but I didn't listen to myself. I ran, jumped, dove, grabbed, slapped and yelled like I didn't have to get up at 5-something the next morning. And I loved it. :)

Thursday was the first Thursdays on First & 3rd of the year! This is what my whole internship has been based around and gearing up towards. I was excited, but a bit apprehensive heading into it, being a very visible leader of the event but having no hands-on experience with it before. From my perspective, it went great! We had a decent number of volunteers who were great to work with and enjoyed being there, and the vendors (at least the ones in my area) didn't cause any trouble or make too much of a stink about anything. They're pretty much all great people.

Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate very well, and it rained off and on (mostly on) from 11am through 3pm, causing most of the lunch crowd to stay indoors, leaving many of the vendors with some long faces. My boss was |this| close to calling the market off because there was some danger of high winds which could really wreak havoc on the 10x10 tents the vendors set up. Fortunately, she decided against canceling the evening portion, and all the bands played. People responded, and the evening crowd was quite a bit heavier. I enjoyed a vegetable panini from Martinis at the Kahler Hotel. It was good!!

The band stopped playing shortly after 9pm (which I think is about half an hour later than they were supposed to) and I ran around all over the place making sure all the vendors were getting things taken down without any problems. My night ended around 9:45, making for a day of slightly over 14 hours. I loved every minute though, and can't wait to do it again this week, though hopefully with better weather!

Friday morning I slept in until about 10am. It was my birthday, and mom made me a 3 egg omelette with peppers, onions, mushrooms and cheese. It was delicious!! While it was being prepared, I admired and inspected a birthday poster that mom, Johanna and Cassia had made for me. It said "Happy 22nd birthday Christian" on it, with the word "happy" hidden 22 times on the poster. I found 17 of them the first time through, but had to look a bit more carefully for the other five. Good work, Team Family. I spent the rest of the day at home, playing baseball, mowing the lawn and hanging out with Johanna while the rest of the fam ran errands for the weekend's festivities.

Saturday night I had a party with my college friends. Sadly, a majority of the people I invited were unable to attend, but a number did come for a short while. We had a hoot playing some crazy tennis, a "closest to the stump" golf shootout, and some great food and games of Apples to Apples and Uno. My dear friend Laura was the only one who stayed the whole night. Knowing that she drove down from her home north of the cities for my party was a tremendous blessing to me, and really meant a lot to me, since most of my friends couldn't make it. Praise the Lord for His blessings. :)

Sunday ushered in party # 2, this time with all my Scout Troop friends. This one was pretty much a Troop 102 reunion, with 12 of us joining together for a bonfire and a creepily hilarious game of Apples to Apples that lasted somewhere around 3 hours. My green apple card winnings pegged me as being "intelligent" and "sexy." What more could a man want to be? :P

Today it rained all day, and accordingly I spent it curled up in a chair reading from 8am straight through to 1pm. I finished Anne Graham Lotz's The Magnificent Obsession. The last 60-75 pages were mostly decent, but I still won't recommend the book to anyone. Way too much speculation and conjecturing of biblical figure's thoughts for a Christian Living book for me. I also finished Skye Jethani's The Divine Commodity, which I found to be a thoroughly engaging and culturally accurate and relevant book that I will soon be recommending to a couple of the pastoral staff at church. I recommend it to you, dear reader as well. Find this book and read it.

I'm also now about a third of the way through Emily Bronte's sole work of fiction, Wuthering Heights. Such a turbulent book so far!! Love it though; really intriguing character interplay and intertwining. I also started a biography about George Frideric Handel. I've wanted to read a biography for a while, and for some reason I just had it in my head that I should read about Handel. We'll see if anything jumps out at me as I work through it's 175 brief pages. I also started Shane Claiborne's The Irresistible Revolution. Looking forward to digging into this much-talked about book!

That's about it for now. Looking forward to Thursdays on First again this week, and then a trip to Lake Mille Lacs this weekend! First time up there for the summer, should be great. Gonna do some serious reading/fishing, hopefully. Then the weekend after that I'll be flying down to St. Louis for the CBA convention! I went in to Christos this afternoon and talked with my boss there about that. Sounds like it's going to be a great time!!

Monday... That's my Funday!

I was going to write last night, but the site was down for some maintenance or something.

The last couple days have been great! :) Saturday was a busy day at the car lot, and even though we didn't sell anything, we got a few good leads for the week and had quite a bit of traffic through, so it was fun. Church was good too. I skipped the service and locked myself in the bookstore to read my new books! I got the following titles:
-The Complete Signature Classics by C.S. Lewis (7 of his most famous titles all in one gorgeous hardback volume. AHHH!!!!!)
-The Divine Commodity by Skye Jethani
-The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne
-Stuff Christians Like by Jon Acuff
I'm 1/5 through the Jehani book and LOVE it so far. The Acuff book I just tossed in my glove box in my car, planning to just keep it there so I have something to browse when I've got some dead time somewhere.
Sometime when I have more energy maybe I'll actually write about WHY I bought said titles and what I think of the ones I've read. Ha.
Over the weekend I also read a book written by Sherwood Eddy called Religion and Social Justice. The interesting part about it was that it was written in 1927, so it talked about things like the horrible pay for factory workers in the U.S., and the effects of the prohibition of alcohol. One of my favorite parts of the book was this quote:

"Were we not so accustomed to war, as once our forefathers were to slavery, we might see the folly, the futility and contradiction of trying to live our lives in water-tight compartments, half pagan and half Christian; at one time believing in the sacredness and protection of human life, at another preparing for its fi...erce destruction."

Nice to know people "got it" back in the 20's, too.

Other highlights of the weekend included a great game of kickball at pastor Dan's house, attending the wedding reception of a friend I know from Fusion who is the driving force behind GFC Media, the film company that I worked with when I played the role of Billy Boy Scout. If you click the GFC link you can find that particular film on their video page. Good memories.
I also had a great cup of tea with my dear friend Emily. We enjoyed the beautiful sunshine and discussed the pros and cons (well, mostly we just discussed the cons) of "seeker-friendly churches." Good stuff.


Today I got up around 9:30, ate a leisurely breakfast, spent some time in the Word, and then Julia and I went downtown to see Monroe Crossing play at the Peace Plaza! It was my third time seeing them, and they have yet to disappoint. Such tight-knit talent!
After that I took Julia to her flute lesson. I then ran some errands, during which I swung by First Alliance Credit Union, where I broke the door handle off their front entrance. I'm a pretty enthusiastic person, especially when I'm having a day filled with stuff like God's Word, live music and sleeping in, so I was feelin' it. I walked up to the door and gave it a rather authoritative tug. The handle snapped right off! It seemed to have been loose before, but I still felt pretty awesome.
There was an employee who had just walked out the door and when she realized what had happened, she took care of the issue and put the now detached door handle to a back office somewhere. We had a good laugh about it.
I spent 3 hours at Christos and then went to Panera for supper with Bob, after which I went to Soldier's Field to see if anyone was playing Ultimate. There was a group, and I jumped in. I played barefoot, since I was only in flip-flops. I enjoyed the exercise, but when your ears get dirtier than your feet, it's not as fun. Stupid cussin' high schoolers.

Tomorrow will bring about my last RDA work day before the Thursdays on First summer market kicks off!! I am really excited for everything to start up, and hope to see many friends, family and acquaintances downtown over the course of the summer.

For now though, I've written enough, and I can hear books calling my name. I'm in the middle of three right now. the Anne Graham Lotz book I've mentioned before, The Divine Commodity, and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, which I started on a whim last night.

P.S. I love that one of the tags I can use for this post is "accidental vandalism." Bahahaha.

It's almost 10pm. I've been up for almost 19 hours. You do the math.

Today was a bit atypical. I woke up at 3am and left the house at 4am, taking dad and Elise up to the Minneapolis airport. Dad bought a car online in Colorado Springs, and so they flew out and are currently in the midst of driving it back.

I got back to the house at 7am, leaving me 20 minutes to do whatever before getting out the door to walk to the bus stop. I made good use of the time, making sure I had everything in my bag for the day, cooking two eggs and making a full lunch to take with me for the day. All in under 20 minutes. Score.

I intentionally left all my pleasure reading at home today, intending to get some actual work done. Which I did! I finished up the book report for the R.A. book (Fireseeds of Spiritual Awakening) and got that sent in, caught up on some emails, and got a good chunk of processing done on what I want to write my Old Testament papers on this summer. I should leave my books at home more often. Hmm.

Now, typically I only work on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so with it being Wednesday, that was another thing that was atypical. Well, today was our volunteer training day for Thursdays on First (TOF) volunteers. We had two sessions, one at noon and one at 5:30. There were 7 people at noon and 5 at 5:30. TOF starts one week from tomorrow, woweee! I think things are going to come together well, and I'm excited for them to do so!!

Going to the Honkers home opener tomorrow night with a group of great friends, really looking forward to it! I love me some outdoor baseball!