The State of the Yoder Address

And life has gone on for the better part of the last two months as I haven’t done so well at keeping this updates (thank you to all who’ve done such a diligent job of reminding me so). So, without further adieu, I present you with ‘The State of the Yoder Address’.

Some people love the winter and some people hate it. I tend to be one who doesn’t really mind it, but am not overly taken with the bitter cold. Snow is always a pleasant thing though. This winter in Indy has had neither bitter cold nor much snow to speak of. In short, it’s been a rather ‘blah’ sort of time. There have been sunny days and sort of warm days which pretty much ended up being a tease to me, as spring was too far away to really get prepared for. And even now we see the same thing. It was supposed to be 65 yesterday and by Sunday it should be cold enough for a few snow flurries. The second day of March makes this a little more tolerable, but needless to say, the weather has made me feel like I’ve been in this two month long holding stage where there seems to be little progression toward or away from any one season.

At the beginning of this month I tuned in to watch the President’s State of the Union Address (this post’s namesake). There were a lot of words but none of them seemed to spark a whole lot of enthusiasm or excitement from me. You might say that this is because I’m not really a Bush supporter at all, and on top of that, I tend to be a pessimist when it pertains to politics anyway. But I would say that my lack of a positive response was caused by something even above these usual reasons. I think that even your everyday Bush supporter as well as the eternal optimist would have to be honest with themselves when considering the real legitimate chance that absolutely anything worthwhile will happen in the political realm in the next few months and years. We’re entrenched in a war that it’s not possible to get out of in the foreseeable future. That’s expended just about as much political capital that our president has to give. Congress is mired in an almost relentless routine of having another shady politician caught in another shady deal about every other news cycle. To top that off, many of them are up against mid-term elections at a time when simply being Republican is not going to win the reelection because the president’s approval rating is in the 30’s. Not to mention that the party as a whole seems to be splitting is opinion on most issues right now. Being a Democrat isn’t going to get anyone elected either on account of the fact that most people look for their elected officials to have some sort of alternative ideas to the faulty planning and actions of the current administration. And that is just about all that the Democrats are interested in doing right about now. All that to say that it’s great for President Bush to talk about Math and Science teacher initiatives or Alternative Energy initiatives but that’s all it is… talk. There’s no more political capital. What does all of this mean? It means that 2 or 3 years from now we’re still gonna be in Iraq. Iran’s still gonna be moving toward nuclear weapons. Our education system is still going to be mired in about the most stratifying inequality imaginable. We’re still going to be driving cars around that suck on gas at around 2.50 or 3.00 a gallon. And none of it is going to be heading toward a progressive new horizon of change anytime soon. What a waste of time. These are all just thoughts and opinions, mind you. I’m not a political scientist, so what do I know about any of this anyway?

I saw my friend Maha a few weekends ago. She was back in Warsaw for a few days to try and get her mom’s finances in order. I only saw her for an evening and we didn’t really talk of much of any consequence, which is unusual for the two of us when we’re together. However, it didn’t matter. Maha is a reminder to me that people can change. I’m not talking about her. I’m talking about myself. When we were in highschool together we were about as different as they came. We didn’t know each other, but at the same time, we both knew enough about each other to know we didn’t want to know each other. And then the coffee shop happened. And for the first time I realized that friendship is not necessarily a declaration of homogeneity. It was in those long nights closing the coffee shop that I learned how to have respect for someone who disagreed with me. I learned what it was to discuss and debate without getting personal or feeling attacked… simply exchanging ideas. These things don’t need a winner to be declared at the end. Before, I think in my head those sorts of exchanges were all a power play. I will exert my intellectual and mental power over you by getting you to realize you are wrong. Not the case at all. What a beautiful, life altering realization that is….. You have your opinions and I have mine. If we cant respect another person’s right to think what they want, then we have no respect for anyone at all.

My job is still excruciating. Days and weeks were flying by from November through January. I hit February feeling pretty good about things. Then it sort of hit me through a series of pretty crappy days that I still had 1/3 of a year left to go. That’s right, no joyrides here. 4 more months. The tough part about them is that there’s really no breaks or vacations and to top it off, there are still a couple months of less than pleasant weather. We began to get busier at work to the point where days became the frantic scramble that they were back in July and August. And I again wondered if I really would be able to make it to the summer time or if I should just quit right there. I weathered the storm again, and this week has seemed to be a relatively low key one with next week looking like most of the same. The real boost on the job front came this week when I got through the month of February and began the official countdown. Yes, I have a countdown of days left to work. We’re at 51. I made a calendar on my dry-erase board at home. Each day when I come home I get to put a big red X through the number written on that day (I’ve got a feeling this is going to be the most looked-foreward-to part of my days). I’ve got roughly 10 weeks left. I’m quitting on May 12^th at the latest. That’ll give me 2 weeks to move out of the apartment to wherever it is that im going (to be discussed later). I’ve decided that in 2 weeks im going to have to sit down with my boss and break the news to him. I’m already sort of dreading it. By then it’ll be 2 months till quitting time and I think that this will be sufficient amount of time for him to find a replacement and for me to help train the person, if that’s wanted. If all that happens fast, then I’ll probably just stay on at the warehouse for a few more weeks as an hourly employee or something. I don’t know how im going to break all of this to Marvin, but I’ve begun to have the conversation in my head and I just don’t know how he’s going to take it. Is he going to be understanding? Will he be angry? Will he feel let down? I don’t know. I hope that giving him that much notice makes it easier than if I waited to give my 2 weeks notice or something like that. As I made the calendar I got pretty excited. I’m doing my best to plan things for most of the weekends so I have stuff to look foreward to in the short term. However, I am already finding out that the end coming closer is making me less and less tolerant of the things I hate about my job. It’s getting harder for me to ignore those thoughts and feelings. They’re also coming with more frequency. I think that the month of March could be quite a trial to get through without some really depressing days. But if I can hold out till the weather turns, I may yet make it out with a bit of sanity and mental health. I know this all sounds sort of comical, but many of these things are the honest truth. I would really appreciate any prayer on behalf of my mental and emotional ability to deal with all of this appropriately. Summer time come to me fast.

The Shorbs visited me a few weekends ago. Good friends are life’s sunshine. They couldn’t stay long, just Saturday night and they were off after church on Sunday. It didn’t matter though. Just being in their presence again was the sun on my face. It made me kind of hope that Marvin hires someone new for my job soon so that I can maybe take a long weekend in the spring to visit them again. Nate seems to be slowly warming up to his job which is very encouraging. I don’t care what he says, I think that the kids who ended up in his class this year received one of God’s special blessings. Nate Shorb, you’re a life changer. Don’t forget that.

My parents came down to visit at the beginning of February. It’s kind of a cool part of growing up and having a place of your own… I got to be my parents’ reason for getting out of Warsaw and doing something different. I like that sort of thing. I could host people every weekend. I love them dearly and I hope that they never decide that I live too far away to want to come visit me. One casualty of the weekend…. Our Christmas tree. Yeah, it was still up in the apartment 2 months after we cut it down. The funny thing was that we stopped watering it at new years but the needles were all still attached. That all changed when the parents decided it needed to go and soon needles covered the whole floor. In fact, I stepped on one randomly this week. It kinda hurt.

Angela Moore is indescribably amazing. She is absolutely wonderful. She picks up my spirits immediately when I think of her, and looking foreward to our nightly phone conversations pushes me to make it through yet another workday. Sitting here trying to decide how to explain why this is the case…. Not because I need anything to fill that void or play that roll (because I was very paranoid about that being the case if I started a relationship at this particular juncture in my life with work being what it is and all). And not because I generally allow that person to play such a role in my life early on in a relationship either. Here’s my best shot. You hear people talk about a person who just simply compliments them wonderfully. That person who just fits with them. As if you were the pieces to a two piece puzzle. I don’t know, maybe this is turning into something too sappy and cheesy for you to read, but I guess this is what I’m getting at. Previous relationships seemed so much more forced and full of effort than this. Everything about this relationship is so organic and natural and fitting. Every relationship starts that way but as time goes on, we all realize that we’re all different people and relationship is this sort of intentional effort to come together somehow. And I’m not saying that this relationship wont have that (because every relationship will have that because people are people and people are messy and people have issues). But never before has absolutely everything about a person seemed so comforting, and peaceful, and exciting, and thoroughly enjoyable to me. Nothing’s perfect, and neither is this, but everything that’s not perfect about who each of us is in this relationship makes it feel all the more natural and good. I better cut this off soon… she discovered my blog finally (so phil and noah can stop impersonating her in the comments section) and read all about everything I wrote about her in November and December and she didn’t think I was too much of a crazy stalker person to stop dating, so that’s a plus. So, to keep from embarrassing her too much more, I’ll let that all stand as it is.

Oh, Valentine’s day… Angela’s mom has a degree in horticulture and has spent plenty of time in flower shops and doing arrangements before. Thus, Angela has sort of high-class taste in flowers. Well, I don’t know what sort of class they are cause I don’t know anything about flowers, but needless to say, she’s got some favorite flowers that are a little more specific than the random daisies or roses. I did a bit of scouting out the situation with casual conversation about a month prior to the event and got the names of her favorites. No cheesy red roses here… Instead I called up the Hartford City flower shop about 3 weeks before Valentine’s and ordered a dozen sterling roses, a dozen fire and ice roses, as well as a dozen delphiniums. They were to be delivered the day before Valentine’s to Amy Barnett’s house. About a week before V-Day Linda Brate was over at our apartment watching College Basketball with us. She and Phil told me that I should make my own valentines. I told them no, because I always do cards the same way. No matter to whom, or for whatever reason, I always get plain thank you cards and cross everything out to write my pages and pages of stuff all over the card. It feels more like my sort of thing to do than cheesiness. However, They convinced me and Linda said she’d help me make it. I went to her apartment a few days later and she freaked me out with all of her card-making equipment and supplies (she says every girl has that stuff but im not sure about that). I decided to make 3 cards for her. One for each dozen flowers. I cut them all out and they had cool paper on them and I even learned how to emboss the words right on the front which looked pretty sweet if I do say so myself. Anyway, I was up the weekend before Valentine’s to visit her and I dropped the cards off to Tracy. That night before V-Day, Steph, her roommate told her that she had an early early morning breakfast date. Really, she and Tracy woke up early and ran over the Amy’s house to pick up the flowers and put them and the cards in Angela’s room so that when she woke up she’d see them there. I liked that idea. No seeing your name on the English hall front desk board or whatever… She was going to wake up on Valentine’s Day and know someone thought she was special. So, yeah, then I drove up after work and surprised her. I think she was surprised anyway. She came downstairs and gave me a big hug, which made the whole thing worth it pretty much. So, yeah, there’s Valentine’s day (hope you enjoyed the story Courtney). Thankyou to everyone who helped… Amy, Phil, Tracy, and Steph and Linda you are good friends. I owe you.

Spring training is underway and that is always cause for celebration. I love baseball, and what I love about baseball are these things… 1. the Chicago Cubs 2. Live Baseball games. 3. Fantasy Baseball. Our fantasy baseball draft is next weekend. Everyone’s coming down for the weekend and it will be a full house. So much fun. Phil’s reserved the boardroom at his fancy schmancy bank and we’re all gonna come together with suits and laptops and merriment. Oh sweet, sweet, fantasy baseball. I’ve been working on my mock draft for the better part of 2 weeks now. Harder than you think it is. Needless to say, all the preparation isn’t going to do a bit of difference because 2 of my top five will spend half the year on the DL. When April hits we’re going to listen to Cubs broadcasts on the radio in the warehouse… I don’t even care what anyone says. If they complain, im firing them. Nuf’ Said. I’ve gotta decide what Cubs games im gonna buy tickets for. Wrigley field is my Mecca.

So, Taylor finally posted a generic Hall Director position. I’m in the process of getting my references around and as soon as those are taken care of I’ll get an application. It feels good to actually be doing something about this instead of just sitting and thinking and hoping. I had a meeting with Skip in January which went very well and I was more than encouraged by his words and thoughts. Taylor’s going to be offering a Masters of Student Development in 2 years. So, if I do land a job there next year, I may defer my Ball St. program in hopes that I’ll do the Taylor program instead. That’s really exciting. As this all gets closer, I’m getting more and more nervous about it. I know this is what I want to do and I feel confident that everything about this past year has all been one big precursor to making this next step in this exact direction. God is good, and I have confidence in that. I also have confidence that if it turns out I didn’t see God’s direction as clearly as I thought, that there will still be cause for hope and excitement about my future career. The prayer right now is more for calm, and peace of mind cause it’s gonna happen in it’s own good time and there’s nothing I can do about it.

This summer I could be back in Warsaw with the parents which would be fun. It would probably mean working 3^rd shift somewhere or picking up hours at the coffee shop again. I could also end up in Ohio with Noah. That would be sweet. I’d work construction. Noah would make living out there relatively inexpensive too. I could also end up living in Upland getting a jump on finding a job that will let me work there through the next school year. All of them excite me and im not sure if I like one over any of the others. Any ideas?

My sister has a boyfriend…. WHOA! And she actually seems to be acting like shes going to give this one a chance. I’m stoked. How about you(Noah, sorry you didn’t pan out for her…. Guess there are bigger and better guys out there)? He still hasn’t introduced himself to me. He got pretty nervous meeting my parents the other weekend. Someone should have told him that was a waste of time when he still had to deal with me. Good luck kid. This is my baby sister we’re talking about whom I love dearly. I’m waiting….

Wow, well, I think that’s getting caught up from the past 2 months. I’ve known this long one was due, and it’s prevented me from writing several small soapbox ones along the way, so now that we’re all caught up, hopefully we can get back on track with posting regularly.

High Fidelity

Phil and I watched the movie 'High Fidelity' last night. It was great. No, seriously, I thoroughly enjoyed it and wouldn't be suprised if I own in in the not too distant future. We have a free month of the Blockbuster rip off to Netflix. Last weekend I watched 'Me and You and Everyone we Know'. Interesting. I think the whole thing's about intimacy in some sort of roundabout way. Maybe some of my movie critic friends can tell me otherwise... Soon to come are the Kill Bill movies.

I talked to the girl on the phone for 2 hours last night way past my bedtime. It was awesome right up until the point where i woke up this morning... So, im sort of paying the price all day today, im sure. But what a small price to pay for talking on the phone late at night.

Our Christmas tree has finally come down out of the apartment. My parents came down to visit this weekend and pretty much hijacked it out of there(I think they were afraid we were gonna send the whole apartment up in flames). So, though there were aspirations of it still being around in May, no such luck. I know many of you who didn't make the pilgrimage down over the holidays may be a little dissapointed, but alas, all good things must come to an end. However, if you come visit soon there's a good chance you could step on one of the pine needles still on the floor.

Shorb's thinking of coming out next weekend. Come back to me friend. It's been too long.

Homework

Today is February 1st. It's the unofficial opening of fantasy baseball season (ie: im making today that day). Homework starts today. Ends on draft day. BOOYEAH!


PS: I know this is not the post several people wanted, but rest assured, as soon as our internet connection works at home, then i'll post about real things.

Tires

So, i don't recall explaining my flat tire ordeal. In december I was driving to warsaw to meet my parents (it was the weekend of the huge snow storm and i decided to risk life and limb to get up to taylor to see the girl and almost died like ten times). So anyway, friday morning get home. park the car, go with the parents to chicago. get home sunday afternoon. go to get in my car and head back to indy... tire's flat. Take the tire off, and there's a nail i ran over. It's sunday so i can't get it taken care of that day. Dad let's me trade him cars for the week. He takes care of my car monday. The company says they can repair it, but that they don't think there's much tread on the tires. Dad says he thought he replaced them before he sold me the car. Turns out he didnt and I've been driving around on tires that have 80,000+ miles on them when they're only 60,000 mile tires or something like that... Made me count my blessings for having driven the month before to Shorb's in PA and to Chicago. So, it was time to get brand new tires. $450 dollars I had definately not budgeted on spending 3 weeks before Christmas (parents decided it would be a good christmas present to help me out with the expense... bonus!). So, it got taken care of that week. Brand-spankin-new tires. Last friday, driving into the apartment I drove into a Montana-sized pot hole. Oh yes, it bent the rim and put a small buldge in the sidewall of my new tires. So, I've been extremely happy all week thinking about how much more money im gonna have to spend to get a new tire that i've driven on for aproximately 3 or 4 weeks. Dad, last night told me to call the tire company and see whether they didn't have a waranty on them. So this morning I called and checked, and sure enough, they do. I'm getting the whole thing taken care of... new tire and all. for next to nothing! WHEEW! On top of that, i dont even have to go to warsaw to get it taken care of. Turns out that the tire store in Upland is part of the same group that the place in warsaw is, so i can get it worked on tomorrow while im up at taylor with Phil and Noah. Wow, this was one of the last things I would have thought would end up convenient and relatively inexpensive.

Noah's gonna meet us at Taylor this weekend. Good timing. I miss that kid. It'll be good to hit up Mi Pueblo tonite with all the guys. I talked to the girl again last night. talked for an hour in spite of being pretty tired. I LOVE that. I'll get to see her for 3 consecutive days. Looking foreward to that more than just a little bit. Tracy called me earlier. She's in india still. Gets back at the end of next week. Can't wait to hear stories. Gonna talk to Skip this weekend about Taylor Residence Life and Student Affairs Administration. I hope that all goes well. Sounds like a busy weekend, and it's gonna be. I am looking foreward to it all.

Ice Skating

We went ice skating on saturday. I didn't break my legs (a real possibility though). I'm not gonna lie, I had to pretty much hold onto her shoulders for dear life for most of the time, so im not sure if we can really say that I skated very well. But, i'll take it. I spent the most splendid day of conversation with her. It was so relaxed and casual and at the same time opinionated and not small-talk. I respect that so much, and crave it all the more.

Work's been kinda slow this week and it's made for some long, drawn out days. The weather has been pretty bi-polar. We move from high 50's and sunny to snow, ice and 20's and then back to 50's again all in the span of a few days. I'm not complaining. It's just a little wierd. Yesterday I put on a show to whoever cared to look out the apartment windows and watch my try to get into my car, who's doors had frozen shut, while i tried to carry an arm load of stuff. It didn't work and i spent 5 minutes trying to get in. In the process i dumped both my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and my newspaper in the snow.

'Caesar is God'

I got livid at church yesterday. Now, first things first; this wasn't the teaching pastor. This was another guy filling in. However, that doesn't help me much. We're talking through the back end of the first chapter of Philippians and what he's pointing us to is this section where Paul admonishes the people to remember their citizenship in Christ. In this guy's attempt to get us to understand what Paul's saying he begins into this little schpeel about America and patriotism. Talks about how good it is to be a citizen of this country and all the freedom we have and all the opportunity that we exercise. This is supposed to be something along the same lines as what Paul is reminding the Philippians about with Christ, just all the more so. And then he went back to talk about how the people of the church understood this sort of citizenship because it was sort of the opposite response to what their citizenship to Rome was. Being a citizen of Rome was good because you had the right to due process of law and couldn't be sentenced to death most of the time... ...However, the big beef with that was that if you were a Roman citizen you had to believe that Caesar was God. This was a major drawback, our speaker pointed out. And then he moved on. Now there were several periphery issues that came up which kinda got me heated (including a rather pin-headed, ethnocentric remark that, had I been French, would have been compelled to stand up and walk out right then.... I was pretty offended, none the less), but the major beef can be found in this bare bones restatement of the first half of his message. Call me a heretic, but is it not possible that the way we live and interact within and toward our American culture is pretty much the equivalent of proclaiming it God in our lives? And if this is the case, then proclaiming oneself such an unabashedly patriotic proponent of all things American, then isn't that somewhere along the same lines as proclaiming Caesar as God if you were a Roman? Think about it... Do we loooove money? Do we work really hard to get as much money as possible? Is money not the most primary factor in much of our decision-making? Do we not allow consumerism become more than an activity but a mindset and a way of life? It transforms who we are, what we think, how we feel, and what we do. Are we sure that capitalism is not our God? Again, call me a heretic... But I would be inclined to say that, short of verbalizing this fact, We interact with and allow capitalism to affect us in much the same way as we're called to interact with and allow God to affect us. So, if this is the case, isn't Capitalism more our God than Jesus Christ (aside from all the lipservice we pay to Him, of course). Now, again, this is not me jumping on the capitalism bashing soapbox (i can get on that one much more pointedly some other time). This is about being appalled at the notion that someone who is standing at the pulpit of a church in front of a congregation associating our patriotic response to all things American as a positive similar correlation to the way we should remember our citizenship in Christ. NO! What in the world kind of word picture is that? You're going to get me to understand that I should remember to align myself with Christ in the same way that I align myself with my culture even though my culture really is my God, and not Christ? Isn't there just some inherent fallacies in the idea that my love of one 'God' in my life is alright, just as long as I love the other 'God' more? What makes me even more livid is the fact that this was said at the pulpit. Anything is fair game in discussion and debate. Ask any question you want, get as crazy and out of the box as you want. Just don't do it while standing behind the pulpit in a church. That position has too many responsibilities for someone to not take into consideration all of the implications of the things they say. I don't care if it's just supposed to be a word picture. The word picture, when thought through fully ends up associating two things positively that shouldn't be associated positively and that's a big deal especially when one of those things is our relationship and citizenship with Jesus Christ! If I walked up to the pulpit and preached a message using an illustration that following Jesus is the same as following Allah or Buddha, only that I need to follow Jesus all the more... I would get laughed off the stage and then I'd be lucky not to be tarred and feathered right outside of the church building in the parking lot for the heresy that I allowed into the congregation. I know there are differences between what was really preached and what I just used as an example, but tell me that the principle is really missing the point. I'm not trying to say that I don't like America or that I shouldn't feel blessed to live in a country with all the privileges and freedoms that I experience every day. I'm not trying to say that everything we are is horrible and despicable or deplorable. Really what I was the most disappointed in was that, not only did this guy not get that American culture is a more real God in our lives that Jesus is, but from the pulpit, he used this deification of our culture as a positive example as to how we should also follow Jesus, only, just a little more. And it was said, and the rest of the message went on and everyone listened intently, and I doubt that too many people caught on that such an association could have just been made in their heads and hearts.

Blue and White

So, today at work I spent a few hours just stickering books with some of my employees. The young lady working across the table from me started talking to me about movies and stuff and somwhere in the middle of the conversation she got a confused look on her face and looked at me for a long moment then wanted to know how old i was. When I said 23 she got a good laugh out of that. She didn't realize that I was only a year older than her. She was expecting me to say somewhere between 28 and 30. Wow... i dont' even know what to say. I told her she probably thought that because of the beard. She didn't agree. She said it was my manorisms. She pictured me going home and reading books and the newspaper at night and on the weekends. She had trouble thinking that i was the same age as all the people she goes and parties with all the time. It was kind of funny, but obviously, i got sort of introspective about it. We have two totally different lives. She is a 22 year old african american single mother of 2 who lives in a run down appartment complex where her mom lives 2 doors down and her two best friends (who are also single mothers) live a few doors down the other direction. She didn't finish highschool. She doesn't have a steady job. Her kids are nothing but a complaint and the weekends are her chance to get away and go pretend that she can act her age. She thinks I should take care of her kids for a week sometime because then i would be motivated to do more crazy stuff; like somehow I'm short-changing my good fortune to have not procreated yet. it was a disheartening conversation.

Phil's boss pulled him into his office last week and in so many words told him he needed to wear different clothes to work. 'Step in up just a notch' i do believe was the direct quote. Phil was mystified by it all and so was i. I see phil every morning before he goes to work and it's always a shirt and tie with either dress slacks or khaki pants along with dress shoes. Some days he even wears a suit. So, for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what the dude was referring to. Phil didn't either and he even went back into the guy's office to ask him to be more specific, but the guy was worried about hurting his feelings and wouldn't give him any better idea. He told phil that he'd set up an account for him at a local clothing store (a pretty high-rollin one if i do say so myself) and gone and picked out a few things that he wanted phil to get sized for. He said Phil would figure it out when he got there. He explained that he was a blue and white guy. That he doesn't really get very adventurous with the kind of clothes he wears, but just stickes with blue and white. that's what works. Ok... whatever... So, phil goes to this place yesterday. sure enough the boss had picked out a pair of grey dress slacks, a pair of black dress slacks, a blue shirt, a white shirt, and 2 yellow ties. they were all pretty basic and plain and all basically things that phil has in his wardrobe currently and has worn to work periodically. However, the guy just bought him a few more and phil is still left searching for what exactly in his closet doesn't belong at work... HILLARIOUS! Blue and White. He thinks Phil is going to turn out to be a little 'him'. I love it.

No baseball coaching

So I could have been an assistant baseball coach for one of the middle schools in the area. If only they didn't practice till after I got done with work.... That was another potential life goal checked off the list right there. Guess it's gonna have to wait.

Tracy's in india (that's almost the name of a Dido song). J-term lighthouse trip. I get the email updates and stuff and I can't help but get pretty excited for her. I think about how things went for me when I was in Czech over that month a couple years ago. She's already been gone a week, but im sure she feels like the trip's lasted forever and a day. Time lasts forever it seems in situations like that. Good for her. I pray God's opened her up to something totally 'other-worldly'.

Shorb sent me his finished Hymns album this week. It was beautiful. He's been working on it for the past 2 years or so and I remember asking to listen to some of the stuff at various times in the past 2 years and he never let me. I'm glad he didn't cause it was so beautiful to listen to. I got a tear in my eye, which is really lame, but between the culmination of such a personal project and the worshipful feel of the whole thing, I just found myself sincerely moved.

Phil and I spent our first weekend together doing nothing and going nowhere since the beginning of November. WOW! what a welcomed event. It was so good to kick back and relax around the apartment and do absolutely nothing of consequence. I've vowed to not travel anywhere other than Upland or Warsaw until late March. So, if you wanna hang out with us, you've gotta come see us. And you should.

My dad loves Blue Like Jazz. I've talked to him already on a handful of things. That book is great, and what makes it more great is that I can talk to a guy or a girl, a peer or a parent and there's always beneficial and worthwhile conversation and insight to come from such exchanges. Props to you Donald Miller.

I signed up for a gym membership last weekend finally. It's felt wonderful to lift again. This is not to say that i'm some buff tool that you would think belongs in a gym getting 'big'. But I dont care, cause it just feels good to work out and break a sweat and feel even remotely healthy again. The feeling good part was a lie sunday morning after the first day though, on account of me having to litterally roll off of my bed and onto the floor and try to pick myself up by the recliner. So sore. The moral of the story is this.... don't make fun of the fat kid for going to the gym even though he doesn't belong with everyone else there. Be glad he's not going to die of a heart attack in 5 years.

So, i dont know if i've written on this thing about this girl that i've been hanging out with for the past 2 months and have just recently decided i could call her my girlfriend.... yeah, im crazy about her. Yes, as im sure is the duty of all people who are 2 weeks into a new relationship, I am saying it now... I like her alot and I'm totally enthralled and amazed and intoxicated by her. I get to call her every night and I can run up to taylor any weekend i want to and see her. I can take her out on dates and go overboard on her. I can say cheesy things to her and everything. If the giddy honeymoon stage of all relationships lasted longer than the first few weeks and month, there would be far fewer breakups in the world. So, yes, I know this euphoria is not something to expect for too terribly long, but man... I'll take it for as much as I can get it for right now. And to top it off, I'm not really a 'euphoria' kind of dater... I'll look foreward to the quiet, serious, contemplative times more than this. Crazy. She's definatley got me. Amazing.

It's been around the 40 degree mark and higher for the better part of last week and this week. It's the middle of january folks... I'm counting my blessings, because even though it's not gonna last and winter will overwhelm us eventually, no doubt.... every day int he 40's is another day that's not in the negative 10's. Just get me to the spring time baby.

We are aproximately 6 weeks from pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training... which means baseball is on the horizon, and just as importantly, fantasy baseball is really on the horizon. I'm in the process of putting together my best attempt at a solid, competative, 10 man 5x5 league. If you think you're the person for one of those slots, let me know and start doing your homework. I know I plan to start in 2 weeks and I'm going more hardcore than ever since i dont have class to distract me. BOOYEAH! PS: I noticed that cubs tickets go on sale feb. 24th... gonna be hard to talk myself out of buying a bunch right off the bat.

really really full

Last night Phil and I went to B-Dub's. We ate so much that we both went back to the apartment and layed on the couch the rest of the evening complaining about how full we were. I think i'm still full from that meal this morning. Jeesh... Today's a boring day at work. I may be able to post some more. I've actually meant to post a few times in the last week (NOAH!) but the internet is conveniently never working when I'm in the mood to post. Hopefully that will change soon.

New Years

Im sitting in the basement of my parents home in Warsaw typing. It took me driving 4 hours to northern illinois, a big italian meal, a great evening with angela, ringing in the new year (no kisses for me, dont forget im a huge chicken), playing games, watching movies, chickening out on having the talk that night, waking up the next day, going to church, eating lunch and finally giving myself a stern talking to about how there was absolutely no way i could live with myself if I left Zion without finally having the talk before i worked up the courage to ask her to take a walk with me before i left for me to officially start a new relationship. More amazing than that... she seemed like she'd been waiting for me to bring it up. So, that's the big new years news for me. There obviously a ton swimming around in my head right now and im sure clarifying and enunciating all of that will come in the following days and weeks, but for right now the euphoria is just too intense for me to really do justice to my thoughts and to my excitement level right now. She's my girlfriend. wow, there it is. what else needs to be said? (actually, much much more, but not tonite)
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ME!