an adventure well worth taking

last night i was sitting in the lower apartment, talking to jake about some apartments i had been looking at when we decided to figure out where one actually was. while looking at the map, i said to jake, "hey, what's that??", referring to the strange set of streets set up like a circle. he said, "i don't know, let's see if we can figure it out." so we changed to the satellite map (really cool function of google maps by the way) and zoomed in a bit to see what it was. well, we could tell there were a bunch of houses around the circles, but what peaked our interest was the large building located in the center of the circles. we had no idea what it was. and thus the adventure was born. we jumped in the truck and headed for this strange anomaly of road design. upon arriving, we got a bit lost, drove around the circle for a while, and finally reached the center. it was a storm shelter. apparently this strange set of roads was a trailer park, and the building in the center was a storm shelter/rec center for people living in the park. well, we promptly took our pictures there, jumped back in the truck and drove off as fast as we could, for fear of being threatened with a shotgun.

i love college and the miscellaneous late night hyjinx that occur. i hope that doesn't stop once i'm graduated and into the working world.

debunking the myth of soulmates

i happened across a very interesting article the other day on relevant magazine's website. if you'd like to read it, here is a link to it. LINK and now for my thoughts on it.

i think this article made a really good point. i think the idea of soulmate's or "the one" becomes a scapegoat in our society. how many people say something to the effect of "they just weren't the one" or "we fell out of love" when things get hard and they get divorced. wasn't that what the wedding was supposed to be about, declaring to the world that that person was your "one" for the rest of your life? apparently not though. or what about someone who remarries after their spouse passes away? did that person draw the good straw in life, and have two "ones"? i find that a bit of a stretch. and the other thing to think about is that people are imperfect and make bad decisions sometimes. so what if my "one" happens to marry someone else? am i supposed to wait around for them to figure out they aren't meant to be together or do i just find someone else, how may not be my specific one, and then cause trouble for someone else? i think there are just too many factors in the whole scheme of relationships and marriage to try and pin it down that definitively.

don't get me wrong, i think God knows what's going on with all of it. and that there is some sort of plan going on. but as the article i previously linked states, the only case of a specific man and woman being set aside for each other are adam and eve. and frankly i think that was supposed to be rather metaphorical for us. eve was created as a companion for adam, or a little more generally, woman was created so that man would have a compainion, someone to share life with. (as a quick note, i don't mean that in a man dominant sort of way, just in a "man life would be really lonely without women" sort of way). looking through the rest of the bible, the rest of the relationships are a bit looser in their designs. isaac's servant wasn't told to go find rebekah, just the woman who first watered his camels, or hosea was told to take a prostitute as a wife, not necessarily gomer. or how about jacob? he worked for seven years to get rachel as his wife and ended up with leah. then he worked another seven for rachel. or how many of the kings of israel had multiple wives?

so for jacob, was leah his "one", or rachel? or how about the kings, did they have 300 some "ones"? and i doubt hosea spent his teens thinking, "one day, when i want to start a family, i would really like to have a prostitute mother my children."

maybe i'm just being cynical, but i think that there might be some validity to this. i'd encourage you to think about it. let me know what you think.

22

22 doesn't feel much different than 21. in case you were unaware, yesterday, the 21st was my birthday. well, this morning i looked in the mirror, and wondered, "what exactly about me says 'hey this guy is definitely 22'?" perhaps the beginnings of the beard, but realistically, i've had that since i was 16, so people have always seen that. maybe the slightly more distinguished jawline that's been developing. but does anyone really pay that much attention. more so, it's probably the slightly receding hairline going on, but even that's hard to notice with the long hair. so physically speaking, i don't think i look any different than 18 or 25. no, i think what makes the difference is the 22 years of life experience. i've seen a lot, done a lot, and learned a little over the last 220% of a decade (that's 22 years for you non math geeks). i think maybe something that kind of sums it all up is an answer to a question that i've always had. i heard this answer in a movie the other day.

the question is: why do hot dogs come in packages of 10, and hot dog buns in packages of 8?

the answer: hot dogs come in packages of 10 and hot dog buns in packages of 8, because sometimes life doesn't work out the way we plan, and we've just got to work with what we've got, but at least you always have a hot dog.

not even sure how this happened

for your viewing pleasure.

rock show

well, i returned to the scene this weekend by going to a show. it felt good. a lot has been going on this past week that had kinda been getting me down, so it was nice to just go rock out for a while and get my mind off of things. however, i did have a bit of a freak out moment when we got to champaign for the show. i did something i've never done in 6 years of going to shows. i left my ticket at home. i was really mad at myself for commiting such a "rookie" mistake. luckily though, we live in a world dominated by technology and internet. so the guys at the venue were able to look up the order that my ticket came in, and saw that only three had been scanned. so they believed me and let me in. i just couldn't leave and come back. oh darn. cuz i'd really been planning to leave anyways. so besides all that craziness, got to see emery for the fourth time and anberlin for the third time. as usual, they rocked. i did cement my hatred of hawthorne heights at the show though. number one, you could clearly see the screamer turning his vocal processor on and off everytime he stepped up to the mike. LAME! secondly, i still think every song of theirs sounds exactly the same. case in point, during their opener i turned to kurt and said, "i didn't think they would open with ohio." kurt looked at me and said, "dude, this is mickey fm." yeesh. that says everything right there, at least for me. so yeah, dudes from hawthorne heights, if you're reading this, you are all lame (musically speaking that is). well that's all for now.

motions

so if you've been reading this at all, you know that i'm in the process of finding a new job. lately the amount of time i've been putting into that, school, and work has been kind of stressing me out, and i've been kinda bummed out and tired, all the time. honestly, i've been feeling the effects of this through my entire life. i haven't been connecting with God in the ways i used to, i feel like i've isolated myself from a lot of my friends, i haven't been working out like i have been saying i would for a long time, and so on and so forth. basically, i'm not really happy right now. i feel like i'm just going through the motions of life, and that's it. so this was a song we sang at worship last night and it really hit me. what was really weird about the whole thing was that i hadn't been planning on going to worship, but at 8:10 i just started putting on my shoes and went to worship, i felt compelled to go. guess i was supposed to be there. so here's the song.

Deliver me, out of my sadness.
Deliver me, from all of the madness.
Deliver me, courage to guide me.
Deliver me, strength from inside me.

All of my life I've been in hiding.
Wishing there was someone just like you.
Now that you're here, now that I've found you,
I know that you're the one to pull me through.

Deliver me, loving and caring.
Deliver me, giving and sharing.
Deliver me, the cross that I'm bearing.

All of my life I was in hiding.
Wishing there was someone just like you.
Now that you're here, now that I've found you,
I know that you're the one to pull me through.

Deliver me,
Deliver me,
Oh deliver me.

All of my life I was in hiding.
Wishing there was someone just like you.
Now that you're here, now that I've found you,
I know that you're the one to pull me through.

Deliver me,
Oh deliver me.
Won't you deliver me.

~Sarah Brightman

confused? yup.

i just don't know. that's all.