Magic:

I just read this and it stood out to me so much that I thought it would be appropiate to share.

"The older you get, the harder it is to believe in magic. The older you get, the more you understand there is no Wizard of Oz, just a schmuck behind a curtain. I pictured my pastor as a salesman or a magician, trying to trick the congregation into believing Jesus could make us new. And, honestly, I felt as though he was trying to convince himself, as though he only half believed what he was saying. It's not that Christian spirituality seemed like a complete con, it's just that it had some of those elements.
"The message, however, was appealing to me. God said he would make me new. I can't pretend for a second I didn't want to be made new, that I didn't want to start again. I did."

- Donald Miller "Blue Like Jazz"

Aha:

Case in point. 50 stitches is a lot of stitches.

Home:

Some days just feel right. And I thank Jesus for them, because they make life worth living. I love the fact that I can spend an afternoon with a friend and not stop laughing the entire time. Also I find my core self being challenged constantly just from being around someone who lives life to the fullest.

That may just be it. I desire to be around people who will never let my life be boring.

Singing:

When I was a kid, I could sing better than those kids who sing with Jack Johnson on his Curious George album.

Likes:

When people ask me what I like to do in my spare time I usually answer, "rock climbing and hanging out with friends," but the words "hanging out" don't do it justice.

On the most superficial level, it's watching a couple of movies while snacking on scrumptuous brownies. On the next level it's the random people showing up and the constant friendly banter. Dig a little deeper and you'll find the constant hilariousness of strange, random, and inappropiate comments and actions. And then if you stay long enough, every little event becomes a commotion that inscribes you into the memory of the house. Most importantly, though, is the seeing and talking with those I love dearly, and just sitting together to share life with those I care for.

That's what hanging out really is. That's what I like to do.

Saved:

I'm like such like a Hillary-Faye.

Goodbyes:

People are moving on with their lives and it feels so strange.

Crazy House is as crazy as ever.

Today, my performance at the climbing wall was just embarassing.

I'm glad it's almost the weekend.

For the longest time, I used to say "for all intensive purposes"... my professor who has an English accent is the only person I know who says "for all intents and purposes" clearly.

Harmony:

Sing with me a new song.

Sunday:

I wrote some stuff about the volleyball tournament I watched today, but I lost it. So instead, here's a video of the tournament a few years back. My friend plays of the Hip Sing B team, FYI.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4141277950699485380&q=volleyball&hl=en

Thursday:

A potpourri of events today.

1. The professor for my 9:30 class didn't show. It's probably not a good thing to miss the first day of class, especially if you're teaching it.

2. Lunch in the Union, which is always nice... but I miss the South Campus Dining Hall lunches.

3. I watched the longest tennis match of my life. Agassi won, which is awesome, in a 5 set match. It was pretty ridic.

4. I now only know of two people who don't have cell phones. No, make that three since J Molinatto doesn't have one because he isn't allowed to have one at work.

5. I spent several hours of my evening trying to mod the software on my cellie, though if I'd read some forums I would have immediately known that Verizon blocks out all of the mods and that's why I was getting all these errors.

Somehow the day seemed almost wasted. Now I'm not sure if any of my Thursdays are going to be any fun.

Pogs:

Tonight we ressurected an old pastime. POGS. Sometime last year, Andy mentioned that he used to collect pogs, so when I happened to see some when I went home last year I couldn't help but pick them up. While shuffling through Andy's stuff, Ryan and I found the pogs and started a tournament. I don't think a full game of pogs has ever been played by college students. They were popular in like... 5th grade.

Maybe there's been some sort of trend going on, considering the amount of time and effort put into trying to do cat's cradle. Back in the day, we used to be entertained a piece of string or throwing a piece of plastic at a stack of cardboard circles. You could pick up a pog for a nickel (though the collectable ones were something like five bucks).

Afterwards, we found an online pog game and we played each other in that for a while.

Oh, and Andy ordered a lot of 1500 pogs off of Ebay. This trend is coming back, my friends.

Beginnings:

The beginning of the end. Maybe.

Either way, Seniors- here we go.

Truckin':

Whew. Three books down, two more to go.

Gypped:

Wow, what a weird looking word... gypped... I think that's how it's spelled anyway.

Today was a pretty neat day. I woke up lateish and read a little bit. Then in the afternoon I met up with Dede for lunch and a stroll around downtown Silver Sprung. I got home and finished my book (more on that later). Then I met up with Seye and Joel to stroll around the Washingtonian/Rio area which very much resembles downtown Silver Spring but has a lake and fountains and a nice boardwalk. From there we went to Jeff and Kristal's who had just finished up dinner with Jason and Jenn. A little bit later, we left the married couple to themselves and went to hang out at Esther's. All in all, a good day.

Now, about this book thing. There's a little bit of a confession mixed into here. As of last post, I had read two trilogies, where the second trilogy was the sequel to the first. I skipped the second book in the whole six book series, though, because I got impatient. From there I picked up the same author's earlier writings, two series of five books. More accurately, I am still waiting on the second five books. Anywho, today I finished the fifth book in this series and pages 363 and 364 were missing out of 372!!! What the heck. I had read through close to 2000 pages following this adventure and a couple of the pages that were supposed to give me closure were gone. Man that was upsetting at the time. Of course, I still have five more books in this second series that I'm waiting on so I guess I don't really need that much closure.

Maybe I've just been reading too much and nothing blog-worthy happens in my life so I document these things to make my life seem interesting.

Confession:

I just spent the last 14 hours reading, with a one hour break for dinner. Similar stories for the two days before yesterday. I've been in a different world this week.

Random:

50 out of 259 online on the buddy list. I wonder if that's a record for me.

Montgomery County Public Library System is awesome. I can search the catalog online and then reserve and renew books with a simple click. And if it's not at the Gaithersburg branch, I can request it and it'll be delivered from a different branch within a couple of days. Pretty sweet.

Monopoly:

Tonight was a Monopoly night. I, of course, came away as champion.

When things seemed grim and I was reduced to $1 and a few mortgaged properties, the dice finally rolled my way and people started to stop in at Park Place and Boardwalk. The fatal error of the game came when my sister accepted my offer of a free Baltic if she would let me buy Park Place if she landed on it. She took the deal, knowing that I already owned Boardwalk. Before long, no one could withstand the mighty Boardwalk empire.

Plus I went climbing earlier and I realize how out of shape I am.

Heat:

It was so hot out today, my sweat glands are sore.

Dream:

Oh man that was freaky. Surely my it was tainted due to recent events, but those details seem to be minor.

I was driving Roberto and Henry to some retreat and we wanted to see if Brian wanted to ride with us. So we stopped by his house, only to find him sitting with his family and sobbing. When he saw us, he composed himself and told us he couldn't go. Henry said some pretty funny things at this point in his usual semi-serious tone. As we drove off, the road right in front of me suddenly ended and I found myself driving down a grassy hill. It dropped off very quickly and we were flying really fast way out of control. Then the car flipped and stopped right in a little nook of a strange cliff. The cliff was 200 feet down to the ground and it wasn't made of rock. It jutted in and out in a random pattern, but the formations were completely geometric... every face was flat and every edge was straight. And the cliff wasn't rock. It had a strange mossy feel, similar maybe to artificial turf or maybe the padding found under carpet. How bizzarre. I remember it so well because I was holding onto a feature of the cliff for dear life, watching my car slowly tumble down the rest of the cliff below me. I guess I'm not the fondest of heights. Nor do I feel very comfortable on non-rock elements.

I certainly hope that one's not reoccuring.

Summertime:

You know, there are some things you can do in the summertime that are just so right, you don't even mind the heat.