Correction on yesterday’s entry. At no time in my stressful work environment two days ago was there smoke coming out of anywhere.

Inspirational thought of the day:

The Big White String

It was a big white string,
On my arm
Maybe made of wool,
Maybe it was yarn
I’m going “I don’t care,”
“What’s the big deal?”
A big white string,
How’s it make you feel?

We’re walking in the sun oh yeah
We just walked out the door
He looks and says lift up your arm
I say whatever for?
It’s not like people go around
With fists thrown to the sky
But I do it anyway
And here’s the reason why.

CHORUS

I wonder where it’s from oh yeah
I wonder what it’s for.
Maybe it fell from the sky
Perhaps it’s from the floor
They could have used it for a flag
Or maybe for a kite
Or to keep my bro and sis
Attached after a fight

CHORUS

BRIDGE

It’s just a bit of string
That’s really all it was
It’s just a bit of string
So what’s with all the fuss?


Here’s why—even though it’s often restrictive and sometimes downright ridiculous—our government sees the need to regulate us in certain areas: a guy in Eugene (please don’t send any “It was Eugene, that explains it” e-mails) gets arrested for illegally towing cars away. What they would do is go to a lot and post “No Parking” sign when there were cars already in the lot. Then they’d tow ‘em and charge ‘em. How could he get away with this? Turns out regulation in the towing industry is very lax. This guy had a long rap sheet, been arrested multiple times, yet he was able to get into the business no problem. The guy, of course, said he didn’t know he was doing anything wrong, and technically there is no city law that says how long you have to wait after you post to start towing.

Tom and I got interviewed by a newspaper the other day about AHQ. The Brownsville Times is a weekly fishwrap (that only sounds disparaging, it’s really not; every newspaper’s a fishwrap) that serves the greater Brownsville metropolitan area (population maybe 2,000). It was fun, the guy was really nice and made it easy for us

I went to my first church committee meeting on Tuesday. At first I found it a little…restrictive. Like a committee isn’t the place to hash out beliefs and ideas, we’re there to get things done, in this case to plan the next Spiritual Life Meeting that will be taking place. I settled into it, though. It was actually sort of fun. See, short sentences again. I can’t get away from them.

Pet peeve: when people don’t listen to others. When someone is talking and the person they’re talking to is obviously not paying attention. Rude. And the scary thing is, I find myself doing this.

It’s not like we must be a philosopher or anything, we just need to take time and reflect about ourselves and the bigger scheme of things.

Right now in the “Zits” comic strip, they’re doing this gag about an ink outage, so what we’ve got are partially drawn characters making snide comments about the lack of ink. I totally don’t get that. I get Groucho Marx. I don’t get this.

John 12:43 came up and walloped me in the nose. In verse 42 it says that some of the Jewish leaders actually believed on Christ, but they didn’t confess it. They didn’t confess it because “they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.” This area of making a difference to people around me, taking an active part in the spiritual battle (“…our struggle is not against flesh and blood…”) has been on my mind quite a bit this summer. And then to see this little verse, it’s like it describes me.

My job is generally pretty easy, just sit back and listen to equipment run. But I’ll tell you what, it can be very, very stressful. See, what happens is sometimes the pellet mill will plug up. Sometimes all that means is the equipment will shut down, but sometimes it will squeal the belts. Talk about getting your heartbeat up, when you hear the belts howling the body goes into overdrive. So a couple days ago it plugged up on me twice. Turns out, after calling dad, that I need to do a maintenance thing (tightening the rolls). So I did that, then I started her back up. Well, the equipment up there is big and there’s a loose bearing somewhere that’s causing it to rumble and for whatever reason excess steam and/or smoke was coming out of it. So not only are my nerves on edge because of squealing belts, but this thing sounds like it could blow up any minute and stuff is pouring out of it like it’s an alchemist’s holy grail. I’m getting nervous just writing this. The story has a happy ending, things went basically smoothly the rest of the night, except for something stupid on my part. But that was relatively minor and really doesn’t add anything to this account.

I like Ben. I went golfing with him again yesterday, and it really was enjoyable. This was a tougher course than the one we went to Saturday, so our scores weren’t as good. But oh my, it’s a beautiful thing to be walking a beautiful course in beautiful weather.

But I don’t just like Ben because he plays golf with me; I like him because he’s a thinker. He says there are two kinds of people in the world: ones that think and ones that don’t. That might seem a bit simplistic and downright impossible, but hang with me on this. I’m talking about thinking in the sense of pondering, of thinking the things of life through. That latter type of person goes through life just for the fun of what it can offer, and they are very, very focused on the here and now.

Now, I think this is oversimplifying things a little bit. I don’t know if there are too many people that never once in their whole lives think about why they are here or whether there is extraterrestrial life. But how many people basically go through their lives without really thinking through what they believe and why they believe it?

In a way, thinking might be scary because there are many, many “thinkers” who have thought themselves into atheism or worse. But of what value are our beliefs if they can’t stand up to our own scrutiny? You think they’re going to stand up to anyone else’s? If we don’t think, in the end we lose big time.

As he battled to suppress an inevitable sternutation, he came to this conclusion, tenuous though it was: due to the didactic manner in which his boss spoke, the man had to be quixotic egotist. (Me)

In the didactic session the quixotic student knew that he would be in a tenuous situation if he did not admit that he had not a clue what sternutation meant. (Aunt Barb)

The poor man's quixotic attempts at didactic dialogues were tenuous at best
due to his propensity to sternutation. (friend Merry)

Yippee, we’re going to rehearse this week! Of course, David’s gone so it’s going to be just three of us. You ever tried practicing with a group when not all of the group is there? I don’t think I have, not for a whole practice. But it can’t be very satisfying. But at least it’s work, at least it’s progress.

I love arguing with Randy. Currently we’re arguing about football. He thinks I go so far out of the way to avoid homerism that I deal in nonreality. That’s not true, I just try to be cautious and objective when it comes to my favorite team. And you’re not going to win the Pac-10 if you don’t have a good quarterback. It’s that simple.

Don’t complain about gas prices. In Oslo gas is $4.89 a gallon.

People thrive on encouragement; I know I do. Different times I think about how I can be encouraging to others, but for me (mostly due to laziness) often I don’t make the effort. Really, just taking the time to let someone know you appreciate them or something they’ve done, that’s really all there is to it. I think of this because of a lady in our church who at different times has made a point to encourage me in different areas.

In my Writing 121 class, we read a variety of essays on a variety of subjects. This one essay was a scathing denunciation of the term “broken family.” The author’s point was that a “non-traditional” family shouldn’t be demeaned by such a negative moniker. This led, of course, to quite a bit of discussion on the subject. One thing I remember, when we got on the subject of divorce and how it affects children, was the comment “I think we underestimate the resilience of children.” Basically, kids can get over it, c’mon, they’re strong enough to overcome it.

Thankfully, I have an incredible family, my father loves my mother, my mother loves my father, and they both love all of us children. But to justify divorce (and I’m talking from a secular perspective) by saying that children will “get over it” is completely inconsiderate at best and downright unfeeling at worst. One of our ministers, Arlen Krabill, taught the 4th grade at our VBS, and he related a story this morning about one of the boys who—upon being taught about “Thou shalt not commit adultery” and how that sometimes moms or dads can decide that someone else will make them happier—broke down because he had experienced this exact thing. It’s heartbreaking.

That’s sort of a downer and it does not reflect the way I’m feeling right now. I am in a very positive frame of mind, very happy. It is pure bliss to be serving God. Of course, it’s great to serve Him whether I feel happy or not, but when you feel happy it’s just gravy. You just need to make sure your head is out of the clouds enough to let God work in your life.

According to this handy calorie calculator (http://www.healthstatus.com/calculate/cbc) I burned 540 calories playing golf today. It was a lot of fun. I’m usually not the one to suggest going and doing stuff, but I just got the bug to play. I hadn’t golfed for so long there were cobwebs and lots of dust on my clubs. I did pretty well for me, too, I was happy. A 48 on nine holes, unless you count my two lost balls. Traditionally we play a one-shot penalty for those, but if you want to be technical about it (which I don’t), it’s two. So 50, 48, whatever.

It’s almost football season, you know. Any women reading this are rolling their eyes. I’ll tell you what though, the Pac-10 (that’s the big college football conference out here in the wild, wild west) is down this year, which is a good thing because I think the Ducks (as in the Oregon Ducks, one of the big college football teams around here) might be a little down this year. The Beavers (the other big college football team around here) should have them, I think they’re superior at most positions.

Does anyone see any possible way that I can used “didactic,” “tenuous,” “quixotic,” and “sternutation” in the same sentence? I want to, but I don’t know how.

I like people that aren’t self-conscious about how much money they make. Like a guy at church, we were talking about what he does for a living, he just up and told me how much he made. Like, maybe we don’t need to just blab it around all the time, but it’s nothing to hide. Unless you’re really rich living among people of lesser means. Then maybe, I don’t know.

That being said, I’m keeping it to myself how much money I’m making this summer. Suffice it to say that I’m glad to be making it. And also suffice it to say it's not because I'm rich and you're poor.