Right now I'm sitting at Tom's computer while Tom's sleeping on his bed. It's after five, and David's supposed to be here so we can practice some stuff for Kon's wedding.

Friday's are sort of strange. I don't go to OSU at all on Friday's, so I should have lots of time to just hang out, relax, do homework, get caught up on e-mail, play golf. But that doesn't happen. I don't get back from teaching music until about 11:30 or 12, then I surf the web and try to catch up with e-mail and try to get any pressing personal details worked out and by that time I want to take a nap but I can hardly justify it because I need to do homework.

So tonight is my public "daybue" as a music teacher. We're doing some fun things, playing a game with the little ones, doing a fancy little warm-up (the scale on steroids) with the older ones.

I admire Mr. Bob who was out in front of the MU on Wednesday and Thursday. See, I'm not an impromptu kind of guy. In most situations that require on the spot thinking for something funny or creative or intelligent I fail. And this guy opens up the field to anyone to ask him anything about Christianity. And believe me, college students have a potent combination of humanistic logic and a biting delivery.

Are there many things more beautiful than driving through fog and breaking into brilliant, clear sunlight that highlights green, sparkling fields?

I'm basically filling time here. It's 5:25 and David's still not here. Tom is shifting and sighing on the bed, but his nap still has a pretty firm grip on him, I thought. I see signs of it loosening. Oh he's...arising? Yes he is!

I need to get a bottle, because we're going to play "Spin the Bottle" at the meal the youth are putting on for the ministry. Sorry, juvenile joke, it's obviously not what you inevitably inferred. But I can't say what it is in the off chance that one of them might read this before Monday night.

This brings up another point, since it's 5:30 and David's still not here. Implication and inference are two different things. Implication is what the speaker does, inference is what the hearer does. An article on the internet, for instance, may imply something, but it never infers. I, on the other hand, may infer plenty of things from that very article.

I hear David coming, so I must close.

I had a wonderful yesterday. Lots of fellowship. I saw a man intelligently engage a crowd in the middle of campus, sharing the good news of the Gospel and answering whatever questions people threw out at him. I heard about some people who recently came to campus with signs saying something like “You’re going to hell” and who hung out by Reser Stadium right before the football game on Saturday yelling their messages through bullhorns. I met a Christian lady who runs a children’s store in Corvallis who had a run-in with the bullhorn people. She did not have a good feeling about them, they seemed of a different spirit to her. I met a guy who challenged me to know what I believe and know how to engage non-believers effectively (this is an on-going concern/struggle of mine--to engage non-believers effectively; I want to, badly). I had a great time of Bible Study with a group of guys, talking about the early church compared to the church of today. I also went to the Campus Crusade meeting where they debated whether it was better to get 3 hours of sleep at the Fall Retreat or 0 hours.

I’m thinking, too. About how I should interact and think about Christians that practice things differently than me. I’m thinking about what I believe the Bible teaches that’s important enough for me to refuse to fellowship with a professing Christian who happens to disagree. I’m thinking about my major and about where it’s going to take me. And I’m thinking about people who have asked for (or I’ve just volunteered) my prayers.

Love, people. And if you’re a Christian, love other Christians.

And somehow, we have to unify. The Bible tells us to, just like it tells us not to practice homosexuality or lying or cheating. We’re pretty strong on those latter three, but it looks like we’re rather weak on the former.

Two sports-related thoughts.

First of all, sports fans are so incredibly fickle. The classic case is the one of the back-up quarterback. If a football team is struggling, the back-up quarterback is likely the most popular guy on the team in the eyes of fans. Everybody wants to see the new guy, the guy with so much potential, the guy that could fix everything, the guy that "has to be better” than what we've got now.

How quickly does everyone go from being so excited about the new guy that’s going to come in and quickly, dramatically turn the team’s fortune’s around to saying the guy's the biggest bum around when he comes in and doesn't produce wins. But when reality sets in, when the team keeps losing because winning isn’t going to happen overnight, the same fans that were abuzz with anticipation, that were cheering, that were dreaming of the glory this man would lead them to, those same fans are booing him, calling for his job.

For those who know and/or care, Joey Harrington is who I am talking about.

I was listening to a sports talk radio show today and they posed a question to their audience that went something like this: if a baseball player that you liked was found to use steroids (which is illegal) would you continue being a fan of that player? Someone e-mailed in and said essentially that this decision (to use illegal drugs) is something that has to be made by the player, it’s something that he has to deal with, it wouldn’t really affect me as a fan of theirs. The host summed this view up by saying that some players probably view it that way, that they’re responsible to only themselves and maybe their team and if they can justify it, if they don’t get caught, then it’s probably ok.

That reminds me of evolution. Take away an ultimate authority and what are people left accountable to? Their own, utterly confused, ethics.

I was walking past the music building at OSU yesterday and I heard a choir just singing their hearts out on what sounded like a Spiritual of some sort. It reminded me so much of my past experience with choirs, the camraderie, the music, the pulling together.

I've been running with a school theme, which sort of makes sense because it's a huge chunk of my life at this point. Continuing in that vein (this could be an incorrect usage of the word) students--when they badmouth teachers--nearly always do not know what they are talking about. It's like this people: the teacher nearly always knows more than you do. And they know how to deal with students better than you do. And there probably was a reason they didn't round your 79.89 average up to a B. And they actually do know how to grade tests. And they've probably dealt with 20 other disgruntled smartmouths after exams. And they don't have it in for you, unless you were rude to them. Then, maybe they do have it in for you but who's fault is that?

Then the question becomes, "Byran, have you ever criticized a teacher?" Well...yes, though I generally give them the benefit of the doubt even if I disagree with them. But when you think about it that way, you realize why everyone else has all this nasty stuff to say about the teacher that was so terrible. From there point of view everything's perfectly logical; any thinking person should be able to see how horrible the professor was. But that's the challenge, to look at stuff (and this encompasses all of life) not using your tiny little perspective but from others' perspective, to see where they're coming from.

We are semi-finished with the recording part of our album. Last night we muscled through the last of the songs that we needed to get done. Of course, one of the toughest things about recording is knowing when to stop, finding that line between "I know we can do better" and "I don't think we're going to improve on this." We'll probably go at it once or twice more and see if we can improve anything we currently have.

Second midterm down. During the first part of the test I was feeling really weird. It’s sort of like on the outside I was moving with measured precision but on the inside I was going crazy. Almost like I was just going through the physical motions of doing the test while my head was…boy, it’s hard to explain. It's like my inward and outward are going at two incredibly different speeds. The outside deliberate, steady, and rational while the inside is like a machine shop, lots of loud noises and constant motion. Nobody freak out. I think it was the product of not getting enough sleep the night before. This same sort of thing has happened a few times at the mill over the summer. It’s the strangest phenomenon. But it’s a little irrelevant, because it doesn’t adversely affect me, it just feels odd.

I think the test went well too. Traditionally, if you see anyone in your class following a test you gather around and discuss it. I came upon a group like that and I wasn’t following the one guy’s description of his method for solving one of the problems, which does not make you feel peachy. But I discussed it with a couple of guys later, and in everything we discussed my answers seemed to be holding their ground.

When you get into one of those post-test discussions and you realize you messed up, now that’s not a happy feeling at all. You either grasp at straws as to why your answer could be right, or you start tallying up the points you think you probably lost.

What’s really bad is when you come out of a test and realize that the solution to the problem you couldn’t figure out was right under your nose, that it should’ve been elementary because you’d happened to study it in your preparation. I remember doing that once on a Strengths of Materials Final. I figured with the botched problem, I had probably pulled my grade down to a B. I fretted and thought and worried about it, and it turns out I got my A anyway.

Don’t worry, be happy. Look at me, I’m happy.

It’s the moving that is so, so painful.

Today I did a good deed. I was talking with a guy that a friend had brought to church and I decided to go over and get him and I a drink. Arlis was over there apparently filling up cups with water—what a great guy. I marched over there in all my glory and said something like, “Is it ok if I take two? They’re not both for me,” because there were two full cups on the table. He said something like “sure” and I marched off with my prizes. It wasn’t until I came back to refill my cup that I noticed that…Arlis wasn’t there. And then it dawned on me, I possibly took two cups of water from a man who was filling them up for his family. I was prepared to get really embarrassed. I was right, and I did get embarrassed. It was really funny though.

About the “write a lyric like you’d say it.” Ironically, the man who told me that, Dale Kropf, wrote a song called “No Less Than Me” that became a hit for J.D. Sumner & The Stamps Quartet and in the chorus he breaks this "rule."

No less than me I bring to You
No less than me my offering
Nothing else that I can bring
As a service to the King
All I have is his I know
My life is under His control
His child I know I’ll always be
That’s why I bring no less than me

Tomorrow is a test. I don't feel prepared. So I must rise early. Because I want to do well. Oh but tomorrow morning will come so soon. I will be so tired. And feel so bad. What if I choke? What if I get a 70%? Or a 60%? I'll try to sign off on a "hi" note.

Hi.

I am so sore! I wonder what I’ll feel like tomorrow morning trying to roll out of bed and go to church. The reason for the extreme soreness is that a group of guys got together this morning and played tackle football. We only had enough for 5 on 5, so that made for the offenses having their way for much of the game. It was fun, and I have several “badges” to show for it. Oh, but I’m sore.

But why do you care? I read part of a great article that was all about writing on the web. One of the author's points was that those web writers shouldn't just keep a log of daily activities, but explain why those activities matter. What it means. Why another person should care.

So why should you care that I'm sore? Perhaps it is that God could teach you sympathy through this experience. Or he could use this as a test for you because you were tempted to think, "Stupid kid, that's what he deserves for playing a violent game." Or perhaps you were tempted to jealously because where you live there aren't enough guys that you know that would like to play tackle football. Or maybe jealously because you are a girl and though you secretly would like to play, you don't feel that it would be "ladylike" and besides you can't possibly imagine where you could find other girls with the same secret ambition.

I smile when I think about
The way You turned my life around
I smile when I think about
The happiness in You I’ve found
I’m so amazed at what Your love has done
And when I think the best is yet to come
I smile.
-Newsong

Since I like to write songs, I'm going to take the liberty to point something out about the above lyric. It's catchy, but not without its flaws. Take a look at the fourth line, how it twists the words around. An experienced and published songwriter once told me that you should write words to a song as you would speak them. Someone wouldn't pray, "God, my heart is filled with joy when I think about the happiness in You I've found." Obviously, it's not a fatal error, because the song was pretty popular, but it's something that I attempt to stay away from, though I haven't always.

I’ve been singing this "Smile" song a lot today. I sang it when we were rushing to find seats at Mac Court, to see the University of Oregon basketball teams scrimmage. And again when we were in the mall getting our pictures taken. “Our” in this case means my brothers, my sisters and I. And I was singing when I walked out of the mall. I wondered then what I would think of someone walking past me just singing. Probably think them strange. No, I actually would probably think good of them. And finally, I was singing it as I took my shoes off upon returning home. Singing's great, but it can annoy brothers and sisters. Mostly brothers that you share a room with.

By the way, it looks as though UO should have a couple of good basketball teams this year. The ladies have a freshman center who is 6’6”. Think about that. A woman six and a half feet tall. Of course the men have a couple of 7 footers.