The weather outside was curiously out of whack with reality: didn't Mother Nature know I had a test today? Shouldn't it be gloomy and raining and icky rather than warm and sun-shiny and, well, nice? Maybe that's okay, though; maybe that all-too cheerful sky was a good omen for tests to come.
Amy spoke in Chapel today! So after three hours of class (again, starting at 8:00 in the morning, before the world was meant to exist), I went to listen to her. I wasn't surprised, but that's only because I already had some idea of what she was planning to talk about, otherwise I would have dun been shocked. The speech was very much "Amy", though, complete with descriptions of the attractive young temple priests their Global group met in India and other slightly scandalous comments. She did well.
Theology of Creation. Great teacher, great class, except most of what we've talked about so far has been on the philosophers: less so about "creation" and moreso about how to know what's "real". Ooohhh. The test was typo-ridden. I can't stand typos. One or two, fine, I understand that we're all human, and I make mistakes, too (shocking, I know). But honestly, there was a little too much humanity going on in that test. I tried hard not to be too distracted by my perfectionist personality.
Being that this was a religion test, I knew going into it that I wasn't going finish first (always do for Computer Science tests, never have for a religion test). I was right near the tail end: five minutes past the technical end of class, only half a dozen students still scribbling into their blue books. But it went well. I think. I mean, I wrote a lot, more than I normally do for essay tests, and the multiple choice, true/falses, and fill in the blanks went decently (except the one for which I wrote in the teacher's name instead of a real philosopher whose name I had no hope of remembering). So I'm hopeful. Maybe that's a surprise in the making: the test I thought for sure I would fail I might end up earning an A on. Hint hint, God, that would be a really great idea for a surprise...
Later in the afternoon I went to hear a guest speaker who is a journalist in India. Even more cool, she's from Chennai/Madras, which is where I stayed when I was there two years ago. Oh, I miss their accents. Listening to speeches is one of those really odd things: I remember enjoying it at the time, but now, reflecting, I can't really remember any details of what she talked about. It was something about being a Christian in the midst of a non-Christian press, and she talked also about how much respect reporters have in India by their very nature of being able to reach out to so many people. I'm not sure what else, but take my word, she spoke well, and I was actually amazed at how fluent her english is; one could make an argument that she may speak better than most students at this college, myself included.
I needed to make a trip down to Target today to pick up some diabolical supplies for tomorrow. Might as well talk about it now, seeing as it is, in fact, "tomorrow" when I'm writing this. March 14th is a special day. Not only is it Pi Day (you know, the Greek letter that mathematicians use as a number, has to do with circles, 3.14159...), but, as I learned in my Interim class about Japanese culture, it's White Day. What the heck is that, you ask? As I understand it, White day is closely related to Valentine's day. In Japan, Valentine's is the day for girls to give flowers to guys; White day, then, is the day guys give chocolates to the girls. What I'll be doing (slash, have already done) is giving a bag of chocolate-y goodness to a couple of my best friends, along with a note explaining what it's about; thus, the need to purchase things at Target (my drive into town was gloriously refreshing, since I could leave the window down and moonroof open. Sweet).
I got back, played guitar for a little bit more (oh, yes, I had played earlier today after studying and before my test), then met Ashley for what turned out to be a surprisingly long "quick" dinner. But I'm very grateful we had that time: I had a couple things I needed to ask, and, to no great surprise, Ash responded exactly how I knew she would, which definitely gave me some much needed guidance. One thing I'm so thankful for in our friendship is that she is always a straight shooter and doesn't shy away from saying something just because it's probably not the advice I wanted to hear. Anyway, it was a very good dinner talk.
Tonight was my debut for running lyrics at FCA. As with anything involving Windows, there were more than a few unpleasant surprises lurking, waiting to pounce on me. First Windows forgot how to do the proper 1680x1050 resolution on my laptop display. A simple reboot fixed that. Then, some of the motion backgrounds I used in EasyWorship lagged or jumped. Grrr. I also made a boo-boo: in the middle of the first song, I moved my laptop slightly, which unplugged the VGA cable going to the projector. 5 seconds of black screen. *Groans of agony*. The reason I tried moving things, though, was to fix another problem I'd caused: the VGA cable was, well, not tangled, but, "amidst" the power cords, which was causing a distorted image from the projector. After the blackout, I decided that slight, barely noticeable distortion was better than no image at all, so I stopped messing.
After the FCA speaker finished speaking (which, incidentally, included yet another reference to Hebrews; 2:3, I think), I needed to replug the video cable from his computer back into mine. That was easy, but, for whatever reason in its infinite stupidity, Windows forgot what it was doing with multiple displays, so it took the entire length of the transitional prayer time (a full two minutes, while everyone had their eyes closed, thankfully) for me to get things working again. I finished just as they said "amen". Thank you, God, but that was a little too close for my comfort.
Back in the room, I got an email from a friend who's grandmother just died a few days ago, and at the end she included a verse from, guess where: Hebrews 3:14. I decided I need to start keeping track of these verses.
I wrote a little, tried posting a couple days here, but Blogger's server was either having trouble or going through some nightly maintenance or something, so I couldn't get in. One last small surprise.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Day 13
Today was the day: I finally had to change the batteries in my voice recorder. Ah, AAAs, you've served me well.
This morning I had breakfast with Amy, who, enjoying the beautiful, absolutely gorgeous weather today, frolicked in the sunlight all the way to Buntrock. After eating, I made my way down toward Skoglund; today is special, of course, because it's Monday, and that means it's Ashley and my special day to work out together–always a treat to look forward to. We had a great conversation, but the day had brought nothing too surprising so far, just a normal Monday (other than the weather, that is, but that's more of a "gift" than a "surprise").
Came back to the room, practiced guitar for a while, then went to Buntrock to meet DaveO. It seems today's conversation was just doomed for interruptions–this is not inherently a bad thing, since interruptions have potential to be surprises in disguise, but today I had a couple important things on my mind that I really needed to talk about (okay, fine, I'll be honest: it was just one important thing... one really attractive important thing). First Dave was late: he had some errands he'd needed to run in town and they went longer than expected. Then, when he did get here, someone else joined our table for a good 10 minutes or so. I'm not opposed to meeting new friends at all, but time was short, I'm impatient, and I couldn't start on my list of conversation topics with someone else there. Finally, with maybe 5 or 10 minutes left before Dave had to move on to his next appointment (hmm, kind of makes him sound like a shrink... I think maybe he is, in a sense, just without the private office and extra letters at the end of his name), I delved into the relationship questions. And that's when the surprise came: he didn't say what I expected him to say at all; he said something a lot more in line with what I'd wanted to hear. What's more is that I know he wouldn't just pander to my hopes, which was encouraging. That's perhaps really abstract, but even at this I've may have written more detail than entirely appropriate.
In the afternoon I wrote another short response paper for one of my classes (this one as extra credit–the readings were about theodicy, how could I not have a lot to say about that after taking an entire course on the subject last year?). Then I took a nap, because I didn't really feel like doing anything, even though I knew I had a lot to do.
On my way out for dinner I printed some number of various papers and notes, one of which made the printer jam–that was exciting. It jammed in the same place as the last time a couple days ago, so I knew exactly what to pull out to fix it, and then, to my delight, the printer was smart enough to know it needed to reprint that page. Good printer.
Dinner was with Katie and her roommate, and then Katie and I were off to a small group study session for our Theology of Creation test tomorrow! Yay! It went reasonably well, and I felt somewhat relieved after actually talking through the study guide; not to say I felt completely prepared, but I felt less ill-prepared than before, so that's good.
The rest of the night was sort of a wash; my brain was tired, and I needed to get to bed so I could be well-rested for tomorrow. This did not happen before a hilarious conversation with my roommate about British spelling, though. If he reads this I'm sure he'll be upset, but I can't resist quoting this great line he said: "Do the British even use the 'z'? And simple words like xylophone don't count!". Oh Ben. He of course realized what he'd said right away (I'm sure my hysterical laughing helped), and it was just a great way to end the day.
This morning I had breakfast with Amy, who, enjoying the beautiful, absolutely gorgeous weather today, frolicked in the sunlight all the way to Buntrock. After eating, I made my way down toward Skoglund; today is special, of course, because it's Monday, and that means it's Ashley and my special day to work out together–always a treat to look forward to. We had a great conversation, but the day had brought nothing too surprising so far, just a normal Monday (other than the weather, that is, but that's more of a "gift" than a "surprise").
Came back to the room, practiced guitar for a while, then went to Buntrock to meet DaveO. It seems today's conversation was just doomed for interruptions–this is not inherently a bad thing, since interruptions have potential to be surprises in disguise, but today I had a couple important things on my mind that I really needed to talk about (okay, fine, I'll be honest: it was just one important thing... one really attractive important thing). First Dave was late: he had some errands he'd needed to run in town and they went longer than expected. Then, when he did get here, someone else joined our table for a good 10 minutes or so. I'm not opposed to meeting new friends at all, but time was short, I'm impatient, and I couldn't start on my list of conversation topics with someone else there. Finally, with maybe 5 or 10 minutes left before Dave had to move on to his next appointment (hmm, kind of makes him sound like a shrink... I think maybe he is, in a sense, just without the private office and extra letters at the end of his name), I delved into the relationship questions. And that's when the surprise came: he didn't say what I expected him to say at all; he said something a lot more in line with what I'd wanted to hear. What's more is that I know he wouldn't just pander to my hopes, which was encouraging. That's perhaps really abstract, but even at this I've may have written more detail than entirely appropriate.
In the afternoon I wrote another short response paper for one of my classes (this one as extra credit–the readings were about theodicy, how could I not have a lot to say about that after taking an entire course on the subject last year?). Then I took a nap, because I didn't really feel like doing anything, even though I knew I had a lot to do.
On my way out for dinner I printed some number of various papers and notes, one of which made the printer jam–that was exciting. It jammed in the same place as the last time a couple days ago, so I knew exactly what to pull out to fix it, and then, to my delight, the printer was smart enough to know it needed to reprint that page. Good printer.
Dinner was with Katie and her roommate, and then Katie and I were off to a small group study session for our Theology of Creation test tomorrow! Yay! It went reasonably well, and I felt somewhat relieved after actually talking through the study guide; not to say I felt completely prepared, but I felt less ill-prepared than before, so that's good.
The rest of the night was sort of a wash; my brain was tired, and I needed to get to bed so I could be well-rested for tomorrow. This did not happen before a hilarious conversation with my roommate about British spelling, though. If he reads this I'm sure he'll be upset, but I can't resist quoting this great line he said: "Do the British even use the 'z'? And simple words like xylophone don't count!". Oh Ben. He of course realized what he'd said right away (I'm sure my hysterical laughing helped), and it was just a great way to end the day.
Day 12
The day after a Daylight Savings Time shift always gives me trouble; last time around I was off by three hours all morning–yes, you heard me, three hours. No, I don't really know how it happened.
Today wasn't that bad. I thought I woke up at 9:00, actually it was 10:00 (since my self-setting alarm clock hadn't actually self-set over night); thank you cell phone and radio announcer for setting me straight on what time it really was. But, hmm, that means I have much less time to get ready for Church than I thought; that's okay, I'm a guy: I only need a couple minutes, anyway, and most of that is in brushing my teeth. I even had time to fold the towels I'd washed last night and then start this daily entry.
Just to keep life interesting, I went to Church at Boe today; actually, I went with a friend (the one from the phone message and run in last night), that's why I didn't head Emmaus-ward. Pastor Benson preached, and he said some things that really only a college pastor could get away with while talking about manure. He's the perfect college pastor, though; I don't know what St Olaf will do when he leaves.
After Church I went to lunch and found some friends to eat with, then it was off to the library. Nothing too eventful there, other than a most welcome surprise of actually finishing most all of my homework for Tuesday. Score! The book I read for Christian Theology and the Moral Life, "Lament for a Son", was surprisingly insightful; I'd expected it to be just like Kushner's book (which I read last year), but it was much more emotional, much less logical (this is neither a good nor bad thing, just an observation). In short, I was pleasantly surprised at how well-written and expressive it was; the author said just about everything I would have wanted to say if I were writing a book about suffering. The two books together, I think, would make a very nice complimentary pair.
I really feel that God's been talking to me a bit yesterday and today, giving me some direction on a very tangible idea I can use to just do something nice for a couple of my closest friends later this week; I think it again ties in well with what Terry mentioned about being the surprise.
On a completely different note, my voice recorder has been on one bar of battery life for several days now–normally it only lasts a few hours in that state. Hm. Surprise!
Today wasn't that bad. I thought I woke up at 9:00, actually it was 10:00 (since my self-setting alarm clock hadn't actually self-set over night); thank you cell phone and radio announcer for setting me straight on what time it really was. But, hmm, that means I have much less time to get ready for Church than I thought; that's okay, I'm a guy: I only need a couple minutes, anyway, and most of that is in brushing my teeth. I even had time to fold the towels I'd washed last night and then start this daily entry.
Just to keep life interesting, I went to Church at Boe today; actually, I went with a friend (the one from the phone message and run in last night), that's why I didn't head Emmaus-ward. Pastor Benson preached, and he said some things that really only a college pastor could get away with while talking about manure. He's the perfect college pastor, though; I don't know what St Olaf will do when he leaves.
After Church I went to lunch and found some friends to eat with, then it was off to the library. Nothing too eventful there, other than a most welcome surprise of actually finishing most all of my homework for Tuesday. Score! The book I read for Christian Theology and the Moral Life, "Lament for a Son", was surprisingly insightful; I'd expected it to be just like Kushner's book (which I read last year), but it was much more emotional, much less logical (this is neither a good nor bad thing, just an observation). In short, I was pleasantly surprised at how well-written and expressive it was; the author said just about everything I would have wanted to say if I were writing a book about suffering. The two books together, I think, would make a very nice complimentary pair.
I really feel that God's been talking to me a bit yesterday and today, giving me some direction on a very tangible idea I can use to just do something nice for a couple of my closest friends later this week; I think it again ties in well with what Terry mentioned about being the surprise.
On a completely different note, my voice recorder has been on one bar of battery life for several days now–normally it only lasts a few hours in that state. Hm. Surprise!
Day 11
The day started with the usual routine of dealing with emails, much of which is spam, some of which are actually newsletters worth reading, and very few of the friend variety. This morning, though, somewhere between the newsletters and friend categories, came a note across the techies email list at MA regarding an upcoming concert rumored to be held in the chapel sometime on Sunday: someone didn't think they'd be able to help with the concert because it might conflict with church that morning. Okay, makes sense enough, but what was so striking to me was that this came from someone, who, not that many months ago, identified themselves as a very non-Christian Wiccan. I think their significant other has had a very positive effect there...
I printed off some chord sheets on my way out for my prayer time in Mellby chapel today (I'm bringing my guitar with this time), and of course there's a paper jam. Not a huge deal, I fixed it soon enough and the printer gave me my printouts, but just another one of those tiny things (perhaps we can call them surprises?) that I wasn't at all expecting.
So prayer time today served three purposes: one, simply, prayer and contemplation about God, St Olaf, the 47-hours-of-prayer itself, etc. Two, guitar practice; I justify that because they're all worshipful Selah songs, so even if I'm not good I think God can accept the effort anyway. And three, read Hebrews... for one of my classes; okay, so maybe it's "homework", but it's still reading from the Bible, that's got to count for something.
Maybe it's just because I happened to read Hebrews today, but it seems afterward I kept seeing references to it everywhere: in my textbook for a completely other class, on the prayer chapel walls themselves, I don't know, it just struck me as odd coincidence.
On my way back to Rand I ran into one of the theatre majors who graduated last year, back for a visit to see a show. Nothing too surprising during our brief talk, other than the initial surprise of seeing her again.
I happened to check one of my stocks this afternoon and discovered it's continuing to do really well, but the special realization I came to today is that, if I wanted to, I could sell it all and completely pay off my credit card debt. Wow, way cool.
I then proceeded to spend the entire rest of my afternoon fighting Internet Explorer (running on Windows) to try to get a website I've been working on to display and behave correctly. Every other browser does things the right way, even Firefox on Windows, but IE has to be different. Lots of research and a couple CSS and javascript tweaks later, it worked again. Just very frustrating. Grrr. Another reason to hate Windows.
Tonight I think I learned a lesson about how to "be the surprise" (Terry's next book). For the first night in a while, I didn't have any dinner plans already, until a friend called and we went. She'd had a really rough day and just needed someone to listen; I'm glad I could be there for her. I like asking questions; I feel like I'm good at it, good at prodding people toward figuring out their own thoughts; it's something I can actually do to help, which is a good feeling.
After a bout of homework in the library (which surprisingly closed much earlier than I'd expected!), I was around Buntrock for a while. As I was preparing to head back to Rand, I called a friend to ask about church in the morning, and had no sooner finished leaving a message on her cell phone than I bumped into her in person, all because I chose to take the longer route out of Buntrock. Surprises like that make my day like no other.
Back in the room, Ben and Todd and I spent a short bit of time trying to find the live video feed of St Olaf's construction webcam. They have the normal link on their home page, but this only gives the user a still image, set to refresh every 5 seconds; not nearly as cool as a live motion video feed would be. The best part, after finding the web interface with streaming MPEG-4 video, we could save the file reference onto our computers, open it in Quicktime, and stream live in full screen. Beautiful.
Almost time for bed, but first, a round of laundry (I really need towels). After drying, I had one last surprise: the dryer didn't completely dry everything. Turns out someone forgot to empty the lint trap, as did about the last 50 people before him. Alas, live and learn (and yes, I emptied it afterward so that the next person wouldn't have the same surprise I got :)
I printed off some chord sheets on my way out for my prayer time in Mellby chapel today (I'm bringing my guitar with this time), and of course there's a paper jam. Not a huge deal, I fixed it soon enough and the printer gave me my printouts, but just another one of those tiny things (perhaps we can call them surprises?) that I wasn't at all expecting.
So prayer time today served three purposes: one, simply, prayer and contemplation about God, St Olaf, the 47-hours-of-prayer itself, etc. Two, guitar practice; I justify that because they're all worshipful Selah songs, so even if I'm not good I think God can accept the effort anyway. And three, read Hebrews... for one of my classes; okay, so maybe it's "homework", but it's still reading from the Bible, that's got to count for something.
Maybe it's just because I happened to read Hebrews today, but it seems afterward I kept seeing references to it everywhere: in my textbook for a completely other class, on the prayer chapel walls themselves, I don't know, it just struck me as odd coincidence.
On my way back to Rand I ran into one of the theatre majors who graduated last year, back for a visit to see a show. Nothing too surprising during our brief talk, other than the initial surprise of seeing her again.
I happened to check one of my stocks this afternoon and discovered it's continuing to do really well, but the special realization I came to today is that, if I wanted to, I could sell it all and completely pay off my credit card debt. Wow, way cool.
I then proceeded to spend the entire rest of my afternoon fighting Internet Explorer (running on Windows) to try to get a website I've been working on to display and behave correctly. Every other browser does things the right way, even Firefox on Windows, but IE has to be different. Lots of research and a couple CSS and javascript tweaks later, it worked again. Just very frustrating. Grrr. Another reason to hate Windows.
Tonight I think I learned a lesson about how to "be the surprise" (Terry's next book). For the first night in a while, I didn't have any dinner plans already, until a friend called and we went. She'd had a really rough day and just needed someone to listen; I'm glad I could be there for her. I like asking questions; I feel like I'm good at it, good at prodding people toward figuring out their own thoughts; it's something I can actually do to help, which is a good feeling.
After a bout of homework in the library (which surprisingly closed much earlier than I'd expected!), I was around Buntrock for a while. As I was preparing to head back to Rand, I called a friend to ask about church in the morning, and had no sooner finished leaving a message on her cell phone than I bumped into her in person, all because I chose to take the longer route out of Buntrock. Surprises like that make my day like no other.
Back in the room, Ben and Todd and I spent a short bit of time trying to find the live video feed of St Olaf's construction webcam. They have the normal link on their home page, but this only gives the user a still image, set to refresh every 5 seconds; not nearly as cool as a live motion video feed would be. The best part, after finding the web interface with streaming MPEG-4 video, we could save the file reference onto our computers, open it in Quicktime, and stream live in full screen. Beautiful.
Almost time for bed, but first, a round of laundry (I really need towels). After drying, I had one last surprise: the dryer didn't completely dry everything. Turns out someone forgot to empty the lint trap, as did about the last 50 people before him. Alas, live and learn (and yes, I emptied it afterward so that the next person wouldn't have the same surprise I got :)
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Day 10
Surprise! It's warm, and it's raining outside! Or, at least, it was this morning, like real rain, not snow, not icky sleet; rain! Bring on Spring, I'm ready!
If I thought yesterday might have been lacking in its quantity of surprises, today swung the pendulum in the complete other direction. And by that I mean it was just a really good day. I think I've been really blessed, or just lucky, in that God hasn't thrown many nasty surprises my way–they've all been of the uplifting, joyful variety.
I had lunch today with one of my computer science friends; she's not a CS major, but we lab TAed together last year and became good friends from that. I discovered that humor is a funny thing (punny, I know): some days I can't make a decently amusing joke for the life of me, they all just completely fall short of generating laughter, and garner unpleasant awkward stares instead. I've sort of gotten used to that. But other days, like today, circumstances can be just right such that my mind can process quickly enough, and effectively enough, to keep the funnies flowing. Honestly, I like to think of myself as a funny person–er, funny in what I say, intentionally, as opposed to funny looking or anything–it just can't happen everyday, I suppose. Anyway, today was one of those good joking days: everything just seemed to work. Wish I could pull that off all the time.
When I came back to my room I took my chance to practice guitar for another hour before my roommates came back from class (I'd practiced a little before lunch, too). Surprise! I'm actually getting decent! Apparently repetitive practice does actually help with muscle memory. Now I can sort-of, almost, somewhat play things that resemble real songs!
There were a couple non productive hours spent in the middle of the day trying to catch up on "surprise" journaling amidst the allure of watching the Guitar Hero animations on the TV while my roommate played. Focus: it's a rare commodity. On the other hand, God snuck in another little surprise in this time: I have a widget that tracks stocks, and when I happened to glance at the numbers for one of the stocks I own, well, I was surprised, because it's doing surprisingly well. This makes me happy.
Tonight was the first of hopefully many cooking lessons, offered free (only cost is for the ingredients) by a student in one of the on-campus honor houses. Tonight's menu: hardy lentil soup, bread, and apple pie. The email said we should bring a couple apples, so I went into town to find some.
First, though, my car was almost out of gas, and that situation needed to be remedied. Surprise! No longer is gas cheaply under $2.00 per gallon; no, now they've decided to hike the price back to $2.49! Ahh! Goodbye money, I'll miss you.
My idea of grocery shopping involves Sam's Club and a giant cart filled with frozen, microwaveable meals in bulk packaging. I'm not sure I've gone shopping for apples in a "real" grocery store in some number of years, so today was an experience all in itself. I found the apples section, but then there were so many colors and choices. Okay, the email said "Granny Smith", I can do that. Found them. Now, how many go into a pie? Oh, and I'm supposed to bring some for Ashley, too (we're both in tonight's class!). Well, um, they're mighty large, maybe, 6 of them will be good? And they're only $1.99 a pound, so that won't be too bad. Wait, 6 of them weigh almost 5 pounds!?
Cooking class itself turned out to be not nearly as nerve-wracking as I'd thought it might be. You must keep in mind that I'm the one who, on the sign up sheet under "experience" circled "Me? In a kitchen?". But recipes are very step by step, and the more experienced people were certainly very friendly and held the novice hands all the way through the process. The end result was amazingly tasty, and not just because it was far past my normal dinner-eating time. The bread in particular was gloriously delicious. I only wish I had more time to learn this art of food-making.
Eating came later than anticipated. Actually, I think we started eating at about the time we originally thought we'd be completely done and leaving, which sadly meant I missed the beginning of the 48-hours-of-prayer in Mellby chapel this weekend (the idea is that people take one hour shifts, not that everyone is there all the time). Alas, thus is life, but I feel I "made up" for it after spending some several hours there later in the evening/night.
I need to interject a short funny story here: walking up from parking my car in Skoglund after cooking class, there was a hidden puddle near Rand that jumped out and surprised me, attacking my right shoe.
Back to Mellby: what does one do in the chapel for any length of time? Well, it's been rearranged from the creepy, spooky room it normally is into an inviting little living room, decorated with papers all over the walls to write on, a few hymnals and Bibles, a rosary or two, and a bean bag chair, in addition to the normal benches. In my time there I was only alone for maybe 50 minutes, during which I prayed, read the rest of John that I still hadn't read for class (but it's still Bible reading, so I think it's okay), and quietly sang a couple hymns. Then Nick came in and I was going to leave, but we ended up talking for over an hour, and then Sarah joined us, and we all talked some more. So, 48 hours of prayer (or 47, as the case is because of Daylights Savings Time), perhaps not so much intended to be solid prayer, but rather 48 hours of focusing on God.
If I thought yesterday might have been lacking in its quantity of surprises, today swung the pendulum in the complete other direction. And by that I mean it was just a really good day. I think I've been really blessed, or just lucky, in that God hasn't thrown many nasty surprises my way–they've all been of the uplifting, joyful variety.
I had lunch today with one of my computer science friends; she's not a CS major, but we lab TAed together last year and became good friends from that. I discovered that humor is a funny thing (punny, I know): some days I can't make a decently amusing joke for the life of me, they all just completely fall short of generating laughter, and garner unpleasant awkward stares instead. I've sort of gotten used to that. But other days, like today, circumstances can be just right such that my mind can process quickly enough, and effectively enough, to keep the funnies flowing. Honestly, I like to think of myself as a funny person–er, funny in what I say, intentionally, as opposed to funny looking or anything–it just can't happen everyday, I suppose. Anyway, today was one of those good joking days: everything just seemed to work. Wish I could pull that off all the time.
When I came back to my room I took my chance to practice guitar for another hour before my roommates came back from class (I'd practiced a little before lunch, too). Surprise! I'm actually getting decent! Apparently repetitive practice does actually help with muscle memory. Now I can sort-of, almost, somewhat play things that resemble real songs!
There were a couple non productive hours spent in the middle of the day trying to catch up on "surprise" journaling amidst the allure of watching the Guitar Hero animations on the TV while my roommate played. Focus: it's a rare commodity. On the other hand, God snuck in another little surprise in this time: I have a widget that tracks stocks, and when I happened to glance at the numbers for one of the stocks I own, well, I was surprised, because it's doing surprisingly well. This makes me happy.
Tonight was the first of hopefully many cooking lessons, offered free (only cost is for the ingredients) by a student in one of the on-campus honor houses. Tonight's menu: hardy lentil soup, bread, and apple pie. The email said we should bring a couple apples, so I went into town to find some.
First, though, my car was almost out of gas, and that situation needed to be remedied. Surprise! No longer is gas cheaply under $2.00 per gallon; no, now they've decided to hike the price back to $2.49! Ahh! Goodbye money, I'll miss you.
My idea of grocery shopping involves Sam's Club and a giant cart filled with frozen, microwaveable meals in bulk packaging. I'm not sure I've gone shopping for apples in a "real" grocery store in some number of years, so today was an experience all in itself. I found the apples section, but then there were so many colors and choices. Okay, the email said "Granny Smith", I can do that. Found them. Now, how many go into a pie? Oh, and I'm supposed to bring some for Ashley, too (we're both in tonight's class!). Well, um, they're mighty large, maybe, 6 of them will be good? And they're only $1.99 a pound, so that won't be too bad. Wait, 6 of them weigh almost 5 pounds!?
Cooking class itself turned out to be not nearly as nerve-wracking as I'd thought it might be. You must keep in mind that I'm the one who, on the sign up sheet under "experience" circled "Me? In a kitchen?". But recipes are very step by step, and the more experienced people were certainly very friendly and held the novice hands all the way through the process. The end result was amazingly tasty, and not just because it was far past my normal dinner-eating time. The bread in particular was gloriously delicious. I only wish I had more time to learn this art of food-making.
Eating came later than anticipated. Actually, I think we started eating at about the time we originally thought we'd be completely done and leaving, which sadly meant I missed the beginning of the 48-hours-of-prayer in Mellby chapel this weekend (the idea is that people take one hour shifts, not that everyone is there all the time). Alas, thus is life, but I feel I "made up" for it after spending some several hours there later in the evening/night.
I need to interject a short funny story here: walking up from parking my car in Skoglund after cooking class, there was a hidden puddle near Rand that jumped out and surprised me, attacking my right shoe.
Back to Mellby: what does one do in the chapel for any length of time? Well, it's been rearranged from the creepy, spooky room it normally is into an inviting little living room, decorated with papers all over the walls to write on, a few hymnals and Bibles, a rosary or two, and a bean bag chair, in addition to the normal benches. In my time there I was only alone for maybe 50 minutes, during which I prayed, read the rest of John that I still hadn't read for class (but it's still Bible reading, so I think it's okay), and quietly sang a couple hymns. Then Nick came in and I was going to leave, but we ended up talking for over an hour, and then Sarah joined us, and we all talked some more. So, 48 hours of prayer (or 47, as the case is because of Daylights Savings Time), perhaps not so much intended to be solid prayer, but rather 48 hours of focusing on God.
Day 9
Despite an all too early start to the day (8:00 am class), today held very few surprises for me. Maybe that's okay, maybe I needed a break from writing so much. Class in the morning, another class after that, Remicaid over the lunch hours (including a short but very rejuvenating nap), and in the afternoon I finally started my renewal FAFSA. Yay.
Dinner was infinitely more exciting, since I got to eat with Nicole and Annie. Have I mentioned I love eating meals with friends? I love eating meals with friends, it's so much better than my first year when I ate almost every single meal alone. I love my friends.
I started out this entry writing about a lack of surprises. I think that was premature; it seems God saved the day's "surprises" for the very end, almost as a dessert, if you will (since they came after dinner, the analogy made sense to me :).
For the second week I was privileged to use my Windows (*shudder*) partition and EasyWorship on my laptop to show the Thursday Night lyrics, and, though I was still counting mistakes throughout, both Dave and Adam reassured me it went fine. I'm almost always a harsher critic of myself than anyone else is, have been for many years, but I think Adam and Dave helped me realize something else important that I know I need to deal with: I suspect I judge myself more harshly than God does. Even though it's such a huge deal to me, I'm not sure if God really cares whether every slide is shown absolutely perfectly; maybe it's time for me to accept that, as long as I tried me best, that's what God truly looks for.
Adam really encouraged me tonight, and I'm not sure if he even fully understands just how meaningful his words were and are to me. Coming from someone who I truly admire, respect, and look up to as a role model, his encouragement to me during our small group prayer time before the Bible Study, and again afterward, was indescribably special to me.
After Thursday Night is when God gave me the real surprises of my day. Well, maybe not a "surprise", but a "gift": the chance to go out for late night pizza at the Pause with Adam, Dave, and two of the other leaders from Thursday Night. Yes, I suppose I was sort of hungry, but moreso I cherished the time of fun and fellowship, and the chance to hang out with some really good people.
I went back to Ytterboe with Adam to pick up my briefcase, and then, on the way out of the dorm, came across a penny. For anyone who is familiar with the "Pennies from Heaven" story, you'll understand why finding a penny "from Grandma" is so heartwarming to me. For those not familiar with the story, I'll explain it another time when my eyes aren't threatening to close and my head fall flat on my keyboard.
Dinner was infinitely more exciting, since I got to eat with Nicole and Annie. Have I mentioned I love eating meals with friends? I love eating meals with friends, it's so much better than my first year when I ate almost every single meal alone. I love my friends.
I started out this entry writing about a lack of surprises. I think that was premature; it seems God saved the day's "surprises" for the very end, almost as a dessert, if you will (since they came after dinner, the analogy made sense to me :).
For the second week I was privileged to use my Windows (*shudder*) partition and EasyWorship on my laptop to show the Thursday Night lyrics, and, though I was still counting mistakes throughout, both Dave and Adam reassured me it went fine. I'm almost always a harsher critic of myself than anyone else is, have been for many years, but I think Adam and Dave helped me realize something else important that I know I need to deal with: I suspect I judge myself more harshly than God does. Even though it's such a huge deal to me, I'm not sure if God really cares whether every slide is shown absolutely perfectly; maybe it's time for me to accept that, as long as I tried me best, that's what God truly looks for.
Adam really encouraged me tonight, and I'm not sure if he even fully understands just how meaningful his words were and are to me. Coming from someone who I truly admire, respect, and look up to as a role model, his encouragement to me during our small group prayer time before the Bible Study, and again afterward, was indescribably special to me.
After Thursday Night is when God gave me the real surprises of my day. Well, maybe not a "surprise", but a "gift": the chance to go out for late night pizza at the Pause with Adam, Dave, and two of the other leaders from Thursday Night. Yes, I suppose I was sort of hungry, but moreso I cherished the time of fun and fellowship, and the chance to hang out with some really good people.
I went back to Ytterboe with Adam to pick up my briefcase, and then, on the way out of the dorm, came across a penny. For anyone who is familiar with the "Pennies from Heaven" story, you'll understand why finding a penny "from Grandma" is so heartwarming to me. For those not familiar with the story, I'll explain it another time when my eyes aren't threatening to close and my head fall flat on my keyboard.
Day 8
I got to sleep in today! Well, that is, if one considers 8:30 to be sleeping in, but still, the early awakening was worthwhile because I had my weekly breakfast with Sarah, one of my best friends, to look forward to, which was, always, wonderful. I'm really happy that I'm seeing my friends so much this semester–seems I've successfully learned at least some important lessons about how to place my social life above school.
Individual Fitness was what it was–not terrible by any means, but every day I'm always reminded at just how out-of-shape I am, and I'm not entirely convinced I've seen major improvements since the beginning of the term, other than slightly sore muscles at the end of the day. Maybe I just need to "give it time", like so many other things in life.
After exercising I almost always come back to the room for some alone time with my guitar and God, and today I played refreshingly better than the past couple times: my fingers obeyed very well, and I even hobbled my way through a couple new songs (new to me, that is; I'm sure they've been around many years). I've also found I seem to play better standing up than sitting down; no doubt this is a good thing, since when I actually get to the point of being able to perform, it will obviously be while standing.
Amazingly (to my surprise, you might say), the fax from the doctor made it's way to Northfield, so there was no problem scheduling my Remicaid. Whew. Good thing my Thursday test was postponed, since now I'd have no time to study right before it.
God blessed me with a day of friends and good conversation: I got to have dinner with another of my best friends, Amy, and we had plenty to talk about between our respective romantic interests, the overall dating scene at St Olaf, and Amy's post-graduation plans.
After dinner I went to listen to Terry Fretheim, a visiting Old Testament scholar. This is one of those times when, while I know he's really knowledgeable and, well, smart, the event itself was painfully boring, a situation only aggravated by the absurdly intelligent questions people asked: in short, I was completely in over my head and had no clue what everyone was talking about. Oh well, I did hear one great quote from the speaker (not that this single saving grace made the event fun, but call it one surprising saving grace in the midst of confusion and darkness): "Do make a distinction between the authority of the Bible and the authority of your interpretation of the Bible".
Post-lecture/discussion, the library, and God, had one last amazing surprise gift waiting for me: an unexpected, and long, conversation Kyle, Ashley's boyfriend. I've talked to him in brief passings before, but sadly never at any length, Tonight we finally had that chance to really talk, and to talk for real, beyond all the silly typical "what's your major" kind of questions (okay, some of those snuck in, too, but this was so much more than that). Just one more layer of icing on an already beautiful cake, er, um, day.
Individual Fitness was what it was–not terrible by any means, but every day I'm always reminded at just how out-of-shape I am, and I'm not entirely convinced I've seen major improvements since the beginning of the term, other than slightly sore muscles at the end of the day. Maybe I just need to "give it time", like so many other things in life.
After exercising I almost always come back to the room for some alone time with my guitar and God, and today I played refreshingly better than the past couple times: my fingers obeyed very well, and I even hobbled my way through a couple new songs (new to me, that is; I'm sure they've been around many years). I've also found I seem to play better standing up than sitting down; no doubt this is a good thing, since when I actually get to the point of being able to perform, it will obviously be while standing.
Amazingly (to my surprise, you might say), the fax from the doctor made it's way to Northfield, so there was no problem scheduling my Remicaid. Whew. Good thing my Thursday test was postponed, since now I'd have no time to study right before it.
God blessed me with a day of friends and good conversation: I got to have dinner with another of my best friends, Amy, and we had plenty to talk about between our respective romantic interests, the overall dating scene at St Olaf, and Amy's post-graduation plans.
After dinner I went to listen to Terry Fretheim, a visiting Old Testament scholar. This is one of those times when, while I know he's really knowledgeable and, well, smart, the event itself was painfully boring, a situation only aggravated by the absurdly intelligent questions people asked: in short, I was completely in over my head and had no clue what everyone was talking about. Oh well, I did hear one great quote from the speaker (not that this single saving grace made the event fun, but call it one surprising saving grace in the midst of confusion and darkness): "Do make a distinction between the authority of the Bible and the authority of your interpretation of the Bible".
Post-lecture/discussion, the library, and God, had one last amazing surprise gift waiting for me: an unexpected, and long, conversation Kyle, Ashley's boyfriend. I've talked to him in brief passings before, but sadly never at any length, Tonight we finally had that chance to really talk, and to talk for real, beyond all the silly typical "what's your major" kind of questions (okay, some of those snuck in, too, but this was so much more than that). Just one more layer of icing on an already beautiful cake, er, um, day.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Day 7
It's a Tuesday, meaning... *drumroll* 8:00 am class! Yay! Snore. Well, not usually. I mean, the class is interesting, usually, but it's also so early! I'm a computer scientist, I'm not meant to wake up before 9:00 at the very earliest (though I am proud of the fact that I have never ever slept in past noon in my life, aside, I'm sure, from my days as an infant, but it's not really fair to count those).
On these days of three religion classes I get a two or three hour reprieve in the middle of my day, a time I will normally spend catching up on emails, phone calls, writing, whatever. Today that time brought me an exciting surprise (exciting in the sense of somewhat frustrating). It's been almost 8 weeks since my last Remicaid infusion, which means, actually, now that I think about it, I should have really scheduled one for last week. Anyway, I've been feeling fine, but I know the time has come that I need to get that scheduled, or I'll be very unhappy in a couple days. I called to schedule, and the nurse called me back an hour later. Good thing I'm not in the desperately bad days yet, because apparently the doctor's orders that Northfield hospital has on file are out of date, and they haven't been able to get MN Gastro to send updated ones. Oh, that's fun. It's only my ability to have a normal life that's on the line, no biggie (context, for those who may be reading and didn't know, I have something called "Crohn's disease"... just go look it up on Wikipedia). Anyway, I called the doctor's office, they said they'd fax something, so hopefully that will all be resolved by tomorrow.
Theology of Creation. Oh today was a good class! Not only was I able to draw connections and contribute something I'd learned last year in 'God and Human Suffering', but we spent some significant amount of time looking closely at different translations of Genesis 1:1. Well, I thought it was fun, anyway, to see the vast difference between "When God began to create, the earth being unformed and void..." and "In the beginning when God created the heaven and the earth...". The first is from a Jewish translation, the second is from the NRSV, and the connection I drew was that the former seems to imply a form of ongoing creation / redemption of what Stansell called "preexisting stuff", or chaos, which ties directly into what we read in Rabbi Kushner's book last year about God's unfinished but continuing work in redeeming the chaos. Maybe it was more profound in my mind than when I type it out, but for me it was one of those "Oh, it all makes so much sense now!" moments.
The other wonderful surprise from TC came in the form of something much less theological: due to a glitch in emailing the study guide for our test on Thursday, we get a reprieve from it until Tuesday! That means no cramming tomorrow night, and an entire weekend to slack off before cramming Monday night! (I'm an honest person, what can I say?)
A shower and short study time in the library later and I was back to Buntrock to chauffeur our small group down to the George's for Tuesday night dinner. Today's was a special dinner for at least three reasons that come to mind:
1) It was Lara's birthday today! So there was special cake and singing (and we're St Olaf students, so of course Happy Birthday was sung with some number of harmonies);
2) The George's are leaving on Thursday for a 10-day trip to Israel, so no dinner next week (a whole extra week living without John's puns, I'm not sure how I'll survive)
3) We had special guests, and my new friend who came last week came again this week!
Perhaps the greatest surprise came somewhere in the middle, as I was originally on my way to the library: I got a text message saying that Michael had had his heart transplant! Once more I was filled with such mixed emotion–I'm so glad to know Michael will have many years ahead of him, but I'm saddened to think that someone else just died, some other family is going through the pain and sorrow of planning a likely unexpected funeral of their loved one. Still, perhaps for now it is best I focus on Michael's restoration.
Tuesday night means FCA, my newfound place-to-be every week at 9:00. The speaker was really good, very well-spoken, and I think her message was something I really needed to hear. What's more, and more in the surprise alley, at the end one of the leaders actually spoke about the "surprise me" experiment, following up from last week. "Surprisingly", she encouraged everyone to try it for the next 30 days, and each week there will be some time for people to talk about what surprises God has put into their lives. I think I'll have plenty of stories that I could share by my day 14 next week. Plus I think it's just cool that I had the same idea as they did (of actually trying the experiment), or maybe rather, that they had the same idea that I had a week ago.
At the end of FCA I took the plunge: I talked to "Koach" Nesbit for a few minutes, then we walked over so I could meet the leadership people; I had emailed Coach Nesbit last week to volunteer my time and service for running song slides for FCA if there was a need, and when the student leaders met, they decided enthusiastically to take me up on my offer. So now I'll get to start slideshowing it up for FCA as often as I want, for now every other week. What was really, rewarding, I think is the word, is how much they appreciate the offer, and it's so awesome to be able to use these gifts that God has given me for yet another something that will truly be appreciated. And admittedly there will be some bragging involved if there comes a week when I'm scheduled to run slides for FCA, Thursday Night, and Selah.
My last little "oh that's cool" surprise tonight came when adding Lara's birthday into my computer's address book: for fun I thought I'd just type the word "today" into the birthday field, and lo and behold, it just worked! The year was wrong, but it auto-entered today's date. Cool! Just another reason to love Apple: NSFormatter, which, as my roommates and I decided, may just be one of the coolest things since sliced bread. This spawned another conversation, of course, about what was the coolest thing before sliced bread, to which we answered it must have been rising bread. And on that note, goodnight!
On these days of three religion classes I get a two or three hour reprieve in the middle of my day, a time I will normally spend catching up on emails, phone calls, writing, whatever. Today that time brought me an exciting surprise (exciting in the sense of somewhat frustrating). It's been almost 8 weeks since my last Remicaid infusion, which means, actually, now that I think about it, I should have really scheduled one for last week. Anyway, I've been feeling fine, but I know the time has come that I need to get that scheduled, or I'll be very unhappy in a couple days. I called to schedule, and the nurse called me back an hour later. Good thing I'm not in the desperately bad days yet, because apparently the doctor's orders that Northfield hospital has on file are out of date, and they haven't been able to get MN Gastro to send updated ones. Oh, that's fun. It's only my ability to have a normal life that's on the line, no biggie (context, for those who may be reading and didn't know, I have something called "Crohn's disease"... just go look it up on Wikipedia). Anyway, I called the doctor's office, they said they'd fax something, so hopefully that will all be resolved by tomorrow.
Theology of Creation. Oh today was a good class! Not only was I able to draw connections and contribute something I'd learned last year in 'God and Human Suffering', but we spent some significant amount of time looking closely at different translations of Genesis 1:1. Well, I thought it was fun, anyway, to see the vast difference between "When God began to create, the earth being unformed and void..." and "In the beginning when God created the heaven and the earth...". The first is from a Jewish translation, the second is from the NRSV, and the connection I drew was that the former seems to imply a form of ongoing creation / redemption of what Stansell called "preexisting stuff", or chaos, which ties directly into what we read in Rabbi Kushner's book last year about God's unfinished but continuing work in redeeming the chaos. Maybe it was more profound in my mind than when I type it out, but for me it was one of those "Oh, it all makes so much sense now!" moments.
The other wonderful surprise from TC came in the form of something much less theological: due to a glitch in emailing the study guide for our test on Thursday, we get a reprieve from it until Tuesday! That means no cramming tomorrow night, and an entire weekend to slack off before cramming Monday night! (I'm an honest person, what can I say?)
A shower and short study time in the library later and I was back to Buntrock to chauffeur our small group down to the George's for Tuesday night dinner. Today's was a special dinner for at least three reasons that come to mind:
1) It was Lara's birthday today! So there was special cake and singing (and we're St Olaf students, so of course Happy Birthday was sung with some number of harmonies);
2) The George's are leaving on Thursday for a 10-day trip to Israel, so no dinner next week (a whole extra week living without John's puns, I'm not sure how I'll survive)
3) We had special guests, and my new friend who came last week came again this week!
Perhaps the greatest surprise came somewhere in the middle, as I was originally on my way to the library: I got a text message saying that Michael had had his heart transplant! Once more I was filled with such mixed emotion–I'm so glad to know Michael will have many years ahead of him, but I'm saddened to think that someone else just died, some other family is going through the pain and sorrow of planning a likely unexpected funeral of their loved one. Still, perhaps for now it is best I focus on Michael's restoration.
Tuesday night means FCA, my newfound place-to-be every week at 9:00. The speaker was really good, very well-spoken, and I think her message was something I really needed to hear. What's more, and more in the surprise alley, at the end one of the leaders actually spoke about the "surprise me" experiment, following up from last week. "Surprisingly", she encouraged everyone to try it for the next 30 days, and each week there will be some time for people to talk about what surprises God has put into their lives. I think I'll have plenty of stories that I could share by my day 14 next week. Plus I think it's just cool that I had the same idea as they did (of actually trying the experiment), or maybe rather, that they had the same idea that I had a week ago.
At the end of FCA I took the plunge: I talked to "Koach" Nesbit for a few minutes, then we walked over so I could meet the leadership people; I had emailed Coach Nesbit last week to volunteer my time and service for running song slides for FCA if there was a need, and when the student leaders met, they decided enthusiastically to take me up on my offer. So now I'll get to start slideshowing it up for FCA as often as I want, for now every other week. What was really, rewarding, I think is the word, is how much they appreciate the offer, and it's so awesome to be able to use these gifts that God has given me for yet another something that will truly be appreciated. And admittedly there will be some bragging involved if there comes a week when I'm scheduled to run slides for FCA, Thursday Night, and Selah.
My last little "oh that's cool" surprise tonight came when adding Lara's birthday into my computer's address book: for fun I thought I'd just type the word "today" into the birthday field, and lo and behold, it just worked! The year was wrong, but it auto-entered today's date. Cool! Just another reason to love Apple: NSFormatter, which, as my roommates and I decided, may just be one of the coolest things since sliced bread. This spawned another conversation, of course, about what was the coolest thing before sliced bread, to which we answered it must have been rising bread. And on that note, goodnight!
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Day 6
Today started at what can only properly, or rather, sanely, be called an insanely early hour of the morning: 7:00 am. I was meeting a new friend for breakfast at 7:30, because this was the only time we could find that worked for both schedules. Okay, she was cute, too, so that helped in my willingness to wake up, but really, this was truly just a "get to know you" variety of breakfasting. In that vein, it came up in conversation that her roommate had graduated from Minnehaha last year; I didn't recognize the name, but still, neat connection.
I think I've discovered that God's an early riser. My first surprise of the morning happened before breakfast at around 7:20, when I first came into Fireside to wait: I saw someone who, from a distance, looked very much like my best friend, but, as I realised after waving and talking at them, definitely wasn't anyone I even knew. That was awkward.
Ashley and I resumed our weekly Monday morning workout time today, surprise, it turns out we've been in one of the same classes this semester and didn't know it! Well, we're not quite as ignorant as that makes us sound: she's in one section of the class and I'm in the other, so, same class, same teacher, just different time of day. Still, cool! Not so cool, though, the massive "worksheet" that's due Tuesday (tomorrow) comparing the four Gospel Passion narratives. I did mine Saturday night, and it took many hours. Why bring this up? Because in the course of our conversation, Ashley pointed out to me that, listed on the assignment sheet, even, there's a website that could have helped me with the comparing. Hmm, read directions? Me? Surely not!
Later in the day I received an email from Matthew telling me our friend Michael is in the hospital in serious condition. He told us a few weeks ago about how his heart was becoming less and less effective, and that he needed a new one to live. The doctors 'gave' him only a few months. The "good news" is that being in the hospital now bumps him to the very top of the waiting list (he was further down on the list before not because he wasn't in desperate need, but simply because he still had a quality of life on his own outside of a hospital bed).
So now we pray. It's an odd prayer, if you think about it, because as I realized, in order for Michael to live, that means someone else has to die. What a conundrum. On another related philosophical note, we never really know when our time on this world is going to be over; knowing of cases like Michael's is one reason I decided many years ago that I would be an organ donor.
After a short break following class, I met DaveO (he's one of the pastors at Emmaus, also the one who leads Thursday Night) in Buntrock for our weekly Monday afternoon talk–just a time to talk about what's going on in life, usually my life, mostly on the spiritual side, Bible reading, prayer life, the God-connectedness factor, and also classes, homework, a brush with the attractive females in my life, whatever comes up. The time goes by too quickly, but I cherish it just the same, not only for the opportunity it gives me to talk about myself (my favorite subject, of course), but also because I've found David is a very wise man who always has some positive, deep spiritual insight into what I'm feeling or going through; our talks help bring a little bit of outside perspective to my chaotic mind.
The rest of my afternoon was spent entirely in the library in my new favorite, couch-lined study pit. The topic of my studies? Reading, and lots of it, since I'd not really done any all weekend yet. Oops. It also kind of limited the number of surprises God could throw at me–after all, aside from when I took breaks to read a chapter or two from "Surprise Me", there's not too much unexpected stuff going on in books about sin or the Christology of Paul's letters.
That may have been a lie; I did have one surprise: I actually finished all the reading that I needed to get done for Tuesday. Now, granted, some of it may very well have been sped-read, with some cost to actual comprehension of the material, but let's be honest, I wasn't getting much out of it to begin with, so I don't feel terribly guilty.
Somewhere in the midst of addiction and sin (reading about, not engaging in, mind you) there was a quick break for dinner with Ashley–we both had a lot of work to do, so it had to be quick, but still, better to eat quickly with a friend than alone. And we both got a surprise: the lemon bars. Oh, yes, Stav had lemon bars! This is a rare event, one that must be properly celebrated by taking multiple servings of the delicious lemony substances. But wait, this time around a surprise lurked! When the lemon bar primordial ooze of goodness was being formed in the mixing bowl, it apparently suffered a massive overdosing of salt, a taste that made its way quite noticeably into the final product.
After dinner, and after more reading about Paul, I packed up and returned to my room, anxiously awaiting my 8:30 time to play guitar with Stacy. Stacy is one of those people that lives on my "oh-my-goodness-you're-so-cool-I-can't-believe-you're-actually-talking-with-lowly-little-me" list. More specifically, she's one of the Selah leaders, and, like fellow Away With The Stone band members Adam and Kurt, is a really really good guitar player (she also seems to play just about every other stringed instrument known to mankind). Okay, so getting to play / learn guitar with/from her is just as amazingly, awe-inspiringly cool as it has been when I've met with Adam and Kurt in the past. I know they're normal people, but still in my mind I've placed them all on this pedestal of near-deity-ness.
Before lugging my guitar to one of the Ytterboe practice rooms, I thought I'd print out a few chord sheets to bring with, just of songs I know or wanted to know. Turns out that the Rand printer forgot who it was, and so no one in the dorm can print to it right now. Ben and I identified the problem (it has the wrong IP and needs to be re-netreg-ed, likely another small fall-out from the Great Network Crash of Aught-Seven) and emailed IIT, but that still meant I couldn't print anything. Oh, well. Surprise.
Lack of chord sheets wasn't a huge issue, though. More to my chagrin was the fact that I was not in top guitar-form that night. This is what I get after a couple days of not practicing. So that was a bit embarrassing, and it's hard to justify saying "I'm normally better than this, I promise". Oh well, it was still an absolutely awesome two hours of friendship building and guitar skill honing, and of course now I have plenty more to practice.
The time was getting late, and I have an 8:00 am class on Tuesdays, so it came time for me to march back across campus for two last small surprises: when I got back to the room I walked in and found we had a guest visiting: Dave, one of the CS graduates from last year. We didn't talk long, I had to get to bed and the others all went out to the Pause, but still, it was good to see he's doing well.
My last fun little surprise came in the form of an absolutely great quote that I read on another friend's blog. The quote, classically though mistakenly attributed to Sir Winston Churchill, is thus: "If you're not a liberal when you're 20, you have no heart, but if you're not a conservative by the time you're 40, you have no brain." Sadly, in whatever permutation it takes, he never said it (I'm not a hypocrite, I check my sources: http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=112), but still, regardless of original authorship, I found it to be hilarious; I guess I'm probably just a little more aged, no, let's say, "mature", than most of my fellow college classmates :)
I think I've discovered that God's an early riser. My first surprise of the morning happened before breakfast at around 7:20, when I first came into Fireside to wait: I saw someone who, from a distance, looked very much like my best friend, but, as I realised after waving and talking at them, definitely wasn't anyone I even knew. That was awkward.
Ashley and I resumed our weekly Monday morning workout time today, surprise, it turns out we've been in one of the same classes this semester and didn't know it! Well, we're not quite as ignorant as that makes us sound: she's in one section of the class and I'm in the other, so, same class, same teacher, just different time of day. Still, cool! Not so cool, though, the massive "worksheet" that's due Tuesday (tomorrow) comparing the four Gospel Passion narratives. I did mine Saturday night, and it took many hours. Why bring this up? Because in the course of our conversation, Ashley pointed out to me that, listed on the assignment sheet, even, there's a website that could have helped me with the comparing. Hmm, read directions? Me? Surely not!
Later in the day I received an email from Matthew telling me our friend Michael is in the hospital in serious condition. He told us a few weeks ago about how his heart was becoming less and less effective, and that he needed a new one to live. The doctors 'gave' him only a few months. The "good news" is that being in the hospital now bumps him to the very top of the waiting list (he was further down on the list before not because he wasn't in desperate need, but simply because he still had a quality of life on his own outside of a hospital bed).
So now we pray. It's an odd prayer, if you think about it, because as I realized, in order for Michael to live, that means someone else has to die. What a conundrum. On another related philosophical note, we never really know when our time on this world is going to be over; knowing of cases like Michael's is one reason I decided many years ago that I would be an organ donor.
After a short break following class, I met DaveO (he's one of the pastors at Emmaus, also the one who leads Thursday Night) in Buntrock for our weekly Monday afternoon talk–just a time to talk about what's going on in life, usually my life, mostly on the spiritual side, Bible reading, prayer life, the God-connectedness factor, and also classes, homework, a brush with the attractive females in my life, whatever comes up. The time goes by too quickly, but I cherish it just the same, not only for the opportunity it gives me to talk about myself (my favorite subject, of course), but also because I've found David is a very wise man who always has some positive, deep spiritual insight into what I'm feeling or going through; our talks help bring a little bit of outside perspective to my chaotic mind.
The rest of my afternoon was spent entirely in the library in my new favorite, couch-lined study pit. The topic of my studies? Reading, and lots of it, since I'd not really done any all weekend yet. Oops. It also kind of limited the number of surprises God could throw at me–after all, aside from when I took breaks to read a chapter or two from "Surprise Me", there's not too much unexpected stuff going on in books about sin or the Christology of Paul's letters.
That may have been a lie; I did have one surprise: I actually finished all the reading that I needed to get done for Tuesday. Now, granted, some of it may very well have been sped-read, with some cost to actual comprehension of the material, but let's be honest, I wasn't getting much out of it to begin with, so I don't feel terribly guilty.
Somewhere in the midst of addiction and sin (reading about, not engaging in, mind you) there was a quick break for dinner with Ashley–we both had a lot of work to do, so it had to be quick, but still, better to eat quickly with a friend than alone. And we both got a surprise: the lemon bars. Oh, yes, Stav had lemon bars! This is a rare event, one that must be properly celebrated by taking multiple servings of the delicious lemony substances. But wait, this time around a surprise lurked! When the lemon bar primordial ooze of goodness was being formed in the mixing bowl, it apparently suffered a massive overdosing of salt, a taste that made its way quite noticeably into the final product.
After dinner, and after more reading about Paul, I packed up and returned to my room, anxiously awaiting my 8:30 time to play guitar with Stacy. Stacy is one of those people that lives on my "oh-my-goodness-you're-so-cool-I-can't-believe-you're-actually-talking-with-lowly-little-me" list. More specifically, she's one of the Selah leaders, and, like fellow Away With The Stone band members Adam and Kurt, is a really really good guitar player (she also seems to play just about every other stringed instrument known to mankind). Okay, so getting to play / learn guitar with/from her is just as amazingly, awe-inspiringly cool as it has been when I've met with Adam and Kurt in the past. I know they're normal people, but still in my mind I've placed them all on this pedestal of near-deity-ness.
Before lugging my guitar to one of the Ytterboe practice rooms, I thought I'd print out a few chord sheets to bring with, just of songs I know or wanted to know. Turns out that the Rand printer forgot who it was, and so no one in the dorm can print to it right now. Ben and I identified the problem (it has the wrong IP and needs to be re-netreg-ed, likely another small fall-out from the Great Network Crash of Aught-Seven) and emailed IIT, but that still meant I couldn't print anything. Oh, well. Surprise.
Lack of chord sheets wasn't a huge issue, though. More to my chagrin was the fact that I was not in top guitar-form that night. This is what I get after a couple days of not practicing. So that was a bit embarrassing, and it's hard to justify saying "I'm normally better than this, I promise". Oh well, it was still an absolutely awesome two hours of friendship building and guitar skill honing, and of course now I have plenty more to practice.
The time was getting late, and I have an 8:00 am class on Tuesdays, so it came time for me to march back across campus for two last small surprises: when I got back to the room I walked in and found we had a guest visiting: Dave, one of the CS graduates from last year. We didn't talk long, I had to get to bed and the others all went out to the Pause, but still, it was good to see he's doing well.
My last fun little surprise came in the form of an absolutely great quote that I read on another friend's blog. The quote, classically though mistakenly attributed to Sir Winston Churchill, is thus: "If you're not a liberal when you're 20, you have no heart, but if you're not a conservative by the time you're 40, you have no brain." Sadly, in whatever permutation it takes, he never said it (I'm not a hypocrite, I check my sources: http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=112), but still, regardless of original authorship, I found it to be hilarious; I guess I'm probably just a little more aged, no, let's say, "mature", than most of my fellow college classmates :)
Day 5
I have an addendum to add to yesterday: on my way into the poetry event, and then again leaving dinner, I bumped into a friend I haven't seen in a long time, and though we didn't have much chance to talk (so much catchup to do, especially since she was just in India over Interim!), it's these little run-ins that are truly the highlights in my days.
Today started bright and early heading to the 9:00 service at Emmaus, where I was pleasantly surprised with a very fun and just plain "good" selection of songs, especially "Shelter" and Chris Tomlin's "Forever". The other very pleasant surprise was to see Pastor Will back in the pulpit after being sick at home with shingles for a month.
Almost the entire afternoon was spent in a very comfortable (almost too comfortable) study pit in the library, just writing: I had four days (plus an introduction) of surprises to journal, so it was about time I dealt with all those random voice notes I'd taken. On a completely other note, while there I also had the pleasant surprise of discovering I'd already paid off my Target credit card. At least that's one less thing to worry about.
Since the library didn't open until noon, I spent about an hour this morning sitting in a window cubby in Buntrock near the Cage, an hour which held some nearly countless number of those day-highlighting "little run-ins": little surprise packages called friends, coupled with pleasant smiles that I'm sure God sent knowing how much they would lift me up.
Just before 6:00 I finally put down the computer and "Surprise Me" book and journeyed to Fireside to meet the Selah people for dinner, where I attempted, as always, somewhat unsuccessfully, to be funny, before returning to my cozy library corner for homework-esque reading.
The night didn't bring many "surprises", but a comment must be made about the smiles that I kept smiling at Selah. I know the songs by heart, at least, for the most part, so my eyes will often tend to wander around during the singing to see who else is there, and it seemed like every time I wandered tonight, they spotted a new friend or acquaintance coming in the door, down the steps, and into worship. It was no shock to see any one of these people in particular, but it made me smile to realize how Selah, how God, had brought so many very different people from different areas in my life into this one place, all for the same purpose of glorifying our Creator.
Today started bright and early heading to the 9:00 service at Emmaus, where I was pleasantly surprised with a very fun and just plain "good" selection of songs, especially "Shelter" and Chris Tomlin's "Forever". The other very pleasant surprise was to see Pastor Will back in the pulpit after being sick at home with shingles for a month.
Almost the entire afternoon was spent in a very comfortable (almost too comfortable) study pit in the library, just writing: I had four days (plus an introduction) of surprises to journal, so it was about time I dealt with all those random voice notes I'd taken. On a completely other note, while there I also had the pleasant surprise of discovering I'd already paid off my Target credit card. At least that's one less thing to worry about.
Since the library didn't open until noon, I spent about an hour this morning sitting in a window cubby in Buntrock near the Cage, an hour which held some nearly countless number of those day-highlighting "little run-ins": little surprise packages called friends, coupled with pleasant smiles that I'm sure God sent knowing how much they would lift me up.
Just before 6:00 I finally put down the computer and "Surprise Me" book and journeyed to Fireside to meet the Selah people for dinner, where I attempted, as always, somewhat unsuccessfully, to be funny, before returning to my cozy library corner for homework-esque reading.
The night didn't bring many "surprises", but a comment must be made about the smiles that I kept smiling at Selah. I know the songs by heart, at least, for the most part, so my eyes will often tend to wander around during the singing to see who else is there, and it seemed like every time I wandered tonight, they spotted a new friend or acquaintance coming in the door, down the steps, and into worship. It was no shock to see any one of these people in particular, but it made me smile to realize how Selah, how God, had brought so many very different people from different areas in my life into this one place, all for the same purpose of glorifying our Creator.
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