Move Along

Ah, and now for the weekend update...

Friday, i took off work early to ride the ever dependably late Amtrak (avoid it at all cost). It was only about 2 and a half hours late into Durham and Ashley scooped me up there. We spent the evening packing.
Saturday, we packed some, then had lunch with my college roomie, Barnes. We grabbed some Asia Cafe and sat in the quad at UNC and her dog, Eli, almost behaved for the most part. We also stopped by PCM and played pool. We spent Saturday evening packing more and then Rob and Katherine came over (Rob is Ashley's friend through his band and Katherine is my college friend) so we had a fun visit. Then we packed more.
Sunday, we packed the kitchen, picked up the U-Haul 14-ft truck and headed to a cookout. We bribed a boy there with pizza and Gary came for a few minutes to help us load the truck. Between loading and removing the washer from the wall, it took us a mere 6 and a half hours to load the truck and head off to Richmond at 9:20 PM and arrive at 12:15 at night.
Monday we got up early to unpack the U-Haul and put all her belongings in storage. Kyle helped us and we all had lunch with my college friend Melissa at Stir Crazy as she passed through from Maryland. We finished unloading and had a phenomenal Sicilian at Mary Angelo's on Cary St. Ashley and i crashed and watched Grosse Pointe Blank.

In other news, i not only get to go to Triennium this year, i get to be a SMALL GROUP LEADER!!! i fly up a day early and come back a day later and stay with all the national and international leaders. i'm completely stoked. i also redesigned the PBB symbol and designed new t-shirts for this year. i'm starting into the Journal that will be used when the kids get here and got the Google group running.

On the horizon... possible Ashley visit this weekend and a YoCo party.

June 8- Riding with Sallie down to Charlotte!!!! for Maggie and Erik's wedding!!!
June 9- Wedding and Charlotte Knight's game with Amanda
June 10- My family meets Ashley's Family
End of June- Up to Hershey to meet Ashley's extended fam

Social-conscious

Ok, so something's really been bothering me. There's a T-mobile commercial where these teenagers all text each other on their "sidekick" mobile devices and converge on this downtown building. Some are on the 2nd floor, some on the 1st. Someone texts "now" to everyone and they run for the escalator and when they meet at halfway, they all silly-string one another and all the other people who are unfortunate enough to be on the escalator and make a run for it, out running the armed security guard. This hopefully, is what one does with a T-mobile "sidekick," silly-string, and no role model. Most importantly, the missing ingredient is some sort of social-conscious of the world around them. Not of their actions and the repercussions for themselves (doubtful that got a lot of thought) but for others. No, i'm not even hugely concerned with the people who got innocently silly-stringed, but they are part of it. Some poor janitor is gonna have to clean stair after stair of hardened silly string between all those stairs on the moving escalator that are going to gum it up. Someone who already likely works 12 hours a day at this job and probably holds another job too. Someone who has a wife who works two jobs and two kids who just want enough money to buy lunch at school occasionally, not even a cell phone or a "sidekick." According to the US Census, 70% of all economic activity in the US is service work. Does this thought enter the mind of the advertising agent making six figures a year? The typical employee at a T-Mobile store? Catherine Zeta-Jones, their spokeswoman? The typical teenager watching this? Yours? How many times did i have to see it before it occurred to me? i've worked service industry jobs and worked along side folks in the service industry. i've seen a woman have to spend hours scraping the gum off the bottoms of furniture in a college student union because countless students at a liberal arts college don't think about who cleans it. i've seen a man spend hours scrubbing a sink that someone poured black paint down to avoid finding a safe place to dump it. How hard do we make the lives of others in our own daily routine? recreation? How disgusting or gross are the tasks we set before others by our lack of forethought? How would we live if those thoughts came before all else?

DUCKPIN!

Ok, Lord Nelson, my buddy here at Union got me and Marc and Jen out to our first experience with Duckpin Bowling. It's outrageously fun. The alley is the same size, everything is the same as regular bowling, except....
the pins are half size
and the balls are a little bigger than a softball (all of the same weight, no holes)
So the pins are way harder to knock down because there is way less overlap with them spread out the same as regular pins and you get 3 chances per frame, not 2 like in regular bowling
But it's so hard to get a strike or spare that nobody gets a very high score, even if you're good. You can hit them right on the center and you'll knock the two middle ones out and that's it. It's hard, but so fun. The crowd was interesting, emo kids with lots of tattoos. It was like a benfold's after party in the boonies.
And the two guys running it, one looked like Tom Petty, and the other guy was ringing me up and saw my UNC Wachovia card. He goes, "hey Larry, this guy's got the right card!" "Larry" graduated in 73 from UNC and the guy ringing me up is from "near chapel hill" and his wife works in ortho at UNC hospitol. i asked where near ch and he says "little town called Burlington." i told him i worked there one summer for church. So he says "which church?" i told him and he said, "yeah, there off 49?" "Yes sir." "My parents got married there."

Small small world.

Emo-tional

Not a lot in the news i felt like reporting on, but i just came across a youtube video worth pointing out. It's a satirical, although mostly accurate explanation of exactly "what emo is." It is about 20 minutes long and it does have some language in a couple spots, but it's worth a look if you've ever tried to explain this to anyone, or yourself.

Don't forget, Smallville Season Finale tonight.

Mother Earth, the neglected mother of the Week

Yes, Sunday was Mother's Day, and how many of you thought about Mother Earth? i know, i know, there are those of you offended by the use of that name or term (can it for the moment because i am defending the Earth and therefore, God's creation, so keep your semantics to yourself).
How big is your own ecological footprint? Do you know? It's a term used a lot now, and it's highly important. There's all sorts of easy ways to reduce it, so let's try it together, shall we?

Things i do well already (if i can do it, you totally can):
Recycle all papers you clear out when cleaning up (including newsletters, newspaper, etc)
Recycle all cardboard (cereal boxes, pasta boxes, etc)
Instead of throwing out or hording greeting cards for years, recycle them, PLEASE!
Wash out and recycle cans and bottles
*if you really feel your tap water is not sufficient, buy a Britta filter or jug and reuse bottles you can wash yourself. Stop buying bottles water by the case every week. That's extra packaging you are less likely to recycle and the delivery cost in resources and money is a huge factor in your ecological footprint
Buy fewer hair, cosmetic, and cleaning products and when possible, buy the refills
*ps: you can recycle your toilet paper tube, i know, more steps to the bin than to the trash beside you, suck it up
Carpool as much as possible

Things i don't do so well (let's all try):
Turn off lights when you leave a room
Turn off computer monitors when you aren't using them
On cool nights, open a window and turn off your A/C
Take the stairs more often
ONLY PUT AS MUCH FOOD ON YOUR PLATE AS YOU WILL EAT, you can always go back for more. Seriously, wasting food is a huge contributing factor. More food must be grown, shipped and disposed of when you waste or don't eat what you take.

Go to green.yahoo.com to learn what else you can do and make your own plan for how to make your life greener.

Wanna help stop hunger? Do you go to the grocery store once a week or more? Have 30 or 40 cents extra in your budget? Really think about that before you answer, it's yes, i promise) Buy an extra can or two of vegetables, pasta, etc, every time you hit the grocery store. Keep them on another shelf at home and take them to church with you on Sunday or the food bank once every month or so. If half the members of your average church (20 families or more) did that, they would take in 320 cans per month at the very least, or more than 36,000 per year. There are more than 100 Presbyterian churches alone in the Charlotte area. That would be 3,600,000 cans per year from only the Presbyterian churches in Charlotte. Are we getting the idea?

Merrily we Roll Along

i think my new practice is going to be to write fairly often and just add news stories and thoughts as they come to me to the same entry if they occur on the same day so i don't forget what i was gonna jot down. So if entries change all day long, don't be surprised (as if you check).

So to start with, today my favorite song is I No Longer Hate California, which you can find on CD Baby and listen to about half of it. It's a rockin' fun tune, so jump on it.


As a result of the questions i just read in Contemplative Youth Ministry, i'm making an indirectly related resolution. The book focuses on how to be truly present with youth in ministry. These questions focus on how you as an adult have changed as you've grown:

Where in your life did you stop singing?
Where in your life did you stop dancing?
Where in your life did you stop telling stories?
Where in your life did you stop listening to silence?
-Angeles Arrien

I'm painfully aware of my addiction to TV and the stories and comedy from them that apply to real life. When working with youth, these can be most relevant, but my resolution is to rely more heavily on stories from my own life, especially with those my own age. This effort is to help in the lost art of story telling, as well as an effort to truly listen more.


13:48- Just found out Jerry Falwell was found dead in his office at Liberty.

CONGRATS!!!

Yes, first off, congrats to the graduating class of 2007 of the University of NC at Chapel Hill. i really am proud. Some of you are even all grown up now ;-)

My mom and sister came through on Thursday afternoon to say hello and go to dinner. They got to see my office and meet my boss and Carson and some of my hippie friends.

i found out that my friend Susan and her husband Dan were headed down for the graduation because Dan's sister was a college buddy of mine graduating this year. So i hitched a ride down to the hill to see Ashley folks for a day or so. Got to the Law Graduation to see Ashley's mother's husband graduate and it was very nice, as well as see her mother on mothers day. i called my mother in NY and then all my other mothers here and there and everywhere.

Also made it back to Chapel Hill Bible Church for the first time in maybe 5 years. Was a very nice service. The music was all led by a dude who looks just like, and acted much like, Eddie Izzard (non-drag) and was very good. Ashley's former pastor gave the message and it was very good as well. It's worth mentioning because i've had friends recently, more than a few struggling with an issue he touched on. He talked about how many of us wait for God to love us or God to use us or God to really move in our lives in some big obvious way, and then when God uses us or God loves us through other people we figure "well, that's God's Plan B." And he's right, it's not plan B, that's God's plan A, and it's a good plan! Thought i should bring it up.


So i've rethought being shot into space after what happened to poor Scotty...

Graced with His presents

So, i had an interesting conversation with one of my best friends today and she asked me, 'what is grace?' Well, i've given this quite a bit of thought during many long dry Presbyterian services. The conclusion i've arrived at requires defining 3 terms together...

Justice is getting what you deserve
Mercy is not getting what you deserve
and Grace is getting what you don't deserve (as is injustice on the flipside, but stay with me)

Have you read or seen some version of Les Miserables? If not, please take this moment to go here because frankly, you need to know something about it now and the next time it comes up in conversation or you need to impress a girl (if you watched Star Trek: DS9, you'd know all about it).


Justice would be throwing the main character (Jean Valjean) back into prison for stealing candlesticks from the priest.
Mercy would be letting him off with a week's worth of community service at the abbey.
Grace, the whole point of the story (same as the Bible), is giving those candlesticks to Jean. It's a gift he does not expect or deserve. He actually deserves punishment. But that gift is the price paid to save and redeem him. It's a gift given to give him a new life, which is all the priest wants for him, a life he didn't know he could have.

Planet Watch

That's right, i'm keeping tabs on our exploration of and colonization of the New Earth planet (Gleise 581c). If Steve Colbert is right, it'll be the US populating it soon.

Article on BIGFib.com Pay special attention to the Daedalus
















Books to read this summer:
Death by Black Hole
The Black Swan

I'm a hard workin' dog

Yes, started work for PBB yesterday. Love my new office. i'm diggin' bein' next door to all the big wig intellects and my spacious work place. Joy, my supervisor, has me doing all the leg work for applications and teacher packets and going through applications of the kids who will come in July to write cover letters that summarize what they say about themselves, and what their recommendations had to say about them as well. i love working. Seriously stoked about the summer and about Triennium.
Ashley is continuing to search for places here in Richmond while job hunting. We had a great weekend after her interviews at Carmax. Ashley, Kyle, and i went down to VA Beach Friday night and crashed with their friend Jason who is in the Navy. We spent the next day at the beach and boardwalk, where there was a massively awesome car show on the boardwalk itself. i saw a '56 Chevy and got to talk to the owner who said i "got the prize" for asking and knowing that the gas cap was hidden behind the driver's-side tail light.



























Saturday night, Ashley and i made it to Spiderman 3. Gotta say it was good, but too long. More of it should have ended up on the cutting room floor. Some scenes were entirely superfluous and it ran too long. Special effects and story were top notch for a superhero flick.









Oh, best preview by far... The Bourne Ultimatum
Second Best was Harry Potter, looks rockin'

Street Cred

Great episode of the Daily Show (something rare these days post Steve Colbert and most of their finest reporters leaving)....

A recent 60 Minutes interview with a leading rap artist (who, is hardly important) featured him saying he wouldn't "snitch" on a guy next door on his street even if he knew he was a serial killer. Yikes. So this is what one of the new anchors on the Daily Show had to say on this phenomenon...

You get street cred for not snitchin'
You write rap songs about it
You can trade that street cred... for real cred
You use that cred and move away... from that street
'cause if it's the kinda street you get cred by not talkin' to the cops... that's a scary street



In other news, scientists did find a planet that could support life! Kind of exciting. It's in this sorta "Cinderella zone" of distance from its own sun that means it could have water in a liquid state. Unfortunately, it would take our current fastest ships 400,000 years to get there. Even at the speed of light, it would take 20 years.

Layman's Fun Article

Worth Your Time, a Penny for My Thoughts

My girlfriend located a news article i felt was worth passing along. It's not just the intrinsic entertainment value or the "aww" factor that is worth noting. i actually found the responses to be the really thought-provoking portion.

Kitties v. Puppies




















The gist is that a CA school has created freeware to defeat spam. You know those sites where you log in and it asks you to identify the weird twisted letters and numbers to prove you're a human and not spam? Well, that's not good enough these days. So this software displays a series of photos and asks you to say if it's a cat or a dog. Get them all right? You are a human! So what's the big deal? Will this be helpful? What will this lead to? Well, these comments were what caught my eye...

"I think it is pretty cool, but how long will it take for hackers to come up with cat-recognition software?"

"Maybe this type of security 'arms race' will leads to fundamental advances in artificial intelligence. Visual recognition of objects is a big problem in that field."



ALSO: Going to TRIENNIUM!!!!

Just for Fun

So this blog is entirely too serious for its own good. Here's some humor for those of you who visit. So take a break...

This commercial will have you laughing so hard you'll wet your pants...
bathroom etiquette

G Dubyah impersonator for those of you who don't know...
Steve Bridges

i'll add some Political Speeches from youtube later as the ones by almost every candidate are hilarious. Does anyone take them seriously? Geez. i dunno which is scarier: Hillary Clinton speaking or Hillary Clinton in her youtube video faking womanly and sweet and nice. Yikes!

hillary


Ok, seriously, go be good citizens and pick a better candidate than Kerry or Bush or Edwards or God forbid, Hillary. Where or where is C Powell? Are there any non-scary thirds or moderates to be found?

my women's lib theology youtube of the day...
7up