the glory and the horror

I started using SLAD again for my time with God. It’s nice to be focused, and work on specific areas of my life. I think I may start doing book studies now, while still slowly reading through the Bible. I’m not sure where to start though. I did some minor prophets last year. Perhaps an epistle. Or maybe Old Testament history.

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WARNING: There will be spoilers if you haven’t seen Catch Me If You Can.

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I side with Sam. I actually went to see this movie the first time with him and Ben. We all thought it was a good one. Maybe a little slow, but it was interesting. It dealt a lot with the son (Leo DiCaprio) and his relationship with his father/father figure. Tom Hanks ends up taking the role of the father figure later on, I think, once the chase develops. It really does seem that Frank (DiCaprio) isn’t quite totally aware of what he’s doing. Not that he doesn’t think it’s wrong. I think he knows that, but it seems like he just seems to see it as more of a game. When he calls Hanks in the office, it seems to highlight the loneliness of both men. And then at the end – the bit about no one chasing him… It was all about him trying to get his dad to care enough to put some limits down, a similar idea that floats among some child psychologists and the necessity of setting boundaries/limits when they’re young, and even as teenagers. Part of knowing that someone cares is when that someone cares enough to put down boundaries, and set limits to what can or cannot be done, out of concern and love for the person.

Back to studying.

Just thoughts.

I’m fairly certain that I passed the Neuro test. That’s a good thing.

Eosinophils are hard to find.

So here are the summer plans thus far. I’m going to drive home to CA with some friends, including Kathleen, for Andrew and Lydia’s graduations, which I am VERY much looking forward to. Both the road trip, and being at the graduations, and being home under more normal conditions. This past Christmas break was anything but normal home time. After that, I come back to Dallas and do a month-long preceptorship with an internal medicine doctor who’s on the ethics committee over at Baylor University Health Center here in town. He’s supposed to be a great guy, and was instrumental in crafting a very good law on advanced directives and medical futility here in the great state of Texas. After that, Kathleen and I are headed up to either Colorado or Wyoming to spend some time with her parents. I’m looking forward to that – both the time with her parents, and the time in those two states. WY and CO are beautiful, and I can’t wait to do some hiking up there again. After that, though, it’ll be time for school. There might be a trip to central asia squeezed in there with church, but I’m not sure.

I still don’t have a roommate for next year.

There are many things to pray about. A friend’s dad passed away today, sorta suddenly. I don’t know much, but I know that it wasn’t the best situation.

Anyway, I think the Yao Ming/Shaq thing was way overblown, and that it wasn’t that big of a deal. I didn’t get to read the Asian Week article, but I think the columnist overreacted. I think Yao handled the situation very gracefully. Props to him. I don’t think Shaq is racist. I don’t think the comment was inherently racist. Shaq is not the most eloquent speaker. We know that. He said something stupid. Everyone agrees on that much at least. Good. Be done with it.

DWC was a good time to see old friends, catch up, and just to keep abreast of some of the fun things that are happening within Campus Crusade for Christ. I enjoyed the opportunity to go and be a part of that, if even for a little bit.

I’ll get to the other, meatier topics after my test. Oh yeah, I’m headed to Houston this weekend!

Just thoughts.

So my roommate is going to be moving out for sure. Sadness. We get along so well. *sigh*. The things you do for women.

So it’s test time again. Neuroscience and Cell Biology this time around, Monday and Friday respectively, of next week. I haven’t really been going at it too hard yet. It doesn’t seem that bad. But then again…

It looks like the spring break return trip to see the team isn’t going to work The Austin folks are wimping out on me, so I may not have anyone to go back with.

Urbana is this December! Yay!

So an interesting proposition was put forth to me last week. A professor here at Southwestern thinks that I should seriously consider taking a leave of absence from here after 2nd year, and get my Ph.D. in philosophy. I think it’s an intriguing idea. Definitely not totally out of question at least. I’ll pray about it, and prepare for it, at least. I have lots of time before I have to decide. But I may use my ethics paper as my writing sample. That’d be really fun I’ll have to have Dr. Bishop help me with that.

Just thoughts.

So Sam is riding on me to update with actual content. So here’s some. I missed all the football games today. Not totally intentionally, but mostly. I did get to talk to Blake and Kyle, and others whom I have neglected because of medical school and my own lack of effort. Not lack of desire. Just effort. But some would say that is equivalent. If I truly had the desire, I would have put in the effort.

Bible school wants to change its “666″ phone number

Church today was REALLY good. And I pulled out an Urbana tape that I had hidden in the car, and I listened to that over the last 2 days, and I think it ranks up there as one of the better sermons. Up there with John Piper’s “Doing Missions When Dying Is Gain.” I don’t have it with me in the apartment, but it’s one of the last messages – it’s the one from the day that the IJM guy spoke. Speaking of Urbana, it’s coming around again next year.

So I’m probably losing my roommate, so I have to find another one. That brings up the question of whether or not I want to move, or if I want to try to find someone to move in with me. I’ve talked to some people, and I need to pray for wisdom about who I want to try to grab. We’ll see how it goes.

And Sam, I’m sorry this isn’t specifically tying into too much from the stuff I said I’d blog about. Some other time. It’s late. And I just got kicked off-line, so this post will go up at a time other than when I wrote it.

Just thoughts.

So I tried to update last night, and Blogger ate it. Twice.

So there are many things to talk about. I’ll try to just list them for now, and then get to them as I have time.

Catch Me If You Can – about the basic human desire to be wanted and cared about – additionally about father/son relationship, boundaries
DWC – I saw Guff, Jackson and Noah! and Laurel, Jenn, David, Kelly, and Nikki!
Foxes’ Book of Martyrs – Reliability? Even if not 100% reliable, if only partially reliable, it’s amazing.
The Mission – Am I Jeremy Irons or Robert DeNiro? Cultural issues with missionary work
Shaq and Yao Ming – racism =? jokes about race
Summer plans – Driving home, and back, and what else to do?
Even more future plans – I’m most likely losing my roommate

Just thoughts.