Bringing the Drama

i keep somewhat modest goals in life. i don’t expect to become an astronaut or hit a game winning home run in the world series. i registered for the crescent city classic and wanted to run the race in under an hour. today i ran it in 59:36. so my goal to run a 10k in under an hour was accomplished today. i may have been able to run faster had not so many walkers gotten in the front. once i got to about 2 miles, i was able to run at my usual pace. i did pass a guy with the same running shoes as me, so i told him “nice shoes” as i ran past him. i was doing good up until mile 4, and i started to get tired. so i’m not sure how much i slowed down, but i know i did. i didn’t see a clock from the halfway point to the end of the race, so i had no idea. anyway, once i saw the finish line, i started sprinting. so much so that about 100 yards before the finish i realized “if i keep running like this i’m going to puke”, so i realized i’d make it under an hour and dialed the speed back to cross the finish line in under an hour. cool. then i came home and rode my bike around the neighborhood, so i bought back 11 pts (WW pts) before noon. (what up robbi!)

i had a meeting with my boss yesterday, i guess the yearly evaluation debriefing type thing. i got a good review, and then i got to talk to him about my thoughts. i think he can tell i’m looking to get a new job. and i’m really not sure if i want to do that. my friend andy points out that we have an easy job and we get paid handsomely for it. (actually, he doesn’t use ‘handsomely’, but i like that word to describe monetary compensation) and its true, i don’t do anything really hard and get paid an engineer’s wage. so i should be happy right? i just don’t feel i’m using the experience i gained at school. i mean, yeah, i pretty much had it tough in school, but i want to use that instead of use it to get an easy job. so i don’t know what i want to do. i do know that i want to paint a few of the rooms in my house. so at least i know that much.

i don’t know why but the first time i saw ‘love actually’ i didn’t like it very much. i’ve seen the last 20 minutes on tv a few times the past couple of weeks and really like how it portrayed the different ways love is shown in different relationships. from the naive to the serious and everywhere in between (including some relationships that are a bit disturbing). nevertheless, aren’t you excited when colin firth’s determination to learn portuguese pays off at the end? i am. and they are so right about airports. i just hope one day i have a girl leap into my arms at an airport, i think that’s cool.

i was going to type more about this because i’ve been thinking about typing about it, but i think i covered what i was going to say. so there ya go.

so today i realized i’m not sure if i want to stay at my current job location much past this summer. “where to?” you may ask….well, that’s the hard part. i don’t know. i’ve decided i finally want to paint some walls in my house since they’ve been white since the day i moved in. all except for the living room. so i’m not sure if i want to get another job locally, or do what i’ve wanted to do for quite some time and move to a completely other state. i guess today i got frustrated with my job to the point where i can’t picture myself there anymore. there’s a severe lack of communication between departments and people are just not nice to each other. to ask questions, they pose them in such a way to already make you feel stupid before you even answer. so i’m going to investigate other jobs in the area, then see where that goes.

i did something this evening that i have never done before. i bought a dvd without having seen the movie. i bought ‘finding neverland’ on the recommendations of people i consider friends, as well as seeing the trailer again last night on apple’s site and decided for $14.99 i can swing taking a chance, especially when there’s an excellent chance i’ll like the movie. so i got home and watched it. i loved it. how a darker movie won best picture i’ll never know. it was excellent. i highly HIGHLY recommend it. and i can finally say that about a movie without reservations since i recommended ‘garden state’ to people and some of them hated it.

after the movie, i sat down and finally ate dinner, and the rock n roll HOF induction ceremony was on. u2 was being inducted and they performed ‘until the end of the world’. its oddly enough one of my favorite songs. i realized as i watched them (which also inspired me to pop in ‘u2 go home’ and watch a few performances there) that they are my favorite rock band now. i should not deny it anymore. i get goosebumps just thinking of the chords to some of their songs. but sadly, i will not be going to see them this time around. i have seen them one time, back on the popmart tour. incidentally, the tour shirt from that year is my favorite. if people can recognize it, i instantly have more respect for them. so now i have three ‘non negotiables’, i’m really starting to be restrictive, huh?

btw, thanks for all the comments with the post from the other day. i thought afterward that it may have gone too far or i ’shared too much’, so i’m glad to see that other people saw what i was saying.

like i said the other day, i hate picking brackets for money. wake forest lost tonight, and i had them winning the whole thing in both of my money brackets. so my big upset pick vermont won’t help give me an early lead for anything. i’m done. it sucks.

now i want ALL of the top seeds to lose so the final four looks nothing like anyone predicted. here’s to looking for duke, unc, uconn, illinois, and kentucky all to go down. i mean, if someone would have said kansas, gonzaga, oklahoma, wake forest, and syracuse would be out as of the first weekend, would anyone really have believed them?

my friend carla wrote a new article for relevant on dating. this got me to thinking about the bible study i go to and why i feel so out of place at it sometimes. the current topic is on dating, and it is so close to being good, but it falls short in some respects. when i think about what i wrote last week, i remember that i never ranted on that subject i said i was. that subject was sex and the christian single. and now i’ll wait for that collective gasp to dissipate…..waiting….waiting….okay. are we all in agreement that for the most part the church teaches the whole “wait till marriage” concept? good. i don’t have a problem with that. my problem is the idea of treating sex as this dirty thing, so much so it causes people to be embarrassed to have it when they do get married. in matthew paul turner’s book the christian culture survival guide he talked about one of his friends getting married and the wedding night being uncomfortable to sleep with her husband. is that not a scary thought? where did things go wrong? of all the bible studies i’ve gone to or sermons i’ve heard regarding sex, i’ve heard a wide variety from the extreme to the understandable. this one weekend in college i went up to a retreat center in black mountain, nc called ridgecrest. the first time i went with clemson’s FCA, i really broke through of all my presupposed concepts of church. faith became real, all that stuff. my 2nd time going was my junior year and the speaker was tommy nelson, and he did a series that weekend on the song of solomon. it was mind blowing. this guy got up there and pretty much said “yes you’re christian, and once you get married, anything goes.” i remember when he said that everyone pretty much went “aaahhh”. it was almost like we were being taught a completely new way of looking at sex, that it was OKAY. but that’s not what i’ve been taught outside of that one weekend in 1999, which has been “until you get married, don’t talk about it, and pretty much pretend like you don’t want to have it.”

this gets back to the bible study and dating. at the bible study apparently the idea is not to even kiss when you’re dating, at least that’s what the speaker made it sound like at the last meeting. yes, you read that right. while that idea may be fine for most people, its not really for me. not that i’m a kissing fool, but let’s just say when i get up to the altar, i would like to have had some practice when the pastor goes “you may kiss the bride”. after reading carla’s article, i think the treatment of sex flows down to the reason why a group full of average to good looking single christians is full of more standing around than any dating. i went to dinner with a small group one time a few months ago, and this one guy said he swore off dating for 6 years. SIX YEARS! don’t worry, the six years just recently were up, so he successfully did not date anyone from the time he was 18 to the time he was 24. what is this fear of dating that christians have? maybe it can be attributed to that book advocating we kiss it goodbye, but whatever it is, it needs to change. i give advice about leaping out of the boat and trying something instead of sitting inside the boat thinking or talking about it. i try to take this advice when it comes to dating. i’m not really one to always start a conversation with a complete stranger, but i’ve had my moments of taking a chance. heck, last summer i emailed some girl i met at a baseball game and ended up going out with her a couple of times. totally out of character really, but i felt better for it. why sit by and regret not doing something you could have done? i remember going on a youth group trip in 1997 where we went to a conference called dc/la in washington. in one of the breakout groups, the speaker talked about not dating anyone for one whole year. i don’t see a reason to put a time limit on something like that, so obviously i did not take the pledge. my new friend chad did though, but the problem was, he met my friend jennifer that week also. so then began a period of about 3 months of “i want to date you but i took the pledge”. it was horrible for them, and i’m glad chad threw down the idea and they started dating. they are now married and oddly enough, living in DC. dating is not wrong, but i get the feeling sometimes the church teaches that it is, and i don’t really agree with that.

anyway, it was time for a rant. and can i just say how scary it is that right now i don’t even have a crush on anyone?

in honor of the time of year known as “crazy bracket fever”, i present you breakdown of some love/hates:

i hate:
-unc
-picking brackets for money
-knowing your alma mater isn’t even in the tournament
-when the favorite wins
-roy williams bolting for chapel hill when he had a legacy in work at kansas
-nantz and packer calling games, no mostly just packer
-billy packer
-my pick to win it all losing in the first round
-players declaring for the draft early

i love:
-picking against rick barnes and the longhorns because of barnes abandoning clemson’s basketball program
-last second shots
-double digit seed upsets
-overrated teams going down
-roy williams saying “i don’t give a s*** about north carolina”
-watching teams celebrate winning their conference tournaments because they are making the NCAA’s for the first time
-sentimental favorites winning
-acc teams representing the best basketball conference in the land
-picking brackets for money
-reading everything i can on mid-major schools so i can figure out who to pick for an upset
-watching jason williams brick free throws and seeing duke lose to indiana
-this time of year

last night i fell asleep on my couch and had very odd dreams. apparently this infomercial came on about some makeup, so i was dreaming i went with someone to a seminar on putting on foundation. then i had a dream where i was ina group talking to people, and a guy (who i knew apparently) offered for me to go live with him in iowa or something for like a month just to see how i would like it. the background on that could be this article about moving to the midwest that i had read at the end of last year. that sounds so cool, just to move somewhere like that. well anyway, the idea intrigues me, but i’m not sure if i’d like it enough. the moving to iowa for a month would be kind of fun though, get away from my job and meet new people. i remember seeing a segment on cbs sunday morning where they profiled the iowa state fair. its like a whole other life to me, i didn’t grow up knowing how to raise pigs or having my mom enter pie competitions. i guess it just shows how diverse this country is where it can be such drastic changes from one state to another or one region to another.

i went to see ‘the graduate’ with my sister today. i think it was the first live action play i had seen in over 2 years, probably longer. they changed the ending plus they had made elaine seem kind of ditzy, but i thought it was quite good. the music of course was great. i grew to like simon and garfunkel after seeing the movie. morgan fairchild totally nailed mrs robinson. she even had the raspy voice and everything, and of course everyone gave them a standing ovation at the end. so i guess i felt for two hours like i was in new york with seeing a play in a big theatre and not a community production. maybe some day soon i’ll get to go.

my aunt developed cancer on her esophagus a few months ago. she went and had surgery, and thankfully is on her way to a full recovery after being in the hospital a while. when she was in the hospital, our family got a bunch of the livestrong bracelets. i thought them to be a fad, but when a family member or someone close has cancer, you just kind of start wearing it. i’m proud of it. now here’s the thing….at the hornets game i went to friday night, i saw this kid with an adidas rubber bracelet on. i know livestrong means awareness for cancer, and i know the pink ones mean breast cancer, but what does a plain adidas bracelet mean? it means, to me anyway, that adidas is trying to capitalize on something for their own profits. i went searching on google tonight to find an example of this lack of originality and ended up finding these nike bracelets. why do companies have to copy off of things so blatently? i know the livestrong bracelets are getting popular, and that’s good. but i hope the people who wear them know the meaning behind them.

tonight i watched “win a date with tad hamilton”. i know i know. i thought it was good though, no matter what y’all say. sometimes i enjoy watching cheesy movies. just nothing with freddie prinze jr.

i finally got my new issue of relevant today and its AWESOME! all music the whole way through for the most part. and mute math is the cover band, and the title “mute math and 77 artists that will matter in 2005″. YES! i love learning about new music. they preview just about every album coming out in 2005, but they leave out my two favorites, nickel creek and ryan adams! its sad, they cover all the other bases except for two glaring omissions.

i love getting new issues. i wish i could read everything at once. a few of the editorials were good, and may cause me to type thoughts about them. i’ve been thinking of one topic, started thinking about it during the last bible study i went to and one of the editorials kind of furthered my thinking of it. maybe brought me a different viewpoint. that may be for later in the week, actually i would say i will type about it just right now i can’t. right now i have to get to bed. i do love relevant. i feel like i’m on the outpost of a revolution. 20something christians being real about everything, taking over from their parents and putting their own spin on the church. all that is another blog entry that i can’t type right now. maybe i have more creative thinking than i thought going on. stay tuned.

as if taking a cue from my buddy mike, i’m going to post about movies that matter to me. not my top 50 movies, but movies that i think if someone sees and enjoys, they may have a better understanding of who i am. if you hate one of the movies i list, that’s okay, you can still be my friend.

garden state – i loved how real this movie felt. it just dealt with what i thought were a lot of issues facing people in their twenties, reaching adulthood and trying to figure out your identity. where is life headed, what can you do about it? what does it all mean? it was very very good, top movie of 2004 easily.

swingers – i first saw this movie after a recommendation from a friend. its definitely more of a guy movie, and it gives guys such empowerment when it comes to girls. sure, maybe taking everything in the movie literally may not be the smartest thing to do, but a lot of it can be taken and applied. it definitely is probably my favorite movie of all time since i can watch it over and over and not get bored.

almost famous – i loved the music aspect of this movie. it treated rock music as something more than just something to listen to. i liked the relationships in the movie, and how william really grew up in the two hour movie. it was great, and to think it was a bit of a bio for cameron crowe, it kind of made me envious. incidentally, “its all happening” is from ‘almost famous’, but you probably already knew that.

signs – i liked this movie because its more about mel gibson’s faith than about aliens. when i graduated and spent over a year looking for a job, i really grew apart from God. it got so bad i remember being on the phone with my mom saying i wanted to deny God, i just had had enough. but i couldn’t. i couldn’t because i knew in my heart it was all true. eventually i found my way back, and looking back i see that God was watching me go through that trial to strengthen my faith. i guess when i graduated i was in that christian bubble, thinking everything would be okay if i believed. but it was when i was broken that i realized how lightly i was taking everything. anyway, i like how faith was dealt with in ’signs’.

how to lose a guy in 10 days – i know i know, “how can you put a chick movie in there?” i remember matthew mcConaughey on leno when the movie was coming out, and he said something like “its a chick movie for guys.” i totally agree with him. i’m not the only guy who likes this movie, my friend andy i’m pretty sure considers it his all time favorite. maybe i identify with it because i’ve dumped girls who were clingy or needy (if a girl ever made me miss the end of a basketball game because she wanted a coke, whoa) and the only way i’d stay with someone like that would be the encouragement of friends and money. it came on tv the other day and andie finally broke down when they went to his parents house. “when your mom hugged me, it was a real hug.” realness is never overrated.

i may write again about my favorite sports movies or maybe other movies that didn’t quite make the list, but i think these five will do for now. and being a lord of the rings fan, those movies are in their own category. i don’t think i could consider them with other movies. but that’s a whole blog entry for another time.