Life stages

When you get to around the age that I have just about reached or have already reached, and you're still single, you start getting not only pressure from parents, but concerned friends who are married. Generally I've found that people who are married are very intrigued by people who aren't married, they feel as though we (the single) are behind or missing out on something.

Not that I don't disagree that we're missing out on something -- obviously we're missing out on married life. But this idea that we're in some kind of dilemna that needs fixing is totally absurd. "Poor Johnny, he's in a real bind. Look at him, he's single. We need to save him.."

Generally I think all married couples who do this are coming in with good intentions. Although they may not really see the big picture, they have experienced something amazing and want to see us experience the same thing.

'The setup'

The setup is when those elite married couples decide that one of us just cannot go any further being single, and feel the need to alleviate us from this horrible fate that we find ourselves in. They prod and poke to try and figure out what the heck is wrong with us, why haven't we moved in for the kill, what are we waiting for. They give us a list of names, or ask us for certain criteria we're looking for and then provide us with a list of names.

On an interesting side note, this has never actually happened to me. I've seen it hundreds of times to my friends but never to me. I'm kind of in the belief that I personally am not ready for a serious relationship because I am bereft of any kind of mature adult thought. And as a big kid, no woman of my age could possibly take me seriously enough to invest time into a serious relationship with me. I think people see the same thing which is why they never bother to try to set me up. Or perhaps in their eyes I'm not good enough for any of their friends. Or maybe I'm being paranoid and they just see others as more 'desperate cases' than myself. :D

'I'm still finding myself'

I like this answer and I think it works as a great excuse for why I'm still on the 'dark side'. When I was 20 years old, everyone was talking about trying to find God's Will in their life. At that age, we're all looking for answers as to where our lives should be headed. You're in school, you kind of know what you'll be doing because you're finally getting a grasp of what you're learning in school and where it could lead. At 28 (in a couple weeks) I stand here proudly and say that I still have not found myself. I don't really know who I am.

Personally speaking, I can totally see myself getting married, starting a family, growing old with someone. It's the stage in between where I am and that, that to me is kind of a grey area for me. I can't picture myself dating. I can't get my head around the part when you have to ask someone out, then dress up real nice, try to carry out a conversation, poking and prodding. It just doesn't seem natural to me.

I think the coolest thing would be to meet someone while serving. Chances are if you're serving alongside a person, you already have very similar goals and interests. God wouldn't place you in a situation where you weren't using your gifts to the best of your capability. Thus you can kind of skip the whole awkward dating process and go straight into the whatever the next part is. I like that.

'I'm going to bed'

Since I can't think of a good conclusion to this post, I'm just gonna go to sleep.

I don't dance

I went to check out the Jazz Festival on Friday with my small group. Personally I'm not a huge fan of jazz, but this year's festival wasn't really jazz anyway so I enjoyed it. And actually, the few groups that were playing jazz, I really enjoyed. So maybe I'm impartial when it comes to jazz. The other thing is, I felt like dancing a bit when I listened to it.

You fast forward to Mike and Nadine's wedding (pictures to come later), they played some hip-hop stuff and I had absolutely no inkling to dance at all. *shrug*

One of the acts we saw was a kid named Rob Christian and his band, he plays the sax.. and he was amazing.

Here's his website. I wish I had bought his CDs because you need to pay shipping if you order from them.

Relevant

Kim from our Longlac team had a Relevant magazine with her on our trip. She told me about the website and podcasts. I've never actually gotten into podcasts, as I know it's this whole new world and I get the feeling that if I get into it, I may never see the outside world again.

Anyway. The website's pretty cool. http://www.relevantmagazine.com.

I've been considering getting out of the Christian music scene for a little while. Just cuz like, as many others who've been down this road have noticed, the music becomes less significant when you hear it all the time.

coming..

Sorry! I haven't forgotten about you. Just sorting out my thoughts..

Vacation

Since I never got around to a trip to Africa, and seeing all of Ina's photos to Hawaii, it really got me thinking about what I could do (likely next year). Since I'm not going this year, I'll likely have 15 carry-over days giving me a grand total of 30 days next year. Now assuming I'll be heading back to Longlac again next year, that leaves 25 days of vacationing!

I was trying to think of a good, purposeful or even meaningful vacation spot. A couple weeks ago during a bible study I was looking through the neat maps in the back of my bible and I stumbled upon the idea of backpacking through the middle east and Europe, touching on the cities and locations that Paul visited during his missionary journeys. I think it would be really cool to try to retrace Paul's steps, although I don't even know if those cities still exist. The picture I've uploaded is the third leg of Paul's journeys.

Yesterday for small group we had praise and prayer. It was basically something that I've been hoping and praying for, a chance to quiet down, lift up my burdens up to Him and just spend some time with him. Things have been so hectic lately, all the work that is piling up on my desk at work, all of which I basically have to get done before the end of next week. Then worrying about being prepared mentally and spiritually for the Longlac trip in EIGHT DAYS. Gosh.. But last night gave me the opportunity, finally, a quiet night where I could just commune with God.

Blogging

So it occurs to me today that I need new blogging friends. Michelle is long gone, and my real life friends are all updating on a *quarterly* basis.

I had this amazing thought, a great post to make. It's still in draft mode but it's a really good one. Y'all should just keep checking here til I finish it. It's just *that* good. The whole sermon, if you could call it that.. I mean it's more like an encouragement or spirital rant. But anyway, like I was saying, the whole thing is wrapped around lyrics from a John Mayer song.

For those wondering about my cooking adventures, I have some pictures but I'll post them (probably never). I'm currently in week 3 of a long pasta phase. Ever since I discovered fresh pasta at the supermarket, I've gone nuts with it. I'm made spaghettini, linguine and ravioli. Creativity with ravioli leaves much to be desired. But with the others, I've had the most fun with linguine. I made a seafood linguine, had everything but calimari in it. It was pretty tasty.

But my favorite one right now is the broccoli and grilled chicken breast one, with alfredo sauce. I just love this one, I've had it for dinner about 8 times in the past 3 weeks. Pasta totally rocks, and I can totally see the whole "pasta makes you fat" thing, it's so true.

Been working out lately, mostly arms and shoulders. My purpose for working out has changed. Lon told me this, about working out, not for myself but for the glory of God. His idea is that, the longer you live, the longer you can spend in your life glorifying God. I can totally understand that and I'm going with it. If I die early because of my own sloth, I've basically thrown out this responsibility I have of living my life fully to glorify Him. Cuz I'm dead.

Another great reason for working out, especially for my arms and shoulders, is so that I'll have less trouble lifting kids up over my head when I go to Longlac. I remember having a lot of trouble with that last year. Piggyback rides are one thing but when they ask to go on your shoulders.. that can get painful.

Blah

You are listening to "Just Like You" by Jadon Lavik. Yup, thank goodness for Jadon Lavik, no wasted $17 here!

Today is Kenric's birthday. He's 28. Kenric is my friend and I like him a lot. I hope he's having a nice day.

I feel so *blah* today. I had soooo much work to do this morning, it just came as one big blur because I had to get it all done before my meeting at 2. Work is gonna be crazy for me the next couple weeks. I have to get everything on my plate finished before I go on my trip.

I almost missed my Longlac meeting late because I thought today was Wednesday and the meeting was on Thursday, so I sat at home eating dinner and then suddenly I get this call from Pastor Daniel:

Hey Brian, are you coming to the meeting?
me: There's a meeting?
Um.. haha, yes.. did you forget?
me: I thought it was tomorrow.. but today's.. oh crap! I totally forgot.
Well, just come now, we have a lot to cover.
me:[no shit, damn] okay, sorry, I'll come right now *sigh*
Okay, I won't tell them that you forgot. [click]

I've discovered that I use the word "annoying" a lot. I'll tell someone that I find another person annoying, or that the sound that machine makes is annoying. I think that I use the word too much, to the point that there's no way to measure how annoying something is, because my overuse of this word.

I was thinking about developing a scale of annoyance levels. For instance, "Ben Mulroney annoying" versus "Wanda Sykes annoying". On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is the most annoying, Ben Mulroney would be a 2, while Wanda Sykes would be a 10, just above "Nails on a chalkboard"'s 9.

I think Ben Affleck, Colin Farrell and Orlando Bloom should start a club, a club called the "We Are Bad Actors So Don't Bother Watching Movies We're Starring In" club.

It just occurred to me that these 3 guys have collectively come up with some of the worst movies of all time in the past 10 years. I wonder if there were similar guys from back in the day that had this amazing gift, like an Anti-Midas touch of turning films to feces.

I watched Superman Returns last weekend. It was an awesome movie. I'm really biased when it comes to this, as a fan of Superman. But personally, I thought it was an amazing movie. Man, I wish I could fly. I mean take away the super strength, super speed, rugged good looks (which I already have anyway), x-ray vision, laser eyes, super cold breath. I'll just take the flying please, it's good enough for me.

I really like Superman. He's the savior of the earth, just like Jesus, only Superman is a fictional character whereas Jesus is the real mccoy.

I'll be leaving for Longlac in 9 days. It doesn't feel like it yet. I mean to say that my head's not into it yet, and neither is my heart. Please pray that I get there as soon as possible. I think this missions trip is going to be totally amazing... I just hope I don't miss it..