Picking Up Where I Left Off...

Seeing as how I left a few topics untouched last time, I'll start with those. (Most of you are already up to date on most of these from conversing with me, but there are a few who aren't)

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of a summer project, it's a 6-10 week trip somewhere in the world (either in the US or elsewhere) for college students to spend their summer in ministry with Campus Crusade for Christ. For a couple of years, I've wanted to go on a project, but never had the opportunity because I had to work to pay for school during the summer and other things like my CFI training got in the way. This year I decided that I'd finally go for it.

When I first started seriously thinking about it, I knew that I wanted to do an international project rather than a domestic one, but I didn't have any idea where I wanted to go. Over the last couple of months I've been spending time talking with my friends Adam and Chip about where each of them went and found both trips were very attractive to me. It was a very difficult choice to make because both projects appealed to me a lot and God didn't seem to be strongly calling me to one over the other. The decision eventually came down to a bunch of small factors adding up to me being about 80% confident that I wanted to put Desert Rivers (Adam's project) as my first choice and Acts 29 (Chip's) as my second. Both are to the Middle East, but I'm afraid I can't say any more specifically than that.

Filling out the application was a very long process and they ask a lot of in-depth questions, but over the course of about a week I was able to get everything answered. Chip was willing to be my peer reference, but I was having trouble finding someone on staff to be my staff reference because I have very little interaction with Cru staff due to the way that ministry at the Quad is organized. Eventually Ryan Speicher agreed and at the last minute (he's been extremely busy lately) he was able to interview me over the phone on the couple of things he didn't already know for his reference and finish it right before the deadline. One major problem I was facing was that the website they were using to submit project applications was having serious problems on the day of the deadline because of how much traffic they were getting (and part of a certain question was broken so that I lost a lot of time trying to figure out a way to circumvent the problem), so the website frequently wouldn't load at all and even once you could get a logon screen it would randomly drop you without saving the changes I made. I decided that I wasn't going to go to the AFTERdark event the night of the deadline until the project was done and submitted (I only had that one problem question left to deal with and to hit the "Submit" button), but the problems with the website were so bad that I didn't get to AFTERdark until the very end (several hours later). Then, of course, they chose to extend the deadline so that it wouldn't have been an issue at all. I just wish they would have made that decision earlier so that I could go to the event.

AFTERdark was a combination concert/speaker sponsored by Athletes In Action and held in Elliot Hall. The band was Tait (led by a former member of dcTalk) and the speaker was a guy named Joe White who was the former football coach of Texas A&M and put on a dramatic presentation where he took on the role of a Roman cross builder and was pondering who Jesus really was while actually building a cross onstage.

The campus was blitzed with advertising for it on an absolutely massive scale. I really question their advertising tactics because all the promotional materials were worded very carefully to leave out just about any clue that it was a Christian event and promote it just as a "free concert." I'm not exactly comfortable with the idea of tricking people into hearing the gospel. How is using deception, even through omission, a Christ-like way to act? I'm also a little hesitant with presenting the gospel in such an emotionally charged (a certain friend who feels more strongly about it called it "emotionally manipulative") way because we want people to truly accept the gospel and not fall away when their emotions change. Granted, God can and does work in such events, and good follow-up with people who indicated decisions goes a long way to help (and it appears they are making a lot of effort to follow up on a timely basis with everyone who indicated a decision for Christ or a recommitment of their life), but I still question if it's the best way to go about things.

All of that being said, I wasn't able to be there for anything but the very tail end of the event, so I don't actually know what it was like. I'm just going on my thoughts from the extensive advertising and what people have told me. Please feel free to add your thoughts on my musings above via comments (yep, that was yet another shameless plug for comments). I did get to stop by Elliot that afternoon while Tait was doing a sound check and that was pretty cool (and I found out that the first thing Josh Weis did when he met Tait was teach him a bad Chuck Norris joke).

Chalk up one for the "Wall of Weird" (not really weird, just unusual):
Friday night I was supposed to go to a big concert down in Indy featuring Newsboys, TobyMac, Newsong, Zoegirl, and a couple others, all for $10 at the door, but that didn't exactly happen. I had found out about it a few days before and was having a hard time deciding between the concert and Cru, but figured that I'd go to the concert because it was such a good deal and Newsboys are one of my all-time favorite bands (and I could get a free ride down there with a group of guys going from the Quad). Friday evening at 5 I went to get some dinner before we hit the road at 5:45 and was having a really uneasy feeling about the whole thing. It was weird to have such a strong uneasiness about it because I was looking forward to the concert and all the details were coming together nicely, so there was no rational reason not to go as planned. So I decided to eat dinner by myself rather than with some guys from my floor and spend the time praying about it. The general gist of my prayers were asking that God would take away the strong uneasy feeling and give me peace about it if He wanted me to go to the concert. Well, He didn't, so I didn't. I still have no good ideas why He decided to tell me not to go to the concert, but that's how things go sometimes. I did find out later that there was a big accident on 65 on the way to Indy (2 semi's went off the road), so they were an hour late and decided to skip the concert and go go-carting and bowling instead, but another guy from my floor showed up at the same time they did and still managed to see Newsboys and TobyMac perform. Like I said, I still don't know why He said not to go, but I'm just trusting Him with it and glad that it was a strong enough feeling that I couldn't easily ignore it.

On a side note, the girls put together a really awesome/hilarious video advertising Women's Retreat this weekend and showed it at Cru. I especially have to thank them on behalf of the Cary guys because they included a special segment that was a nod specifically to our tradition of duct taping people. To the readers who were involved with that: is there any chance I could get a copy to post on here?

After Cru on Friday a bunch of us went over to Mer'dith to play cards and hang out. Eventually Shane decided he wanted to go hang out at Steak 'n Shake, but he realized that he needed some leverage to convince most of the group to come instead of dropping out on us. After talking with Kim, he concocted a plan to duct tape someone and use the hostage as a way of getting people to come (don't ask how the logic of that works: it does, but I don't want to dig into it enough to try to explain it right now). Then he consulted me, we talked for a few minutes about the intentions of the plot, and then I decided we should get Mike Papaik and proceeded to make it happen (and, in typical fashion, it worked just as I planned). In short order, Mike was very securely tied up and in Chip's truck on the way to SNS with the majority of the group following in various other cars. It was only after we'd been there about an hour that we let him have a dull knife from the SNS silverware to cut himself loose (took about a half hour). A few pics:
Getting tied up:

Standing outside waiting to be loaded into the truck:
One of our tables at SNS:
The table Mike was at:
We had one more table (the one I was at), but I'm afraid I didn't get any pictures of us. Sorry guys.

I think this should about cover it for now. I still have two or three things to talk about (mainly just pictures of two of them), but I'm going to be getting off work soon and I've given you plenty to read already.

Ok, fine, I'll give you a link as a parting gift for getting this far. This is a commercial in the UK for the new Honda Civic. Click on the link, skip the intro, click on the "Watch Civic" link on the upper left, and finally click the "Watch the Film" link if it doesn't start playing automatically. For the maximum experience, pause the clip until it finishes downloading (as signified by the colored bar filling in above the play controls) and make sure your volume is up. Oh, and one more thing: keep in mind as you watch it that EVERY sound you hear is made by the choir:
http://www.honda.co.uk/civic/

Creative Date

Well, my prediction of getting extremely busy extremely quickly has certainly proven true in the time since my last 'real' update (barring topics that start with P like Picard, Pirates and Personal Sleep Patterns). Classes are "off to the races" (Prof. Fanjoy's trademark phrase), although being a flight major I don't have a lot of actual homework. :) For this post, I figure it would be worthwhile to cover Saturday's creative date, my Summer Project application, AFTERdark, Perelandra, and maybe even some linkage if you're lucky.

While at Christmas Conference, I hatched a fairly ambitious plan to do a lot more creative dates than normal this semester with my cell group and managed to sell the idea to Sean and Matt (the two other guys involved with leading the group) and the guys from the group who were at the conference. As part of that plan, we hit the ground running this semester with plans to start having creative dates right away, starting with the one last Saturday and the next one happening tonight. For those of you unfamiliar with the creative date concept, it is simply a time where a guys' cell group plans and does something with a girls' cell group to foster fellowship between each other. In the past, Cary has gone for quality over quantity in dates, creating such extremes as the Murder Mystery Night date last spring (which took a month of planning and a ton of time), but now we're trying to do a lot more in the way of simple dates.

Saturday night we had our date with the Windsor Monday cell group. Several of our guys weren't able to come, but the numbers balanced out nicely with 6 guys and 7 girls. We picked up the girls at Windsor and took them ice skating at the rink down by the river. One of the only problems we had the entire date was that we hadn't briefed the guys very well on the logistics of how we were going to pay for the girls at the rink, so we ended up standing at the entrance with me in the front yelling to all the guys in the back of the group to tell them what to do and they, conveniently, weren't really paying attention, so it kind of reflected poorly on our planning and me as being in charge of the whole thing. Oh well, just one of those logistical bugs to work out on the first date of the semester and make sure they don't happen again. The good news is that the girls were very gracious about it and once we got past it everyone had a lot of fun out on the ice.

The only other problem with the date was that some of the guys have never been on a creative date before (and it's been a really long time for some others), so they kind of needed to be reminded after a little while on the ice that they were supposed to mingle with the girls instead of just staying as a pack. Once that was taken care of though, they did a fantastic job and were able to get to know the girls and spend time with them. We skated for a little over an hour before everyone started getting tired. When it came time to leave, I was skating around telling everyone and a certain rat by the name of SARAH WILSON was kind enough to tag me 'it' in our game of tag right after everyone else was already off the ice! ;)

Then we went to Vienna (a local coffee house) and were able to warm up while sitting around talking and getting to know the people we hadn't really met before the date. We talked about what we were thinking of doing this summer (including what projects some of us are applying to) and Jenna got really excited when Amy told her of some deal that might provide a way for Jenna to go to France for a month next year. After a while of hanging out there, we drove the girls back to Windsor, declared the date a big success and called it a night.
Now, how about some pictures?

This is the 'nice' shot of the group while waiting for the Zamboni to finish with the ice:

Here is a silly picture taken a couple minutes later:

It didn't turn up well in the picture, but the group developed a fascination for blowing "smoke" (the condensation from your breath) at each other or just up in the air:

Some of the girls leaning over the ice:

Susan, Erin, and Jenna in the back seat of my car on the way to the coffee house (Sarah took the picture):

Sarah and I in the front seat of the car while stopped at a light:

Naturally, we had to also take a silly picture of the back seat:

According to the official story we were stopped at a red light when we took this picture (I won't be doing or saying anything to dispel that account of it):
For those of you who just got worried there (parents, grandparents, long forgotten distant cousins, etc), yes, we were actually stopped in that shot.

I don't know why Chris had to tamper with this good picture by giving Erin the ears while we were walking to the coffee shop, but he ignored me when I said not to:

After the date was over I was back in my room and got a Facebook message from Sarah. Apparently she had been hanging out with Amy and Amy told her to send me a note to listen to a certain techno song by Daft Punk saying that I'd like it. I recognized it from an iPod commercial a while back that I had liked, but I never knew the name of the song. So I thought I'd pass it along to you guys. Technologic by Daft Punk. Look for it on Cdigix if you're in the dorms or to watch the music video done by a creepy robot (have to mouse over the picture and choose Quicktime or Realplayer):
http://www.daftpunk.com

Well, I'm afraid I'm out of time for today. Some other things came up while I was at work and couldn't finish the other topics I wanted to cover. Until next time, keep your stick on the ice.

Pirates

This is Johnny:

He lives across the hall from me, is a Cru cell group leader, and is known as our resident pirate. If you are an astute observer of the world around you (being a fan of "Pirates of the Caribbean" might also help), there are significantly less swashbucklers inhabiting our world today than there used to be. Why is that? Well, I might have an answer for you:

In my travels across the web, I recently came across a graph showing a startling correlation:
There you have it folks: global warming is to blame for this disturbing endangerment of the species swashbucklingus piratus.

Yet another bit of knowledge that's amazingly relevant to your daily life. It's a service I provide this stuff, you know...

Best Blonde Joke Ever...

Found a link to the best blonde joke ever on Rob Bushway's blog this morning. Enjoy!
Best Blonde Joke Ever

Night Owls 1, Morning People 0

What's this, another post in one night? Yep, and being posted at 1:35am I think it's an especially apt time for this one:

You've all heard Ben Franklin's old adage, "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy wealthy and wise," and if you're a night owl, you hate it. Let's face it, fellow denizens of the night; we can't stand it when people throw this one at us to attack our sleep habits. Well, that's about to change...

Recent research at the University of Westminster has shown that "...early risers were more likely to suffer from muscle aches, colds, headaches, and mood swings..."

And another study in Britain of 1229 men and women over a 25-year period also shows "...those who burned the midnight oil and slept in the following morning ... also proved to be slightly wealthier than the early risers and no less healthy."

Of course, all this talking of sleep reminds me that I've been up for the last, well, you don't actually want to know how many hours I've been up, suffice to say that it's not a small number; so I'm gonna hit the sack.
G'night...

"Make It So"

-Jean-Luc Picard, Captain, U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701D

Having recently come across a couple of hilarious videos about Captain Picard on Video.Google, I've decided to dedicate this post to the captain of what is by far the best Star Trek series: The Next Generation.

She's going to kill me for posting this, but my Mom has a thing for Picard. As she said a while ago while discussing balding (I believe the context was the reasons why bald should be left bald as opposed to a comb over, so this came out of nowhere), "I think bald is beautiful. Think of Captain Picard: he's a hunk!"

Found this online:
101 Reasons Picard is better thank Kirk as a Starship Captain
1. Two Words: better voice.
2. Picard's ship's counselor traded in her miniskirt for that great low-cut neckline.
3. Kirk fought over women. Picard had women fight over him.
4. Picard fire both photon torpedoes AND phasers at the same time when in battle.
5. Picard's ship is better than Kirk's -- better, faster, stronger.
6. Picard hates children -- Kirk once rescued a bunch of patricidal little maniacs, tried to console them, and almost lost his ship and crew in the process.
7. Picard was responsible for Beverly Crusher's husband dying, berated her son constantly in her presence, yet still managed to make her fall for him.
8. Though admittedly he's seldom a patron, Picard's ship actually has a BAR.
9. Kirk fought others himself, Picard has others do his fighting for him.
10. When nurse Chapel re-appeared as Troi's mother, she fell for Picard.
11. In seven years, Picard never developed a gut like Kirk's.
12. Picard was never killed by his first officer.
13. Picard's family made alcoholic beverages for a living.
14. Kirk kept losing security guards throughout each season; Picard has kept Worf for seven years.
15. No member of Picard's crew was EVER based on a member of the Monkees.
16. Two words: better actor.
17. Picard can do better impressions of his first officer.
18. Picard single-handedly saved the Federation, the Klingon Empire, and all of humanity while still a lowly captain.
19. Picard's a better musician than Kirk, while admittedly that's not saying much.
20. Picard's crew members sleep with one another on a regular basis.
21. Picard's crew gambles.
22. Picard's engine room has that neat warp coil that glows.
23. Picard's ship has better control panels instead of a series of Lite-Brite boards.
24. Picard would never star in a show like "T.J. Hooker."
25. Picard would never have allowed Charlie X aboard his ship.
26. No sideburns. 'Nuff said.
27. Picard's first officer never seized control of the ship to transport a former captain anywhere.
28. Despite the Borg incident, Picard is still welcome back at Starfleet HQ. Kirks name is an anathema to Starfleet HQ and alien races alike.
29. Picard never ordered his ship to self-destruct as a bluff; when he orders it to do so, he MEANS it.
30. Picard's ship was never taken over by its own computer and made to attack other Starfleet vessels.
31. Picard has never been made into a bad Filmation cartoon.
32. Picard was able to bring Denise Crosby back from the dead. Need we say more?
33. Picard infiltrated Romulus, posed as an intergalactic mercenary, and was tortured extensively after capture by the Cardassians -- and never broke a sweat.
34. Picard has never been demoted.
35. Picard has never had his body taken over by a former lover.
36. Picard has never developed amnesia and thought he was an Indian.
37. Picard has never encountered aliens from weird planets like "Zatar."
38. Picard's quarters have a window.
39. Nobody ever back-slaps Picard.
40. Picard was never involved in any hokey shootouts at the OK corral.
41. Picard is a caffeine addict. (All that Earl Grey tea.)
42. One word: Leadership.
43. Kirk is not a sex symbol. Never was, never will be.
44. If Picard had a son, he wouldn't lose a fight to a Klingon whose commander was Christopher Lloyd.
45. Speaking of losing, Picard has never lost a first officer to a man who once made a career out of selling Chrysler Cordobas, either.
46. Picard would never be so stupid as to go rock climbing without equipment and rely on an overweight first officer with rocket boots to save his butt.
47. Picard would never stand for playing "Row Row Row your boat" around a campfire.
48. When Picard enters a room, people fall silent; when Kirk enters one, they keep on drinking.
49. Picard has that cool, futuristic artificial heart.
50. When Picard has an alternate reality experience, it's worth watching and caring about.
51. Picard never expects the impossible from his engineer.
52. When Klingons are aboard Picard's ship, they don't go rampaging about with 17th century weaponry.
53. Picard has more class than Kirk ever had.
54. If poor judgment were bricks, Kirk would be a housing project.
55. Picard had the chutzpah to admit when he screwed up instead of putting on a face which only made things worse.
56. Picard doesn't rely on the Organians to help him settle intergalactic squabbles.
57. Picard gets along with the aliens aboard his ship.
58. It's unlikely Picard ever contracted a sexually-transmitted disease.
59. One word: diagnostic (Never heard it on the old show.)
60. All that cool technical jargon (Also never heard on old show.)
61. Picard has hair on his chest.
62. Picard can actually make being bald, middle-aged, and scrawny look sexy & macho.
63. Kirk sat alone in the middle of his bridge; Picard kept counselor Troi within easy reach and view at all times.
64. Picard has never mutinied or had his crew mutiny against him.
65. When Picard gets drunk, he tracks mud all over the house and gets in a fight. When Kirk gets drunk, he passes out.
66. Picard hired Whoopi Goldberg to work in his bar.
67. Picard is not afraid to mind-meld.
68. Picard's ex kept her name even after the divorce; Kirk's kept it a secret even from her son.
69. Picard likes solving mysteries; Kirk couldn't figure one out if he tried.
70. Picard has never messed up with the transporter.
71. Picard has never been bitten by a mugatto. Nor has he ever allowed shape-shifting salt vampires aboard his ship, either.
72. Picard has never aged prematurely.
73. Picard wasn't afraid to take on Satan.
74. Picard knows Gilgamesh & is able to recite it.
75. Picard argues with his captors while being tortured, Kirk merely screams in agony.
76. Picard never brought a woman back from the 20th Century only to have her blow him off in front of the entire Federation assembly.
77. When Picard talks, people listen.
78. If Picard were a late-night talk-show host, he'd be Dick Cavett. If Kirk were a late-night host, he'd be Chevy Chase.
79. NO ONE laughs when Picard's Doctor says, "He's dead, Jean-Luc."
80. Picard has never kissed a Romulan.
81. Picard has never crashed in San Francisco bay in a pirated spacecraft.
82. Picard would never have brought "Nomad" aboard his ship.
83. If Khan came aboard Picard's ship, Picard would have had the common sense to restrict what technical manuals he would've been allowed to review.
84. If Picard found a huge glowing sphere in the middle of outer space only to discover it was controlled by a child with an ugly puppet, he'd be pissed.
85. Picard would never ATTEMPT hand-to-hand combat with a gorn.
86. Picard would never have dropped the charges against Khan.
87. Kirk actually tried to defend the idea of intragalactic war with the Klingons.
88. When Kirk went back in time, he frequently messed with history to suit his own ends.
89. Picard probably would have found the Galileo 7 in less time than it took Kirk.
90. Three words: Better costume variety.
91. Kirk tries, usually unsuccessfully, to respect other cultures. Picard tries, usually successfully, to get other cultures to respect him.
92. Kirk's occasional game of choice is 3-D chess, Picard's is poker.
93. "Picard" has more syllables than "Kirk."
94. Can't forget those neat collar insignias.
95. Picard's not afraid to deal with more advanced cultures & has done so on a number of occasions.
96. Picard's been on both Klingon birds-of-prey AND the heavy cruisers (and lived to tell about it).
97. When Picard goes undercover, he makes it look easy.
98. Though Picard has contempt for aliens like the Cardassians, he doesn't let it show.
99. Kirk wears boots -- Picard wears shoes. And as we all know, it's gotta be the shoes...
100. Assimilating has never been a problem for Picard.
101. Picard has never trashed Gene Roddenberry.


Ok, now for those videos I mentioned at the start of the post. I don't know the story behind this first one (if it was part of an episode or just some random extra bit or what), but you can clearly see the influences of his career stage acting prior to Trek (the link takes you to video.google.com, where the clip will start playing automatically as it streams, if you have a slow connection you might want to pause it until the gray bar showing the amount downloaded so far fills up most the way for smooth playback):
http://tinyurl.com/ay8ww

I don't know who first made this, but I believe the "Picard Song" had been around the net for a while before someone made this video to go with it. Basically it's a bunch of lines from Picard remixed to a techno beat with video clips to match it. What's sad (or cool, depending on how you look at it), is that I actually recognize a significant majority of the clips it shows. Yeah...
(Same warning about streaming from above applies here; runtime is a little over 5 minutes)
http://tinyurl.com/7uw59

Feel free to comment on your thoughts of the video or additional pro-Picard reasons for the list above.

IndyCC

After a break so short I wonder if it even happened, I’m back at Purdue. Today was the first day of classes and I had four of them spaced out between 7:30am and 3:30pm. Some of them are going to be pretty tough (“Advanced Navigation and International Operations”), others continuations of classes from last semester (727 Systems and 727 Operations), one terribly scheduled (Air Transportation overlaps with my cell group, so if I get off the wait list I have to stop leading the group and leave a great group of guys), and a couple should be fairly easy (“Crew Resource Management,” and, drum roll please…BOWLING!!!) Yep, as a continuation of my strategy to take one fun/easy class per semester to get back on campus, I’m taking bowling. Sadly, I don’t think anyone I know is in my section tomorrow morning, but I do know that John Cobb (my oft-sleeping roommate) is in another section.

Here's a quick picture of Sarah (new cousin) and I over Christmas (I talked about her and Sam in my last post):

And here are my parents with Sarah and Sam:

Indy Christmas Conference was AWESOME!!! I wish I could do a recap of everything that happened, but that would take far too long (even with my tendency for ultra-long posts). The speaker was James White; I’d never heard of him before, but he’s got the dynamics of a black preacher (makes sense considering that he is a black preacher) and the theological solidness of John Piper. Yeah, he was really good. And better yet, in what I think was a combination of his dynamic style and a small miracle from God, my massive sleep deprivation never got to me during the conference, so I was able to stay perfectly awake the whole time and take an insane quantity of notes (I didn’t know I could write that small).

I had a great set of roommates (Chip Pollock, Josh Weis, and Tim Six), although we had way too much food in the room. [Side note: I didn’t know Tim before this trip, although I’d heard his name around Mer’dith, but it turns out that he’s a freshman in Flight, so we had a lot in common to talk about.] Our plan was to buy food as a group and eat in the room so that we’d be able to save a bunch of money by not eating at the massively-overpriced food court. Chip kind of coordinated things, saying for me to bring breakfast stuff, he was going to bring sandwich stuff, etc. The problem was that he made two major errors in his directions. First, he told everybody to bring chips/snack-type foods. Second, he didn’t tell anybody quantities. So we ended up with a couple dozen Pop-Tarts and about 20 granola bars from me, plus a couple boxes of cereal that the other guys brought with them, 2 jars of peanut butter (one creamy, one crunchy), 3 squeeze-bottles of jelly (2 strawberry and 1 grape), 2 pounds of turkey, 2 pounds of ham, and 6 loaves of bread, not to mention tons of pop and chips out the wazoo. Yeah, let’s just say that we didn’t go hungry that trip.

A few random notes about the trip:
-Our creative date with one of the girls’ rooms was really fun, although I don’t have time to talk about the details of it (I might be able to talk Chip out of the video and put it on here though; it’s pretty funny).
-A large group of Purdue and IU people went ice skating together on the night of the 30th and there are a lot of pictures from that which you’ll see later.
-Purv (Adam Purvis) and I went to the Indianapolis International Auto Show during a block of free time and had a lot of fun checking out the various sports cars and concept cars around (you can tell we’re from the city in that we had absolutely zero interest in the pickups, where certain friends of mine from Indiana would have spent the whole show). We were most impressed with the Pontiac Solstice, a convertible sports car that looks like it’s around $50k, does 0-60 in 6.5sec, gets 27mpg highway, and comes loaded at about $26k (http://www.pontiac.com/solstice). Basically, it seems to be an excellent compromise between the appeal of a convertible and price.

On the 31st we had a huge dance party with the theme of “Through the Decades” (and some people really went all-out on the costumes for it, kind of scary for certain time periods). Then we met in the main meeting room and prayed in the New Year and had an extended time of worship afterwards. I ended up hanging out with people (including Shane and Kathy, who came just for that night) until around 5am. Then I massively overslept the time I was supposed to meet my ride back to Chicago, so when I woke up I had to frantically pack so they wouldn’t have to wait for me too long.

That’s the short version of the trip, if you want to know more about it you’ll have to ask. I’ve put a photo album with some of the 227 pictures I took up on Facebook, but if you’re not on Facebook you’ll have to look at album on my Flickr site. All the same pictures, but the Flickr one doesn’t have the captions. Here’s the link to that one:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/flyingshawn/sets/1805861/

That’s all for now. I don’t know when I’ll update next (gonna be pretty busy this semester, especially considering I already had homework to do as of 8:30 this morning). Also, I think it should be brought to the attention of my general audience that one person here is absolutely crazy. Apparently, while bored and sick during the break, Amy Chen managed to read the entirety of my blog from when I started it a year ago to now. That’s just nuts!