dinosaurs, part deux

because i neglected to include the other photo last time...

priorities

why i probably shouldn't have a master's degree: i put plastic dinosaurs in model of the school to amuse myself.

why i might be qualified to write a paper on the theology of humor and laughter: see above.

happy halloween.

ultimate frisbee, by the numbers

1 beautiful fall day.
1 win. (yay!)
1 loss. (boo!)
2 cramped calves.
2 bananas consumed to combat cramping.
good times.

taking a stand

i'm calling for a school schedule reversal...
1 week of class. 12 weeks of reading.

jurassic park

"But if the Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don't eat the tourists." - Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park

this dinosaur was discovered in the regent model yesterday and is now extinct. a moment of silence, please.
off to the left you can kind of see the plastic palm tree i put in there too.

good things about fall...

raking leaves.
then jumping in said leaves and having a leaf fight with your housemate.

perhaps i just didn't notice this when i was younger, but leaf piles never feel quite as fluffy as they appear when you throw yourself into them.

then again, what do i know about fall? i grew up in california. regardless, i do know that watching the World Series is another good thing about fall.

you have all the time there is

from "As I Lay Dying" by Richard John Neuhaus...

"Around 1910, William Temple, the future archbishop of Canterbury and son of Frederick the archbiship of Canterbury, complained to his father that he did not have the time to do all that needed to be done. 'William,' said his father, 'you have all the time ther is.' I tell myself that frequently, especially when I am worried about getting done more than is mine to do: You have all the time there is.

Time is not unlike a sacrament; it is capable of bearing the absolute. Christian thinkers have written about the 'sacramentality of the present moment.' Our lives are lived in a succession of present moments, and the trick is to slow down the past at which one moment is succeeded by another. 'Be still, and know that I am God.' says Psalm 46. But our world presents itself as a conspiracy against being still, against living in the present moment. I walk out on Second Avenue and the people, the cars, the buses, the very buildings themselves, along with an impetuous drive within myself to be someplace I am not, are all pressing up against the enemy of the present moment that is the Future, which is to say the next present moment that is, in turn to be escaped as rapidly as possible into the next present moment; like a rushing crowd trying to get out of a burning building through a tiny exit. Having never stopped to live in the present moment, we one day run out of present moments and discover we have not lived at all. It is true in every present moment: You have all the time there is."

particularly applicable as i face down the preparations to do an arts thesis project. and pretty much just life in general.
top three moments this past week:
1. placing miniature dinosaur figurines in the model of the new look Regent college last tuesday night. it's been 4 days, and they are still there. i bust a gut laughing every time i walk by it. pictures to come.
2. sprinting with rochelle from safeway back to my house, carrying munchies and a carton of ice cream so we don't miss the beginning of the new lost episode.
3. reading sara's paper out loud to her as she typed furiously on my computer so she could turn in her paper for class. the things we do for our friends that aren't a big deal because of who they are.

plus, holding sienna is a highlight in and of itself. this is a given.

my job

a close up look at what i deal with about 10-12 hours each week.
i feed people's addictions, basically.

and now for something completely different...

because i'm procrastinating,
and because i live with the cutest baby on earth. seriously.

grey

things i like:
sleeman's honey brown lager
baseball
space heaters

things i don't like:
wet socks
poor insulation
my short attention span

reality check

this morning i woke up to blue skies and sunshine out my window. a rarer and rarer sight this time of year in vancouver.

it pissed me off.

instead of working on my paper due on tuesday, i'd have to go play ultimate frisbee. a few of us have played together in the intramural league for the past few semesters. i'm far too loyal and have problems saying no and a big enough guilt complex that i showed up to play. i was annoyed that it cut into the middle of my day. it grated on my nerves.

i don't know at what point in the day i realized that i was being an idiot about it. i was mad about playing outside on a beautiful fall day? what was wrong with me? i took a deep breath of crisp fall air, looked and i mean really looked at the grass, the trees and the sky. I pushed my worries aside, knowing that when it came time, i'd get things done, as i have so many times before. i resolved to enjoy myself, and be present in the moment.

we won both games. hardfought battles, as we were short on subs. i'm starting to remember how to play again, and my body wasn't as sore as it was last time we played. these bones are getting older and slower.
as a reward, one of my new teammates bought us all caramel apples from the apple festival. that's so little league - i love it.

also, my housemate jeff made hostess cupcake and reese's peanut butter cup milkshakes. awesome.

the hits just keep on coming...

well, the week is over, so that's good.
my bank account has been restored to me. they didn't catch the person who did it. but they verified that i was not the person responsible for going on a $3000 shopping spree over last weekend, thus hugely overdrawing my account. it's been disorienting to have this bit of security taken away in some unknown manner. there is some reasoning behind this age of paranoia.

stunned that october is half over. time slips away all to quickly. my attention and energy is spent in a huge variety of ways, and i hope it is done wisely. torn between wanting to be with friends while we are all still in this place together and attending to my various responsibilities as a student. usually friends wins out, but we're getting on to academic crunch time. i wonder why i do this to myself. although i do find in myself a new desire to rise to the challenges and course set before me for the next few months, school-wise. it must mean i really like what i'm doing. or else i'm a huge masochist. i guess we'll find out pretty soon.

celebrated two good friends tonight. they're getting married in december. good wine, good cheese, good company, good stuff.
good night.

blah

definitely not one of the best weeks i've had.

like a slap in the face

being around many people again is kind of a shock to the system, after a weekend of retreat.

other things that are a shock to the system:

going to the dentist at 8 am and getting your teeth cleaned, since the last time you got yout teeth cleaned was 2 years ago, and learning that pretty much the whole inside of your mouth is decaying. but no root canals, so that's good, gotta find the silver lining somewhere.

trying to pay for the dentist and your card gets rejected. going to the bank later that day and discovering that somehow, someone has gotten your info and went on a spending spree yesterday so that you have zero dollars in the bank account. still trying to figure out how this happened because the card itself is still in your posession.

i want to go back and hole up in my retreat room at rivendell.

retreating

*note: though rivendell has wireless, and i did have my computer with me, i refrained from blogging until i got home. it was a mighty struggle.

I spent the weekend at rivendell. frodo and the other hobbits say hi. actually this rivendell is a retreat center on bowen island. it's a beautiful place. a friend once described it, "it's like a pottery barn on top of a mountain overlooking the ocean." the consumer evilness of pottery barn aside, it's a pretty accurate description. it's pretty beautiful place. this was my third time there.i sat at this desk.
this was the view.
between staring out the window and reading i did a lot of this. it was quite invigorating. that's a good sign, seeing as how i will soon be working on a arts thesis project.

retreats are interesting. first you're all excited to get away, and you throw yourself down on your bed and heave a great sigh of relief and relaxation. after a while though, it gets kind of hard to stay in this relaxed state. you get kind of sick of the small supply of food you've brought and crave something, like, say, a doughnut. after a while you want someone to talk to. the soul is not used to so much quiet. you wonder things like if your friends notice you're gone, because by golly they should. The Buddhists call this "monkey mind." It is the description of the mind of a person who is not in the present moment, like a monkey that goes from tree to tree tasting a piece of fruit from each and then dropping it and moving on to the next tree. We jump from thought to thought and project to project without really ever being in the present and fully experiencing everything we are doing at a given time.
it takes an effort to calm the mind and let go of insecurities such as this and to appreciate the silence, to open yourself to God and to a depth of thought that is hard to get in everyday life. most of the time, it seems like we're just skimming the surface, and have neither the time nor courage to see what's in our heads. Retreats make us stop, and slow down. it takes a certain degree of work to be on a retreat. but it is good work. kind of like the feeling you get when you're washing dishes and you can space out on the simplicity of the task.
i was both happy and sad to come back. retreats are temporary things, gotta come back to the real world at some point. you just have to bring the peace back with you somehow. henri nouwen's book "the genessee diary" is a more in depth look at this tension of being needing to be apart and also needing to be in the world. he spent 6 months at a trappist monastery. it's interesting to see how the seeds of other books he's written began in this journal that he kept.

big weekend

Lots of stuff went down this weekend. Besides the whole crazy shoulder dislocation thing (not my shoulder, either of them) - that was unfortunate and unexpected. What was anticipated and exciting was the fact that my friends rochelle and titus got engaged. that's them there on the left - when i hang out with them all three of us laugh pretty hard and i like that. actually, taking care of hudson in the ER waiting room almost prevented me from placing the scavenger hunt clues rochelle had entrusted me to leave for titus. it all worked out, and now they are engaged. woohoo!

sunday night we had a party for jane. she turned 29. we are all leaving our twenties, bit by bit. which is not to say that we are growing up, because we still like taking pictures like this. yep. sienna has a drinking problem already. but she still manages to look cute here, even after chugging an entire bottle of sleeman's honey brown lager. mmmm... honey brown.

we made prodigious amounts of prodigiously delicious mexican food. again, we california kids really miss the stuff, so we have to make it ourselves. freakin' good enchiladas, 2 kinds of guacamole (my contribution), salsa, topped off with some sangria. all made and consumed with good friends. the secret ingredient is salt. avocado may very well be my favorite vegetable, er fruit. whatever it is, i just like to eat it.

this is the kind of social setting i was talking about in my last post. the actual subject matter being discussed in the photo is best left never spoken of again. besides that, i enjoyed the hell out of myself in a room full of some of my favorite people. great party.

introverson

discovering these busy days just how introverted i am. sure being with a group of close friends energizes me and my playful side comes out. but i feel utterly drained after my shift as a barrista, or a long day in school. once i get home i pretty much pass out. i need the time to be "off." it's just interesting to be realizing new things about yourself. or perhaps it has to do with the season you are in. my first year at regent, for instance, i would have totally been into going to the parties and would sit in the atrium passing the afternoon by visiting with people. instead tonight i watched a movie with a few friends instead of the party scene, and sit at the counter at the coffee shop away from the center of social interaction. i opt for sitting around a table with a few good friends. which will hold, i suppose, until i move to wherever it is i go to after this place and have to start over again, forcing me to extroversion. such are the rhythms.

spent the afternoon taking care of my friend's 3 year old son, hudson. while hudson and i played in the waiting room, he was getting his dislocated shoulder popped back into place. we were playing ultimate frisbee and it popped out. russ's wife and other son were at home, so i went along in the ambulance to keep hudson company. there was no alternative really. it was a bit surreal. and funny to see how hudson trusted me, since i had spent my first year at school babysitting him every thursday. it's not so easy to earn a place in a child's world, and when a kid remembers my name, i feel honored. he and i passed the time by checking out the inside of the ambulance, and he made up his own songs to sing. i mean, for hudson, it was a pretty exciting day. not so much for russ.