Saturday, March 17, 2007

The Peculiars

Last night would have been like any other Friday night... there were movies and icecream and Bryant and other folks... the other folks is what made it different. Last night it was the other folks that made it peculiar. It started last week when my dear friend Elyse (who has magical fingers by the way... pianist extraordinare) told me that she had never seen the Goonies! I asked myself, I says"Elyse! How can someone be a product of the 80's and have never seen the Goonies?!?" So it became my goal to theme an evening around Elyse's Goonies consemation. I really dont think that is the word I'm looking for. This evening also became the ideal oppurtuniy for me to hang out with more people my age... and not so much my age but different people. People I dont usually ever spend time with but every time I see them I'm like... you make me smile. I want to spend time with you...

Alas it came around... this beautiful Friday evening. After a slow paced, cold day with Dane, and 4 episodes of Blues Clues I made it home... had a hot date with Billy Blanks.... took a shower.... ate some chiken soup from a can... and awaited the arrival of my amigos. The doorbell rang... and behold the pianist, the bassist, and the photographer greeted me with embraces and cookie dough... Elyse brought this mouse icecream even though we said vanilla. Elyse is famous for not bringing the right things to a social gathering. Last week I told her we were having teriyaki stir fry and she brought over bbq sauce. Which is fine. She had good intentions and it gave me a chance to test my teriyaki sauce making abilities. The ice cream turned out to be really good.... so it was ok that she failed her mission. :)

Right behind the bassist came the guitarist the drummer, the supermodel and the actor. I was excited and looking forward to such an interesting evening with these beautiful and interesting people. Now I'm thinking to myself... this story isnt that interesting. You hung out with a group of talented and good looking people who love God and love you. Where's the conflict? Where's the passion? Where's the climax?

Well, we made a giant cookie and put a box of non-vanilla icecream on top of it. Justin's idea...drummers... We preceded to get spoons and eat it out of the pan. It was the most overindulgent thing I've ever done with friends... but it was delicioso. We wathced the Goonies and laughed and ate more pazookie and laughed some more and enjoyed eachothers company. Still no conflict... unless you count the underage, text messaging love affair that was happening between one of the musicians and an unidentified red head from Arizona. But other than that... there was no conflict that involved me, or the evening...

It was one of those nights you see on Felicity or the O.C. Really good company... a group of people that may never be together just the 8 of us again. 3 of the most amazing women I've met and 4 of the raddest guys I know... it was refreshing. But still nothing "crash throught the window, break a table, fall down the stairs" terribly exciting...

After Bienvenue, Miles and E.Z. E peaced out... I had life-story time with Bry, the Asian kid and J-Dub... Kaeli started... her life as a Belizian supermodel was filled with adventure and conlict and an incredible journey.... lessons learned and tears cried... unstable and amazing is what I called it... and it turns out she wasnt a Belizian supermodel... that's just her alias. Next went the guitarist.... plenty of suburban tales. Typical half white half Asian... :) Not as much adventure although the segment about San Luis Obispo was rather interesting... the actor went next. From Africa to Oklahoma... it doesn't get better than that. I went next. I found my life story painfully uninteresting... I found most of our stories painfully normal... except for Kaeli's. the drummer chef extraordinare finished... by this time it was 3 in the morning and the only thing that could've kept us up woulda been speed or a more interesting story or speed. Justins history isnt uninteristing, but like 3/5's of us it was painfully normal...

I found one thing that made all of our stories worth listening to. Its like they say... you can't see your future unless you know your past or something like that. And every single one of us had these amazing futures planned out. Of course it was the redemption phase of our yong adulthoods that was inspiring and nice, but it was the plans... the plans to have a play on broadway, to be an amzing physical therapist, to open a restaurant to be a musician with a lot of money.... those were the intrigues.

I felt it necesasry to mention how painfully uninteresting my life really was to the group and how all of us will have much more interesting stories to tell after we've traveled more and turned 40.

I wonder if I will know these people when I turn 40... if I dont... I will make sure to try and know them... to call them and ask them if all theyre dreams came true. That's basically what my Friday night was... one big, nice dream... little conflict.... a lot of love... and the feeling of inclusion and acceptance. That's what we're all striving for. Thanks to the goonies and a painfully uninteresting life story to tell, that's exactly what I got.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

A Day Like Today

After an amazing morning... and when I say amazing I'm over exaggerating a tad because amazing in my eyes has been reduced to not sleeping through my first class, and reading a chapter of the Bible before walking out the door... like I was saying, after an amazing morning of cocoa pebbles and Queen Esther I found myself in the dungeon of the library listening to tales about tax policy and interestingly intrigued.

There's a peculiar girl in my class that is also on the team I'm studying with in South Africa this summer. Banana and I have a quaint friendship, the kind you would have with a giggly, across the street neighbor or a second cousin or something. I seem to be hilarious to her. And she is outstandingly adorable and is always smiling. She's honest and odd and today we were matching nearly from head to toe. I always see her at the strangest times of my day and shes a breath of fresh air.

I felt the need to talk about her because she made me smile on numerous occasions this random Thursday and in case I forget about her in the future I'm hoping this will remind me. I also went to Africa care group... Dr Jamie Gates puts on these random lunches and dinners for people who have an interest and passion in Africa and get bored with our tiny little American lives and need to reach out to the bigger picture or something like that. It's always fun and I always meet people I know and like... today this dude named Brian was there. He lives in the Congo. He lives in the Congo alone. He's white. I give him mad daps for being white and living in the Congo alone. He's trying to change the world through micro-finance. That just means he wants to help stop poverty by providing resources for people with no food or money so they dont have to sell crack or sacrifice their first born and stuff like that. I think that's really rad of this Brian guy to be so socially aware. He's bulding Global Community. That's a movement that requires a blog of its own. Google it if you'd like.

Now I'm sitting here and my lower back hurts. Must be ovulation. Everything inside of me says get up and go excercise. I even have my workout clothes on already. But... I don't feel like it. Why don't I ever feel like it. One day if I break my leg I'm gonna think back on moments like this and kick myself (with the leg thats not already broken) because there's no reason for me not to feel like it. I'm just being lazy.

God, help me not to be so effing lazy. AHH! I think it's a spirit. Like an evil one sabotagind any potnetial in me to be thin and gorgeous one day. Yup... I'm gonna roll with that one.

I'll let you know tomorrow whether or not I actually made it to the gym.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Donald Miller in Chapel Today

So there he was. In the flesh. I felt like I should close my eyes and pretend that I was reading what he was saying to me because he speaks exactly how he writes: with humor, with his foot in his mouth frequently, with passion, with "this is so simple, why dont we know this and do this" in his tone.

I was a bit star struck but that quickly faded away with each human word he spoke in that short, 30 minute time period. Actually, I kind of like that the speakers only get 30 minutes to speak in chapel... It's a small dose of some thing amazing... like eating fudge. Could we really eat an entire peice of fudge if it were the same size as a big gooey brownie covered in chocolate syrup with walnuts and vanilla icecream on the bottom. Well, we might be able to, but would we want to?

I walked away from it all today with that "I'm being challenged" feeling. The same feeling I get when I read Miller. And as I got up out of my seat and walked out of Brown today I thought to myself... this is what it felt like when I turned the last page of Blue Like Jazz and then found myself in belief that if I kept turning and flipping the book over and back again more pages would suddenly appear. But that's the thing. I always want to listen more and read more of things that are fufilling and challenging, when in reality, the purpose of those very revolutionary memoirs are to CHALLENGE me to not sit around and ponder about progression. They are the very call to be the progression... to "write a story every day with my life"... to live out a phenomenal screenplay with characters, conflicts, highs and lows and make it worthwhile, so that if anyone were to sit in on it as if it were a movie they wouldn't get up and leave... as if Jesus were watching it and saying..."shutup... this is the best part bluhd!" haha... i want to be His best peice yet... to entertain angels. Life is a dance toward God...I'm jus trynna move.