Sore

Busy weekend. Had a Buck’s party for my brother-in-law-to-be. Is the guy who marries my sister-in-law my brother-in-law, or do they have some other name for it? Meh.
The groomsmen and family did some karting before the barbeque started on Saturday. I haven’t been karting in a long while, but the same principles I had learned so long ago still apply to this day.

Success At Karting Rule #1: Don’t pick a crap car!
It isn’t about picking a good car. This is where beginners falter. It is ALL about not picking a crap car. Until I stripped the gears off my right drive shaft I had the best car (in my opinion). Trev (future brother-in-law) and I broke down at the same time, so we got a few extra laps at the end. It was during our last lap we recorded the 2 fasted laps of the day. Good fun. 70km/hr an inch off the ground feels a lot faster. My latismus dorsi (that my back for those of you not educated by the Arnold Swartzanegger encyclopedia of bodybuilding while growing up, right Andrew?) was killer sore yesterday. But it was good fun. Jo would’ve loved it. She’s a car junkie beneath the school teaching shell.

Met with a cafe owner yesterday about volunteering with them. They are creatively financed, which allows for some unique opportunities, one of which is functioning with volunteer staff. There is an equal emphasis on the business and creating a community. Staff are encouraged to balance their engagement with customers and their work responsibilities. They have various poetry nights, live bands, a recording studio, and other stuff going on during the week. It should be a lot of fun, and I will learn to make coffee on a 14,000$ espresso machine. I am looking forward to this… It’ll be an opportunity to make some new friends and learn a few things. Will let you know how it goes.

The View From Here

You might have noticed a bit of design change. Well the design really hasn’t changed but some colours have… and maybe a few added bits here and there.

Wanted to condense the side bar a bit. Done.
Wanted to make some room to maybe add some more blogs to the roll. Done.
Wanted to make it easy for people to find my eamil. Done.
Wanted to change the look of the thing. Done.

Maybe in a few months I will overhaul the whole thing. I leave too much time in between redesigns, I have to relearn everything again. I will say, most changes were done with a few clicks on my css style sheet. Very easy.

I am also contemplating bringing back Weird Al Wednesdays. But only once a month. Maybe the first Wednesday of the month.

Here’s a great stencil that I found along my path from the uni to the station. Peace out, from lover, the dreamer, and me!

Heavy

When you are faced with adversity or criticism sometimes it can be tough. If you are the kind fo person who has trouble not taking such things personally… suckfulness rises a step. It sucks, but you find ways to deal with it. You sift out what was true amongst the misunderstanding, or the blatantly untrue. You work out what you need to take responsibility for and the rest you shake off. Not an easy process, but necessary to move on I think.

The suckfulness however, rises to an overwhelming peak when people you care about are caught in that same adversity.

Jo and I meet with a few Christian people to support each other… eat together… teach each other… read scripture together… and are exploring how to reshape our lives to better/more reflect the kind of life we see Jesus calling us to live (… our repsonse to the poor… serving our communities…) Because of some of this reconfiguring, we do not go to a established church service. Unfortunately we found church as we have come to know it, kind of got in the way. We are not “anti” church. We see the need for established/inherited/traditional models of church. We also see a need for different models. We are trying to work out a different model.

This move for us has stirred up some interesting dilemmas. Mostly with those who choose to do church within the traditonal model of church. We have tried to be very open about what we are trying to do. After to explaining to people where we are coming from, we have yet to have anyone express concern. It is a bit frustrating. We ask for your prayers and for wisdom as we walk through this stuff. We want to be open to valid criticism… people are entitled to their opinion… but that doesn’t make them any more right.

Flat Out!

Hey. Real quick…

1. Have been at my first Forge intensive this year. It’s been good, but very draining. I’ll explain later.
2. I am finally a Temporary Resident of Australia.
3. I am glad to see how the competition is shaping up in hockey at the Olympics. It will make for some great drama hopefully in international play, and will only be good for hockey overall.
4. So very tired.
5. Will fill in the gaps after some rest.

Immigration Update

I have finally received my finished RCMP police check. They only looked at it on the 22nd of January… I sent it in in November. But it all checked out (for those of you who may have questioned my innocence on varies allegations!)

I will be heading into the immigration office tomorrow to hand it in, and hopefully be given my temporary visa (as opposed to the bridging visa I have now).

It will be nice to have this all taken care of. Now we just have to wait 1.5 years for that permanancy.

Off to hockey.

Nacho Nacho Man! I Want to Be A Nacho Man.

The story of a mexican priest who becomes a wrestler. With Jack Black. Watch the trailer here: http://www.aintitcool.com/Nacho_small_vid.html.

So It’s Been A While

Been busy the past week or so…er… so, I’ll try to catch you up.

Firstly, Happy Birthday to Jeff. He is the only 31 year old I know who can gain 6pounds in a week.

This past Saturday we finally recorded our audio commentary for the wedding video. You know how some audio commentaries are really interesting, giving you all kinds of background info, or insight into why they did this, or stories about what happened during a particular shot… basically, are really good? And then you have others where they kinda sit around, and it’s like you are watching the movie with 3 or 4 other people who won’t shut up and don’t add much to the experience? I’ll let you guess which one this commentary came out like. I did miss the input from my brother and Mitch. Jer because he lives just too damn far away, and Mitch because… well… he forgot about it. I did say hi to the one person I think will actually listen to it though, so… Regardless, it was fun. I have some ideas now on how i will do other audio commentaries to make them way more interesting. All of that to say, I am hoping to get the dvds printed off this week, so we should be able to send them out soon. Those of you who requested a copy, be watching your mail boxes.

Sunday, I endured my first day/night cricket match. The day/night means it only goes 50 overs a side. As opposed to the 3 days a side. The first 5 hours were alright. After that all the drunk people and the sun started to get to me, so we ended up leaving near the 9th hour. I’ll have to check out a 20/20 game. Surely they are done quicker.

Monday, I took the day off work to watch the Superbowl (time difference people) which started around 10am here. I made some wings from scratch (I was very proud of myself at how they turned out I might add). I ended up making my mom’s recipe because I didn’t have time to go scouring Australia for Frank’s hot sauce or the equivalent of. The next time we play poker I am going to make some wings though. Good stuff.

As for the Bowl… thought that pass interference call was crap, but in the end the Seahawks made some poor decisions and it cost them. If you want to see all the Superbowl ads you can see them here. All we got was crappy repeated ESPN promos for stuff I’ll never watch.

Anybody watch AND tape the UFC that happened on Saturday? I would love for someone to send me a copy for my birthday, or random give Caleb a present day! Any takers?

Got some more stuff happening, but will leave it for another post. Don’t want to give too much after such a long break. I’ll be in touch.