this is no longer my blog

so i finally decided i felt like venturing from my room to see what is going on in the outside world. a little cabin fever. but i do believe the rapture has occurred and i, unfortunately, have been left behind. no one is around, which is an odd occurrence here in the dorm. no one was watching tv in the lounge, although the lights were on and a friend's nalgene water bottle and keys were there. none of my neighbors are home, and there is a deadly silence in the building.
i guess i've always had this fear that the rapture would actually turn out to be more than Biblical misinterpretation and actually occur, leaving me behind to face the rest of the end times on my own. some sort of consequence for all of my shortcomings and sinful ways. and now, here i am, facing the end times and i haven't even read any of the "left behind" series to know how to effectively cope. the antichrist and the four horsemen of the apocalypse are going to come rampaging any time now and no amount of hiding or cowering will save my wretched life. i have, however, heard the dc talk song "i wish we'd all been ready" (actually, it's not their song... isn't it a cover of a larry norman song?) but that doesn't really give us anyway to prepare for being left behind, it just puts to words the regrets that must go through someone's mind when they're sitting around enjoying some coffee with a friend, and suddenly they're alone...
oh, well, a friend just came to the door... so obviously that stuff about the rapture was just babble... or maybe a side effect of the plague. bacteria eating away at my brain or something. oh well...

so i was looking over past posts, and i feel like i need to post some updates just to let all of my faithful reader(s) know what has been going on.
1. my plant: Sophia is doing well. the fertilizer seems to have helped, she has a number of new leaves and looks like she's getting another. it must be her adolescent growth spurt.
2. elections: my friend mike and i were NOT elected co-presidents. the male/female duo i suspected would win ended up winning. however, no one ran for vice-president, and mike and i were the number one write in candidates. so we accepted that position. there is no salary, our work is all pro bono, but it's resume fodder and i get to be helpful. so it all works out, doesn't it?
3. i haven't made any recent additions to my blog to make it cooler. it would require actually coming to my blog (which by the gaps in dates you can tell i haven't been here). i have not seen anything that would add to the overall blog experience, either, so that's another reason i haven't added anything. mission: make blog cooler is still in full effect, however.
4. i preached my last sermon for my preaching class. i think i did good, the professor had some good things to say about my abilities and progression, which is always good to hear. the other students said some nice stuff, i always like compliments. if you have any, feel free to leave them in the guestbook or forum (links at the bottom!)
5. i haven't seen anymore famous people, although another student here was interviewed for a story that was published in the northeast iowa synodical insert for the lutheran magazine, so he's kinda famous... anyway...
there, you are updated and i will now go back to not thinking. my brain hurts.

have you ever been at a point in your life when you would just like to sit in a lawn chair, outside in the nice weather, maybe drink some iced tea (perhaps of the long island variety) and just forget your responsibilities and bask in the warm sun and watch the world go by? i've been feeling like that lately. of course, that would be heavily frowned upon here at school. and life in general, actually. unless that was your job... but good luck finding a job like that. if you do, call me.
yeah, so there's really no excuse for me not updating this before now. A lot has happened between Easter and today. I've met my internship supervisor. He seems like a good guy. We should get along well. Maybe I'll even learn something!!
I don't feel so well. My stomach has been sketchy for several days. And now I have a headache. Maybe I have the plague. Scurvy, perhaps? Leprosy is out of the question...
Anyway, it hurts to think. So I will close for now. But I will try to do better from now on. I promise.

"It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is."

You are Desiderius Erasmus! You have great love for others and will do just about anything to show it to them. You are tolerant and avoid confrontations, so people generally are drawn to you. You are more quiet and reserved in front of strangers, but around some people you open up. When things get tough, you like to meditate alone. Unfortunately you often get things like "what a pansy," or "you're such a liberal."

What theologian are you?

A creation of Henderson

So happy Easter. Easter has always been possibly my favorite holiday. Now, remember I am a self-admitted church nerd, so holidays have always revolved around church for me. Everytime a holiday rolled around we went to extra worship services. Easter always had the best hymns and the cool Easter lillies, and the white banners and it was this big joyous occasion after somber, sad Lent. It always just fit my personality more. So I have always liked it. Well, a big part of Easter is the sunrise service. It's an earlier service than normal, to get a jump on the celebrating. My friends here at school and I weren't sure when the sunrise service was at the church we normally attend, but we thought something like 7:00 seemed right so we met at 6:30 to head out to church. Well, we drove by the church and the sign out front said 7:30 so we had about an hour to kill. We ended up going to a gas station for some coffee, and just kind of hung out for a while. Then we went to church where I was a little disappointed. There wasn't a large attendance, and it's kind of hard to have these big joyous anthems with ten people singing. Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but there weren't a whole lot. Then we decided to skip out of the Easter breakfast (most churches serve some sort of weird egg bake or overcooked ham) and we came back to school and I took a nap until about 11:30 when we went to our friends house for Chinese food. It was homemade and pretty good, although it was truly weird to have Chinese food for Easter. We spent a while there, until about 6 or 7. Then I came back to my room and putzed away the rest of the night watching tv and surfing the internet. So all in all a fairly uneventful Easter, at least in celebration... not in meaning and significance!! Easter still remains one of my favorite holidays. Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

so i should be sleeping. it's way way way too late to be up. but tomorrow is saturday, the fourth in my seven days of easter break bliss. didn't do a whole lot. went to church with my friend mike and his mom, sister and three kids and his sister's daughter. i sat in the midst of mike's three boys while mike preached. that was fun. then we came back to mike's house and he had three papa murphy's take and bake pizzas, and he had to drop the oldest of his boys at a lock in, so he dropped all of us of except his oldest son and his mom, and we came inside and i made all three pizzas. it was fun. mike does a lot for me, and they invited me to come eat pizza, so the least i could do was make them.
in other news, i got a webcam/digital camera thing. it's the kind you mount at the top of your monitor. i'm really not sure what to use it for... possibly video chat with friends. i already used it to take some pictures of my "niece's eye view" so that when i finally get to see her, her mom will have been able to prepare her for me. i think i might try to post a pic of me on here somewhere. maybe near the visitor counter. i'll see what i can do. yippee.

in my constant attempt to achieve coolness with this website, i have added a forum and a guestbook. now maybe someday when people actually come and read my website they will post in the forum and/or sign my guestbook. that would be neat.
SO IN CONCLUSION - SIGN MY GUESTBOOK! EVEN IF YOU CAME HERE BY ACCIDENT.

so some friends and i drove to iowa city to the mall there, as something to do with all of our easter break free time yesterday. we spent the larger part of the day down there, and ended up eating both lunch and dinner there. well, we ate dinner at an old chicago that we found, and since two out of the four of us had never eaten at one before, we decided to eat there. so my friends and i walk in, and as we're sitting down my friend melissa needs to go use the restroom. i was kind of upset because there weren't that many people there when we walked in, and of course they sit us right across from this other table where three fraternity types were sitting. well, my friend melissa needed to go use the restroom, so she left before we even sat down. i ended up sitting across from the two who'd never eaten at an old chicago, and as we're sitting there i hear one of the guys at the table next to us say "inferno." now that might not spark interest in many people, although i am an admitted mtv junkie. i usually have it on in my room if for nothing else than background noise. but i hear the word inferno, and turn and notice that i am sitting by no other than Mike from Real World: New York and Alton from Real World:Las Vegas. And they had another friend there who I didn't recognize. And they were talking about the Inferno which is the latest Real World/Road Rules challenge on MTV.
so needless to say, i was kind of excited because i can't think of when i've ever been around anyone remotely famous other than the governor of nebraska way back in the third grade. so at this point i was wishing i had a camera so that i could get a picture and prove to all of my other friends that i actually saw these two. and of course the two friends across the table don't have televisions in their room, and when they do watch TV it's not mtv, so they have no idea what i'm talking about. thank goodness my friend melissa is another person who watches mtv and so as soon as i see her coming back from the bathroom i get up and walk over and tell her.
well, to make a long story short and uneventful, we didn't say anything to them because they were eating and i didn't want to be or look like another crazy fan. i mean, they ARE just people. and the waitresses were drooling all over them. it was sad. so we ate our calzones and left. but now i do have this story to share with others about how i have, indeed, been in the presence of fame. even if it is mtv fame.

so mtv has this new tv show called "i want a famous face" and basically all they do is pick a young person in their upper teens/lower twenties and then they get plastic surgery to look like someone famous. like these twin boys got tons of surgery done on their face to look like brad pitt. or a girl got a boob job to look like britney spears. or this transexual got surgery so he could look like jennifer lopez. and just the things they say pre-surgery broke my heart. especially the twins, they just kept saying things like "as soon as i get this surgery done, things will start to come together for me." they thought that there was something so wrong with the way they looked before, and everything would be solved if they could just get rid of their physical flaws. and it showed them post-surgery and they were talking about how they were going to get all of the girls, they were going to get acting jobs, and their life would now be perfect, and one of them goes to talk to the girl he's had a crush on and she doesn't feel any differently. sure he looks better, she said, but that doesn't mean she's going to like him differently. does it say something about our society that we have all of these make over shows? whether it be "what not to wear" or "i want a famous face" or "a makeover story" or "extreme makeover" and people are getting plastic surgery more often than they go to a dentist! are we, as a society, relaying the message that people aren't somehow complete or whole or desirable or loved or authentic or valid unless they fit into this tiny little box of what is considered attractive or beautiful or handsome? the image people strive for is just a hollywood-ized, airbrushed, computer altered image. and we see this packaged, altered, colored image and this is what people strive to be like. it's sad, and it makes me angry. i see such wonderful people feeling somehow less than or incomplete or faulty because they don't fit this image and no matter how much they work out or how much they don't eat or how much make up they cake on or how much they spend for the right clothes and hair cut, they just don't attain this image they think they have to have. and i don't know how to fight it. i don't know how to say "f*** you and your fascist beauty standards!" in a way that will get anyone to listen and to pay attention. i hate to say it, but i actually like that christina aguilera song "beautiful" because it speaks out against this very crap. people are beautiful because God created them that way. i just wish everyone was able to grasp that and really hold on to it and own it. because it's true.

so in my sad attempt to make this site seem cooler than it really is, i added a counter, that counts everytime someone visits my site. i looked at it this time when i logged in and it said 5. those five visits were me checking to see if it was working. so now i officially know that NO ONE is visiting my site. of course i haven't linked to anything... perhaps i should. but then people might actually read my ramblings... not sure that needs to happen. anyway...
i haven't posted in a while. and i'm not posting a lot right now. i'm tired and going to bed. i smell like wood smoke. i was down by the married student housing for a while tonight, sitting around a campfire and having a good time. that is one big reason why i LOVE seminary. i'm gonna miss that kind of community while i'm on internship. i can be hopeful that i'll find a similar kind of community, but i seriously doubt it.
anyway, i'm going to bed. God bless.
shalom, peace, all that...