words from my mouth

It has recently occurred to me that there are several words and phrases that I say, perhaps, too frequently. These include bummer, sweet, that's hilarious, son of a biscuit, and awesome. I'm not sure why I say these things as often as I do. I suppose everyone has catch-phrases or expressions that they say regularly, but maybe we just don't notice them.

What do you think? Do you say something a little too often?

words from my head

Life is good right about now. So good, in fact, that I'm seriously considering going running as soon as I finish this post. (I haven't been running in months)

To answer your obvious first question, things with Kelley are going swimmingly. It's like each day is the best day, but then the next day is better. She's pretty awesome. My favorite part of our relationship is how often we can see each other. It's usually not planned, either. Like, I'll post on Twitter and Facebook about doing Campus Cam for CollegeLife one morning, and she'll come sit with me after her class. Or when she forgot about Daylight Savings two weeks ago and showed up to church an hour before she needed to be there, we went out for breakfast at Whataburger. All around greatness.

My CFL team is killing. I captain the Hurricanes, and we are holding first place at 7-1. I suppose technically we're tied for first, but we have more overall points and a higher point differential than the other team. Many more. And much higher. My team is great. We usually have just enough players to play the two games each Saturday morning, and I am physically hurting each Sun-Tues. But we play very well as a team. We spread the ball around so well that I'm pretty sure everyone has scored at least one touchdown. Everyone does their job on defense so well that most everyone who's played off the line has gotten at least one interception. Whether we have everyone there or hardly anyone there, we all play hard and play hard together. I love it.

My grandma is in Texas. There has been a lot of family drama over the last few weeks, but I think it's beginning to come to an end. It has resulted in Grandma moving from Missouri to Texas into an assisted living center within walking distance from my parents' house. I'm going over tonight to help move some furniture items out of a moving truck. The only bad part of that story is that Grandpa is still in a hospital in Missouri. We're not entirely sure what's going to happen to him over the next few weeks, so please pray for his mental and physical health. I haven't ever lived in the same city as my grandparents, so this should be pretty neat!

We interns had our monthly Supperfest last night. In July, we manterns wanted to show the femterns how much we appreciated them (as they are compensated in no way whatsoever for their service to CollegeLife), so we had them all over for dinner and games. They wanted to cook for us the next month, but we said, "No! That defeats the whole point of what we were doing! We wanted to treat you!" But they would have none of it. They cooked for us in August, we played more games, and Supperfest was born. Every month, we've been trading off who hosts whom. Last night we played no games, and instead just talked. It was nice. I don't see most of the girls on a regular basis, so it's good to reconnect each Supperfest. We have a great group of interns this year. Really great.

My housemates are the best, too. Taylor and I have been sharing the big room ever since LoPresti moved down from Virginia. Taylor is a lot like my brother Daniel, actually. Scientific, technical, similar sense of humor, same age, similar personality and character. It's a little creepy. Either way, we get along pretty well. All the guys do, really. It's pretty swell. I'm glad for each of them being here.

Man, that was much longer than I anticipated. Sorry about that. I'll leave you with my three most favorite classical pieces of all time:

• The Firebird Suite by Igor Stravinsky
• Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin
• Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major by Johann Sebastian Bach

Priorities

Have you ever noticed how we Americans have a different set of priorities when looking for a job, for example, than a lot of other cultures?

My mom and I were looking at the final round of assisted living centers for her parents today at lunch. They aren't really physically able to care for themselves any more, so we're probably going to move them down from KC, MO in the next week. Mom wanted another set of eyes to see everything and think how they would like it. She was telling me how a lot of immigrants are nurses in this industry. Not doctors. Nurses. I asked why, and it seems that is, hands down, the fasted way to get your green card. Interesting. So rather than going to medical school to become a doctor and make zillions of dollars saving people every day, they take the quicker route of becoming a nurse.

This accomplishes several things. 1.) They get a well-paying job relatively quickly. 2.) They are able to provide for their entire family (which may include parents, aunts, uncles, etc.) with said well-paying job. 3.) They are able to obtain permanent residence in these United States relatively quickly. What more could you ask for?

When I think back to this spring and summer when I was looking for a job. The first thoughts were Is it doing something I'll enjoy with people I'll enjoy? Is it something I know how to do? Will it pay well? Is it something I want to do? Does it provide benefits? And on and on it went. I was very self-centered. How does it benefit me? I'd wager that much of the rest of the world is very family-centered. How does this benefit my family? How does it enable me to provide for or spend time with my family? And so on and so forth.

What do you think? Am I right? Am I wrong?

Deuteronomy

When was the last time you poked around in this, the fifth book of the Bible? I thought so. Here, many laws and rules and ways and means are laid out for the Israelites by God. It can be kind of slow because God always repeats himself several times when talking about important things. "Do ABC like XYZ. In the way of XYZ, do ABC. ABC shall be done by XYZ." I was just continuing my reading of Deuteronomy while eating breakfast this morning, and I was astonished what I read - THE GREATEST, MOST ELABORATE THREAT OF ALL TIME!

At the end of chapter 26, God's commands are wrapping up. In chapter 27, we hear about building an altar and people are cursed if they do things against God. But chapter 28 is the best.

It starts off with ways you'll be blessed for obeying God, then goes into ways you'll be cursed if you disobey God. Verses 58-59 and 62 summarize it well:

58 If you are not careful to observe all the words of this law which are written in this book, to fear this honored and awesome name, the LORD your God, 59 then the LORD will bring extraordinary plagues on you and your descendants, even severe and lasting plagues, and miserable and chronic sicknesses....62 Then you shall be left few in number, whereas you were as numerous as the stars of heaven, because you did not obey the LORD your God.

Basically, you screw up and God destroys you. But like I said, this is only a nice summary of the wrath God will bring down upon them if they don't obey his commands. It starts back in verse 15 and continues all the way through the last verse of the chapter! That's 54 verses! It's like a page and a half in my Bible! There are a couple of places (like v58-62) where it looks like God's done threatening them, but then he picks right back up one or two verses later. It's fantastic.

I love a good threat.

Oh, Happiness

David Crowder*Band's new album, Church Music, is pretty amazing. I have the song "Oh, Happiness" stuck in my head. Always.

I'm sorry I've neglected you recently. A lot has happened in the past few weeks. Let's see. Working for CollegeLife is amazing. I've learned so much about videography. I LOVE it. The staff and my fellow interns are the best, too. Couldn't have asked for a better setup.

I've also learned a ton about life and my faith in talks with my housemates and Jeff, the CollegeLife director. He meets with us manterns every other week to go through a book together, or the Bible, or talk about our lives. He's the man. Click here to watch him on stage at Axcess and other videos made by yours truly.

I went to the Texas State Fair on Friday. Always a great time. If you've never been, you're really missing out. It's a blast.

I also went to the Relient K concert in Dallas Monday night. Man, they put on a good show. There were two opening acts - first Barcelona, then Copeland. I thought Barcelona was AMAZING. They had energy, good tunes, and rockin guitars. And of course, Relient K was the big act. They played a couple of covers - possibly better than the originals - The Office theme, the "5 Dollar Footlong" Subway theme, "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid, and "Island in the Sun" by Weezer. "Under the Sea" had some heavy electric guitars on it, which was cool. Anyway, good times were had by all.

There's also a new lady in my life - Kelley. She's pretty great. Kind, patient, fun, social, active, cute, beautiful, smart, engaging. For those Facebook stalkers out there, you already know we're dating. Congrats. For everyone else, we're dating. Hooray!

Until we meet again....