Friday, December 21, 2007
We are in Hawaii Safely - After many delays
laterz
Friday, December 14, 2007
Just Dont
Haha!!! I love this shirt!
(http://www.bustedtees.com/bt/images/BT-amish-gallery-1401.jpg)
Oh and by the way... does anyone read my blog? I know Hurley does cuz he is always disagreeing with everything I say.. .but is anyone else? Your thoughts on what I've been saying? Come on, give me some feedback!
Thank you! Come Again!
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
How Things Fit Together
So I’ve been thinking about what I said last post and what Hurley said (basically, he said not to focus on the works but on Christ). I was also reading some Colossians this morning and here is how I think all this fits together.
First, my response to Hurley. I agree with you, that the works can not be the focus of your life. However, they can be the focus of a set of thoughts when they are viewed through Christ. Christ is supreme. Christ is everything in my life. Now how do works fit in to that? Second, I say that because the NT writers talk about works all the time…
So… where does what I said and what Hurley said fit together? I think maybe in this semblance of an order.
1. I think that most people in
Most people are completely clueless to this. They are completely comfortable with warming the pews at church every week. They don’t examine themselves as scripture says they should.
THEREFORE, I think that the message that is burning in me (aka, no fruit can give evidence of no salvation) is only part 1… it’s purpose is to be a smack in the face and say ‘HEY!!! You need to wake up and pay attention because you may not be saved!”
2. THEN… part 2 comes. When they realize that their fruitless lives speaks against their salvation, then they are open to hearing about Christ being supreme. Before they don’t want to listen because they are ‘Christians’ and why would they pay attention to a sermon on Christ’ Supremacy when no other sermon they have heard has changed how they live. Part 1 wakes them up and gets them ready for part 2.
Part 2 is that Christ is supposed to reign supreme in your life. He is not supposed to be first on your priority list, but ruling over your life, decisions, and priority list. He is not your mascot but your monarch that you bow before and that every decision you make during the day goes through the filter of ‘would this glorify my Lord?’
This is the foundational message. This is where you spend your time building them up in Christ and building their base / foundation of though. This is what is most important.
3. Then, when they have gotten that Christ is supreme and that he is over their life, not just first in it, then you can go to application. How should that look? How / why should you study scripture, pray, fast, give, love, help, heal….. Without Christ as supreme, actions are just legalism and trying to be ‘good enough’ to get into heaven. When Christ is supreme in your life, when you are overcome with gratefulness for Jesus being beaten within an inch of his life so that you are not suffering in hell for all of eternity, you can do NOTHING BUT change your life and mold it around him. When he changes your very nature, you no longer enjoy sin, you hate it. You want to give up gossiping in the workroom. You want to give up your self-centeredness. You can’t imagine yourself sleeping with your boyfriend because those things are self-focused instead of glorifying to God! It’s not following the rules. It’s changing your lifestyle in response to God’s love. Rules, without relationship, brew rebellion.
Instead, people must be in a true love-relationship with Christ. Then the works will joyfully flow out of a response to that. But make no mistake, scripture is clear. If you have no fruit, no evidence of a changed life, no good works, no nuthin…. then scripture says that those voids give evidence that you most likely are not saved. We MUST examine ourselves and our lives so that we can be in a true, deep love-relationship with our God and savior, Jesus Christ.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
The Least of These
So I was reading in 1 john 2 today, and I came across this passage:
9Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. 10Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble. 11But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.
So I started off…. Hey, I don’t hate my brother. Kat’s a pretty cool guy (when hes not being melodramatic, which he doesn’t do much anymore =) ). So I’m ok! But then I thought, wait, Christ speaks of ‘brother’ as pretty much anyone you meet on the street (Luke 10, Good Samaritan). So do I hate anyone? Umm…. I don’t think so. So I’m OK.
However, then I gave it one more thinking… The story of the Good Samaritan about the fact that your brother is anyone who needs help. The religious guys who went around the hurt man were not loving him. The Samaritan, who went out of his way to help someone, even his enemy, was the one who loved him. The reason I point this out is that the passage above says that whoever LOVES his brother lives in the light. (By the way, this is not brotherly love or family love, its agapeo, Godly, selfless love). When Jesus gives us an example of loving our brother it is helping a guy who just got mugged. On top of that, its stopping and helping a guy who just got mugged in the slums of downtown
I say this because the guys who didn’t love the man didn’t spit on him or laught at him. In fact, they probably felt sorry for him but were too busy. So their ignoring him was a default hate. If you pass a drowning child in a lake but continue because you are busy, that’s default hatred towards the child. We are no different.
I wonder how many times we stop and help the homeless guy on the side of the road? I wonder how many times we just drive by those guys because we cant be late. Instead of helping we just callously assume that he is going to use the money for booze. Why not go buy the guy a bag of jumbo jacks? It takes $10 and 10 minutes. But that’s ok. Him eating today and tomorrow is not nearly as important to us getting to our meeting on time.
41"Then [Jesus] will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'
44"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?' 45"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'
46"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."
I say these things because I am guilty of them. I pass by people all the time. I cant remember the last time I took my dinner money and went and bought food for the homeless guys over at the intersection of 20 and 820. I am too busy… I pass right by the least of these all the time.
May God change my heart.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Kicked Out Of The Nest
I though about just staying Kelling Photography (while officially registering my business as SKelling Photography), but then the problem is the website, which seems to be the big problem...
So I am officially taking suggestions for names for my photo business. I considered and liked Big Ox Photography, but that didnt get past the committee (aka, Bwige).
I would like my name in there.. but I dont like the other words for photography. I don't want it to say 'Event' in the name because them people wont call me for weddings and portraits...
what do you think?
Hey, lets make it interesting, a prize for you if you come up with the name I use!!!
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Rude Awakenings for my Poor Brother
What he said to me:
wow, there are a lot of logical inconsistencies in Jay Jay...
I mean besides talking planes, right now there are some planes flying with a helicopter... they don't fly at the same speed!
and here comes a space shuttle!!! like they fly at the same speed as a helicopter!
hehe, they are going on a camping trip... AIR PLANES going on a CAMPING TRIP!
how do you "get things ready" for a camping trip when your arms are wings?
(by the way... this is a fun joke said in love..... just in case anyone missed that....)
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Rubik's Cube
Fast forward to today. My beautiful wifey came home sick (after going to school when she shouldn't have (stubborn girl)) and so I spent the afternoon caring for her (and yes, she was unhappy when I added extra cheese to her mac & cheese, but that was cuz I didnt know dairy was bad for an upset stomach and I was trying to make it better for my princess. Besides, when have I EVER done anything by the directions on the box!?!?.... YAH RIGHT!) So I got stir crazy tonight and went and got her soup and brought it to her and then went to the mall and picked up some jewelry I bought her (she liked it :) ).
So then before I went to bed, I decided to pick up my old friend once again. Now, I am proud to announce....
I SOLVED THE RUBIK'S CUBE!!!!
Yep, I did it all by my self!! No manuals, no cheats, no one showing me how. Just hours and hours of problem solving!! I am really really happy. I am also very proud of myself for not asking for directions. :)
Well, you ask, what is next for this puzzle king (move over Kat!)? Well, next I am working on Rubik's Revenge. Classic Rubik's is 3x3. The Revenge is 4x4. Oh yah baby!!! Bring it on!
Monday, November 5, 2007
Confessions
OK… in the spirit of Swing giving her confessions… I guess I should reveal my deepest darkest secrets also… so here goes…
- I am an email freak. No really… I probably check my email between 75 and 100 times a day. Yes, this may be because I am waiting for my next photography order to come in, but its also because I so enjoy getting a message from someone. Every time a new message pops up in my inbox… it just gives me a small bit of joy. Maybe woven in there also is a sense that someone cares about me and wants to talk to me… but that’s neither here nor there.
- when it comes to food… I’m a bit strange. My favorite foods are on the ends of the temperature spectrum. A cooked piece of whatever, is ok.. but it could be better. For example, I LOVE frozen vegetables. Man… a bag of frozen snow peas or frozen corn…. YUM!!! I will eat just about anything frozen (obviously, it needs to be small things that can be broken easily… you cant eat frozen steak or pieces of broccoli because they are too thick). On the other end, I love it when things are REALLY well done. I love to cook a pan of corn till the corn is extra dry and crispy – almost burned. That way, it really jumps in your mouth and crunches in your teeth. Same thing with ground meat – if its real dark brown and extra crunchy – PERFECT. And there are few things closer to heaven than boudain, taken out of the wrapper, and cooked well done. Oh wow… so tasty..
- like swing.. I think I have friendship issues. I don’t have any REALLY close friends (outside my wife). Now, I do have good friends, Valerie and Andrew, Estevan, but they are just friends. (I must be careful to not offend anyone here.) I think at the core of what I am saying is…. is that I don’t have anyone that I can really just hang out with on a regular basis. We have few people who we can just see each other all the time because we click so well and just really enjoy each other’s presence. We really enjoy time with Valerie and Andrew, but they live 45 minutes away and so we don’t get to see them much. It’s a similar situation with most people from church, they are just SO far away…
Swing said once to me that really deep friendships wont happen much after college because you just cant spend that much time together (swing, maybe you can clarify that better). I refuse to accept that. I deeply believe that we are desperately in need is true relationships. So many people spend so much time looking on facebook, and texting, and im’ing, and playing World of Warcraft. Too many people have their deepest friendships online. That just isn’t good enough. You just cant get the depth of communication and friendship online as you can in person… I crave that type of relationship… its just so hard to find it (and even harder when you consider the time it takes to develop it) - that’s about it… umm… oh.. this is something I have never told anyone… so don’t spread it around….
I am madly in love with my incurably hot wife!!! *growls* She’s hot stuff!! - lastly… I think my definition of who is going to heaven is narrowing. The more I read scripture, the more I see that Christianity is not about church or rules. Its about being madly in love with Jesus Christ, our only savior and only way to heaven. I am beginning to believe that if your life is not producing fruit, that your lack of results just gives evidence that you have missed the point and don’t really get it. This is as far from legalism as it can get, but if you are not doing a mad dash towards God BECAUSE of his mind boggling love for us, then maybe you really don’t understand Christ at all. (again, this is not legalism, it’s your inability to live your life the same after Christ did so much for you, its you wanting to radically alter your lifestyle to mirror Christ BECAUSE of what he did.)
Now, I know that most of you will probably disagree with this… but the more I read scripture, the more I see it to be true. That’s not a clear explanation, but its just something I wanted to share.
One thing I want to do over thanksgiving is to put this down in a cogent written form so that my thoughts are clear and well spoken. At that point, I will post it and deeply desire all of your thoughts on it. I know I’m wrong in places and I look forward to ferreting out those errors.
OK, I need to go. I love you guys.. *sniff* maybe some of you will email me and make me feel loved… J by the way, don’t email Spartacus at hotmail because I’m locked out of that… *cough* Stephen at kellingphotography dot com *cough email me cough*
Sunday, November 4, 2007
The Job That Keeps On Giving
So my last two weeks have been consumed with pretty much one thing only – The Reklaw Fly-In at the Flying M Ranch. First, a fly-in is where a bunch of guys with planes fly into some small private airport, hang out for some period of time, and fly home. At this fly in, a bigger one, people come and hang out for 3 days and then go home. It 2 hours southwest of
I spent all last week getting ready. Including buying some new equipment. I got all the computers working and talking to each other at home perfectly. The plan was for me to head up Friday afternoon to take some test shots and get everything prepped. Then, everyone else would come up Friday night and spend the night so we could be there early Saturday morning. However, because my package was delievered over 2 horus late on Friday, and then Kinkos didn’t have my order ready when they said they would, I ended up leaving the house 6 hours late and went straight to the hotel. But that was ok. All the bad stuff was happening on Friday so Saturday would come off without a hitch.
I wish.
I arrived and set up and the computers would not talk to each other. This killed everything. I cant show the pictures to the people if they don’t talk to each other. Therefore, I took 10,000 pictures and sold 5. Yah. A big bust. A huge bust. I lost a ridiculous amount of money (paying people and getting equipment and stuff).
However, I decided to persevere through it. I got home and starting sorting the pictures (yes, all 10,000 of them) to put them on the internet so people could order them. That took till Wednesday. Thursday I spend updating the pictures and reuploading the ones that got deleted. So far I have received 2 orders bringing in $120. So I am still in the hole in a VERY bad way…
So… now for the back end of this. I am ok with the whole thing. I trust God. He is good. All the time. He is always good in every situation every time without fail. I know this. I may not feel it right now, but I know it. And I’m not freaked out about losing so much money. I know that God will provide. He will not let his beloved son starve. He has always given me such amazing gifts, why would he stop now.
This is definitely an improvement. A couple of years ago, I would have yelled at God for this. I would have griped and complained. However, I think he has grown me. He has matured me so that my faith is bigger. I trust him.
Its good, but still not where it will be. I look forward to the time when I could lose everything, my wife, family, ministry, job, house, kids, money, camo hat… everything, and still fall on my knees in worship of my Savior. He gave me the ultimate gift. Who am I to complain when he takes away something temporal?
Well… that’s about it.. it pleases me that I’m maturing. So hows your walk going? Hows life?
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
God's Goodness
So I was reading through Isaiah 45 today… it’s a good chapter, but it seems to show a side of God that we don’t like to see. God does whatever the heck God wants to. We cant stand in judgement over what he does. We must simply trust in his goodness. It says that he ‘forms the light and creates darkness. He brings prosperity and creates disaster.’ We love to hear that God brings prosperity, but we never want to hear about him creating disaster. To say that God would have caused hurricane Katrina would make most people turn because ‘he would never do that.’ But it seems that scripture says that he does not just allow bad things to happen but that he creates them sometimes also.
So what are we to do with this? I think we need to see the bigger picture. First, life is not all about us and our happiness. God’s highest concern is not our comfort. It is His glory. And if something brings him more glory, then isn’t that what we are to strive for. If losing my wife brings God more glory, who am I to argue with that? Didn’t he save me? Don’t I owe him my life? Who am I to question him, one infinitely more wise than me, on his decisions?
Now, I think there is one caveat that should be inserted, one bit of information that makes what I just said OK. God is good. Let me repeat that. God is good. He is loving and kind. He wishes that none should parish. If I know that, I am ok with the bad stuff. If I really trust him, I know that that ‘bad’ stuff is for a reason. I don’t believe that God would send someone to hell without them having a chance at salvation. That means that even thought many died in Hurricane Katrina, every one of them had a chance to go to heaven. Some accepted. Some didn’t. However, through that time, many people were displaced. Many people had a chance to hear the gospel who may not have otherwise. Many people were given better lives by relocating. In the end, more people will be worshiping in the throne room of God because of that situation. Not that I understand that, but I must trust that.
God is not safe, but he is good!
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Political Opinions on Abortion
So I am baffled, amazed, and generally disgusted. I was fishing around the net for political info the other day trying to get a better idea on who I should vote for. Although I generally lean republican (only because I generally agree with them on the issues), I am an independent at heart and would have no problem voting democrat if the candidate were right. So I find a site that is comparing the candidate (http://politics.nytimes.com/election-guide/2008/issues/abortion/index.html). And I start looking and then I see that the middle column is the candidates opinions “ON LATE-TERM ABORTIONS A recent Supreme Court ruling upheld the 2003 Partial-Birth Abortion Ban.” So this is whether the candidates agree with a BAN on Partial Birth Abortion.
Now, I must put in one note here because I just did a google on it and found out that I misunderstood what it is they do. I was correct in thinking that they do partially birth the baby (by reaching into the womb through the vagina with forceps and grabbing the legs and pulling it half way out). However, I found out that they do it between the 5th and 6th month instead of at the end of the pregnancy. The thing that shocked me and made me sick was HOW they actually aborted the child. (warning: this is not for the squeamish) The doctor actually uses the forceps to make a hole in the child’s head and then uses a vacuum to suck out the brains of the unborn child. I was absolutely speechless. I can think of few more disgusting and inhumane ways to slaughter a child.
Just Wow.
So yah, back to politics. Again, I am reading a page about the positions of each candidate on the supreme court BANNING this horrific procedure. As I go down the list, with only one exception, EVERY DEMOCRAT WAS AGAINST THE BAN!!!! THEY ARE FOR PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTIONS!!! I was totally speechless. I could not believe it. how can you be ok with this barbaric procedure?!?! (Senator Biden, the one dissenting voice, supported the ban but chided the court because he said it opened the door to appealing Roe vs Wade).
Well, that makes that decision REAL easy. Unless Biden is on the ticket, no democratic votes from me. There are a few issues that will make or break my vote… that’s one of them. It turns my stomach to think of such things and it really gives a clear picture where our society is… its disgusting. As for the republican side, all of them supported the ban. The one almost exception is Giuliani who was OK with PBA in the past but is now opposes it.
So, no that I AM going to vote Republican, but I am sure as heck not going to vote for any fool that is ok with murdering a child in such a horrendous way!
OK… now for the caveat… am I wrong somewhere? I admit that I am not an expert in this area. Do I have bad information or illogical thoughts? If so, please tell me, I want to have a cogent and intelligent opinion on this subject. What do you think?
Coming soon!! - An article I found where a MIT guy says that we will soon be marrying (and having sex with) robots! I’ll post that tomorrow. (no, I’m not kidding)
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
lolcat Bible - Review
Basically, it translates scripture into web-onics. Just for a refernce, here is The first part of Job 1: (by the way, if you are over 30, you will have MAJOR problems understanding this... you have been warned)
1. In teh land of Uz wuz a man calded Job. Teh man was goodz, afraid of teh Ceiling Cat and evilz. 2. Teh man hadz seven sunz and tree doters, 3. And lots of sheepz and camlez and rinoceruseses and servnts, srsly. 4. His sunz tok turns mading cookies, and they all eated them. 5. And Job wuz liek "Oh noes! Wut if cookies were sin? Gota prey, just in cased."
6. Teh ayngles wented to seez Ceiling Cat, and Saitin wented 2. 7. Ceiling Cat axt Saitin, "Wher u wuz?" Saitin saied "Oh, hai. I'z wuz in ur earth, woking up and down uponz it."8. Teh Ceiling Cat sayd "Has u seen mai servnt Job? He can has cheezburger cuz he laiks me."
9. "No wai!" sed Saitin. 10. "U just plyin favrits. 11. If u take his cheezburgers, he no laiks u no moar."
So umm... here is my review, which may surprise you).
A seminary student’s perspective on the lolcat translation of scripture:
Well, I think I will share my thoughts in the order in which they came…
Thought 1: Umm… this sounds kinda funny, but could have serious problems…I think I will check it out. However, they thought did pop into my head that they probably weren’t taking God and scripture very seriously… hmm… are they really treating him as holy?... we shall see.
Score: 0 (still neutral, with reservations)
Thought 2: (as I am reading Job 1).Umm…wow… this is actually pretty entertaining. However, they do refer to God as the Ceiling Cat… um…. I think that falls short of God Almighty, Creator and Sustainer of the universe… but I guess I can get past that (-1 point)
Score: -1
Thought 3: Job 1:2-3 “Teh man hadz seven sunz and tree doters, And lots of sheepz and camlez and rinoceruseses and servnts, srsly.” That’s pretty funny… especially the rinoceruseses. Srsly. (+2)
Score: +1
Thought 4: (Now reading John 1) John 1:1 “In teh beginz is teh cat macro, and teh cat macro sez "Oh hai Ceiling Cat" and teh cat macro iz teh Ceiling Cat.” Well…. at least they are theologically sound… Christ = God. They may have bad grammar, but they have good theology. (+3)
Score: +4
Thought 5: (reading on in John 1) John 1:5 “Teh lite iz pwns teh darks, but teh darks iz liek ‘Wtf.’” So umm… I don’t think it’s a fabulous idea to have ‘WTF’ in the Bible, which by the way for those of you who don’t speak web-onics, is short for “What the F***.” Umm… yah.. that seems like not a fabulous idea. In fact, it seems like a TERRIBLE idea. Yah… (-5)
Then I read on, John 1:7 “He tellz teh ppl dat teh lites is tehre, so dat teh doodz sez ‘OMG’.” Umm… again, good intentions, but taking the Lord’s name in vain (which is breaking one of the top 10) is not a fabulous idea either (OMG = Oh My God). (-2)
Score: -3
Overall…. I give it a -3. Its not heretical. Its not like this is an assault on God or anything. But it doesn’t really give the honor and reverence to Christ and the Creator of the Universe that it should (but that comes from the guy who is struggling with the fact that most of my generation and younger treats God as their homie that they stick in their pocket and take out during the day when they have a problem instead of falling on their faces in reverence, awe, and holy fear.)
Second, if it were really going to get people to read scripture when they would not have before, maybe it would get some bonus points. But I highly doubt that would happen. Even if it did, they would have to move to some other translation quickly because they couldn’t really get good solid understanding of if out of this translation (HA!! Even The Message translation would be a step up in depth and accuracy!!)
So overall, funny and good for a laugh (with reservations in certain places). However, its not worth translating the whole thing. Srsly.
Monday, October 8, 2007
What Am I Doing Wrong?
So umm….. here is a post from Craig’s List in
What am I doing wrong?
Are there any guys who make 500K or more on this board? Any wives? Could
Here are my questions specifically:
- Where do you single rich men hang out? Give me specifics- bars,
- Jobs I should look out for? Everyone knows - lawyer, investment
- How you decide marriage vs. just a girlfriend? I am looking for
Please hold your insults - I'm putting myself out there in an honest
PostingID: 432279810
--------------------------------
THE ANSWER
Dear Pers-431649184:
I read your posting with great interest and have thought meaningfully
Your offer, from the prospective of a guy like me, is plain and simple a
So, in economic terms you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset. Not only are you a depreciating asset, your depreciation
So in Wall Street terms, we would call you a trading position, not a buy
Separately, I was taught early in my career about efficient markets. So,
By the way, you could always find a way to make your own money and then
With all that said, I must say you're going about it the right way.
--
What a great answer! He is so right. Beauty will fade. That is why we are not supposed to chase after the hottest girls or the guys with the biggest biceps. Those looks will fade and, if we chased after hot shallow people, we will be left with simply shallow people that aren’t much fun to be married to.
It seems to me that scripture says to be careful about who you hang out with. Once again, the secular world is seeing how scripture has revealed for millennia the right way to live… we just need to open the book and see what God has already planned for us.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Busy Schedule & Sex Ads
Hello hello,
Haha, and now for something completely different!! I am so amused by all the Spam I get in my email box. The subjects are so entertaining. “Let *product* make all your secret wishes come true!” or “Realize all of her dreams with our help for short time!” or “Extend your possibilities in your private life!” and one of my favs “Let women thirst for you! Surprise them with your size!” ROFL… these are HILARIOUS!! As if I could click on these and my sex life would be just amazing.
Its just such a comment on our society that we get these kinds of ads. Everyone wants us to think that sex is all about how you perform, and what additives you have, and how steamy hot your partner is… in the end…its really about none of those. The secular world balks at the idea of a Christian having 1 sexual partner their whole life. The argument is that how can you know what you really want if you don’t sample the other flavors. The funny thing is, the statistics say otherwise. Christians (those who don’t sleep around) and more fulfilled sexually in the their marriages. They are happier with sex and have it more often. The thought that you have to be ‘sexually compatble’ with someone is totally bogus. (on a similar note…. The same thing goes with living together b/f marriage, you are TWICE as likely to get divorced if you live together before marriage – take THAT myth busters )
Why is this true? Wouldn’t one think that sleeping around gives you more practice and exposure to more techniques or whatever? Maybe. But here is where the world has totally missed it. Sex is not about the physical. Sex is more about the emotional and the physical than it is the physical. I don’t know how exactly to explain this part… I just know its true. (I’m trying really hard to avoid examples because none of you guys want to hear about my sex life.) When you have sex, you are not just joining physically with that person, you are joining spiritually. You become one in heart and soul with that person. You have joined to them. Yes in a physical way, but more so in a spiritual way. So when you sleep around, you are joining with lots of people. But every time you break up with someone you’ve slept with, it rips your joined soul in 2 (the sexual part, its not like only ½ your soul can go to heaven now.. hehe…). And when you keep sleeping around, you retain less and less of yourself. You carry with you more and more people to every new sexual partner. Sex is not simply physical.
That’s why those ads are so entertaining to me. its totally bogus that you can fix your sex life with a click and an internet order. I know the above things to be true for 2 reasons… 1 is because scripture says so. Scripture tells us to have 1 marriage, 1 partner. Period. It tells us that when we do have sex, we become one flesh (one soul). Second, my life and my marriage testify to the truthfulness of what I’ve said…
OK, I know this isn’t new information for most of you, but I was just thinking and maybe it will give you something to say to whoever at work next time they says that sleeping around is a good thing…
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Should I Have Expected Anything Different?
Big Dork
So my brother did a photography job for me last weekend and not only left his ipod in my car but forgot to return the USB Key for one of my photography programs. So I got him to mail it to me yesterday. I received it today. This is what was in the package (yes, the little red USB is what I requested)…. Should I have expected anything less?
Um... yah.... its reminiscent of the cup/face/thing that he gave Dad one year for Christmas....
(Dad, could you post a picture of that?)
And yes... its all in the trash... and no, I didn't eat the lollipop.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
I Am So Sick of Politics
stupid politics... stupid politics...
how about we just fire all their butts and get a whole new crop of politician-less politicians.... (like a political magical pawn....)
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
I Eat Hebrew For Breakfast!!
102
Yup. One hundred and two points on my first Hebrew test. yah baby!!
now, that doesn't mean that I totally understand it, it just means that the test was easy and that I knew what was going to be on the test. But still... I MADE A 102 ON THE TEST!!! YAH BABY!!
so I'm excited.
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Friday, August 31, 2007
8/30/07 - The Day of Bad News....
Well today seemed to be the day of bad news…..
- Brigette’s great uncle died
- My aunt had surgery to remove a bunch of lumps on her breast (I found out about the surgery after it began
- My friend told me that his gpa is going to die in a few days
- my other friend told me that they were going to have to delay the birth of her baby for almost a week longer because her little lungs weren’t developed enough
- My other friend said that her mom just found out that she has MS
Some days are just like that. We have no option but to fall back into the arms of God. We all have nice little lives built around us. But what do we do when that all comes crashing down? What then?
What choice do we have but to rely and trust on someone and something outside ourselves? Otherwise we hit rock bottom and have no reason to live.
This just makes sense because my purpose in life is to bring glory and honor to God almighty. I know that even if my little kingdom crashes, I can still fulfill my function in life. I can still do what I was programmed to do. My main purpose is not to provide for Brigette or to get more stuff, or to gain power and friendship. All those things can be taken away from me. Therefore, none of those can be the foundation for the purpose or happiness in and of my life. If my joy rests on whether or not I have a wife, then my life becomes meaningless the moment a drunk driver kills her. Instead, if my purpose and joy come from outside myself, namely Christ, then even if my little kingdom burns to the ground, I can sit, like Job, in the ashes of the world I knew and worship God.
Well… I guess that’s it for today. I know I make everything deep, but its late and I’m feeling deep tonight so… such is life.
May God richly bless us and open our minds to explore more deeply the depths of his surpassing greatness. And though a fruitful lifetime devoted to Ludus would not reveal to us even a drop in the bucket of God’s humbling awesomeness, may we, through our feeble thoughts, bring glory and honor to the name above all names, Jesus Christ.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
8-29-07 I Love Being An Adult
And, I know Bwige will freak out when she reads this, but I have no problem doing similar fun things with our kids (when they get here in a VERY VERY long time). Wake up, eat cookies, drink chocolate milk, have some cake (by the way, cake is healthy, it has eggs and flour and other healthy things). What a fun morning! Now, don’t freak out, I’m not going to produce walking blob-children. This is something we would do only like once a semester. But what a fun thing to do! (I know most of you are rolling your eyes, but I don’t care)
Well…anyways… I have some bad news and some good news… the bad news is that Bwige was beginning to be bitten by the baby bug… she was starting to feel that primordial urge to have kids…. Arg… I knew the day would come but I had hoped that it would be farther away. Oh well..
Don’t worry mama, we will have kids eventually… it will (God willing) be a while… and since I’m in seminary and we have a room with a red phone that goes straight to God… my prayers are first in line so all your prayers for Bwige to be pregnant and give you more grand-babies are being voided. Sorry.
OK, that’s it, I must go back to cleaning the house. Have a fabulous day all!
Thursday, August 23, 2007
8/23/07 - You Wimp
August 22, 2007 (GamePro) -- Japanese game maker Atlus said on Tuesday that it would remove 150 Arm Spirit arm-wrestling machines from Japanese arcades after three players broke their arms while wrestling with the machine's mechanized appendage.
"The machine isn't that strong, much less so than a muscular man," said an Atlus spokeswoman. "Even women should be able to beat it," the company claimed, saying that it would check the machines for malfunctions as "a precaution."
"We think that maybe some players get overexcited and twist their arms in an unnatural way," the rep added.
Arm Spirit, which is only distributed in Japan, lets gamers advance through 10 levels battling, among other opponents, a French maid, a drunken martial arts master and a Chihuahua before reaching the final showdown with a professional wrestler.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=personal_technology&articleId=9032180&taxonomyId=165Wednesday, August 22, 2007
08/22/07 - We're Not In Grade-School Anymore Toto
We went for a walk about 7:00 and headed over to Seminary Food Store (a grocery) and got little frozen ice bars... they were pretty good (and only 6o cents each!). Then we kept walking and came upon... Stephen's Park. No really, that is it's name! I didn't know I had a park named after me! Wow. *I'd like to thank all the little people I had to step on to get here....*
So we went and sat down in the swings to watch a big soccer game going on. It was not any team, just a bunch of Hispanic guys playing. There were 24 people on the field (how many in normal soccer... I think the internet says 11 per team but that just seems like so many!). So anyways, I was swinging as I sat and watched and I realized, this is kinda small for me. Hmm... the joyous days of no responsibilities has gone. Gone are the hours on the playground. Gone are the days of recess.
All this came to a point when it was time to go. I decided that I would jump out of the swing for old times sake. So I did the whole rocking to gain momentum thing. Back and forth. Back and forth. (while doing this I wondered if I could swing high enough to go all the way over the top... and if I did, would my skin turn inside-out?). Higher and higher I swung. And just at the right moment, I propelled my body out of the swing in anticipation of that joyous moment of weightless flight... and as my body was leaving the swing....... my feet touched the ground and I just ended up standing. No flight. No joy. Just a tall kid standing up out of the swing.
*sigh*
oh well. Those times have passed. I guess life is like that... further up and further in... no looking back.
Friday, August 17, 2007
August 17th, 2007 - Home Again - or - 11,635
We flew in yesterday and were taken out to dinner by Bwige's parents. We got home and to bed about 11pm (23 hours awake).
We love you all. Dont worry about the days you missed, everyone will be getting a fully updated blog with pictures (hopefully in the mail in a slideshow CD).
By the way... I will be posting a final picture count soon, but it will be about 11,500!
Yah!
Love you guys. thanks for your thoughts and prayers. God blessed and provided fantastically for us. He always amazes me....
Update: Official Number...... 11,635! Yah!! I hit my 10k goal. And no, I am not going to make you look through all of them. I will have probably 2-300 for anyone who wants to see them.
also....I just told the computer to shrink all 11,000 of them.... I wonder how long that will take.... (dont worry, just shrinking a copy of them)
ok, have a great evening, I'm going to bed
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
August 15th, 2007
we love you all and cant wait to be home. God has been providing so amazingly for us daily. His blessnig have really impressed me! May God richly bless you as well!
August 12th, 2007 – The Grumpy Old Man Strikes Again
8:30 pm – sitting in the train station
Tonight will be a very long night. A very long night. We are going to catch a train from Ivrea to Turin at 9:30. Then, we leave Turin for Bolognia at 10:45. After arriving at 2:30 am, we will catch another train at 3:00 for Venice to arrive at 5:30… a very long night. Last time, the overnight train worked very well. We were able to take one train the whole way. I guess this time didn’t work so well. Oh well, you win some you lose some. And we will save the price of a hotel room tonight. However, at 3:00 while waiting for the train… we may wish we had done otherwise. Well, we wanted an adventure and that’s what we are getting!
So today we slept in a bit (9:15) and then planned on taking the car to a castle which was on the way to Aosta (same direction we went yesterday). However, first we decided to drive to the train station and get our tickets before the day started (and in case the station was closed when got back (good choice cuz it is now closed)). Driving to the train station, however, turned out to be not that good of an idea. We decided to do so because we were parked overnight in a lot that we were not sure was free so we wanted to get the car out. Brigette suggested that we just walk to the station and walk back. Well, she turned out to be right, it would have been faster to walk there and back.
First off, we had no idea where the train station was. When you are walking, you cant get that off course. When you are driving at 45 miles an hour, you can get very far from your destination very quickly not only because of your speed but because you must follow the direction the road wants you to go. Which is exactly what we did. We drove on the highway, away from Ivrea (the train station is in Ivrea). And when we ‘took the next exit’ it put us into an abandoned indrustrial district with no one around and no way to get over to the city (which we could clearly see). We finally got back on the highway (after doing many circles) and found our way back into town. By this point, both of us were very grumpy. And I finally ended up stopping the car and giving Bwige a long hug and a kiss. We calmed down a bit and drove on. And guess what? The train station was not but a quarter of a mile ahead of us! YAH! We were very excited. We bought our tickets and headed for the castle.
We got to the castle about 1:30 and bought tickets for the 2:00 tour (only in Italian). While we waited I went around and took lots of pictures of the castle. This was a very cool castle. It had towers and walls and shooting holes just like the ones in the story books. It had 2 rings of walls to repel the pesky invaders that tried to take over the land. I circled the whole thing taking pictures (it wasn’t that big, just cool). While I circled, Bwige sat and read the brochure that was in English. Also waiting was a family with a little girl, Mariella (about 4), and a little boy Christiano (about 2). The little girl was excited about the castle and was running around vanquishing (stabbing) the evil invaders (the bushes) with her sword (her Barbie doll). Bwige said it was very cute. By the time I returned, she was getting a bit antsy. She did not have to wait long as the tour was about to start.
Once inside the castle, I took some cool shots of the towers and other fun things while we waited for the lady to finish getting tickets. Then we were all ushered inside the courtyard where I took some nice pictures of the old frescos. And *insert ominous music* that’s when he struck again…... The docent of destruction, the curator of chaos, the GRUMPY OLD MAN! *insert screams of terror* I WAS TOLD NOT TO TAKE PICTURES!!! AAHH!! Why!?!?!! Why?! Why cant I take pictures of your stinking castle. Aren’t people supposed to enjoy it? Huh? Well aren’t they? Then why cant I take a few freaking pictures! (can you sense my frustration here?) The whole tour was now useless to me. I couldn’t understand a word she said, I couldn’t take pictures, all I could do was walk around and look (but not touch). Arg…
Then, in one of the rooms (a kitchen I think because it had a hearth and a bit old table) Christiano (remember him) was doing what all 2 year olds do and was running around exploring. Well, being a 2 year old and doing what 2 year olds do, he ran to the table and knocked over a chair. Not a huge deal except that this table is several hundred years old and he broke off a leg. Not so good. They eventually just propped up the chair against the table to fix it later.
Here is why I include this in my rant…. Why is it that chair-destroying children are allowed in the castle, but a harmless camera isn’t? Huh? Does my camera steal the soul of your castle? Does it compromise the integrity of your walls? Does it rearrange the molecular structure of your rocks and make them crumble before your eyes? No? THEN WHY CANT I TAKE PICTURES OF YOUR STINKIN CASTLE!!?!!?! Please, can someone tell me why… I really don’t get it. I don’t understand. Am I going to casue you to lose business? Am I going to … I don’t know…
And I realize that I am making a big deal out of this… but it’s a big deal to me! I enjoy a place because I can take pictures of it and remember it and enjoy it again and again. When I cant take pictures, the tour is just about useless. I cant understand what shes saying. I get nothing out of it. Its just the inside of a castle. And I know that I can still enjoy it because it’s a castle, but it’s the principle of the thing! The whole thing is tainted because its owned by the grumpy old man. It was such a beautiful picturesque castle. The towers were magnificent! Why must they taint the whole thing by not allowing pictures? Arg… arg… arg… Oh well… life goes on. I did get some pretty pictures of the outside.
We sat down at the base of the castle to have lunch. We got an appetizer of tomatoes with mozzarella cheese. Yum Yum. The cheese here is different than the wanna-be cheese that we have back home. The mozzarella comes in little balls about the size of a tennis ball. And when you buy it in the store, it isn’t shrink wrapped either. It is sealed in a little bag full of water (to hold in the moisture). As a result, its much tastier than what we get at home. I am very pleased.
Then we got ordered sandwiches for lunch. I got one with mozzarella and tomatoes, and Bwige got mushrooms and mozzarella. Except we really didn’t know what we were ording because they were called paninios. The lady said they were kinda like crepes. Whatever, we ordered them ready for something new. What we got was anything but new. After a bit, they brought us out, 2 quesadillas. Yup. The Italian version of Mexican quesadillas. 1 tortilla, a few slices of tomato, and a few slices of cheese, all grilled. Kinda. It was very obvious to us that we are very, very, very (yes, 3 very’s) far from Mexico. The cheese inside was not melted and the outside of the tortillia was only light brown on a few small spots. *sigh* The itallians do food so well. They do, however, need some lessons in preparing Mexican food. Don’t get me wrong, they tasted good. It’s just that with a few small improvement, they could be fabulous!
After that we drove back to Ivrea. We returned the car and walked in the direction of the train station. On the way there we sat at a fruit stand for a few hours and ate watermelon. Then, a bit later, saw them putting fruit salad inside a cantaloupe and decided to order one for ourselves. Yum Yum! Since we had 5 hours till our train left, we decided that the shade at the fruit stand was a good place to sit.
As we ate, we discussed life and our schedules when we get back. While we were dating, we did a fabulous job of praying together. Since the wedding, we have done lousy. The main problem is that Bwige gets up earlier than me and so we don’t pray together in the mornings. Also, we don’t study scripture together which we really want to do, but just haven’t. We were trying to figure out a good time to do both. I really want to do some in depth study of scripture instead of always just reading a passage. Its like a buffet; you cant get all the food in one pass. You must go back multiple times and chew slowly.
The problem came when we tried to figure out when to study. In the mornings we are mostly asleep. In the evenings we have schedule conflicts. … what to do? So what we finally agreed to do is to pray together in the mornings and study in the evenings. Since we are slashing our schedules, the evenings should work out… we will see.
For the in depth part, we are going to start with an overview of the book. This means reading through a whole book each day for the first 5 days (long books we will read the whole thing only the first day and then alternating halves for 4 more days). After that we will study a section a day till we get through the whole book. At the end, we will read through the whole thing once more.
The point of doing this is to get a better understanding of the books as whole. So much of our scripture study is done in little bits. Its like studying just the little finger of the statue of liberty. Then you study just one nose of Mt. Rushmore. Then you study 3 square feet of the grand canyon. Yes, you are getting information when you do that, but if you do only that, just the crown could make someone think the statue of liberty was a porcupine! You need the big picture. That’s what we hope to get.
Well, after that, we headed for the train station, again on foot. We stopped and asked directions from a man from France who spoke decent English. He, however, didn’t know so he asked another man who was ahead of us buying cigarettes. We were told to basically follow the road we were on all the way to the other side of the city. Great. Oh well, only 15 minutes. So we walked on.
Then, as we were walking, a Federica pulled over ahead of us and came to greet us! She and her coiusin and their husbands were on the way to the memorial service. They said hello, but since their car was full, couldn’t give us a ride. Oh well. It was very nice seeing her one last time. However, we were not done seeing old friends. A while later, another car pulled over and it was the Frenchman! He gave us a ride to the station. How nice! It was, however, very cramped in his car as I sat in the front seat with my bag (which is almost 3 feet tall). Haha.
Anyways. That’s about it. We are on the train to Turin. I very much look forward to being home. I miss my bed. I miss not moving around all the time. I long for home. But I am ok with traveling a few more days. I know that this is temporary and my permanent home is waiting for me.
Maybe that’s how we are supposed to feel about heaven. We are temporarily traveling here but we long for something more permanent. We long for where we were made to be, with our Father. Just a thought.
OK, time to go. I look forward to seeing all of you soon. May God richly bless you and every day give you greater visions of heaven that you may, like I do, yearn for Home.
August 9th, 2007
2:30 – on the train to Turin.
Today is a traveling day. We started off today by me going to the train station about 8:30 to buy tickets. We were planning on the 10:00 train but took the 12:30 because it worked out better and was half price.
So now I am on the 12:30 train to Turin, then we will take another train to Ivrea where Tom lives. We will be staying with him for 2 days. We are headed towards the mountains. Hopefully it will be cooler there and have different food.
Well, that’s it… not much interesting so far. Laterz.
11:30 pm – sitting in bed at Tom’s House
Well the train was uneventful. We arrived in Ivrea at 6:30 and Tom met us. He is our age and works as a waiter at a private club. He is a really nice guy and a lot of fun to hang out with. He took us home from the train station and his mom met us and was very motherly. She is so much fun! She immediately went into mama mode and started offering us food and drink. She is very much like my mama who is happiest when serving others. Even though her son said we had enough food, she kept bringing it out and a snack turned into almost a full meal!
The interesting part is the food she offered us. She brought us out a plate of salami slices and also slices of white stuff. Yah, the white stuff turned out to be… umm…. Bacon. Without the meat. Yep. Slices of fat. Mmmm… And as before, we believe in eating what is put in front of you so we each had a slice. Also included in the snack was rice cakes (to offset the meatless bacon), olives (Bwige loved them) breadsticks, and yummy cheese.
Afterwards, Tom took us out on the town. We went and saw where he works. It’s a private club (not for rich people) where you have to wait a long time to get in because it is small. They have a little lake and their own private view of the mountains. Very nice!
Then, he took us into the mountains a bit for his favorite place to eat, the Sostos. Basically, it means a stop for the pilgrims (who used to take that road on the way to Rome).
The restaurant was a very homey place. Very tastey. We got a plate of cheeses for the appitiser. It came out with three different slices of cheese on it (real slices which come from a round of cheese not pathetic American slices which are flat and disgusting). One was small and hard, not bad. Another was bigger and white, very tastey. The last cheese was the biggest and was filled with spices.
(this will be finished later)
August 8th, 2007 – Step Maddness – or – The Land of 2500 pictures
9:00 am – sitting in bed
Bwige is retuning the snorkels. I just got up, again. It stormed last night and I got up at 3:30 and watched and took pictures until 6:30. I kept wanting to go to bed but as soon as I would put my camera down, something new would happen or the storm would start up again and taunt me to get more pretty pictures. Oh well… A few of them turned out really really well. Some were pretty and blue, some had lightning in them. Yah! I don't know how much hiking we are going to do since its still drizzling. We shall see…
10:00 pm – sitting in bed
We are back. What a long day. I am happy that I got to sleep a few more hours before I had to get up. We got up and went down to the ticket office only to find that the road between Riomaggiore (#1, where we were) and Manorola (#2) to Corniglia (#3) was closed. This was not good since we had hoped to hike all 4 paths. Oh well.
So we started off and hiked from Riomaggiore (#1, where we were) to Manorola. This path is the Via dell’ Amore, the Path of Love. We walked along it and, just because we were supposed to, kissed pretty often. We had to because there were guards walking around and handing out tickets to couples who were not kissing! Then, to get extra ticket protection, when there was a place where you could climb up a bit to a picnic area, we climbed to the top and sat and kissed for a while. HA! Just TRY and give us a ticket!!
The walk was very pretty. It ran along the cliff above the ocean. There were lots of pretty places to take pictures (which I did) and lots of flowers to take pictures of (which I did). The path, however, was very flat and easy. There was almost no climbing or steep ascents… just all smooth sailing, I mean walking.
One thing that was very disappointing has been the graffiti everywhere. People just write on the walls and steps, and seats, and plants… its disgusting. How rude to ruin a beautiful place with ‘Andre wuz here.’ Not only here in the Chinque Terra, but in Rome. People wrote on the walls of St. Peters and the Pantheon. I mean really! How low class can you get! Do you have no soul or respect for anything in life? I would be totally enthused if they would put up cameras and as the violators left the site, threw them in jail for a while, maybe 1 year… that way, others would get the point that HEY!, this thing is important and NO, you are not the center of the universe so that you can do whatever the heck you want! So frustrating.
Anyways… The walk of love took less than an hour (even though I was taking a ridiculous number of pictures) and we arrived in Manorola without incident. When we got there, there was a bus to the top of the hill. As can be expected, the person ahead of me was allowed on but I wasn’t. So SOMEONE (*coughBrigettecough*) suggested that we just walk. Yah. Great suggestion. The walk was pretty much straight up a hill, but since that would have been too steep, they did switchbacks. Lots of switchbacks. 385 steps worth of switchbacks. Oh well, I needed the exercise anyway to work off all the gelato we have been eating.
And speaking of steps… we took the train from town #2 to #3 so we could walk from #3 to #4 and began that hike. And what a hike it was. (One side note is that before finding the footpath to town #4 we started walking down the car path to #4. I mention this because I saw some passion flowers! Yah! I love passion flowers. They are my favorite flower! They are so pretty. They used to grow on the TV antenna in the back of Grandma’s house and I fell in love with them!) The hike from Corniglia (#3) to Vernazza (#4) was supposed to take an hour and a half. It took us a little over 2 hours. Can you guess why? (if you didn’t guess that I was taking a ridiculous number of pictures you should feel very ashamed of yourself because you know absolutely nothing about me and you have deeply hurt my feelings)
This path was much harder than the first. There was lots of steep climbing and long ascents. It was not, however, that technically difficult (there was no 1 foot wide path where you inch along sideways), it was just long. I would guesstimate about 4000 - 5000 steps.
I think my favorite part of the hike (which has been my favorite so far) was the blue water. The water is just such a beautiful deep blue here. On top of that, its clear! You can actually see the bottom (being from Texas I had no idea what that was like). But the cream of the crop was the little sections of teal blue water right around the coast. (I’ll show pictures later). It was just so beautiful. I cant wait to see those pictures.
OK, one note for this part of the day. Both of the best views on the trek were on the paths to the nude beach (no, we didn’t go down there, we just went down the path a little cuz the view was so good). And although I considered naming the blog for this day ‘An Afternoon on the Path to the Nude Beach’ I decided otherwise. Haha.
Oh, and we have seen lots of Germans on this trip. From what we hear, the Germans all travel extensively in the summer (maybe because they get 6 weeks paid vacation every year). So my question is… is there anyone actually in Germany during the summer? Hmm…. *note to self, on my quest to be Overlord of the Universe, make sure to invade Germany during the summer….*
Well, the next part of the trip was dinner in Vernazza after watching the goobers at the dock. That was interesting. Since there was a storm coming, the waves were pretty high. Again, perfect for picture-crazy Fluffy. The waves were high enough that they would crash against the docks and make a pretty high spray (the dock is a solid cement block, not a wooden platform on pillars). A few college age guys were sitting on the edge with their legs hanging over. They would wait for a big wave to wash over the dock and throw them backwards. They were getting a bit banged up but seemed to be enjoying it.
A few times it actually rolled them about 6 or 8 feet backwards. But again, they seemed to be enjoying it. And hey, it made for good pictures.
OK, now is a good time to insert an explinaiton on how I took 2500 pictures in 1 day. I take 2 types of pictures. First, is, ‘Oh look a flower, click click click.” That type is normal picture taking. The second type however, is more movie style; I hold down the shutter button and it takes 5 pictures a second (50 at a time). I like to take those and then later put them together into little mini motion movie thingies. I take those for things like the ocean moving around the rocks, boats moving in the water, trains coming straight at me…. So, I don’t know exactly the breakdown, but at least 1000 of the pictures were of type 1. I think today is probably my record for number of pictures taken in 1 day! I am very proud of myself, especially since I am going to miss my projected goal 20,000 pictures. My more realistic goal is now 10,000. I am a little over half way there (between 6k and 7k). However, I should make quota because the next few days will be spent in the mountains and I hope to take lots of nice pictures.
After watching the boys get washed onto shore, we headed up the hill into town to get dinner. By this time, Bwige was tired and getting quite hungry. I say this just because I wanted to comment on how cute Bwige gets when shes tired. Her eyes get all big like a little puppy and she is just so CUTE!
Anyways… we ate pizza for dinner. Yum, I had pesto and mushroom and Bwige had sausage and mushroom. (She says that the pizza hasn’t been that good since Rome and that this was the first pizza she has liked since then. I think its all about the same.) We also each had a bottle of peach juice with our pizza. Arg, one of the most frustrating things here in Italy is the drink situation. You pay for freaking everything! Its so dumb. If you want water, you pay for it because it comes in a bottle. If you ask for Aqua Rubineto (tap water) they look at you like you are crazy. And a couple of times, they just bring you bottled water anyway. And it is expensive too, like 2 Euros ($2.50). So yah, its usually about the same price to get water or wine. (however, I think I’ve decided to give up my quest to like wine once we get home from Italy… its not very good and just empty calories) The other thing is that most restaurants have a 2 or 3 Euro cover charge (a charge for sitting down and breathing). That’s frustrating. And the cokes (which I don’t drink much at home anyway) are even more expensive. 1.5 Euros for a can of coke. Yes, a can. Not a cup with free refills, but a can. Its ridiculous because you have to drink something with your meal but its going to cost you $5 one way or another. Arg.
Another thing that I haven’t liked about the food here is the bread. Pretty much every load of break we’ve had has really hard crust. The inside is nice and soft, but the crust is hard to chew. That’s probably the worst part of the food here. (however, it was a little better in Tuscany because they don’t put salt in the bread. A long time ago someone taxed the salt heavily and so they rebelled and have not used salt in their bread ever since… oddly enough, when you take out the salt, the bread can last for like a week and a half! Wow… no preservatives and it still lasts. I would think that the salt (a preservative) would make it last longer. Live and learn)
Yum… Italian food is so good! I am learning lots of new ways to cook things.. like, get this, spaghetti without tomato sauce. Yah, whoda thunk? They just put on a bit of olive oil and salt. Its actually pretty tasty too! Another thing is the pesto. Man its good! And they put it on pizza as a topping! (however, in regards to the pizza, it seems that they usually do just 1 topping instead of lots like we do).
Alas, however, I am craving new types of food. It seems that the menus have been pretty much the same since we arrived in Italy (other than adding a bit of seafood when we are by the coast). Spaghetti and pizza really are their main fares. It seems like in the US, there are lots of different types of food. You go to Chili’s and you can get Burgers, Italian, Asian, Mexican…. But here its just all Italian. We have seen little to no other choices. We did see some Greek food in Rome and Florence, but those are the bigger towns. Like Bwige, I am starting to crave Mexican food… we are just getting tired of having the same thing all the time. Oh well, we will be home soon. Plus, we are traveling to a totally different part of the country tomorrow so hopefully their pallets will change as well.
Another thing we crave is companionship. We are traveling alone and, while we really enjoy each other’s company, crave other people to talk to. We have been looking but haven’t found anyone else to travel with. We have even been trying to branch out and talk to other people, but we just haven’t come in contact with that many English speaking people. Oh well…
After dinner we went and watched the men pull the boats in from the harbor because of the storm. They would pull them up to the shore and attach a rope to the front. The rope went all the way up the ramp to a pulley in the square which was attached to a wench to the side. The wench was only a large circular pice of metal that turned on the top. When the rope was wrapped around it 3 times, it had the friction it needed to pull the boat up. Afterwards, they would put the boats on little flat dollies and line them up in the square. However, some people took them up the hill into town, a few even carried them up the hill. Geez. (these were little rowboats, not big boats… lol, a bunch of guys carrying an ocean liner…yah)
We then caught a train home to Riomaggiore. When we got there we called Tom, the guy we are staying with tomorrow night, and talked to his mom. She said to call him back in 10 minutes. So we went and sat to wait. Another guy went into the phone booth right after us and came out and asked us if the phone had worked for us. Apparently, it died after we used it. It said it was out of service…. So we searched for another phone and finally found one. It was dead. We did find another one and while waiting talked to a girl from Seattle. She commented on Brigette’s shirt (University of California, Santa Cruize) whose mascot is the Banana Slugs. She said that wherever it crawls on you, the banana slug makes your skin numb. So… a fun game to play is to get together with a few of your friends and pool your money to pay an unsuspecting freshmen to lick a slug for $10. So, to their surprise, besides the odd taste of slug slime, they get a numb tongue and cant talk the rest of the night. Lol, $10 well invested!
OK, that’s the interesting things from the day. Hope you are enjoying!
Oh, and one last set of steps… already said it was 150 steps from the street to our room. We its another 150 from the beach to the street. Yah, no fat Italians around here!
August 7th, 2007 – An Afternoon at the Nude Beach – or – OH Look! OH Don’t Look!!
11:00 pm – laying in bed
Today was good and bad. We started off the day by packing up the rest of the pizza from dinner last night between 2 pieces of pizza box cardboard and wrapped in bandanas. Very umm… watertight. All that went in the little green bag for our day-long adventure.
About 9am we trekked down to the water and rented kayaks so we could paddle around. We got them for all day long along with snorkel gear. The plan was to kayak down to the 5th town in the morning, relax, eat the pizza, snorkel a little, and then kayak back in the afternoon. Ha!
Well, our kayaking adventure begin when I, being the experienced seaman that I am, tipped over in the kayak after being in it all of 45 seconds. The paddles were weird and I was headed for another boat and I was trying to stop too quickly and *splash*, in I went. Now, you must remember, I was not in a canoe where the top is all open. I was in a kayak, one big piece of plastic with a hole on top for you to slide your legs in and your torso pokes out the top. So when I went underwater, my legs were lodged inside. Hmm… hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. I freaked out for a second. I remember thinking, “Hmm… legs inside kayak, body underwater, no air underwater. Not good.” But that quickly passed and I slipped out and surfaced (to the relief of my wifey, who I found out afterwards was freaking out more than me. She later told me that she was thinking, “Noo! I don’t want my hubby to drown! We haven’t even left the harbor!”).
Getting back in, however, was not so easy. I have been trained and have many getting-back-in-canoe skills. But my getting-back-in-kayak skills are a bit lacking. So I swam back to the ramp (20 feet away) and got back in (to the amusement of the kayak rental guy, who was thinking, “Stupid tourist, cant even get out of the harbor without tipping over. This is going to be a long day for him.” How right he was.)
Having gotten back in the kayak, we paddled out to sea. That’s right, we are on the sea. No, not a river. The sea. This is a fact I hadn’t considered. My past water experiences have all been on nice, pretty, calm, serene, slow flowing, rivers. Yah, the sea isn’t so calm and pretty. The sea has waves. Waves bounce you. Up and down. Up and down. Down and up. Up and down. Yah. Fluffy gets motion sickness. Up and down and fluffy don’t play well together. However, I paddled on like a good little soldier.
The next thing I learned is that unlike a river, the sea has currents that don’t all go in one direction. And since I am a big guy, I displace a lot of water. That makes me more susceptible to the currents. So I would be paddling one way (while going up and down, up and down, down and up), and all the sudden, my kayak would be pointed out towards sea instead of towards land. Hmm, not good. So I would put myself back in the right direction. Paddle, paddle (up and down), kayak pointed out to sea. So basically, I paddled in a zig zag pattern the whole time. Back and forth, up and down, (ok seriously, I’m getting motion sickness just thinking about it and typing it, no really.)
We paddled for a while and made it past town #2 (we started in #1) and got 1/2 way to #3 and decided to rest on a little rocky beach. However, when I went to get out of my kayak, I couldn’t walk. Not good (my leg had fallen asleep). I called to Bwige for help and she pulled my kayak while I lay there like a limp fish. After a bit I was able to walk and we sat down for a rest. We pulled out the backpack, the one I was wearing when I tipped over in the harbor, the one with our pizza, yah that one. Supprisingly, the pizza was dry! Yah! So we at the pizza before it got any soggier. That was about 10:30. We rested for a few minutes and since Bwige wasn’t feeling great, I decided to go snorkeling. However, since the beach was made up of tiny pebbles, they kept invading my feet and fins so that it was very uncomfortable. When I finally did get my feet clean enough to put them on, as soon as I stepped into the water, my foot was again invaded by little rocks. Arg. Oh well. They will come out when I get in the water. However, when I went to get in the water, I noticed the very forceful waves crashing against large rocks right off the beach. I decided I didn’t want to get smashed against the rocks into lots of pieces and end up like the pebbles on the beach. So I abandoned the snorkeling idea for the moment.
After a bit we got back into the kayaks and paddled on. After more up and down, down and up, and being thrown whichever way the sea deemed fit at the moment, I was getting really tired. My arms were exhausted and my back was aching from sitting so long with no support.. My head was spinning from all the up and down of the sea. I could go no further so we headed for the beach. As we got closer to the beach, Bwige made an interesting observation, we were headed for the nude beach that the guide book had talked about. Hmm… what to do? I could go no further (forwards or backwards) so we just headed for the least occupied part of the beach. Now, I know this wasn’t a great option, but you must remember, when you are hiking and you get tired, you can just sit down and rest. But when you are on the water, if you just stop you get pulled out to sea. So yah, this was the best option at the time.
So we pulled up onto the beach, arms exhausted, backs aching, and legs stiff. We flopped out of the kayaks and lay sprawled out on the beach like a bunch of passed-out drunks. After we recovered for a second, we pulled out kayaks together, and lay on the sand, in the sun, under one of Brigette’s sarongs (which is basically a big thin square piece of cloth). In the end, there really weren’t that many people on the beach, only about 10-12 at most. However, faithful to their surroundings, they were enjoying themselves in the raw.
Now, I do have lots of thoughts on nudity and the like… and I could go into a long deep discussion on the topic, but I’m tired and don’t feel like chasing that rabbit trail tonight, I’m tired. Let me suffice it to say that while it may be fine and fun with your spouse, because of the whole lust and leading other’s to bad thoughts, its probably not the best idea in public.
So there we lay. Sprawled out (and totally clothed, if you were wondering) on the nude beach. Then down the trial comes a family. Hmm, this is going to be interesting. Middle school boy and high school girl lead the way with mom and dad following. Mom and dad stand and stare for a moment, not sure what to think. They have this perplexed look on their face like… is this what I think it is? Interestingly enough, boy and girl pass right on by and head down the beach. They don't seem to be phased. I later figured out that real mom and dad were nudists, and perplexed (who I thought to be mom and dad) were just other beach-goers. However, in the end, all stayed. The perplexed couple set up camp on the entrance side of Bwige and I, and boy and girl and parents set up at the far side of the beach. It was so interesting to watch the faces of people coming down the path… they just seemed perplexed at first, then the just kept going. It was interesting that another boy and girl came with parents (all kept their clothes on) and just went swimming.
Anyways, Bwige and I laid there trying to recover from the beating the sea had given us. However, since we were laying in the sun with only a sarong covering me, we weren’t resting very well. So even though I still felt sea sick and tired, we got back in headed back home. Yes, the plan was to go to town #5, but we only got half way past #3. Oh well, neither of us wanted to be beat up by the sea any more… and our hopes, like the water, were severely dashed upon the rocks.
On the way home, though we had stopped half way, I decided to go all the way in one stretch. I was tired, hungry, exhausted, and didn’t want to stop and delay our homecoming any longer. I don’t know how good of a decision that was, but I made it… barely. I really almost didn’t make it back to the harbor. I was so exhausted from all the paddling. Not only that, I was paddling twice as far as I should have because of all the extreme zig zags I was doing. The up and down of the sea was also making my stomach sick. Sitting in the kayak was making my back hurt really bad and my butt worse. However, through much frustration, we did make it back to the harbor and I literally collapsed onto the rocks and just lay there for a bit. (oh and Bwige was just fine. For whatever reason, weather she displace less water and wasn’t affected by the current or she was just more skilled, she did fine going straight and wasn’t all that tired.) We made it! Praise God!
We finally got up and returned the paddles. I got an ice cream bar on the way home. MAN WAS IT GOOD! I don’t know if that was the exhaustion or the ice cream, but it tasted fantabulous! After passing out on the bed for a few hours, we got up about 7:00 and donned our snorkel gear and headed back to the water. Although we were sore all over, we paid 20 Euros for that snorkel get and we were going to get our money out of it danget! Man am I glad we did.
Snorkeling is so amazing! There is a whole world under the water! We swam around and saw boulders bigger than our house. We saw schools of fish bigger than our house! We saw rocks the size of cars just sprawled out on the sea floor. And we only got 100 yards out into the ocean. Man… I am just so amazed.
Again, I have lots and lots of deep thoughts on this, but I am really tired and falling asleep so I’ll just give them in brief.
First, God did all that. Wow! He made all the different things work together. The fish eat the scum that grows on the rocks. The rocks beat against each other to make pebbles. The moon works to make the waves. It all balances out. (insert part of me digging on the beach and no matter how big a hole I tried to make the sea just filled it in. when I left, it looked as I had never been there. God makes things even out). It just amazes me that God takes care of all the details that we don’t even consider. OK, that didn’t make much sense, but remember, this is a brief. It will make more sense when it is several pages long.
Second, wow, its big! We only saw one cove on one beach on one stretch of one minor sea. Wow! Again, its all there by God’s imagination. He put it there so that we could be amazed and give glory and honor to him for making it all work together.
OK, that’s about it, I’m tired. Its time for bed. We had dinner sitting outside a bar. The food was ok, but not great because it was pretty much microwave dinners. I had pesto w/ pasta (which by the way, pesto was invented in this part of Italy!). Bwige had mushroom pasta. They were good as far as microwave dinners go. Bwige also got a pina colada. However, it was not like the ones in the states which are like slushies. Instead, it was just juice with rum and coconut added (and whatever else is supposed to go in it). Different but not bad. Likewise, my milkshake was just liquid instead of being thick like we are used to. Not bad, just different.
OK, no really this time. I’m going to bed. Goodnight. Tomorrow we plan on hiking the 5 towns (or as many as we can get to).