Everything's coming up Milhouse!

You ever get that feeling that EVERYTHING is going super great, so there must be a catch? Things are going too well; something bad is for sure gonna happen.

Haha, Nah!!

Things are good! Its been an excellent week in Aimerville.

My boss dragged me out to a furniture sale and persuaded me to pick out a nice new-to-me oak desk for my office. And then he proceeded to move everything out of my office, including the carpet! Now, I was hesitant to let him do this; he's been wanted to tear my office apart for two years - I had visions of it going very, very bad! BUT! It's awesome! Fresh paint, new floor, new desk; it looks great! And, it only took 3 days - hallelujah!

Then I went to Wonderland with some fun friends! Always a good time. Although, I am getting old. I came home with various bruises on my shoulders, hips, knees - anything that banged against those fun restraints! Probably mildly concussed too - man your head bangs around a lot on some of those rides! I'm thinking next time I go, it should be through the week in September or October; maybe the lines would be shorter. Oh, also, I'll just ride the Behemoth all day! That thing is AWESOME!!

And then, I was dragging my tail around at work (because of having gone to Wonderland the day before) and the boss says 'Hey, lets all take the afternoon off and go sailing!'. Well... can't argue with the boss now can we? So I went sailing. Beautiful day for sitting around on a boat in the sunshine!

And then, to top it all off, I got word from some very dear friends of mine in Ottawa that WE'RE GOING TO ENGLAND NEXT SUMMER!!! AHHH!!! So exciting! I really hope it works out! I've got one year to save up the appropriate funds - bring on the penny pinching!

Tomorrow, I'll finish putting my office back together. And then its long weekend time! Woohoo!

Ragamuffin

I've been slowly reading 'The Ragamuffin Gospel' by Brennan Manning as of late. It's a bit of a change up from the last book I read (Lamb). For starters, there's no swearing in it; also it is not a novel, but more of a 230pg essay on grace and how people just don't get it even though its so darned simple.

You know what I like? As starkly contrasting as these two books are, they preach the same message. A message of unconditional love and abounding grace.

The consistency of that message is a reminder that all I have to do is reach out to God's love - let Him love me for who I am. Also, I should probably be trying harder to mirror those characteristics in my own life.


Quote for the day:

If Jesus appeared at your dining room table tonight with knowledge of everything you are and are not, total comprehension of your life story and every skeleton hidden in your closet; if He laid out the real state of your present discipleship with the hidden agenda, the mixed motives, and the dark desires buried in your psyche, you would feel His acceptance and forgiveness.
~ Ragamuffin Gospel

God knows I'm a screwup. Oh, does he know! But He loves me anyway. And He loves you too. Now, the trick is, to get us to love each other, (or at least, respect each other, or at the very least, quit judging each other), the way He loves the both of us.


I like this 'ragamuffin' concept. I've heard about it before...

Things are lookin up!

Hey Hey! My pension plan is finally earning money again! Maybe I'll actually get to retire someday!

So lately I've been trying to find decent investment options for my work, with very little luck. Because, as we all know, interest rates have tanked.

With Prime hovering around 0.9%, low-risk investments (GICs and the like) are paying about 1% interest per year. Woot. You might as well stuff your money in your couch cushions - the money you collect from people's lost pocket change is sure to be better than what the banks are paying!

Heck, apparently, the TD bank is paying a whopping 0.0001% per year on 1 year GICs!! They don't even want your money!!

On the flipside, they're more than willing to loan you their money. At 7 or 8%! That's right, someone's making a boatload of money, and it ain't us!

But did you know that you can purchase shares in that big bank? That big bank that is raking in billions of dollars per year in profit. Not only that, those shared pay dividends. Dividends. A portion of the profit, each and every year. Right now, BMO shares are running at about $50 each. They pay about 5% in dividends. Not a lot, but way better than what the same bank is paying you in interest on your savings account!

And then, there is this lady:

Local Woman enjoys Million-dollar Birthday.

*sigh* You just never know....

Who do you trust?

A week ago, I saw this pop up on a friend's facebook status:

Amber alert 3 yr old girl taken in Waterloo by a man driving a new silver truck plate 72B381 KEEP IT GOIN SO THEY CAN FIND HER!!

Within an hour, someone had commented that it was a hoax.

Today, another friend had this as her facebook status:

AMBER ALERT IN OSHAWA - 3 YEAR OLD GIRL TAKEN BY MAN DRIVING NEWER SILVER TRUCK PLATE # 72B 381 If all of you reading my status would copy and paste this amber alert into your status, it could potentialy save a little girl's life.

Same license plate #, different city.

I warned her that it is a hoax, and googled it. I got a link to an article about Urban Legends spread via social networking sites such as facebook and twitter.

The fake alert started last February, with the city listed as Idaho Falls, ID. From there, it has spread over and over and over again, always with a different city, always with the same license plate number.

It makes me wonder who in their right mind would start such a rumour? And how many people, in equally ill taste, have perpetuated the rumour by knowingly changing the city and passing it on?

I know we all want to believe that people are generally good, but once in awhile we get a real winner who screws things up for the rest of us and plays us all for a bunch of fools.

Please, please, please, when you get information from a shifty (aka non-news) source, check the facts before you pass it on.

Aw, Fark!

What?

Oh, so, 'Fark' is not some new slang I have picked up, it is actually a website. www.fark.com

It is a catch-all for mostly useless news. "It's not news, It's Fark!"
Suppose you are reading a news article on the internet and suddenly you stop and tilt your head a little to the right, and your jaw drops, and you squint your eyes a little, and you say 'wha?'. THAT is where Fark comes in. Fark is a website where people from all over the world submit these slightly ridiculous news articles, and then the best ones are picked and published on the main page every day.

I get an RSS feed on Google Reader (very helpful tool) from the local paper. Today, a certain headline stopped me in my tracks: 'Cops Talk to Man about "ill-fitting thong" '.

Now, if that is not Fark-worthy enough as is, upon opening the article, I noticed that this incident happened in Clearview Twp. CLEARVIEW. Indecent Exposure. Need I say more? Come on! You've gotta be smiling a little!

I pointed this out to a friend of mine, and he immediately submitted it to Fark. So, we've sort of been waiting around all day hoping that it will eventually show up on the main page. But alas, only about 5% of submissions are picked to be published, and ours is not there yet. So much for that 30 seconds of fame.

Story

I've been thinking a lot about stories over the past couple days.

A wise man, by the name of Brett Andrews, once taught me that stories are how people relate to each other. By telling you my story, I am opening the door for you to tell me your story. Through this shared storytelling, we get to know, respect, and trust one another. Eventually, this storytelling opens doors for evangelism: the sharing of God's story. (That was the bible college context anyway.)

I've been telling a lot of stories lately. Stories about my past. Stories that are, hopefully, helping me to make a point, or to make sense of the present. I think that storytelling is what defines us as human: being able to share our stories, our past experiences, our take on life. Without that ability, what would we be?

I have come to realize that stories are unique to the person telling them. That even though you and I shared the same experience, your story of that event and my story of that event are going to be different. That doesn't mean that one of us is wrong, or that one of us is lying, we just have different perspectives, different views of the same experience.

And maybe that's the beauty of storytelling. My story on its own is biased, and probably a little self-serving. Your story on its own is too. Each one of us only holds our own perspective, an incomplete story. But when we share our stories with one another, especially stories of like experiences, our stories are completed with perspectives from various views. And interwoven between those two stories, those stories which at first glance seem so starkly different, interwoven between those stories, is the truth.

Will you share your story with me? Can we discover the truth together?

Unconditional

When did the world forget what 'unconditional' means?
Or did the world ever really know?

I've been thinking about that word a lot lately.
In regards to friends.
In regards to lovers.
In regards to God.

Without conditions. No-strings-attached love.
Is that love at its purest?
Is that kind of love actually attainable?

I just finished reading my new most favourite book on the planet: Lamb - the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore.

This book takes the fact that we are missing 99.9% of the details of Christ's life from birth to age 30, and in a very fictional sense, fills in the gap with the help of Jesus' best buddy Levi (who is known as Biff).

I'll put a disclaimer on here right now: This book is full, FULL, of sex and swearing and completely made up things. Jesus himself drops the F-bomb on numerous occasions. I would feel bad letting my mother, or my pastor, or my best friend, or anyone under the age of 20, read this book.

On the first page, there is a quote that says, 'God is a comedian playing to an audience that is afraid to laugh.' ~ Voltaire

If you are afraid to laugh, then you probably shouldn't read this book.

The book is fictional, the book is obscene, the book is funny! But it also portrays Jesus as a man with an exceedingly enormous amount of unconditional love for all. And maybe that's why I like the book so much.

Maybe we people can't actually fully grasp unconditional love, what with our self-centered, self-serving, greedy and sinful ways. But, maybe that's just a lame excuse to not even try.

Personally, I'd like to think that its easier than it sounds!

1+1= chaos?

I was sitting in church this morning listening to this young preacher kid talk about God and Creation and stuff and I started meandering down my own little bunny trail of thought...


1+1=2, 2+2=4, This is a given. We know this. It doesn't change (dear math geeks - just... let me have this one, ok?). It is absolute. We can always rely on the fact that 1+1=2. Always.

We can also rely on God to be absolute. Always. (If you need me explain that one, well, maybe you should spend some time in church yourself.) The omnipotent, omnipresent, all loving, caring, just, righteous, graceful, merciful, etc, etc, Creator God. Never changing; absolute. Always.

And also, the natural world around us is full of things that we come to rely on, to take for fact, to expect to always be constant and never changing: The sun rises and sets, gravity holds us in place, seeds grow and reproduce, water is wet, ants build up their ant hills just before a rain, leaves turn colour and fall off trees, etc, etc, etc. It just is. And we rely on it to always be constant and never changing.

So we live in this world where everything around us is constant and reliable and unchanging. Fact. Absolute.

And then....
There are people.

And for all intensive purposes, we, people, are chaos!!

Everything about us is always changing. And I don't mean that we grow up and become wiser and get jobs and stuff like that. I mean, daily, constantly, we have factors at play in our lives which change the way we view the world around us.

Our emotions alone are a huge factor. Today, grumpy; tomorrow, happy. Why? Just because. But also: our current state of spirituality, friendship circles, moods, living arrangements, amount of sleep, health, food eaten for lunch, the weather. So many things are at play which affect the way we live on a minute by minute basis. And this in turn affects the way we handle situations around us; how we interact with other people. Really, it's a wonder that any of us are friends with anyone else! With all those factors at play, how do you even begin to predict how someone else is going to react to something you say or do?

It makes me stop and think. People are not absolute. People are not unchanging. And yet we often treat each other the opposite of this.

Maybe I should start showing a little more grace towards people; a little more caring, compassion and understanding. After all, I don't know what's going on in your head, but if you're just trying to navigate the chaotic waters of life like I am, wouldn't it be better if we weren't all a bunch of jerks about it?

Just to clarify:

I agree with the turtle.

Area Code 917 is in New York City

Why do I know this?

Because I looked it up.

After I got two calls from the same number.

At 4am.

A thin blue line

straight down the right hand side of my laptop screen.

Google seems to suggest that it is a prominent problem in Toshiba machines. *Le sigh*

Time for a new laptop!


.....


HAHAHA!
Good one Amy, good one.

Wiiiiiiiii.............

My Wii quit working. It just won't turn on. No power. No lights. No nuthin'.
It makes me go 'aw crap! I spent a bunch of money on this stupid thing and now what?'
Also, my bro bought me a rather expensive game for my birthday which I was sorta hoping to play (I think he was trying to suck up just before he asked me to MC his wedding.)

Anyway, I did what any self-reliant, non-techie, but not-a-complete-schmo, would do: I googled it.
"Wii won't power on"
And, bammo! Answer. There's a surge thingy in the power cord; unplug it all, wait a bit, plug it back in, should be good to go. I like answers like that.

It should be good to go now. Lets hope it works, otherwise, I've got a pretty pricey paperweight.

What did we ever do without Google?