Mr. Molasses

For those of you who don't remember (or never saw) the much-beloved, smash hit Saturday morning educational kids' show "The Weird Al Show", the title of this post is a reference to the slowest superhero ever. (By the way, if you wish to see more of the series, I do have it on DVD).

Anyway, the past couple days I've been feeling very slow. At times, my brain kicks down into low gear, and it feels like I'm moving and thinking in slow motion, while the world keeps going normally. These spells only last for a few seconds, but it's quite disorienting. I'm not sure what's causing it, though it seems to happen when I'm not doing anything else. If I somehow learn to control it, I could become the lamest superhero ever--bad enough even to where most Batman villains have cooler "powers".

In some unrelated news, I got my new toy today--a speaker dock for my iPod. Now I can finally fulfill my dream of listening to music in the shower. Though potentially, the neighbors might hear and ask me to turn it down in the future, since it's not that hard to hear things like "I didn't rob no bank" or "Hide the dope, your mom called the cops" while I'm in my room. Don't you wish you lived in a neighborhood as classy as the one I live in?

Giving of Thanks

So, a couple days ago, I was doing my morning prayer on the bus, and Gollum's song started playing on my iPod. I started thanking God that the lyrics to that song aren't true for us--in fact, basically the opposite. Specifically, these lyrics (because these are the opening lyrics):
Where once was light
Now darkness falls
Where once was love
Love is no more
Yeah, I know. A song about an outcast murderer from the soundtrack of a major blockbuster as source for prayer ideas. What can I say? I'm weird.

Anyway, today during connection group, we were talking about things we were thankful for from the past semester, and I thought I'd share. One thing was actually that other lyrics people weren't available to do Salt. Yeah, that meant more work for me, but it more work means I don't get bored...and I've sort of been able to take over the lyrics area (at least for Salt). It makes me feel more important.....though most of the time, I hate feeling important.....sometimes, I just don't understand me.

Anyway, another thing I'm thankful for is linked up above. The cancellation of MMP last week. It's gotten me to start praying on my own more often, and reading my bible regularly--going strong every day since then. So yeah, breaking the normal routine of MMP has helped me take some little steps in my walk with God.

Well, just one day (and two classes) away from Thanksgiving break. I really need it, too.

If only....

Reading my bible today, and I was struck by this passage:

"He is not a mere mortal like me that I might answer him,
that we might confront each other in court.
If only there were someone to mediate between us,
someone to bring us together,
someone to remove God's rod from me,
so that his terror would frighten me no more.
Then I would speak up without fear of him,
but as it now stands with me, I cannot."
-Job 9:32-35 (NIV)

If only there were someone like that.....everything would be so awesome.....

Crazy day

First, I'm going to start off with an update. Yesterday, I posted that my laptop charger was on its way out. Well, a few hours after posting that, it failed completely. Luckily, one of my roommates has a similar computer, so we're going to basically share a charger until my new one arrives--which UPS says will be Monday. As I type this, it's in Missouri.

Anyway, a couple of odd things have happened today. On my way to my first class, I stopped in a men's room. As I was washing my hands, two guys came in, knocked on the handicap stall, and then both entered the stall.

The second odd thing was while waiting for my second class, I was rubbing my eyes to get the last of that sleep build-up out and it looked like dried blood. My thought process after that is as follows: "Hey, if I'm crying blood, that's probably a good excuse to skip out on class. Let's see if that's the case. Nope, regular tears. And now I'm crying in class. Crap. You know, it's probably better that I'm not crying blood. Whenever that happens on House, it's a bad sign." I was then on the verge of tears for the rest of class from (internally) laughing at myself.

And now for something that may be shocking. I'm not going to Anthem tonight. For the first time since becoming a Christian, I'm going to miss out on an Anthem concert. Part of this is due to the critical attitude I had at the last Ames Anthem I went to. Part of it is that I'm not really in the "normal" age range of attendees there. The average age at Anthem in Ames is far younger than Adoleo and Anthem in Iowa City. Ames packs in high school and middle school kids, college kids, and not much older. Iowa City, on the other hand, is college and post-college people. I know, that's not a great reason, but it's part of a bigger "I don't really fit in in the Ames Salt crew anymore". Almost everyone I knew back there has moved on in the world--marriages, babies, real jobs, new cities, new churches, etc. Cornerstone isn't my "home church" any longer, and I guess I fully realized that at the Spring Anthem. My home church doesn't have a home. My home church comes in a trailer, and holds services in bars, hotels, and theaters.

Typing that last paragraph reminded me of something in my prayer this morning. I was thanking God for not listening to me about not sending me here. I resisted so much to the idea of coming to Iowa City, but now that I'm here, in Veritas, helping out in what little ways I can, I can't believe that I fought against the move.

Well, I've got Spanish class in 10 minutes, so I need to wrap this up. Um.....bye.

Power to the Laptop!

Last night, I noticed that my laptop's power cord was starting to go bad. At times, it will act like it's unplugged, and my laptop won't charge. It's not completely gone yet, though, as a little jiggling or unplugging and plugging it back in gets it going again. Well, this is unacceptable. I can't wait for it to be completely bad to start thinking about a replacement, so I ordered that this morning. It should be here in a few days--I hope the current cord lasts until then. I also ordered one of those iPod dock/speaker setups, because I've wanted to be able to listen to music in the shower since I lived in Ames and saw that someone else had a similar setup. That will take a little longer to arrive, but that's okay. I still have no idea where I can put it in the little basement bathroom. There's not much room in there that isn't taken up by the fixtures.

And now for an update. I mentioned this long ago, but I'm finally getting around to jumping through the last hoop for going to classes at the University. I'm going to the student health clinic after class today to fix the problem of the records for MMR vaccination--by just going ahead and getting the shots again. And of course, the prices mentioned in that post have gone up. They're now $190 for getting the shots again, and $367 for the test to prove that I've already gotten them. So, as I said before, I'm going with the cheap option and getting another round of the shots.

Techie to the core

As I've mentioned before, I am a little serious when it comes to running lyrics. Well, last night, my roommate was running lyrics, and I was sitting next to him. He would occasionally ask me about timing--should he put up the next slide, should he blank the screen, etc.--and I realized something. My timing is good because I know the songs really well, and I know the songs really well because I listen to worship music a lot. What I realized, however, was this: part of the reason I listen to worship music as much as I do is so that I can be better at running lyrics. Yes, I love worship music, but that's not the whole reason I listen to it. I see it as part of a job. When I'm at the church computer, it's MY JOB to make sure that the right slides are shown at the right time, and to correct any misspellings/typos in the slides. In essence, when I'm listening to Gungor, Phil Wickham, David Crowder, Adoleo, Anthem, etc., part of me is mentally preparing for the next time I'm on the schedule.

I know, I'm weird. But if I wasn't, this blog would be far less interesting to read.

No MMP? No Problem.

Monday morning prayer was canceled this week because the Veritas staff was all out of town. Happily, this meant extra sleep. Sadly, this meant no meeting with other believers to lift each other up to start the week. However, I decided to use the bus ride to class to have a little "Martin's Monday Morning Prayer". This was a rousing success, with a 100% turnout rate--and we listened to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack to add to the mood. After praying for the entire 20-minute bus ride, I went ahead and planned on continuing that, and just giving the bus ride as time to chat with the Father.

I spent this morning's bus ride in prayer, and continued on my way into the IMU (to pick up the Des Moines Register, even though I haven't actually read it in about 2 weeks). Then I had another idea. I don't often read my Bible--and by that, I mean I haven't read in about 2 weeks as well--and I've got another bus ride ahead of me where I get nothing accomplished. Why not read it then?

So that's the plan as it stands now. Bus ride to school: prayer time. Bus ride home from school: Bible time. I'm not sure what to do about Saturday and Sunday, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I'm also not sure how long I'll follow through on what I'm saying, so we'll have to wait and see.

Signs of a bad day

There are a few things that I only seem to do when my day sucks. If the first thing I do when I get home is to walk out on the deck and throw a rock into the pond out back, my day is below average. If I immediately follow this up with killing computer-generated enemies and/or ordering a pizza, it's bad (however, ordering a pizza without the rock throw simply means I want pizza).Whenever I bust out the Swedish rave music, things are going very badly--not that anybody would actually know what I'm listening to (unless they ask me directly). Naturally, I say this because I was playing it recently--Friday, to be specific.

You see, two weeks ago, there was a pancake party after Salt. I didn't go, saying that I had a test and a speech the next day. I was also stuck on the topic for the speech. I couldn't come up with anything. So I did what made sense. I skipped that class. This past Friday, I showed up to class (after hearing everyone else give their speeches) and found out that I was back in the rotation--still with absolutely nothing close to a speech ready. I said as much, and got to have a nice, long talk with the teacher after class.

So now, because of a massive, month-long brain fart, I'm going to fail that class. I spent my next class completely unable to focus and hating myself for failing, then went home while listening to the Swedish rave music, threw a rock in the pond and ordered a pizza. I spent the weekend in self-loathing.

I'm feeling better now, so y'all can stop worrying about me--at least, for a while. As has been mentioned before on here, I'm not exactly stable.