Burger’s B-Day

You know its a Sunday evening and normally Sunday nights are pretty busy for me and today really is no exception.  First of all Mondays are my busiest day so I have to put in a lot of time to get ready for it and being that I take a nap which lasts all afternoon, that pretty much fills up my evening.  And tonight I have to go to choir practice at 9.  Oh yeah you read that right, choir practice.  Our hall has put together a choir and I believe that we get to sing at one chapel at the end of the year or something so yeah I still can’t sing but I’m not sure that anyone in the choir can so thats totally cool.  Not to mention it is really hard for me to sit down and do work these days because I have been on the biggest reading kick of my life.  This week I burned through the Screwtape Letters and started The Case for Christ, which has been excellent up to this point.  So that makes it really hard to do work when you see that book there just calling you saying, “Read me.”  So tonight is busy but earlier tonight, I had the privilege of going to a B-Day party.  It was a kid on my floor.  His name is Josh Burger.  He is a freshman and has epilepsy.  Tonight was really cool as there was about thirty people who went to Chili’s to celebrate with him.  I ended up sitting next to his parents and chatted with them.  I know it meant a lot to me to see the priceless grin on Josh’s face, I can only imagine what it meant to his parents.  It was really cool and you know the most important thing in this world is people, they also take the most time.  It really was awesome to be there tonight.  Josh was as usual drinking his Dr. Pepper, he loves his DP and drinks it non-stop.  After dinner then his mom brought out the cake and asked if we were all ready for some cake.  Someone asked what kind of cake it was and it was of course Dr. Pepper cake and thats when it hit me… 

A day to look back on

You know some days in your life seem like they just come and go and you probably won’t ever remember them.  I think back to Tuesday of last week.  Now I know I went to some classes and to chapel and stuff, but other than that I don’t think I could tell you one thing that happened to me that day and that was only like 9 days ago.  Your memory is based off of emotions.  That is why you remember emotional things and forget things that don’t bring emotion.  So I remember winning a state championship because there was a lot of emotion there for me, I don’t remember what color shirt I wore last Tuesday because it didn’t evoke a strong emotion from me.  However there is also another way to boost your memory and that is to have something that you constantly look at as a reminder.  It is for this reason that this Tuesday is a day to remember, for I changed my hair again.  I don’t know whats going on, its like I’m becoming a freak show or just being a rebel, or I’m starved for attention.  But really I just thought it would be cool for a while and we’ll see how it looks as it continues to grow out.  Most people have likened me to M&M (or something like that) I preferred to be called skittles though and thats when it hit me… 

Youll never guess

So lately I have been on this whole reading kick (disclaimer: though some parts of this story are fabricated for my pleasure and hopefully for yours as well, some parts of this story are true, and all parts involving my new found love of reading are pretty much true.  I think it started over spring break when I read two books, the second of which is called “Triangle Kingdom.”  I learned a lot from this book but lest you get that glazed over look in your eyes that I have seen plenty of when I begin to talk about this book I will spare you the details of it.  I think the biggest thing I learned though is that there are a lot of really smart people out there who know have probably forgotten more things than I will ever know.  In short there is a lot to know in this world and if I’m ever gonna know it all I need to get cooking.  So yesterday I made a little run to a bookstore.  It was across town and I picked out two books to read, one I’ve always wanted to read and that is the “Screwtape Letters” by Clive Staples Lewis and the other is the “Case for Christ” which was recommended by the author of the book I just finished.  Fast forward to today, I’ll return to fill in the details of the drive home later.  Today I went in to talk to the secretary of the theology dept. and low and behold they were giving away a library of books.  They were all free.  I dug through for a while and picked a few out and so I’m pretty stoked about that.  But back to yesterday and my trip home from the bookstore.  So I am driving home and I’m pretty excited to delve into my new books and being that my evening is somewhat empty I figure I should get some good reading done, but then you’ll never guess.  I saw a billboard and I couldn’t believe it.  It was a picture of none other than my roommate’s girlfriend Nikki Mills.  She was who we went to TN to watch play basketball and there she was in Springfield on a billboard.  It was a shot of her playing in the tournament.  I couldn’t believe it I just stared at it and stared and stared and stared and thats when it hit me… or maybe I should say I hit it but thats another story. 

The Proverbial Road Trip

I know I already wrote about going to Tennessee but I think that it is important to look at the road trip aspect of it.  Road trips are just great.  There is nothing like throwing a bunch of stuff together and jumping in a car and going.  I was the co-pilot for the entirety of the trip, but my navigation skills were excellent.  We almost got lost about 3 hours into the trip, but even at 4:30 in the morning my mind was working like the steel trap that it is and we hung a few lefts and a right or two and we got where we needed to go.  There is just nothing like the high pressure situation of needing to know where to turn with a road map sprawled out, you got to love it.  Another aspect of the trip was definitely the music.  I put a little mix together featuring some of the greatest music from the 80’s.  Its important to stay connected to your roots and being that I was born in the 80’s, I need to stay in touch with that time.  There was definitely some major power ballads going on and the power mullets as well.  The timing was off for me though as I didn’t have my mullet, but I think a pic of that mullet is in order today.  One of my favorite songs on the list was “total eclipse of the heart” which is off the album Mullets Rock! Too!: Mullets in Love.  A title like that can bring a man to tears.  It makes me sad that there were no mullets around for my mullet to fall in love with, that is a sad tale.  Some other songs that were featured on the mix were “Here I Go Again”, “Sweet Dreams”, “Don’t Stop Believin”, “I Ran”, and “Jack and Diane” just to name a few.  The other great thing about road trips is the conversations that you have along the way.  Me and my pilot had some good convo about lots of different things.  Some of the conversations did get a little out there as it got late.  It is important though to realize that so much time in a car can really give you lots of time to think and discuss.  So many times we don’t ponder the things that matter most.  One of the things we pondered was the true and most correct usage of the word proverbial.  There is a lot to it so don’t pass that off as a light subject.  We discussed many things like that, such as can a flavor of ice cream be bad or does the fact alone that it is ice cream make it good.  These are the questions that we must ask ourselves and thats when it hit me… 

Tennessee!!!!

So me and my roommate had an awesome weekend out in Jackson, TN.  We left at one thirty on Friday morning and got there at seven.  I mean if you really want to have some fun on a three day weekend the best way to maximize your time is to not sleep.  We actually drove through the night though so that we could watch my roommates girlfriend play in the NAIA Div. I National Basketball Tournament.  We saw them in second round action and it was so fun.  She plays for Carroll College which is in my hometown.  I can’t say that I have cheered so intensely for a team in years.  When I really thought about it, I would have to say it was when I was a sophmore in high school.  Their team won that game and I was stoked.  They moved on to the elite eight which is farther than any other team in school history, which is sweet.  Nothing like setting records.  We also got to spend some quality time with some really good people.  Many of the players and their families were from Montana or Wyoming and you know what, I really like people from there.  I hadn’t ever met those people before hand but we had some really good conversations.  I felt really at home around all of them.  In fact it was almost as if home met us in TN for the weekend.  I even met a graduate from my high school who was one of the first to be placed in the hall of fame.  It is always and honor to be in the company of true bru that is for sure.  I met another lady who was related to the parents of one of the kids that I played football and basketball for as long as I can remember.  Sometimes its a small world.  This was just an awesome road trip and I loved every minute of it.  There were so many memorable moments.  Things that I just won’t ever forget.  One would have to be towards the end of the drive there it was about 6:30 and we were listening to Men without Hats  ”Safety Dance” it has a high pitched techno beat that can mesmerize you in the day, but it was on and we were driving under a bridge with just cross beam after cross beam and my partner in crime says to me, “do you ever feel like your living in a dream” and thats when it hit me… 

Passion Week

This week, being the week leading up to Easter has been passion week in my dorm and so we have had chapel at 10 every night.  The services have been so good thus far and I am really looking forward to tomorrow’s as the speaker spoke last week and was real good, real good.  This week I have spent a lot of time worshipping, especially tonight since I went to youth group and then to chapel, but the more time I spend pondering the death of Jesus on the cross, the more I realize that I will never truly understand what He has done for me, nor can I do anything to ever deserve or repay him.  I have heard some vivid descriptions of death on the cross and its like I hear it every time and it sinks in, but it seems as if I need to hear it one more time to grasp it, because I just can’t get a full handle on it.  This week has been amazing though.  It is good that I am getting my Easter time in now though because me and my roommate are heading to Tennessee for the week end.  We are going to be leaving in about 24 hours exactly.  Now depending on when you are reading this that may seem like a fairly normal plan, but I am writing this at about 12 on thursday night, 12 midnight.  We are going to watch his girlfriend play in a B-Ball tournament and her game is at 10:45.  It’s a six hour drive, add in getting there in time to watch warm-ups and eating breakfast, well you do the math as to when a good time to leave would be.  I have done the math and there isn’t a good time so midnight it is.  It should be a good time.  I blogged about my b-day a week ago and I’m still getting cards in the mail (feel free to send one if you like) which is great, I love the extended b-day.  Well I got one from a certain uncle, with some fun tickets in it.  Oh fun tickets are the best.  And the bigger the number on that green fun ticket, the better it is.  So here I am in my dorm with my fun tickets, eating candy that I got for my b-day out of this pretty pink bag that some girl named Victoria, who was trying to keep a secret, lost and thats when it hit me… 

Rock what you got

This is somewhat of a retroactive blog as I mentioned in my last blog the EU:24 event that took place last weekend here on the Evangel campus.  The campus was just full of people all friday, I mean the sidewalks were just covered.  The school worked really hard this year to try and bring some more kids in to help raise admissions.  One of the things that they did in order to draw kids in was to bring in some bands and have a concert.  So they brought in the “rock what you got” concert.  This concert had five bands.  I only remember three of them however, Disciple, KJ-52, and Superchick.  In case you were wondering Superchick was the big ticket of the tour that actually kicked off on friday as they had their first performance at EU.  You know this concert really brought me back to my high school days.  I thought of my buddies Nick and TJ back home, who would have scolded me for sitting in the balcony.  If those guys had been there all three of us would have been front and center, you can bet your bottom dollar on that.  We all went to a concert last year that had very much the same feel to it and so I got that nostalgic feeling.  So did a buddy sitting next to me who used to be in a band that had previously opened for Disciple.  We both sat there for a while, obviously not in silence.  We just kind of looked forward without looking at anything.  Life goes so fast.  I don’t know what to say, it just does and you look back at the memories you have and sometimes you really wish you could go back for a day or two.  I know my buddy really wanted to be up on that stage playing with his band.  But I do have to say that while I am a rock’n'roll guy KJ-52 took the cake with his rap.  I sat in the balcony and laughed the whole time.  It was like a real rap concert, everyone with their arms going up and down, in the chapel.  And then these two elderly ladies sitting next to us stood up and joined in, I pretty much lost it, in the words of KJ, all his good friends call him Tweesa though, it was more messed up than Donald Trump’s haircut.  And then he sang a song for all the caffeine addicts.  The song was titled Mountain Dew and thats when it hit me…  

Stupid little freshman

I always remember my older brother saying how when he was a freshman in high school our oldest brother called him a stupid little freshman, which is funny because my oldest brother was only a sophmore then.  Well this weekend we had what was formerly known as crusader days and is now known as EU:24.  Evangel put on some big events to try and get prospective students to visit.  I volunteered to host a student for the night.  The kid never spent much time with me because he came with his youth group.  Actually I thought he was gonna be a no show because I didn’t meet him until one that night.  And when I did, you guessed it, I found out that he was freshman.  So we talked a little but there really wasn’t a lot to talk about being that he wasn’t even remotely interested in thinking about college or anything of the sort.  He just wanted to stay up really late since his parents weren’t around.  He left early the next morning, I was still in bed, though that doesn’t necessarily mean it was early.  But here is what got me.  The next day I tried to think back to when I was a freshman in high school.  I did this for a while but there is so much that I can’t remember.  I remember we went to Tulsa for spring break, and played Rocky on the PS2 most of the way there.  I remember I was in Bible Quiz.  I remember me and my buddies used to thumb wrestle a lot.  But I can’t remember lots of things, like what I would do on the weekends for fun.  I can’t really remember who my good friends were then.  I can’t remember what kind of music I was into.  I’m sure if you take the time to think about it you will be surprised at how much you have forgotten too.  When I do things like that it really makes me ponder what is important.  I mean that was four years ago.  So when I graduate from college, I will have forgotten the same things about myself right now.  It is weird to think like that.  One thing I do remember from my freshman year is this time when I found a pair of pants in my closet and wore them to school.  They were black and I thought they were cool.  But when I saw my brother at school, who I rode to school with that day and he had not commented on my pants then, he looked at me and said, “Nice pants, what are you turning into a goth?” and thats when it hit me… 

Spring has sprung

The weather has been so nice here since I have been back and I have been getting into season.  The first thing I have been doing hopefully isn’t just seasonal.  I have started waking up and doing yoga (OHYAH).  This is my attempt to prevent from becoming old and fat too prematurely.  All my years of football have left me all beat up.  I’m just a pieced together has been.  And there is no way I am gonna go lift weights just for the fun of it.  So instead hopefully yoga will help piece my body back together so I won’t need a cane when I’m 30.  In the afternoon though with the great weather I went out and played some tennis.  Now tennis is hard and I am really bad at it but it felt so good to be outside and then on my way back from playing tennis I ran into some guys playing catch with a baseball.  It has been years since I have played and so I had to stop.  I ended up throwing the ball for about an hour.  It took me a while to warm and see if my shoulder (one of those football injuries) had any juice left in it.  I was stoked when I found out it did.  I just love the sound of good pop when the ball hits the glove.  Man it brings me back.  It crazy the weather is so nice though and thats when it hit me… I’m not in Montana anymore.  Montana only has 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter and road construction. 

My birthday

Excuse me for having taken yesterday off of blogging.  I could name you a thousand excuses but hey excuses are well I mean I just won’t.  I was really tired yesterday, it was my first day back in class but more importantly it was my birthday.  I had a great day, I got phone calls from all of my family as well as presents (which I mean come on we all know thats where its at).  And then some friends here through a party for me too, which was awesome their was an ice cream cake from the DQ.  It was super good and a really good time.  I mean overall the day was a success.  Now for the day I wore some interesting attire.  I wore a shirt and tie which I totally was digging however those seemed to be overshadowed by the shades.  A buddy of mine saw U2 in 3D over break and was showing me his classes.  He offered me a couple bucks if I wore them all day, so I did.  Then he gave me the two bucks at my party.  It was really satisfying, it was like I earned a present.  But the classes really through people off, in fact some people didn’t recognize me.  Given the haircut and the glasses a lot of people would look at me and then disregard me only to be shocked when they figured out it was me.  I had one teacher that really digged them though and he called me cool cat all class and that was a 2.5 hour class, so that was a lot of cool cat.  But here is the deal I am now 19.  I have only one more year as a teenager and I need to go out with a bang.  I’m not sure what I’m going to do but I was thinking maybe a tattoo would be cool, I’m jk mom… but seriously.  But when I figure out what I’m going to do I’m sure it will hit me.  But right now I want to satisfy a request for all my DC talk lovers.  Pulling out my big black book, cause when I need a word defined thats where I look, so I moved to L’s quick fast, in a hurry, threw on my specs, thought my vision was blurry, I looked again but to my dismay, it was black and white with no room for gray, Ya see, a big “V” stood beyond my word and yo thats when it hit me… that luv is a verb.