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I'm really having trouble coming up with new content.. But let me share this moment of my day today.

Bright and early, on my way to work this morning, I was riding with my Aunt Paula, who also works at the Minnehaha Academy. (MA) In the middle of the road, there was a duck, litterally standing there, not moving at all. When we drove a little closer, we noticed that it's beak was tucked in behind the feathers on its back, and was sleeping. Right there. In the middle of the road.

Thought it was kinda weird.

I'm trying to come up with some spiritual warning against falling asleep in the middle of the road like this duck, but I'll let you draw your own conclusions about that.

Card Key Gymnastics

As an employee at Minnehaha Academy, part of my job is to sit at a desk and watch a monitor that shows security cam footage of the front door. When people come, I have been instructed to click two buttons, ask then what they are at the school for, and then let them in based on how they reply. Then, if they seem to check out, I click another button to unlock the door and let them in.

However, this is not the only means for people to enter the building. Full time employees at Minnehaha are given card keys that broadcast a very short distance signal to the receiver on the side of the building, requiring the carriers to bring the key within inches of the wall. Often times, these workers will be carrying a purse, bag, or other miscellaneous objects, making it difficult for them to get at their key card. As a result, they will not bother getting it out, and will try to activate it without removing it from, say, their front pants pocket. Then, they will lift their leg up a little and swing their leg towards the wall to touch it to the receiver. Sitting here, watching the monitor, I've seen people: hip check the wall, turn around and poke their butts against the key card detector. Also, people have jammed purses, wallets, and bags against the receiver, and even hold it in their teeth bending over to waist-height to open the door. Because of this, I, almost sadistically, wait to see how they would open the door with their card key.

I'll prolly keep a running commentary of all the ways that people have "carded in."

Comments and Updates

Two things:

I had a sad experience the other day. Seth P. told me that he read an update on the blog he thought was really funny. Shortly thereafter, I asked him if he had left a comment. He replied negative. It was super depressing, because I rely on comments and feedback in order for (1), knowing when people have read the entry, and (2), improving my writing for your enjoyment. So, you should leave a comment, even if it's just, "nice." or something like that. o.0

Also, I've been thinking about setting up a contact list in my email, and adding "subscriptions" so that you can know when I've made an update. If you want to "subscribe," lemme know, and I will add you to the list, and send you updates when I make a new post. This way, you don't have to check back every time, you can just jump straight to the post. :)

Thanks a bunch,
Paul

Stylin'

A guy walks into a store and starts searching for a new shirt to wear. Confronted with many decisions on what color, size, and shape the shirt he wants will be, he chooses a particular article. Taking his clothing to a dressing room, he tries it on. Admiring it for a second, he murmurs to himself, “This shirt just isn't my style.”

I've come to believe that an attitude and phrasing of a personal style is false: without a preconceived view of someone's “style” there cannot be an article of clothing out of style for an individual.

We are especially swayed by our own opinion of what our style is. For instance, a v neck t-shirt is slightly different from a crew cut. Since I've only ever worn crew neck, I tend to believe that v neck isn't my style. If I were to put it on, I know that would be out of the ordinary to wear such a thing. Also, if people I knew were around me saw it, they would also think it wasn't my style.

Here's the thing: without a preconceived notion of what my style is, bystanders who've never seen me before would not suspect anything, and decide that v neck was my style. Thus, if I wore a crew neck around them after a while of wearing nothing but v necks, they'd see me as though I was breaking my unwritten “code.”

I've attempted a few social experiments of my own, going to movie theaters or dinners dressed in ways that I normally wouldn't even consider wearing to a party with my closest friend, and every time, I've received the same reaction: none. I wasn't out of my style in their eyes.

Therefore, why are we so afraid of changing it up a little bit here and there? Why don't we make it a style to not have one?

Big, Orange, and Pointy

Katie and I decided the other night that we would grab a McFlurry from McDonalds, and then run over to Centennial Lakes park to immediately walk off the extra calories. While there, we noticed a swing that we had sat on once or twice. On it were two, large cones. With a coy smile, I pointed out that it would be pretty uncomfortable to sit on.

Katie replied with a chuckle, "What do they call it? A.. Col-.. Colonoscopy!"

I turned around with a smile, "No, not in this case, this would be a coneoscopy!"

She's Pregnant?

While monitoring the front door at Minnehaha academy as a part of my summer job with the school, I was waiting around for people to come to the door when amazing news struck the main office: Tommy's wife was pregnant.

Who Tommy was or what he was all about still evades me, but as soon as the receptionist broke the news, shrieks, squeals, and screams of joy and wonder flooded the rather large room. Even so, up to 45 minutes after the fact, the ladies in the office picked up the office phone and called more and more people, re-emphasizing the excitement time and time again, even justifying a few long-distance “business-calls” to express their exuberance with others.

Why is this? Certainly it is a joyous occasion, but how could it elicit such a reaction? Had it have been a room of guys, I would presume the reaction would have been something more like, “Mike.. That tiger.. Rawr.” This would come along with some fist bumping, or something of the sort.

At the same time, I envy women this ability to express their joy and excitement; often I find it extremely difficult to do the same. I would imagine that it would be taken in the wrong way if I were to run around with my guy-friends, yipping, yelling, and “YES!-ing.” How do we get away with it, guys? How would we express our joys that “She's Pregnant?”

Keep Lookin'

In order to celebrate my long-awaited graduation from high school, my friend and I, Jonathan Wormgoor, celebrated an open house a couple days ago. I was chatting with my dad, when I noticed a frisbee. Turning around to find someone to throw it to, I noticed a little boy expectantly waiting for me to throw it to him. How could I resist?

Keeping in mind my relative size and strength to him, I carefully calculated the precise power that it would take to gently throw it to him. As the frisbee lofted through the air towards him, everything was going seamlessly. At least, until it did until he looked away.

About a foot from him, he cringed, turned, and altogether missed the frisbee. Being a baseball player, I am very well versed in the “keep your eyes on the ball” adage, but nothing could be farther from the truth. After one more try, hoping he would get it on his own, I grinned, walked to him, and taught in a gentle, loving way what he was doing wrong.

“Make sure that you never look away,” I explained, holding the frisbee a few feet from myself, slowly moving it closer, simulating the flight of the disk, “If you keep looking, you can catch it better.”

That was all he needed. With a small, shy nod from the little boy, we were off again. I stepped back to my position a few feet away as he scampered away to his. With another precision toss, I wafted the frisbee back towards him. As it got closer and closer, I saw he understood what I had carefully taught him. He reached forward, maintained his vision, and snagged the frisbee out of the air with the confidence of a pro.

Huge smile. He flung the frisbee right back, even more excited than before.

After a few more minutes of calm tossing, the young boy's friend noticed what we were doing and decided to get in on the action. Golden hair bouncing in the summer sun, he trotted over, requesting permission to join in. With a quick, affirming glance towards the former participant, I tossed the disk towards the newcomer.

Like the first boy, as it arrived in his hands, he backed down and failed to catch the frisbee. Realizing his obvious blunder, the first boy ran to his side immediately, picked up the frisbee, and held it out, as I had, moments ago, telling him that, “No! No! You gotta keep lookin' at it whole time!”

How often have I not noticed that I have such a great power as to affect not just the person that I am interacting with, but also those of the ones that they mix with? Measuring words has such a great meaning when we keep in mind how many people we can affect.

We gotta keep lookin'.

Messed Up

Well, I've been blogging lately, (Says Paul as he glances through the past three days' worth of posts) and one thing that occurred to me to write about is my typing style. Many people have asked me about why the keyboard on my laptop is so crazy, messed up, or weird. I am posting this to alleviate any confusion on that part. I use a style of keyboard called Colemak.

What is the Colemak keyboard? The Colemak keyboard is a change in the layout of the keys based on the location of easy access of the individual letters. Basically, all of the most commonly used keys are moved to or close to the "home row" where your fingers rest while typing. When the keys are re-arranged in this way, it allows for two things: first, your fingers move nearly 2 times less than they do on a qwerty layout, not tiring your fingers out quite as much, and second, it allows you to type faster because of less movement.

The Colemak keyboard was developed because of the deficiency of the Qwerty keyboard. Qwerty was actually designed to slow typists down. Back when these ancient things called "typewriters" were popular instead of computers, the users were becoming so fast with typing that the hammers which applied the ink to the page would jam. To alleviate jamming, a man named Christopher Sholes gave birth to Qwerty, slowing typists down since 1874.

My math teacher (a wonderful individual, that likes to challenge and monologue to his students), was ranting in class one day about the inefficiencies of some things in math and culture in our society. For instance, the United States has refused to switch to the obviously more efficient Metric System. Another thing he mentioned that day was keyboard layouts and how we are slowed down by the Qwerty keyboard. I took his innocent lecture as a challenge, went home, downloaded it, and began to learn.

This is why my laptop keyboard is so "messed up,"
Colemak

Texting God

Interesting topic, right? Well, I think that it's a valid idea. 

In my (and “our” for those that are my peers) generation, a large part of our daily lives is staying in touch. Not just with ourselves (which in of itself is an important idea), but with others. How do many of us do that? One way that we communicate is through texting, tweeting, and other various Facebook-related tasks that return information to us quickly.

To add to this, if we need to have a deeper, one on one conversation with whomever we are trying to communicate, we then call them, email them, or send an otherwise more detailed message.

Through these two conversations, the short and the long, we build relationships. We relate to the other person and begin to understand them and what they think about whatever the heck it is you may be doing in a deeper and more clarified way. Through this, we construct and strengthen bonds with others.

We can talk to God in the same way. I would propose that we could have little mini-conversations with him throughout the day. For instance, you're driving down the road, notice that it is a particularly beautiful day, and you send him a quick message, “Thank you.” (you can even hit the “quick text” function on your phone). Through this, we can learn to never end a prayer. Your whole day could become one continuous conversation with Him.

Text God.

However, keep in mind that this doesn't eliminate the importance of having in depth conversations and devotionals with Him, we should just add unlimited texting to our plans.

Double Take

In response to Jonah's post on dreaming.. 

I've had a few interesting phenomenon occur while dreaming. People claim that they have dreams such as a never-ending drop, a recurring dream, or even (and as is most commonly portrayed in our culture) the nightmare of going to class without pants. Never having experienced any of these, I have a different "common dream." On occasionally, I have dreamed I've died.. 

The funny thing is, though, as a dreamer, I become very, very skeptical of that which I percieve in my virtual reality. My subconcious mind does a "double take," looks from an objective point of view at my dream, and says, "Yeah right!" With a little chuckle, "That would never happen." And so, calmly, I wake myself up, use the bathroom, and go right back to sleep, care free of any.. Random, outrageous death. 

The Fire Outside

On a plane, there is this truly wonderful thing called the "emergency row." To the airport, flight attendants and everyone therein concerned, they are the locations where people can exit a possibly burning, crashing, or otherwise dying aircraft. To the passengers (especially those over, say, 4'10") it means leg room.

 

Directly above the door was a picture that looked something like this picture. For about five minutes I could not for the life of me figure out what it was.  Some of the following passed through my head:

"If you can shoot a heat ray from your eyes, don't hit the door please."

"Superman, please refrain yourself.."

"Don't open the door to look at the bonfire."

It was just ridiculous! I seriously had no idea until I realized I shouldn't open the door for the fire outside. No, instead we should stay inside the giant metal aircraft and steam like a kettle.

 

Huh. 

 

Dribble

The other day I was sitting on the plane on the way to Indianapolis from Minnesota, waiting for the rest of the passengers to board when this Asian man and his very young toddler walk down the aisle towards the rear of the airplane. When they reached the section that me and two other passengers were sharing, they were forced to stop due to traffic further down the plane.

This man's little girl was a wide-eyed cutie, resting in his arms, examining the rest of the passengers. With one hand, she clung to her loving father and with the other she was grasping a rather large bottle of Dean's milk. As they stood there, I couldn't help but resist waving my hands and smiling a little at her. So I did. For a moment, she just stared at me, wondering what I was doing. The corners of her mouth began to crease with the beginnings of a smile until it was a full blown grin. Little did I realize that she had a huge mouthful of milk.

The white, soon to be sour liquid rushed out of her mouth and all over the man sitting on the end of my row. He'll never know the dribble was my fault.

Four on the Floor

On a recent trip to Florida, I was given the opportunity to drive a beautiful red convertible Mustang Cobra, looked after by an unbelievably skilled driver and mechanic, Dennis Tone, my Uncle. Before we left on the trip, my mom had called to find out if we could stay with him on the way down. In the conversation, she asked Dennis if it would be all right if I were to drive the car. He replied with reassurances it would be golden, except for one small problem: a manual transmission. This should normally not be a big deal, but until that point, I had not a clue how to drive a stick. Still, the idea of strapping the reigns on every pony that Wells Fargo had to offer and getting behind the wheel of this Mustang Cobra thrust upon me the desire to learn.

Of course, my family does not and is not planning on owning a manual transmission vehicle, so we needed to borrow one. I pondered whether or not it would be truly worth it to try and borrow a car, and it felt weird to ask someone. Still, how many more opportunities like this I would have? I decided to give it a shot. I asked my friend the next day at school if he could teach me in his car, but he replied that his truck might not be able to take it. Shows what confidence he has in my driving abilities. Psh!

A few days later, I was at a social event. During a pleasant, passing conversation, I jokingly asked Skip Trudeau if he had a stick shift car he would be willing to let me use, and with a grin and a laugh from deep within, he full-heartedly granted me the use of his pickup.

I swung by his office the next day with my dad, and picked up his keys from his secretary. The first time we checked the keys to see what car we were looking for, we had arrived at the parking lot. We knew we were looking for a Ford or a Chevy. First glances at the revealed over ten Fords and multiple Chevys. A little dumbfounded, we took a stroll through the lot, hoping for inspiration. Luckily, we chose correctly the first time.

My dad, not having driven a stick in many years, jerked, sped, and burned us out of the the lot in the rickety, yet venerable old truck. I laughed, and he grinned as he slowly got reacquainted with driving a 4 speed. This humor was merely foreshadow.

He took us around the block, and down the street a little ways to my church. Arriving in the parking lot, he turned the truck around, threw it in park, and gave me a quick overview on how to drive the monstrosity. As we switched positions in the car, I eyed the parking lot, looking for any unwanted company. Much to my disappointment, there were many people coming and going that could watch me fail.

I plopped into the driver's seat. Doing as my dad said, I pushed the clutch, turned the key, and made sure the car was in first gear. With a slow, cautious release of the break, the car drifted forward as I revved the engine up to speed, ever so gingerly releasing the clutch to find the catching point. I could feel the car getting ready to go, getting ready to move, and at the critical moment: Whump! Dead. Cold. The life that wanted so much to get out on the open road was gone, left not even in first gear.

Thoroughly embarrassed, I looked to my dad for inspiration, but all he could do was laugh. Rolling my eyes, I started the car again as he told me that everyone kills it their first time. I tried again; I took my foot off the brake, pushed the gas, and slowly came off the clutch, but this time I brought the clutch back to fast. The car lurched forward, stopped, lurched again. When I ripped my foot off the clutch and gas simultaneously, I got my second kill for the day.

It was not until my fourth attempt that I got the truck, jumping forward, to not die. Then it was easy, the heavens opened up, and it seemed as though I had it all under control. Shifting into second was a breeze, and braking was cake. All until my dad told me to stop and try starting again, this time with an uphill slant.

Needless to say, it took me almost 8 tries to get out of that.

Boogie-Boarding

I have always enjoyed the ocean. The sound of its powerful waves, crashing onto the sand at the shoreline fill me with one desire: boogie boarding.

Boogie boarding is surfing for those who do not live near the ocean. Instead of being tan, coordinated beasts of the ocean, that shred up waves with unbelievable skill on a surfboard, those like I are milky white, awkward land-lubbers that prostrate ourselves on foam boards, hanging on for dear life. Despite my short-comings, living in an obviously landlocked state, and all, I took great joy in my opportunity to boogie board.

After a short stop at Ron Jon Surf Shop in Cocoa Beach, Florida to pick up a board, we hit the ocean. Stepping over the sand dune, leading down to the ocean, a beautiful sight was beheld by all. The humongous three and four foot swells, breaking down to the water, carrying many a boarder back to the shore was fantastic.

My brother and I ran to the waterline, tearing off shirts, shoes, and socks as we flicked sand on beach goers, burned our feet in the sand, and frightened a little kid or two in our frenzy. Everything was perfect.

Cringing our way in, we tried to get used to the water before anyone or anything could splash us, making us all the more colder. While we glanced around, still taking in the surroundings, we failed to notice a tiny little wave that hit us in the midsection, and splashed water all over us. Burr! At that point, it was better to just jump in. And we did.

We hopped and swam our way out to the big waves. The waves worth riding.

Wave after wave battered us as we tried to find the perfect one to ride. None of them seemed to be the the right one. Occasionally we would try this one or that, but for the most part, they refused to carry us.

Then, the perfect wave loomed on the not so distant horizon. It beautifully rose above our heads, and was going to crest any second. With all haste, I turned around and ran from it, pressing the board to my chest, ready to ride. The watery monster began turning white and began to fall over me, but I was not going to let it go without catching a ride first. I dove away from it and began to paddle, feeling its power surge around me. I was thrown forward, skipping, sliding, and speeding across the water in front of me.

Glorious.

Little did I realize the monster's jaw was closing around me, but grinning, I continued blissfully for another few seconds.

WHAM! Gallons of water hit me in the back like like a freight train. I flipped forward, shooting deep beneath the water. The time I was tumbling beneath felt like hours, and I was so disoriented, that instead of coming up for a breath of air, I went down for a face-full of sand. Realizing the surface was the other direction, I pushed up, and gasped for air. Only, instead of pulling in air, I swallowed a mouthful of salt water.

This instance did not deter me, however, and I was able to continue on boogieing to my heart's content.