Not Bad, Scorsese

last night, the movie didn't happen because of some ticketing issue. we decided to come home, have a bowl of ice-cream and catch up on our t.v. shows we've been missing for the last couple of months that we've been apart. it was a nice time, and i'm sure something we'll be doing a lot. but we went to see a matinée of shutter island today and it was pretty good. i'm not entirely sure i was satisfied with the very ending, for reasons i won't disclose here because i'm sure a lot of people haven't seen it yet.

but yeah, it was good.

church this morning was great, continuing on in the series on jonah. pastor bruce's sermon was so encouraging for my wife and i, as it was about redeeming a city as opposed to going out to the small outside villages. it's our desire to do work in hong kong, a major city, that there would come forth a large group of chinese missionaries to the chinese people outside of the major cities, which is where a lot of work must be done. i haven't seen a strong emphasis on changing hong kong as a city, and since it has millions of people living there, it seems like it should be a priority.

got to talk about hong kong with one of our flatmates today, patrick. it was cool because he had been there on float in the navy for about 9 days. it's always interesting to hear an outside story of what the city is like because we are so obsessed with it. different people have a different flavored impression of what it's all about out there and how it's like. i love listening to it. pretty much i just love hong kong and everything about it.

tonight, christin and i made dinner and hung out at home in our new place. it really is beautiful out here, and quiet! it's good to be in our own place, even though there are people living upstairs and all, it still feels really private. i'm looking forward to a productive week with my schoolwork and hopefully a successful time at the unemployment office [tomorrow — please pray] and a job search throughout the week. also, please pray that christin and i would make good on our efforts to learn cantonese quickly and efficiently.

Retroactive Anti-Failure

my lack of real world experience in the field of actually speaking cantonese to living, breathing human beings is probably my biggest downfall. today, that downfall was somewhat remedied by a nice lady at the chinese buffet down the street from my new house. it was nice to be able to see if my comprehension skills have really improved well enough to be able to have a fast-paced, 'though i know you're a beginner, you're speaking chinese to me so i'll treat you as though you've mastered the language anyway' sort of conversation. they were, and i was pleasantly surprised.

fortunately, my lack of vocabulary is less of an issue now, but as soon as the other person mentions something outside my realm of experience, i start stammering and sweating like obama without his teleprompter. it's okay though, because most chinese [especially in america] speak a good deal of english. the woman in question was malaysian, but she spoke cantonese well enough, which makes sense given that the business is owned by two hong kong people. it was good, i'm sure i'll be coming back there for the food [which was pretty good for buffet food] and some conversation.

tonight, we're off on a date. johnny rocket's for burgers, bow-tie cinemas annapolis for shutter island. it's gonna be great.

Taste The Intensity

oh motivation, where art thou? i knew it would be a challenge to keep up the commitment [that i now realize i didn't actually ever make] to blog every day, but i didn't know that it would happen so quickly upon arriving in maryland. i don't really want to do anything right now, my motivation is at zero, but i press onward! listen to me go on and on, i'm like a worthless lazy sack of beep-n-beep-n! if you get that joke, you rule. if you invented that joke, i can't believe you read my blog.

i don't like blogs that exclusively talk about the writer's own personal current events, especially when the individual is particularly uninteresting and not notable, but that's all i've got for today so that's what you're getting. the great thing is that i can now justify my blatant boring posts like this one by saying that people may actually care to know what's going on in my day-to-day because i've just recently moved across the country.

ha! take that, logic!

actually, now that i think about it, i love reading crap like that. i love watching crap like that. it's so interesting that despite all of the interesting stuff i watch on youtube, the stuff that can really draw me in is the hum-drum daily vlog. the best one that i watch, which is actually the only truly daily vlog that i watch, is ray william johnson's 'breaking nyc'. he's fairly youtube famous because he runs the insanely popular '=3' which took your mom jokes, bad puns and viral video to a whole new level. the funny thing is: i don't really like =3 at all. i like breaking nyc.

i like the idea that i can check out another person's life in a non-invasive way. i think the reason behind this lies in my fascination with people who live their lives very publicly. a lot of the time, i wish i were that type of person, and i'd actually like to do something like a daily vlog in the future and involve my wife as well. we'll see how well that works out. i think the implications of living a public life are ineresting, especially given the spiritual aspect of being a 'public persona,' sans ego of course. that's the biggest thing to keep in check. can it be done?

wow. i've just realized that i managed to make an entire, somewhat lengthy blog post that's about blogging everyday life without actually blogging everyday life. since i want to keep it that way, and nothing that happened today was particularly interesting to the point that i must point it out to you 'like omg right nows,' i will let the irony stand. ;-D

Arrival

well, i'm here! surprise to my wife, surprise to anyone who isn't in my immediate family [or isn't nick hadley] but i've arrived a day early to my loving wife and my new apartment. my wife is good! my apartment is also good. today was a good day, and lots of stuff happened. i'm pretty eager to get some sleep, so i won't go on about it for too long, but i'll try and fill you all in with most of the stuff that went down.

i woke up in lovely sevierville, tennessee and did my homework for the week after sleeping in until about 10am. it was wonderful. the sleep, not the homework. my aunt sharon [uncle marc is in virginia, presumably on business] made cookies for me and christin which were delicious. the two of us and joel [my cousin] caught up a bit on things and talked about my favorite subject, china. i was on my way out of the boondocks and into sevierville.

let me tell you about sevierville. it rules.

i drove by so much cool stuff so fast that i didn't have time to pull out my camera or phone to get footage of most of it. i did snap a photo of a huge fireworks store, which isn't anything spectacular to anyone who lives outside of silly california, but it was grand. i put a picture below. anyway, in addition to that, there were at least two water parks that i saw, a huge nascar go-kart deal, this building that's completely upside-down that hosts magic shows or something... and a castle that comes complete with dragon. amazingness.

anyway, that was actually most of the amazingness for most of the day, as the drive out wasn't particularly memorable... probably because i had just driven the exact same route two months ago when christin and i came out with the jeep. i got to d.c. at around 8pm, right on schedule, and things were looking good. good, of course, until i exited the 595 toward davidsonville on the last stretch to the house. christin called me. she was crying. why?

she hit a deer.

rather, a deer hit her. left fender, scared the crap out of her... there wasn't a whole lot of damage to the car, and zero damage to her, so in the end it was really no big deal. however, it sort of dampened my surprise and ruined it to an extent. granted, she was still super happy to see me, but it just wasn't the sort of entrance i had wanted to make. ;-P but she was so grateful to see me that she hugged me for literally 3 minutes without letting go. it was the best hug of my entire life, and now i get to have hugs every day. so good! so that was most of my day. what did you do? bwahaha.

tomorrow it's time to check out the unemployment office, catch up on my youtube subscriptions and edit a ton of video footage from the last two weeks. expect two awesome vids on my channel in the next few days! we'll see if i can stay motivated to keep updating this blog daily. i've found it to be quite helpful for me in arranging my thoughts and getting back into the swing of writing on a regular basis. expect more chinese as well, as i've been more devoted to learning it quickly. we now have a standing rule in the house that if we know how to say whatever we want to say in chinese, we must say it in chinese. we'll see how well that goes. ;-D goodnight!

Monday, December 23, 2002

sweetness and light, i love you so much. it's been so few hours since we last talked, but sometimes an hour or so feels like days at a time. the time passed since we'd last prayed together on the phone across nearly 3,000 miles of mineral and vegitation [sic] has gone slower than i could ever imagine. missing you feels like i'm missing part of me. my completion is in Christ and the joy of the Lord is my strength, but since i met you, i haven't been and most likely will never be the person i was. once two strands of thread are woven into this fabric of love, it's hard to see the single threads i once knew. i take my place in the whole that is Christ and His body, and i can only pray that my place in His cloth of majesty is a thread wrapped so tightly around yours. i cherish your company. i love you.

the more i pray with you, the more i hear you open up your heart to the Lord, the further and deeper in love i find myself with you upon looking back. every prayer you speak, whether in your heart or from your lips is of course not for me, but it blesses my heart just the same as it speaks to our Lord and Savior. when i hear you pray, it's like i see your deepest level of love, i hear your innermost being crying out to be all that our Lord, our God, our Best Friend and Daddy has made us through the death and resurrection of his Son. it's really more than words can say, but i hope these few inadequate words will somehow convey my interpretation of your heart's pure and radiant beauty. christin joy, i love you. thank You so much, Lord Jesus, for making this beautiful girl just that. and praise You, my God, for the opportunity to be hers in love.

this just came straight from my heart. i had planned just to write you an e-mail and talk about things, but all that's really been on my mind is your prayer, your voice, you in general. that and, of course, praise to God the Father and Jesus Christ for bringing you into my life and blessing me with your friendship and love. i love you, christin. i really do. and i can't see any trouble befalling either of us that will change that. you have my loyalty, you have my trust, you have my prayers, you have my deepest friendship and adoration, you have my all that can be given which is given from the Lord who keeps me. you have my heart. i pray that your day tomorrow will be the most beautiful day you have ever seen. i love you. goodbye.

We Were Born To Battle

blogging early tonight because i've got some time to kill in dallas while waiting for my friend onan to get off work. today was pretty sweet, i left almost on time but arrived here right on schedule at just about 7pm. i stopped a lot, because i drank like half a gallon of water, a 44oz. pepsi [gotta get it now because i'm quitting after this road trip] and some energy drink from albertson's with a picture of a cheetah on it. i guess that's supposed to mean that i'll run as fast as CHEETAHS against actual CHEETAHS and it'll be a tie and they'll get deported back to PLANO, TEXAS!!!

i'm totally missing lost right now. fail.

speaking of missing things, i miss my wife. i also miss my friends. i miss company at this point, so i suppose it's good that i'll be meeting up with someone i sort of know to chill. and by sort of know i mean don't really know at all because we met through facebook mutual friends. go technology! nic lazz called me while i was in traffic, driving through ft. worth and that was great, he's doing well in school and i'm stoked for him. i gotta get hooooome to my wiiiiife!

when i get tired of music, i listen to podcasts. when i get tired of podcasts, i listen to sermons. by the time i'm tired of sermons [or just can't process anymore] i'm ready for music again. it's really quite a convenient cycle, and i could definitely get used to it. listening to the naked cantonese podcast is helping my language acquisition a lot, which is great because it's beefing up my vocab. that was the biggest thing for me, i can string words together, but i run out of words quickly from lack of vocabulary. working on it! learning with christin and daily vlogging will help even more.

yeah. if i'm not too tired after i chill with onan and i haven't got a free place to crash tonight, i'll probably head back out and get some more miles behind be and sleep at a rest stop. it's probably about as comfortable as that motel 6 was last night, and $40 less as well. ;-P i'm gonna go try and catch up on a bit of my youtube subscriptions now. tomorrow: mississippi ho!

Tired Of Crazy Train

despite my typically random titles, this one is true to an extent. i am not tired of crazy train, but i certainly am tired. i'm also tired of canceling the capitalization of the word 'i' every time i type it on my iphone, but then again, i'm also too lazy to jailbreak it to avoid that particular problem. anyway, long story short, i'm in el paso, texas at a motel 6 and i won't pay for wi-fi so this brief phone blog will have to suffice for now. tomorrow i wake up in about six hours and make the long drive to dallas. pray for me.