How are you spending New Year's Eve?
10:00am - Family Picture @ Sear's Photo Studio in Athens, GA
1:00 pm - Hanging out with Steven & Anna Winters in Atlanta, GA
7:00 pm - Ashton Long's Wedding at North Atlanta Church of Christ
10:30pm - IHOP at Mall of GA
So we have the yearly family portrait. I picked out all of the clothes because I am fashionable like that. Hanging out with some friends that graduated from FHU a couple of years ago. The live like 5 min from The Varsity, maybe I can convince them to go there with me again for lunch. Then I have the interesting part of my day. A girl from high school is getting married, which I guess that in and of itself isn't that interesting. What will be interesting is that it will be the first time a large number of us that graduated together will be congregating again. Who knows what will be happening. I get to drop that I am graduating a year early. I am sure that might spark some interest. It should be fun. Then the yearly tradition. We [my family and my best friend Robert's family] always go out for breakfast on New Year's Eve. I wont be there for the fun and games before we go eat, (and neither is Robert) but I am going to meet them at IHOP for the good stuff. So it should be a fun, crazy last day of 2007!
So I was surfing the web tonight and was looking up how my favorite football club (aka soccer) in Brasil was doing. So I found out that they are 5th right now and continued to surf around when I found something I really didnt believe was real. In addition to the World Cup (which I also found out Brasil is hosting in 2014), there is also such a thing called the Homeless World Cup. It started in 2003, and it takes place every year. This year's tournament (which last year had 48 countries represented) is in Copenhagen, Denmark this coming summer. Last year's tournament had 496 players participating, and there were over 1800 goals scored in more than 300 matches. I really think this might be the most ridiculous thing ever...here are the rules/eligibility, as they say on Ripley's, "Believe it or not..."
Player Eligibility:
-must be male or female and at least 16 years of age at the time of the tournament
-must have been homeless at some point after the previous year's World Cup
OR
make their main living income as a streetpaper vendor
OR
be asylum seekers (who have neither positive asylum status nor working permit)
Participants:
-3 players and 1 goalkeeper
-4 subs (rolling substitution allowed)
Tournament Details:
-3 points for win, 0 for loss
-If game is tied, then sudden-death penalty shootout (3 points for win, 1 point for loss)
-14 minute games
-Field is 20m x 14m
and they say "only in America"...
So tonight I watched A Beautiful Mind. It was one of the best movies that I have ever seen. Definitely one of my top 10 of all time. Just thought I would share that for the record. A must see if you have never seen it. It was one of the cleanest PG-13 movies that I have seen in a long time...no language, no sex.
I have been meaning to write in this thing a lot sooner than now, but I guess now is as good time as ever. So the semester for me is officially over. It has been a wild and crazy semester, definitely with its ups and downs, but it was a good one. It has really hit me hard to think that I only have one semester in college. One of my roommates is graduating I guess today seeing that its Friday already. It is just weird to think that its all going to have to come to a close. Graduation seemed so far away last year, I don't know what has made me think about it so much now. I have learned a lot this semester. Been disappointed a lot this semester. Drew closer to God this semester. Maybe got a little bit smarter this semester. Figured out who I am a little more this semester. I have discovered what I need and want to hold as important to myself - God, Family, Friends, and Experiences...in that order. I have been frustrated this semester. Girls do a good job of that. I have been frustrated with God, especially when I don't know what God knows what is best for me. I see so many situations and relationships with so much potential, and sometimes it frustrates me when what I want isn't necessarily what God knows I need. I guess that is where one's faith gets put to the test and where patience and trust is tested and made stronger. One semester left. Who knows what is going to happen. I have hopes and dreams, but an open mind is the only way to truly experience it fully. I still can't believe its almost over, but the crazy thing is that its only almost begun.
Quotes from A Beautiful Mind that really connected with me:
"I need to believe,
that something extraordinary is possible."
"Perhaps it is good to have a beautiful mind, but an even greater gift is
to discover a beautiful heart."
"Imagine if you suddenly learned that the people, the places, the moments
most important to you were not gone, not dead, but worse, had never been. What
kind of hell would that be?"
"Nothing's ever for sure, John. That's the only sure thing I do know."
"I've gotten used to
ignoring them and I think, as a result, they've kind of given up on me. I think
that's what it's like with all our dreams and our nightmares,...we've got to
keep feeding them for them to stay alive."
"You once said that God must be a painter because he gave us so many
colors.
I didn't think you were listening...
I was listening."
So I didn't shave from between mid August until October 31. Here is what my beard was about 15 minutes before I shaved it, and here is what I am now. I am glad that I grew the beard out, but I definitely think that it was pretty nasty and that I probably wont grow one again for a good long time.
.
Show us your favorite team mascot.
So this weekend, my parents, my brother, and his friend Pearson went up to Harding University to check out the campus. On Saturday, I got the chance to meet my parents in Memphis and hang out with them, which was good since I had not seen them since school started. We met at the park on Mud Island, which the weather was awesome so it was really nice being next to the Mississippi River. My dad was in a bad mood for the first like hour, so that made it very unenjoyable [side note: i refuse to change 'unenjoyable' though vox tells me that it isnt a real word]. We hung out by the river until it got close to 6pm, because we had dinner reservations at The Daily Grill. I have eaten at The Daily Grill a few times for lunch, but I never had eaten there at night. I felt really bad when we got there and I realized how expensive the stuff was. I mean, I knew it was going to be a little more than usual, but it was like $5 per plate more than I thought it was going to be, which doesn't seem a lot, but it adds up with multiple people. They were OK with it, so we all ordered and my dad got out of his mood, so it turned out to be very enjoyable, and the food was absolutely awesome. I had 3 chicken breasts on top of mashed potatoes with spinach, plus a tomato with parmesan cheese on top. We topped the meal off by sharing a fudge brownie a la mode. After we left, I showed them where I worked this summer on Beale St and then took them to the rooftop of The Peabody and we checked out the city and saw the famous ducks. They enjoyed it a lot, and I am glad that we got to hang out.
"What I'm doing now," he continued, his eyes still closed, "is detaching myself from the experience."
Detaching yourself?
"Yes. Detaching myself. And this is important - not just for someone like me, who is dying, but for someone like you, who is perfectly healthy. Learn to detach."
He opened his eyes. He exhaled. "You know what the Buddhists say? Don't cling to things, because everything is impermanent."
But wait, I said. Aren't you always talking about experiencing life? All the good emotions, all the bad ones?
"Yes."
Well, how can you do that if you're detached?
"Ah, You're thinking, Mitch. But detachment doesn't mean you don't let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That's how you are able to leave it."
I'm lost.
"Take any emotion - love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I'm going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions - if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them - you can never get to being detached, you're too buys being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.
"But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then you can say, 'All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.'"
Morrie stopped and looked me over, perhaps to make sure I was getting this right.
"I know you think this is just about dying," he said, "but it's like I keep telling you. When you learn how to die, you learn how to live."
[Tuesday's with Morrie, pgs. 103-104]
So that was really long and it took me a good while to type out, but I think that this passage is so powerful. I realized that I dont always really let the emotion or the situation penetrate me fully. I realize that I have to be willing to throw myself out there and take a chance and see what happens. I cant let the fear of rejection be more powerful than my willingness for whatever emotion to fully penetrate me. It is like I am robbing those emotions from me by allowing that fear to control me. This is my favorite passage of the book. It made me think. I think I am ready and willing to face whatever emotion comes back in return for me expressing how I feel to her.
Show us a gadget that's on your wish list.
It'
s not necessarily a "gadget", but I really want it bad.
Video: Show us a great music video from the '90s.
Show us some sunshine.
Submitted by Cath.
So it's not your typical sunshine. Little Miss Sunshine was a movie that my friends and I rented last semester at school. Somebody heard it was a pretty good independent film, and so since we saw nothing else that tickled our fancy, we rented it. I thought it was a great movie for a few different reasons. One thing I didnt like was the language that was in the movie. If there was any reason why I wouldnt see it, it would be for language. But the other elements, it was good. One thing that makes a movie a favorite of mine is that if the storyline isnt typical. Typical I mean by having a good guy/bad guy, a problem that almost looks like it is too much to handle, and then "miraculously" it gets fixed (and there is a love element as well). This is what I call a "breakfast club meets a family roadtrip". The plot is unexpected and very humorous. All of the actors play their characters really well, and they work well as a cast. Limit the language, and it is easily one of my favorites. A very good movie nonetheless.
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Vox Atlanta & Georgia Updated: Oct 29, 2009
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