Some things of note
1. School still sucks. Learning is great, and will always be great, but the institutions of learning built up around themselves like this giant monument to our intellectual egos called a university have always, and will always suck. They are soul sucking entities designed to rip your very will to live from your mind turn it into a fear of failing shoving it back into your brain, and then they piss on you an laugh while you dance around them like a trained monkey.
Or maybe I’m just lazy.
2. Engaged encounters are a good thing. This was a great idea that some Catholic person had, which was to create a weekend retreat that tells you about the things you are going to deal with in marriage that you may or may not have thought of yet. And then they make you answer questions, and share those with your fiance. The difference between this and the “maximizing your marriage potential” that the Vineyard does is simply time and depth. The Vineyard one was great, and I heard a lot of repeat material at the retreat this weekend, but they just don’t go in depth as much. They ask the hard questions, but don’t give you time or encourage you to really share about it with your fiance. At this retreat they separated us from our fiances at the end of each session and had us write about the questions they asked for a while. Then you got to go into a room, just the two of you, for a good long while and read what your fiance wrote, and then talk about it. They had a section on everything too. They had one in there about getting old, ugly and dying, and people dying around you, and how you deal with that. I don’t remember the Vineyard talking much about that at all, but that is a big deal. Anyway, if you are engaged and you haven’t gone on one of these things it is totally worth it, I highly recommend it.
3. Not leading a small group is good. I totally don’t have time or energy on Saturdays for that right now, and I need to sink some more time into my senior design project, and Saturdays are looking good for that. Plus it was getting draining to be there on Saturdays in the middle of the day. I think there should be a small group for people who work nights, but man, I don’t think I’m the guy for that. Maybe someone who actually works nights would be a better choice.
4. I suck as an artist, like really bad. But I put up a new part to my website, at http://bigcat.chaosnet.org/gallery which will have thumbnails of things I drew, think are funny, or pictures I took. Also there will be albums on there of my friends stuff. Right now Scott has a little of his artwork up. I might put more and more stuff up there as time goes by, but right now it has a fairly good collection of my works availalbe in a digital format. And this new software makes the thumbnails for me as I upload the pictures. I thought that was cool. The new software I got is called Gallery, you can google for it if you want, it is an easy thing to find, I’m just feeling lazy and don’t want to put up a link.
5. When you tell someone you don’t want something done a certain way for your wedding why do they argue with you. It’s my wedding damn-it, not theirs. And why do some parents think they can insist that things go the way they want them to. Laurens parents are driving us nuts, which isn’t terribly out of the ordinary. But it is so annoying to try to communicate with her mother and having her father respond to us. Can you really have a relationship with someone if you aren’t willing to personally resolve conflict, and if you never apologize. I tell you, that isn’t how my family does it, and I’m glad.
6. Wedding planning is stressful. You plan and plan and plan for this one day event, but a lot of times it makes you loose focus on the fact that marriage is a forever kind of thing. That one day is very important, but not as important as the rest of your life, but you just focus on this one day, not the forever. I’m glad we planned on doing this marathon of counseling / retreats this month because that is building for the future, not just that day.
7. I emailed a bunch of you with an official wedding invitation. RESPOND DAM NIT. It isn’t that hard, your available to come in two months or your not. Please let me know. We would like all the responses by the middle of July so we know how much food to order. Currently Matt asked me when we wanted the RSVP and no one else has emailed me. Also, if you didn’t get an email from Tice (mostly my roommates who weren’t on the email list) you should ask him what he has up his sleeve for the day after the wedding. He is planning some get-together for the former 5 Northers, but I didn’t see your names on the email, so you should hit him up asking him what is going on.
Well, that is pretty good for now. Back to writing this proposal for senior design class.