Old School

Vic, circa 1980?

Okay, this picture wasn't taken today. Maybe a new picture every day is a little ambitious. The days I don't take a picture, I'll use as an opportunity to dust off the ol' archives.

Faith, if you're reading this, sorry I didn't call; Changes That Heal went waay over and we finished around midnight. It was a great discussion though. I'll give you a call before I leave tomorrow.

The other night I happened to see the show Family Plots. After a little while, I started to get into it; of course the people on there are really wack. I got the distinct feeling that this family had some significant boundary issues. I started to think, "I wonder where this place is?" As they filmed one of the workers driving by the business location, I read the sign: "Poway Bernardo Mortuary." Go figure. I should have known — people that crazy could only be from San Diego.

Today at work we had an interesting meeting discussing the future of our company. I was having flashbacks of Dan proselytizing eAssist and it's rock solid future. Honestly though, these guys seem a lot more down to earth. It does help to have a bit of vision for what I can contribute. And hey, at least they gave us pizza.

Okay, I'm packed and ready to go. Hopefully my next blog will be from New York.

Picture a Day

I've decided that I'm going to bring my camera everywhere I go and try to take at least one picture a day. Unfortunately I forgot about my idea when I was at Irene's house, which would have been a perfect opportunity. So today I'll have to settle for a picture of Carlos on the sofa watching Big Trouble in Little China, which is where I found him when I got home.

Today and tomorrow are the anniversaries of George Gurganus' death and birth, respectively. Every year Irene spends time on these two days reading all of his cards, listening to tapes, and celebrating his life. Tonight she had people over and showed a video of his memorial service in 1992. It was quite an inspiration. I had already known that George and Irene, while in their 70s, had decided to leave the comforts of the United States to help rebuild the church in Japan. That's a pretty amazing example, to me. Tonight I also learned that many years before that they had left their all-white congregation somewhere in Abeline, Texas to join an all-black church nearby, to pave the crossing of racial boundaries. A lot of people thought they were crazy for doing so, but they endeared themselves so much to their new congregation that they were later asked to become elders. Impressive, most impressive.

The video was pretty amusing too in that it demonstrated how long ago 14 years really was. Two words: sweet mullet. Business in the front, party in the back, folks.

I've told a couple people today that I am missing the unemployed life. It's funny that just a few weeks ago I was relishing in the fact that I need to be somewhere every "tomorrow morning," 9am. And now it feels like a chore. Really this is the best of both worlds though — it's a short term commitment and the fact that I can't work more than eight hours a day frees me up at a decent hour everyday and is completely a blessing. One thing that George's video helped galvanize in my mind is my desire to go to school. Apparently he had a bachelor's degree, two masters degrees, and a Ph.D. That would probably be overkill for me but I think a master's would certainly be worthwhile. The only problem is, what to study?

List of Things Vic Could Do When He Grows Up

• Psychology/Psycho-therapy
  
• Medical research
  
• Bio-informatics, bio-systems, nursing-informatics
  
• Teach English and learn Mandarin in Taiwan
  
• Teach computer science (probably save for the last third of my career though)

Any other suggestions out there? Anyone? Anyone?

Simple Pleasures

About a month ago Steve Pietrykoski was over at the house because Joel was in town. When he came over he brought this box full of my stuff that apparently had been left at his place since 1996, when I graduated UCSD. It was quite a rush, going through all that stuff from my early years. It's the feeling of finding a twenty-dollar bill in the pocket of your jeans (before you throw it in the washing machine, of course), combined with the feeling of digging up and opening a time capsule. Of myself, no less. I was just thinking about it here at work because I've been listening to a lot of the CDs that were in there — Teenage Fanclub, Jesus & Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine. I'm tempted to throw a bunch of my stuff in another box and lose it somewhere. Or maybe I'll just set my clock-radio ahead ten minutes.

Yesterday was cool; Sara showed me her snakeboard that she bought on eBay from overseas. Man, I wish I had brought my camera. That thing is so funny. It was pretty fun too; I think I was getting the hang of it. She spent like $160 on it. There's a part of me that always wanted to be a skater. We had a good talk about her life issues and stuff too. I should start charging by the hour.

Alan's just got his apartment, so it will coincide nicely with our New York 2004 trip. Woohoo!

Hm, I guess work is pretty slow right now.

Yosemite Rocks!

Yosemite was so much fun. It's good to be back home though. I'm mostly grateful that I wasn't sick. I was feeling pretty crummy on the drive up, so as soon as we arrived, around 2pm on Wednesday, I slept most of the afternoon. I figured the high altitude had an effect on me too. What was interesting was that I ended up laying in bed for a few hours unable to sleep for all except the last night there. I think I was thinking too much too.

The Enyarts (and Nikki): Steve, Nikki, Sandy, Shelly, Jared

The biggest gripe that Nikki had about the trip was that there are no feats of strength in Yosemite — well, at least, not the kind that have the kind of return on investment that he's used to. The closest thing we came to was horseback riding, which was actually mule-back riding. The most difficult thing about that was filtering out the over-achieving comments of the kid on the mule behind me all the way up. "Don't let your mule eat! Keep your helmet on!" Um, thanks kid. Can you take a really close look at my mule's rear leg?

Our cabin; note Nikki's possibly illegal pocket-racer

I had met the Enyarts before (Jared's parents), but this time I got a little more time to spend with them. I met Jennifer, Jared's sister, her husband Darren, their child Spencer, and Darren's dad (I think) Sam too. Super cool family.

Our typical morning view of half-dome, thanks to the (controlled) fires going on during our stay

Anyway, I ended up thinking a lot about where my life is at with respect to my bible-talk, my household, and my leadership group. I am finding that I tend to really rant a lot about these things, especially when left to the solitude of my thoughts. The thought that kept lingering in my mind is, if I am so smart/wise/loving, why isn't my intelligence/wisdom/love speaking for itself? Why do I feel like I need to explain myself all the time? If I was really leading the way, wouldn't people just feel the results of my decisions through my life, instead of me having to preach it? It brings to mind Matthew 11:19. And, the other thought that formed after a lot of tossing and turning was, Who is the common denominator in all of these relationship circles? *sigh*

Jared's secret map to a secret cave for secret spelunking (P.S. don't tell anyone)

The revelation in all this, I believe, is that I am not a very merciful person. I tend to evaluate people and situations in terms of whether they deserve things — my attention, my praise, my investment. Undoubtedly everything and everyone in creation will eventually fail me or be flawed in some way; therein lies my excuse to deem them undeserving of investment. And that is the way I have felt about nearly all of my relationships — these people don't deserve my praise, my appreciation, my admiration. It feels awful to actually say that, but there it is.

There was a bad fire on the way home, near Magic Mountain

I began to think about the definition of grace — unmerited favor. Man. And I start to realize that here is where the rubber meets the road with regards to real love, real Christianity. Because what all this line of thinking leads to is the fact that deep down, I really feel like I do deserve praise and appreciation and admiration. Double *sigh*.

Another interesting sight on the way home. Probably not a good day for this guy

Anyway, I guess that's what some time away from the typical distractions of life gets me. Next week: New Yawk. Time to hit the sack.

Bad Burger?

I don't appreciate my health enough until I get sick. Then I'm really grateful. I think I ate a bad burger at the Fouts' BBQ. I remember it being really raw, so much so that Sara wanted to know if I wanted to microwave it. I figured, nah, I'm tough.

Of course I felt fine on Sunday, the next day. So maybe it was the lasagna I had at Giovanni's. At any rate, I felt pretty bad on Monday as soon as I woke up. I stumbled through the work-day, took a nap over lunch, and when I got home I went straight to bed. I didn't go to work today, and instead slept and sweated it off. I feel a lot better now, which is good since Nikki and I are leaving for Yosemite bright and early tomorrow morning. Ben decided to come down tonight so we met at TGIF for a late night snack, along with James, Sarah, Kathy, Roderick, Alicia, and some of the teens: Martin, Eric, and Curtis. Martin is driving now, hard to believe. It was cool to see him driving the other teens around.

I'll be offline until after Yosemite. Let's see how long I can last.

One Crazy Summer (Weekend)

This weekend was full of engagements, holy moley. Joel, my friend up in Richmond asked Joanne, and Richard, my roommate, asked Remy. Unbelievable.

I was on the phone with Joel today as he told me a great story about how Joanne's dad sort of spilled the beans with her and then she was totally expecting it at a perfectly orchestrated moment but he didn't ask and she kept pestering him to ask but he wouldn't. And then the next weekend he managed to setup a walk on the Golden Gate Bridge but played as if he really didn't want to be there so she wouldn't suspect and then popped the question there. But he couldn't get on his knee because he was afraid of dropping the ring. Oh man, good stuff.

Richard told us earlier about how he asked Remy's father for her hand and I guess he (her dad) started to cry. I'll get the whole scoop tomorrow night I think; the engagement party at Island's tonight was way too crowded.

Mark and Norma get married (we threw a disc up for them at ultimate frisbee), Jon and Dung's have their bridal shower, my best friend and my roommate both get engaged. It's almost more joy a guy can handle. Of course I'm so excited for all of them but there's always that little pang of envy mixed in with a bit of wistful hopelessness. There, I said it.

The weekend, reader's digest version: Friday - singles devo by Kai and Denny's afterwards with Faith, Sarah, James, Mashanda, et. al; Saturday - household quiet-time, ultimate frisbee, Jon & Dung's shower, lunch with Carly, nap, BBQ and Catch-Phrase at the Fouts' with Shannon, Sara and Aimee; Sunday - Guillermo's last sermon as paid staff, lunch with Kris Easterling, a visit to Eddy Chung at the hospital, BBQ and bible-talk leaders' meeting at the Bergems', roommates engagement party, time to blog. TOO MUCH STUFF.

More specifically, there were some pretty dramatic highs and lows:

Russ led the household QT on Saturday, reading from Messy Spirituality. In it was a great story about how graciously a certain dating couple was treated in the church they attended. They lived together but at some point decided to submit to "do things right" and get married. They got pregnant though, and so the money they had saved for the wedding went instead to the new baby and they had only a legal marriage with the Justice of the Peace. Their married friends in church decided to surprise them by throwing them the wedding they never had -- they kidnapped each of them, had them write down everything they loved about their spouse, and later brought them back to their house where some 60 more friends and family were waiting to be a part of the wedding ceremony and celebrate. It was a very touching story of how deep love and grace can really go, without judgement. I know I don't have that kind of depth of love.

Ultimate frisbee was another story. A homeless man had set up his camp near where we usually play. He was pretty ornery and foul-mouthed but we managed to agree on an arrangement of the field. Unfortunately, while we were playing one of the guys ran for a catch off the field (as typically happens) and into his "territory" and he pretty much went ballistic. He was being very unreasonable and threatening and cursed very loudly, all the while with children present. We felt like something needed to be done so Pete called the cops. They came and talked to him and searched him for quite a while. By the time we were leaving he had started cleaning up his stuff, much more humbled. It was sad to me that we had to resort to that, and there was a certain helplessness I felt in our inability to do anything more constructive. I felt pretty bad too when the police officer asked, "Did he shake that stick at you when he was threatening you? If he did, we can get him." He hadn't, and so they couldn't/didn't bring him in; I felt so powerless and unable to do something good for someone in genuine need.

At the "Jack 'n' Jill" bridal shower, Jenn Dominelli was there and we spent most of the time there catching up with her. Turns out she's headed to Nashville, Tennessee early next year with Stacey to pursue their careers in music. You go, girls. I'm so impressed.

I was talking to Carly about teen-camp and I remembered something about it that is worth mentioning. Before the kids arrived the counselors were together for a meeting and Hannah, the coordinator for the facility spoke to us about how excited she was to work with us. Apparently 85% of their clientele claim to be Christian, and yet she could tell right away that our group was "serious." The fact that we are not only multi-racial, but that people of different races actually talk to each other, was very impressive to her. She was even amazed when we were going over ground rules such as consequences for sexual misconduct, stealing, and such. Other groups apparently don't talk openly about those things, though they happen frequently. She was so excited to work with us that she specifically requested to be on this contract -- she was literally jumping up and down when she was telling us this. It was really encouraging to see her heart and to feel so noticed and appreciated.

Meanwhile, at the BBQ -- the Fouts sisters are so funny. It was cool to hang out with them and get to know each of them individually a little better.

This is getting really long.

Guillermo's sermon was great today; he got a bit emotional right in the beginning of his sermon as he was acknowledging all the people that had come to service to support him. It was very touching. At lunch Kris said it was the "end of an era." The Adame family certainly has given a lot the shaping the west region and the San Diego church as a whole, for which I am grateful. I was my usual nervous before church, also knowing that I was going to be the only lead song-leader today. I wonder if the day was especially emotional for me because of that fact -- I feel so alone sometimes in my role with the music ministry. Jana just left for China, Susan went to Pomerado and probably will continue to go so that Brian can attend their earlier service, Richard goes there now too, Zack is so hit-or-miss. Guillermo expressed the kind of loneliness that comes with a lack of support from the congregation. I think I could relate.

Okay, enough for now, sheesh.