Random links #...(ok, I've lost count)

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Girl: a website by alex

There just isn't enough time

I've been so busy lately everything was bound to collide eventually.

I'm going to Virginia this weekend with some friends. But the cost is that I'll miss a treasured Over the Rhine experience down at Moonlight Gardens.

If you're interested at all in great old buildings, unique churches (not necessarily the building), wonderful people or tremendous music then you'd likely enjoy this: Save Elizabeth Art Show and Benefit Concert. Alas, I have a wedding party to attend.

And then my company's picnic is the same weekend as I'll be in Indiana for the USGP.

And then in October my dad asked me to go to this aircraft construction workshop. It's the same weekend as AU's homecoming, which I haven't missed in years. But I'm going with my dad. I enjoy spending time with him, and someday I do want to build a plane. And Homecoming comes around every year.

So I've got great plans over the next couple of months, but almost every good plan comes with some kind of significant cost.

OK. I'm done whining now :-)

Oh Happy Day!

I nearly forgot....just a few words are needed to describe it. I have this on good authority.

Chipotle. Two new ones.

Union Centre Boulevard.

and Tylersville Road.

Yummy.

Too many things on my mind to think straight

So, I'll just jot some seemingly random thoughts here.

Apparently it's test weekend for me. I'm currently wired in a manner that looks like I'm wearing a CIA tap. But it's my walking, 24-hour ECG monitor. I'm trying to prove to the FAA that my heart is healthy enough to fly. Tom, however, says that they're going to find out that I don't actually have a heart. That's fine with me. If I don't have one then it can't fail.

And then tomorrow morning I'm taking the GMAT. I probably should be "studying." But why start now?

I've gotten all kinds of questions about feedback on my little pre-dating escapade. So here's the scoop: of the four women I indicated interest in one shared that opinion. And I'm pretty excited that one. We're meeting again next week. I'm quite looking forward to it. I'll get nervous later.

And no, I'm not telling you where or when we're going. I'm not stupid. My friend tonight said to me "tell me where you're going again, I don't remember."

I don't fall that easily.

I spent a bit this evening pounding on my piano. Poor Beethoven, Bach and Mendelssohn--they have to be cringing up in heaven. It was relaxing, but not very polished. I've owned this book of Bach inventions for over a year and I can only play one. But that's one more than this time last year. Always optimistic--that's me.

Right.

I finished For the Time Being the other day. Miscellaneous quotes, no particular method, order, or agenda:

There are 1,198,500,000 people alive now in China. To get a feel for what this means, simply take yourself--in all your singularity, importance, complexity, and love--and multiply by 1,198,500,000. See? Nothing to it.

§ § §

Augustine said to a group of people, "We are talking about God. What wonder is it that you do not understand? If you do understand, then it is not God."

§ § §

"Suddenly there is a point where religion becomes laughable," Thomas Merton wrote. "Then you decide that you are nevertheless religious." Suddenly?!

§ § §

I have never read any theologian who claims that God is particularly interested in religion, anyway.

§ § §

Many times in Christian churches I have heard the pastor say to God, "All your actions show your wisdom and love." Each time, I reach in vain for the courage to rise and shout, "That's a lie!"--just to put things on a solid footing.

§ § §

We are only about three hundred generations from ten thousand years ago.

§ § §

Paul Tillich devoted only two paragraphs in his three-volume systematic theology to prayer. Those two startling paragraphs suggest, without describing, another mechanism. To entreat and to intercede is to transform situations powerfully. God participates in bad conditions here by including them in his being and ultimately overcoming them. True prayer surrenders to God; that willing surrender itself changes the situation a jot or two by adding power which God can use.

§ § §

I don't know. I don't know beans about God.

§ § §

"Only by living completely in the world can one learn to believe. One must abandon every attempt to make something of oneself--even to make of oneself a righteous person." Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote this in a letter from prison a year before the Nazis hanged him for resisting Nazism and plotting to assassinate Hitler.

§ § §

The church and intelligentsia

NYTimes Op/Ed:

"I'm troubled by the way the great intellectual traditions of Catholic and Protestant churches alike are withering, leaving the scholarly and religious worlds increasingly antagonistic. " more >>

I think that link requires (free) registration. If you don't want to fool with it then try CNN

Share your thoughts on the article. Good, bad, indifferent.

And, if you consider yourself a believer and have not read Moreland's Love Your God With All Your Mind then do so now.

Class dismissed

Another perspective

Funny this should be in the paper today:

Romance rotisserie matches its meets at Kroger

Embedded reporting at its finest

There is a trend I've heard about in singles circles for some time. It goes by various names: speed dating, progressive dating, pre-dating. Those are probably all registered trademarks by now.

But I'd heard enough to be curious. I've thought about doing this for nearly two years just for sheer entertainment value alone.

So last night I did. I attended a Pre-Dating event in Blue Ash. Essentially 8 guys meet 8 girls. You spend about six minutes together and then all the guys rotate to the next spot. At the end of the night you check off people you'd be interested in and the organization sends you an email with contact information for those who were mutual matches.

I told a very few people about this outing. Expectedly, they were curious and egging me on about it beforehand. Below is this morning's email to them recounting my experience:

~~~~~

I've got to tell you, when I pulled into Watson Brothers I was tempted to just turn around. Very tempted.

I went in anyway. But there was no sign giving direction, so I've got to ask the hostess girls where to go. Now I'm feeling like even *more* of a loser (certain that "Where's the pre-dating thing?" will be heard as "I'm a geek who resorts to these weird things and I'm looking for the room full of trolls that I'll be 'meeting' tonight").

Once inside the little banquet room the tone was different. Oh, I was still nervous, but this was looking promising. Everyone was friendly. As people filtered in you could tell that several of the women came as friends.

It was just as described. There were a bunch of little tables, all numbered. You were assigned a table to begin with and then the guys circled around. Six minutes is far too short. Seriously, try having a conversation with someone covering the basics: what you do, where you're from, how big your family is. If there is any back and forth at all ("you're from Indiana too?") it chews up a lot of time.

All total there were 16 people there (plus the three coordinators). I was surprised that everyone showed up. I expected there to be an odd number one way or another.

Of the eight women I met I said that four were matches. Every single one was attractive, and bright, and professional.

The funniest (to me) moment was one of the last people I met. She's a flight attendant. (Actually, just for reference, she was a UC cheerleader who got hurt, quit school, and became a flight attendant.) I asked the most unusual place she'd been. She said that she didn't travel outside the US much, so her trip to Cancun was it. But she *wanted* to go to Negril, Jamaica. Oh? Why there?

She wants to go to one of those "anything goes" hedonism resorts. I'm thinking "wow, 9 out of 10 guys would be loving this...but I'm kinda scared."

No, not a match :-) (see, guys *can* turn down attractive women on principle.)

There was a UC medical researcher who just moved from Australia, a girl who's tri-lingual and lived in six different countries, a girl who works at UC doing clinical research (undergrad in bio-something), is working on her Master's in Criminal Justice, and then wants to go to law school. Wow.

My note-taking got better as the night went on. The first person I met was Lauren, who was--in my opinion--the most attractive woman there. And she was sweet, and talkative, and very friendly. For the next two or three people I kept thinking that I wished that I would have had more than 6 minutes with Lauren.

When I was finally done and filling out my "match sheet" here are the sum total of notes on this person I kept thinking about: "Lauren -- west-sider--claims adjuster".

It was conversation overload and I remember next to nothing about that initial one, so I'm in the funny place of really hoping I get to see this person again while simultaneously remembering next to nothing about her.

I'm supposed to get an email with mutual matches sometime today. We'll see.

Live from the front,

Brian, your intrepid odd-ball singles event reporter

So how am I doing on those New Year's resolutions?

For some reason when I was driving home this evening I was thinking about New Year's resolutions. Actually, I think I was enjoying the prospect of the coming fall and thinking ahead towards winter and then recalled: I made resolutions. Public ones, at that. In case you don't remember they were:

I hereby resolve to:
-grow my thumbnails
-visit a new state (for me, that is. I don't think the United States will be adding any for a while)
-visit a new country (as long as they have McDonalds)
-actually write something that resembles "substance" (hoping against hope)
-host more visitors in my house (maybe mowing my grass would make people feel more welcome?)
-pay off my car (you know, the warranty won't last forever)
-renew my pilots license (you can never have too many expensive hobbies)
-get straight A's for the first time in my life (I'm refusing to acknowledge that only taking two courses at a time is an advantage)
-paint the bedroom in my house that still has teddy-bear wallpaper on it from the previous owners (even though I rather like the mint-green motif)
-mail Christmas cards (it's the right thing to do)
-see a play in Cincinnati (I saw plays in Indianapolis and Chicago, but not my adopted hometown)

So let's work through those.

-grow my thumbnails
Nope. Currently I have two good fingernails on my left hand, four on my right. My thumbs are still the designated scapegoats. It isn't pretty.

-visit a new state (for me, that is. I don't think the United States will be adding any for a while)
I've come nowhere close. And I'm not sure if I'll get this done. I've sucked up all my vacation time already so I'm not going very far afoot.

-visit a new country (as long as they have McDonalds)
My international trip got pushed from this year to next. So I won't get this one done either, but hopefully I go to South America in February 2004. I won't miss meeting that one by much.

-actually write something that resembles "substance" (hoping against hope)
Right...

-host more visitors in my house (maybe mowing my grass would make people feel more welcome?)
Again, you've got to be kidding. I didn't even have the Christmas in July party that I was hoping for. But this is partially due to all of my out of state friends who keep saying they want to come over but never do. I can't help that, either.

-pay off my car (you know, the warranty won't last forever)
This is frustrating. I should have made significant progress on this. But it's been one thing after another. I spent money on an impromptu trip to Colorado. That was fine. But then my brakes needed totally redone. Then I ruined three of my four tires. The list goes on and on. There has been no getting ahead this year. It's frustrating.

-renew my pilots license (you can never have too many expensive hobbies)
In progress. I'll at least get my medical before the end of the year. Depending upon that timing I should get re-current this fall or next spring. Maybe during the winter, if the weather is mild.

-get straight A's for the first time in my life (I'm refusing to acknowledge that only taking two courses at a time is an advantage)
In my four classes so far I've gone: A, A-, A, A (ok, the last one's not posted yet, my final was just last Thursday. But I'm hopeful.)

-paint the bedroom in my house that still has teddy-bear wallpaper on it from the previous owners (even though I rather like the mint-green motif)
Not yet....

-mail Christmas cards (it's the right thing to do)
I bought some last January, so I don't have an excuse not to.

-see a play in Cincinnati (I saw plays in Indianapolis and Chicago, but not my adopted hometown)
This one I did! I saw two plays in Cincinnati, none elsewhere so far this year.

Wow. Of the eleven items I can only legitimately claim to have fulfilled (or yet expect to fulfill) four of them. That doesn't seem like a very good completion percentage.

This Gilded Age

Is it not late? A late time to be living? Are not our generations the crucial ones? For we have changed the world. Are not our heightened times the important ones? For we have nuclear bombs. Are we not especially significant because our century is?--our century and its unique Holocaust, its refugee populations, its serial totalitarian exterminations; our century and its antibiotics, silicon chips, men on the moon, and spliced genes? No, we are not and it is not. These times of ours are ordinary times, a slice of life like any other. Who can bear to hear this, or who will consider it? Though perhaps we are the last generation--now there's a comfort. Take the bomb threat away and what are we? Ordinary beads on a never-ending string. Our time is a routine twist of an improbable yarn...Why are we watching the news, reading the news, keeping up with the news? Only to enforce our fancy--probably a necessary lie--that these are crucial times, and we are in on them. Newly revealed, and we are in the know: crazy people, bunches of them. New diseases, shifts in power, floods! Can the news from dynastic Egypt have been any different?

Annie Dillard, For the Time Being

Rhetoric

Kids today are groomed to be good little worker-bees in bureaucratic hives. They take orders and some eventually give orders, but neither in most young Americans' immediate pasts nor foreseeable futures is there much need for critical thinking or persuasion as practical activities. more >>

New and Improved! 25% more for 25% less!

OK. Maybe just new.

Random traffic report: someone got linked to my site by Googling for this: lyric why don't you and i chad kroger

I hope he found what he's looking for...although I don't think my site is it.

And maybe it's just me, but that seems like a terrible song lyric.

I was IMing tonight with a friend. Not a close, intimate friend...just a friend. And just tonight she had broken up with her boyfriend. Such pain. And such mean things that were said. The consequences of this wrecked and broken world are like tentacles...they're inescapable, aren't they? I tried telling her that she deserves better. I want--and probably need--to tell her even bigger things. That God loves her, for instance. And that she was created in God's image. And that she is valuable and redeemable and precious. But I know my friend, and I can't say that. Not now, anyway, not in this context of relationship. So I squeeze the big thoughts into little words. "Take care of yourself. Life is to short to voluntarily hang around people who treat you crappy. You deserve better."

It feels so inadequate, though. Maybe it's helpful. Hopefully it's at least a window into a greater love. But who knows?