March Madness

Hey everybody

Ok, so I’m not really into the march madness basketball tournament, but the title seemed fitting.

I guess it’s been quite a while since I last posted, so I am posting now. What have I been up to?

I went to Lethbridge twice over the Christmas break. the first time I visited Nat and the kids and mom, then drove Mom back to Calgary so she could fly home. Then Dad and I went down for Christmas, spending a few days at Nat and Ryan with family, it was great.

Attending my last semester at University of Calgary for my bachelor of Commerce! (including a block week course). Also I was playing hockey in my floor hockey league (AFHL), but that season is now over (well playoffs are still going, my team missed). Still working with the youth group at my church (BEMC). Went snowboarding at C.O.P. and went to Utah with my dad to visit my mom and step dad, and do some skiing. We also stopped in Lethbridge to visit my sister and the kids.

I Also watched the Olympics, and they were awesome. I got more into them than I ever have before, and loved that they were always on, for the two weeks. It was weird to have them done. Anyways I am proud of our athletes and the fact that Canada got the most Gold medals of any country in the winter Olympics, ever, with 14!

What else? I have been reading a bit. I read two great books in the past few months, Sex God and Jesus wants to save Christians. Yes, one is called Sex God, and it is a Christian book! It’s actually an interesting take on love, and that sex is really about God, comparing things in life where one thing is really about something else. I suggest you read it. also just finished the second book, and it was good as well, read it.

I have been listening to music as usual, but in January Jake and I went to Scott’s parable in Red Deer, mostly just to get new music. I bought a bunch of cds: Hello Hurricane by Switchfoot, Awake by Skillet, Welcome to the Masquerade by TFK, Confessions by Pillar, Forget and Not Slow Down by Relient K, and The Good Album by All-Star United. So much good music. I also bought some new music from Itunes, some Kim Walker, MGMT and Owl City. Jake bought a bunch of CDs too, and one of them is a Junkyard Poets album, which I borrowed, and is also quite good. My favourite CDs recently are Hello Hurricane and Forget and not slow down.

My 14 most listened to songs in the past 3 months are(according to last.fm):

Switchfoot – Needle and Haystack life

Switchfoot – The Sound

Switchfoot – Hello Hurricane

Switchfoot – Bullet Soul

Switchfoot – Mess of Me

Relient K – Therapy

Relient K – This is the end

Switchfoot – Red Eyes

Switchfoot – Free

Relient K – Candlelight

Thousand Foot Krutch – Scream

Switchfoot – Your Love is a Song

Relient K – I don’t need a soul

Relient K – if you believe me

And over the last 3 months my top 5 albums are new ones:

Switchfoot – Hello Hurricane

Relient K – Forget and Not slow down

Thousand Foot Krutch – welcome to the masquerade

All-Star united – the good album

Skillet – Awake

For more visit : http://www.last.fm/user/calgarydude/charts?subtype=albums or look at the bar to the right!

Also I have been involved in a small bible study group on Tuesday nights with Justin, Greg and Jon, which has been great. We started the Truth project this past Tuesday, and it led to some great discussion.

I have been applying for jobs the past few days, so that I have a job come graduation in May. My Grad ceremony is June 10^th, which is also my niece Abigail’s birthday. I am hoping to go to Seattle on the May long weekend for a wedding of two of my friends from Capernwray – Colton and Stacia.

I am also hoping to go to Israel with a group from the church in October. It would be awesome to go, see the country, the history and walk where Jesus walked. I have a meeting for it on Sunday.

Also bought YC tickets for the youth group in February, that was tough, they sell so fast, something like 17,000 tickets sold in the first 6 hours!? at $140 a ticket, that is alot of money. with that kind of demand, you would think they could do something like that in Calgary.

I have been busy working on school stuff, have a midterm on Monday and two other assignments due, so it is sort of march madness. Also the Flames have been kicking butt lately, winning 4 in a row, also considering getting Stampeders season tickets with my dad.

Not sure what else to say, or if anyone will actually read this, but i hope you enjoyed!

Thanks for reading,

Adam

Noooooooovember - updates, music and one liners

hey everybody

well its been awhile since i posted on here, since september started, i have finished most of my fall 2009 school semester (midterms are done!!) and started into my floor hockey season (www.alliancefloorhockey.com)
School has gone well, with some good courses, 2 Opma courses (inventory management and spreadsheets for business use), a Canadian studies class on humour, a sociology of sport class and two half classes of mgst (working with people and corp governance and compensation <- yuck). had 5 midterms last week, one for each class, it was a tough week but just like any other midterm/final week, its nice to be done. although its not as if I can just relax now, as there is still a month left with assignments, a paper and finals coming up. Although it is reading week right now (3 days off!), so I do have some time to do other things, which I am doing.
oh and hockey is going well, kinda. Our team hasn't had a great start, at 5-13 now, but we are still in a playoff spot I think, and its been fun playing. I have gotten a bit better so far, but it is hard when half the team doesn't show up for most games. Our team actually has 2 goalies, but neither showed up last night, so I got to play goalie, it was, interesting. Actually it was fun and challenging, and with the help of my teammates, I was better at it by the end of the second game, too bad that was against the better team. we lost the first game of the back to back 13-11 and the second by something like 17-8. So I had fun, even though I let so many goals in. It didn't help our team only had 1 sub, yet again. but its about having fun right? when our team shows up, we usually win, but our record shows how often that happens...

My sister and her husband get to move into their house this week, so they are up here getting things finished up for that, my dad will lose most of the furniture upstairs as they left it here til they get the new house. I need to buy a new tv or home theatre system, which will be upstairs, so my dad will use it. As I am a student, my dad will buy it and I will buy it from him next year when I move out/have money/the situation changes. So I get to shop for a TV etc, but its tough to get in the mindset of spending heaps of money, when I am trying to limit what I spend to a minimum. I need to have the perspective of what I will be willing to spend in a year, once I have a solid job and will be actually using the stuff, which is tough to do (and probably dangerous!). I am spending my money from 12 months from now, which is weird, actually it's kind of like having a credit card that doesn't earn interest until next fall. hmmm

Lately I have been listening to lots of music...wait, thats always the case haha. Ok but lately I have been listening to "the 401" and "thousand foot Krutch". I went to a concert at my church a few weeks ago and it was "the 401" which is a band I had never heard of. Good music, I bought their CD, which is called songs of Solomon, basically the love book of the bible. After listening to the cd several times and the lyrics, I understand why they named it that, but It is good anyways! Also a few months ago I downloaded (on Itunes) "Set it off" which is the first CD from Thousand Foot Krutch. I already had their last 3 but bought this one, and have enjoyed it. *Actually they have a new album out that I want to get, called "the Masquarade" not sure how to spell that haha. other music I want to get includes some Jesus Culture music, they are a good band that a friend of mine told me about. I've listened to some of their songs on youtube. Justin also shared the band "Sparta" with me, which I liked their cd.
I also would like to get the new NewWorldSon cd, the new Franz Ferdinand cd and the new Switchfoot cd (they finally came out with a new one), Hello Hurricane, which is apparently better then their last 2 cds.

ok, to finish, some one liners
Ninety-nine percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name
borrow money from a pessimist - they don't expect it back
time is what keeps things from happening all at once
lottery: a tax on people who are bad at math
I didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian
never answer an anonymous letter
it's lonely at the top; but you do eat better
I don't suffer from insanity; i enjoy every minute of it
always go to other people's funerals, or they won't go to yours
few women admit their age; few men act it
if we aren't supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?
no one is listening until you make a mistake
give me ambiguity or give me something else
we have enough youth. how about a fountain of smart?
he who laughs last thinks slowest
campers: Natures way of feeding mosquitoes

that's all for now,
thanks for reading as always,

Adam

End of May update and randomness

hello readers,

apparently I should post again, so I will!
I am sitting here waiting for my Laundry to finish so I can put it away and go to bed.
anyways heres the latest. My Flag football season starts this monday! I am excited about that, it should be great. we play 15 games, mostly on mondays, and I am playing Cornerback.
I also started spring school, which has been ok. its a whole semester packed into 5 weeks of school. I had a group meeting today (a saturday!) at the Uni and it seems I have projects/assignments due about every week. midterms start the week after this week.
Also I started at TransCanada a few weeks ago. I am happy with the new job, and the people I am working with, which is important. right now I am working a few days a week.
hmm, what else?
oh I went to YC with my youth group last weekend, and it was awesome. of course I was really tired and sore after. sore from YC? yep thats right. I guess it was getting a few hours of sleep each night on a hard church basement floor, doing 100 pushups saturday night, and jumping and waving my arms etc for a bunch of concerts. the weekend was great, a few great concerts, a few dissapointing concerts and a few suprises. Relient K was a bit of a dissapointment, one of my favourite bands, maybe it was the sound in the arena, maybe I wasn't in the mood for Relient K, I think they played alot of thier slower songs though. the ones i knew were good though. Red was fun because some of the youth and I made up dances as we didn't know the songs. Thousand Foot Krutch was great as expected. Pillar wasn't great and niether was Grits. Family Force 5 was fun and NewWorldSon was probably the best (and suprise for me, I hadn't heard them before). Reggie Dabbs spoke and was great and the worship was alright (the songs I knew, or at least that we could see the lyrics for, were good...but that wasn't many unfortunatly). anyways it was a fun weekend as it always is.
Big news this past week was for my brother-in-law Ryan. He got a job as the Youth pastor at a church in lethbridge! the job search is over! I am happy for him and the family to get the job, but it will be sad with them leaving. It will be wierd not seeing them and the kids all the time, but it is a great opportunity for them. of course they need to find a place to live there now.

also, i bought Grey cup tickets this morning, for my dad and I. Grey cup 2009! whoooo. Go Stamps Go!

so some random thoughts....sometimes we try to fit God to terms so we can compare him or so that we can figure out who he is. God can't be put into a box. trying to put God into anything is like trying to put a backpack inside itself. you can try and try, but you just can't. there are many words we use to describe God, but a few words can't be used to define who God is. God is love as many say, but theres so much more to God. God is everywhere, everything, inside us. his Holy Spirit is inside us and flows out of us when we let him. Athiests try to prove God doesn't exist, how can they do that, aside from personal judgement and opinion. they even try and force their beliefs on others, that sounds alot like the thing they are fighting against. Often people try to fight against things either because they think it is wrong, or because they are scared it might be right and want to wipe it out so they don't have to worry it is right.

Jesus would tell us the only things harder then hate is love, and harder then war is peace. Love your neighbor as yourself, one of the biggest things Jesus stressed was love. Love. do you love yourself? What does that mean? maybe its that you care about yourself and want the best for yourself. Now even though you love yourself, you may not like yourself at times. how does that work? lets say you do something and immediately regret it, don't want to face the consequences, maybe you don't like yourself at that moment. "stupid me." but you still love yourself, you still want the best, that is why you are upset, you know you could do better etc. this works the same way with other people, or at least it should I guess (sometimes we need God's help to start to love even the most annoying people in our lives).
Think about the people you don't like, why don't you like them? because of something they did or they are doing. Maybe you still love them, not in a "love=marriage" sort of way, but in a way that means you care. You want the best for them, you see what they are doing and that they would be better off doing something different. sometimes I run across people who are difficult, I should care that they get better, not hate them for who they are. its like loving someone who beats thier kid. That person is hard to love, but think about it this way. You want the best for that person, you may not like thier actions ( I hope...), but you know they could be better off, and you hope they can change, you may do something, say something or pray for change, bottom line, you want the best in the situation. then again, maybe you don't always feel this way, you think the person should be hanged, shot, whatever. but think about that, should we lose hope in anyone, where do you draw the line...

heh. well there was some ranting for you. comment if you have any thoughts, i hope this at least got you thinking, whoever is reading this.

thanks for reading,

Adam