Tired in here?

Mondays are usually my day off. Yesterday it was not though. We had in-service training over in Cranbrook. It was really good (except for spilling hot Timmy Ho Hot Chocolate all over my pants and hoodie on the ride out there). (Unfortunately I have no pictures because even though I have gotten really into taking them, I lent my cam to Anh for a couple weeks; I sure hope she is making good use of it).
So, I saw David Collins there and he had some really valuable things to say. We returned to town here in the afternoon and now I feel very burnt-out. I really missed having a day-off and some time alone to relax. I do, however, get to take that day at some other point. I must choose wisely. I just hope I can make it through this week.
I got to see Liz yesterday too. That was a real treat. See, ministry is still pretty sweet, you get to connect with old friends in other towns while on the clock(kind of on the clock). Let's hope that Liz gets to make up a day off some time too. We brought it up with her supervisor but I think he got the wrong idea and thought we were asking him if he will ever get a day off. (We care about that too, but don't forget about the intern!)
Ok, this blog is un-linear and tangentful just like how I feel today. See, my mood governs everything here. Look at my girlfriend. Ain't she cute!

Time to open a can....

So, life as a pastor offers some perks. For instance, on thanksgiving weekend people from the church brought some jams and stuff for a display and it was meant for the pastors and stuff to divide up and keep after. So, I got some good stuff, including a pie and some pumpkin bread.
All I have left by now is a jar of canned peaches and some jams.
However, I still have a problem; I can't get that jar of peaches open. I've been trying for a few days now. I wrestle with it for a few minutes before giving up and putting it back in the fridge. This has been a real blow to my self-confidence. I've been going to the gym every weekday at about 4:30 pm with Brian. I was under the impression that we were getting quite HUUUUUGE by now. But, apparently I still can't open a can of peaches.
What should I do? This is beginning to drive me mad. I do have tonnes of space in my fridge, but this can sits there taunting me and calling me a puny, wussy little puke.
Does anyone know how to get into this can of peaches?

Beets

If you want to see some really cool things done to toilet water, eat alot of beets. Trust me.
I was about to take a picture, but then I realized I have more taste than that.

In the aftermatt

Thanksgiving is over...obviously. Well, I guess that is less obvious to the Yanks, but I'm pretty sure I don't have american readers. I think it went well. I didn't cook much. I made a breakfast and mostly did alot of dishes. I hope everyone had fun.
We have an awkward family tradition of taking pictures during family dinners, that I adhered to. "Awkwardness is the Spice of Life"-(Matt Yeomans)
As you can see, it wasn't a fancy or formal dinner like most years, but the food was still good. Look at that plate!
Here is a bit more of the action...







































Wow! Exciting stuff!

The Eve

This is the post where I can hopefully build some rapport. So far I have come across on Old Man Yeomans as looking down on singles, jealous of marrieds, and a fair bit wierd and obsessed with manners. Probably only some of that is true. Perhaps a bit crazy is what I am going for here anyways.
Lets talk about my real life these days. Tonight is the night before most of my family, and my girlfriend, Anh, come to visit me for Thanksgiving. (Yes, I am Canadian and we do have a different date for Thanksgiving). Actually, this reminds me that next week it is time to set up for Christmas because it is officially the season, according to me.
Anyways, I am really, really excited for this weekend. I don't remember even being this excited for Christmas in recent years. Maybe it is because I get to host. I finally live completely on my own and can do this sort of thing. All of a sudden I am thinking of that movie, Pieces of April with Katie Holmes. In the movie, poor April doesn't have too much of her life together, yet she does make a thanksgiving dinner for her family. I, on the other hand, am not even pulling that off; my parents and sister are bringing most of the food. I liked the movie surprisingly enough. I had to say that so we can drop it and get back to my life. There will be 6 of us staying in my 2 bedroom apartment. But, as Mitch Hedberg points out, it is up to me how many bedrooms my apartment has. Mine has 6. One room just has a stove in it, another looks like a closet, another looks like a hallway, and another bedroom has couches and people tend to watch TV in it.
Another reason I think I am so excited about this weekend is that it may be my only Christmas-type get-to-gether with family and loved-ones (Anh, so far you fall under the Loved-one category) that I will get this year. See, as a new pastor, I am not quite sure if I get any time off at Christmas time. It's not that we aren't all about celebrating the incarnation. It's more about the fact that we are so into celebrating the birth of Christ as a church community, I don't know if I get any time where I am actually allowed to leave town because of it.
So, I am going to enjoy every moment of having us all here in my little pad. I hope everyone doesn't mind giving up their otherwise luxurious lives for a couple days to be apart of the highlight of my year.

I think I'm pretty dedicated to good manners

So, I've realized that like any good Canadian should be, I am dedicated to being polite. I realized this when I woke up this morning. I had just finished having a dream that was strange. It was kind of funny and surreal.
It takes place in room of the third floor of a building. The room was small and empty with one large window. There were about 3 of us in the room. When I looked out the window, there was some people down on the ground below, supposedly waging war against us. So, in essence, the guy right below our window, down on the sidewalk was trying to kill us. (This dream is getting exciting now, isn't it?) Anyways, he had this contraption sitting between the 2 wheels of some sort of bike trailer. The contraption had a pipe that went straight up to right outside our window. Then there was this dinky little hose that attached to the top of the pipe and went inside our window. Anyways, this whole contraption was some sort of flame-thrower that the guy down on the street was controlling. He was shooting bursts of flames in through the window, trying to burn us up. The flames narrowly missed my friends standing on the left side of the window inside the room (I was on the right). Everyone was ok though.
I thought this wasn't cool that we might get burned, so I gave the pipe outside a shove so that it fell away from the building. This upset the guy outside a bit but he quickly got his flame-throwing contraption upright again and shot more flames inside our room.
This next time, in order to protect us, I yanked the hose off of the pipe. This caused the flames to shoot straight up into the air out of the pipe outside our window whenever the guy below pushed his button. This made the guy below really angry and he started yelling at us to give him back his hose so he could kill us with it. He even climbed up the pipe to the window to look in at us and demand the hose back. I told him I would give it back if he promised he would stop blowing flames in our window. I explained that he had almost burned my friends and that he wasn't being polite. He retorted that I wasn't being polite by stealing his hose. I couldn't argue with this, so I planned to throw the hose back to him while he hung on to the window sill (we were standing by the door of the room). I figured that I could then make a run for it along with my friends if I had to.
Before I had a chance to give him back the hose though, he told me that we were in a battle with each other and that I should started acting like it. Then he proceeded to throw a hammer at us. The hammer stuck into the door right beside us. This got me quite upset and I actually yelled at him: "How Rude! You could have put someone's eye out with that!" He resonded by saying, "I know! I'm trying to! This is a war! If you don't like it, you can leave!"
At this point, I yelled, "Fine!" and threw him back his hose and left.
As I walked away down the hallway, I was muttering to my friend about how rude the guy at the window was and that there was no excuse for such impoliteness. I don't care if it is a war, I still think it is pretty rude to try and kill someone.

Well, that was the dream. Get what you want out of that. I thought it was interesting that I seemed to not only get upset at the guy trying to kill us, but that I got even more upset at the guy's unwillingness to change his ways when I informed him about how rude he was being. Is there no respect for manners these days?

Whiners!!!

Well, I think I have something to rave/rant about now. I was doing it to my girlfriend over the phone instead of listening to and supporting her like I should have been. Anyways, she suggested I blog about it in order to get it out, so here it is:


First of all, let me say that I have the utmost respect for marriages and I believe that everything possible must be done to protect them. Second of all, I will say that I am not ignorant enough to say that anyone is completely alone. God is always present and can comfort anyone no matter what situation they are in in life. Really, he is our only real hope and source of true joy. Also, I need to say that I am not complaining. I have nothing to complain about because I feel quite blessed to have the life that I have; I get to do something that I love and am passionate about and I have beautiful and wonderful girlfriend that I am so grateful for. With that being said, it's time for me to stick up for some people out there.

Please, please correct me if I am wrong (I really mean it), but married people are whiners. Have you ever noticed how everyone gives a married couple soooo much sympathy if they ever have to spend a few days apart from each other? It becomes this thing that everyone says is so unbearable and horrific. Weren't these two people separated for years before they were married? Does something happen to them the moment that they get married that causes them to be so super-sensitive to being apart? I am not at all saying that they should be apart. What I am saying is that 'have they forgotten what their lives were like when they were single?' I don't think that they get super-sensitive, I think it is just the opposite. They have become DE-sensitized to the pain that they suffered as single people. They have simply forgotten how hard life was before they were married and when they are apart from their spouse, they get a little taste (not the full experience) of what it was like when they were single. To make matters worse, instead of recognizing it as the hint of an painful old experience be remembered from their single past, they writhe in agony as if it is some new and awful torture that no single person has experienced. Give me a mother-fathering break! These married people need to take a memory pill!
Let's dissect this issue and compare the 3 main statii of people: 1. Married (spoiled) 2. Dating (awaiting glory) 3. Single (horribly alone with only some distant glimmer of hope that the situation may some day be rectified). Alright, now let's apply these 3 different situations to the issue of being separated from one's soul mate for a certain amount of time.

1. Married People
These people have developed a close relationship with their other half. They have someone who understands them, loves them, supports them and knows them. They have someone to share life with, all the good and the bad, and they are never alone because they always know that their is some other human thinking and caring about them. Also, they get to have SEX (don't think I wasn't going to go there; O yes I am!). So, when married people have to spend a week apart or something, the worst that they have to experience is the realization of how good they have it. They can talk to their spouse on the phone in the meantime and know that they will be able to be physically near each other in a little while. Ok, they have to suffer for a week without sex (cry me a river!)

2. Dating Couples
This is my category and I am terribly grateful to even have this. There is a relationship that is growing. These people have someone that they know is thinking about them and there is that comfort of knowing that someone that you care about, cares about you too. They get to share some parts of their lives together but really, they don't get to live together or spend too much time together because they have separate lives for the time being. And, obviously, there is no sex or much of a physical relationship at all. There is only hope that grows stronger. When these people are separated from each other for a week, (I am familiar with this because I only get to see my girlfriend a few days out of every month) they still know that someone cares about them. They can still talk to each other on the phone. Being apart can be somewhat difficult but really, there is not much more that they really get to do when they get to see each other anyways, especially when you compare it to married couple reunions. As far as sex goes, they just have a realistic hope of it happening on some glorious day off in the future. But dating couples are always grateful for the chance just to be around each other.

3. The Single Person
Let's be honest, there is no point talking about the situation when the single person is separated from their soul mate because that is ALL THE TIME. This person leads a life of solitude and loneliness. They have no one to give them a kiss. No one cares about them in a deep way. Apparently they are expendable in times of battle because no one cares much if they die except themselves (if they even care themselves). They only seem to care about living if they are clinging to some hope of someday not being single anyways. Sex: they can only dream that this will someday happen, but there is no evidence yet to support a hope of it at this stage. These people live for the hope of a hope. Pitiful.

Dr. Matt gives his prescriptions:
To the married people I prescribe that we all support their marriages and do what we can to make sure they can be together. After all, they are meant to be. To the dating couple I prescribe that we all support them and give them any chance to actually hang out with each other. Give them environments where they can hang out with each other because there seem to be so many where they are not allowed. And finally, for the single people I prescribe that we do whatever we can to make their horrific lives more bearable. Show them some love because we all know that they aren't feeling it from anywhere else special. Take them out for dinner. Be nice to them. Don't give them any of those crap lines about how they can enjoy their freedom (we all know that's a crock). Give these people some hope about actually meeting someone too. You don't need to set them up or anything, but don't be afraid invite groups of single friends together in settings that are relaxed and subtle so if their is a chance of someone hitting it off sometime, it is actually possible. Oh, dear friends, we must pray for the single ones living their pitiful lives.

So, in conclusion, people give married couples too much sympathy, and single people not enough. The truth is, in my opinion (just like this whole blog is), married people have become accustomed and don't even realize how good they have it, and some single people have not even yet realized how bad they have it. I guess relativity, desensitization, and forgetfulness all seem to work in our world to keep people from getting too bitter or too satisfied. Hmm, this blog did not go totally where I planned it.