whatever...

i really like skating. i went skating tonight for almost an hour and a half and i loved every second of it. i'm not very good at it...yet, but i enjoy it more and more every time i go(which isn't often enough). i think in the future if i get a little better at skating and if i have the money and time i would like to buy some gear and join some kind of league - a church league or some low-skill men's league or something like that - and play some hockey for fun. it makes me wish i had skates for more years of my life growing up than i did...oh well. i keep spelling skates like this: saktes.i do that with a bunch of different words on a regular basis. like the word first, i often spell frist. it's like my fingers get slightly ahead of my brain and one letter goes in too soon or something. or sometimes in words that have double letters i type the wrong letter twice...like scholl instead of school for example. and it's always the same words too. i don't know what it is, but it happens, trust me. i tried a new workout yesterday that i can do without going to the gym cause i never get to the gym anymore and it annoys me. in the magazine it was called the body weight work-out, and it's basically a number of excercises designed around using your body weight instead of gym weights. it works alot on working your all around body msucle, especially building the core(like your midsection/abs/lower back area) it is the kind of thing that alot of gymnasts do(and gymnasts are some of the strongest most solid people there are...they can often out-bench body builders with little weight training beforehand) i couldn't even finish the workout. it was way more difficult than i had anticipated. after the first excercise my legs were actually shaking while i was doing the next excercise. today i can feel it all through my legs up through my but and into my core. this was a new experience for me. i am excited to keep doing this work-out now and see what happens(if i can stick to it). i had another new experience the other day. for the last couple of years i have been the number one or two defenceman on my school's socer team. when i play defence, if i challenge someone, i have always been able to get around their body if they are shielding with it and attack the ball(probly has alot to do with being tall and having long legs in part). i don't always get the ball and sometimes this strategy is a bad one and would lead to a scoring chance against us so i don't always do it. but the other night we were scrimmaging, and there was a new guy practicing with us. he is HUGE(like muscles huge). again, i've never not been able to get around someone no matter how big they are, but when i tried it on this guy, he simply blocked me and walked around me like i was nothing and went in on net and there was nothing i could do about it. this shocked me because it had never happened to me before. i will have to play him differently in the future...i am going to work for my old landlord's(finchy) brother tomorrow. his name is quentin and he looks and sounds just like his brother. in fact when he left a message on my phone i actually thought it was finchy until Quentin said his name. it seems weird to me that they look and sound so alike, but it's been said that me and my brother darrell are pretty similar(though i don't think anywhere near that similar). i saw someone with bleach blonde hair the other day and i wondered what i would look like with hair that color...especially while it's as long as it is. my hair is already dirty blonde, but if i bleached it i think it would be a very noticeable color change...am i spelling color right? is there a u in it? that's another thing with words i sometimes mess up. the hockey commentator in Canada's hockey team made one of the most obvious statements i have ever heard in my life today...he said "Heatley had 2 shots. the first one...then the second one" apparently he found it neccesary to explain this...meh...he's one of the couple hockey guys that are starting to get old and senile, but you gotta love em. Bob Cole and Harry Neale...the golden oldies. eventually they'll retire but hopefully will not be forgotten like Dick Irvin. he was awesome. i can't wait to be graduated...being a student with no money sucks...granted, i will be going back to school in a year or two, but the hope is that i will be in a better financial state when i go back and it won't be such a pain. one can dream right? maybe it'll never happen, but i'd like to be in a position sometime before i'm 40 where i can travel alot, maybe even live somewhere else and do some cool stuff...that'd be really swell. i want to go to a world cup and a champions league soccer game some day. that would be neat. i also want to visit ireland, see the pyramids in egypt, the opera house in sydney australia(cause it looks really cool), travel europe(cause where can you go in europe where there's not something cool to see?), see the forested or jungled(i'm not sure which you would call it) hills/mountains in cambodia, see a bunch of plays/theatre productions cause some of those are pretty cool, see the circues du soleil(this is new on my list as of today when i watched a little bit on tv and it was AWESOME) and a whole bunch of other stuff that i can't think of at this very moment. anyhoo, im gonna go to bed now...i'm tired. night.

this wasn't as easy as i thought it would be

This is a short kinda fun little survey that i had sent to me recently. i found it very interesting cause you have to answer the questions with song titles...never seen one like it before and i had fun with it

Choose a band/artist: Dave Matthews Band

Answer the following questions ONLY using titles of their songs

1.Are you male or female: "Jimi Thing"
2. Describe yourself: "Smooth Rider"
3. How do some people feel about you: "fool to think"
4. How do you feel about yourself: "so damn lucky"
5. Describe your ex gf/bf: "#41" (purely for humor's sake...i've never had a girlfriend let alone 41 of them)

6. Describe current gf/bf: "sleep to dream her"
7. Describe where you want to be: "one sweet world"
8. Describe how you live: "seek up"
9. What would you ask for if you had just one wish: "Proudest monkey"
10. Share a few words of Wisdom: "Don't drink the water"
11. Now say goodbye: "say goodbye"

well there we go with another post...i recommend giving this one a shot if you're into it. like i said above it's pretty fun, though it's a little tougher finding good answers to a couple of the questions(and you might want to change one or two questions...like the girlfriend ones if you're married...they're kinda pointless...but you could make up your own questions instead or, you know, whatever...). anyways, i gotta go to bed now cause i am very tired. night night.

i have a hockey card of dale hawerchuk!

some quick thoughts then off to bed...
first off, Canada's men's hockey team is about to start competition in the olympics starting tomorrow. my thoughts on the team are as follows:
1. Coaching - i don't like Pat Quinn, though i respect him as a decent coach. i think Canada could have made a different choice here, but as much as i am biased against him, pat quinn will certainly not hurt the team as he brings alot of experience and past success to the team...Jacques Martin is my boy and a good choice for assisstant caoch...that is all i have to say about coaches.
2. Goaltending - Brodeur is the "DUH" choice of this whole team. he is the best goalie in the NHL and in the world and he is still in his prime years. there simply is no other choice for the #1 spot on this team. Having said that, Roberto Luongo is being groomed as Brodeurs successor and it won't be more than a few years before he dethrones Brodeur as the best of the best. Luongo will likely see at least 1 maybe 2 games in net in the round-robin games against some of the weaker teams as he should a) to get some playing time and be ready if they need to call on him and b)so he can get more international experience in preparation for future years as Canada's #1. Turco has had a stellar year and though i hate the Dallas Stars who he plays for in the NHL, he deserves to be in there(though he likely won't see any playing time as #3).
3. Defense - A solid group. The only concern i have is due to injury. and that is that Scott Niedermayer, who is in my opinion one of the best defenseman in the world(possibly the best cause i like him that much), and is certainly the best defenceman Canada has, is injured and will be unable to compete in the olympics. Otherwise, Canada's defence is extremely solid with a good mix of offence and defence, youth and experience, size and for the most part it is a group of good skaters.
4. Forwards - Here is where my biggest problem with this team lies. though i agree with the majority of the picks, there are a couple exceptions that i take. first, KRIS DRAPER DOES NOT BELONG AT THE OLYMPICS. i don't mean to take away from him as i do believe he is a good player, a very solid defensive forward, pesky to other teams and gritty, but i repeat KRIS DRAPER DOES NOT BELONG AT THE OLYMPICS. especially considering that the team includes shane doan who can perform the same role as draper only better and with more offensive capabilities. I think that Draper should be dropped in favour of someone else. My next problem player is Martin St. Louis. i don't think he's anywhere near as bad a pick as draper, but i just think there are better choices out there. St. Louis has been in the NHL for many years now and has had one very good season and many other average or slightly above average seasons(including this current season). he is a good player and i think maybe his already present chemistry with lecavalier and richards helped land him a spot on this team, but again i think there are just simply better choices for this team than him. Who do i think should be on the team instead you may ask? well i think a player like Paul Kariya deserves at least a look. Though his past couple of seasons have been mediocre at best for a player of his status, he has revived his career in nashville again this year proving that he still has the skills and offesive talents that made him such a good player in years past. Add to that the added experience and success he has had at the international level as compared to someone like St. Louis and i think he would be a better choice. the other solution i offer is to promote the taxi squad players. This team has an abundance of experience already on it, and i think that Jason Spezza and Eric Staal have more proved that they can play at an elite level and i think the team would only benefit both now and in the future from including these players on the active roster. They would bring a tremendous amount of youth, skill, and energy to this team and it would only benefit them to play for the years to come as it is these players among others who will be making up the team in the future. I think that Kariya should be on the team or at least on the taxi squad with these two youngsters playing in the games. Also i think Crosby should have been put on the taxi squad. chances are these players won't get any playing time, but should it ever come down to it, Crosby has probably as much skill as anyone on the team and could step into a 3rd or 4th line role if absolutely needed. in the meantime, considering that kevin lowe(one of the people responsible for choosing this team) said himself that crosby could be the captain of the next olympic team, y not give him the experience of just being at the olympics and getting a taste for what it's like, what kind of pressure and excitement there is and all that. It will only help him for next time around, and even if he doesn't play a game he's still a better pick than Draper or St. Louis.
So this is my evaluation of the team we have sent to italy to sompete. Though i have slight disagreements when it comes to our forwards, i do think that we have an excellent team representing our country and i believe they have what it takes to win gold. Go Team!


other than that, i don't have much to say i guess cause that took longer than i thought and i am now tired and want to go to bed. In conclusion i will leave with this thought taken from C.S. Lewis' "The Problem of Pain". I am currently reading this book, and this little thought of his entertains my mind. Lewis is talking about truly understanding as a christian what it means that we are sinful people, and though to fully appreciate it you may have to read this book yourself, if this little tid-bit piques your interest at all i recommend picking up this book and taking a closer look. though not always an easy read, it is a very good read. So without further ado:
"When we merely say that we are bad, the 'wrath' of God seems a barbarous doctrine; as soon as we perceive our badness, it appears inevitable, a mere corollory form of God's goodness."

i blame rap music...

ok so one of my first blogs was about how soccer was about to start for the year and how excited i was to get back into it, so i figured i would give an update on things now that the year is just about at an end. This has been one long frustration of a season. I say this because though our team has finished the regular season in 4th place(out of 5 teams) with a 3-5 record, with the way we have been playing, we should be at 5-3 at the very least, and we had a very good shot at being 7-1. in three of our games(though the score does not always reflect it) we played well enough that we should have won the games, but things did not bounce our way or our guys just weren't quite able to score some goals on the dozens of chances we seem to generate each game. take our last game against prairie(the first place team) for instance...until the last 2 minutes of the game, the score was 1-0 for prairie(then they scored 2 goals while we were pressing forward to try to tie it). Their one goal was a good quality goal on their part but other than that we had shut them down entirely. On the other side, we were dominating the game getting chance after chance after chance that we either kept missing the net, shooting directly at the goalie, or hitting posts(2 crossbars in that game alone). our players SHOULD have been able to put a couple of those goals in and we SHOULD have beaten the first place team in the league. In our other game against this first place team, they beat us 6-4, but in this game we gave them 4 penalty shots on which they scored 3 goals. this game can be blamed on us as giving any team 1 penalty shot is just about unforgiveable, let alone 4 in one game. point being though, that again we had them mostly shut down, and outside of the penalties we gave them, we beat them 4-3. this is the kind of thing that has happened to us over and over this season. there is only 1 game that we deserved to lose and that was the second game of the year.
There are times i feel like i am just making excuses and trying to paint a nicer picture than actually exists, but i just can't accept this because I know that we have a better team than our record shows and if we can bring everything together for just one game then we will be a scary team to have to play.
Probably one of the biggest problems thus far has been putting the ball in the net. every game we far outchance the other team and either we just can't put it in or their goalies come up huge(there are actually some very good goalies in our league). I alone have hit at least one post in every game we've played except one, and that's from defence where i only get one or 2 shots a game(i hate posts so much...shudder). and i have set up our players countless times for breakawaysand goals that should be put in with no end result. If we can just put a few of these shots into the net like we SHOULD be, then obviously our success rate will climb drastically. also for most of this semester we have been missing our second number one defenceman(me being the first) which could be the thing that takes us from a good defensive team to a great defensive team. when this guy is playing he and i rotate with one another so there is always one of us on the field which shores up the defence considerably. we have a solid group of defenceman, and the other guys have stepped up this semester and played very well in his abscence, but if we can have him back and have those guys keep playing the way they have been, then like i said i think it will be the difference between being good and being great, and it may be what we need to finally push us over that edge.
our playoffs unfortunately aren't for a month which means we run the risk of getting rusty and out of game shape which is unfortunate. However, hopefully this will give guys a chance to heal, get in better shape, and possibly come together even more as a team. Like i said this has been a very frustrating year because i've come out of virtually every game feeling that we legitimately should have won(note the word legitimately...this is not me just being upset cause we lost). I want to win that gold so bad this year i can taste it and i know that we have the team to do it and i look forward to turning things around and surprising some teams come play-off time. Here's hoping...

i should be working right now...

i got tagged...this should relieve some boredom for a bit...

Four jobs i've had:
1. banquet server, Canadian Bible College
2. Nufab lumber warehouse
3. Phantom Screens
4. soccer referree(is that spelled right?)

Four movies i can watch over and over:
1. Batman Begins
2. About a Boy
3. Garden State
4. Top Gun

Four Places i've lived:
1. Kelstern(i think this is where my family lived the first year of my life)
2. Regina
3. Calgary
4. college residence(i haven't lived in any other cities so i needed something else)

4 TV shows i love to watch:
1. Smallville
2. Scrubs
3. anything sports
4. i guess Lost(though i haven't seen hardly any of the second season...don't watch much tv)

4 places i've been on vacation
1. Northern Saskatchewan(beautiful country up there)
2. Edmonton
3. Crow's Nest Pass
4. Yellowstone National Park in the U.S. (though i was too young to remember most of it)

4 of my favorite dishes:
1. Steak(don't care what it's served with, the steak is the important part)
2. Roast beef and potatoes
3. chicken or turkey with all the fixins(it's all the fixins that i love best)
4. i guess ham with scalloped potatoes

4 Sites i visit daily:
1. TSN
2. NHL.com
3. hockey pool
4. CNN news site

4 places i'd rather be right now
1. playing soccer
2. in a music store with a pocket full of money
3. at the school res. cause i know lots of people there
4. ireland

so there we go...someone else's turn...

i was at the floor meeting in residence tonight and i had alot of thoughts swirling around in my head, most of which was unformed and incoherent, at least as of yet, but there was one thing that seemed to stick out above the rest and has been something that has invaded my thoughts for some time. This is not something, however, that i have tried to work through before, so i will try to gather my thoughts now, though they will probly continue to develop for awhile after this.
it has to do mainly with worship, specifically communal worship with other believers, as i am in no place to comment on a person's worship outside of this setting(apart from my own). one of the things that i have wrestled with is whether or not as believers, we are authentically worshipping God in these times, and for that matter what does that even look like?
This has become an issue to me because it is something that i have been examining and adjusting in my own life recently and i have started to observe those around me a little bit. I came to the realization recently that more often than not in times of communal worship i would just sing the songs probably more out of habit than anything, while my mind wandered elsewhere and was not at all paying attention to what i was supposed to be doing. and even in those moments when i really did feel like i was into it and truly praising God, i realized that though my heart was temporarily in the right place, i paid little attention to what it was i was actually singing, what words were coming out of my mouth. i resolved to start actually examining these songs and paying attention to what they are saying and whether or not that is something i can sing, or am even interested in singing. that has translated into a couple of different things for me in my own worship life right now. I tend to do one of two things, sometimes both at the same time. one of these things is just to not sing, but rather sit back and listen to what is being sung. This has allowed me to examine, like i said earlier, whether or not these words truly express me and my thoughts, faith, etc.. I basically enter into a time of reflection and interaction with the song being sung and more importantly with God and my relationship with him. In doing this I have felt closer and more connected with God in these times (and this is every time, not just once in awhile)than i ever have before. The other thing i have started to do is just listen to the music, and simply ignore the words at times. To me, this is almost always a pure form of worship, because regardless of what the words are saying, the music has been written and is being performed by people using their talents to create beautiful music with the purpose of glorifying God. I was at a large worship event recently put on by my school and throughout the whole night the music was magnificent, and especially at the end in the last couple of songs. One of the guitar players started playing a mandolin and the worship band played some twangy upbeat fun songs, and while they were playing, you could just see the sheer happiness and joy that these musicians were getting from playing this music(especially the mandolin player), and to me, that was one of the most magnificent displays of worship i have seen. God gave these people a gift and a passion, and they are passionately using it in return to offer up praises to God. It's beautiful.
Part of this side of things - that is listening to the music as worship - has included listening and watching other people as they worship. The congregational singing, when listened to, can add so much to the music and make it that much better, and when you can spot someone in the crowd who is so deeply moved by the music and is pouring themselves out in the act of worship, there is something special about that. The unfortunate side of doing this is that what i see in observing others during worship is that alot of people do not seem to really enter into worship and rather sing just cause it's what you do when you go to church. Like i was until recently, they are reading the words and singing the songs without making any actual connection to God, while their minds are wandering, concentrating on something else (this is a generalization to an extent...certainly not everyon is like this). This makes me sad to see, because in my mind it is essentially contradictory to the whole purpose of worship. Rather than spending 15 or 20 minutes in commune with their lord, offering up to him what he most righteously deserves and is most worthy of, people spend that time thinking about something they have to do later that day, or thinking about the funny faces/manerisms some members of the people on stage have while they play and sing, or whatever it is, point being, they are doing the opposite of what that time is meant for.
To this end, i sometimes feel like it is the church that is at least partially to blame for this. Sunday morning worship has become merely a routine, and sometimes it's just a show as much as anything. Just some people up on stage playing some music that people sing along with. and even some things that are meant to get people to focus on worship and on God have just become part of the act(stuff like a scripture reading between songs, and that kind of thing). this sounds kind of harsh even to me, and its not really my intent to attack the church and say they are failing or doing a poor job in terms of worship, and certainly they can not take all the blame. People in our culture, for whatever reason(this would be a whole other topic if i got into it) have become apathetic, and this is brought into the church from the outside and i think that is in part what i see when i observe other people...just a lack of caring/enthusiasm for worship(and probably many other areas as well).
The end result of all this is that i just do not see alot of what i would consider "Authentic/from the heart kind of worship" when people gather together, and this is a sad thing. I do not suppose to know what to do about this if there is anything to be done, but maybe the church needs to try some new or different things in their worship services, something that will maybe challenge people and force them or help lead them out of their apathy into a focused on God, heartfelt, realtionship building time of worship. like i said, i do not know what this looks like or what needs be done, but this is something that has been weighing on me recently.

I hope that this made at least a little sense, as i kinda just wrote what came to mind and i'm not sure if it all follows or if i left stuff undealt with, or what, but i wanted to get it out and try to at least start to make some sense of it for myself. if you have any additional thoughts or comments, then please feel free to let me know. another person's input and opinions are golden, and to be listened to(even if they don't always have it right).
i guess that's about it for now. adios