Time to Just Be

We finished learning our floor routine today. I get so confused, if it was all gymnastics I would be fine, but it isn't, it's dancing too. But we did bars, so that more than makes up for it :-)

And:

A wonderful time of fellowship, and not being in the center of attention. The Hildebrands came up from Cardiff by the Sea to visit with the the Ashramites (mostly the storers) so the Hildebrands, Dolly, Betty, and the Kerrs made their way over to the Storers house, and we had dinner and hung out. I wish I knew how to listen better, I spend so much of my time talking when I could be listening. I listened a lot tonight ::is very happy:: I love those people!

It's A Beautiful Day!

It is such a beautiful day! I am cold, which is just so awesome. It's 57 degrees outside. I am on my trampoline doing debate. It rained. There are grey skies. The grass is alive. The planes fly overhead. Leaves are turning colours. It is a beautiful day!

A Haiku for Joy
Clorox disinfects
The screemy jeemys will die
At Joy's fatefull hand

Capturing Life

I love photography! I can't get enough of it. I love my camera :-) I really want to be an amazing photographer someday, that would be awesome. Not like a professional or anything like that, but just to have the ability to capture life in a photograph. As part of my photography class today, I did a portrait "session" with my mom. It was so much fun! Here is where the benefits of a digital camera are so cool, I took 93 pictures and didn't have to pay for any of those in film, and if I did, there is no way I would have taken that many pictures. So, if you want to see the results (which vary from good to funny) Go check them out!

Random Musings: Sometimes the Sunday school answers that we are pretty much taught to ignore, and look "deeper" are really all that we need. I work with the kids on Sunday Mornings and I have found that those kids with their "Sunday school answers" seam to have a more intimate grasp of how amazing God is, and the power that he holds than many of the older kids and adults that I know. All of those things that we learn in Sunday School that we forgot and trade in for our grand theology we were taught for a reason. Simply depending upon God. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. We need to start things off with God and, rely on Him and He will get you through everything... He will.

"Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary , they will walk and not be faint." - Isaiah 40:30-31

the inadequacy of the spoken language

"A picture is worth 1,000 words"

"Silence speaks louder than words"

Language is so inadequate to describe life, to describe thought. Maybe I just haven't spent enough time in my thesaurus recently. But really, how do you communicate something that doesn't have a word to describe it? Even if you were to make up your own word for it, you must describe it with other words if anyone else is to understand it. You could choose to attempt communication by approximating words and describing it through things that it is (but isn't) like. You could say all of the things that it isn't, but that would take years. Or you could decide not to try explaining it at all. That way there could be no misunderstandings as to what your thoughts and experiences really are. So, I guess the real question here is would it be better that way? Is it better to understand someone else's thoughts incorrectly, or incompletely, or to not know them at all?

Running Low/Flying High

Well, I ran out of gasoline today... It was a very sad thing, for you must understand that this means my gas gauge isn't really working, and I thought it was. It works generally, but unless somehow I burned an entire gallon of gas driving from Carver to Standiford, then my gauge isn't doing very well. And this is a new one! We just replaced it, because the other one didn't work at all. Oh well, I guess it isn't the most important thing in life (though it was kinda fun pulling off to the side of the freeway, and now I know where the emergency flashers are located in my car)

We are working on our routines in gymanstics ::is very excited:: So, I really don't like all of the dance stuff (dance, not Ballet) But putting the routine together is fun. Honestly I don't care how well you can hold your poses, or what your scales and pirouettes look like. I want to see you do gymnastics! I wish that we could make our own routines, that would be so awesome! Mine wouldn't have much dance-ness to it, more transition-ness. I enjoy gymnastics immensly.

It's here!

The debate year has finally started for me. I am researching more than just an hour or two a week, and practice rounds are starting to become standard I think :-) This will be the third week in a row that we have had a round (I think). And today we are going to have two rounds. This is exiting. I like debate! We are going to debate Stephanie and Kirby affirmative and negative. Hopefully both rounds go well. I don't even know half of the stuff about our affirmative, but that's ok, maybe after the round I will know more. That's kinda the point of the round anyway being as we don't have enough time for a full round. More to get some stuff out there and some practice then to have the most perfect round ever... Which believe me, it won't be. I think that I should say this one more time... I love debate!

Decisions

I really don't like decisions all that much, and am definitely not a very decisive person... But I need to decide. I get so confused sometimes, and then there are times when I know exactly what I should do, but I really don't want to do it, or as in this case am just flat out scared to, so I say: "I am indecisive". In reality I am just hiding behind those words, and they are rather easy to hide behind.

In other news, school is insane! I am having a hard time keeping up with everything, which is mostly caused by me not wanting to do it. I simply am not motivated to do anything except for gymnastics right now. I feel like a gymnast. I don't think I have really consistently ever felt like that before. You see, there are people who do gymnastics, and then there are gymnasts. I believe that I now fall into the later category, which is quite fun! I love gymnastics ::grins::. However, my school is suffering at this lack of motivation. Biology, Math, even to some extent photography (though not nearly as much, because I love photography). Debate... Well, it needs a category of its own. Unfortunately it is last on the priority list, though not of my own choosing. I have to get school done now so that I can work on debate during qualifiers, that's just how it is. Though I must point out that I have done debate every Friday for the last couple of weeks (that means only debate, no school) so I guess I make up for the lack of debate during the week on Friday. We just started "creative writing" today in English 311, which was very fun, so I am excited about that. Hopefully I can get back on top of things...

I'm going to stop procrastinating! I'm off to go do some school :-)

(I started using Firefox)

There is no point

I am a flower quickly fading.
Here today and gone tomorrow.
A wave tossed in the ocean.
A vapor in the wind.

Everything is meaningless.

Who are we?

A good friend told me today that I love what is not of man (though not in those exact words). It is very true. I love the mountains, the sky, the earth beneath my feet, the beach, water (in any form) rain, snow, hail, lake, ocean, puddle, the sun, the colors that stretch across the sky, the reflection of the moon, mud, creation. I love creation. Sometimes I wish that I wasn't living in this time, that I lived in a different time... a time without all of this technology. To be able to see the sky without having to climb atop a roof. I know that there are advantages and disadvantages to basically every time period, and we have it pretty good in the United States right now, but I can't help but wonder. Everything is so romanticized, but so is our world today.

I wonder at our world. Who are we to inflict pain on other people? Who are we to abandon those who most need to be loved? Who are we to decide who needs to be loved? Who are we? I don't understand why how people can be so cruel. It is beyond my comprehension. You can try to explain it away through psychology or tell me so many things, but I can't believe it. There is no way to explain it away. I can not understand. I refuse to understand.

Ancient China.

Debating Again

Well, I finally feel like I am part of debate again. It's taken me a long time, but as of this morning I do. I have evidence on more than one case, and this will be my second round today. I'll get my case (that I don't know much about) Piranha packed later today, and then I will know stuff about it, because I will have to. We will help everyone get their cases ready for Santa Clara, and hopefully find time for another round: affirmative. That word is so scary. I have only read over the affirmative stuff once or twice. Heck, I know more about immunization than I do about my own affirmative case! But that is soon to change, because I am now ready to debate.

New (Old) Shoes

I bought a new pair of debate shoes yesterday. The shoes that lasted me for the first four years of my debate career have finally given the job over to a new pair. Different people buy different shoes for different reasons, but I really don't like buying shoes. New shoes are... well, new. They feel funny. Joy also got a new pair of shoes yesterday, so I get her old ones! I have had my Tennis Shoes for a couple years, and Joy had them for a while before that. I really really like them, but Joy insists that they have served their duty and that I should take her old ones. (more like just can't believe they don't really have a sole) Besides, they are Nike, we are against Nike.

New shoes are like a lot of new things. They don't really belong to you, they aren't yours. Yeah, sure you have paid the money to buy a pair of shoes (or whatever it is that you bought) but how can they be yours if they are still just like every other pair in the shoe store? They don't have you in them. You probably will never find another pair of shoes that are exactly like mine, because there is not another pair of shoes that have been through the same things mine have. I love my shoes... and I don't want to see them go.