Happy Birthday to Me

Okay, I know I'm 33 years old now and I'm not supposed to be into birthdays anymore. After all, birthdays are for kids and I should be mourning every year that I get closer to death, but I'm afraid I'm just a little too juvenile and not mature enough to hate the day of my birth and avoid it like the plague. I just love having people say happy birthday to me and giving me good wishes. I love having Jordan do her very best to be a good girl all day long and serve me (she got me breakfast this morning). I love presents when they come, especially the cheesy dollar store ones I get from J.
I came to school this morning with a birthday greeting from a colleague who I didn't know knew my birthday and I wondered how he knew until I looked down the hall and saw the crepe paper decorating my office. My ISP is taking me out (to the campus cafeteria) tonight, Jordan has some top-secret plans. It's just fun!!!

Miscellaneous Blog Entry Title #1

Today as Jordan and I were driving into the church parking lot, I noticed a man and woman pushing a shopping cart into the lot as well. After we had parked and were entering the building, we saw them "park" the cart with the parking attendants (who quite gallantly put orange traffic cones in front and back of it). We followed the couple into church (watching the woman adjust her pants at the side of the path while the man impatiently waited for her). We then entered the sanctuary and I decided that I wanted to sit near them. This was partly out of curiosity (I admit it) and partly because I saw it as a chance to be accepting of people different than me. I remember growing up and seeing people come into church that were poorer, dirtier, different than me and I would avoid them, so I now try to consciously not avoid them. They were a bit disruptive during the service. The man was a little more into it than the woman, he would nod his head at various times when the pastor said something he agreed with, he filled out the visitor information card (bringing it down to the usher and handing it to him in the middle of the service) and he was careful to fill in the blanks in the sermon notes. The woman was in and out of the church, finally leaving during communion to smoke outside. It was also apparent that they hadn't showered in a while and while the smell wasn't overpowering, it was there.
Shortly after we entered, Jordan got something in her eye and went to the restroom and in that time, a guy (youngish, cutish) came in and asked if he could sit by me which of course I said yes to. He sat down and then Jordan came back. The guy sat there for maybe 10 or 15 minutes before he got up and moved to the other side of the church.

Now here's what I'm wondering and what I would love to ask him (but never will of course). Did he leave because Jordan returned and he now found himself seated next to a single mother, or did he leave because he couldn't handle the couple in front of us (I guess he could have left because he saw friends of his, but as he moved to a seat behind us and made no indication of searching the church, I am more inclined towards my other 2 options) Neither reason is blame-free on his part, but I'm more curious about the 2nd option. We want church to be a place where people can come and worship, right? Our pastor even scolded people last month for leaving the service early to get out of the parking lot quicker because it interrupts the work of the H.S. We also want to be an open place where anyone can come to find God, regardless of where they come from. So what do we do with people who obviously haven't been to church in a while, or this one ever, and who don't understand the church "culture?" People who are that disrupting presence but maybe need God more than others. It seems obvious that we should welcome them and provide a safe space for them to learn, but is it obvious? How do we deal with this? Do we provide a safe climate in our churches for others to come and learn? Just a few questions to ponder. I'm off to dreamland now!

Voting

Unless you live in a cave (and if you do, you probably don't have internet access), you know there's an election on and a highly contested race between Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton. Additionally, you probably know that "youth are turning out to support Obama in record numbers" or something to that effect. Here's what I was wondering today as I was looking through the news: will Obama effect the involvement of young people in future elections. Imagine all these dewy-eyed fresh faced 18-32 year olds (I'll no longer fit in that category as of one week from today, sigh) so excited about a candidate who they feel represents their interests. They turn out and vote, they work on the campaign, they watch YouTube videos of Obama girl. November comes along, they vote for their candidate and... he doesn't win and they stop caring about politics because their vote still doesn't count or ...he does win and all of the sudden they see what their involvement could mean. I know we can't definitively predict that this will happen either way, especially since we don't always have stellar, devotion-inspiring candidates running for office, but I think it's interesting and I'll be watching closely to see what happens.

"A so-called "mash van" in the UK shows off its new "mash cone" with sausage, mashed potato, gravy and peas in an ice cream cone."

I found this on the BBC. I knew the British weren't known for their food, but I had no idea they had no taste buds at all.

The Pacific

Yesterday I dropped Jordan off in Oceanside for a couple days with her cousins and then drove up to Costa Mesa for a school/prayer thing. As I was driving up I-5, I looked out to my left and saw the beautiful Pacific Ocean and it hit me that I hadn't seen the ocean once since I moved her last August. What is wrong with me? I've managed to keep myself locked in Riverside and haven't gotten out to see all the beautiful things around me. I got the LA Times this morning, and there was a section on 8 cool places to visit nearby here - desert, ocean, mountains, rivers - and again, I haven't seen any of them. I'm now making a public pledge that I will go someplace new and different once a month, and not Disneyland or Universal Studios-type places, but places with real character. I want Jordan to learn to appreciate the world around her and learn to entertain herself instead of needing an adrenaline rush or a cartoon character to entertain her. She's been giving me the "I'm bored" speech a lot lately and so I'm trying to instill in her that she can learn to entertain herself. She just needs to figure out how to use the simple tools she finds around her to create new and interesting things. We'll see how it goes, and if you have any suggestions of cool and interesting places, let me know!

True Beauty

Now this is a beauty contest I can support...