For those of you that wanted Facebook access for whatever reason and had already graduated from college, now you can sign up. More details at TechCrunch.

If, for some reason, you’ve never heard of Facebook… basically, it’s a social networking website a la Myspace that, until now, was primarily limited to college students, high school students, and various corporations and organizations. If you couldn’t sign up before, now you can sign up and add yourself to a group for a specific geographical region. Of course, you can add all your old college buddies as friends as long as they haven’t enabled optional restrictive privacy settings.

So go search me up and add me. I’m waiting for you.

(Yes, Jenny, this means you, too.)

Categories: Life
Tags: Facebook, Jenny

My cousin is getting married on Saturday. Oddly, the wedding is at a place dear (I think) to many of your hearts: Snow Mountain Ranch. Who couldn’t love a place they’ve cleaned toilets (Jenny), done massive amounts of manual labor, and formed long-lasting friendships? (Jake, this is where you say something sarcastic =)

So amazingly I don’t have to work on a Saturday for once and I’m hoping to trick my body into letting me leave on a regular schedule this weekend. I got off work at 3AM this morning and actually managed to get almost three and a half hours of sleep before waking up. Time to finish getting ready!

On the Seattle front, I’m in the initial stages of planning a trip out there in October. Not quite moving, but I can take a look around and try to stir up something good.

That’s all for now. Sorry there haven’t been more posts lately, but I’ve been distracted.

Categories: Life
Tags: family, Jake, Jenny, Seattle

In a partial bow to Phil’s demands, I will leave one certain video off the internet. I’ll hold onto that one until a future time when it may be more appropriate. Like at a wedding instead of on the internet. Who knew my blog isn’t the right place for all things entertaining?

The good news is I’ve got a different video of embarassment to post. Good job, Jenny, you’ve provided the content for the day. To the rest of you: Enjoy! (This one will probably make a lot more sense if you know the people involved — the voices you hear include Varv, 4L, & Tracy.)

(Direct Link to Video for the RSS Feeders)

For anybody that’s curious, I used VideoEgg instead of YouTube this time. YouTube does this weird thing where it destroys the aspect ratio of your video if it’s not a standard TV ratio (4:3).

Categories: Friends, Life, Video
Tags: 4L, Jenny, Phil, The Varv, Tracy

I’ve had absolutely zero green beer today in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day here in the States, but I am happy anyway. I did listen to some Flogging Molly, but that’s the closest I got to being Irish today.

I don’t know if it’s just the aftereffects of the trip to Guatemala, but I feel a lot more hopeful about life now than I have in quite a while. I was talking to Jenny on the phone today (Phil and Jenny, you say? No way! ;) and she told me I sounded happier than I have in a year. Hey, that works for me.

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) Maybe it’s just faith showing through. Eh, who knows.

All I know is this: My life is not perfect, but it’s not bad. There’s no civil war going on (it’s not in Guatemala either, but they’re still recovering), money isn’t a problem, we practically drown in food in this country, my family is great (shout out to my parents and mis hermanos)… I could list so many things.

One weird part about returning home from the vacation/trip was catching up with all my friends about their lives. A lot of my friends have had some difficult or frustrating things happen in their lives. Broken hearts, bad jobs, bizarre relationships, etc. A dose of reality. What can a person say about reality? The bad aspects won’t go away no matter what words you use to dress it up and make it more appealing.

Sorry I haven’t offered a whole lot of conclusions here, but I’m gonna try to write here more often. At the moment, I’m out of time. Later!

Categories: Life
Tags: alcohol, Bible, Guatemala, Jenny, Phil

I went to Main Event primarily for social reasons. I figured it would also be a good time to worship God through music and hearing a lot about him, but I considered that it would simply be another advantage and not so much my focus. It turns out this idea was wrong. God totally used this weekend to tell me some things. One of the biggest is that Japan still matters and missions still matter and that if I’m not going, I better be staying for the right reasons. So I’m evaluating my reasons to make sure they’re legit and not excuses.

One of the other big things is the importance of spending time with him. Having been a Christian most of my life, it would seem like this should be obvious. I know about it, for sure, but so often it’s easy to put aside the simple things like spending time reading the Bible in order to run off and gratify my own selfish desires. That ain’t cool! I need to spend more time listening to him and talking to him.

My primary reason for going was also satisfied. Thursday night, I got to Kansas State and was able to spend a large amount of time with Allie and also go to Nav Nite. The time together with Allie was wonderful. God gave us some good opportunities to talk and he certainly answered some prayers.

I really enjoyed seeing my other friends as well including many from this summer like Engle, Larry, Leslie, and others. I saw some friends from Nebraska including Cora, Jake, and Double-J. There’s also Jenny who somehow seems no longer a Nebraskan while she’s wearing purple, but is certainly not somebody I would consider a “Wildcat” yet. But she’s a friend, so the color doesn’t matter.

As soon as I finish posting this, I’m gonna get ready and drive up to Lincoln and spend the rest of today there before heading home tomorrow. Yay for that!

This is me signing off. G’day.

Categories: Friends, Life
Tags: Allie, Cora, Double-J, Engle, Jake, Jenny, Navigators