Fighting off Peer Pressure

Im sitting down to write the blog...and thinking about what is happening in the upper elevations of the atmosphere this morning.... reading a few other blogs of the morning (congrats Jake for getting it done already this week!) ... and it dawns on me that Christmas is upon us. Its amazing how the pressure to blog about my own personal feelings of Christmas is weighing on me. However, always striving to be a "good example" for students (other than that whole ... pie incident over Thanksgiving) I thought I would talk about something other than Christmas. Dont get me wrong.. Christmas is important. And of course, it isnt what it is supposed to be anymore.. Since Sean Covered that... I dont need to go into it. Both the Grinch and Charlie Brown can teach us alot about Christmas. On another front, Jake had a wonderful story about his Post Tankgiving Christmas Kickoff. While congrats are in order on the finding your tree, You might have to start changing the date from the Saturday after Thanksgiving to the Saturday after Halloween, since thats when the credit card companies start pushing Christmas shopping. Ok, so it was only two blogs that have been posted recently... both having to do with Christmas that spawned my peer pressure.. But, the season tends to make it hard as well.

So, since Im not going to talk about Christmas.... What am I going to talk about?

Well, I think it is time... prior to tomorrow... that I give the youth group a little insight into the Box! Hehe. You see, for those of you that do not know... Jake and I get together for lunch on Tuesdays. Lunch goes quick so we can get down to the real work... PING PONG. We've been playing for quite a while, and I have to admit, Im really pretty impressed at how good he has gotten. He's got some really nice serves. Nice spin and even some general tricky-ness to it. And while I will admit, I dont know what Ive got on him, we are pretty evenly matched. We tend to go back and forth on the "Best of 7" games that we play. Somedays one of us just has a bad day... or like only plays with one contact... but overall, we are pretty evenly matched. We can have one game that one of us gets blown away at 21-10 and then the next game goes to 25-23. I hardly ever let him get skunked...cause thats no fun.. so I tend to make sure he gets one of the first seven points... and generally it goes the other way as well.

Another thing I have been eager to write about since Sunday, I must give another kudo to Sean. Well, actually his parents. They invited us over for pie Sunday (which meant I was there early...and stayed late!), however, the pie was not the fun part. We were sitting in the living room talking about all sorts of random topics.... and then I found it. The couch that I was sitting on had two things on it that vibrated. What a cool idea. Thats all Im going to say about that...

Im glad I could do a post today that wasnt Christmas related. So I cant really be called a bah-humbugger in this time of hear... I will say one thing. I dont remember where I heard this.. but, here it is... "Dont take Christ out of XMas!"

Have Fun!

Making a fool of yourself.... and loving it!

So I was getting caught up on people's blogs and comments (since I needed a good topic for mine) and ran across the blog of Jason where he "announces" the video of Jonathan. Now while I understand that the Highschoolers might not realize what a significant event this was... I believe that there were some interesting things to note from this and even a moral or two.

Significant Note #1 : I find it interesting that a highschooler tried to talk about the "hype". The hype had been building since Authentic Faith weekend, which.. he was not at. The presentation did indeed live up to the hype. Weather the hype was high.. or low!

Significant Note #2: I think that this note can come from the inner workings of Two14 Guitar Guy's comment. It assumes that when Jonathan is a Senior someone (even a 7th grader) will think that he is the coolest! THAT, is a humorous comment in itself. But, the idea that we would have to pull out this video to expose his "true dorkness" is simply... Insane. When he is a Senior, he will still be showing his true dorkiness.

Significant Note #3: Jonathan... Thinking something like that would be forgotten? Shame on you. We had to video tape it... That way... When you are a senior and have to do it again, we can meld the two videos in together, and put another one up on the net for all to see.

Significant Note #4: Should we ever let him forget this? No way!

Significant Note #5: don't underestimate the power of the Insane!

Moral of the story #1:
As we all learned from the "Tea Pot" escapade, Jonathan... And people like him (I know, it takes one to know one!)... Will always do things that regular people would think they would NEVER do... Like sign "I'm a little tea pot" in front of a room of people, or wear a court jester outfit to work, church, and a renaissance Festival! There are those (JESSICA) that would say they would NEVER do things... But, you just don't know. There are some people that would do anything for a laugh... Like be "forced" to sing the "Tea Pot" song... And there are others that if they did that, they would be absolutely devastated with embarrassment. Embarrassment is good for you... keeps you humble.. and eventually you get used to it...and you become a youth leader!

Moral of the story #2:
I can only hope that Next retreat, Jonathan is a bit more cautious when he goes and gets in on a bet that the loser of a game has to do something. While I'm sure this kept out most people... When Jonathan showed up... It became the entire talbe of people VS. Jonathan. The writing was on the wall before you made your first die roll Jonathan. You WERE going to end up at the bottom of the winner's list... they just all had to figure out how to make that happen!

Food, Fun, and Murder... What a night!

It would seem that the Murdery Mystery Night was a killer success. As usual, Instead of going with the obvious murderer, I attempted to find the monkey twist in the story. Not being the murderer, while forcing me to tell the truth, also made me be synical of everyone elses stories (Hence... THE POINT!) Well, I thought, "If I were the muderer and had to come up with a good story... What would I come up with." Fortunately, Jennifer Aniston's true story, was my idea on a made up alibi. So, I chose that story as the false one...and of course .. I was wrong. Sure she didnt have a gun...but hey.. It seemed that there were so many guns at the party, certainly she coulda gotten a hold of one!!! If I would have been the murderer.. I was going to find a pair of characters that were talking to each other... and find out what they were talking about. Hopefully I could be quick before I got asked where I was. Then, once you hear that conversation.. you can just tell them then what they just said was exactly what you already knew... because you were in the bathroom next to their conversation. Then, you have both of them confirming your alibi, if they dont think about it very hard. After all, if I could get rid of "Oppertunity", then I couldnt possibly be the murderer.

Other than my thinking that Jake would throw in a twist, I had a lot of fun. I dunno about everyone else... but, the first part was the worst. Having to talk to people about things I dont think you would really talk about at a party, was murder in itself. However, sitting around at dinner with a table full of people was much more enjoyable. I guess food makes anything more fun! Thats ok... I happen to like food. (Thanks to Jessica's Parents for the Lasagna! YUMMMY!)

Over all, quite a night! I loved it. Im just glad that the Box-man didnt do any typecasting! I would have hated to have to figure out how to dress up like Arnold!