MrImperial's Xanga

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 18:48:28 GMT

After some thought, I've decided to head back over to Blogger: here

I will miss a couple features of Xanga, but not enough to warrant sticking around.

Blessings!

swagbucks

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:44:50 GMT

Click this link and join! This one. Yeah, this one. It's better than Blingo. Seriously.

happy new y...wait a sec...

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:13:57 GMT

Someone asked me what my New Year's resolution was. I usually don't do these because they're pointless and hardly ever work out. Not that it's bad to have goals, but you know...keeping something up for a year is usually an effort in the futility of, well, human effort. No one ever says, "My NYR [because it's tiring to keep saying/typing such a long phrase all the time, hah] is to be gracious, or to accept grace more." You know why? Because people don't see that as effort, as something they can tabulate and quantify; you can't mark it down in a chart or give yourself bonus points for grace. But it's stuff like that that I think we should actually be focusing on a bit more. I digress...

My answer to the question is simple: I actually missed the deadline by just over a month. November 30, to be exact. This is an exercise in irony, because the resolution I've made according to the Gregorian calendar is that I want to orient my life more distinctly to the Church calendar. So I'm a month late...the new Christian year begins on the first Sunday of Advent, which this year happened to be November 30. Whatever the historicity is concerning the creation and implementation of the Church calendar, for catechesis or whatnot, it should still hold prominence in the lives of all Christians, even those who are not a part of a catholic church that recognizes the Christian calendar. Invariably we all orient our lives toward a cycle of repetition, whether we realize it or not; primarily, this is a seasonal repetition, but secondarily, this is a "secular" (not using the world in an evil sense, per se) orientation that looks at January 1 as the hinge-point. This is how we measure birthdays, anniversaries, vacations, etc., and like I said, this isn't inherently bad.

But what if we oriented our lives toward the Christian calendar, so that others knew we were Christians by the way we acted and lived out the Christian story? What if people could see us bursting with hope during Advent rather than trudging around dismally about the cold and the darkness of winter? What if people could see our grief over sin during Lent, despite the secular calendar's increasing hope of plunging into Spring from the depths of Winter?

a pause

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 02:59:45 GMT

After finishing a brutal semester (which ended up being awesome, actually), and spending Christmas in New York with Cherith's folks, and spending an evening in central PA with Cherith's dad's family, we are now in Eden, NC for the New Year. We'll be jetting off again on Saturday morning, so if you're in the area and want to see us, give us a call (or facebook us). Then we get a day of readjustment to KY, and work starts over again (and classes). I've transitioned into a new position at the library: mail run/periodicals assistant. The main details: I now make the mail move around between IT, the library, and the Post Office, first off, and second, Rob is actually my direct boss now, as I'll assist with checking in periodicals and doing other odds and ends with them as time permits. For J-Term, I'll be filling my second Inductive Bible Study requirement, taking Hebrews with Dr. Bauer. Despite the fact that this is going to be hardcore, break-neck work for a month, it's going to be great. The only problem is that some time between now and February I have to write a 700-word research proposal for my Durham application, and interest is tottering on the edge. I'm excited about the subject matter, but not so much with the actual sitting down and typing the thing out. But it'll just have to get done I guess.

Enough for now. Peace.

don't ask

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:29:40 GMT

Anyone writing on Pelagius who doesn't mention the Drinking Song of Pelagius is hereby deemed a heretic him/herself.

random

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:38:18 GMT

I used to like basketball. But I'll always like Kevin McHale.

And I'm pretty sure he's had that suit since the '80s.

gah

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:53:10 GMT

I almost became a Methodist today.

Dr. Kenneth C. Kinghorn, who used to teach church history around here, said today that he'd be happy to recommend me for a John Wesley doctoral fellowship, knowing my interest in doing synthetic work between biblical studies and church history and that I intend to pursue PhD studies. You see, he's on the board of directors. Which means that I probably would have gotten one. The average is about $10,000.

And then I had to take a big gulp.

"Ah, yeah...I'm not a Methodist."

"Oh, that's a shame. You'd be a perfect candidate."

....

trusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrusttrust

also

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 23:20:03 GMT

4. I recently updated the Flickr, as you can also see by the little side-bar thingy on the right (assuming you have enough desire to scroll further down, or assuming you don't have 3 papers to write in 7 days like me). Mainly pics from SBL at Boston and Thanksgiving.

5. I just noticed that traffic to this site has dramatically increased in the last few days...is there some alien conspiracy out there trying to trick me into thinking more people read this site than I originally thought? Or is it just thanks to RSS feeds? (In which case, let me personally thank you for allowing me to clutter your feeder.)

Back to reading Childs. Good stuff. Just wish I didn't have to do it at the moment.

minor, quick update

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 19:15:36 GMT

The semester's screaming toward the finish line, so I don't have much time to blog. I'll hopefully get a few things out that have been stewing in my brain lately once I'm done with everything (which at the moment involves two research papers, a translation exam, and a book review).

1. I got an A on my Jude/2 Peter paper, praise the Lord. With the final comments, Dr. Reese also included the suggestion that with some polishing, it would be publishable. How's that for the ego?

2. The Astros signed Mike Hampton. This matters not to most of you. I will be interested to see how this turns out.

3. I've landed another of my photos on a website. Check it out.

semi-annual sports post

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:35:41 GMT

Ok, I probably post about sports more than semi-annually, but since it hasn't been a while, here you go...

Football:

The AFC East is actually shaping up to be an interesting division this year. You have the 7-3 Jets (yes, the Jets have a winning record...wow), at the top, the 6-4 Patriots (who aren't doing too badly without Brady), the 5-4 Miami Dolphins (I can't even believe it...not just a winning record, but a viable shot at the playoffs this year...woohoo!!!), and the 5-4 Bills (don't believe NFL.com's rankings...the Dolphins have better conference and division records, and are thus on top of the Bills...those web people need to be fired).

Did you catch that? The Dolphins are 5-4. Despite having a man-child as a quarterback. Despite losing some of our best defensive backs. Despite having a no-name receiver corp. This is amazing. Most of it is thanks to great coaching (a la Tony Sparano and Dan Henning), taking the offense back to high school with all those trick plays (I will say, though, that by the end of the season I'm probably going to have a nervous reaction any time someone says "wildcat"), and trusting the running game to lead the charge (and you can't have a good running game without a good offensive line). Pennington's really stepped up his game, though, so I'll give him some credit too. However, all that being said, we are still 5-4 - which means there's room for improvement. Get everything clicking on all cylinders, though, and there's a chance.

In other football news...Mike Singletary is the new Ozzie Guillen. The man's hilarious. My most recent favorite quote, regarding how Frank Gore thought he had a concussion, though it ended up just being a neck strain: "Frank Gore is a football player," said Singletary. "He does not know what a concussion is."

Baseball:

I won't belabor this, because most of you probably don't care at this point, but the Astros are in position to make some interesting moves as the free agent market heats up. They're obviously shooting for quality starting pitching, but will Ed Wade continue to invest in old clunkers, or actually make a good move?

Hockey:

The Detroit Red Wings are 10-2-3, which is good, but not as good as last year. With the exception of Chicago (I can't believe Chicago's competant at hockey again...it's been a while), though, the division's looking pretty anemic, so the Wings shouldn't have any trouble locking it up again this year. Hopefully there's no mid-season melt-down, though.

Basketball:

Basketball? Are you kidding? The last time I cared about basketball was when Bill Clinton was President. Guess the year.

Happy Friday!