28.06.2000

my room is almost clean now. or rather, the process is nearly complete. the last two days, my mom's been helping me, which has made it go a lot faster. there's also a lot more things getting thrown away (i tend to keep everything)...

last night i watched e.t., and tonight i saw edward scissorhands. both were great movies. my favorite part of e.s. is at the beginning, when the avon lady is walking up the stairs of the old spooky castle in her cute little lavendar outfit saying, "avon calling! hellooo...hellooo...i'm your local avon representative..." it's just so ironic, so...oxymoronic? i'm not sure. but really funny. i also like that "religious" lady; she cracks me up.

i did the dinner shift tonight, and we were excessively bored, as it's summertime & few classes are going on there's only, like, 18 people in the dorm...anyway, so ellie made this "flip book" on the corner of a pad of paper. there's this little sun dancing, then another sun comes along and the two dance together for a while, but then a cloud comes. the cloud looks very nice at first, but is really evil. it eats one of the suns. then the cloud--poof!--explodes, and the two suns are together again, dancing along...then one sun leaves, and then the other one just fades until it is just a dot, and then no more.

23.06.2000

quote: "love is found in the things we've given up more than in the things that we have kept."--rich mullins

well, i am back now from colorado and face-to-face once again with reality. the week was nice. sometimes when there is a great wind in the aspens, the rustle of the leaves sounds like the roar of the ocean.

i am getting acquainted with my new starflyer cd, everybody makes mistakes. it is truly a wonderful, amazing album. my favorite song, of course, is 20 dollar bills. it's beautiful: the subdued vocals, the string melody, the harp arpeggios, and the piano underscoring it all. i just wish the song didn't end so soon.

new discovery: fingernails grow very fast.

i am about 1/3 done with my new webpage, but am still as yet unsure as to what server i will use (i'm working on the page offline right now). i like tripod's url, but i have heard of some of the upcoming things angelfire is gonna do--bad, stupid, crappy things--and am a little dubious about staying with tripod for fear of what they may choose to do, since they're connected with angelfire. also i don't really like tripod's ads. so i've done a little searching around but haven't come up with anything feasible yet. i suppose it comes back to the old can't-have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too thing.

today, among other things, i:

unpacked my suitcase
ate pancakes
read a book (nonfiction!)
played the piano
played frisbee with friends and other assorted people in the park
met someone new
attended the opening of a much-loved shakespeare play

14.06.2000

i will be gone for a week, so no updates for a while. but i'm working on the new design for this webpage; i have lots of ideas all of a sudden, but limited time. so long, lovely!

12.06.2000

i am talking to six-year-old shawn, who stays at his grandparents' house all day next door to us because both his parents work all the time. he is the same little boy who thinks God makes his heart blue with His power, who says he has been to heaven ("this morning! i walked through the woods and over a bridge, and there i was in heaven!"), and who cannot distinguish a b from a g.

"can kyle come out and play?"
"kyle's not here right now, shawn; he's having surgery."
"what's surgery?"
"it's when you go to the hospital and you lay down on a bed and doctors come in wearing funny green clothes, and they cut you open and work on your insides."
"does it hurt?"
"no; they put you to sleep, so you don't feel anything."
"do they cut out your heart?"
*laughs* "no, shawn, they don't."
"what do they do?"
"well, it depends. sometimes they can do surgery on your heart, or--"
"my grandma got her heart cut out."
(judy, shawn's grandma, is very much alive and well next door.)
"really. well, i don't think they did that to her. maybe they did something else to her heart."
"i got my heart cut out."
"oh? when?"
"this morning."
(granted it is still 11:35 in the morning; it must have been a pretty early surgery!)
"then shouldn't you still be in the hospital recovering?"
"they sent me home. but i have to go back to get a shot."
"when?"
"when i get up in the morning. and then i have to be in the hospital for thirty-three weeks. or maybe eight thousand days."
(i open the door to go back into the house.)
"okay, shawn, well, you be careful and take good care of yourself. it's pretty hard to live with your heart cut out."
"yeah, okay."

08.06.2000

due to certain circumstances, this journal will perhaps be terminated sometime soon. i have not decided absolutely yet; it's still pending. but it has really helped me a lot the past few months, and i'll be sad to see it go if indeed it does. but it will be entirely my decision, based upon what i feel needs to happen.

"i hope we have ourselves an understanding..."

"it's up hill both ways/tomorrow i swear i won't act this way/i know it seems like that is what i always say/but it does not matter to me/althought it seems it should/it's because i know i'm understood...you know i want to be like Jesus/but it seems so very far away/when will i learn to obey?"

(pedro)

06.06.2000

"hey Mr. Hole-Fixing Man
i'm as broken as a boy can be
so how bout fixing me?
...start by fixing me"

"rest in Me little david and dry all your tears
you can lay down your armor and have no fear
cause I'm always here when you're tired of running
and I'm all the strength that you need"

yeah, i like this pedro ep a lot.

05.06.2000

we had a couple of rainy days last weekend. i love rainy weather. if there's not too much of it, that is. i love waking up early on a rainy saturday morning, i love going outside in the rain, i love driving in the rain (as long as it's not too heavy!), i love the coolness that the rain brings to the air--it's totally different from the winter coldness. which sounds wonderful but is terrifying.

so i got the latest starflyer cd, everybody makes mistakes, & pedro's ep, whole. they're both great. i especially love the pedro ep. it's a concept album--basically, it tells david's testimony in five songs. it starts out w/ him being a heroine addict & ends up w/ him trusting Jesus. it's awesome. i love the layout of the liner notes, the whole concept of the album and how perfect and concise it is, the lyrics, and the music of course is very good. both albums keep growing on me, the more i listen to them.

but my days have been good thus far.

01.06.2000

taylor went home to glory yesterday morning at about 5:30 am. which is sad from our perspective, but yet at the same time absolutely glorious and wonderful. he is where he belongs, with the Maker of Noses. he has two strong legs now, and no pain. there is no mortal body to hinder his spirit's growth. praise to the Lord for His mighty work!

i'm trying to clean out my room, but after 2 1/2 hours of working on it tonight, i'm burned out already. there just is no easy way to go about it. i just wish all the junk would go away. but i'm gonna do it this year. i know, i've said that for years and years, but it's really gonna happen this summer. maybe if i give myself a deadline of two weeks to get it done in, then i'll reward myself by buying a guitar. yes. good idea. very good idea. i think i shall do it. and tomorrow's my day off from work.

recently (while cleaning up my room) i found a journal i had kept during 7th & 8th grade. it's really funny to read through it now. back then, i fought with my parents a lot, loved school, and was always very precise with my records. it's kinda funny to read now, of course. it's interesting to see who i looked up to and who i thought i was going to be friends with but never was. but so is the way of life.

june really is a great month, i'm convinced. it's so full of hopes and happinesses. you've got the whole summer ahead of you, and it's all right there at your fingertips, waiting to be grasped. and you can smile and dance and put everything off saying, i've got the whole summer ahead of me, why do it now? but i shan't do that; of course not! no, i'm going to make good use of my summer and savor every last drop.