I just missed you in Cincinnati, Gabe (and everyone else who was there)! I was in Cincinnati Sunday and Monday. You see, last week Krista decided to move to West Virginia for the summer, and Sunday she did so. Being the good sister that I am, I offered to drive out there with her, so we got up at 5am and drove 13 hours to Cincinnati on Sunday. Matt happened to be there last week for General Council and was willing to stay an extra day, so we met him there and Monday he and Krista drove the rest of the way to WV, I flew home. It worked out quite well because Krista will be doing a summer internship at the same church Matt is doing his internship. We spent Sunday evening at Taste of Cincinnati, which seemed to be a trashy version of the State Fair. Krista and I quickly decided that compared to every other girl there, we were overdressed; our necklines were far too high and our capris covered far too much of our legs. The whole thing was like a sea of exposed flesh that we had to wade through. It was a bit nauseating. On the positive side, it was great to be able to see Matt, even though it was only for a few hours.

Unfortunately, I had to spend about seven hours in the Cincinnati airport yesterday, waiting for my flight. I couldn’t get an earlier flight than 5:00, and Krista and Matt needed to leave fairly early to get to WV in time for an intern retreat, so I spent the day feeling like I was trapped in the movie "The Terminal." The experience really made me realize how impatient I am. I could not wait to get out of there. Why? I had no plans to get to back home, the only thing of urgency in my life right now is getting my Oxford reading done, and that can just as easily be done in an airport as at home. Yet still, I felt like I was going insane inside that airport. I visited Starbucks about four times, read all of Sense and Sensibility, and took the tram back and forth between the concourses, just for fun. The good thing was that my flight left at 5:00 and (with the time zone change) I got back at 5:57. So even though I wasted seven hours of my life in that airport, I felt like I somehow had at least gained one back.

I have been gone for a week and I come back to one blog? Something is wrong. Where have all the bloggers gone? Well, I guess I will take the lead and blog (which I was already doing before I wrote that sentence) I have had a wonderful week. I was at General Council in Cincinnati. For those who do not know this is the annual meeting for the whole denomination of the CMA. I saw a few familiar faces such as Melissa MacDonald, Matt Evans, SYG, Ryan and Tammy MacDonald and there new baby girl, and Andy and Ellen Stumbo who are expecting their first baby girl. It was great to see all of them.

Council was great and boring at the same time. At some points I would sit back and realize that I was amongst 2000 leaders in the church who were all praying for God to work in the Alliance. It was a very humbling experience. That was some of the great. Some of the boring were the business meetings in which we seemed to crawl from one report to another. It took us over 2 hours to pass a recommendation simply because people could not agree on whether it should read with the words "the church" or "the church at-large." No kidding. I did come away from this weekend very refreshed and excited to be apart of the CMA. The highlight of the week by far was the Saturday night missions service. Missionaries from around the world came through holding flags and banners and many were dressed in clothes from the fields where they worked. I must confess that seeing so many men and women who had sacrificed so much for God, I had to hold back tears.

It was a great week, but it is good to be home. I look forward to hearing from all you procrastinating bloggers.

To those of you inclined to ignore my normal postings, I ask that you read just these first few lines because it has nothing to do with my own mental vomit, but with a request made by our own Molly Donelson. Molly has asked me to pass along a prayer request for her Chinese friend Dong Dong, wishing to have greater numbers supporting what is happening with him currently, and so, further than that, I have no details or specifics thanks to the listening ear of PRC, but to those of you who think I have nothing to do with spiritual things or things that are serious, well, you're mostly right except when Molly asks me to do things like this. So, since I'm not Scott Stinson, I have nothing futher to write or say on said subject, but you all know better what to do with these things than I do, so you can ignore the rest of this because it has nothing to do with the above subject.

I realize it's been a while since I last posted, and some of you are disappointed, but maybe I can cure a bit of that disappointment with some amusement, though I'd say it's rather unlikely. Nobody says anything about our year anniversary - nobody says anything about Star Wars coming out tonight/tomorrow. Next thing you know, we're all going to forget about Christmas and the 4th of July! Anyway, I plan on seeing the movie tomorrow after I get off work. Work has been interesting lately only because I met my replacement - a guy that happened to look like an out of work porn star when upon our first encounter yesterday. I mean, the curly-mullotish haircut, the creepy mo-stache, the unbuttoned shirt with chest-hair clearly visible... Then I worked with him today, Billy's his name, and he's evidently not in the adult film industry. Well, as far as I know. But he is taking my place, and giving me quite a bit of prespective about how I must have seemed two months ago when I started. Thankfully I did not push him out of the way and do his job for him as I wanted to so many times, but I also felt unqualified to instruct him since I had so recently been trained into the job myself. Of course, now I wonder what the guy that I replaced was thinking when I showed up. "Man, how does this 15-year-old get out of high school to come to work?" "Could your hair be any more Chandler?" "Oh, there aren't any stupid questions, but there sure are a lot of inquisitive idiots." Who knows? Sorry about the Friends quote. I've been watching a lot of old episodes since it's on twice a day around here and I only get two normal channels. Folkestad - what day will you be showing up here? If it's early enough on Friday, we should hit lunch at my store before we head up to Big Fork. Or maybe not, if it's not a workable thing. Whatever.
So my brother and I were talking about movies, and he mentioned the new Batman movie that was coming out, and that's where I want to go with this blog. Apparently, according to my kin, Quigon Jin trains the new Batman to swordfight in Tibet somewhere, and the principle from Lean on Me teaches the new Batman how to drive the Batmobile. I saw this new Batmobile, and it's the most hideous thing I've seen on wheels since the last monstertruck rally came to town. I think it's a cross between a Toyota Prius, an H2, and a porcupine on steroids (do we call that a major league porcupine now, or is there other newfangled lingo that I'm missing from a lacking connection to pop culture?). But whatever... Katie Holmes is Batman's new lady - even if she looks 35. Makes me miss Dawson's Creek just a little bit. Except I've only watched one episode since the first season came out when I was a sophomore in high school, so I don't know what exactly I'm missing. So as my conversatoin with my brother wandered on, he at once exclaimed that it seemed Jesus was one of the three finalists on American Idol (ironic as that may seem just in the title). I said I was open to a new interpretation of Revelation, and we could probably find something just about like that in The Message or the New Living or whatever else is out there that couldn't be more contemporary without writing with a bunch of smiley faces at the end of each sentence. So, either this guy on American Idol is just some long-haired hippie (speaking of, Kyle, are you back in Missouri?) trying to woo the religious right with his uncanny resemblence to the Messiah, or Tim LaHaye is full of... nevermind. I think it's not an either/or in this case, because I'm fine if both statements are true. Riding on the clouds... riding on a pop-culture phenomenon... every eye will see Him... 30 million viewers... I could see another Branch Divideon group forming out of the similarities. What happened to all the Christian cults? Do the Muslims get to be the only ones with wildly dangerous fanatics? I guess Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are plenty enough for us right now. Speaking of religious trouble, I found two books that I'm hoping to part with quickly, one of which is a copy of Pursuit of Happiness with the name Daniel Bubna sketched into the front page, and the second being the infamous Purpose Driven Life that was a graduation present and nearly got me on the track to a purpose-driven death after the first two chapters... and so I was wondering if anyone wanted our old textbook or this roadmap to religious self-fulfillment, and I'll be more than happy to give either one to you rather than have you buy these books and further the thought that they should be sold or printed. There. I think that about balances my serious and spiritual beginning so that you people don't come looking to me as someone deep and seasoned. I'm fine being stupid and mildly annoying. Much easier expectations to fill. Well, I need to be rested for the big day tomorrow. Hopefully none of you think less of me for my verbal wanderings here. If you do, I guess I'll never know, so don't worry too much about it. I'll give myself that advice.

I love square dancing. I really do. Once I got on the dance floor at Kurbis and Bethany’s wedding last night, I realized what I had been missing. I’ve been swing dancing, ballroom dancing, line dancing, etc. But never square dancing. I love it because it is so easy to learn and you get to dance with so many different people. If you are getting tired of dancing with your partner, it’s only a matter of time before the caller will yell something like "Circle round to the next guy/gal," and then it’s like starting all over! Not that I ever got tired of my wonderful dance partner, Nathan Duerkop.

Square dancing aside, I’ll be the first to say it was a beautiful wedding. I decided that it is a good thing to leave the reception feeling like your throat is bleeding from talking to so many people all night. Unfortunately, I was so tired from all of the square dancing that by the time the "normal" music came on and everyone went crazy dancing, I had no energy left for it. All in all: wonderful wedding, wonderful people, wonderful square dancing, and I could go on.

This morning we decided to make it a Crown Reunion Weekend, and we went to a Stand Your Ground concert in St. Paul. Krista and I apparently weren’t the only ones with the idea; Miller, Maria, and Duerkop also attended. Of course, afterwards, Krista held the SYG shirt up to me saying, "So You’re Gay?" I guess that’s just expected, someone’s gotta make the joke, it might as well be at my expense. We helped them load up and I didn’t even wish I was on tour. Probably because I was never in Stand Your Ground. They did a good job. It was worth the trip to St. Paul.

Not a soul wanted to comment about our year's anniversary in exile? Anne is in China, Lynnea's a Crown professor, and Josh Mann's getting married! I mean, some things we knew were coming, but what happened? I didn't even know there was a blog a year ago. There have been babies and puppies (Janke would have liked that if there were any such thing anymore), new jobs and a whole year's worth of blathering on this thing, and for what? I feel I'm the worst mix of sentimental and jaded right now, and the only thing I can think to do is keep writing something until the important stuff comes out. Oh, sorry about the posted picture from the other day. I finally figured out how to do that stuff, and everybody else was posting pictures, so I had to join in. I've been generally quiet on the blog in recent days. To some of you I apologize for my absence, to others I apologize for not letting my absence linger just a bit longer. I've been trying to get some reading done in my days off. Robbie is leaving me tomorrow for his new house, and all will be quiet around here once again. Then we'll all wish I was so busy and distracted that I didn't blog for some weeks. For some reason, after I finished Ovid's Metamorpheses, I felt like 18th century British Lit, so I've been running around reading some George Herbert, John Donne, and some Alexander Pope. I found the quotation from the movie: "How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sun-shine of the spotless mind!
Each prayer accepted, and each wish resigned;"
The movie is even more powerful after reading the poem from whence came its title. "Eloisa to Abelard" is the poem. Power with words - it's something we might know a little more about thanks to this thing. All this to say that I think of all that has transpired in the year since our lives all diverged from our collegiate path. I mean, things must have gone crazy if I had a girlfriend, even if it was for a short time. Years will keep coming, since nothing is more swift than time. I've been pondering the thought that if I could say something to that youthful me a year ago, what would it be, if anything. I actually do have an answer, but I can't say it here for fear of being misunderstood, maybe even by myself. Soon enough this, and that, will be the world forgot. I doubt any of you wish to be so grotesquely sentimental as me, but maybe some of you have been letting these annual'd days remind you... well, I guess I don't know what you have taken from our years together. Maybe this is all just a waste - a few fingers stuck in the dam that's holding back the waters of apathy - a place for the lonely and the verbose to pour out what little has been poured into them, maybe hoping that even a shadow of Crown would pass over us, and we would be healed. I don't know why this darkness seems so easy to type tonight. Summer's not yet here, I'm losing my last college roommate, I have to put in my two weeks at work the day after tomorrow... it's the deep breath before the plunge, and my lungs ache from the strain. Well, all that to say, I do miss you, probably all of you, even Kurbis, and the last year has been just that much more dim without you around. I guess feeling the darkness is as important as basking in the light. I'll leave you with one last quote from "Eloisa to Abelard."
"For thee the fates, severely kind, ordain
A cool suspense from pleasure and from pain;
Thy life a long dead calm of fixed repose;
No pulse that riots, and no blood that glows."
Hopefully not, for any of us. I guess I should welcome the next year with its pleasures and pains.

I found an old picture of Kurbis in a Crown sweatshirt. It's a good thing he learned to shave a little better. I miss that kid. He'll be married in a week, and now we can see why. He's so cute. 

Hello Crownie Faithful,
I hope all is going well. Congrats to the King ( Adam W. Kyle could you please forward this information to our techno-stupid friend... please leave out the part where I call him techno -stupid.) and Josh the Mann for their impending entry into manhood. If you guys ever need some advice call me. Also I am able to perform weddings now and I don't charge much.

Chris, I long to visit you again. I have a life full of this crappy thing called responsibility and it keeps me close to where I live.

Life has been going by so fast. My little ladies are already 6 months old. They are eating sweet potatoes now which makes for orange spit-up. (It also effects their bowel movements, but I will leave that information out.) If you ever need a smile just hold one of my little girls. They light up rooms wherever they go.

I am officially taking on responsibilities in my churches youth group. For those of you who did not know I have not worked with youth before. I have been very busy with adult ministries. This is exciting and terrifying at the same time. Much like jumping out of a plane would be if you had no parachute. I hope I have a better ending. Another new tidbit about myself is that I am now a slow pitch softball player. It has been a humbling experience. To think that a game that is designed for the out of shape and over the hill crowd can make me wake up the next morning sore. I hope I am just out of shape (i.e. a fat lard) and not over the hill. This sure is full of random thoughts. Hey, is anybody going to watch Crown's graduation? Chet Carlson and John Schussman are both finally graduating. Let me know if you will be there. The greatest memory I have of our own graduation is Lynnea shaking her rose seconds before we are suppose to enter and it breaks in half. It was hilarious! Luckily, the King (Adam W.) raced across the enormous hallway of MECCA/Grace Church and stole a rose from the stand that was selling them. What a great memory. And the moral of the story is stealing is okay in emergencies!

Well, I should be getting back to work. Thank you for wasting your time reading this masterpiece of literature that I have composed for you. I hope to see most of you soon. I have never eaten a quizzno's sub or watched a single episode of 24! Am I a loser?

Bye

Gabe (or anyone else for that matter)
When are you going to come up here and visit again? We now have another Zorbas by us... With Golden Tee! (Puts Bdubbs to shame!)

Chris

Gabe (or anyone else for that matter)
When are you going to come up here and visit again? We now have another Zorbas by us... With Golden Tee! (Puts Bdubbs to shame!)

Chris

Here is a picture of my Gals. If you are thinking..."Man Gabe has cute kids..." You would be avbsolutely right!



Cuties