weird feelings

I'm so bad at tateblog these days. I just don't have the inspiration I had back when I sat next to a KU football player in Journalism class (see my September-December 2005 entries) or when I lived in a hurricane-devastated city (January-April 2006) or when I had a dislocated elbow and did cool arm stretches and wore a robo-brace (December-March 2007). Life is just normal now. Sort-of. Wait, never is life normal.

Things have been just weird feeling lately. I really think that's the best way to put it. I got to go to Kansas a couple weeks ago and see my homies, but everyone is all scattered now and doing their own separate things in the Kansas City/Lawrence areas. Good to see people, but felt a little weird. Weird when life moves on without you. And I mean really moves on.

But to all my Kansas peeps: Thanks for being awesome. I loved chatting with Melissa, and going to a basketball game and steak 'n shake and pizza and everywhere with Emjo, and staying at her and Maggle's sweet apartment, and spending an afternoon at Target with Steve, and catching up with Katie D., and being one of the first to see Linsie after she got engaged, and hanging out with Jub in his messy car again, and getting some quality Jen time at her new Kansas City apartment, and seeing the Browns, and just being in a place that held some of the best and worst times of my life. It's hard sometimes, but I gotta do it.

Especially when I get to see Mario Chalmers and Brandon Rush in real life. Holler.

Anyway, moving on.

Another weird feeling: This Thanksgiving (pronounced THANKSgiving please) was the first year of my life I spent away from St. Louis. And probably the first in more than 20 years I spent away from 863 Rochdale...can you confirm that amount of years Mel? That was weird. But I still got to spend it with cool people, and I still got my sparkling cider.

Ok so that picture is a little weird of all of us. Or maybe just Angie.

Yeah that's much better. Oh what would I do without these girls and the whole Wysocki family? Well, life would be a lot less exciting. And I would live on the street. And I would watch Scrubs alone. And I would have one less best friend. And these days, they're hard to come by.

Two other highlights of Thanksgiving break: Turkey Bowl and our night downtown.

Turkey Bowl is this football game our church plays every year with current students and alumni and leaders and stuff. It was way fun. Here's the thing: On the Monday before, it was like 75 degrees. And on the Wednesday of Turkey Bowl, well...

It snowed. And was really cold. But that didn't stop me from scoring a touchdown or two and having a perfect game at quarterback. I may have only been quarterback for like 8 plays, but still. I never knew how valuable those countless number of games we played in the middle of Rochdale Drive growing up would be in my life.

And I love this picture because I clearly just caught the ball and I'm about to get dominated on by Smiley and Gomez. Awesome.

And then the night after Thanksgiving, Angie and cousin Laura and Kristen Felten and I went downtown. Just for kicks.

That's us in front of the newly lit capitol or city hall or something building. Whoops, don't quite know my Denver monuments yet. Usually I get stressed out for downtown outings, but this one was fun and chill and stress-free.

Also a side note: In Kirkwood, we just call St. Louis "downtown." So I still do that here. But everyone else says "I'm going to Denver" and it confuses me because I'm like, hello we live in Denver. And they're like no we live in Arvada/Westminster dumb dumb. Whatever. I'll always just call the major city that I live in the suburbs of "downtown."

I had some more to write about weird feelings, because lately we've been talking a lot about justice at church. And I even gave a talk on it, with the help of my friend Alan Fogleman from afar. He's awesome. And he led me to two web sites, love146.org and the International Justice Mission. I've been looking at these web sites a lot and seeing all the terrible injustices going on in this world. But all of this still feels really weird and fresh on my mind and I've nowhere near processed it yet. Nor have I given myself time to process. Dangit.

But right now I gotta go.

If you want to check out my talk, you can go to our High Point web site and click on the iTunes link and you can get our podcast with my talk on it. I don't claim to be an expert, or even close to one (not to mention it was only the second full-length message I've ever given), but I tried to present the things God was putting on my heart. Yep.

One last thought. My favorite CDs lately are the Newsies soundtrack, the Narnia soundtrack, the Home Alone soundtrack and Chase This Light by Jimmy Eat World. The end.