If my life were on SportsCenter...

...these would be the 5 best plays of the past week or so:

 

5. Great hustle by Jay Granger sparks a late inning rally

4. Bowled a strike in my first throw in nearly 5 months at our Mason YL bowling fundraiser

3. Hit a 30 foot bunker shot to within 7 inches of the pin

2. Channeled my inner Bill Russell to block a shot (12th of my career), rebound it, and start the fast break

1. Jay Granger scores the tying run in his baseball game

And these would be in the SportsCenter Not Top 10:

5. Lost 3 in a row in ping-pong to Tony at TWL 

4. My bowling scores from today: 107 (good warm-up), 128 (pretty good but could improve), 96 (choked on the last ball to break 100), 76, (fell apart at the seams)

3. Contributed a 1-10 shooting performance to an overall team effort of (approximately) 4-55 shooting in a 12-4 loss at IM West

2. Bowled almost as many gutter balls over 4 games (13) as I did strikes (14)

1. I hit 0 out of 9 fairways last week

Blogroll

So here's a list of all my friends' blogs that I read and why I read them.  There are other blogs by people that I'm not friends with (although I'm sure it'd be fun if we were were friends), but I'm already thinking that I'll be too tired of typing to include those as well.  So that'll probably be another day:

• Shannon: Shan's currently in QUITO, ECUADOR for a study abroad.  How cool is that?!  Not sure how often she'll be able to update, but I'm really excited to see pictures and hear stories of a place I have never seen before or really know all that much about.  And I just think she's awesome (sorry for that shameless plug).
  
• Emily: Emily is a great writer and is able to capture each of the individual moments of life that make this life so great.  She tells lots of stories and tries her best to "rewind the best parts."  I'm sure one day she'll rewind back to when we were teammates and how awesome that was.
• Dilyn: Not sure if she'll be able to update a lot from up north, but I hope so.  Dilyn is a faithful women of God and wants to become even better.  Most of her posts are about her pursuit of that.  And music.  It's a really interesting blog for someone who doesn't like bacon.
• Dana: This is a good place for deep, thought-provoking blogging.  Dana really looks for God in every situation or experience she has, and often writes about them.  And she likes Harry Potter a lot.
• Woj: We all know how life is a struggle at times and so does Woj.  She enjoys that struggle, and that's what her blog is about.  Often inspiring, I might add.
• Katie B: It's more interesting to read Katie's blog (well, it was always interesting) now that she's a new mom.  Katie does a really good job letting you into her life and the joys of this new life she is currently experiencing.
• Sween: A newbie to the blogging world!  I like Sween because she is a great observer of her surroundings.  I'm excited to hear about what she sees around her and how God is working.
• Kristin: Just recently hopped on the blogging bandwagon, but one of the few on the "I will wholeheartedly seek after Jesus" bandwagon.  Her blog is about her life and how Jesus is in control of it.  And how she loves that.
• Mark: This is Mark's blog that he does through work.  I like how he weaves stories from work and his personal life.
• Alison: I like reading Alison's blog because each post is seriously straight out of her heart and mind.  It doesn't really go through a filter, and because of that, it is incredibly honest and therefore profound and fun to read.
• Laura: This young lady's blog is cool because she is a mom to 3 of the coolest guys you could ever meet.  I typically finish reading her blog either laughing, smiling, or re-thinking how I approach my life.  Or all 3.
• Drew: Drew writes with his heart on the keyboard (okay that was kind of gruesome sounding...I wanted to convey how he is a man who wears his heart on his sleeve and blogs that way, but I don't think that's how I came across).  Anyways....
• Coryell: A great read because Cory is a deep thinker and wants so desperately to know Jesus and be more like Him.  However, Cory updates his blog about once every 9 months, but the archives are good reads.

Somewhere about halfway through I ran out of witty things to say, so my apologies.  Time to go work out!

Conjuntion Junction

Well it's been kind of crazy and busy the past week or so, and I have a lot of blogging catch-up to do.  Now that life has slowed down a bit, I should be able to get to everything this week.

I've upped the number of blogs I consistently read to 22.  In fact, I'm kind of a blogging nerd these days, if you will.  Armed with my new favorite application, Evernote, I now keep up on several friends' blogs as well as several others from random people I don't know that I found through Noel's blog.  Evernote lets me clip anything interesting that I find and organize it for later; it's basically a glorified note-taker.  And I'm obsessed.  Most of these blogs are personal blogs of several of my good friends.  I love it.

Have you seen the first Matrix movie?  Remember the scene on top of the roof right before Trinity and Neo save Morpheus?  She calls Tank to upload her with the ability to fly a helicopter, and in a matter of seconds, she knows how to fly a helicopter.  That's how I feel life is like right now.  Because of the internet, we have limitless amounts of information only seconds away from us.  I can look up basically any sports fact to settle any argument or debate.  Just last night I looked up how many milliliters are in a cup because I needed to measure out 1.75 cups with a nalgene.  "Google" has more usage as a verb these days rather than a noun.  It's crazy.

So my favorite thing about blogging is the ability to stay connected with people.  Sure, it's a great outlet for me to gather my thoughts concerning life and God and make sense of both, and to share funny things/stories with others.   But it's also a great way for my increasingly scattered (geographically) speaking friends to keep in touch.  

We all want to be connected to others in community.  I'm glad blogs are around to help make that happen.

A quick way to make a $1

Prize money goes to the first person who can tell me why the first paragraph is always 1.5 spaced.  It bugs me.  I suppose I'm not too obsessed with my the aesthetics of my blog, but the least I can ask for is uniform, single spacing.  So if you know if/how I can fix it, I'm all ears :)

Just making sure

It's pretty late right now, and I'm not too sure why I'm still awake.  My average bed time if I've been at home has been right around midnight.  I was talking to my friend earlier today how late 1 and 2 AM feels these days.  It was normal to be awake that late during my college years (because that was SO long ago), but these days if I wake up on Monday, I'm going to bed before the clock turns Tuesday.  But not tonight my friends, because I'm wearing my rebel hat.

Well, not exactly.

Anyways, today was a good day.  I woke up for church (a small miracle considering my sleep patterns of the last 7 days), had a solid session of frisbee tossing in the park, and made the highest quality omelette of my life tonight (of the 5 total I've cooked myself).  I also helped my friend Mere buy a new Mac today off eBay.  Walking her into the land of Mac was quite the honor and privilege.  Welcome to the club MLA.

Looking back to look ahead

So I realized that when you save a draft then eventually post it, Blogger will post it with the date and time you originally saved the post.  So it's not magic that I went grocery shopping today but was able to write about it on Tuesday.  Although that would have been cool.  It's kind of like that April Fool's joke from Gmail.  Anyways.

For today, I'm going to go with the Top 10 Reasons why I'm excited about this Summer:

10. Playing catch in the park by my house

9. Golf.  Lots of golf

8. Sleeping in 

7. Lots of reading

6. Tigers games (tbd)

5. Going to the grad parties of the seniors I've known for 4 years 

4. TWL Work Weekend

3. Spending quality time with friends without having to simultaneously study

2. Transitioning to Grosse Pointe

1. Sending Shan off to Ecuador...then welcoming her home!

Vitamin C is still playin' in the background...

I'm a few days into summer vacation / realizing I'm done with college and it feels great.  Life has really slowed down and I like that.  I can go to bed before midnight without feeling pressured to wake up before 8 to keep studying.  I can sleep in past 11 without having to miss a class.  

The last few weeks have been so memorably crazy.  I put the finishing touches on my first 4.0 semester of my life, was baptized with my friends and in front of my friends, and I attended my last YL leadership and college graduation.  But during my slower, quieter week, the highlights have been:

• buying enough groceries at one time from Meijer that I couldn't go in the U-Scan 12 Items or Less lane 
• interviewing in Grosse Pointe
• buying a new rain jacket 

There's still a lot of random things I want to do, but I've got the time now to get those done at my own pace.  

To further comment on graduation, since it feels like it deserves more words, I'm planning on posting a few Top 10 lists.  If you have any suggestions for one, let me know.  I'll lead off with top 10 things that I will miss about college:

10. The Gallery at Snyder Phillips

9. Hanging out at Gone Wired

8. Mondays and Wednesdays with Sween

7. Being able to do things I don't want to do (e.g. study for a test) with people that I love

6. Friday night leadership

5. Springtime on campus

4. Walking down the banks of the Red Cedar in the fall

3. Izzone

2. Mason Young Life

1. Being within walking distance of a community of people that love me

I made that list in a surprisingly short amount of time, so I'm probably missing key things.  I am allowing myself full permission to edit that list if need be in the future.

Enjoy the sun!

Sportsmanship

If you've got 5 minutes, this is worth watching. I'm not sure if "sportsmanship" fully captures this. Pretty cool I think.