One-Ring Circus

This past Tuesday I went to the Shrine Circus. I went with my Little Brother and his older brother, thanks to tickets that I received from my Little's mother. This circus tours southern Ontario every summer and this past Tuesday was their only scheduled stop in London, I think.

They started out with the trained poodles and went on to some amazing balancing and gymnastic acts. The ony guy got onto a small platform that was eight feet in the air, placed a cylinder sideways on top and then balanced on top of a board on top of that. He would then jump up and throw down new boards on top of the previous one without falling off the cylinder, until he had five boards stacked up underneath him. That's better than any skate boarding trick I've seen.

In another act, one man came out and balanced a twenty foot pole on either his shoulder or his forehead. Someone else would scurry up his back and then up the pole, performing various tricks at the top.

There was a woman who spun multiple hoola hoops around various limbs while being swung through the air on a line, with the act culminating in spinning a ring of fire. There was an intermission after one hour and there was the requisite clowning around between acts. The show lasted just under two hours, finishing off with three adult elephants performing various tricks.

I don't remember having gone to a circus before and my Little hadn't gone before. For the low cost of ten bucks it was well worth it. The next time y'all have a chance to see a circus, I recommend that you go out of your way to do so.

Additional note: I took digital photos but hardly any of them showed anything so I can't blow your mind with the great shots that I thought I took. And yes, there was someone outside the arena holding up a sign saying, "The Cruelest Show on Earth." Heh.

Tribute to Mitzy

Mitzy Grant

1992 - 2005

I found out this past weekend that our old dog, our cherished Mitzy girl was put to sleep on Wednesday June 15, 2005. She was twelve and a half years old and she was a Lhasa Apso breed (and part poodle). We received her as a gift from another church about a year after my dad started pastoring in Wawa. When my parents went to South Korea for three years, we sent Mitzy to live with my grandparents in Florida.

When she lived with us in Wawa, we used to have fun tossing her into the snow in our backyard. The snow was usually several feet deep and well over her head. She would jump up to get out of the snow and you could see her head pop up repeatedly until she finally managed to get to the sidewalk. Other times, we would place her near Puffy, our oldest cat (who is now 19 years old). Puffy would swat at her if she saw Mitzy nearby and Mitzy knew that, so it was always fun to see what we could get away with.

Mitzy enjoyed her retirement in Florida, away from the crazy cats and crazy teenagers. My grandparents spoiled her tremendously and she quickly became a cute little ball of hair. It was always fun to go down to Florida to visit her. She would start yipping excitedly as soon as you pulled into the drive way and wouldn't stop until several minutes after you arrived.

I've posted some pictures on my photo website as a tribute to Mitzy.

Father's Day

My dad was reflecting on fatherhood today, naturally. He was poking some fun at me by pointing out that by the time he was 27 (as I am now) his eldest child was 7 years old (that child being me). His actual sentence was, "By the time I was your age, you were 7 years old." That was a weird one to get my head around.

And yes, I would have loved to have started my own family already but at least I still have my parents and my siblings. I love you all!

Summer Plans

A couple of weeks ago, my church had a video which included a man who was playing on the Crocodile Hunter persona. He visited the "wildlife" in a local church and, after chasing his prey down with a net, came away with a new female volunteer for VBS (Vacation Bible School). On his next exciting adventure, he crept up on the even more elusive male volunteer, whispering to the camera about how clever these creatures are. The male was mowing his lawn and just as the mower stopped, the hunter turned on the TV inside with a remote control through the window and a sports show came on. The male immediately went into the house and fell into the trap, making it two successful captures for the big game hunter.

There was no trap for me but I decided to be one of those rare male volunteers this summer. My church is holding a summer kids camp (or VBS) called the Serengeti Trek. It will be running each morning from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm from July 18 to July 22. I'll participate in that and then head over to work for the afternoon. I have many fond memories of the years in which my mom ran a VBS back in Wawa with the entire youth group helping out, so this should be fun.

On the weekend of July 22, I'm also planning on a weekend ministry trip to Windsor with several members of my worship team and the drama team. There's a church there named New Song Church that has a ministry in training other churches for inner city outreach and ministry to the poor. We're talented in music and drama ministry so that's what we'll be doing with them, but they'll be showing us the ropes regarding their church ministry at the same time. I always like doing these kinds of things of quickie ministry trips, though I haven't had many opportunities over the years.

And finally, my big trip of the summer will be a trip to Quebec with my mama et ma grandmama. I'll presumably handle the bulk of the driving. We'll be leaving early on Friday August 5 and we'll be returning on Sunday August 14. We're heading down for a big Therrien family reunion and I haven't visited my extended French family since I was a young kid. It should be fun, if only because the entire family likes to break out in music all over the place.

News & Links

You know how reporters will sometimes get quick quotes from the random people just to give a taste of the crowd's opinion for a story? There's a guy that takes time off from work so that he can have a chance to be that "man on the street," to the extent that the Associated Press released an internal memo warning reporters about this guy. (Link)

Yes, Michael Jackson was declared Not Quilty on all ten counts. Now if he can fix his finances and stop making self-agrandizing songs he'll be all set. Hooray for infotainment!

The Toronto Star had this article two days ago from a man that crossed Canada in a car, getting quick interviews with people across our country regarding the issue of homosexual marriage. He managed to get a very broad range of reactions and responses and I thought that it was quite an interesting read.

I would like to congratulate Jevant. In this recent post, Jevant defended a "hockey dad" that was in the news because Hockey Canada had suspended his son from playing because the father had a lawsuit against the league. This man found out about Jevant's blog post, presumably by looking at his website's link logs, and posted a comment thanking Jevant. The power of blogs in action, my friends!

Old School

A thought:
You know when people are acting in charge and all that and they say, "I want you to obey me without question. When I say jump, you say how high." Now my thought is, didn't they just say to obey without question, and then they say to ask how high?
From my brain,
-J
Personals, MHS Press, October 1994

Seek beauty and miss love,
seek love and find both.
-J
Personals, MHS Press, Valentines Issue, 1995

What Love Is
Value
Accept
Loyalty
Endures Hardships
Never Hurts
Truth
In All Things Respect
No Criticism
Equality
Sacred

Do Things for One Another
Appreciate
You and Her/Him
-J
MHS Press, Valentines Issue, 1995

Book List

Number Of Books That You Own
Several dozen books and a couple thousand comics. The average comic collection numbers around five thousand and I think that I'm well below that. And yes, I think that comics count as a literary format and that a graphic novel counts as a book.

Last Book Bought
"Random Zits" comic strip treasury. (Official Site)
Foxtrot comic strip treasury. (Official Site)

Before that, I purchased the following books a month and a half ago:
Ig Noble Prizes (Link)
"My Life as a Ten Year Old Boy" by Nancy Cartwright, Voice of Bart Simpson (Link)
Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams (Link)

Last Book Read
There and Back Again: An Actor's Tale by Sean Astin (As I wrote about here.)

Books On Your To-Read List
Hitchhiker, as listed above. Code Complete, a programming manifesto of sorts that I have never read thoroughly despite it being a requirement during college. Mega Speed Reading, which was in an old box I was going through so I'll see if I can improve on the above-average speed that I now have. The Costly Anointing, which I also found in an old box and that was written by a worship leader regarding the cost of Gods anointing on our ministry.

Five Books That Mean A Lot To Me
The Bible (bible.gospelcom.net)
This is the only book that I read regularly. Heh. It keeps things interesting since it's made up from so many smaller books with different authors, writing styles, settings and purposes. The overall plot thread that winds through this book tiesa it all together: "God loves us."

The Foundation Series (Link)
Sci-fi fan that I am, this series is the primary reason that I'm such a fan of Asimov's writing. The series was gradually written over the span of four or five decades, eventually incorporating the Robot novels that Asimov originally wrote as a separate "universe." While Asimov rarely gets into romance or much into action, I love the way that his stories act like brain teasers. He'll take one situation, throw three different view points at you and you have to weigh it all out. I like the challenge he gives me in honing my own logical abilities, even if it just for fun.

The Life Story of the Flash (Link and Explanation)
I freaked out when I saw this comic sitting on the book shelf in my comic shop one day. It's the only hard cover comic that I own, though it's not actually a comic but more of a written biography with some comic stuff thrown in. This book was a key plot device in another trade paperback that I purchased several years before that involved one of the Flash's main nemesis and time travel. I was shocked to discover that this plot device from the story had made it's way into the real world, several years after it was 'predicted' in the original comics. So cool.

Evidence That Demands a Verdict (Link)
I read this during my mid-teen years and it was right up my alley. At the time, I was heavily into the scientific evidences for Christianity. I went so far as to photocopy pertinant articles from every archived magazine in our high school library and to write one of the required essays on the Big Bang theory for my physics class. I certainly thought that the topic was fascinating at the time and that this book was a notch above the rest. Since then my interest in these things has decreased as I began to realize how little it matters to most people (Christian or otherwise) and how pointless logical debates can become. Even so, some of the arguments in this book still ground my thinking today.

Marvels (Link)
This trade paperback collection marks the arrival of Alex Ross to comicdom. The photo-realistic, man-on-the-street, painted portrayals of Marvel superheroes at the beginning of the Marvel age blew the minds of many comic fans, including mine. It's one thing to see Giant-Man and the Human Torch in our regular comics, it's another to be on the street looking up at a man crossing over buildings or someone exploding into flame in front of you. Beautiful.

On A Roll

I played two games with my slo-pitch softball team again last night, as I usually do on Monday evenings. As I mentioned before, our team won our first game last week so we came into the evening sporting a shiny 1-5 record. According to our league's website, the team we were playing had an 0-6 (pronounced "oh and six") record so we liked our chances.

I ended up pitching both games thanks to my surprise prowess on the mound, such as it is. In our first game we were the home team and we came up in the bottom of the fifth inning for the last at-bat of the game. We were losing 2-4 and we were having a tough time generating any offense. Apparently we had finally gotten warmed up, though, as we proceeded to bat in three runs with only one out and then the game was called as we won 5-4.

The second game was even better. We had worked out the kinks and we had very few errors in the second game, improving on the first defensively. In line with that, some of our fielders had fantastic plays during the course of the game. We declared Vicky, who was playing left field, the star of the game thanks to two gorgeous catches that would have ended up as doubles or triples. On one play, she was running backwards to catch a high fly ball that was hit quite well. She reached back over her left shoulder and caught the ball, but then the ball popped out of her glove not just once but twice. She kept running with it and finally managed to pull in the catch. I bowed my cap to her for that spectaular sequence.

We also kept our momentum going from the first game and we had hot bats right from the start. I pitched pretty well, using the setting sun behind me to my advantage to blind a couple of batters into strike outs. The game ended 9-0 for us, so our team managed to get a shut out. That's pretty impressive in slo-pitch, though we need to give credit to the fact the wind was blowing pretty hard all evening towards home plate so no one could hit anything very far in the air without the ball getting pushed back quite a bit.

Enough about baseball. I had one unrelated link to offer. [CAUTION: Don't read the following if you dislike violence.] Apparently there's a custom of some kind in South Korea and in Japan in which people cut off their little fingers. The trick is that it means different things in each country. This blogger tries to get to the bottom of this cultural difference.

Swimmin'

I got a nice sun burn over the weekend. Gorgeous weather with a constant cloud cover that made for some soothing UV radiation all over the place. I should really be careful about this stuff since I'm so likely to get skin cancer in my later years but for now I'm young and carefree.

On Saturday, I took my Little Brother out on the Thames River that runs behind my house. Along with John and Hyun and one of Hyun's friends, we were out there floating around for a good hour. I made a great anchor, ensuring that the river didn't sweep us away downstream into London. I posted a new picture on my photo website that my mom took.



The floating tube/trampoline contraption belongs to my brother and he's the one that usually plays with our two South Korean students in the river. I took a page out of his book while I was hanging out with my Little. My dad was commenting afterwards that it's a good example of what discipleship should look like. After all, it's very unlikely that I would be out there swimming at any other time, but I'm quite willing to do so for the sake of my Little.

"I have become all things to all men that by all possible means I might save some." 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 (Previous Blog)

Funny News

I read this article over on Church Marketing Sucks this past week. There are two unrelated churches in the US that are having a church sign trivia contest. Both churches like to post witty and pithy sayings on their signs. One church will pose a question on their sign and the other church has to answer it on their own sign. Heh.

And do you know that rats can't vomit? Some hard-nosed scientific research has been done regarding that question, as linked to on this blog.

I read a science article this past about an experiment that was done at Stanford University. They held up cards facing away from a camera on a computer. It's like a pshycic card trick in which someone tries to read the cards when they cannot see them. The trick is that this was done by "dual photography," capturing the light that bounces around a room and calculating where it came from, reformulating a picture that shows the face of the card based only on it's reflection against other items in the room.

I recently finished reading There and Back Again, a book by Sean Astin. He details his experiences playing Sam in Lord Of The Rings, along with his past experience playing Rudy. It was a very cool peek into his awkward Hollywood career and his time in New Zealand filming LOTR.

And finally, here's a link to the Tao of Programming. It includes various funny bits of 'wisdom' in the style of Confucius. No one else may care but I thought it had some funny - and oddly true - sayings.

Everywhere I Look

Have you ever noticed this quirk of human nature? When you or your family buys a new car, you now spot this same model all over the place on the roads. You may not remember seeing that model ever before and yet now it seems that everyone has one.

At the age of twenty-one I became aware of the need for discipleship and mentoring amongst Christians in general and other young guys in particular. Everywhere I look, I now see guys that need at least one close Christian friend and yet they can't seem to find one. The feeling was particularly prevalent for me within the past few months.

I was told that the pastors at my church (GTA) hear from numerous young men every month, asking where they can connect with another Christian guy because they need a real friend and because they want to mature in their Christian lives. I have three guys in mind that I personally know are looking for this.

Even though I have a personal connection with each of these guys and I probably have a good chance of developing a close friendship with them, I already have several close friendships, plus a Little Brother. As I learned a few years ago, I can't stretch myself too thin and I can't be everybody's friend. So I end up talking with people about this need, praying about these guys and writing a blog post. How effective is that?

In theory, a cell group/small group/life group would be a good setting to get young guys together and to help them connect and develop friendships and mentoring relationships between themselves. I've led that kind of group for two and a half years before and I've been a part of such groups several times. It's tough to break ourselves out of the Canadian mould of superficial friendships and the refusal to have a mentor.

At this point, I'm thinking of simply going out to lunch with one of these guys and talking to him about it. He was open enough to mention the need to me, so maybe I can talk to him about the other guys that I see in the same situation. I've often said that anyone that wants to mature just needs to become a leader and/or a mentor. You'll be sure to grow in a hurry. (I know I did.) It's not always a question of having someone more mature to mentor you, it's often a question of stepping out and being that mentor yourself.

Everywhere I look, I see a need.
Everywhere I look, I see me.
Everywhere I look, I see God's hand.
Everywhere I look, I see God's plan
For me.