Beach and Stuff

Danny and I are in the same boat in a few ways. We kind of feel like we've picked the Bridge dry. There's plenty of fish in the sea, but this pond has been well fished. Also, when you're fishing, you gotta put the little ones back. I want to do a dinner again, but with more advance notice so that I can get an older turnout. I already have a few ideas on who to call, but I'll need time to build rapport. In the meantime, four-way Risk games are pretty awesome.

The beach retreat had some good bro time. We all went to the beach at Pacific City. Sadly, there was no football game. I went up the sand dunes and worked on back flips with a friend. And the leader Alex Salwedezel is pretty awesome. There were only a couple people on this retreat that were at the beach retreat two months ago. People either went off to school or got in a relationship.

There was a talent night again. The crazy thing was that about half of everyone went home early and missed the talent night. I told jokes again. Lately, the Bridge has featured the female equivalent of Dirty Jon, with an extra helping of mental illness. She came on the retreat. She laughed five times harder and longer than everyone else. It kinda killed my flow. And with so few people there, there wasn't the critical mass you need to have enough laughers in the crowd to have definite positive feedback. One of the guys took a video of my performance, but I had him delete it.

I need Ian to finish his letter of recommendation so I can move forward with my Army application.

Jour de Travaille

I did a bit of reorganizing my bookshelves today. Before, if it was a book I hadn't finished, it was simply pulled closer to the edge, but now, the unfinished books are now on their own shelf. There are X Christian books I haven't finished and Y secular books. The problem is when the book turns out to be boring, I have very little motivation to finish it. I ordered 4 books online a couple days ago. It's very exciting.

I rafted down the river with Danny and Jon Sauter and another guy and 4 girls from Solid Rock on Sunday. Since it was Labor Day weekend, there were maybe a thousand people that had the same idea. The weird part about it was that in our group, we all kept our shirts on, except for that other guy. I think it's weird that Christians would define modesty to such a strict level in a crowd of a thousand shirtless guys and barely-there bikinis. We didn't actually ever say anything about it. So the real causes of our farmer's tans might have been modesty, insecurity, or fear of judgementalism. If it were true that "modest is hottest," wouldn't immodesty cause less "stumbling"? Anywho, we went to sushi afterwards. The whole day was a blast.

Today, I have nothing planned except reading and working out. I think I've been experiencing heartburn since Thursday. I wasn't sure what was causing the chest pains so I stopped working out. I think I'll easy my way back into it.