December 19th Tunes

I've been listening to a lot of music lately and I've decided to share a couple of my current favourites. These could be made into one (very long) awesome CD if you so chose.

1)Shawn McDonald - Take My Hand

2)Take That - Back For Good

3)Sergei Prokiev - Dance of the Knights

4)Pete Murray - Fly With You

5)Spoon - The Way We Get By

6)John Butler Trio - Revolution

7)The Tequila Mockingbird Orchestra - Canela

8)Newton Faulkner - I Need Something

9)Ryan Knorr - What About Me

10)Sean Fournier - Put The World On Stop

11)Matt Willis - Crash

12)Newton Faulkner - Gone In The Morning

13)Shawn McDonald - All I Need

14)Kendra Springer - Angela

15)Osibisa - Sunshine Day

16)Josh Woodward - On Brevity

17)Serazino - Cochabamba

18)John Butler Trio - Good Excuse

19)Verve Pipe - Never Let You Down

20)I Am Not Lefthanded - Dedicated

21)Gavin Mikhail - Fight The Sky

22)Fatblueman - Hope It Turns Out Alright

23)Bézèd'h - Eric Adams

24)A Day To Remember - You Had Me At Hello

Life is Hectic.

my thought stream

Oh gosh, I have a 13 hour bus ride to go through on Thursday.

Not only that, but it's a night bus.

Christmas is coming! Exciting! Know what that means?

It means I get to celebrate Jesus' birthday!

Woo!

Only one more exam left to go! I can do this!

Study study study!

I get to go home soon! I get to see mom!

I get to play with my dog!

I get to sleep in my own house!

I wonder which of my friends are going to be home.

Any of the six I still talk to from high school?

I should be studying right now.

My exam is at 2pm tomorrow.

Gad zooks, this chocolate tastes good.

Holy cow my mind is everywhere right now.

Calculus makes me think:

( -b + or - Sqrt(b^2-4ac))/2a

Triangles are fun!

Logarithms, mmmm..... not so much, but still interesting.

Go Manda go! You can make it to Friday morning!

Then you'll be home!

I still have about $245 left on my caf card.

I only have two days left to spend this money.

I wonder who I can feed tomorrow.

Update!

I think there is seriously something wrong with Facebook.

I'm going through withdrawal and it's only been two days. Luckily I haven't gone on it, but I really wanted to.

This could be problematic. I might need more than one week away from it.

Post Script: "Less Is More" by Relient K is a very good song.

Wherefore art thou so glorious, Facebook?

WHAT in the world is the deal with Facebook?

(Why did my spell checker just tell me that Facebook is a valid word, but only if I capitalize it?)

I want to know the answer to something. Why is Facebook so addicting? I mean, everyone has it nowadays. What's the glow around this thing that our lives now revolve around? Not to say I don't partake in its magical awesomeness, but why does it have to be essential?

I noticed a little while ago that people are starting to get a little maniacal on this famous website. If they send you a message or post on your wall and you don't respond in the next hour they start to wonder if you're even alive any more. Or maybe you're ignoring them! Maybe you don't want to be friends any more! They start to wonder about you.

What is it about technology that fascinates us all the time? First it was the computer itself. It was so neat. It was like a typewriter, but better somehow. It could erase and type over the spot on the page again and still look neat, rather than you having to throw out your messy, inky page that only has one letter missing and carefully insert another around the gears.

The next big thing was what? Floppy disks. Then came compact disks and CD players. After that was the MP3 player and the iPod. Cell phones came in somewhere in that mix as well, starting out being big, then getting smaller, now they're growing again. Apple is becoming the next big thing even though it sucks. It's all because it's new and shiny. People follow and crave whatever looks the most interesting. What causes interest? NEW stuff. Stuff you haven't seen before.

I figure that's what Facebook has also. People are always changing their statuses, posting photos, videos, random information about themselves that no one really needs to know in the first place... And for some reason we crave this new information that we don't need. It's so addictive and it's taking over people's lives. They treasure talking to people via Facebook messages and completely ignore each other in person.

I know some people that use it in different ways as well. They use the site to check up on people who they're too afraid to talk to in person. They like the looks of someone they see around at school, so the first thing they do is look that person up on Facebook to check if they're single, rather than going up and introducing themselves to make a new friend.

Not cool. That's called stalking.

Yes, I have been guilty of it at times, but I have stopped now because I realize that there are much more important things. Like human relationships. Interactive ones. Ones that involve real people, in real life. This, my friends, is why I have decided I need a break from Crackbook. Oops, I mean Facebook. (Sorry, that was a horrible joke.)

I'm staying off that site completely for the next week at least. Maybe even longer. We'll see how it goes.

Anyway, over and out.

-Manda

Is this all it is?

I heard something that shook me a bit last week. You've probably heard the saying

"Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car."

That saying made me laugh. Because it's true. Some people think church is everything. They go to church every Sunday, read a couple verses, listen to the sermon and hear about all the things they should be doing, confess their sins, then go back home and go on through the week with no more thoughts on the subject until the next Sunday when they start all over again.

That's bull.

I was talking to one of my friends in a car ride back from the mall and she was telling me about how she thought most church-goers are silly and hypocritical. She said they all go because they think it's needed. Because they have to in order to get to Heaven. I said that I go because I enjoy it and she thought that was cool. She told me about a different friend of hers, who stopped going to church a while ago. Her friend had stopped going to church because it wasn't doing her any good. Her reasoning was this:

Why do people sit in church and listen to all the things they should be doing instead of actually doing them?

This woman doesn't go to church anymore because instead, she goes downtown and volunteers in a soup kitchen to feed the poor and homeless.

Reality check.

That's what's important. Sure, reading the bible, praying, and keeping up with Jesus talking to you is all good, but we should all be out there, helping our neighbours ALSO.

I don't know about you, but that's what I want to be like.

Not Sure Where To Go

Well, the title pretty much sums up the entirety of my thought processes for the past couple of weeks.

I used to know where I was headed.

When I left high school, I knew I wanted a job. I wanted to work for a year and save up money for university. I applied to four different universities, three well-known and highly praised, the last well-praised but only a small crowd had heard of it. I was accepted into all, but I chose the small one. It seemed most homey. I didn't like the thought of going to a place that was so big you'd have lecture halls filled with 500 people. I like the small 30-people-at-most classes.

I started my first year there knowing that I wanted to become a teacher. I was sure of it. I was going to spend five years at the university: three years for my BA in English and two years for the Education After Degree so I could teach. Then I was going to find a job at a small school somewhere, find a small cottage to live in, and find a guy to marry me and live out there with me.

By the end of the first semester I had changed my focus to a music major, psychology minor. By the end of the first year I decided that I wanted a music major and drama minor. So that's where I am right now, second year going after that music and drama BA.

Something inside me still wants to be a teacher, but I have changed my focus for now. I want to graduate with the three year BA from here, then I don't know what I want to do yet. I know that I don't want to settle down somewhere yet. I know that I want to continue learning. I know that I want to explore and go on an adventure.

This all happened about three weeks ago. One day I had my life planned out, then I woke up the next day and I wondered why. I don't really know all that much yet. I want to explore so I can experience new things and learn. I want to figure out what exactly I can't live without.

I want to always be surprised.

It happened around the time that my grandpa passed away and my dad got married (which were like two days apart). I guess those two events shook my world a bit and made me think about what I wanted out of life, at which point I realized I couldn't answer that question.

So I started looking into travel abroad opportunities. Since I want to both learn and travel, I started looking up schools in foreign countries. My first impulse was to go to school in Norway, but apparently I have to have a certain level of Norwegian language fluency in order to complete a degree there, so until that happens, I'm going to have to go somewhere that speaks English.

I don't really know where I want to go yet, but it's going to be somewhere with a culture quite unlike the one that I live in here in Canada (not that Canada only has one culture, in fact it has many, each completely different from the next). New experiences are fun. I enjoy fun.

I can't wait. 2012 I graduate from here. That's the start of a real adventure.

Over and out.

AND Just So You Know...

GOD is definitely the LOVE of my life.

He is always there to comfort me.

He points me where I need to go.

He tells me when I do something that makes me stray.

He protects me.

He makes me smile.

He's mighty.

He's holy.

He's worthy of my praise.

AND.

That word is great. It means that there is so much more. One description is not enough to cover it all. That's where the AND comes in. I quite enjoy it.

Post Script: God, you're my hero. Keep doing all those tubular things you do.

What is love?

So I just realized there's something important I don't know but feel I should know...

What is this thing we call 'love'?

Some might say it's a feeling.

If you look it up in a dictionary it might say something to the effect of: "a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person."

But that's what it used to be.

I walk around and hear the word tossed around like a ping-pong ball; like it's nothing special.

I love cookies is a good one.

I love soccer is neat.

I love you... that's a phrase I hear far too often. It's great that you are fond of everyone, but where does it become insignificant?

The word love, I feel, should be used when there really is a deeply profound feeling present. One that changes your life completely. One that you can't live without. One that makes you feel as if you'd be incomplete without it.

I'm not saying you shouldn't love your neighbours, that would be silly. The thrick is, you should love your neighbours as yourself. Not as your significant other. To be in love with someone is different.

I like this, this thing we call love. It is fun. It makes me feel great.

Here's a challenge I have for you. Next time you use the word 'love,' make sure to put real feeling into it. Make sure it changes someone's life.

-Over and out- Manda