I’ll be moving out to Spokane, Washington on Monday. I can’t tell you how excited I am. I’ve lived in Minnesota my whole life and so spreading my wings feels like a liberating experience. However, one of the things I’ve been trying to figure out is how will I ever find a church out there?

I don’t know anybody in the area, I don’t know really much about Spokane. I don’t even know where to start. I did a Google search of churches in Spokane and was overwhelmed by the results, pages and pages of different places to find other Christians. It would take me forever to visit all of these locations (1,630 results to be accurate) and be a major suck of my time to research every single location.

The solution I devised? Look at the church website. If it looked not only up to date, but was designed well, then I would put it on my list of a church to visit.

You may think this sounds shallow and superficial, and you may be right. But let me try to explain myself a little bit. After experiencing a very conservative church culture and seeing the experience many of my friends had with churches through college, I know the type of place I want to attend. I want there to be more than 6 people my age and I want them to be aware of current trends, basically, relevant. I know there are a lot of pastors out there that find the importance of culture and media… well sacrilege, but I think it is a great way to reach out to other people. It’s a stereotype, but churches who know what the importance of a good website also know the importance of relevancy and reaching out to others.

After looking for a church of my own to find, I now know the importance of a good church website. A good church website isn’t built for the congregation (although it’s a plus if it can be used that way) but is a gateway to allow others to get to know you more. It’s a great non-committal way to allow people to get a feeling for what you are about so that when they first visit, they aren’t completely scared out of their minds. So how important is a good church website? Important if you want tech-savvy people to come to your church, which is becoming the case more and more as younger generations grow up.

I’ll keep you posted as the search continues. What do you think? Think I’m being shallow or is there a fair argument to be made here? Let me know in the comments!

One of the greatest aspects of this movie was that it helped me remember what it was like to fall in love. The feelings that you get when you can’t wait to be with someone, the bliss and high that occurs with knowing that you are with the “right” person, the pure ecstasy that comes from spending time with them. If you’ve ever felt this way, you know what I’m talking about. Until watching this movie, I had forgotten those feelings existed.

I haven’t dated anyone (seriously) for two years. You may not think this is a big deal, but you have to know a little bit about me. I was the guy in high school that dated a lot of people. Up until my last relationship, I’ve had 9 fairly serious girlfriends. That’s a lot of girlfriends to cover over the span of 6 years (not counting this 2 year drought).

But my latest relationship ended a bit… well… rocky is the nicest way of putting it. I’m not going to get into the details of that here, but just know that it made me very bitter and jaded about relationships in general. Ever since that point I’ve never liked anybody ever again. Now you might be able to contribute this to two things, either A) no one has been appealing enough to like or B) I’ve been too bitter to allow myself to like anyone. Regardless of the reason, I’ve never been hardcore attracted to anyone since.

But watching (500) Days of Summer and seeing Tom and Summer fall in love stirred up those memories of my own life when I was in love. It helped remind me that I too once felt those feelings and that I felt those feelings at the beginning of my last relationship, you know, the one that ended poorly.

I remember wanting to spend lots of time with this individual, being excited to learn new aspects about her personality, finding out little quirks and mannerisms about her. I savored every new nugget of information learned and tried to enjoy every moment of time that was spent with her. People could see this new found bliss in my eyes, they knew that I was with someone that truly made me happy. I had forgotten what it was like to feel that way about someone. I had forgotten that it was possible.

So what happened between the fairy tale beginning and the horrific end? Well, that’s a story I’m not going to share on the interwebs, but life has a funny way of working itself out. (500) Days of Summer reminded me that love is out there and that I can’t be bitter about relationships. I was in love once, and chances are likely I will be again. What is important is that I keep myself open to the possibility of finding that love.

Do you have a lesson of love you’ve learned from your own life? Go ahead, open up and share them below! I’d love to hear them.

When the opening sequence began, it was like a kid opening up his present on Christmas morning. I took off the wrapping, opened the box and inside I found… well… it’s hard to explain. You know that gift that you dream of getting on Christmas, the gift that consumes your every thought during the season? Well, let’s say you don’t get that gift, but you still get a very good gift. The gift is still great, but it just can’t compare to your ideal gift. Enter (500) Days of Summer.

(500) Days of Summer was not a bad movie by any means, in fact, it was pretty darn good. But I was expecting to see a movie that would make my top 10 list. This was not the case. Before I go on, I need to talk about the title of this movie. Why is 500 in parentheses? Is it a design issue or is the “500″ optional, meaning the title of this movie could be Days of Summer? I don’t get it. Anyway, let’s continue.

(500) Days of Summer is a romantic comedy that is dark in nature. It isn’t a chick flick by any means because there is no clean cut happy ending. It’s life, and life is unpredictable. The plot follows the blossoming relationship of Tom and Summer. As the movie itself opens up with, “This isn’t a love story, but a story about love.”

Tom is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is the perfect person for this part. He is able to play the love struck protagonist with such excellence. You can’t help but feel for the guy and relate to all of the different things that he goes through. I hope that he continues to play roles that allow him to show his sensitive but also humorous personality traits.

Zooey Deschanel plays Summer Finn, the next and upcoming indie darling. I walked into the movie wanting to fall in love with her character, but her character was too off the wall for me to actually fall in love with. While I was not drawn to her character, Levitt and Deschanel have no problem playing the chemistry on screen and I never doubted for a second that Levitt was completely in love with Deschanel.

There are a lot of artistic creative liberties in this film, that if they were in any other film would make you say, “WTF?” Some of these artistic decisions work and some of them fall flat. I have to give credit to Marc Webb (director) for trying though.

The first half of the movie follows the traditional boy falls in love with girl arc. But what makes this movie great is the way it ends. The way it ends brings about such rich and profound conclusions about the nature of love, that I found it refreshing to my bitter heart. While the ending is not happy by any means, it still speaks truth into the nature of relationships. In fact, I have so many thoughts on the personal ramifications of this movie, I’ll post on those on Wednesday.

I’d recommend seeing this movie, even if you aren’t into “RomComs.” This is indie enough where it allows itself to take liberties to break out of that traditional genre. I’m giving it a 4 out of 5.

When Vista came out, I heard all kinds of negative things. Eventually SP2 came out and made most of the kinks disappear in Vista. I’ve even gone on record defending Vista to friends, telling them that with the new service packs that it is not as bad as everyone says it is, in fact, it is pretty decent.

Well that was before I started using Vista machines in regular life. Here are two examples of how Vista has broken down with no option of support.

Scenario 1: My parents own a Dell laptop. They’ve never had an issue with the machine. However, one day audio stopped playing on the machine. They asked me to help them fix the computer. I looked into the problem and the process that runs the sound was not opening up. After going online to find solutions to the problem, I discovered it was a registry error. It should be an easy solution, find a new copy of the .dll file and replacite . But when I tried to replace it, I was told I was not the administrator so I couldn’t. That wouldn’t be a problem except for the fact that I was on an administrator’s account! I looked up the problem some more and other people had the same issue. The solution? None. Awesome.

Scenario 2: My friend just bought a new Acer laptop and wanted to try out a new game. He bought KOTOR 2 (Knight of the Old Republic). He told me he loved the game, but one day I watched him play it and it had no sound. I asked him why he played it like this. He said that he couldn’t get the sound to work. I asked him if he looked up the problem. He said he spent half a day once trying to get it to work. After looking up the problem, it turns out it was a problem with the audio card and Vista. The solution? Pay for a special version of the game.

SERIOUSLY? How can there just not be a solution? Sometimes things break and then you just have to live with it? I don’t even understand how anyone could call that a sell-able product on the marketplace. You can’t just sell something to people and let them just live with the brokenness of the product. No wonder so many people hate Vista.

All this to say, I’ve heard great things about Windows 7 (due out in October) and I hope that this will help fix people’s issues with Windows. Until then, I’ll stick with my Apple products.

Jesus Wants to Save Christians

Velvet Elvis, Bell’s first book, was a great deconstruction of some traditional ideas and helped show how liberating theology can actually be. SexGod, Bell’s second book, focused on the nature of physical relationships as a metaphor for a relationship with God. While the content here was more specific in nature, it was still decent nonetheless.

That brings us now to Jesus Wants to Save Christians. To be honest, I didn’t really know what the book was about going into it. I was worried that it was going to be another post-modern tirade about the problems in the modern day church and that Jesus’ way of life would show us that we can’t live like that. Instead, what I got was a treatise and introduction on liberation theology.

Liberation theology is sweeping South America right now, and focuses on the liberation aspects of the Bible (Exodus, freedom from slavery, looking towards a bright future, etc.). While this was a decent introduction to the idea, I felt like my time could have been better spent reading an expert’s opinion’s on liberation theology instead of Bell’s.

This leads me to the biggest problem with the book. The way it is written makes it almost unreadable. In his previous works, he’s made an attempt at odd formating to help break up things and make it look artistic. That has been fine in the past, but this book takes it to a new extreme and makes it hard to concentrate. There are some places in the text where individual words get their own line of text. It’s written like this:

This is the

style

of prose

that Bell chooses

to write

in.

At times he can write full paragraphs with full thoughts, but often times the sentences that make up those paragraphs are so short and disjointed it makes it even harder to concentrate. Just as you starting to get into a groove of reading his prose

again then he

breaks

it up

again.

If you couldn’t tell, it seriously drove me up the wall. So would I recommend this to a friend to read? If you are interested in liberation theology, perhaps, but there are much better works out there on the subject. I’d say your time is better spent reading something else. Let’s hope Bell’s next book isn’t as distracting in form.

My current weight fluctuates between 145-147. I think this is the least I have weighed all my life. I’ve always been an overweight kid, and this marks the first time in my entire life where I have been a normal weight! It’s actually all very exciting.

Meeting with people I haven’t seen in awhile is always a fun experience. The first thing they always say is, “Wow! You’ve lost so much weight!” The next thing they always ask is, “How did you do it?” Everyone is looking for an easy answer, some secret they are missing out on that I have discovered. Well, I’ve got bad news, there is no secret. I started eating better and running more.

It makes it sound easier than it was. I started this journey two years ago and the first couple of months were hell. I would only run one time a week because that was all the energy I could muster and I would have trouble even running one mile, embarrassing I know. It took a lot of hard work, determination, and discipline, but I’ve come so far.

So for those of you seeking to lose weight, I encourage you to just start trying. You’re going to stumble, it’s not going to be easy, and you’ll probably won’t see results right away. I know I didn’t (see below). But if you keep at it, you will not only lose weight, but find yourself living a healthier lifestyle. My eating habits are not even close to where they were at two years ago. It just took a lot of hard work.

So in order to celebrate me reaching my goal, I thought I would share a little photo collage of my weight loss journey. It’s embarrassing, I know, but I wanted you to see how drastic the change has been! Below is the collage with a handy little key to show you where each stop was along the way.

A) Taken during my senior year of high school in Italy. This was when I was just slightly overweight. Nothing too bad yet.

B) Taken during the summer after my freshmen year of college on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. Not only is my hair awesome, but I am slowly putting on more weight.

C) Taken during my sophomore year of college in Thailand. This stage in my life is where I hit max capacity: 215 lbs.

D)Taken during my junior year of college, shortly after I started losing weight. You can see that the effects aren’t showing yet.

E) Taken during the summer after my junior year. You can see a difference in my face, a slight sign of weight loss.

F) Taken just a couple of weeks ago. Instead of wearing size XL shirts, I now wear smalls. How crazy is that? What a funny journey this has been.

I cannot understand poetry. If you are a literary nut of any kind, you’ve probably stopped reading already. For the longest time (22 years of my life), I’ve never been able to understand what makes poetry so beautiful. I couldn’t even begin to understand why people thought poetry was an elegant art form. To me, poetry just felt like a mish-mash of words thrown together.

That is, I used to have trouble appreciating the beauty of poetry. Lately I’ve been able to find the elegance, to savor the wordplay, and to enjoy the sound of the rhythm of the meter. So what brought about my turn in opinion? You’re going to laugh, but it was one thing: Rap.

I know there are plenty of people who hate on rap music constantly. There are the traditional arguments, that rap music only encourages hateful stereotypes, it is laced with profanity, it dumbs down the mind, and it is associated with all kinds of illicit behaviors. But I must say to those who hate, take it for what it is.

Rap is dependent on a beat. Without a beat, rap beings to fall flat. It loses it’s charm, it’s no longer fun to listen to. You can be the best wordsmith in the world, but if you don’t have a sense of timing and rhythm, then you will never be a rapper.

Once the beat is established or the flow of the rap has started, the challenge then is trying to fit words that run together smoothly into the parameters of the rhythm. To say that the beat can never be changed is a false statement, however, there is still a sense of meter. This is where rap begins to change depending on who is the one doing the rapping.

You can fill that space with random words that may sound good or be catchy to the ear, or you can fill that space with words that are not only appealing, but charged with a message. When the message is eased into the bigger sense of what is going on in the rap, not only is it fun to listen to, not only is it creative, not only is artistic, but it changes the way you think about things.

I get it. That’s poetry. Poetry fits into a meter, it involves being able to be creative with words, it takes the capacity of a great artist to imbue the poem with meaning. Anyone can make a poem that sounds good (Shel Silverstien), but to take a poem that not only sounds good but but lace it with deep meaning (Edgar Allen Poe) is something else entirely.

No longer will I be the one that tears down poetry. It has its own place in art, and one that is powerful nonetheless. Without rap, I would have never understood what makes poetry so great. While rap has helped me see this, I can promise you this: Country will never teach anybody anything.

I was told that this book was one of the darker ones out of the entire franchise. What nobody had prepared my for was how funny this movie was going to be. That’s right, check it again. I thought this movie was very funny. While I can’t say I’m a huge fan of teen romance in general, there were lots of little light moments that were done right. Done incredibly well to the point of a theater filled of Hogwarts dressed denizens to lose themselves in chuckles. Maybe I’ve just drank the Kool-Aid, but I did find those moments genuinely humorous.

Another fantastic thing about the movie is how pretty it is. The DP for this movie, Bruno Delbonnel, knew what the heck he was doing. There were many shots when I thought to myself, this is freaking fantastic looking. The look and feel of every shot was well done and wonderfully executed. It’s worth seeing for the camera work alone my friends.

Now I know nobody goes to this type of movie paying attention to the cinematography, so let’s get down to the details. How was the plot? I am going to blame my opinion on this due to the fact that I’ve never read any of the books. The movie makes absolutely no sense. In fact,the only reason it made sense was because my friend was explaining bits and pieces to me as it went along. Otherwise, I would have been lost and forced to focus on the visuals (which as I said already, would not be a bad thing).

Should you see this movie? Chances are, if you care enough about Harry Potter you’ve already seen it in theaters and are on your way to seeing it again. If you don’t know anything about the franchise, then you’re better off letting this pass over your head. I’m giving it a 3 out of 5.

What contributed to my feelings of soreness was going rock climbing for the first time in my life.

I will admit, when someone invites you to go rock climbing, it sounds fairly intimidating. You would think that your feelings would change when you arrive at the place, but it turns out seeing people scale up a wall and hang upside down doesn’t do much for waylaying any type of fears.

I started as a complete noob; I didn’t even know how to put on my harness. I had to awkwardly come out of the locker room and ask one of the staff members to help me. Yeah, I was that guy.

But as I climbed up my first wall, it seemed pretty easy. I thought all of my fears could indeed, fall to the wayside. It was easier than I thought to climb up a wall. Well that was wall one. After doing more climbs, I learned a valuable lesson. The human body gets tired from doing work. In fact, rock climbing isn’t about muscular strength, but muscular endurance, of which I have neither.

Now Imagine This Going Up A Wall

Trying to climb walls four and five were like watching a teenager who just got their driver’s permit drive a Station Wagon for the first time. Not only do they look ridiculous doing it, but they are incredibly dangerous. I literally couldn’t make it more than two pegs up the wall before my tiny, tiny arms gave up on me. As people kept trying to give me advice, I kept sucking it up because my body continued to fail me. It was a humbling experience.

Which brings me to what I learned from rock climbing. I learned that everybody sucks… well when they start something. It’s true that there are born child prodigies out there (boo), but whenever somebody starts something, they are always going to look like a tool. It’s how the learning process works. The challenge is being able to handle looking like a tool with class and dignity.

It’s easy to get defensive, to make excuses, and to rationalize why you suck, but it takes a stronger person to realize that this is how life is. A beginner has to start somewhere, and what better way than by embarrassing yourself in front of experts?

All this to say, rock climbing was a fantastic experience and I’m looking forward to doing it again. However next time, I’ll have the advantage of decreasing my level of tool by a bit thanks to my past mistakes. But this is what the learning process is all about. Someday I hope to look at a new climber and think to myself, you were that bad too once.