Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Some of my favs,not exhaustive,haha

Asked about what some of my fav books,authors, movies, celebrities, music...you get the idea,haha. Well here goes:
Music is easy: @davematthewsbnd is my fav, followed by Van Halen, @taylorswift13 @NickiFoxxMusic @ChantellePaige @CarinaK @GDGOfficial (Gavin DeGraw) @bep (black-eyed peas) Brooks and Dunn, U2 and a few others.

TV shows: Leverage,Burn Notice, all the CSI's, Criminal Minds, White Collar, Gossip Girl with @itsJessicaSzohr, Vampire Diaries (dream date is Nina Dobrev, she is sooooooo hot,haha) House, and Bones, kind of all over the place, I know.

Movies: Twilight series, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Spiderman series, new Star Trek, X Men series, Tombstone ("Why Johnny Tyler, you madcap, where you going with that shotgun?") Gladiator, Man on Fire and a few others.

Celebrities: @Schwarzenegger @Brittanysnow Blake Lively, Jessica Szohr, Nina Dobrev (@ninadobrev), Hugh Laurie, Jennifer Morrison and a few others, see not totally an exhaustive list.

Christian music I like : @ChrisTomlinband @DavidCrowderbnd,Hillsong, Charlie Hall, @louiegiglio (one of leaders of #Passion movement) @matt_redman and Caedmon's Call all of em are incredible musicians, so check em out.

Friends who I chat with on twitter on regular basis: @NorCalChika @Bolanile @NickiFoxxMusic @ForeverAliceC @itsJessicaSzohr @msjlowndes @ChantellePaige @CarinaK @adventuregirl and I recommend all these as great follows, if I missed one of you don't sweat it, will get you on next go around.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Life is what it is...I guess,haha

Had some random thoughts rolling around in my head, things that have been posed to me either in a lesson in Sunday School, go to two of them, so can't necessarily remember which lesson had which illustration. Or I got this thought from the lesson in "Big Church" which always makes me laugh when someone says that.

One thought that has occurred to me, regarding Jesus and His teaching. He always seemed to teach for quality over quantity in how He approached the people He was with. As humans and especially as Americans we seem to value quantity over quality approach in how we deal with life and what we seek in life. When did that become the most important thing we seek out of life? Hmmm, I guess it was when we became such a consumer-driven people that accepted the mentality presented to us, but that is just my thoughts. Jesus said I have some specific areas I want you to learn and learn well. He seemed to understand, the axiom of "learn a few things and learn them well" rather than throw a bunch of ideas out and hoped some would stick as much of our teaching is prone to do.

Another thought that occurred to me was Jesus also had both teachable moments and challenges to the religious authority's way of thinking in His answers He gave to His disciples and the religious leader's questions.

Not sure where I am going with this or if I'm even going anywhere, just throwing out a few thoughts that I thought of from this weekend. I guess one other had came to mind, in regards to the NFL playoffs this weekend. Just because one strategy worked against one team and worked for you to get your team into the next round of the playoffs, does not guarantee success the following weekend. Also the experts are correct on occasion, but rarely right on what worked and succeeded for a team. By this I mean, the experts might be correct on a team winning, but their predictions are rarely right on what worked for the team. The team, what they do to win, and the adjustments the team does as soon as right before game starts causes all predictions to go flying out the window. I think that this is true in life. Just because one thing worked for you one day, one week...doesn't guarantee that it will the next, life is full of changes and we need to be changing too or we will become irrelevant or just passed by in the game of life. Hope you got something out of this, will try to be a bit more cohesive in my thought process in my next blog. Till then...

Friday, January 15, 2010

Suffering

Hmmm, this is a more dificult blog to write from the standpoint that it is controversial in nature. Someone asked me the age-old question of why bad things happen to good people. This was in reference to the devastation in Haiti and as I write probably in Venezuela also. This is a hard question, especially for the fact that the person followed it up with, "I can't believe in a loving God, who would allow this to happen, can you explain how you would believe in God, after this disaster?"

I remember one answer that was given and it seems fairly satisfactory if not the most desired answer for this question. I believe in God, go to church and am a follower of Christ. So I get this question all the time when I talk to someone who is not a Christian and cannot follow Christ due to Him allowing bad things to happen to good people argument. The example was in regards to free-will, the thought that God did not create us as puppets to do His bidding, but with minds and wills of our own. Now this example was this, as a parent we do not choose to shelter or protect our child from every possible danger or possibility of them getting hurt. Instead we give them instructions, warns and possiblilities of what might happen if they choose to touch a hot stove but we cannot shield or stop them from possibly doing that if we want them to grow and to develop their own free-will. The person giving this example went on to say we as humans need to remember that due to sin or our exercising our free-will in a way other than God created us for has caused not only us to be fallen from the image God created for us but also the world to be fallen. Living in a fallen world has consequences and difficulties that arise, but this is due to God giving us as humans the option of exercising our will and allowing us to live with those consequences. So as long as we live in a fallen world there will be disasters and difficulties arising in our life.

I feel for the people in both Haiti and Venezuela and am praying for their safety and quick return to the way of life they had before the earthquakes. But I am not shocked or surprised at possibility of these "natural disasters" occurring due to the world's fallen state, away from the "Garden of Eden" that God created for us as humans originally.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

What I learned part two and more random thoughts

This is kinda a continuation of yesterday's "What I learned last yr" and some more random thoughts. Someone asked me, since I am in Houston, which is somewhat University of Texas country, if I thought UT got robbed the other night in the title game. Will talk about that too.

Another thing I learned last yr is, life alone is not really life, but maybe just survival. By this I mean, I am very comfortable doing activities alone or by myself. Probably a bit too much, so toward the end of last year, got into a sunday school class at my church Houston's First Baptist Church or @Houstonsfirst on twitter for my twitter readers. This gave me and the girl I go out with some opportunities to get connected with other people and hang out together without any kind of pressure or expectations. Life seems to be at least a little bit seems to be about us developing friendships and relationships with those around us, at church or anywhere we are and sharing our lives, experiences and difficulties together. Now, living life alone is an option, but we as humans seem to be social creatures, and to ignore that almost seems to go against the way we are created.

We give as good as we get, is not true, going either way, giving or getting...we should always give our best, even knowing that we may not get the best or get anything back at all. Still knowing this, give our all, and let God work out the rest. At least we know, we didn't hold back or shortchange someone. Life lived in 1st or 2nd gear is nice, cautious, predictable, but going all out and cranking it up probably is the way we were called to live.

Now to question I was asked, I think UT robbed itself of opportunity to win national championship, by playing Colt McCoy almost exclusively throughout season, and sacrificing experience for backup in order to pad Colt McCoy's stats for Heisman trophy consideration. I said in one of my blogs early on in season that neither Colt nor Sam Bradford nor Tim Teabow would win Heisman. There was plenty of time during season for this "national powerhouse" to play the true freshman Garrett Gilbert when team had blownout their opponent, yet they only got him chance to play enough during season to account for 124 yards?!? No one to blame but yourselves UT, when Mark Ingram wasn't playing during game, Alabama still had a player to step right in and produce for them, hmmm. Yes, qb position is harder to play then running back, but with a bunch of unranked and low-rated teams that UT uses to pad schedule, plenty of time to get playing time for young mister Gilbert, so that his first significant playing time wasn't on the biggest stage of all: national championship game, hmmm. So, play your backup quarterback enough during season, so that he is not thrown into fire with no experience but is ready to contribute. Also, noticed a trend, Linas Sweed is playing for my Steelers and drops alot of passes and the "star receivers" for UT were all dropping passes the other night. Sweed is a former UT player and now other receivers both in NFL and current Longhorn players are dropping passes,hmmm

Friday, January 8, 2010

2 blogs in one day,haha

So, decided to do a second blog and also realized I write pretty much the same way I talk, not sure if that is a good thing or what,hmmm.

What to blog about when it's a second blog of the day...this one maybe a bit random, have a few thoughts and topics I want to go on about, so bear with me. First is some of the things I have learned from last year. I learned in life, I need to treat people better than I am looking to be treated, that treating someone well has just as much effect on how they treat you as when you treat them badly. Almost the reverse effect of if you are treated badly and retaliate or if you treat someone badly and they have a tendency to treat you just as badly or worse. Equally I have found that I go out of my way to be nice to someone, they respond back equally nicely. Guess it is kind of like that "Pay it Forward" mentality.

Another thing I learned is that while life is not fair, and never let anyone tell you it is, you don't have to just sit there and let life run you over. Think about that for a moment...You always have an option to make changes and do something different to change the outcome or way life ends up. I think myself and probably other people as well have the "victim" mentality and just go "poor me, nothing I can do, now that life has happened to me and happened unfairly." NO, we still can respond, always have that option, now our options maybe limited for a moment, but even then we still have freewill and the option to do more than just sit there.

Thirdly, continue to garner and grow friendships. By this I mean, continue to make friends and develop these friendships beyond, "hey how's it going?" stage. Deepen these friendships, for you never know when you might need help or a friend who you can turn to in time of need and if all you have is those shallow conversations, who will you turn to, for more?

Life will continue to happen whether we want it to or not, by this I mean, "nature abhors a vacuum." That sounds very mysterious, but truly isn't, put quite simply, life doesn't just stop because we want it to so like life we need to keep moving and not stand still or we may get run over,hmmm.

We are all role models, so despite Charles Barkley's infamous words, "I am not a role model" we all are. From the greatest to the least of us. We are on display for the world to see, you can say, "I'm nothing special, no one would possibly care about what I do or say," I think that would be incorrect, seems that there is always someone seeing or hearing what we say or do and then scarily, following our example. With that in mind, what example or role model are we?!? What a heavy burden or a golden opportunity, depending on if you are a half empty or half full type of person. We can influence those around us, just have to be willing to do so. I suspect that there are enough out of control, foolish, non-thinking rolemodels out there for the world to see. This world needs leaders, true leaders, not the kind that has to tell people to follow them but lead in words and actions toward a better world, again, hmmm, is that you?!?

Just some of my random thoughts of what I learned, garnered, observed and contemplated from this last year. Hope it held your interest and makes you think some also.

Sports in general

I have become slightly disillusioned and I guess maybe less tolerant lately of sports in general. I think maybe it is due to several factors. I am in the camp of banning Gilbert Arenas forever from NBA, this due to his inability to actually show any intelligence and maturity, dispite being given lots of opportunities to do so. This latest fiasco with the weapon in the locker room just exemplifies the need to go extreme and ban him for good. People including him will argue against such extreme measures for the "reason" that he was asked by people close to him to take weapons out of home and bring them in to arena, for whatever reason, that is all well and good. BUT and this is a huge BUT, that does not excuse away his attrociously bad judgement in bringing them out in what he calls a bad attempt at a joke or all his lack of remorse or good judgement since the incident occurred and came to light, trying to joke about incident with reporters and pretending to gun down teammates in huddle. Why should league waste their time and keep him around?!? He is no rolemodel, which unfortunately for Chuck Barkley and every other pro athlete is, no matter if they want to be or not. That comes with the territory, you want to be an athlete, make obscene amounts of money have the fame, then expect to be scrutinized and watched on what you do by those around you and sadly often imitated. Hmmm.

On role models, do we realize, each and everyone of us are a role model for someone? Yes, it is a huge responsibility, but equally an incredible opportunity also. Embrace and accept it, for that is life, and then go and be the person God has called you to be, both before Him and all those around you.

I have become less tolerant of foolish behavior, including overhyping of sporting events by the media and excusing of bad behavior by them as long as you are rich and famous and make an impact in both their lives and ultimately their wallets. Tiger, Gilbert Arenas, Michael Jordan, Brett Favre all do horrible things toward those around them and people they work with and the media excuses it and we the public just accept this action as "just the way it is," why is that? We the public can make a huge difference by calling these people and their actions into question, yes one person can make a difference, it's through that one person that others become aware and begin to change alongside them and before long it is millions of people changing and not accepting status quo. hmmm, just something to think about

Monday, January 4, 2010

New Year so new blog,haha

Hello all,
To all my friends and confidantes on twitter, no I'm not dead, the rumors are greatly exaggerated. I have been busy and have not been on the way I should have been, for that I do apologize. Hope life has been going well for all of you, my parents come into town from Colorado later this week, so that is a good thing. Spent Christmas with my sister and her family,including my two incredible nieces: Ava and Emma.

Saw the following movies, more than I had seen in the 8 previous months combined, was impressed with them for the most part: New Moon (Too much hype, lead to being a little disappointed overall, but that was the media's fault on trailers and commercials every few seconds, set my expectations way up there, but good movie overall. Also saw Avatar, thought it was very well done, and also Sherlock Holmes another fairly well done movie.

Have made resolution to be the same person in public that I am in private, that is a WOW resolution, when I think of how I don't always match up, all the time. Also to get to a position, where I am not required to rely on someone else to accomplish my goals, still not there, but working on it.

That is kinda where I'm at right now, will be on more to chat with you all in twitter and chatzy, have missed you all horribly and terribly, but am back now, so watch out world, haha. Continued success in 2010 as we strive to be the person we have resolved to be.