When I told Alex, my housemate, that I brush my teeth three times a day - before and after breakfast, and before I go to bed, he was a bit surprised.. he said I was hardcore. Thinking about this, it was back in the summer of 2004 that I picked up this habit. When living with Tim and Thomas, I found out that one of them (or both of them) brushes his teeth before breakfast. It was smart because I frequently had to leave right after breakfast since I was in such a rush to get to morning class. So I started brushing before breakfast. But soon I gave myself more time in the mornings, and I continued brushing my teeth after I ate, going about the way I grew up. Brushing before you sleep is just something you need to do, there’s no weirdness about that.

I picked up a lot of stuff from living with those two guys. Cooking, separating my meat into meal-sized portions before I threw it into the freezer, using spices when cooking, how to maintain a clean kitchen. When I think back to that summer, I remember when how I wouldn’t do very much schoolwork since I was taking 3 DE courses. I remember how I stayed up till 3am some nights in bed reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy that I borrowed from the school library. We had so much time, I would cook my own meals for dinner almost every night, if not at least every other evening. We would cook our meals, eat together as we watched the evening news at 6pm, go off to do a bit of schoolwork, then re-gather to watch CSI or Canadian Idol. We didn’t have cable, but since we were on the 7th floor of 16 Wilsonview, we could pick up TV signals from a good bunch of channels. I remember when we would stay up late playing Worms World Armageddon on Thomas’ computer, challenging each other to game after game, as our pride was at stake.

What a life. I’ll never forget my first summer in Guelph. It’s a bit sappy to start reminiscing now, but I believe that when you start to remember good times, you appreciate each day more and more.

I don’t remember when the last time someone brought up the notion of death was. It’s entirely reasonable to talk about it, because in my opinion, thinking about death helps us think about life.

For instance, a friend of mine is facing a situation where he might soon get gravely ill, and he has asked for prayer from many people. There’s nothing wrong with this, as I think we should pray for people who may lose their lives knowingly, but then there’s the other question. Why don’t we pray just as hard when we know that I or someone else is going to live another day? Theoretically, it doesn’t make a difference, there should be no difference in the intensity we pray for people who are going to die, or going to live. Both groups of people need to live their remaining lives similarly cautiously, dependently, and prayerfully. Otherwise we would be putting more value to someone’s time depending on if they are dying or not, which isn’t logical.

How would I want to die if I could choose? I’ll beat around the bush a bit first — I know for sure how I would not want to die. I don’t really want to die of heat, because it makes me really uncomfortable. Dying of prolonged sickness seems really weak. I wouldn’t want to live in and die in a nursing home, those places seem like the loneliest and most purposeless places. And I honestly don’t think I’d prefer to die a violent death. Or have the strength and faith to.

If I died before my wife, I would want to die of a short acute sickness in a hospital. My wife would be sitting next to me and I would look at her, smile, squeeze her hand and then breathe my last breath. It would be the same look and hand-squeeze I would have given her every day before we fell asleep next to each other, that meant “I’ll see you when we both wake up”. I like that thought, it’s calm, it’s relaxed, and everything is under control.

The ideal situation is a bit more complex if she died before me. I think I would want to die from doing something for the first time. If I was old, that would mean doing something I had never done before. So maybe something like scuba diving, or paragliding, or I dunno what else. I would die doing something that I was enjoying. But I wouldn’t want my death to be a tragedy. In fact, I would want for people to show up at my funeral who I had an effect on, but never knew. Total strangers. Then when they would hear about my life, they would think about how God fits into their lives, and possibly be changed. That way my death would seem to have even more purpose.

Winter 2006 Dropped from this section STAT*2050*01 (4073) Statistics II Guelph

Woo hoo!!!!!!!!!!!!

My throat feels dry. We just played an intense game of floor hockey. ‘We’ being our team, Small Gym, which consists of Trevor, Turnbull, Carter, Graydon, John-John, Dennis, Polish, and me. Tonight we had the nice additions of second years, Mike and Ricky (I can’t stop calling Ricky by the name, “Tricky”). I need to watch out because I have some asthmatic symptoms, and so I can’t overexert myself all at once or else I’ll wheeze and have trouble breathing. Apparently, eczema (my skin allergy/condition) is a genetic defect close to the chromosomes in which asthma is located. So frequently people with eczema have asthma as well, or at least exhibit some of the signs.

An awesome discipleship group time, even though only 2 of the guys came out. These are the 2 guys who are totally committed to the group. We were talking about hypocrisy and how sometimes we don’t admit that we’re Christians, or a more realistic example is that we don’t admit that we’re heading to or coming from a bible study with Campus Crusade for Christ friends. Well right after DG, a girl from one of my past classes happened to be in the UC and she asked me what I was up to. How perfect. I told her what we were just doing, and somehow Middletone and I ended up engaging in a conversation with her and her friend about Porn Nation and why we did that event, etc etc. It was an incredible example of putting to practice what I just learned.

Hm, working back from that now. I took a nap. Knew that I would be tired if I didn’t before DG and the hockey game. Before that I met with the counsellor from Counselling Services. I’m really learning more about myself each time I go see him. He asks me really tough questions that help me understand why I do what I do, and how frequently I set myself up for precarious situations with schoolwork. For future reference, I need to list out each semester what happened that I totally bombed out, burned out, or procrastinated way too far. Because from what I can recall, I think this is a recurring trend.

This post is getting long and it’s late. And I just realized I haven’t looked at something for meteorology before tomorrow’s class (for all you out there, that is how you spell tomorrow, with one M and two R’s). I’ll have to terminate it h

In a world full of tumult, there’s still a light at the end of the tunnel. An enjoyable day today, despite an unexpected challenge exhibited through a tad of conflict.

I biked to class, as it was really nice weather outside in the morning. Meteorology class is getting more interesting. I learned how important upper-tropospheric pressure and wind patterns can affect the surface conditions. This would relate to pollution forecasting and point-source predictions. It’s neat. Groundwater was interesting too… a bit slow but the topics are easily relevant and easy to bring to applications. At about this point, it started to snow, quite moderately.

A really pleasant quiet time in the clubs office, as Rebecca Napier was doing her’s as well; I’ve got to read the Bible each day, more. I know I want to, but it’s so easy to just leave it to slide.

What helped make my day nice was a chat with my program counsellor, Jill. My, she really heard me out and gave me some really good suggestions on what I can do with my major, my area of emphasis, and my stats course. I think I’ll drop it. I’m pretty sure I’ll drop it. Instead I will probably add a 0.25 credits to my meteorology course, since apparently they are offering the 0.75 version of the course I’m currently taking (0.5 credit). Jill also suggested I find courses to make my area of emphasis by choosing stuff that would be useful in the future, yet applicable to environmental issues — which cover almost every discipline you could think about. So I’m really glad to have these options, instead of stooping to just fulfilling an area of emphasis I really don’t like, or switching into a general science degree.

A bit of third-hand conflict resolution (hopefully it led to some resolutioning? I know we tried), dinner of perogies and onions, band practice with Kent, Dave, Drew, Karen, Nathalie, and Heather and Laura Siverns watching (including total jam/groove session afterwards), and cutting Ryder’s hair. I’d say that was a pretty fair afternoon and evening.

Ryder actually tipped me for the haircut I gave him. Seeing as I don’t charge for cuts, that’s like a 1000% tip! How generous! Of course, I could calculate the percentage any which way I like, but 1000% just sounds awesome. Now I can use that money to go towards getting my hair cut.