May 19th marks the 1 year anniversary / birthday of my blogging experience. It has been a pretty fun year and am glad to be blogging. I hope to keep it up as it is a good way to keep in contact with people, take note of experiences, and explore interesting (I hope) topics.

To celebrate this blogversary or blogday I have created a page for reminiscing. I really enjoyed my high school experience and was blessed to have really good friends. It is hard to see how we have gone our separate ways, but that is part of life I suppose. I have always enjoyed taking pictures and that was quite true in high school. My pictures from high school page contains a bunch of pictures that I finally scanned from high school. It was great fun to look back and remember all the good times we had together. I hope you enjoy some of them as well, even if you don’t know anyone!

Here are a few from the page:

I recently visited the town where I grew up, Gig Harbor, WA (about 40 miles south of Seattle). In “honor” of my birthday, I figured I would show some pictures from the lovely town (most pics are clickable).

One of the reasons we moved away from Gig Harbor was because commuting over the Narrows Bridge to Tacoma was not very convienent because of the very large volume of traffic (step dad worked on the other side and church was on the other side). They decided to add another bridge to span the Narrows - means now there is lots of traffic AND expensive tolls.

Shalom

For those who missed the late night / early morning ceremony, here are a number of crappy (sorry) photos I took off the TV of Pope John Paul's funeral at Vatican City outside St. Peter's Basilica. The pictures are clickable for larger versions (although still not great quality).

Shalom

The weekend to the Gulf Island of Galiano was quite lovely. We had a nice relaxing weekend at the Fee’s cabin that was filled with gorgeous weather and great company. I have a page with a bunch of pictures from the weekend (sorry it takes a long time to load, there are a lot of pictures!). Here are a few samples:

Shalom and remember to visit the Galiano Picture Page!

At the end of February I was able to hang out with some good friends at Snoqualmie pass. It was a nice weekend of relaxing and having a good time. I have put together a page with a few pictures over at my website so please, come check it out! Here are a few pictures from the weekend.

A few odds n’ ends:
Some may not be aware of this, but should be. The all-mighty Google has done it again. A while back they introduced Google Maps. It is still in the Bata version, but it already rocks. Say good-bye to Mapquest as Google Maps will knock your socks off. Just wait until you start dragging maps all around, it will become addicting, just you wait and see.

I have been foretting to mention this, a few weeks back I saw Something the Lord Made with Alan Rickman and Mos Def. This was a great story (based on real events about Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas) surrounding the first open heart surgery. There were a few reasons that made this story so amazing: Heart surgery was considered taboo at the time, not only were they not able to do anything with the heart, but they thought it would never be possible to perform surgery on the heart, ever. The first operation was performed on a child. During harsh segregation, the white doctor, Alfred Blalock (Rickman), was assisted by Vivian Thomas, a black man (Def) when blacks weren’t even allowed in the operating rooms. The story is about Thomas’ struggles and accomplishments that helped make this surgery possible. Quite moving, well written, and brilliantly acted. Def was a great rapper and all, but I think he is coming into his own in the acting field. And how can you go wrong with Alan “cut-your-heart-ot-with-a-spoon” Rickman? Definitely check it out!

Fun fact of the day: Dr. James (J.I.) Packer, one of the “Top 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America”, takes the bus home from Regent. Doesn’t really mean anything, I just found that interesting.

I am heading to Galiano Island this weekend with my community group from Regent so I won’t be around. We are staying at Dr. Gordon Fee’s cabin over there, how cool is that? I hope you all can have a nice, relaxing weekend as I intend to have. It had better be relaxing because I have got a lot to do in the (shortening) rest of the semester!

Shalom

PS. I really want to be able to tell this to a girl some day: “I caught you a delicious bass.” Check this out.

Marcie, a good friend of mine, has been visiting the past few days which has been a lot of fun. She came to classes and we explored the city. We went up Grouse Mountain which overlooks the city and it was gorgeous. I will probably post some pictures of that shortly. But before that, I found the pics that were taken at Christmas that I thought were pretty cute.

Two simultaneous pictures, one taken by me and one by my first cousin once removed… heh, my cousin’s son, Nathan.

Nathan loves to use the camera and see himself in the viewfinder. Good times had by all.

Shalom

I know I showed a few pics of my apartment before, but I thought I would show some that really show how small it really is. I really like my apt and I don’t need too much space it is just funny to move from having lots of space to not much at all. Anway, this many not interest you at all, but here they are none the less.

I am pressed against my door, this is essentially the entire apartment.

I would actually title this “Kitchen” not Kitchen… Good thing I don’t know how to cook very well. It works and is enough for me!

Nice and compact I say!

Who needs more room than this?

This doesn’t really represent the smallness of my apt, I just like to show off my books Pride isn’t a good thing, I know. Just ask me how many I haven’t finished and that will bring me down a peg.

So there ya have it, a basement apartment in Vancouver, BC… with wireless

Shalom