Recapping the Uncapping of the Polar Ice Capping

Well the semester is over. Classes are done and I am feeling confident about them all. I am home surrounded by snow. Well, at least the stuff that hasn't turned to slush. That's a little disappointing. But still fun. Well, as long as I'm not running in it. Although I think I've discovered something that might work without me having to trek through the snow equivalent of gluck.

I have had several great conversations with my family. I have played several games of Scrabble. I'm currently 2 for 2 in break Scrabble games. Creation followed by Creations/Skew on a triple word score kind of put the game out of reach. My parents are good sports though.

The Semester in Review. I think that's probably what this is going to be about.

Looking back on this semester I think I've learned some stuff. Here goes.

I have matured over this past semester. I have also become immature. More in the sense that I see some things more like a child. Which is interesting. We're told to have the faith of a child because children are so very often lacking in doubt. They trust fully and are full of hope and joy. I think this is a good goal to strive toward. That and watching Scooby Doo is really fun.

First impressions can be accurate and they can be deceiving. I have met people this year who my first impression was right and who it was wrong. Both types have turned out to be amazing people and if I had just let myself be swayed by first impressions I would have missed out on some awesomeness.

Having a network of friends that you can rely on to pull you through tough stuff who prays for you and you pray for them can be one of the best things ever. I used to not have that or at least nowhere near what I have now. Thank you to all of my friends in that network.

One of the biggest things I have learned is that God will ruin my expectations, break my goals, and crush my dreams at times. Why would he do such a thing? So he can take those broken shattered pieces of what I had and mold them together into a much more perfect and amazing sculpture that would not have been possible without the ripping, tearing, breaking, and rending. I don't know what he's preparing me for but it's going to be amazing. Every step I take pulls me closer to that as long as my eyes are focused on him. Anyone reading this don't forget that.

Some of my highlights from the semester. They kind of start out in order and then jumble themselves up.

XC Camp
Rafting
Meeting all the new people
Competing Skitters against Anaranjado
Last game of Risk with Ferfer
Getting a lottery ticket with Jed on 09/09/09 and winning nothing
Capture the Flag
Setting school records
ETC Day
15 Hours of Prayer
Nationals and Mom and Dad coming up for that
Hugging all 6 RAs before noon on Hug an RA Day
Helping people with math
Making it through Elementary Analysis and finding out how much there is to math
Listening to faculty interactions
Halloween dance
Making the temple of Solomon at Gingerbread House competition
Christmas light viewing
Heroscape battles (especially the Viper game and the Ashigaru game)
Watching Ask A Ninja
David Crowder concert
Discovering a church I enjoy
Coffee with Dilla or Jed or Cody or D’eliso or whoever
Small group (all of them)
Last Risk game with Hilary
Jed’s fairy impromptu
Chocolate milk
Making cookies that actually worked
Banana song
Hiding from Jed in the quad
The Great Cold Spell in Eugene of 09
Being done with everything

Well, I think that's everything. As Porky Pig and Bugs Bunny would say if they were mashed together. What's up t-t-t-t-that's all f-f-f-folks!

More randomness in the next blog.

There once was three whales, except they were wells.

Pretty much how I feel right now. Thanksgiving was awesome. My mom did not disappoint with providing her usual amazing repertoire of awesomeness (mashed potatoes, yams+marshmallows{surprise for me; I love this dish}, and of course PIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) Dad made an amazing turkey and it was just awesome hanging out with the family and looking at all of my brother's awesome sketches. Just watch one of these days he's going to be famous. For something. It might be drawing. It might be one of those awesome stories. Or something else. I didn't do any homework over break but I brought home a couple of Dr. Seuss books, Rudolph (you better know which I'm talking about), and a Snickerdoodle cookie recipe. I feel so accomplished. Anyway Thanksgiving break rocked. Up until now. I'll get to that in a minute.

Now in the last blog I said I was going to share what it was God had revealed to me. Well, here it goes. God violates our expectations. Constantly. This is God we're talking about. He comes down to our world and does the exact opposite of what we expect a god would do. Instead of flaunting power, he becomes powerless and weak and a nobody. Instead of commanding armies, he teaches fishermen. Instead of blowing people away with power, he blows them away with love. Instead of living a long and prosperous life, he dies poor and young. Yet this is the paradox of God. He didn't see equality with God as something that any human could do despite somehow being both God and human. He was humble even though he had every reason not to be. He was loving to those who killed him. He lived his life constantly searching and seeking out those he could help. And what does he do today?

Oftentimes the exact opposite of what I expect him to do. I think he's going to give me something because he can use me through it and he proceeds to not give it to me. He throws me into situations I didn't think would happen. Right now I did not think I would be in the middle of the Medford airport waiting for a bus to take me to Eugene at dark-thirty. Yet here I am. I didn't think Riley's family would take me over to their house for a couple hours to pass the time(Of course that happened because I wanted to see if she was back yet and I could hitch a ride; didn't quite work like I expected). But they did. I expected to be in Eugene right now watching the Grinch. Instead thanks to fog, the plane had to land in Medford and they're bringing up a shuttle or a bus or something to get me up to Eugene. Yay life. But here's the thing I'm realizing as I'm sitting here. My life is constantly going to be upset by stuff. How do I react though? That's the important thing. How willing am I to change my will for God's? So that might have been a lot more flow of thought than anything. Hopefully it made sense.

Oh, and airlines give you free pizza if you have to wait forever even if it isn't their fault.

So, what else?

Um...how about if you read past this line your room will be attacked by vicious poisonous fang-toothed comets?

You still reading? You're doomed. The worst part about those little buggers is that you never know when they're going to strike.

You think I'm making this up? Do I have anything to gain by making this up? Beside making my blog a little longer. Fine. If you don't want to believe that the comets will attack your room. I'll just end here.


If not, well I don't have anything so I'll end here.

Make that here.

Eh, why not continue for another line?

I feel like I could do this forever.

Okay actually really ending.

Syke!

Okay that was cruel. This is the real end.

Or not.

......................AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!......................

ΪητεЃηαι ЁЃЃθЃ

So, first things first. The wallabies with machine guns. It was a long hard fought battle with the wallabies taking a long time to make their way up the hill but a well-timed Jell-O bomb brought them the victory. This post-battle summary brought to you by Wallaby-Mart (The place where Wallabies shop)

Anyway, so unless you don't know me, I made it to Nationals (Woo-hoo!!!) and placed 89th out of 350-odd. It was an awesome experience for me. The team came up and watched me and Stephanie (Which rocked. Thank you all of you.) I didn't really have many fun thoughts during the race (but I heard all of the cheering people) and I wish I could say that the Nike dinner thing was cool, which it was, but it wasn't remarkably entertaining. Although, I did have faith in my directional skills when we were wandering around the Nike Campus. I wanted to find the Nolan Ryan building which I thought would be really cool. And using my amazing directional skills I found...the Mike Schmidt building. Close enough. At least I didn't lead us to a mud path like Dan did. Anyway, my parents came up too and it was fun spending the weekend with them. The course itself was full of gluck (I will make this a word in the English language before I die) so it was slow, but it was a blast.

Anyway, I'm in the Eugene airport waiting for my plane to start boarding which means I might just randomly end this and pick up later. I'm stoked to go back home for Thanksgiving with family (I get to see Jake. Haven't seen him in a couple months. We get to swap college stories) , food (Turkey, and rolls, and pies, and other amazingness), and fun. (Don't exactly know what it is but it'll rock)

I'll share what God revealed to me recently in the next blog guy because I want to make sure I can devote enough time to it because it's pretty cool.

So, I'm going to sign off and pick up again in a couple days since I think they're going to start boarding in five minutes. Instead, of me talking I leave you with audio of a highly-trained Navy Seal fighting a wallaby.

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-KCHKHHK! Snap!

Good thing my Navy Seal skills kicked in time to snap that wallaby gun before it hit me. That would have been painful.

CHKCHKCHKCKHCKCHKCHCKHKCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!

AAAHHHHH!!! Get off my face you little furry creature. Unnnhhh! Ok, where'd you go?

CHKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKHCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCHKHKCHCKCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!

bzzzzzzt.

End of recording.

How I Wish I Could Calculate Pi

So...

Blogtime again.

Last time I took us on a journey through my thoughts during my last race. I could do that here except a lot of my thoughts were real jumbled and there wasn't much in my thoughts that was remarkably interesting. So first a couple of quick highlights. Ran 25:15 got 13th either just made or just missed Nationals. So overall a good race. Observations about said race.

1. I definitely had Skillet's "Awake and Alive" in my head through the warmup (possibly because Brandon said we were going to wake up our legs at the beginning) but not at all during the race. I don't actually think I had any songs stuck in my head during the race.

2. During the race I didn't really hear people distinctly unless they were alone or had a really distinctive voice or they were Dan. Thanks for the "Hammertime" Dan. And thanks to everyone else who was cheering.

3. Normally my brain takes the words it hears and rearranges them into other words. Like if someone says "Go Sam.", my brain takes it and turns it into "So Mag" or "Mo Gas" or it swaps an "o" for an "e" and makes it "Games." Anyway, it took until Mile 4 for my brain to do that. It usually happens within the first mile. Weird huh?

4. There was a lot of gluck everywhere. I don't think I need to define that word. If you were there, you know what I mean. Some people would prefer to call it "mud", but I prefer to call it "gluck". I think it gives a much better image and it is much more fun to say. Oh, and just so people know, "gluck" and "mud" are not synonymous. Gluck is a specific species of mud most native to rainy cross country races with lots of dirt in them.

5. It took me about 5 minutes after my race was over to realize I could eat sugar again. (If you don't know, Heike challenged us to go the whole two weeks before Conference without eating sugar junk foods {so stuff like fruit didn't count as sugar}) I'm still deciding whether that was too long or too short.

6. I lost at Ninja way too many times for having just played one in an online Mafia game. Of course, I'm not very good at the game anyway, but still. We were bored and the awards ceremony was taking forever to show up.

7. Chocolate Frosties rock!

So, what else? Oh yeah, I had lots of celebratory candy the remainder of the day and am now back on my regular level of sugar. Jed and I got into a little discussion about "happy candies". These are the kind of candies that make you really happy as opposed to candies that just make you feel satisfied that you are getting sugar. Everyone has their own happy candies and happy candies can vary. For me, happy candies usually involve sour and gummy.

What else? My friend Zach showed up for a little visit. We managed to convince multiple people that he was actually Jed's brother Isaac (Zach for short) and even get some comments on how similar Jed and he looked. (They don't) So, if we told you that was Isaac this weekend, it wasn't.

Okay, let's see what else. I wish I could say God has been showing me amazing revelations, but he just seems to be happy with doing stuff that forces me to rely on him more and more, which I suppose is a good thing. It's frustrating though when you'd rather do things your way (although, there might be a good reason why that's not the way things are going).

Oh, and I'm taking a class in math that would probably terrify the rest of you and is providing some unique challenges for me. I had to memorize this definition and apply it.

The limit of a sequence a_n as n→∞ equals a, if and only if for all ε>0, there exists some N in the natural numbers (1,2,3,4...), such that for all n ≥ N, |a_n-a|<ε

Now that I've terrified all of you, that's one of the easier things in the class. It's nowhere near as fun as it sounds. Yes, you heard that right. Me of all people is not enjoying a math class. Weird, huh?

And...I don't have that many more non-sequiturs to throw at people so I'll leave you with this one. As I sit here listening to the David Crowder CD Church Music I think I've determined "How He Loves" is my favorite song on the CD and the CD is about twelve and a half times better if you listen to it straight.

Okay, join us next time for the rabid wallabies with machine guns story.

This Tytle Has Fore Erors In It.

Yay! Okay, welcome me to the world of blogging. I'm not really sure why I decided to do this, but you know what? Why not? Anyway, first things first. What to expect from this blog.

1. Stuff about my life. If I am too mundane something is wrong with your server, kind of like you're looking at the wrong blog.

2. Stuff about what I am doing. Again previous rules apply. 1 and 2 may overlap. Think of it as a subsequence. Only half of the people reading this will get that.

3. Randomness. It's me. What else did you expect?

4. What God is doing in my life. He seems to be often doing stuff to me and around me, and I feel like it is definitely worth mentioning.

Updates: Whenever I feel like it. Hopefully, it won't be too long between blogs.

Pictures: Maybe. We'll see what happens and how much I can figure out the way this blog thing works or how long before I just ask someone.

Anyway, please read the following agreement before continuing reading.

I, the undersigned do herefore and forever always remove Samuel C. Robison from any responsibilty for any and all injuries or damage sustained by reading this blog or any flaming meteors that may have smashed into my cranium because I wasn't looking for them nor was I checking interdimensional portals.

Okay, now that we have all the legal stuff out of the way...onto my life.

So, if you're reading this and know anything about me, you know I've been a junior in college for about oh, 63 days. (Seriously, I should have expected a multiple of 9 the first day I do a blog) If you don't already know I'm a math major. (I don't know how much of a tipoff the numbers were.) Anyway, I'm going to assume you know who I am. (I use the word anyway a lot in case anyone hasn't noticed yet)

Anyway, my life. (There it is again) Things have been rather routine. I get up, I run, I eat breakfast, I go to some combination of class, ASNCU hours, work-study, and lunch. And then it's XC practice followed by dinner and then whatever that's nights activities are. So yeah, I have a fun little repetitive schedule. Homework isn't killing me but it's making its presence known. But anyway, since I promised I wouldn't be mundane we won't talk about that.

Let's talk about something far more interesting. Jesus. What he has been showing me this past couple months can be summed up like this: Christianity is about loving people, not "doing the right thing" (If you try the second without the first, you fail, whereas if you do the first, the second follows) Christianity is also not a "do" but a "live" (if you catch my meaning), and lastly God will give you what you need, but not always what you want. (Actually a better way to put it would be, that it's less about what you need or want, but giving up what you want to meet others needs) It's better that way.

So yeah, God is good (when is he not?). I'm not really sure where else to take this. Oh yeah, I had a race on Saturday. We'll talk about that to finish this up. I shall take you on a walkthrough of my thoughts during the race. Through out the whole time imagine a mime in the background of my mind miming slowly dying so you get a general idea of the pain.

Start Line. All right, here we go. Okay God, let's see how this goes.

Annoying Horn blares. And we're off. Michael, slow down. Okay, now where is that guy I was supposed to be with? Oh, there. All right here we go. What the hey, who put that tree branch here? Okay, crisis avoided.

(Just so all of everyone knows there was 4 2k loops)

Mile 1. Dan just shouted 4:58 or something at me. Okay that's good. A little fast, but good. I'm still where I need to be. All right, good. Whoa, I very nearly slipped. I'm glad I decided to wear spikes.

End of Loop 1. I think I saw a 6 minute or something on that fun display thingy. That's 24 something for all four of these. That's good. {Subconscious interjects-That means you can slow down now as you're only working on breaking 26, and my body listens a little bit}

Partway through Loop 2. Where did that guy go? Oh well, let's keep going. I need to keep going. Yay. I just heard someone cheer for me. No idea who it is. Oh, here's that downhill that I need to speed up on. (For some reason I also feel like I had a David Crowder song playing in my head at this point) Wheee!!!!!

End of Loop 2. 12:30 something. That's what 25? Ah, I hate how my brain can't do math when I'm running this fast. And why are you looking at these things again? Isn't there a reason you wear a watch? I'm curious. (I apologize for the arguing with myself. When I'm racing, I think I separate into two personalities, the one that keeps pushing through everything, and the one that's counting down the miles until I'm done. They often fight each other)

Partway through Loop 3. There's Brian again! There is hope yet. More cheering for me. I think I picked out who was what. If you keep up this pace, you'll be on pace for whatever time it is you wanted to hit. True, but I can go faster can't I? Well...

End of Loop 3. I think that said 19:0 something so you just need to finish this loop in under 7 minutes and you're good. Okay, so go faster. I guess. Let's see what happens when we just pick up the pace as much as we can. We've got what how much left? I don't know. Probably a mile or so.

Partway through Loop 4. I think I heard Heike just yell at me about pushing it to break 26. Okay, here goes. Let's just go really fast. Thoughts blur together.

Ending. GO! GO! GO!!! GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Done. I think I saw 25 something. That's good. The trees look pretty.

It turns out it was 25:37. Good time. Yay!!!!

Okay, I shall blog again later when I feel I have something interesting to say.

If you're wondering about the title of this blog, well...you can always ask me.