forgiven

last week I wrote a super sweet blog. it had everything that a good blog needs. a little humor, a touch of information, a sprinkle of insight and great grammar. unfortunately, when I went to publish my piece of art, the blogger site messed up and I lost it all. after a week of ignoring blogger.com for it's failure, I am forgiving the internet and writing a new post.

last week was pretty sweet. our dodgeball team came 3rd and I played in my second hockey game. i don't know what it is, but this past christmas gave me a renewed love for the game and I can't get enough. im glad okc has some ice I can tear up.

i wrote my first dynamics test which was "confusingly easy," as my friend Will described it. You walk out of the test thinking, man that was easy, but you are second guessing yourself more than ever because it couldn't have been that easy, could it? i guess we will see how easy it was. I have two more tests this week, which will hopefully won't be too hard either.

last night I was fortunate enough to hear Earl Lavender, writer of Living God's Love, talk. He said something so simple but it has really hit me. He said, you cannot give what you don't have. No duh. But the reality of it for me was that I have been so eager to jump into Lord's work, to get busy in the kingdom, that I have not even thought about if I am prepared spiritually. If I do not put any serious effort into the building of a relationship with God, which right now is practically zero, then how can I share Him with others? For most of my life, things have come fairly easy to me, so I have never had to seriously work hard to be more than moderate at something. This pattern is definetely reflected in my spritiual life. I have never seen the need to put effort into seeking God, beacuse I thought it would come naturally. I am now seeing and feeling how wrong this is. I hope that in the coming days, I will learn to "have a cup of joe with the creator" and to read and listen to what I have to learn about Him and from Him.

finally, if you haven't already done this go check out and read Nic Olson's blog, the link is on the right. you will not be disappointed.

ice capades

last night was pretty fun. i should have stayed in the dorms, finished my bible reading and then went to bed early. instead I was peer pressured into going ice sliding at lake arcadia. the weird ice storm has left the hills covered in 10 cm (notice the metric use) of solid, slick ice. needless to say we saw an amazing oppourtunity before us, and the pictures on flickr are the result.

we all ended up feeling pretty stiff and sore in the morning after many falls while trying to surf down the slope. at the bottom was a line of long grass and scattered trees. if you were lucky, you didn't can yourself on one of them.

also, we have entered a dodgeball team in the school tournament and have been practicing our 5 D's of dodgeball with fervour. Dodge, Dip, Duck, Dive and Dodge. wish us luck.

Tyler.

NEW ROOM!

i just got the loft kit I ordered, so I was able to reorganize my room a little bit better. the only real problem is that I might fall out of bed and kill myself on night. for the extra space, it's a risk I am willing to take.

there is a picture on flickr.

in other news, school was cancelled today but is still on tomorrow. all the church services on Sunday were cancelled as well, which led to a great small group discussion at Chad and Sarah's apt. where we had supper together, broke bread, drank juice and communioned the way Jesus did back in the day. it was refreshing to be a part of that, especially in the bible belt (however the origins of people that attended the small group were Canada, Australia, Montana and Ohio). it was still good though.

we decided that as a group we needed to do this more often. Eat, drink and talk God in an informal setting. a place where we can express our angers and frustrations with God as well as give him praise. hopefully there will be many more great sessions to come.

although school was cancelled, I still had to get up for an 8 am lecture which my teacher decided to have online. it's pretty neat how it works, but still, I had class and homework on a snow day. the least the teacher could have done was have the lecture at say, 2, after everyone was awake.

and my final peice of news is that I did not get to play in my first hockey game this week. Ironically, they cancelled the game due to all the ice. Next week I will have my chance.

hookah, halo and hotcakes.

with the ice storm here, everyone is basically couped up in the dorms, trying to find stuff to do.

my neighbour Chad aparantly can make some wicked waffles (ie. hot cakes), and the plan for friday night was to have some hookah, play some halo and eat some hot cakes.

in preparation for smoking hookah in the dorm room we were trying to find a way to cover the smoke detector because we weren't sure if it would detect the hookah smoke or not. I came up with a great plan to tape a plastic back around the smoke detector. it should work right?

well, as I was standing on Evan's shoulders, taping the bag there, and the smoke detector started to go, and then after 5 seconds turned off. We had no idea what made it go off and there was no test button that I could have hit.

by this point we were getting worried about smoking the hookah in the dorm and getting caught, as all the detectors are wired together throughout the building and we didn't want to cause the sprinklers to go off.

with our hopes down, and the ability to smoke hookah elsewhere was minimal due to the cold, we decided to give up on the idea. all of sudden, Justin came up with the great idea to go set up his dome tent in the park and just sit in there and smoke.

so that's what we did. needless to say it was freaking freezing outside, but with 5 manly bodies sitting in a small tent with a hookah pipe, we were able to stay warm enough and enjoy some good times together and have some good talks.

it turned out to be a pretty fun night.
there are some new photos on flickr of the hookah night and an OC basketball game.

keep in touch,
ty.

ps. thanks for the comments mom and dad, it means a lot. keep them coming.

crazy ice storm eh?

if you haven't heard the news, the state of oklahoma is being hit with a severe ice storm. it's not rain, it's not sleet, it's not hail and it's not snow, but something is coming down from the sky and creating ice all over the place.

the good news is that they cancelled afternoon classes. they also have a bunch of emergency plans of action so that if the power goes out we, the students, will still have a warm place to sleep and food to eat. it's pretty crazy.

as of right now, everyone is just sitting around watching movies. bball has been mentioned for later and I think I will hit that up.

b baller butel is signing off.

flickr

i have gotten some pictures up online. just click the link on the right of the page.

there are only a few photos up of my dorm room and roommates. keep checking back for more.

T.

back to the grind

the holidays were so great and it is very hard to be back on campus. thanks to all back home for the good times and catching up.

i think the thing that gets me the most is being in the dorm room and how it does not feel homey at all. no dad in the rocking chair, no mom vacumming while you are trying to watch TV, no brothers yelling at you and trying to wrestle you. i miss that.

it is a good thing that Clair is with me to keep me going. two days of classes have gone by and the homework has started. this should be a tough but fun semester.

in other news I have joined the fighting squirrels hockey club in the adult mens league here. hopefully I can dazzle them with my canadian stick handling and stunning good looks. if I can't, then at least it will be a good work out.

expect a flickr site to develop soon as I learn to use the new camera and shoot some pics of life at OC.

clair says hi.

tyler.