Having A Geeky Time

Recently I've found two websites that are great places to geek out your apartment, dorm, office, or wherever you can.  Both Allposters.com and ThinkGeek.com have been amazing places (when I've had a little extra money saved up. . .) to geek out my dorm.  I fully endorse both of these sites for posters and otherwise nerdy things.  On my wishlist is the Periodic Table of the Elements shower curtain!

Spring Semester 2012 Is Underway

The spring semester of 2012 is underway, and I couldn't be more excited.  All of my professors are great and challenging.  So far no complaints, just renewing my focus on what's important right now - my education.

Things are going well between Kayla and I.  We both work part time jobs while in school so over Christmas break we arranged to stay at our dormitory, which was challenging given that we don't have access to a kitchen besides the microwave.  So Ramen noodles, Chef Boyardee, and fast food pretty much made up the daily diet.

My main goal for this semester is to earn a 4.0 gpa followed closely by my other goal of focusing more intensely on my courses.  Yeah it's never easy.  While visiting with my Priest back home over break he gave me some great advice for the next semester.  It's only 16 weeks.  That's right.  No I'm n0t graduating with my degree this semester, but in May I will be 16 weeks closer to my ultimate goal of earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Meteorology.

My work out routine has suffered some this week.  Getting oriented to classes grabbed my attention, so I have a choice to make for the rest of the week.  Plan is to catch up and get back into working out tomorrow prior to going to work in the evening.

So that's the semester as it stands!  I've decided not to put a lot of stock into my first perceptions of a course until after midterms.  It's easy to really enjoy a class while the work is just getting going.  In the coming months there'll be projects, papers, labs, and exams.  The usual semester stuff.  Hopefully I'll get to keep blogging my journey through school, and life in general.

Until next time!

Blessed Feast of the Holy Family

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of my family and friends a very Blessed Feast of the Holy Family, celebrated in the traditional Roman Calendar on the Sunday following the Solemnity of the Epiphany of Our Lord!

Hitting the Gym

This school year and especially this semester brings a new goal.  Working out.  I've been doing research and consulting friends who regularly work out and have come up with a fitness plan.  Will I be a body builder?  No.  The goal is just to keep myself in shape.  At some point, if I'm able to keep up regularly, I hope to start building some muscle and endurance.

I'm also using the complete G-series from Gatorade to aid my workout.  I know, sounds very cliche working out and drinking Gatorade products, but after a couple of weeks of using it I do notice a difference in my work out.  The big thing is that I don't feel the usual fatigue after my work out.  The first step in the G-series is a carbohydrate drink that energizes and prepares the body for working out.  The second is just the normal Gatorade that's been around for years.  The third is a protein drink that also re-hydrates muscles.  So the entire series works with your workout.  This doesn't mean that if you use the G-series that you can do whatever you want with your workout.  It's still important to focus on either upperbody or lower body exercises every time I work out, and to alternate workouts every time.

So hopefully this semester will help me become more fit, and with the usual course of my studies more educated.

Beginning the New Year And Back to Blogging

Beginning the new year of 2012 I have decided to radically simplify my web home on the web.  I will no longer be using my website on webs.com and that will be deleted in the next coming days.  Given that I primarily used that as a way to communicate the latest happenings of my life to family and friends, continuing this blog will serve as a better method.

This year brings with it various challenges as every year prior, however I'm excited to announce that I'm getting closer to beginning Phase I of my attempt to completely give my life an increase in geekiness.  Phase I includes obtaining a new laptop to be used primarily for instant messaging, gaming, social networking, and blogging.  This will free up what little space I've used on my current laptop to be spent entirely for school and work purposes.

So as we begin the 2012 I wish all of you the very best.

God bless!

Philosophical Musing: You May Now Kiss The Bride

Oh the thoughts that travel through my mind in early hours of the morning! I was recently thinking about THAT line we hear at just about every wedding any one has ever attended. We see it on TV and in the movies. The image of a couple standing before a minister or Priest saying their vows culminating when the officiant of the wedding says, "You may now kiss the bride." Wait, what does that really mean? My mind drifted slightly and thought about the courtships of 200+ years ago.

Perhaps my mind has been formed by the media to think of William Shakespear's Romeo and Juliet as the "perfect" couple or that there was a time when man and woman's first kiss was indeed at their wedding, but the question remains: what does that phrase really mean? As I continue to think I realize that culturally in the past 200 years the world has changed many of its customs. You don't have to go very far to find a couple making out on a park bench. 200 years ago there seems to be a different custom. Things were "proper." It wasn't common at all to see a couple prior to marriage kissing. Now it's very common to know someone who has had sex outside of marriage.

Is the phrase you may now kiss the bride merely a ceremonial phrase? Or is it in fact granting permission for the couple to finally kiss? What does a kiss even mean?

Discernment Update

Discernment is going really well. So well in fact that I'm discerning out. I'm sorry if this is a shock to any of you. Tomorrow (Sunday) I will be leaving the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest to return to life as a lay person. By the time many of you read this I will already be home. If any of you are in any way scandalized... I'm sorry. 

Things were really great here in formation. I was involved in everything the community did, attended all of the prayers, meals, etc that were required of me. I was doing rather well in my classes and was growing in my faith. But it is apparent that God is not calling me to be a religious. Instead I'm discerning the Institute's Lay Society, the Society of the Sacred Heart, and deciding to pursue academia studying Meteorology. 

Again, if this has scandalized any of you I am sorry and will most heartfully pray for you. If any of you wish to speak with me about this I am willing to talk about my discernment. Please, do pray for me that I may be able to take everything that I learned here and ponder it for years to come. This was not an easy decision. 

Thank you for all of your prayers during this time in my life. Know that I truly prayed for each and every one of you! 

A Day In The Life

So many of you have wondered what exactly goes on during formation. Do I just sit around and pray in the Church? Do I get up early? Do they feed me? What is there to do for fun? And so here I finally write what it is to live a "typical" day in the life of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest.

6:30 am: Rise (I'm usually up between 5:30/6:00)
7:00 am: Lauds (Morning Prayer)
7:30 am: Rosary and other Marian devotions/ Confession available
8:00 am: Low Mass
9:15 am: Breakfast
10:00 am: Spiritual Conference (Mondays), Gregorian Chant (Tuesdays), classes (other days)
--- --- ---
10:00 am Sunday: High Mass
--- --- ---
11:00 am: Chores (when classes or other things are not scheduled)
1:00 pm: Lunch!
1:30 pm: Free time
2:30 pm: Chores or study
4:00 pm: Free time
5:00 pm: Adoration and Benediction
6:15 pm: Vespers (Evening Prayer)
6:45 pm: Free time
7:45 pm: Dinner
10:00 pm: Silence
10:30 pm: Lights out

It's a pretty rigorous schedule. We learn from St. Benedict who advises us to bear in mind "ora et labora," or "pray and work." My main house chore is cleaning and maintaining the kitchen which involves running to the store every now and again for food.

Leaving For Seminary!

To my dearest friends,

A couple of you know already, but for those of you who don't know I have been ACCEPTED to the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest. The Institute is a Society of Apostolic Life which specializes in the Holy Mass in the Extraordinary Form (i.e. Tradtional Latin Mass) and living the spirituality of St. Francis de Sales. I am very happy to have come to this point in my life and can say with a certainty that God has indeed called me to enter the Candidacy phase of formation for the Institute. God willing in the year 2017 I and 10 of my brothers will be ordained a Priest. But that is yet 8 years away.

The primary reason for my departure is to go to a place where I can discern the will of God. What will happen during my year of Candidacy? In one year I will become more fluent in French and Latin and will study liturgy and will learn how to Altar serve a Traditional Latin Mass. I will also be residing at St. Francis de Sales Oratory in St. Louis, MO and have included my address at the bottom of the note.

This milestone of grace comes at a time when I am still discerning if God wants me to be a religious or married. Both vocations are holy and worthy of discernment, and now I get to discern deeper than before the religious life and if God wants me to be there.

To all of my friends I want to say thank you for your prayers. You don't know how much they mean to me. Please keep praying for me I will need those prayers over the course of the next year. Also, know my friends that I will be praying for your intentions this next year and that I love all of you more than you'll ever know.

Truth to be told I never thought I'd ever be writing this note since I began discerning the Institute some 4 months ago. And as some can attest... I kind of fought the idea at first. But in the end when I met with a Priest within the community and spent a weekend visiting them... I LOVED IT! I decided to go through with the application process and I am eternally grateful for it.

What a Way to Begin Blogging!

I've been very much inspired by a great friend of mine who has helped me to realize and to acknowledge some of the problems with the world and how they impact my life. Also, this friend has greatly encouraged me to get back into blogging, something I haven't done since I left Myspace a few years back. And so I bring you things I dislike about the world...

1. When people think that they are better than everyone else just because they think that they are better than everyone else.
2. When people judge the messenger and not the message. Think about it... if the most deranged, narcissistic, immoral person stated that he was converting to Christianity and that Jesus is Lord, would we believe him? Afterall, if he says that Jesus is Lord, isn't that the truth? Does it really matter WHO speaks the truth? Or do we put people into boxes and thus limit their capacities?
3. When we deliberately place people into boxes of social prejudice just because they don't align precisely with our personal world view.
4. The fact that most people will not want to read to the end based on the content of the next statements and the above stated.
5. People who will admit that a person is intelligent and gifted but will avoid them out of fear or feeling inferior without getting to know the person. Think about it... if a person is THAT intelligent or gifted wouldn't it seem logical to get to know the person and thus perhaps risk gaining knowledge making you smarter?
6. When people who know the truth, know what is logical and intelligent, and acknowledge what is real do not act in accordance to it. Think about it... if you know that jumping off the Grand Canyon will kill you and you still (for the thrill of it) jump off the Grand Canyon without a rope or another safety device, doesn't that seem a little dumb?
7. People who ask questions and will not wait to hear the response but rather assume that what you have to say is not important.
8. People who make assumptions about other people based upon their social status, mental capabilities, or world views without hearing them out and getting to know them. See also #3.
9. People who learn one thing about another person and thus assume that they are not worthy of love.
10. The superficial and people who are satisfied with it.
11. The cliche.
12. The fact that over the course of my life I have been guilty of ALL of the above statements.

Know this: I am a Christian, but the worst sinner. I know the Truth, but sometimes do not live it. I desire to be a Saint, but sometimes feel more comfortable being wretched. I desire to evangelize to people the Truth, but sometimes only if I feel like they deserve it. I talk about the importance of temperance and humility, but sometimes pridefully allow myself to eat and drink myself sick. I talk about how we should pray always, but often will make excuses why not to pray.

I sin EVERY day, but I try with every chance I get to say with emphatic conviction: I confess to Almighty God, and to you brethren, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, and deed.

So what's my problem with the world? Me.