Day of Epic

This weekend was pretty fantastic, which is surprising since it was originally supposed to be the most uneventul weekend of the month since I didn't really have anything planned. Richard called me on Friday night and asked if I wanted to do anything or if he could come over, and I then IMed Matt and asked if he wanted to come over as well. Suddenly my boring and uneventful Friday night was turned into a full Rock Band night with Richard on bass, Matt on vocals, Peter on guitar, and me on drums. It was awesome.

Saturday was pretty uneventful, but very restful since I ended up getting almost 12 hours of sleep. Were I still at Rice, I would have freaked out about losing 4 hours of time to sleep that I could have used socializing or studying. But it's summer, and I think sleeping for 12 hours on weekends is what summer is all about.

Sunday was absolutely amazing. I started the day out by helping my old youth group with their car wash fundraiser at culvers. I realized that I've now helped with that car wash for the past 3 years since the tradition started, despite the fact that our first car wash was right after I graduated. And every year I've gotten the same epic sandal tan. Maybe I'll put pictures up on facebook.

I invited Matt, Richard, Geoff, and Steven over for a game of Diplomacy in the afternoon. It was my first Diplomacy victory in a while (Matt and Richard's last turn cheap move doesn't qualify Richard for a win imho). I was playing Germany, and at one point my empire extended from Portugal to St. Petersburg. Granted, it was pretty much just a big straight line, but it was a cool sight to see, and quite epic! I did feel kind of bad about wrecking Geoff, who was new to the game and playing France.

The evening concluded with a showing of, yes, I'm not making this up, Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog and Serenity back to back on the big screen. It was amazing! It was at the Alamo Draft House which means there was also food to be had. One of the waiters was even wearing a complete Dr. Horrible costume. Quite awesome! I liked that there were people in Austin willing to organize this event apparently every year to benefit a charity. They were also auctioning off various comic books and scripts and such signed by actors in Serenity as well as Joss Whedon himself. Being a poor college student I obviously couldn't afford any of these, but it was funny to see the auctioneer selling them up. Her pitch to sell a comic book signed by Joss Whedon was to tell us all that it still "smelled like Joss. Mmmm."

So I spent more time with friends than I have been most of the summer this weekend, which reminded me of something that had been bothering me slightly earlier this month and still a bit recently. Robyn went back to St. Louis and has been hanging out with various friends from her home almost every day. She tells me stories about how amazing Kendall, Patrick, Anne, John, and several of her other friends, of things they did in high school, and how much time they still spend together this summer. I kept wondering to myself why she has such a close friendship with that group of her high school friends, and looking back, I had a lot of friends that I knew only fairly well. It was a mix of a bit of jealousy, and a bit of regret, as if I had missed out on forming a really close group of friends that all got along so well like they did. It didn't help that my main group of high school friends from last summer, everyone from monday night soccer, haven't shown up in 2 weeks and I feel like I'm becoming more and more distanced from them.

I talked to her about whether she was looking forward to coming back to Houston or if she would rather stay in St. Louis for the rest of the summer just out of curiosity, and she said she'd definitely rather be with her friends at home. So why was I so eager to come back to Houston. Did I really not have a strong enough connection with friends from before Rice? Or was it because I now felt a lot closer to my friends at college?

Well, here are the conclusions that I made. First, I'm lying to myself if I say I don't have friends that I haven't known for a while that I am still in contact with and close to. Just out of the friends who came over this past weekend, there were two people that I've known since 9th grade (6 years), one since 6th (9 years) and one thatI've known since 1st grade (14 years!), plus Peter who I've known for basically my whole life and is essentially my closest friend in the world. I also had several other friends come to my birthday party the weekend before, people who obviously care enough about me to give up most of their saturday to spend time with me. And my youth group friends that I've seen every other Tuesday, at Olive Garden, and at the car wash. And finally, yeah, Robyn may be closer to her friends than I am to mine, but that's a reason to celebrate for her (which makes me feel better) instead of just pity myself (and feel depressed).

Work is serious business

My boss returned from his Europe vacation on Monday and the last three days have been by far the most intense days of the summer. Feeling the need for extra workers to get all of the projects done as quickly as possible since we're in some kind of crunch right now, my boss basically decided that it was time for me to stop being just a college-intern-student-worker and start doing the kind of work that all of the drafters do. On one hand it's pretty exciting to be doing serious engineering work, but at the same time I don't feel like I'm ready for it. Everyone else has been doing drafting for anywhere from 5 to 30 years, and I've spent the last 3 days being taught how to do it while submitting real projects to be checked and approved for use by the rest of the lab. Today I actually began creating an assembly drawing from scratch, complete with A JOHANNIGMAN in the "drawn by" box. It was exciting, but once again, I feel like I'm going to mess something up with my lack of experience and knowledge. Part of me also feels like I should be getting paid more if I'm doing the same work as the full time drafters, but then I remind myself that while they are probably getting paid at least twice as much as me, they probably work twice as fast too.

In a more exciting note, I've started emailing my amazing friend Andrea who is in Ecuador about how life has been for her. Since the end of May I've been reading her blog and making occasional comments on her facebook about how exciting it seems. She's on a medical internship sort of thing with Beyond Traditional Borders, and along with another student from Rice, is going around to communities in Ecuador and testing out a series of medical backpack projects that they've been working on in the past year to help out the impoverished areas. It's really interesting and a really awesome use of a summer. She seems to be doing a lot of good in that country by helping to heal the sick and educate the population about healthy habits. If you want excuciating amounts of details, here's the link to her blog. http://ecuador.blogs.rice.edu/

So the reason I mention that is that it was nice to actually hear from her personally about how she was doing and share a bit about how my life was. I consider her one of my best friends at Rice, and not getting to talk to your close friends regularly has been tough this summer. I've already talked way too much about how much I hate only getting to talk to Robyn on the phone or skype every day, and how it's been getting worse and worse the longer I've gone without seeing her (up to almost 5 weeks now). But in reality, that's probably not as bad as it has been to not even talk to many of my other friends. At least I know more or less what Robyn has been doing every day, but with many of my other friends, I don't even know what they are doing this summer.

In some of my prayer and meditation the last few days, I realized that not seeing friends over the summer is a lot like our relationship with God. We can never see him in person, just like how I have literally not seen any of my Rice friends while in Austin (we'll ignore my trips to Houston). But even though we can't see him, it isn't all that hard to keep our relationship if we talk to him regularly. I've talked to Robyn and Ryan almost every day over the summer, but I feel like I've lost connection with many of my other really close friends like Kyle, Andrea, Ian, Gary, Rick, and Autumn, who I have only had a couple conversations with over the summer. Communication is crucial for a relationship with God, just as it is with friends, and I feel like if I spent even half the amount of time talking with God that I do talking with Robyn every night, (and he deserves so much more than that) it would do amazing things for my relationship with him.

My life is amazing

Yesterday was a great day for me. If I were to rank it on a scale of 1-10, it would probably be around a 9, trailing behind memorable "firsts" (9.5) and life changing experiences like getting into Rice, a great spiritual revelation, etc. (10). The day started with actually having interesting and challenging things to do at work. In the afternoon Robyn told me that she had mailed me something and that I couldn't open it until my birthday. While I have no idea what it is yet, just knowing that you mean enough to someone that she is willing to go through the trouble of mailing a birthday present to you is special, and meant a lot to me.

That was then followed by getting to see some of my best friends by going to Olive Garden and then bowling afterward. Looking back, it was nothing spectacular, but there were some friends that I hadn't seen in a very long time that I had thought I might have permanently lost contact with since it's been about two years since I've seen them, like Steph and Michelle, so it was good to have those relationships resurrected. I also noticed how diverse the personalities in my youth group are, and it was interesting to see how many different paths God had taken each of us on. Some of us were at prestigious universities, others at community college and working full time during the year. Some of us were still very strong in our faiths, others were struggling, and others, like me, seem to be somewhere in the middle, but it was encouraging to see that we were all still trying.

I really hope that I can spend more time with that group, perhaps my closest friends from high school, this summer. As more and more of us drift away from Austin, it will be harder and harder each year to get everyone together. I've already noticed this in trying to put together a birthday party to celebrate my 20th birthday this weekend. About 1/3 of the people that I wanted to come have told me that they wish they could, but they are in other cities, or other states for the summer, or for the entire year. As much as my life has begun to revolve around Houston instead of Austin, many of my friends are beginning to establish their lives away from home, making it difficult to stay in touch outside of occassional emails and facebook messages.

I took a class on the science of interpersonal relationships this spring, and one thing that I learned was just how temporary human relationships can be. I look at who my closest friends are now, and only about 1/5 of them are people that I knew even 2 years ago. Robyn, the person I talk to the most aside from my brother, I've only known for about 10 months. Last Saturday, when I thought about who my groomsmen would be if I got married today, only two of the people I was considering were people that I knew more than 2 years ago.

So what is to say that these relationships won't still be around 3 or 4 years from now? I'm half way through college now, and I wonder how many of my friendships I'll be able to keep going as strong as they are now. Already one of my best friends, Kyle, has left Rice. I feel like I'm making a good effort to keep that friendship really strong, but if he wasn't still living in Houston and had instead moved away to another state, I don't know how well I would be able to do that.

Spouses, and the friends who are even more important

Yesterday two of my friends, Russell Schafer and Alison Slowey, got married. Unfortunately since I volunteered to help DJ the reception, I missed the service since Ryan and I were setting up sound equipment. Russell and Alison are a great couple, though I'm sure I could say that about every couple that I've seen get married. Usually bad couples don't make it quite that far. The reception was great, despite the couple times that the RMC sound system completely failed on us and made Ryan and I look like idiots, and everyone seemed to have a great time.

With all of the talk at weddings about how great it is for two people to love each other, it was slightly depressing for Ryan and I since Ryan has been upset about being single for a while, and I've now been to two weddings since the last time I was able to be with Robyn in person. I could spend another post talking about how much I miss her, but I feel like there was something much more important that I got out of this wedding, and that is just how important my guy friends, my brothers in Christ, are to me.

Running sound with Ryan, and hanging out with Bobby for a bit during the reception, made me realize that I have some really awesome friends. The three of us got into a conversation about who our groomsmen are going to be at our weddings, all of which will probably be at least 3 or 4 years down the line at the very minimum. I realized that while I have no idea who I'm going to end up marrying at that point, I've got some very awesome friends that I'm sure will be standing to my left looking just as spiffy as I will when the time comes. Ryan will definitely be one of them, and Bobby might as well, depending on how many groomsmen my wife decides to let me have. I realized that I have at least 6 or 7 very, very close friends that I can talk to about anything, call anytime just to hang out, and who I share a lot of interests with, and that is truly a blessing.

Looking back, I had about as much fun spending most of yesterday with Ryan as I did spending time with Robyn the last time I was in Houston. We talked about all kinds of things, and it's hard to describe in words just how much our friendship truly means and how valuable it is, and will continue to be.

It's great that Russell and Alison love each other so much and will be spending the rest of their lives together, but the friendship between him and his bearded, deep voiced, former MOB drum minor, glasses wearing friend Jake (all characteristics of Ryan as well, aside from him being the current drum minor instead) is probably just as important for him. And those are the kinds of friends who will be with us forever.

Not taking kindly to summer time

Today more than most days, I really really wanted to be back at Rice. Summer isn't going too great for me, which is strange because it seems like I have a lot more to do this summer than I did last summer. Yesterday Robyn and I celebrated being officially together for a month, and I remembered that we haven't really even seen each other for 3/4 of that time, and it will be more than another month before I'll see her in person again. But it's not just that I miss her, I miss everyone at Rice. I miss the guys from 3rd south, I miss Ian and Colin and playing Rock Band in Martel 324, I really miss the MOB and all of my friends from that (Thank God that they'll be the first people I'll see a lot when I get back), I even miss going to classes with Kevin, Ryan, Gary, Nathan, Travis, Mario, and Rodolfo. If I could do anything to make August, or at least July, get here I would.

Robyn talked about how happy she was to be home and spending time with her high school friends because they make her feel more positive, energetic, and enthusiastic than a lot of her Rice friends. I found that the opposite is true for me, and that I feel so much better spending time with my Rice friends, particularly those in MOB, Agape, and CSA, and don't really enjoy spending time with my friends from high school as much, though hanging out with my youth group friends is amazing. There tends to be a theme throughout my life of every Christian or band group that I am a member of being awesome. Perhaps I should take this as a sign and try to spend more time with the people from those areas of my life and not try to diversify my friendships too much among people that don't always put me in as good of a mood or make me feel quite as excited, happy, and optimistic.

On a happier note, watching the Tony Awards tonight made my day, especially the opening number and Neil Patrick Harris's closing number. I decided that at some point in my life I want to take a week long trip to New York and see a different Broadway musical every night. It would get really expensive really fast though. Maybe for my honeymoon or if I ever acquire a vast fortune suddenly.

On another happy note, Russell and Alison are getting married on Saturday, which means I get to see Rice people in Houston again in about 5 days! Excitement! Last summer, Patrick and Gillian's wedding was one of the highlights of the whole summer. Hopefully this will be just as awesome!