As many of you may know, I am nearing the end of my Skil Power Tool marketing extravaganza internship. I'm taking a break right now from lifting big piles of wood that are allegedly not piles of wood, but benches. The higher ups have been complaining about how the piles of wood look too much like piles of wood and not enough like benches. "Stephen, I think you should put some sort of backing on this bench so it looks less like a pile of wood and more like a bench." Or, "Stephen, I think you should sand this bench down so it looks less like a pile of wood." Or, "Stephen, could you please spill your blood on this bench so it is 'Skil' red and not the color of a pile of wood." This has been my summer. But I made a little bit of money and was driven to go to Japan so I can't really complain. I guess this is what I needed to get me moving.
Tuesday night may very well have been the best night of this month. I got off work and ate at Burger King which in-and-of itself wasn't very incredible, but I was reading Calvin's commentary on Jonah at the same time and I thought to myself that reading Calvin in Burger King made me an intellectual or something. Anyway, Calvin was talking about how trials constrain men to call on God, something that is normally foreign to us. So much good in those commentaries. Anyway after that I headed down to the Fireside Bowl to see Braille. Being 21 has its perks as now I can sit in the Fireside bar and watch the Cubs win. So I did that and then listened to Braille play and get progressively better through the evening, so much so that by the end of the set, I was completely depressed that I would not be able to see them for the next couple of years. Paul and I talked about college life afterwards and watched Bob Nanna (the guy from Hey Mercedes and Braid) play a solo show. It was boring, best I could tell, so I ended up calling Chase and Sha (my Romanian missionary friends who live off Damen) so I could hang out with them and talk about being missionaries. It was pretty cool: we talked about Christians using un-Christian language and whether or not it was okay to say shit. We then prayed for about a half hour for our respective mission fields. It was an incredible experience. I like talking about grace.
Then I talked to my sister on the phone then some other friends from college and went to bed around two. My alarm didn't go off the next morning and I was late to work, but it didn't really matter.
Next week I'm not working, but spending most of my time getting ready to go to Japan. I'm going to go get my visa and go to the Art Institute and spend some time at St. Mary's in Mundelein by myself. I'm hoping to not have to get up at six every morning.