Here's my small tribute to the soldiers, past and present, who have fought to protect our freedom.

Dwaine Bassett
Aaron Larson
Joel Larson
Bob Martin
Harriet Martin
Grace Martin
Rick Martin
Gene Martin
Dan Martin
Larry Martin
Greg Martin
Jeremy Redfield
Micah Redfield
Don Simmons


We do this to remember. Thank You.

"Gwaduation, a dweam within a dweam."

Unfortunetly that is exactly how Rice's 2005 graduation did not start. Instead, it started out something like

"Holy creator, you are the one who has created this day, and for that we are grateful. We know you by many names but in unity you lovingly brought us to this time and this place that together we might celebrate the gifts and acomplishments of these men and women who come before us today." 'holy source of all' "In all the names for you've given by all who behold you, Amen"

The closing invocation was just about as 'good' but I didn't feel like writing it all out. By the way, if you for some reason you do decide to relive its glory, you can watch the whole ceremony online here.

Katherine made a good point after remarking that this wasn't even a prayer. She said that in a sense, it would be better if they didn't even have an invocation. Having this kind of invocation just upsets those who actually follow a religion and also upsets those who object to religion in public ceremonies. The only people who actually like this type of invocation are those who claim vague spirituality. No one who takes their religion seriously believe that all roads lead to God (except maybe the Universalists and even that is questionable). So why do we have this invocation anyways? I think that would be an interesting Thresher article about how they pick the 'ministers' and what things they can or cannot say. Are there any Christians still working for the Thresher that might be interested?

Let's see. Some of the highlights from Shelly Williams' graduation speech were 'we need to raise our daughters more like sons and sons more like daughters' (actually we need to raise our sons like sons and our daughters like daughters; they're not adrogenous little cell balls), 'you are now intellectuals' (we've been intellectuals for our whole Rice career), 'you have putzah' (huh?), 'go MOB!' (nice to see that they get some support; how come we can't get them to do a show at graduation?), etc. You can probably tell that I wasn't overly impressed. Speeches are supposed to have one thing that will stick in your mind and you'll never forget. Unfortunetly, that one thing is "relationship partner". Luckily, there were friends around and I had brought my camera, so the day turned out quite nicely.

So last time we left our intrepid advernturer renewing friendships in the heights of Lovett...

Chapter 4
After Takuma went to his dinner, I met up with Michelle and Carlos again and we went to dinner with part of the Lloyd family. I'm not sure if they had a special in with the owner of Trattoria Pasquale, but we were the only ones there and had excellent service. I had the veal and was one of the only people who actually finished all of their food (plus five or six pieces of bread and dessert). I was sitting at a table with Michelle, Carlos, the uncle and grandmother I had driven down with, and Billy's father and stepmother. We had a pretty good time, but aparently not as much as the Rice crowd at one of the other tables. They were laughing loudly, 'stealing' silverware, sipping their pineapple drinks (right), and just having a grand old time. It was hilarious to watch Mike try to bribe Billy's stepbrother with a dollar. It was a good meal.

Chapter 5
Later I went over to Renea's new apartment. Its pretty spacious and she is very proud of her big red wall. I know it sounds strange, but we probably looked at the dissections and neuroimaging in her medical books for about an hour. Yeah, we're weird. Oh, and if you happen to have an extra upright piano lying about, I'm sure that Renea would be able to find a spot for it. We were going to watch Hotel Rwanda with Luke and Will, but it got too late, so we just decided to call it a night. Of course, calling it a night just meant that Luke and I went back to his aparatment and talked about camping and comic books for a while. I don't think I've read any comic books since I borrowed some frorm Luke almost a year ago to the day. He also gave me a cd of his dad's gospel band, Leviticus. They sound really good. I'm waiting for them to make a trip to Houston so I can hear Luke singing with them. Does anyone play sax to gospel music?

And on that possibly discordant note, I will leave you with a limmerick (and yes, howff really is as word).

There was a old Scot named McGowff
Who lived in a ramshackle howff
Its walls were so porous
And his snores so sonorous
His wife and his children moved Sowff.

-Bruce Van Patter

So I was thinking about this weekend and planning what I wanted to write about. I decided that rather than writing one long post, I would rather write several post-facto descriptions and then some musings. So if I don't quite get to the "Relationship Partners" immediately, you just have to be patient. I'll even divide the story up into bite sized chapters for easy digestion.

Chapter 1
I knew that I really wanted to go down to Houston this weekend since it was Rice's graduation and I had a number of close friends graduating. Of course, my classes are ending in a few weeks, so I don't have a lot of free time right now, and I knew that if I went, I would not do any homework the whole weekend, so I was praying pretty hard. Early in the week, I started making inquiries into who was driving down and whether I could possibly get a ride. If not, I would spring for the bus ticket, I'd just assume save sixty bucks if possible.

Chapter 2
Well, on Thursday night I got in touch with Billy and found out that his uncle was driving down the next morning around noon. That sounded good to me, since my only obligation was to run sound for chapel at 10am. I got back later and found that they were actually passing by at 10:15 and that I needed to meet them at a highway intersection. So Friday morning was very busy packing, calling Billy, finding someone to do sound for chapel, finding a friend who would miss chapel to drive me out to meet the other car, etc. It was pretty busy and I had slept for less than 4 hours. But God worked everything out very nicely. Just the way that everything fell into place assured me that God was giving me this weekend to go down and renew all my friendships. Anyways, it was interesting meeting Billy's uncle and grandmother, and as stated before, God was gracious to give me the strength to be amiable and not to fall asleep. We drove down and I was actually able to help out with directions once we got down to Houston. We met up with more of the Lloyd clan and I got to see Michelle and meet her boyfriend, Carlos. He seemed like a great guy.

Chapter 3
Well we split up and I went to deposit some checks (again, I was 'conveniently' close to my bank, when it was open and I had all my checks) and then walked over to find people. First I tried Will, but he wasn't around, so then I looked for Amanda (also away) and finally I found Ames, Jenny, Matt, and some of my other now senior friends. Its as weird for me to think of them as seniors because they were freshman when I was a junior. We hung out for a while then I went to find Takuma and we talked as he tried to fix his computer and prepared for dinner. He was holding a box of books for me, so I retrieved those (only to have them packed by some over-zealous parent and carted off to who knows where). I really need to think of some way to thank him for taking care of them for me.


Ok, I'm getting tired, so i'm going to bed. But tune in tomorrow night for more action packed adventure.

In Other News...
I found out the answer to life, the universe, and how many messages my answering machine can hold. But I'm afraid you aren't going to like it. Its... 55!

I just saw an ad for an alarm clock that turns itself off if you wave your hand in front of it!

I was reading online about how swords are forged (don't ask) when I came across this paragraph and thought how it applied to our lives as Christians. The last two sentences really caught my attention.

"A skilled blacksmith would be able to take semi-refined ore, and look at it, and evaluate it and figure out the best way to make a good sword blade. Ore is different in different regions, containing different trace elements, and some of these would have been good for a blade, making it tougher, or they may have enabled the blacksmith to put a slightly harder edge on it, or heat-treat it to a higher degree. Ores from other regions wouldn't have made for as good a sword, and so, if necessary and possible, the blacksmith would have blended different supplies, welding or twisting different sections together. Access to a good ore supply would have avoided having to go through that level of process; it would also have made the sword less expensive.

When the blacksmith had bought a quantity of semi-refined ore he would heat up his own, much smaller furnace and begin a further process of refining, this time beating and hammering it to push out any slag residue (this would show up as dark fragments within the glowing core of iron). This process would continue for as long as necessary, depending of the quality of steel he wanted. Iron would become steel when it had had sufficient quantity of carbon and other minerals introduced into it during the forging process. Ore was separated into two grades, the high-grade ore being used for weapons and the low-grade for armour. What was left was called a bloomery mass, which was a lump of iron mixed in with a small amount of slag and other residue. The blacksmith then repeatedly heated it, hammered it and stretched it out, trying to get the slag out; he would fold the red-hot back in on itself, welding it back together, beating it out again, trying to extract as much good molten iron from the mass as possible. This was the process now known as folding and stretching. It was principally to refine the iron, to get rid of the impurities and produce a consistent piece of quality steel. Once this had been performed enough times he would have a piece of steel that was fit for a sword.

From there, making a sword by forging was really just a question of a shaping process. All of the real work had been done in the refining."

God's main work in shaping our lives isn't directing us to a specific task, but in refining us so that we will be sufficient for the task which He has chosen for us.

http://www.lordoftherings.net/legend/weapons/

I just had to say a quick thanks to God for my family and specifically my mother. Most of you have met her and know what I'm talking about.

She's recently adopted a college girl for the summer and is teaching others about Romans and Cinnamon Rolls.

Children's children are a crown to the aged,
and parents are the pride of their children.
-Proverbs 17:6

I found a radio station that plays a lot of the music I had wanted to download. Saves space on my hard drive and lets me listen to a bigger selection. Cool. It only plays remixed video game soundtracts, so some of you would get sick of it in two minutes and some of you might share my enthusiasm.


In Other News...

For sale on eBay: used Popemobile

Better get it quick, Will. You never know when you'll have another opportunity. The Popemobile Golf!