The World through Doug Colored Glasses

Reached the top...

2009-07-04T14:59:00.000-07:00

Or so I thought.

Apparently it was a false summit.

Things seemed just right in a day and then comes the reminder, that I'm not done.

There's still work that needs doing.

It's time to dig deep and help take up the yoke of others. I know it's going to be tough but, trails and tribulation are what build us up. They refine us and makes us stronger and more ourselves, it melts all the parts of us that have gotten crusted over.

Seeing what may be makes me want to strike out at whatever is closest but that's not what is right. I need to save that strength to help sort through the possible rubble and pull out the battered survivors.

I choose to stay on course though and stand and fill the gaps as I'm needed. I choose to place my trust in the only place where it's safe. I choose to listen to my Lord when he tells me "Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go." (Joshua 1:7-9)

I know, I know...

2009-06-10T17:16:00.000-07:00

Yeah I know I'm without a doubt a slacker!

I make no excuses for not blogging other then the fact that I'm lazy when it comes to blogging. But with that being said let'st get started.

Here are some things of note that I may or may not have blogged about.

1. I have a girlfriend whom I adore quite a bit (this maybe an understatement.) In case you were wondering her name is Elise. :)

2. I recently waxed my feet. It doesn't hurt all that bad actually.

3. I don't really like the place I'm working at, I love the people it's just not were I want to be.

4. I have an interview at carmax this friday, you should pray for me that if I get offered a position I would be faithful to what God wants me to do.

5. I recently went to a resturant named Appatez (probably misspelled) and ever since then I have been craving Crab cakes like nonstop.

That maybe brief and random but what can I say it's a start.

I told you so...

2009-04-16T11:45:00.001-07:00

Here it is number two for the week!

Yesterday was amazing I learned ALOT! I spent the day in San Francisco with 10 very different people, I think each of these people taught me something or at least re-taught me. I feel very blessed right now, I think God has me in a place in life were he is giving me a ton of opportunities to learn. I hope that I'm being faithful in learning from the opportunities.

We'll see how it works out. :)

I'm back.... this time it's for really

2009-04-13T12:46:00.000-07:00

So here's the deal I'm going to attempt to post on my blog at least a couple times a week!

This week could be a bad week to start but we'll see. Things look like there going to be pretty stinking busy. I think my only really easy going days are going to be today and Thursday.

blah..

2008-10-13T17:13:00.000-07:00

I know I promised a longer blog but what can I say I've been sick lately. So this is the best I can offer anyways I'll be back on tonight I hope with deeper and more meaningful thoughts

Another Short one...

2008-09-30T08:20:00.000-07:00

I'll pick my brain for a longer blog soon I promise.

I'm in a musical and I have to admit I've only got like four lines and I've got a solo of all about two seconds. Most people would be upset about this I however an rather excited and I'm happy to be back on stage after not being in any sort of production for almost four years.

Anyways more updates are sure to follow. Today is starting and i must go and meet all my obligations lest I be called names for always seeming to be late

WOOT

2008-09-26T08:40:00.000-07:00

(This was written on friday)

Yesterday was pretty awesome!!

I was running late from my house to stockton which was going to make late for school but my sister decided that she wanted to make sure I was on time and so she dropped me off right outside of campus and I made it to class on time!!

Then in my first class I got a test back and let's just say that I showed that test who was boss!

Then at work I got paid for a staff meeting which is sweet. Then when I actually had to start working it was a good day too. I'm still trying to get my students to understand that I have much higher expectations then their last teacher. Due to the fact that they haven't gotten that concept yet I'm still teaching then what I expect and they had to re-line up four or five times until they could walk in the right way! Whatever I'm sure they'll get it sometime and that's not just me being an optimist.

On a side note that is way more important then the rest of my blog, I'm really trying to understand where God is moving me right now. Half the time I'm fighting him tooth and nail because I don't like what he would have me do. I've been down a road like the one he want's me to go down before and it ended in hurt for a lot of people and I don't want the same thing to happen again. This probably sounds dramatic but I don't think so I think it vitally important for me; and everyone; to remember the places we've come from but not to get stuck on wanting to go back there!

Who does this in the AM....

2008-09-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

So due to the fact that I work so much or just work at really weird times and my life is pretty jammed pack with lots of fun stuff to do I decided that a morning blog might be fun.

Currently I'm eating some apple cinnamon oatmeal which I must say is pretty stinking delicious!

Wanna See MY schedule today
Go To Stockton- I get to listen to flobots!
Arrive at work-and I get paid today!!!
Then I walk to school- uninterrupted time of thought, and prayer(it's pretty cool you should try)
Go to History- I get a test back in that class
Go To Sociology- my new major, very exciting
Go to Psychology- which is entertaining.
Bo to the bookstore- I hope!!
Walk back to work- more thoughts and prayer!
Work with 24 screaming third graders- yeah I gave 17 write ups yesterday!!
Go Home-kinda
Dinner- I think I'm going with marri and some other friends!!!
Sleepy TIme!!!!

OH I miss my friends that are back at school it's sad!!!

Anyways my oatmeal is getting colder and it makes me wanna gag when it's cold so I must leave you. But I leave you with a thought from Oswald Chambers (paraphrased) When everything else is obscured in fog we can always see our purpose in serving Jesus.

The Come back....

2008-09-19T12:40:00.000-07:00

Yeah blog number two and it's less then a week apart from the previous one!

Unfortunately I feel rather uninspired.

Life is busy with things and stuff. I get done with one thing just to have more stuff that needs my attention. It's annoying at times, but when I readjust and take my focus of of me and get it back to where it needs to be things are better.

I meant to post this like two days ago my bad.

Welcome to my life...(again)

2008-08-16T21:36:00.000-07:00

First of all I apologize to all of my "devoted" readers out there, it's been along time since I've posted a blog.

I'm sorry!

Now it's time to get filled in on what's been going on. Due to the fact that If I were to let you in on every detail my hands would end up cramping from the countless hours it would take to type all the details out, I'll give you just the larger overview of life and where I feel it's necessary I'll give more details. (Wow that sounded for teacher like.)

I'm still single, and I'm still in school that is sufficient for now. I was going to fill in some major details for all eight months I've neglected my blogspot however I think it will be more interesting and entertaining if I tell back stories in my future blogs.

Holy crap that's a lot of meat

2007-12-29T11:06:00.000-08:00

So I again find myself blogging after two weeks of leaving no entries for people to gain interesting insight to my all but boring life.

These are some of the major happenings that have happened in those two weeks.

Finals-long boring and rather retarded
Grades from finals- Great, Great, okay, and could have been worse
Grades from semester-they could have been better but they weren't horrible.
People coming back from college-interesting to say the least
Blindsided by someone but not in a bad way- what i mean to say is that i was caught off guard
Christmas Eve- Argyle Sweater and getting to hear Cassie sing. Way too much fun.
Christmas Day-Lot's of pictures of myself, clothes and the Grandma Cunningham incident(I'll explain)\

With out a doubt this Christmas break has been interesting...

I think I'll just tell you the about the Grandma Cunningham incident.

It all began as my family was sitting down to eat Christmas PRIME FREAKING RIB!!! I grabbed a large chunk of meat which neatly took up about three fourths of the space on my plate and we prayed and passed the other food around. I started eating and then Jerm called I quickly took his call and explained the situation of what was going on that night and went back to consuming my food. Then another interruption a rap at the door and everyone was slightly confused. The confusion was because all of my friends knock and walk into my house, mainly cause I'm lazy and don't like having to go open the door for people. So the family and I are sitting there momentarily confused but undeterred in our hospitality my mom attempts to yell at however is occupying the space on the other side of the door to "come in" however she wasn't loud enough and my brother's girlfriend Amanda yells "COOOMMMEEEE INNNNNN!" This is the moment when things get interesting.

The door opens and no one really pays attention until the mystery guest doesn't say anything we all look up and I swear to you Brett Micheal's has a double ganger and he was standing in my house. We look at him he looks at us and the most ridiculous words come out of his mouth "This isn't Grandma Cunningham's house anymore is it?"

My initial reaction is too responded with some smart alec remark such as no it actually is we just decided to come in and fix dinner here, or nope your wrong she's tied up in the back because she kept asking for someone no one knew but now that you showed up it makes sense now. However I decided against this course of action and let my dad handle it. Needlessly to say the poor man was thoroughly embarrassed and was more then happy to make a speed retreat!

So there you have it the Grandma Cunningham incident!

It's been two weeks...

2007-12-16T23:08:00.000-08:00

Finals are this week!!!! Which means no school after thursday for a couple weeks. Mucho Bueno. I've already past my Eng. 1a class which is great! There are many people coming back from college and that's exciting to. I miss my best good buddy down in Fresno and she's lame for having a job and apartment down there cause it means she can't come back for Christmas. Geez what was she thinking being responsible. I might just have to replace her, on second thought I don't think anyone can be as......hmmmm......eccentric as Marri.

I'm not going to Pursue a romantic relationship for a while.
What does pursue really mean by the way. I looked it up and here are some definitions.

v. tr.

To follow in an effort to overtake or capture; chase: a fox that was pursued by hounds.
To strive to gain or accomplish: pursue lofty political goals.
To proceed along the course of; follow: a ship that pursued the southern course.
To carry further; advance: Let's not pursue this argument.
To be engaged in (a vocation or hobby, for example).
To court: a lady who was pursued by many suitors.
To continue to torment or afflict; haunt: was pursued by the demons of lust and greed.

v. intr.

To follow in an effort to overtake or capture; chase.
To carry on; continue.

So yeah those things are what I'm trying not to do for a while mainly for personal reasons. That doesn't mean however I'm going to pass up on oppurtuninties as the might come my way. Unless I'm told not to by the big guy upstairs.

I'm going to go to Bible college at somepoint and to do what you ask, TO BE A PASTOR. What shape exactly that's going to take I don't really know. I'm okay with that though. This excites me a great deal!

In the past week or two I've been making great connections with people and that is always neat. I've been proven wrong and shown I was wrong not by anyone but by God.

And this is were we go to die...

2007-11-30T10:55:00.000-08:00

Lately I've been surrounded by people who are using words like sacrifice, offering, and surrender. Nothing foreign or completely strange given my background of growing up in the church and my being a follower of Christ (though it's not always right I'm trying). But for some reason I woke up today and started wondering about those words which lead me to think about words that are associated with them. The one that is tied to all of them for me is altar.

And from my understanding of the old testament any time something was taken to the altar something died! Something was surrendered, sacrificed or offered to God and it was his from that point on unless he said otherwise.

So it made me think, how many of my christian friends really know what an altar is for? I mean in a lot of churches there's an altar for you to go pray at but how many people take to heart that if you go to an altar something should die. I'm not saying physically go make a sacrifice but spiritually you need to leave something at the altar cause that's what it there for. If we put something on the altar it's not our place to take it off, that's God's job.

Don't misunderstand me though cause I don't get it right every time and I'm not trying to condemn anyone, I just hope that whoever reads this will start to think about what there saying and maybe just take more time the next time they head to the altar to decide if your really gonna give something up or not.

Thanks for reading it and any thoughts would be appreciated.

TURKEYS, BATS, and PANDAS

2007-11-28T14:07:00.000-08:00

It's been a week since my last post but what can I say I've been pretty busy.

Let me see what should you be caught up on?

First Thanksgiving was pretty much amazing! I got to see my Uncle Ed who I like so it was cool and my grandparents came from Sonora who oddly enough I miss having live here. But at dinner I thought there was going to be a freaking catfight between my Sis and my uncle's girlfriend. They were entirelly to fiesty which made things needlessly to say a bit tense.

Oh, and I ate so much food I actually almost throw up. NO BUENO

Friday I got a new dress shirt and I look pretty sexy in it if I do say so myself. And then my friends from Reno/Fallon came down and I got to kick it with them for the night. However they made me like four freaking hours late for dinner which was hecka dumb cause I was super hungry!!!

You ever have those day's when you do something with someone and you can tell that it's gonna become a memory you cherish for a really long time. I had one of those on saturday. We were decorating the outside of my house for Christmas and my dad and I were working on a project and I can honestly say sometimes it's nice to have him still be like dad from when I was little. I mean he's the same dad but it's moe of me being to get to be younger again and e really just took his time and explained thing to me and it was nice cause it's not something we had to do it was something both of us really wanted to do. It was nice cause it made me appreciate the wealth of knowledge he really has.

Even though so many people came into town this past week I can honestly say getting to see Ty and Marri where pretty much the highlights. I mean Ty lives like twenty minutes away but sometimes we don't get to hang out and it was really cool to see him I mean we played tennis and football and ate mexican food what is better then that, He's my best friend. And then on sunday and monday me and Marri kicked it all day and that was nice cause she's my best good buddy. We watched movie's one was Batman Begins and the other waqs Collateral. Both are must see movies.

School Yesterday was absolutely amazing. It was simple and relaxing and I love being back in Barron's class. Even if have the other student's are dumb and use pop philo. in there description of junk. Freaking hecka dumb, form your own opinion and use your own thoughts. Oh But Panda Express makes up for dumb people so it's cool.

Toughest Parts of the week:

1.Saying No when all you wanna do is say yes

2.Crying when I think of happy memories what the heck!

3.Holding my tongue for the sack of getting out of class earlier!

Gregorian Chants Are The Way Of The Future

2007-11-20T18:19:00.000-08:00

If I were a monk would you still be my friend?

It's actually something I've given some serious thought to. What do you think? Is the robe and friar hair cut for me?

Today is the last day of school for the week, which is always great. I have a six day weekend which is amazing.

Yesterday was sweet I got to hang out with Jeremy for most of the day and I can honestly say he is helping me a lot. We also hung out with Josh(I love that guy) and he recently discovered that he can laugh like the mom from "That 70's Show". It makes me laugh really hard I enjoy it.
He also some how won the game of monopoly that we played which I was winning until I landed on freaking Boardwalk!!! After Tim and Brad got done with work and what not we all played Scene It and I won one game but lost the second one(dang my scene it record is pretty bad like 2-4 for the past couple weeks). After Jeremy and Josh left; tim, brad and I sat and talked it was cool.

Oh and I'm defienitely over the whole writers strike issue. There are way more important Issues we could be devoting our time to so why don't we?!

My most serious thought for Today is what I leave you with.

Why is that we look for meaning and satisfaction in everything under the sun. I think we are way more likely to find it if we were to look beyond the sun. And no I'm not just talking about outerspace but also just in ourselves things won't ever give us the meaning we need in life so get over them! My prayer today is that I can get over the sun and find the meaning I'm looking for and that I might find where I can best serve.

Sunset Boulevard?

2007-11-18T12:56:00.001-08:00

So I watched this old school movie on thursday night in my film as lit class and it was crazy good, quite possibly one of my favorites now. It was called Sunset Boulevard and if you haven't seen it you should cause it's good and pretty funny. It was also pretty cool cause my sister picked me up and we got to hangout on the drive home and since I don't work with her anymore our schedules hardly ever leave a lot of time to hang out outside of our house.

Then on Friday i got paid! So I paid my phone bill and then went to Noah's New York Bagels and enjoyed the simply pleasure that is a cinnamon and sugar bagel. Then I just chilled at home for most of the day after that until I got ready to go to Tim's acoustic show. Which Sadly enough not as many people where there as I had hoped to see. Shame on you if you didn't go. But we went to fuddruckers after and I saw this amazingly attractive girl wearing one of the ugliest pink tiger stripes shirts that the world has ever laid eyes on and by the world I'm pretty much talking about just myself. But then I went to applebees and some of the other guy's went and got dessert and it was rather delightful.

Then after getting three hours of sleep I went and helped at the valley bowl which was fun and an looking forward to next year. There I referred four games of flag football and had to deal with guys that are considerabley bigger then in me tell me I was wrong when in fact i wasn't. No Bueno! By the way being a ref is a seriously physical job just to let you know. However i have decided that being a ref for some pee wee or little league games would be a lot of fun. Later on me and a bunch of other people went to TEXAS FREAKING ROAD HOUSE and took our college pastor out. It was hecka fun. I personally demolished a sixteen ounce steak and the sides just to prove that I could. It was hecka fun.

And over the past three day's I've been wrestling with how to be less confrontational when I'm involved in different discussions. So if you get into a serious disscusion with me and I start to get confrontational tell me cause I'm working on it!

2007-11-14T22:32:00.000-08:00

So with the mucho big changes going on with me I've found myself a new anthem for the time being. If your bored you should find it and listen to it. It follows the theme frome yesterdays blog. Oh It's called Wishes by Superchick in case you were wondering.

Today Josh and I painted the outside of the worship center at our church with the words "worship center". It took us four freaking hours to paint four words on the side of the church. It was somewhat ridiculous if you ask me. It was a little more then agonizing standing one a ladder for that long and it was made even worse cause I woke up late and had to leave my house in with out getting to change my boxers. NO BUENO. The only redeming fact was that Josh was there and he is always alot of fun to be around. Plus I get paid which is always a bonus.

Tomorrow is looking good because I mean I get to go to my movie class and even though I'm watching a forties movie which a surprisingly better then I thought they would be. And me and my buddy Trevor get to talk to some pretty cool before our class.

Here's an amazing video from an amazing band enjoy!

Seat Warmers and Waves never ever mix

2007-11-13T18:20:00.000-08:00

Today was interesting.

I went with my sister to work and walked to school from there. Seemingly uneventful but the entire time I was walking I couldn't help but to smile which was cool cause I find myself smiling less then I used to. Cause lately I've kind of being a mess of emotions. I'm at a weird stage of life. If you wanna know I'll explain at some point.

And honestly I think it's cause I'm realizing things will never be the same with certain people and sometimes I just want to go back to when things were more simply. Cause when things get complex thats when people get hurt. But after my delightful morning walk I couldn't help but recognize that I like it when things are complex cause the only way to get to know people is to dive right in and get messy and enjoy the complexity that is friendship.

Anyway's back to my day. School was boring I mean I love arcjitecture but when you talk about it in the two classes you have for the day and you already know the material there is only so much you can do to keep yourself interested. The highlight of the day was getting to leave early.

I've got high hopes for tonight cause me and some of the guys are going to hang out. Which means lots of laughs and maybe some warm seats!!!

Random Thought On Letting Go in the Aftermath of A Break-up

Holding on to what was will never bring it back but learning to cherishing memories and at the same time learn to let go of the life line they provide is where I want to get to.

So here's to letting go of the lifeline and moving toward what can only be better water.