Update and rough copy of metaphor

For all you who don't know or are curious, I will be departing for beatiful San Luis Obispo on June 28th. To return to Vallejo. Although I am not looking forward to going back to Vallejo because of obivous reasons. I am only be there for three days as we load stores onto the ship. Then we will depart from there and be on our way to Mexcio, and that I am thoroughly looking forward to. I will return in two months August 29th and have a few days to a week back at home, and then school will start for me around the 7th of september.
Right now I am working for a local contractor Dave McCoy, we are finishing up a huge remodel on a house that is on phillip street. That is up behind Franks, two streets up from Islay. I am also trying to build a 15ft plywood boat, that I desperately want to have done before I have to return to school in septmeber. We will see...the best laid plans of mice and men ( great book by the way). I am going to go on the Mexico Missions trip with my church the week before I go to sea, and i am really looking forward to that. Popeye is my hero that explains the picture.
This is a metaphor I have been working on

Life is like a game of solitare

Sometimes you have a place for your cards and sometimes you get a bum game. You are the dealer but you don’t get to choose what cards will be displayed to you when you flop. Is it fate or some greater will power that puts these things in place. You don’t always win in solitare. In fact you loose more times than you win. How is that simlar to life you may ask? It seems more people loose in this life rather than gaining in this life. People choose to live for the wrong things and this results in a loss of joy. In solitare one most constanly be on the lookout for oppurtunites, for correct card placement. Some opportunities only show themselves once and then they are forever gone. If you miss one chance it can cost you your game. So you must be always on the lookout for chances to change the fate of your game. Sometimes you can look so long at the cards and an opportunity will be right in front of you and yet you will not see it. And when you see it you will act on it quickly, but wonder why you did not see it before, sometimes these opportunities will lead to a quick change in action and you will feel the game is about to be won. Sometime it will only be one move and then you game will end, just as your hopes are raised they are also crushed. The pace of the game has little to do with your chances in winning. At some points you will feel that you are about to win as cards are flying down and the lines get longer. And then will come a standstill with no moves available and you will loose. But sometime the action will move slowly for the whole game and you might just win even though it required a great portion of patience. So all in all it is not the speed at which you play nor the number of opportunities you see but really only the number of opportunities you see and are able to make good on.
Simiarly in life we are given a limited number of opportunities to improve ourselves and to advance in society. Some people have less chances than others only because of the place or culture they are born into. If we do not act on the opportunities we are given, whether they be great or small, our lives will become stagnant and somewhat dead. Whereaes even if we act on every chance we are given sometimes this does very little good, our fate never changes and we are stuck. Bad luck, poor charma, fate, the very hand of God. No matter what attitude dictates contentment and contentment is the overlord of our joy. Sometimes it will appear there are no opportunities to change our situations, we have sought every end we can, and yet no chance seems available. Then out of nowhere a door will be opened, but it required waiting, patience, in order to receive what was bound to come.
And finally solitare is a game that you play alone only you know what move you will make next. In the same way in life no one can know what you are thinking or planning on doing until you do it. And I have found that although it is hard to let people help you in solitare, two heads are much better than one. In the same way in life we must let other people into our stories to help us through our tough times, and hopefully they will do the same so we can help them through their valleys.

C.S. Lewis

Quote for C.S. Lewis book The Silver Chair

“suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things-trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a pretty funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I am going to stand by the play world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as a like Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.”

Even if Christainity is not real it is far preferred to believe in something that will bring you joy in a dark place rather than to have no hope at all. And if we stand by our beliefs in the hardest of times we learn that it is not the strength of our faith but the strength of that which our faith is in.

This quote is from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

“’If I were addressing peasants or slaves,’ he said, ‘I might suppose that this suggestion procceded from cowardice. But I hope it will never be told in Narnia that a company of noble and royal persons in the flower of their age turned tail because they were afraid of the dark.’
‘But what manner of use would it be ploughing through that blackness?’ asked Drinian.
‘Use?’ replied reepicheep. ‘Use, Captian? If by use you mean filling our bellies or our purses, I confess it will be no use to you at all. So far as I know we did not sail to look for things useful but to seek honour and adventures. And here is as great of adventure as ever I heard of, and her if we turn back, no little impeachement of all our honours.’”

Reepicheep chooses to live a life of risk and adventure rather than a life of usefulness and routine. I hope to be the same.

The cure for friday night at CMA

This is a journal entry from a month ago when I was up at school. And this picture is not the answer but it is still pretty funny

Friday April 7, 2006 A.D.

I still have not found it, the cure for the Friday night at the California Maritime Academy. The norm is for it to be a night of drinking and revelry, partying, stupidity, drunkness, blowing chunks, beer pong, wiskey, hanging out with the captain, and maybe a few fellows will get ‘lucky’ and meet up with a poor young lady. Yes Friday is my least favorite day because I am left stranded in my dorm room, with very little to do, seeking something other than homework, or the computer, or even reading to help me unwind. Now I know I could go drink and be and idiot, but that is not how I choose to have my fun. That is never how I have had fun, nor do I ever want to become dependent (dependency is a form of addiction, nicer word). But I still haven’t found a way to have much fun on Friday nights. The closest to fun I have had on a Friday night was going to a local rock climbing gym, but it is too expensive to go every week. We once went to mayor island and fooled around a little, but again that is not an every week thing. At home we can always find something positive to do, but here my friends have much different agendas, and everyone, including the Christians seems to rely somewhat upon the amber colored liquid. It’s very frustrating, watching all these people waste their money and time on something that they do not remember. So I brainstorm every Friday and search for something to do that we can all have fun at. But Vallejo is a crappy area for college kids. You have to go pretty far out of the area to find good stuff to do. Maybe when I am old enough I will go to the bars and people watch for awhile. Who know, but I just wish there was something I could do about this party crap.
This week was fairly good, busy, played computer games way too much. I hate them. Sometimes I don’t play at all other times I play a lot. They like T.V. are a waste of time. This book by Jack Kerovac is excellent On the Road. It is so funny and entertaining. Very fast paced. The narrative moves from one situation without breaks in action. I mean to say that it moves along like life, there really are no breaks, maybe for a moment, but then it’s right back at it. If you are on a break you are thinking about how it is going to end and you will have to go back to what ever it is you find yourself doing. It is about life on the road, beatnicks, hobos, hippies of the 50’s. It is very entertaining, and the main character dean, is genius. He talks in his own English language, has his own way of communicating his intellectual thoughts. I don’t know what I am talking about, but I do like the book.

Ecclesiates

This is the begining and already I ask myself is it over yet, oh... well i am talking about the blog not about my life in case you were confused.
Today was a day in which i felt the verses of ecclesiates (which by the way is a very difficult word to spill and I haven't the slightest what it means) ringing through my life. There is nothing new under the sun wrote Solomn.
"So I hated life, because the work that is done under the siun was grevious to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who come after me" Ecclesiates 2:17-18
That was how it started, I had a rough somewhat depressing monday, but it cleared up much like the weather, and I had fun working with the guys on my jobsite, and we made jokes about stuff. Making fun of each others work, calling the house the hackhouse, and the jobs we had each done hack jobs, and each other hacks, which in all seriousness none of this is true. The house is very nice and we all do as good of work as we can.
This picture was taken on a washed up dock near my school in Vallejo, Ca. P.S. don't go there unless you have to. It just isn't a tip top place. San luis licks it hollow.