I was thinking about doing a caving trip here over New Years weekend. Justin says he has some people interested. Originally I had planned on going to Eagle Cave in Wisconsin, but I think it would be a better idea to go to the cave that we visited when Justin and I were Boy Scouts. We will have to get in touch with Dave Torma here this week to get maps and all of that info though. If you are interested let me know.

Lots of stuff going on currently. Seems like a lot of people around me are having all kinds of problems. I can't go into detail with them(for the sake of all their privacy). I was talking to my dad about all of it and he gave me a lot of insight on "spreading oneself too thin." As a lot of people have told me, one of my "gifts" is that I love to help people whether it be with something that requires physical labor or just to listen to someone who is having a bad day. Lately though it seems that I have been going a little overboard with it. I am so happy that I can be their for everyone, but it is coming to the point where it is downright depressing.

Another revelation that I had in the past few weeks is that my "helper" attitude can actually hurt people in the long run. In a few cases I have found that helping out a buddy with money issues (buying dinner, or buying the drinks at the bar) has in a way made him comfortable with me doing that. Therefore there is not as much of a drive for him to really pursue a job as hard as he should be. This type of situation has been occuring in a lot of relationships that I have. Of course this is not going to change my attitude toward generosity, I just need to learn to be more careful when using it.

Chris moved in yesterday. His dad dropped by today to drop off some of his stuff. We got into a conversation about outdoors trips (canoeing, backpacking, etc.) He reminded me about caving. There is a place called Eagle Cave in Wisconsin that I wanna check out sometime this winter. I have not been caving since I was 10 so it should be a fun trip. Gotta call Justin W. and tell him that he is going caving with us this winter. That's right tell you Justin!! Not ask.

Ah a new day another hard earned dollar. This weekend was a bear. I worked at Sweed's 6am to 2:30 pm and Walgreen's from 4pm to 12:30am. I got home at 1am last night and ate toast and some frozen diced potatoes. Matt and I really need to grocery shopping. I think we might wait a couple more days though, it isn't so bad that we are just taking random things that shouldn't be mixed together yet. Things like red beans, fresh garlic, potatoes, macaroni and cheese, and bamboo shoots. Mmm...casarole.

Thought I might share some pictures of random trips and such on my Photobucket account. Enjoy! Eric's pictures

Christ said "Be either hot or cold. If you are lukewarm I will spit you out of my mouth." I hope I quoted that right. But you can understand either way. If you were to see some guy harrassing a woman you would have 3 general choices. Join in(evil), do nothing(evil), or speak up and tell him to stop(good). Well suppose the guy didn't stop when you tried to intervene. Suppose he started to physically assult her, and you would have to physically assult him to get him off. Would you say, "no I shouldn't intervene." I don't think Christ would let that fly. When someone called upon Christ for help he gave them what they needed. Christ was no pacifist. I think it is a matter of giving of oneself for the sake of another completely goes against pacifism.
Pacifism sounds cowardly to me. The definition of a pacifist: "a person who believes in pacifism or is opposed to war or to violence of any kind." (found at Dictionary.com) If Christ was opposed to violence of any kind, he would have ran away from being beaten, whipped, spit on, and Death on a cross.
I don't like violence it is evil. I don't like war either. I do think that there is such a thing as justifiable reasons for going to war. In defense of those weaker than us is the biggest one on my list. Of course this is going to spark some fire and we are going to go into all this "crap" about why we went to this war that we are stuck in right now. So I will just say this. When we have a country that is so diversified, there can't be just one single reason for going to war. Freeing Iraqis from that tyrant, and ending his own miniture holocaust of his own people, creating a perminant vacancy in all of his rape rooms, and the torture of men women and children, etc. Setting up a democratic government there. Finding the terrorists and bringing them to justice. Not having to fight the war on terror in our country. There are probably many many other reasons as well.

I think that Christ's message(when partaining to the treatment of others) was to give of ourselves for the sake of others just like he did. There was more than one reason behind this though. First, as a way to spread his message to others by acting as the Body of Christ. To give of ourselves is to know him better. Second, turning the other cheek pertains you as an individual. When you "turn the other cheek", you show your attacker who Christ is.

Insomnia is a female dog. One good thing about it is that I have time do some posts. We had company at the house for the past couple days. Carl, a younger guy we know needed a place to crash a couple of days to get away from his mom's house. He called me up on Tuesday to ask if he could crash here. Of course we were glad to have him.

Aaron Drog(the former owner of my house, and a good buddy) was at the house with Carl watching Family Guy when I got off work last night at 11:30. We ended up shooting the shit until 3:30am. I still couldn't fall asleep until 4. I don't even know why I bothered going to bed, I had to be at Walgreen's at 7am this morning.

Crazy busy day at "the green's". I am glad I was there to see one of the tech's go into the fridge to grab some insulin, only to find that the pharmacist had put her dinner (spaghetti) with perfect precision on top of the fridge. All I heard her say was "Umm...Denise(the owner of the spaghetti)...help" in a calm voice. I turned around to see this pretty girl with long brunette hair that had spaghetti colored highlights, no wait that is spaghetti! HOLY CRAP! I immediately thought that no one could have purposely set that up so perfectly. I didn't know what to do, fall on the ground and laugh or have a heart attack at how impossible that it was that that just happened. Luckily the girl had a good sense of humor and was laughing harder than everyone else. Unfortunately I was not as lucky in a similar situation that occurred a year ago. I was feeling silly(as usual), so I took a hanging shelf separator and put it on backwards. A shelf separator keeps that drug bottles from mixing with each other. It is a piece of clear plastic about 18 inches long, 2 inches wide and 1/2 in thick. When you put them in backwards they stick out 18 inches out from the shelf. I precisely placed it at the forehead level. I then placed a nice little note under it that read "In case of emergency, insert into head" We all had a good laugh, then got really busy. So busy that unfortunately I forgot to take it down and "Spaghetti highlights" forgot it was there as well. She was reaching for a bottle and gored her head on it. She tore it off the wall(ended up taking down the whole shelf as well) and threw it across the pharmacy. Then broke down into tears. Let me tell you, I have never felt so bad in all my life. Luckily she was crying over her self-proclaimed stupidity in goring her head, than the actual injury itself. Irregardless I still apologize to this day over that.

There was an adult meeting at the Delpra's house tonight so I jetted over there after mass. I was an hour and a half early so I chatted it up with Celeste until Tony and Dan got home. I ended up leaving before the meeting actually started because I was feeling the pain of sleep deprivation.

Did another comment in Justin's blog from the other day too.

Now I must some how force myself to go to bed. I have to work at Sweed's tomorrow from 6am-2:30pm, then hustle over to "the green's" and work til 11:30pm. I am a sucker for punishment. Lord loves a working man.

I was looking at a friend's (Justin W.) blog last night In the universal search for truth.. . He was talking about how he had been following a blog from a girl who mentioned the POP months ago. I checked the link to see what it was all about and found she had an interesting opinion. Personally I thought it to be a skewview, but I tried to look at things from her perspective from what I got from her blog. I posted a comment to her entry from yesterday, but unfortunately it was ill recieved and was deleted along with her post. It was a good lesson for me in the truth of bringing lies out in the open and standing for the truth. Lies and evil in general loose thier power when they are brought out in the open and exposed for what they really are. I am not saying that she is evil or a liar though, just misguided. I posted the email that her "current boyfriend" sent to me and my reply back to him in comments from Justin's blog on her. Along with that someother interesting conversation with a nice young lady( Miss Emily ) that posted some comments on the subject as well.

Yesterday was such a great day. After work, Logan and I walked down to the Olympic Tavern down the street and had a bar burger and some Big Beers. I kicked his butt playing Cricket 200 on the dart board. Then around 1:30 am, we shot over to the Holy Family Adoration Chapel. I always enjoy going there, and regret not going more often. We both had revelations. It is amazing the way that God works in our lives, he always gives us what we need spiritually when we need it. It is so easy to forget what is important in life. What I needed last night was a wakeup call that God should be at the center of my life. Easy to say, but hard to live and realize what it means. Family, friends, self, jobs, possessions none of them come close to how important it is to build our realtionship with God. As for Logan, he needed to be reminded of where he would be without the people of the Rockford Branch of the People of Praise.

Finally started this...

I have had this account for a couple years and have never had the time to post on it. Thank God that one of my brothers Justin Walters mentioned my name in one of his blogs a while back. I did a Google search on myself(Haha...not out of vanity!), just curious. Not much there besides some College football stats from a game that I never even played!

A lot of stuff has been going on since I graduated. I bought a house and started a household much like the "Men's households" in South Bend and Dinky town branches of the People of Praise. Not quite as big of course, there are only 3 of us living there right now. Such a small number of people can make it harder to keep on track with group prayer life and such, but we are defiantely working on it.