National Bowling Week

Happy National Bowling Week!

Who even knew such a thing existed? Now I do thanks to a segment that was just on CNBC.

Speaking of business stories...I bought my plane ticket to come home Saturday night. It was going to be nearly $700 to flight out Tuesday to come home for the week. Well my friend said I should look on Orbits. Sure enough, I was able to save about $400 by getting US Airways orbits! So I canceled the NWA one I bought, and you get one full day to cancel an online ticket without penalty for full refund, so I took advantage of that!

So I'll be headed home tomorrow; will be around through the following Wednesday.

And as for today, what am I doing, you may ask? Well I going back to the Fair...Again! I went with Charlie on Saturday (the weather high for the day didn't even make it into the 70's!) One of our friends, Pat, who's Charlie's roommate, also came along. It was a good time. Pat picked me up since Charlie went early with one of his lady friends, and we got out there probably around 1:30 and I ended up leaving with Charlie around 8 or so. It was good time...We shot arrows from bows, we heard about the fish in Minnesota, we walked for hours, watch the Twin's game for a while. And we ate a lot of fair food. I had a pronto pup (corn dog), fries and cookies.

Will get pictures up soon.

Namu Amida Butsu

I hope this video works (I hope you get sound to listen to it too). It was from Christmas day this past year.

I was going to title the Blog "Good Bye" because of the video, but Namu Amida Butsu seemed more fitting. Why you may ask? The answer is in Star Wars + Buddhims + Christianity.

Well, watching Star Wars lately made me think of the "force." Those fully in touch with the "force" and who have completed their task actually become even stronger and more influential after they die or are killed. They evaporate and are joined back to the "force" to aid those in the "force." Thus Obi-wan can help Luke destroy the Death Star in movie 4, even though Obi-wan had been killed by Darth Vader. Obi-wan was in the "force" and able to still guide Luke from it.

One can think of Amida, the source of infinite source of Wisdom and Compassion as that "force." In death, the soul reaches Nirvana and becomes extinguished, so to speak. The soul becomes part of Nirvana, it goes back to or get assumed into the great realm. And in Jodo Shinshu, that is of course of the primal vow of Amida to aid those who called upon his name. Amida is "force" because the "force" brings about that extinguishing to join the great beyond.

One can think that God is that "force." Christianity believes when one dies in a state of grace with God, they will be reunited to God in heaven. This reuniting of the soul to God can be explained as the most intimate connection between two beings, even closer than any human bonds. And because all Christians, living or dead, are in some manner connected to God, they are all connected to each other in a spiritual or "force-ish" manner. So, as I taught my kids last year, death is not the end of a relationship. Rather if you believe that the soul of your loved one is with God, and you believe in God, the perfect relationship that the three of you share is unending, for God and the soul have no end. Whereas when they were living, time and space kept you physically apart. In death, the soul is always with God and you're always in God's presence, so theoretically death can create an even stronger bond. This is part of the idea that makes up the Catholic teaching of "communion of saints."

So simply put, Im saying Star Wars-ism, Buddhism, and Christianity all teach the same thing on this issue: Ironically, death doesn't separate, but rather makes bonds stronger.

Tidbit By Thomas: (see above four paragraphs cause if that isn't a good tidbit, then I dont know what is!)

A very boring week so far

Well my test last week went well. As I have been explaining it: It was the best case scenario. I had talked with all three professors who were asking me questions. 2 of them were very specific in our discussions of what they might possibly ask. One was more abstract and general. Well, the two actually asked the questions we had previously discussed, and those were the ones I had specifically studied. So I answered those two on Thursday. Since we were given all 6 possible questions from the very start, I knew which question I wanted to keep till Friday so I could strategize for it Thursday night. Friday after the 5 of us were done with comps, we went out for lunch with a couple other classmates and de-comp-ressed ourselves over pizza and pasta (after comps we de-comp-ressed…hahaha ok.) Now, we wait another week or two before we find out if we passed the essay portion and take our oral exams.

So though I wanted to find a good adult watering hole over the weekend to relax…I couldn’t find anyone else to go with me really, so it ended up being a really slow and non-exciting weekend.

In fact most of this week hasn’t been too exciting. I got a renters rebate check from Minnesota (yes, it finally arrived, Susan), so I have enough money to survive for another month. I took part of it to the local Indian casino Tuesday night with a friend. My $40 was turned into $60! Woo hoo! So now I have extra money to spend at the Minnesota state fair, which started today. I got a couple of cheep tickets ($9 instead of $11) already at the store. So I’m looking forward to the fair!

Tidbits by Thomas: I just stumbled across this article online earlier this afternoon, my audience might find it interesting. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/rss/nn20090828b2.html

Tornado Sirens

Day before I take Comps and we have tornado sirens going off! And here I thought today would be a boring day of just studying....

Less than one week...

...Till the big test day. Next Thursday and Friday I'll be sitting in a room, writing for a total of six hours!

So in preparation I've been reading books, going over class notes, and taking notes by hand (to prepare the hand for the massive amounts of writing).

I've also been watching Charlie's baseball team play a lot over the last few weeks. They are now in the state play offs, amateur league. It's a double elimination thing, they've lost one game so far. Charlie was starting pitcher Wednesday night (he got the win). (They had games Monday and Wednesday night, both at 9pm since other teams were playing games before them.) But to win it all now, they have to win 4 more games, two saturday and two Sunday. They are known for having drinks and food after all their games so it's worth going to them.

But after Wednesday's game (it finished about 11:30) and during the drinks (and after they shut the stadiums lights off) we were able to see occasional shooting stars because of the Perseid meteor things which was cool. probably saw a dozen or so while we were out there.

Tidbit by Thomas: Thanks Grandma and Grandpa Kobata for making sure I had enough to get in a good meal before my test!

Laptop Back!

Yes, I got my laptop back this afternoon!

Oh how I'll miss spending 5 hours a day in the library :(

Or NOT!
But I did get 99% of my papers done while I was in there, which was good.

Anyways, more to come later in the week. Will update by Friday afternoon to give you something to read before the weekend.

Deadline

It's official...
I'll be taking final comps in 16 days on the 20th and 21st. That will be the written part (3 essays, two hours each; two on Thursday, one on Friday). The oral part of the test will be a couple weeks after that (one hour long).

So I have about 15 books to read/re-read, 4 portfolio essays to get submitted (2 which still need to be edited), and to remember all of that without going crazy...

2 Dead Laptops

Im sure a couple of you have seen my facebook status and are dying to know what happened...

Yesterday I decided to take in my new laptop (laptop #1)(3 years old) because there was a power source issue and the warrantee was about to expired on. It worked still, except to get a connection with the powersource, you needed to do 8 hops, two cirles and hail mary pass to get it to consistently work. So I backed up all my information onto my external hard drive (which Uncle Gary gave me for free at Christmas time), and figured I’d use my older laptop (laptop #2)(6 years old) to do the simple things (check email, facebook, notes, essays, etc) I needed while my other one was out.

So yesterday, I made sure my old laptop (#2)worked, could read my external hard drive, get online, etc, before I took laptop #1 to the see the geek squad. Test run of my old laptop went well so I went to the shop after Mass. Dropped it off and should have it back in 2-3 weeks. I got back home and tried laptop #2 and sure enough it started to do funny things. And now, it won’t even start up in safemode! I frantically called Br. Dat up, and once if I finally got ahold of him, I found out I don’t even have the right CD to reformate latop #2! Thankfully he’s going to mail that to me today and should be here in a few days.

Till then, I’m 2 laptops down, and working in the school’s library. It wouldn’t be nearly as bad if I could just work on notes and essays w/o the internet from a laptop. For now I have to work on library hours, which is till 7pm, which most of my readers know is quite early in the evening for me.

Oh well, this is a practice to help me with detachment from a machine that ordinarily orders my life around. It wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t planning on taking my final comprehensive exams in three weeks and needed to finish 4 essays till then. This whole situation will also help me study more as I wont be distracted by a laptop either!

But I sure hope both of my laptops get fixed sooner than later!