Rommel's Random Ramblings

It was Sunday School Promotion Day today at church. For those of you that missed it or if you want to see it again, here's the Sunday School teacher appreciation video:

Thank You Sunday School Teachers

Got sick this week (yes, again.) It seems a lot of people that were at that sleepover got sick, too. So it looks like something's going around. But hopefully, I've completed my illness quota for the year.

Anyway, the College and Career group joined another church for a bonfire at Aliso Beach last night. Pictures are online, but a lot of them are either too dark or filled with smoke.

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/rommel4321/album?.dir=c06a

Psalm 19
¹⁴ May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight,
O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.

Yesterday was interesting. I wasn't able to catch all of the message at FACI since I was out filming a bit of the children's church and the nursery for next Sunday. That's okay, though. After eating dinner at the Spectrum, a few of us went to Rock Harbor for their evening service. Some Regen people came down from up north, so we thought we'd invite them to check it out. They've been going over the ten commandments. This Sunday's message was on commandment no.9: You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

After that, we went back to King's house to hang out. They had this golf ball water globe puzzle thing that King's sister got for their dad as a Father's Day gift. Basically, it's a golf ball enclosed with a tee in a glass globe filled with water. The object of the puzzle is to get the golf ball to rest of top of the tee. What makes it difficult is that gravity sort of acts differently because of the water. Anyway, the last time I was there, I somehow accomplished the feat even though everyone else had been trying unsuccessfully for weeks. That's when I took the picture up there. So this time, I was hoping for a repeat. There I was, idly shaking the globe around for the next couple of hours (as we watched Olympic speed walking. O_o) Next thing I knew, I heard this slight snapping sound. A crack formed on the globe, and the water started leaking out. Only two other people noticed what had happened. Everyone else was at another part of the house. The next few minutes, my mind was filled with thoughts just setting the globe down quietly and going home without letting anyone know what had happened. It was almost midnight anyway. I knew my witnesses would have my back. As much as I didn't want to at the time, I told King's sister about it before I left for the night. She was cool about it. "You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor." That would suck to have someone else get the blame for it. Hmm... that conscience and the Holy Spirit just had to kick in. ^_^

I know they've been accidents, but I still feel sad. That's the second time in less than three weeks that I've broken something at someone else's house. Haha, I wouldn't be surprised if whoever reads this doesn't invite me to their place ever again. Speaking of which... hey Culwell, I heard you moved. When are you going to let me check out your new apartment?

Last night, I joined the youth group for their sleepover at church. I was one of the "adult chaperones" along with Aimee. Usually "youth sleepover" = "no sleep for me", but it's all good. We had a great pizza-eating, DDR-dancing, Mafia-accusing, fingernail-painting, Twister-playing, Notebook-watching, Taboo-playing, staying-up-late-trying-to-get-some-sleep, and some general bonding fun time. As usual, all the digital cameras came out, and everyone went picture crazy.

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/rommel4321/album?.dir=f0d2

I also recently realized that my ISP actually gives me 25MB each for 10 websites instead of 25MB total for all 10 email accounts. So that gives me up to 250MB of web space. What do I do with all of this space? I started converting all of the videos I've done into a more web-friendly size and uploading them. See the sidebar for the list. I'll add some more as I go along. Some of these videos I haven't watched in months, maybe years. Ahh memories...

Aww... no more content-based ads that change depending on what I write about. Now we get this BlogBar at the top of the page instead.

Whew... well, on Friday morning I ended feeling well enough to bring my car to the tire shop. When I get sick, nothing really helps me as much as a self-induced fever caused by sleeping with layers upon layers of clothing and blankets. I guess an increased body temperature really does make the immune system more effective.

Friday night was the worship night led by the youth group's worship band. Icy took a whole bunch of pictures. A few guys from a church down in San Diego came up to visit. The youth met them during the Regeneration conference last month in Fresno. Anyway, it was a great time of worship and testimonies. Afterward, we went to get some boba. The San Diego people shared their pictures from their mission trip last month to the Philippines.

Saturday, on the other hand, wasn't quite as eventful. I got up at almost 6:00PM! It wasn't even a "I've been lying in bed all day trying to wake up, I guess I should finally wake up" type of getting up. It was more like I didn't even wake up until that time. Wow... eighteen hours of pure sleep. It's the strangest feeling when you look at the clock and realize that the AM is actually a PM. Even if I don't set an alarm, my longest oversleeping scenario is usually interrupted when I get hungry. However, I would think it's usually lunchtime hunger instead of dinnertime hunger. I was out cold... what was I doing? I'm pretty sure I was dreaming several dreams. Otherwise, I would have probably woken up because of boredom. I'm not too sure of most of the details anymore, but I do remember trying to find my way around these streets built on top the UCLA tennis courts. There was also another part in which I was a part of the X-Men or some superhero team. As who? I don't know... I don't think that was even addressed. Anyway, someone else didn't want the Beast to join the team because of his size 24 feet. *shrug*

Ok, so this afternoon after the worship service was the flag football tournament. A lot of people came this year. I was using my video camera most of the time, but I took some pictures as well.

Now this wouldn't be the same blog without the usual automotive problem. So this time, it has to do with my car's front left tire. It's been refilled with air at least three times within the past two weeks. There must be a leak somewhere. I hope I can have it checked tomorrow. It's a good thing tire shops don't typically charge for routine tire repairs. I'm still not feeling too healthy, though.

Hmm... my the tv tuner on my computer isn't working. I think the last time I tried using it was before I did the complete overhaul on my pc. I kinda need it to capture analog video. I haven't noticed until now since I've been capturing video off of my digital video camera, which is done through a different process. Uh oh, I just realized that I also need the tv tuner to play PS2 games using my computer monitor. Must remedy that...

There was no worship team practice today. The youth are leading worship this Sunday. Us old people get a break. I remember when I first started coming to FACI, they were all in elementary school. Now, they're leading worship once a month. My, how they've grown. We're also having a worship night at church this Friday. The youth group is leading that, too. Pretty much all the home bible studies that night are cancelled so people can go there. I remember the last time we had one of those, we moved out all the chairs in the sanctuary. What was left was a big open area where people can sit anywhere, dance, jump around, do whatever. So much fun.

I will dance, I will sing
To be mad for my King
Nothing Lord is hindering
The passion in my soul

Oh yeah!

Bleh... couldn't sleep until probably about 4am because of a sore throat, and now I'm feeling really sick. I'm supposed to go over to someone's house today and fix their computers, but they had to cancel anyway. That's good timing, I guess. Ahh... must get some rest.

The third annual Teriyaki Bowl flag football tournament is next Sunday.

Are you ready?

Ever heard of Tyson, the skateboarding bulldog?

Yay! New motherboard and faster CPU (2.6 GHz) and my computer hasn't crashed since.

Anyway, it's been quite a while since my last update. There have been a lot of new people at church. Church has been packed the past few Sundays. The church we rent from is building a new sanctuary with three times the capacity. Construction hasn't even started yet, but it looks like there won't be much trouble filling the new place. God is awesome!

Our College and Career group has grown, too. So much that we're planning on splitting up the group into a college group and a career group. The individuals who are literally in college are off leading the high school and junior high kids anyway. So that leaves the people in the career group, people my age (give or take five years or so.) We have to think of a better name than just "Career group"...

I've been practicing singing out loud while playing an acoustic guitar, but just on my own. It's kinda hard and confusing at first to do them both at the same time. An acoustic guitar's not even my primary instrument. I play the bass guitar on Sundays. Not that singing while playing the bass is any easier. That's probably harder, although not as hard as playing the drums while singing. Now that's hard. I'm still amazed when I see our drummer, Nikki, singing along while playing. Somebody bring that girl a mic.

The Evolution 2004 fighting game tournament was held just this weekend at Cal Poly Pomona. They had the US debut of the Tekken 5 arcade machine at the free play area. (No pictures allowed, though.) However, the highlight has got to be the match between Daigo Umehara (one of the best Japanese players) and Justin Wong (3 time Marvel vs Capcom 2 champ) during the Street Fighter III finals. Here's a video. I can't wait to get this year's DVD.