My Birthday

Today was my birthday, and I didn't do too much, which was fine with me, because the days leading up to my birthday were a blast. The stories from those days, and event follow.

Thursday was paintballing again. The games were a ton of fun! The teams were typically arranged in this fashion: 2 people who would “hide” and 3 people who would go to find them. My favorite game consisted of Jesse and I being on the hiding team, and we decided that we were going to hide way in the back of the field. Most of the game was me helping Jesse hobble around the field, moving towards the other team, and away from the line of fire. We actually won the game!! Several times the enemy team would be talking about where I was, and where Jesse was, they would guess “Chris is up in the trees there, and Jesse is in those bushes down there”, when in reality we were both hiding in the bushes, just 10-15 feet away from them. We ended up eventually picking off the opposing team members one by one. My other favorite moment was when I was the only one left from my team, and I hid in the bushes, and ended up surrendering one of the team members. “Surrendering” is when you are close enough to someone that any shot would hit them, and really hurt, so to avoid that, you can shout “Surrender”. Matthew Murada was walking by me, I yelled at him “surrender Murada, surrender!!” Matthew just about jumped out of his skin, then surrendered. Pretty fun.

On the bus ride home, something cool happened, and there was an IPTP as well.  First the IPTP.  I was just sitting there, and this large black man got onto the bus, listening to what sounded like rap music on his iPod, wearing workout clothes. He must have been 6'4", about 225 lbs, just looked like a serious, large, athletic man. Then he sat down. Immediately he started bobbing his head to the music, then within 3 minutes, he started rapping over the beat on the song he was listening to. I wouldn't have minded this, in fact it would have been interesting, but he was rapping about Cal Ripken Jr.. I found out that "ladies love the moon shots! BOOM!"  "2,600 games in a row, who else has done that ****?" "Got more Golden Gloves than ****!". I immediately realized that the Baseball Rapper was going on the blog. The cool thing that happened was not actually on the bus, but waiting for the bus. I needed to transfer to a different bus, and I had talked with the driver about where I could get off. He stopped, and said to me "Hey man, your bus stops here. Get off!" I did, and then realized that this was not where he had said I should get off, but it was a God thing that he did. There was someone else sitting at the bus stop, and he looked decent enough, so I asked which bus he was waiting for. We were both waiting for the same bus, so then we talked about where we were going. He was going to a friend's house to watch a Shark's game. (GO SHARKS!!) I explained that I was coming home from paintball, and he visibly perked up. Turned out he too had paintballed when he was younger. (He is 27 now.) We talked about paintballing for a while, talked about education, religion, movies, cars, working, plans for the future, and then out of the blue, related to nothing that we were talking about. "I've got a Tippmann 98 Custom, that I am probably never going to use again, it is sitting on my shelf collecting dust. Do you want it?" Tippmann's are nice paintball guns, and fairly expensive. I had been thinking about working up to eventually buying a gun, but his offer was stunning in so many ways. The timeliness, the generosity, and the surprise. Sometime this week Dad and I will go up there and get the gun. Pretty cool. I will have pictures once I pick it up.

Friday was MBA, which was relatively tame, but I did notice, again, a phenomenon on public transit. Groups of 20-35 year-old males, wearing rough looking clothes, smelling funny, covered with several tattoos, and typically with some puppy smuggled on the bus. I was talking to one of my friends, and he informed me that the name for such people is "crustpunk". I don't care what they are, when sitting next to them means that my clothes are permeated with the stench of years of non-bathing. Aside from the odor, they seem fairly nice. Friday night was the Valentine's party for Bay Area Homeschooling Class of 2011. The attendees were the planning committee, which is Andrew, Anna, and Courtney, then the hostess, Cassandra, and two people who were not directly involved with the party, Jessica and myself. Some party. In all seriousness, the party was actually great fun, we played Apples to Apples, and Catchphrase, and did a gift exchange. I got a plush penguin from the MBA, which I brought to the party. The end came too soon, as happens with all good parties.

Saturday started with an SOC event, geochaching on the Cannery Row, and doing a sustainable seafood hunt on the Fisherman's Wharf. I have realized that I am not a morning person, up to a point. I do not like waking up, no matter what I am waking up for, but once I have showered and had my coffee, I can be irritatingly chipper. If Chris in the morning without coffee and a shower met Chris in the morning after a shower and coffee, things would get broken. The poor girl who I was carpooling with, her mom was fairly upbeat, which made me even more upbeat, and all she wanted to do was go back to sleep. Most of the group was in a similar state, excepting those who drink coffee, and those who always wake up early. There were a few particularly funny and memorable events from the day. When I first started SOC, one of the "mentors" was a crazy MBA employee, named Tommy. He played a game with the whole group, called "Captain's Coming". Just saying those two words to anyone who was in SOC during that time would immediately earn a laugh, or fond sigh. Saturday was the first time we have played Captain's Coming without Tommy, and it was hilarious! I got out a lot. Not paying the best attention will do that to you.
When we were at the Wharf, I was sitting talking with a few of the students at a table, and a seagull walked past my outstretched feet, which bothered me, so I kicked aimlessly at him. The seagull did not like that, so he flapped against the table, then flew right over my head, and I huddled up in a ball, while managing to retain some remnants of my dignity. Did anyone see "The Birds"? As my group was geocaching, we walked along a bike/walk trail. If you walk on the pavement, you run the risk of being yelled at by angry bikers or runners, or just getting run over, which is bad. One of my jobs was to remind the group to walk on the dirt that is reserved for slow pedestrians. I did this by simply yelling "DIRT!" whenever anyone wandered from the dirt. So fun. "DIRT!" is now a codeword for "I hang out with the cool people at SOC".

Today for church the youth group went to a local bagel shop (because it was bagel shop Sunday) and then did a review of our study of spiritual disciplines. Sugar football, and 2 everythings, with nothing on them. Small group today was everyone associated with the youth group talking about their mission trips, either upcoming or recently finished. Mur, Yodit, and Betit, who were adopted from Ethiopia, talked about their trip back. Kristy talked about her 6-month upcoming trip to Kenya. I talked about my upcoming trip to Liberia. I then returned home, and got to open my presents. A nice leather-bound Bible from Mom and Dad, a sweet card (4 really) from Mandy, and a yarn bookmark, a chess board from Nick (and Freecycle), and a book titled "How to Back Up a Trailer, and 101 Other Things Every Guy Should Know How to Do." Looks great. Alex and I are going to go to a movie at some point, I just need to find a movie I really want to see that is coming out sometime soon. Tomorrow will be my first time cleaning my room and doing laundry as a 17 year-old. I expect it will be about the same.
Shout-outs: Aaron (thanks!), Baker and Cindy (LOL) , Mom and Dad, my siblings (I love you all) , the paintball gang (this summer guys!!), Kyle (thanks for the dogpile!), and you, my readers. Thanks for listening. Have a good one.