My Freaking Awesome Friends

Be prepared, Sonia, this will be a long one....

Of all the things I'm thankful for, I'd have to say my friends rank up there at number one. For those of you who have never met my closest friends, I am sorry, because you are really missing out. Someday soon (when I have time, like when school's over), I'm going to post some pictures of my freaking awesome friends and all the fun things we do.
Last week I was feeling a little frustrated with some things and I guess a little unwanted (to those of you who know what I'm talking about-- I know that's not how it was, but I felt a little that way at first, but I got over it after I looked at the "situation" more objectively ;) Anyway, so I had to leave my job at school and go right to work at Target for another five hours, and I was so not in the mood for that. But then, while I was at work, everybody started calling me to convince me to hang out that night. By the time I had only half an hour left of work, I had three different options of hanging out with close friends. Fortunately, everyone compromised so I didn't have to choose (I told you you'd end up going to he movie, Justin!), but I just felt so darn special that everybody wanted to hang out with me. I don't know if the guys know this, but they always make me feel so special and wanted. I do know that they read this, so I'm going to use this to give them my Why my friends are so rad list, containing both generalities and specifics on why they are so cool.

Why my friends are so rad
#1 My very own, Justin&Justin produced homemade version of "The Game" for my seventeenth birthday
#2 The fact that, whenever I'm too nervous to drive somewhere I've never been before (or places such as "crowded" drive-ins), I can always get one of them to drive for me.
#3 Yet another Justin&Justin produced birthday movie last year in which they interviewed random strangers in Grossmont Center about me and the day of my birth
#4 The two attempts (soon to be three, come Sunday) by Tyler and Justin #1 to teach me how to snowboard (What I got out of those attempts: the raddest bruise I've ever had from when Tyler tried to teach me, and the ability to "plough" as a result of Justin Aubrey's lessons).
# 5 How many guys do you know who get excited about the idea of taking dance lessons with a bunch of senior citizens at Balboa Park on Sunday nights? Say hello to Jesse, Tyler, and
Justin #2
#6- Sunday after-church lunches with the gang
#7- Good times like last week at Jessica's apartment: we watched our homemade movies and videos from our senior year while feeding on a "vat" of Top Ramen.
#8 HOME MADE MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The best thing the guys have ever thought of, where we spend an evening (and sometimes well into the night and next morning) coming up with hysterical plotlines (you should see our latest 'reality show')
#9 Scary movies with these guys are the best. I get to sit in the middle with a blanket and pillow to hide behind and feel protected from whatever's out there. Of course, then when I get up to go to the bathroom, I return to find them all hiding and waiting to scare the daylights out of me....
#10 Games like our version of hide-and-seek, or the barrel game (only to be understood by the Justins, Jesse, Jacquie, and Tyler). There is no greater way for a college student to spend a weekend night than playing Sardines at the Aubrey's house in pitch black darkness with the rest of your nineteen-year-old friends
#11 Two weekends ago they showed up, literally, right outside the door to my work, as I was leaving, and forced me to go with them for dinner and a movie. It was this close to a kidnapping.
#12 For my last birthday, the Justins, Jesse, Tyler, Mikey, Jessica, Jarod, Bev, and David made me a mystery theatre party, taking it upon themselves to be someone completely against their normal character for the night, even to the point of looking and sounding absolutely ridiculous. It was awesome. And Tyler dressed up like a girl. Now that's friendship.
#13 This one happened tonight. As I was leaving work, I realized that the Justins, who had gone to another friend's house tonight, had driven right by Target, and had not stopped to say hello. I was a little disappointed at that realization. But then, my car came into view, and I saw that my tailgate was down and the windshield wipers were sticking straight up (a somewhat annoying calling card that we each use to let someone know that we were there, but didn't happen to catch them, only their car), and the first thing that came to my mind was "They really do love me!"


These are a lot of funny things that my friends do, and there are plenty of others, like our "book" we wrote during eleventh and twelfth grade and our Big Bear excursion last summer and plans for our road trip as soon as we're all done with college. And there are a lot more serious reasons for why I love my friends so much, but those would take up pages and pages too. My friends are always there for me. They always listen to me when I need to talk to someone. Seeing as how most of them are guys, they try to fix all my problems, and it's cute watching them try, but fail. ;) I feel safe when I'm with them, and I know that if I ever broke down somewhere, I could call any of them and they would come get me in the middle of the night. They're just freaking awesome, and I hope that everyone is as lucky as I am when it comes to the people they're closest to.

The End.
( I hope you were able to finish it, fellow English major. I am sorry it was so long.)

The Game of Life

So last night, Justin #1, Justin #2, and I went up to Pine Valley to hang out with everyone who had gone on the college group retreat. (We did not go for the full weekend due to lack of time, funds, and meanie-head bosses.) We arrived around nine, just after the last meeting had ended. After shooting off a few paintballs on the street (don't ask), we proceeded to Worthington Hall (Pine Valley's equivalent of The Barn, except a lot nicer) to get our hands on some gigantic chocolate chip cookies, on the way passing Tyler who was about to go to sleep until we informed him of the game night we had planned in front of the artificial fire in the room otuside of the snack shop (our favorite Pine Valley hang out spot, next to the room off the game room where we once spent hours playing Egyptian Eruption on a school retreat). As we gathered around said artifical fire, bounced on the very cushy cushions of the couches, and set up Life, I remembered this exact same scenario from last year (except with Cranium instead of Life), and mentioned this to Josh, because last year was the first time I had ever really actually talked or hung out with him before. And Enrique remembered that it had been the first time she'd even met all of us, so it was kind of like an anniversary in a way....

Anyway, there were too many of us to play individually, so we split into teams. Jesse and I decided to go to college, and that is how we ended up being doctors with $100,000 every payday. I so wish real life were like that. You spin the wheel, you can get married, have a kid, or get a ton of money. And then you get to do it all over again two minutes later, when your turn comes around again. Real life should be so easy. Anyway, Jesse and I won, and now my dad wants the computer so I must leave!

My run-in with the law

Okay, so it wasn't exactly a run-in, but it was the first illegal thing I've been busted for! Here's the story:

So on Saturday night, my friends and I attended church. After edifying our souls for an hour and a half, we decided to spend the rest of that night in good, clean fun to further bond our friendships: we decided to play a board game. As Justin # 1 puts it, "We're Christian kids-- we don't party, we don't drink, we don't do drugs-- the only thing left is playing board games and renting movies". So don't mock us! Jesse, Justin # 2 and I went to Target to get Scene It, a game our group has been coveting for awhile (that, and 90's Trivial Pursuit, yea!). Next stop was Jessica's apartment, where we met up with her, Mikey, Josh, and his wife, Enrique. Now, when we go to Jessica's apartment in big groups like this, we always park in the small dentist's parking lot next to the building, to avoid flooding the visitor parking spots for her complex. We've done this at least ten times according to Justin (I've actually only parked there twice), and nothing has ever happened. So we spent a few hours at Jessica's glorying in our new game and the gobs of extra Halloween candy that she kept feeding us. It was good clean Christian fun (and Jessica and I, the now infamous popcorn-piece "Team Estrogen", won the first ever Scene It game by a landslide :-).

So around midnight we start gathering our stuff to leave, say our good-byes, and head over to the parking lot next door, only to discover that OUR CARS ARE GONE. All four of them. Josh calls the cops, and they tell him our cars were towed for being in a tow-away zone, even though it was a freakin' dentist's office at freakin' midnight. What kind of dentist holds hours at that time of night, I don't know, but apparently some tow truck driver decided for the sake of any customers that might show up at that time, he'd better give them room to park by REMOVING OUR CARS AND IMPOUNDING THEM. I must admit, I said a bad word. (In my defense, it was a quote from a movie, not something that technically came out of my own head.) The tow company told Josh our cars would be two hundred and seventy dollars a piece to get out, but when Josh asked about the group discount rate, the guy knocked it down to two fifty. Swell.

So after Mikey drove Enrique and me to their apartment to pick up their other car, and then we drove back to Jessica's to pick up the boys who were standing there, in the middle of the downtown El Cajon area at midnight and freezing, the five of us were on our way to reclaim our cars, by force if necessary. During the ride we contemplated TP-ing the place some other night, and Jesse realized that now he had something to write about in his xanga. Brilliant. Justin decided it was all an act of God to give us something interesting to write about in the online journal cult. As a result, Josh ended up learning about xanga and blogs, his interest was peeked, and the next morning at church we gave him our site addresses. If you're reading this, HI JOSH!

So the guy was waiting for us, and proceeded to drag the process of giving our cars back for another half an hour to forty-five minutes, while we all stood outside freezing. He was a little chatty, and seemed to forget we were probably in a hurry at that time of night. I did feel a little sorry for him though, when he told us that his wife (or girlfriend?) had left him awhile back. He also told us we were the nicest people who had ever come back to buy back their cars (for even though we had been quite threatening and plotful on the car ride over, we were actually very polite when face-to-face with said enemy). So here are my two conclusions on that: either there have never been any other Christians to get their car towed by this particular guy (great, we're going to hell now), or any other Christians who have gotten their car towed were just as jerky about it as anybody else would be, and that's sad.

So to sum up the night, the five of us had a very good bonding experience outdoing each other in useless movie trivia and finished off the night with a two hundred and fifty dollar short missions trip to the Lakeside towing yard.

Why?.... because....

I feel so... unworthy. Here I am, being blessed in so many ways, shapes, and forms, more than I could possibly count, and I allow myself to ask God why, why must you take this away? When it seems I've worked so hard to hold onto it, when it seems right to hold onto it, when it seems wrong to give it up... it's not even up to me in the end. Some of you know what I'm talking about and some of you don't, and even out of those who do, only a couple of you really know. This is just so hard to simply let go of, and at the same time, there's such a relief to release it to God, knowing that He's already got it worked out. I was reading Sonia's entry earlier, and she had the perfect quote (Sorry, Saenz, but I'm going to borrow it here)-- "God says to me, to His children, as He once said to abraham, "I only wanted to remove [him] from the temple of your heart that I might reign unchallenged there."" He's talking about Abraham giving up his son, but it fits so perfectly for me, too. God, reign unchallenged in my heart. Take away everything and anything that gets in the way.

I'm done with it all. No matter what I do I can't win here, so I quit. I'll lose, but it doesn't matter anymore. God is still bigger.