A Moment to Reflect

As I drove to the store at 3am this morning, I was caught by some words that were on the front of my shirt. I was wearing the green (dare I say MSU Spartan-esque) samplarian t-shirt. The words down at the bottom of the shirt read: "...it's freakin' sweet!" You might notice a striking similarity between these words, and the address of this blog (imfreakinsweet.blogspot.com, if you had forgot).
What many of you, in fact probably all save one, would not know is how this phrase became part of my common parlance. As you have experienced, I'm prone to spontaneously creating phrases, but this one I cannot take all the credit for. This was in fact a joint effort between myself and the recently deceased Josh Vore.
Despite Josh's affinity towards watching Gilmore Girls (which was beyond me), he, Jeremie, other TLS folks, and myself frequently enjoyed playing rounds of Halo. Jokingly, when Jeremie dominated one such round, Josh and I began laughing about how Jeremie boasted about his Halo skills: "Well, you guys put up a good fight, but you never really had a chance. I mean I am just freakin' sweet at this game." And so that became our inside joke, and every time something happened wherein someone won a game of anything, the mocking cry of "I'm so freakin' sweet, it's not your fault," came out. Frequently, this became the defining quote of Josh and my games of Horse on Lukas' toy basketball hoop. "Freakin' sweet" was our joke.
I had forgotten that until I was on the road, making that urgent 3am WalMart run. Then I looked at my shirt, and then it hit: this is a phrase that I have used countless times at seminary, in Virginia, on the Internet, and in all walks of life. But it never hit me of how I was completely in debt to Josh for what I considered to be one of my more humorous utterances.
The reality of missing Josh won't hit fully until I'm around one of the Vores, no doubt. But now, as I see and hear this phrase all around me, it will no doubt bring back the memories of its foundations. I'm gonna miss that boy, he was freakin' sweet.

Bam-FREAKIN'-O

Today was a DJ day at Summer Seminary Sampler. A "P"-day, finally. We had a number of "J"-days which had "P" elements such as being at a place at the wrong time. But nothing made me feel better than this morning. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the orderliness and all that it provides, but sometimes, darn it, you gotta live in the chaos. Oh, and by the way, if you want a different perspective on the event, see Dave's Blog.

Enter Franklin County MRDD Center, Stage Right. This is a center (possibly could be labeled a resort because it was amazing inside) for children with some kind of mental or physical retardation, which gets bonus points from me just for the thought. In addition to a GIANT Connect-4 board, and countless other rooms and games that made me want to stay an entire day, we got to take part in the most brilliant idea I have ever come across:
One of the teachers told her students where pizza sauce comes from(tomatoes, of course), but one of the kids answered back, "No, it comes from a jar." So the dilemna is that these kids have no clue how food gets made. What better solution, then, to see something get made from beginning to end. Unfortunately, the garden was not quite bearing fruit(read: vegetables). The geniouses(and I mean that term completely sincerely) thought up the idea to get vegetables from the store, and "plant" them in the garden so the children could come pick them. Wow, what a freakin sweet idea!!! We spent the morning pointing out vegetables to the kids so they could harvest them and put them on plates and in baskets. Eventually a chef came in and made a salad out of the things that we gathered. They officially win every award I've ever even thought of handing out.

These kids absolutely loved the whole idea of it. There were many kids encapsulated when the chef began chopping the vegetables, some of them saying things like, "I picked that carrot." With kids running around everywhere today, it felt a little bit like the crowded home I grew up in, which is probably why it felt so good. The only thing that would have made the morning better would be a nice long soak in the ball-pit.