I love iTunes for rad EP's!

Jon Forman
Fall EP

Winter EP Spring EPFront man of Switchfoot had released 3 amazing EP's which I found on iTunes. They are not anything like switchfoot’s last few albums. It is really subtle in its production often going for a less is more approach on the tracks. Through his lyrics and acoustic sound Jon creates a lingering sensation of intense intimacy with God. A lot of the tracks feel more like your listening to a prayer then to as song…which at times can be intensely refreshing when compared with other Christian EP’s. I am really glad he put out the 3 EP’s…with the last Switchfoot disk I had lost hope in the band coming back with anything worth listening to as a lot of the lyric on that disk were an awkward attempt at a crossover. They were not religious enough to get air play on Christian stations, yet still vaguely religious enough to avoid play on secular stations. These EP’s hearken back to the first Switchfoot CD and in my mind do a much better job then it did in conveying meaning through lyrics. If you have iTunes look Jon Foreman up and take a listen. If not here is a link - http://jonforeman.com/ - click the album you want to check out and then at the bottom of the page there is a play bar. It will let you listen to a sample of each song.

So good...
Skakes

all...most...there...

It snowed today...which ruined my 2 week run of wearing shorts. However, at least the end of term is in striking distance. I only had 3 classes this term which made my academic load lighter then usual. My intro to Christianity course rocked which I attribute solely to the professor. If it wasn’t for him it would have been quite tempting to skip the class as most of the info was in the text. Surprisingly for a survey course a lot of the presented material seemed to find its way back to Martin Luther (or at least the professor found ways for it to do so). This made my life a lot easier as I pretty much had the Lutheran thing down pat before class even began. I finished my final for the class last week so I have been missing it as of lately when doing some of my other readings.

My other two classes are still going. Hinduism was a more challenging course then I had bargained for. It’s a lot of terminology memorization which I normally would not mind it’s just that it’s all in Sanskrit and Hindi. While the terminology was less then easy the course had a redeeming quality...once again another great professor. He was pretty open minded when it came to writing our term papers so I was able to pursue the Hindu diaspora in western Canada over the last 100 years. My final for the class is on the 17th so that is next on my radar.

The final class I had for the term was the critical study of religions. It was based solely on writing assignments and analysis which I really enjoyed. It was a very open class in that as long as it was approached in a scholarly method you could choose to do your assignments and final research project on a verity of topics. My final project for the class is on the Latter Day Saints 1978 revelation in regards to the acceptance of African Americans males into the Melchizedek priesthood and the possible influence of the civil rights culture of the era. So far the research is going well and I am excited that the paper is starting to pull together (which is good as it is due on the 23rd and is my last dead line!). While my paper has yet to be written its abstract was accepted to the annual University of Lethbridge religious studies conference in May. So I am looking forward to that.

Now that school is almost done for the term I will be blogging more often.

Skakes

So I almost can't believe how long it has taken me to put this up here. It's been sitting on my computer as a word doc for about 2 months now as the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd time i tried to publish it blogger kicked me out. So here it is. Now that school is starting to slow down I hope to get back to this blogging buisness.

Like I alluded to…the trip to Victoria was almost perfect. I think the coaching staff would choose to say that it was 80% perfect. If it wasn’t for the first 4 hours of the 1st day and the last 2 hours of the 5th day it would have been perfect. Seeing as it will take way to long for me to explain I will give you the list of things that went wrong on both days. If you want the full story and have some time to listen I would be more then glad to share the full story.

Day 1
- Arrive at bed and breakfast in Victoria to find out we were not alone (we had booked the whole thing)
- Pay for rooms by cheque
- “Crazy lady” (who was not supposed to be there) decides to get too friendly with a coach and reminds him “not to be looking at the Toys” of the owner of the B & B.
- Go for tour of parliament…during which coaches decide to get out of hotel
- Try to get out of hotel but the owner isn’t there so we get our bags and attempt to find somewhere else to stay.
- find another hotel
- Go for dinner…45 min wait
- Go for walk on harbor.
- Decided to book reservations for our nice supper out at milestones which sits on the harbor. WC teams of the past have gone there…it’s always a highlight. Go up to door and find that it’s closed for renovations.
- Find somewhere else to eat and book reservations.
-Eat
- Go back to B & B and get out cheque back minus 1 days rate.
-Day finally over

Final day
- Girls to have their rooms cleaned up by 10:30pm, checked by coaches before 11:00pm, lights out at 11:00pm.
- 11:00 pm - no one has checked in with me so I assume the girls have all checked in with the other coach.
- 11:15pm other coach comes to my door and starts to tell me what just happened…
- He hears a knock at his door. Assuming it’s the girls he just opens it…it’s not the girls but 2 drunk bikers that are 6’4 and 250 pounds.
- They ask him “where are the Girls” and start to come into his room.
- He some how manages while talking to get them back out into the hall and starts to try to reason with the drunk bikers. He tells them that the girls are all under age and that they would go to jail.
- The bikers grow tired of him and go back to their room (which happens to be 2 rooms down from the coaches between the elevator and another girls room of ours)
- The coach makes his way back into his room to call and tell the girls to stay in their rooms…but before he can do this the front desk calls and says that there has been a complaint on the 7th floor …girls have been running in the halls and have been yelling (we have girls on the 7th floor)
- So he says he will check into it and leave to go up to the 7th floor when the girls from that floor come off the elevator.
- The coach sternly tells the girls to get into his room
- Girls think he is mad at them and start to try to explain their innocence
- Coach does not want the bikers to know the girls are in the hall and come out…so continues to whisper yell “GET IN HERE”
- Gets the girls inside to find out that it wasn’t them running. Calls front desk and they admit to already having found another group of older girls to be the cause for the problem.
- Coach tells the front desk of the bikers and his problem with them looking for our girls.
- Front desk tells him that they had called some prostitutes that they front desk had tuned away. We later figure that our girls all dressed up from their fancy night our looked to the drunk bikers to be their prostitutes.
- The coach tells the girls the bikers were looking for the “ladies of the night” when they ask what they had wanted.
- Girls ask what the “ladies of the night” are…He tells them its lights out.

Funny part is we plan to go back next year...

Skakes