For those of you who don't know yet, I have the great privilege of announcing that Jennifer Diestelkamp agreed to become my wife last Saturday. At the moment, we are planning to be married in Pontiac, IL (Jen's hometown), on the forth weekend of May.
Needless to say, we are both extremely excited and a feeling a little surreal about the whole experience. :)
So exciting. :-) I told Jenny this on facebook, but I'll tell you too. You guys have been a pleasure to watch grow together - your relationship is one that relationships should be modeled after. I cried when I heard you were engaged because I was SO happy for you.
Hey ... someone from the congregation back home sent out an email saying something about you trying out up there at Marietta. Have you thought about it?
No no, Ben is a great teammate, he would never do a thing like that. Hmm...well, maybe he would. But he didn't this time. It was Devin, who is rather violent sometimes. I sent him the hospital bill though, so we're square. :)
that was not very nice. First you tell me you are not going to make it. Then you make me panic by sending in a response. Only to find that you wrote you weren't coming.
you mean I didn't tell you it was love at first sight with that potentially creepy guy who wants to come to church with me on Sunday? I can't believe I would've let that slip! :)
Congratulations Nathan Combs!!!! I want to hear all about it sometime and I want to see the ring and I want to hear how you did it and I'm just sooooo happy for you guys! Love you both!
Before the life update... I'll provide some ramblings on why I don't post very often, which you are welcome to skip. :)
As anyone connected with this blog will already know, I am obviously not a big believer in using pleonast as a outlet for daily creative journalistic impulses, as my infrequent posting record will attest. One of the reasons for this is simply that I would be tempted to stay mesmorized by a computer screen for gargantuan periods of the day. On the occasions when I do post, I inevitably refresh my blog screen constantly throughout a 48 hr. period - desperately searching for one to two sentence comments, which are (no offense) usually not worth all the time and energy I expend looking for them. In this flurry of pleonast activity, I will also frequent the blogs of 98% of my friends and post on them... hoping that they will be inspired to post on mine. I consider all this a major misuse of time - especially if done on a frequent basis. For those of you who can post daily, or on some kind of a regular basis, and can still be productive with your lives and not allow your computer to consume your existence - I admire your self-control. :)
Another reason for my lackluster pleo posting involves my increasing annoyance with internet communication. When I'm trying to communicate my thoughts in an understandable way - I (naturally) hate it when people misunderstand me. Because the internet does not communicate facial features, tone of voice, or other verbal cues very well, confusion occurs much more easily. Granted, some of these problems are contained in written communication as well - which is part of the reason I'm not prolific in my letter writing. (The other part of it is I'm just rather lazy when it comes to investing time and effort into written communication. :)) Getting back to misunderstanding... sometimes even my closest friends find themselves scratching their heads about a statement that I thought would be perfectly clear and vice versa. This is not ideal. I'm not denying the atvantages and conveniences of internet communication, but I think it is too often overused, abused, and turned into a shallow time-wasting device. I freely admit that I have used it that way in the past, but I'm hoping to curb these habits in the future.
Since I occasionally look at the blogs of others, however, I feel compelled to write on mine once and awhile to let interested readers know what is happening in my life and to reciprocate information that I receive through means of pleo. Especially if those readers don't know me very well or haven't been recently updated by me in person or on the phone.
Anyway, enough pleo analysis. All that to say... my infrequent posting is not just the result of laziness. There are a few other reasons. :)
Life Update:
My life is full and rich. I'm blessed with the friendship of many admirable people, and the ability, funds, and time to see some of them over the course of this winter break. I just returned from an excursion to northern IL - where I was able to spend a week with my best friend/girlfriend (Jennifer Diestelkamp) and her family. During that time we attended a prototype FC booster club winter camp together, where I saw a significant ammount of snow for the first time in eight years. It was also a joy to meet and rub elbows with many other Christians from that general area and to profit from their company.
I'm now back in TX for today, but will be on the road heading back for another semester at USF (University of South Florida). The completion of my Bachelor's in Communications is happily looming on the horizon and I will graduate in Dec. of this year with my last college degree in hand, Lord willing. In the meantime, I am enjoying the experiences of an apartment and the challenges of dealing with a major University. I'm also getting passionate about an ongoing Bible study with one of my former communications classmates, which seems to be going well (though we've only met once). So, all in all, my life beginning in the next couple of weeks is going to be about as busy as a toy shop on Christmas Eve, but I'm looking forward to all of the opportunities to grow.
I was also curious, given your apparent disparagement of written communication, what you think of God's use of written communication. (Warning: Due to the inherent of deficiencies of written communication, you are hereby warned that the preceding comment was intended to be humorous, and was typed in a jesting fashion.)
In addition, I cannot help but wonder whether the fact that you are a "Communications" major might not be biasing against written communications, eh? :-P
Thanks for sharing your thoughts; they were interesting, even if they were - ironically - motivated by a misunderstanding of my written comment. :-) I'm glad you eventually read the part where I said I was joking, too. :-)
notice that short post. I'm on line to renew an overdue video (Bleak House - which was very very very Good!!!) and I'm hoping to watch again in a quiet moment. :)
WELL...I haven't actually looked at many schools. The biggest criteria for schools is that they are near people I know. I've considered UNT, UTA, TCU (if I could find plenty of financial aid...), FSU, UNC Chapel Hill, and Ball State University in Indiana. Any suggestions? Additions? Comments? I'm open to any advice!
Philosophical question of the day: why do we offer some people a penny for their thoughts and then turn around and offer other people (like college professors) thousands and thousands for their thoughts? It just seems really unfair and demeaning to the penny people. :)
I'm reminded of a Calvin and Hobbes comic where Hobbes insists that his thoughts are worth a quarter, not a penny. After Calvin gives him a quarter, Hobbes then tells him that "a fool and his money are soon parted". Needless to say, Calvin did not feel he got his money's worth for the said thought.
Yes. I think we need a windfall profits tax on all those college professors! It will bring fairness to American and help prevent global warming!!!! (...yes, I'm joking.)
Hi Nathan - odd, but most college professors I know don't make enough to drive new cars! So I don't know if we can say their thoughts are super high on the payscale :) Begging your pardon!
Well, I did have a teacher named Cindy Strange, but that was last summer. She was a little odd... which would have been noticed even if her name had been Cindy Combs :)
haha... I typed everyon's names into a "How Will YOU be Defined in the Dictionary?" thingy, and that's how you happened to come out :) How are things??
There is something incommunicably majestic about singing spiritual songs to God with 1,286 other people in the same vicinity. Do you ever get those moments when you feel waves of unutterable spiritual emotion sweeping over you? Chills that shoot up the spine? Those are the moments were you can close your eyes and be so close to seeing Him, to communing with Him. I think many got that feeling tonight during the singing. I wish Christians would talk about emotion more. Sometimes we're so afraid of sounding pentecostal or overly hocus-pocus that we lose the proper perspective towards spiritual emotion. But... I digress. :)
It's phenomenal to think that so many hearts and minds could be so focused in the same direction. Unified devotion is such a powerful concept and spiritual singing is certainly proof of that. When we feel that our words fail to adequately express our deepest thoughts to God... I think that the mere act of singing our words of praise makes them mean more!
How dare we think that lifeless, heartless instruments can add anything to the beauty and power of the human voice when it's being used to sing to God! With all of the singing that will be involved in eternity... Heaven is going to be amazing beyond belief. :)
I've heard so so much about this "Kleinwood Singing." it's in Texas, right? I'll have to go someday...and I know exactly what you mean. It's like being in the prescence of God...too wonderful to describe. hope you're doing great, Nathan! USF is calling your name...
Jenny's help that week was invaluable, both in the kitchen and all over the campgrounds. She and Heidi pretty much worked their hearts out scrubbing pots and pans... and so I'm sure compared to a dirty skillet, my face was a pleasant sight. :-)
