Pastoral Council Doubts

Jeromey Balderrama

Interesting night tonight..  Not really quite sure just how I feel right now.

Tonight I had a Pastoral Council meeting at my church.  These are monthly meetings held on the 1st Monday, and it seems that whenever Pastoral Council Monday rolls around it really zaps the energy out of me.

First of all, I’m chairperson of the Pastoral Council, and while it sounds pretty cool and important, this is really something that I reluctantly accepted.  Believe it or not, I’m the only 3rd year member on there (Pastoral Council members are term-limited to 3 years at my church), and we had a chairperson throughout the first-half of the year but she had to resign because she was going back to school in Denver and her classes were taking up all of her time, so I as the Vice/Co-Chair reluctantly accepted the position.  I even tried to back-pedal out of it when they offered it to me, talking about how I’m not sure if a student should be chair of the Pastoral Council, how I don’t have a lot of time and so-forth, but it still got thrust upon me unfortunately.  So I’ve been trying to make an honest effort out of it, but truth be told I’m not really passionate about the inter-politics & (lack of good) decision making at my church that’s been going on for the last years.  And then when it’s time to get something done for the PC I’ve had the hard time making any time for it.  I feel bad because I’m not giving the group a real honest effort, but at the same time my heart’s not really into it…  It’s just one of those things.

The meeting went pretty well, it flowed alright and I tried to keep people somewhat on topic, but again it’s hard hearing some of the things at those meetings.  It goes back to some of the struggles I blogged about back on May 12th – decisions about how they are (not) going to replace the Director of Campus Ministry position and all of that crap.  When it got rehashed again it really made me upset.

At the end of nights like these I ask myself "Why am I still going to these meetings?"  I’m really not getting anything out of it.  I don’t really I’m making any valuable contributions.  Do I really need to be here?  Then I am reminded of a column that I read back in 2003, from Ron Rolheiser, a very wise priest that was called "Pentecost Happened at a Meeting".  In his column, he reminds us:

"Pentecost happened at meeting and it happened to a community, to a church congregation assembled for prayer, to a family of faith gathered to wait for God’s guidance. Moreover it happened in a common room, a meeting room, in one of those humble, church- basement, type of rooms. It can be helpful to remember that."

He ends the column by saying that "When you don’t know what else to do, keep going to meetings."  So I will keep doing that.  I know that there’s a reason I should be at these meetings.  What it is, I have no idea, but I will still hold that faith…  But I still can’t help but wonder "Why me?"

At times like these I hate programming…

Jeromey Balderrama

I just wasted half a day here at work because of one stupid character.  We’re in the process of upgrading to a new platform and while I’ve been doing that I was updating my component of the application when I realized it wasn’t submitting.  It wasn’t returning any error messages at all – it just plain wasn’t working and reloading the form.  I went through and broke down the 80 different fields in the app and verified they were all doing the right thing.  Then I went through and debugged 1600 lines of code..  Only to find that one of the fields that I’m relying on was depending on my input to be 5 characters, when I was feeding it 6 characters!  Turns out it’s always been that way, but now the field isn’t as forgiving!

So I wasted four hours of my work day for a stupid character limit of 1!  How lame!!  More to come….

Saturday Craziness

Jeromey Balderrama

Well today ended up being a long, but great day!  In one day I got to be both a teacher and a student of sorts, and both experiences were rewarding.

So first my experience as a student… (and don’t laugh).  I learned how to drive a stick-shift today.  Yes I realize that I am 23 and am just learning how to drive one. You may laugh now, but NO MORE LAUGHING AFTER THIS!!!

I didn’t do as bad as I thought I would.  It took a little getting used to for the first few minutes, but I managed to get the knack and did some pretty good driving.  Driving a stick is really not that much different than playing drum set: both your feet are working separately, but also have to be in time with each other.  I drove down from Fort Collins to Loveland, then to south Loveland to get gas (where it’s $1.98 a gallon!!!) and then drove out to I-25 to trade cars with my sister.  A lot of stop & go traffic, I think I am ready to give up my Explorer in 10 days.

Now my experience as a teacher…  I ended up teaching a 4 year old about drumming!  Okay so I wasn’t really a teacher, more like a babysitter, but I did manage to teach her something…

After I finished cruising town in my sister’s Mazda I went back up to Fort Collins, got my drum set and went to church to play.  Usually our choir has anywhere from 5-7 people.  Well today we had 2…  Myself (the drummer) and Pete the guitar player/singer.  We also had a piano player on loan from one of the other choirs.  So needless to say we were in dire need of singers.  Luckily our on-loan piano player managed to call his sister who was happy to come and sing, along with her husband and her three kids.  Next thing we knew the choir platform turned into Romper Room.  It was chaotic, but at the same time it was pretty sweet.  Their 4-year-old daughter was so interested in the drum set that she parked up a chair right next to the drumset.  It was really sweet, but at the same time hilarious because all throughout Mass she kept asking me "What does that pedal do?" "What sound does that stick make?" "Why are you using those red brushes instead of the blue weird-looking sticks?"  "I bet I know what sound the tambourine makes"..  It was really funny.  I answered all of her questions and ended up giving a mini drum clinic right there.  It was cute, and I got really good at being able to play all my parts, (try to) sing, and entertain a 4 year-old at the same time.  Way to go for multi-tasking!

This was also a great affirmation that a LOOOOOOOOOONG ways away from having kids!

Madagascar and Engagement Parties

Jeromey Balderrama

TGIF!  Well… technically it is now Saturday, but who is keeping track?  So this is what I love most about the 3-day weekend – the following weekend seems to come that much sooner, and this one didn’t disappoint.  Even though I worked on less day this week I still seemed pretty tired by the end of the week!  Many loose ends are work are getting tied up, and I’m managing to move through a lot of my smaller-scale projects with ease.  Times are good right now at work!

A few randomized thoughts about what I’ve been doing for the last few days:

Madagascar – See This Movie!  I got a chance to go see it on Thursday night, and it turned out to be a really hilarious, fun movie.  Granted, it was no Shrek (or Sherk 2 for that matter), but as animated movies go this one rates right up there with the best of them.  There wasn’t any specific character that stole the show – but rather the movie was relatively fast paced, the humor was light and fresh, and none of the voice-overs were too annoying (although David Schwimmer did start to get on my nerves a bit by the end of the movie – but I can’t stand that guy to begin with).  But overall it was a good flick.

As I was watching this movie there was a question/thought that kept coming to mind: What is the target age demographic for DreamWorks animated movies?  Throughout the movie I kept thinking to myself  "Geez, if I had little kids I don’t think I would take them to this movie."  Is the humor that occurs in (namely) DreamWorks animated movies understood by kids?  Or does it go over their heads and provide the parents a chuckle during the movie.  Let me give you an example that triggered this thought.  At one point in the movie Alex the Lion built a giant sign out of palm trees that read "HELP", then a few seconds later the trees fell down on the "P" so that the word "HELL" was spelled..  As I was watching that I was thinking to myself – Would a 6-7 year old have caught that?  Could they read that word?  What about a 4-5 year old?  When I was growing up I was taught that "HELL" was a bad word.  Does a kid watching this movie comprehend what just happened on screen?

Now DreamWorks animated movies don’t pretend to be a kid friendly as some of the classic Disney animated films that we grew up with – which brings me back to my original question – How old is DreamWorks target audience for this movie?  How about for Shrek?  If you had kids/younger siblings, how old would they have to be to go see one of these movies?

I think that Disney/Pixar animated movies differ from the Dreamworks films.  While there are questionable material in films from both companies, I get the indication that Disney/Pixar attempts to be toned down to accommodate the younger kids (Monster’s Inc is a good example).  I’m not sure where’d I’d place the "Incredibles".

Personally I don’t think I would take my kids to go see a Dreamworks movie until they were around 8 or 9, and at a point where I can help them understand why some of this is humorous, but also how when taken out of context can be inappropriate.

Then there’s a part of me that gets nostalgic of the Classic animated Disney films and gets sad that Disney flushed their animation division down the toilet the way they did… Outside of the Pixar stuff (which recently cut ties with Disney last year) Disney hasn’t put out a decent animated film since Lion King.

 

Quick question – and I mean this in the most kind-hearted, sincere and just possibly ignorant manner – Since when did people start having engagement parties?

I check my mailbox and there I find that I’ve been invited to an engagement party for a friend of mine.  Now maybe it’s because I’m a guy and really have no concept of sentiment, especially about weddings – but what is the point of an engagement party?  I’m glad you’re engaged – way to go for finding that special someone, but why do you have to have a party around your engagement.  If the intention is that you’re in love and want people to help you celebrate the fact that you’re going to spend the rest of your life with that special someone – isn’t that what the wedding is for?  You’re engaged – great! I’m happy for you, but why are we having a party about it?  In my friend’s case (and this is a bit of a personal rant, so excuse me) they’ve been engaged for almost 6 weeks, and before then we knew that they were planning it two months prior to that – the rest was just a formality.  Also if the wedding is in October can’t you wait to have the wedding to bring people to celebrate?  Maybe I’m being cynical here, but like I said I’m not trying to be negative – I’m probably just an ignorant guy.  If there really is an answer please enlighten me!

 

Last (and probably least)…  I scratched my rent check tonight for me to drop into my mailbox, only to realize that as I’m looking at the calendar I’m not going to be living in my apartment 20 out of the 30 days this month!  This is lame!  Beginning Sunday night I’ll be spending the week down at my parent’s in Loveland making sure my youngest sister stays out of trouble: 8 days.  Then I’m going to be at home 3 days, then on June 15th my mom, aunt and youngest sister are going to New Mexico to clean out and pack up my Grandparents’ (God rest their souls) house.  Which means 10 days that I’m going to be in Loveland house-sitting for the dog & cat.  Then I’m going to DC/Virginia for the Dave Matthews Concert.  So I am paying rent even though I won’t be there 2/3 of the time! 

Ugh… I just needed to complain about that…

Short Week

Jeromey Balderrama

I don’t know if I like or hate the first day of a 4-day week.  A big part of me hates Tuesdays of the 4 day week because it feels like a Monday, but jammed in with all of the Tuesday stuff as well.  This usually means I have double the work that I need to do.  But I like 4-day Tuesdays because after a long weekend there is nothing better than realizing that you’re one less day from the next weekend…  So I think the jury’s still out.

Today was a good day but a tough day.  Good because I had a really good night with a very sweet gal   Tough because I had all of my Tuesday meetings mixed in with my Monday confusion.  Then I ended my day by driving my sister Amanda to the airport.  It’s kinda funny, but even after yesterday’s rant I’m still really going to miss my sister.  It’s funny because as we were driving home my mom and I realized that my sister probably won’t ever be coming back west for any extended period of time ever again.  I think that during the summers she’ll probably find an internship like the one she’s going to now and have another reason to stay out in Boston.  As I picture my sister I really think that she’s going to be happier in the east, as well as far away from her family as possible

Alright, bed time…  I’m really zapped from such a long day – but there are only 3 more left before the weekend comes!