I'm still adjusting to the new apartment. Not that the apartment is difficult to adjust to, it's that some of the things they said they would fix aren't fixed yet. The most annoying is probably the closet where I need to put most of my stuff. How can I feel moved in if all my stuff is still in the room in boxes? The other most annoying thing is the electrical. Ok, tell me if you've ever encountered anything that isn't like this. Typically, you have a light switch hooked up to one outlet in the room. Well, our apartment has one light switch hooked up to both outlets on a wall in each room. This is really annoying because first, it's not the best wall for the light and second, I have more than just lights to plug in and I would rather they not be controlled by light switches (i.e. computer being the most sensitive). Can you imagine using your computer and then your roommate casually switches off the lights as he goes to bed, and oops, my computer too? That's gotta be good for the hard drive. You could always tape the light switch so nobody uses it, but then we can't use any of our light switches for lights! Anyways, I put in the work request with 12 items on it. Hopefully, we'll get all of our requests fixed. The manager is pretty good. I don't think he's lazy. I just think he's preoccupied with renovating the building. Every morning I get woken up by hammers banging on the other side of the wall. I don't mind too much cuz I need to get up anyways, but it's still kind of a shock in the morning. This morning I opened my front door and there was a plastic sheet taped to the door frame on the otherside. I guess they thought I left for work already, ha ha. It was like when they covered the house in plastic in that movie, E.T. Anyways, I had to carefully peel myself an opening so I could get out of my apartment and then try and put it back as best as I could.

On my way home from work today, I noticed that this was one of those evenings where the sunset would be exceptionally awesome. So I quickly drove home and got my camera before heading over to the beach. I always wanted to do stuff like this, but when I lived in Westwood, the moment would be gone before I could even get my camera. Now my home is on the way to the beach so I was there taking pictures within a half hour. August sunsets are probably the best in the entire year for the Los Angeles beaches. I remember seeing some good ones this time last year. I can't really say how the sunsets are in the winter time. I'm usually still at work until dark. I'm willing to go out on a limb on my August claim though. Check them out here. If there any you would like in hi-res for your desktop or something, let me know the code number you want and I'll email it to you. Each one is about 1 or 2 MB. I'm still working on my photography skills. The hardest thing about these photos was taking a perfectly horizontal picture. This is really hard to do without a tripod and especially when you have a perfectly flat horizon. I got it pretty good in most of the photos. Other ones, the colors were too good to discard. A couple pics are a little grainy. I was messing around with too many settings I think. I think auto everything works best. I also discovered that 2200x1700 resolution is not as clear as 1600x1200 either because I didn't have enough light or I didn't have a tripod or probably both. I don't know, anybody have tips for a Canon S400? Oh, one cool thing to note about the pictures is the sun may look like it's behind the clouds in some of the pictures, but all the pictures were taken after the sun had completely set. It's a mystery.

Moving Day Is Over, Sorting Days Have Begun

The move went over pretty smoothly. I got all my junk to the new place. The new place is coming together really nice. This is easily the nicest apartment I've ever had. It actually looks like a home and not a dorm room. I bought a lot of furniture for the living room only cuz it was too cheap to pass up. In my previous apartment, the only thing I owned in the living room were the TV, lamp, and clock. Now the living room is pretty much all my stuff...couches, coffee table, endtable, and the entertainment center. I keep wondering, how did our place look so good all of a sudden? The building is also being renovated on the outside. Originally, we planned on finding an ugly building with the a nice inside. I figured, who cares about the outside, I will hardly ever see that part, so why should I pay for it? All that matters is the place across the street looks nice, cuz that's what you see when you look out the window or leave the place, ha ha. But now they are ripping off the pink wood siding and replacing it with stucco, so the building will actually look pretty good when their done. I'm glad we got the ugly building rent rate. We will also have a backyard when renovation is complete.

So now all the stuff is at the new place, but I still need to sort out all this random stuff and throw away the stuff I don't need. Last time I moved I threw away alot of stuff, but I was surprised just after two years how much more stuff I need to consider throwing away. It's a weird feeling to see all your possessions piled together in one space. Most of this stuff I forgot I had, but I kept it because someone gave it to me or I thought I might need it. I can think of keeping something that someone gave me, but if I thought I needed something and I forgot I had it and I've kept it all these years and never used it, do I really need it? Probably not. Electronics are the worst for this. They still work fine, but they are so old, their use is no longer needed. Who needs an MP3 player with 32MB of RAM? You can hold one CD in there at ok quality I think. It works perfectly fine, but I'll never use it again especially when I'm looking to get an iPod. Or will I ever play a cassette tape again? Do I really need to play things on my tape recorder anymore? I don't think I have in 10 years. I hate to throw away stuff that works, but I sure don't want to be lugging it around either.

I enjoyed visiting a new church alot. I think I'll fit in pretty good there even though I'm one of maybe 3 white people that go there. For some reason I'm more comfortable around Asian people than white people. It's probably cuz of all that time I spent at UCLA, ha ha.

What Are You Looking For Part 2

Ok, who's the wiseguy? Someone got some cutesy ideas from my last post:

"skitguru -workoutmaster" - Ok, anyone who does a search for skitguru is definitely looking for me because everyone knows that there is only one skitguru. Thanks for your silly "workoutmaster" commentary. I am not a master of anything, only a guru of skits.

"-hi skitguru -iloveyou" - This is no doubt done by the same person as the previous one and most likely it was a guy who thought this would be really funny. And they were right.

"is blinking your eyes alot a sign of brain damage?" - This one might actually be real. I wonder what led this person to finally look this up online?

Ok guys, let's keep it limited to the legitimate searches.

What Are You Looking For???

I've been meaning to post on this topic, but the thing I saw today, I could not wait any longer. So every once in a while I look on my site statistics and it tells me if people got to my site from another link. Most of the links come from my Xanga site or Amy's site, but occasionally I'll get something from a search engine. So most of the things I see from search engines are not too strange. I'll get searches for various people I mention on my blog whether I know them or not. But check out some of these more bizarre ones. I'll start with what I saw today:

"Woman mullet hairstyles" - I hope this person was looking for something to make fun of and not looking for new ideas. If so, I hope my blog turned them away from the decision since I did not speak fondly of the style ESPECIALLY for women.

"mormon fashions" - The only Mormon fashion I've heard of is white shirts, black pants, and black ties accompanied by a bike. They also have that "special?" underwear that they get when they marry. Anyways, I guess they were pretty shocked to find what I had to say about the lies that Mormons believe. I hope it challenged whoever read it.

"book mormon skits" - The Skitguru does not do Mormon skits.

"kevin mask ultimate muscle" - Huh? You won't find it here...sorry. Well, maybe 2 out of 4, but I'm not saying which two!

"do short people feel the cold more than tall people" - An interesting question. Unfortunately, there is no answer to it on my blog, but thanks for visiting.

And finally the most curious...

"Kevin xanga sin" - I know that sometimes my blog can reveal my sinful nature from time to time but I never thought that someone would actually seek it out using a search engine. I just can't help but wonder what this person was looking for. I hope they didn't find it here, ha ha.

Anyways, I think the most puzzling thing about how people found themselves on this blog from a search engine was that it clearly didn't identify what they were looking for by the name of the link and yet they still clicked on it. I guess I'll never know why. Ok, I need to start packing my stuff.

Long time, no blog. I went to Utah yesterday and I came back today. Whew! I think I talk about Utah in every blog entry, ha ha. Well, last week I did a little site seeing in Utah. I went to Antelope Island which is in the Salt Lake. It's pretty big and it even has a buffalo ranch on it. I only saw a couple buffalo though. There was also a ton of mosquitos. I guess the area isn't that popular with the locals for that reason alone. Anyways, there was this cool lightning storm on one side of the island and it was clear on the other. My coworker had a film camera so we took some (what I hope is) awesome photos. I'll scan them and put them online soon. I really wish I brought my digital. Next time I go out there for a couple days, I'll take some photos there. I doubt there will be such a cool storm to cast the lighting effects we had this time.

This Saturday I'm moving to Torrance. I haven't packed anything. I haven't had any time. So the plan is to get the truck from Budget early in the morning. Bring it back and put everything that doesn't fit in my car into the truck (i.e. furniture) and take it to Torrance and try to return the truck before they close that day so I won't have to wait until the next day since that's the day I'm going to visit my new church. I hope I like it there.

People are shocked that I'm leaving Grace. It has been my church for 10 years, but I have many reasons for leaving:

1) I live in Westwood. My church is one way and my work is the opposite way. I am spread way too thin. Either I have to get a new job near church or get a new church near work and then live near both.

2) Because I spend all my time driving, I get really worn out and it's hard to really serve in a church. I really want to get involved with youth ministry. I have wanted to do that since I was in college, but I couldn't at Grace because all the stuff was in the valley and met a couple times during the week. That's a long drive through L.A. traffic to go from work to Grace.

3) Since Grace Community Church is not really a local church unless you think of greater Los Angeles as being local, I really struggle having community in my church. It's more like Grace Commuter Church for me. I really need a church family, not just a church.

4) From the beginning, I knew I wouldn't be at Grace forever. It was a great place to learn a whole lot, but now I feel like I need to use what I've learned cuz I'm just getting fat on it. I haven't come close to learning all there is to know, but MacArthur has plenty of materials online so it's not like I will be without. And there will also be plenty of his books to read still of which I am way behind on. Plus the pastor of the new church is a Masters Seminary grad so the teaching is built on a solid foundation.

So everyone I tell this to says these are all excellent reasons for leaving a church, ha ha. I'm glad I came up with them and didn't get them from someone else who was telling me to leave, ha ha. I will be going to the Foundry reatreat for Labor Day and then I'll be done with singles ministry, but not done being single....WOOOOOO! Ha ha, j/k.

Today when I got to Utah, the sky was blue and it was about 90 degrees. Then about an hour later, the sky was dark grey and the temperature dropped to 70 and the wind was something fierce. Then I saw a huge wall of water approaching me as I drove to the hotel. It was quite a storm. Lightning and thunder everywhere. Weather is sure exciting when you've lived in California most of your life, ha ha.

This weekend, I saw The Village. I like most of M. Night Shyamalan's movies mainly because they are really different. The Sixth Sense is his best, but I think The Village is a close second in my opinion. Some parts of the movie really freaked me out. It's funny how one movie will scare a person and to another, they aren't scared at all. What I say to that when I'm the one who got scared is that people who don't get scared in movies lack imagination, ha ha. Anyways, it's a great original story (at least I think it's original). I think some of the reason for M. Night's success is that he makes his villains a mystery. You don't really get to see them right away. He always keeps the camera focused on something else. Like there will be something way scary and you want the camera to pan around really quick so you know you're safe, but he won't do that. I hate that! But that's what makes it so good. Also by creating the mystery of the villain, you're not sure if the villain actually exists or if it's the delusion of the character. Then when you think you've got it all figured out, he'll twist the plot around and you'll be kicking yourself for never seeing it before. That's why M. Night makes such a great movie. He is a master at misdirecting the audience.

The Belarus team left last Friday. This is the first Belarus team without me which isn't saying much since this is only the third one. Hal really wanted me to go. I think it's cuz I'm good at watching the rear and it takes some of the stress off him for looking out for the rest of the group. Belarus is safe for the most part, but it's definitely far more dangerous than being a tourist in Western Europe. Anyways, I wish I could be on the team every year, but it's kind of difficult to do a missions trip every year especially when you get so little time off to do such trips with a full time job. It's not really a vacation which makes it more difficult doing a missions trip two years in a row. Before I did Belarus the second time, I always wondered why I was so interested in missions. Was it for the ministry or was it for the adventure? After going to Belarus a second time, I felt it was equally both. I'm not sure if that is totally the right way to think about it. It definitely wasn't as much of an adventure going to a place a second time. I've seen everything already and since it's not much of a tourist spot, I saw everything there was to see the first time. As far as ministry goes, I'm not really burdened for a particular people group rather I'm burdened for the souls of the lost in general. Some missionaries really want to go to a certain area of the world because they are burdened for the people there. I'm not really like that. I want to talk to whoever will listen. I think that characterizes me as a short termer. There are alot of other places I would like to go. I want the adventure of seeing places that a vacation wouldn't take you to, but I also think doing ministry in those places is far more fulfilling than just touring around. I like to get to know the people. I still haven't given up my dream of doing a longer short term missions trip. The Lord just hasn't provided a way right now so I'm content where I am for the time being. While I wait, there are definitely many things I can work on in my own walk. Perhaps that's why the Lord hasn't provided a way yet, ha ha. Anyways, pray for the Belarus team for the next two weeks. There are alot of unsaved kids that are coming to the meetings out of curiosity.