I love it when the estimate shipping date is wrong and your package comes 3 days early! I got my mp3 player today! It is so cool. It is nice and small, and plays music from Yahoo music no problem. I just plugged it in- had it generate a playlist of over 100 songs that are "Like Blink 182". Now I am rocking for the next 10 hours... Works brilliant in the car with my new stereo. Good thing too... This morning I realized there was steam coming from my air vents. That means one thing- heater core is leaking... The heater core is like the one thing that when I got asked to do back in the days working at Joe Kerby auto repair, I would just groan. I dig tearing apart the engine, but usually to get to the heater core you have to go from the INSIDE of the car. I don't dig tearing apart the inside. Lots of cheap plastic pieces that easily break. I end up tearing out the entire interior to realize I only had to loosen this part and blah blah. Anyway, that is my fun car repair job for the week. Maybe I'll download some lullabyes on it and get Luke to fall asleep while I work on the car for 4 hours... Suck, I am going to go back to thinking about my mp3 player. I have been rocking out to Switchfoot's latest album this week. I mostly don't like "Christian" music, it is just too cheezy for me. I was raised on zeppelin, metallica, boingo even- the lyrics of most christian songs often make me laugh. I know they are meaningful, but they are just not for me. This was until Switchfoot. I really enjoy nearly all their songs. I wouldn't say that they are some incredibly remarkably band- but they actually play decent music with strong christian messages and they don't throw in the typical references to lambs, blood, fire, heavens, mountains, sea... Like a simple message that is so true to the core. "We are the corporate target, we are slaves of what we want ." I mean they even address the most critical question of God, why is there pain and suffering in the world? Their line, "The shadow proves the sunshine" addresses this in a way filled with imagery. Lastly, my favorite title, "Happiness is a Yuppie word" is apparently stolen from an interview with Dylan when asked if he was happy in his later years. He followed the yuppie comment with, we are either blessed or not blessed. How true is that? I started thinking about that today. How in our comfortable American culture we can "stress" about whether we are happy. Did you know that the word stress did not exist in the Italian language- they use our word. In our lives of measuring the stress of school, work, family, other cultures actually just call it living. We can reliably get food, water, and not have to worry about being eaten by an animal or shot or beat? Even our grandparents lived a much harder existence, but survived. They didn't talk about "balancing" work and home- they just did what they had to do. It is actually a luxury that we have time to stress about it. That has what has always kept me level during grad school. Whenever I start to get freaked out about all the work and responsibility I have, I just stop to think about working at my dad's shop. Now that was work. Long hours, thankless work, not much financial reward. I truly appreciate my education and the luxuries it has afforded me. Whether I wake up tomorrow morning "happy" "depressed" "stressed" or "mad", I will always know that I am truly blessed to have my education, my family, and my friends. Hehe, I love this blog entry- from the superficial of a new toy to the true meaning of life- now there is a blog!