neurological dryer lint

i decided to live the adventure last night and install xp media center, right? well upgrade to it, anyway. popped in the CD and went through the install process - which was identical to a normal XP install, except it wouldn't take a normal XP product key and i had to get a media-center-specific one. so it finishes, reboots, i activate it... it's exactly the same. as in, nothing got changed. except my AGP drivers vanished and i had to reinstall them. but otherwise, nothing. no media center.

so after searching around, apparently, i have to install it clean, i can't upgrade an existing XP pro install. lovely.

tonight should be fun - renee and i and artie and lisa and susan and josh (and hopefully leslie and bill) are going to the winery to watch that band and hang out. should be sweet. and interesting - renee's parents are coming, and they're bringing friends too. hmmmmm.

so i tried to swim laps again last night. the first time was nothing short of disastrous - i guess it's an asthma thing because i got through like 3 laps and i couldn't breathe at all. felt like someone was suffocating me with a wet pillow. and i was sore as crap for two days. so why not try it again, it's been a few weeks? yeah, same thing. i know it's probably the best exercise i can do, because of how effecively it works, but i'm taking the trade-off of breathing.

last night at guys group we talked about God's will some - the concept of God having an idea about a direction our lives should go in. one that will bring us closest to him, or afford us that kind of environment. we were talking about getting a sense of where we're supposed to go when we don't know - got me thinking, every other major decision i've had to make, the 'milestones' as jake called them, have been pretty clear. i have no doubt this next one will too. the thing that worries me is my tendency to allow my dangerous comfort-obsession to drag me in a direction that's bad for me. selfishly living my life always ends up making me feel more unsatisfied and incomplete. what happens when i make a big decision based on that comfort-obsession?

it's interesting, though. faced with something like that, i don't think i could make a decision to depart from where God would have me go any more than i could cut off my own foot. it's just where i'm at. and it's not my doing at all, i certainly didn't make myself like that. because somehow i can make good decisions and stay close with God in the large things - just not very well in the small, uneventful, day to day things. little things, i can't allow anyone else to take control. i wonder which is more important? one could make arguments for both.