neurological dryer lint

so every year we take the UC new leader training folks down to a young life fall weekend to be the work crew - i know it'll be the toughest weekend of the year, because i won't get much sleep, i'll be moving nonstop, and i'll be sore for the next couple of days; it's also really valuable time with the NLT guys.

i don't much enjoy being in charge of things, and these weekends always bring that feeling to the surface. i can never escape the constant thought that every decision i make is wrong - and more often than not, they turn out to be, and it's a bummer of a way to spend a few days. sure, we got through the weekend just fine, nothing burned down, and jason shields got hit in the face with an octopus, and our work crew was phenominal. but i got home, my self-confidence as torn-up as my legs, and thought about the best part of the weekend - sitting around for an hour with a hurt camper, waiting to hear back from his parents, just hanging out, trying to ease his mind about his injuries, talking about video games and paintball.

when i was thinking about leaving oak hills in '05 i had this urge to sort of 'be a bridge' to a different generation of Christians, people that were heavily anchored in the traditional. so here we are almost three years later and i am exactly where i talked about being (although the people i'm trying to lead are my parents' age).

i don't doubt my decision to leave young life, it was the right thing to do so that i could devote mindspace to being married. and i don't dislike what i'm doing now in the church small group - it has certainly been the right thing to do for the past year; but my heart is being nudged in a different direction, it seems, and sometime soon i imagine i will discover a much stronger pull and i'll know it's time to come back.

hey look, galaxy is the highest rated game of all time. ok, i'll bite. here's what's good about this game:

- brilliant level design. each 'galaxy' is one level with a bunch of small planets and four or five separate objectives to play through, and each galaxy feels totally new. you're never lost about what to do next, or how to accomplish something.
- graphically amazing (for the Wii), although i think nintendo has hit a ceiling on how good mario games will look forever. if the wii had the horsepower of the 360 or ps3 i honestly don't think it would improve anything.
- a whole lot of fun. unless you're a hardcore dude who wants everything to look like gears you'll laugh and enjoy yourself while digging through this game.

what sucks about it:

- here we go with the same problem i whined about in zelda recently: if you're going to do innovative controls, do them PERFECTLY. i'm not used to first-party nintendo-developed titles with any flaws in the controls... and just like with zelda, they manifest most frequently in boss battles, where timing and precision are key. when you can't hit the boss because the motion controls aren't working perfectly, or you miss something because your pointer stopped appearing onscreen, and you die or get hurt because of it, something is wrong. it's hugely frustrating and kind of sabotages the whole innovative-motion-thing they are selling.
- when you save & quit your game and restart it later, you lose all of your lives and reset to the default of 4. have i talked about how crappy that is?
- every time you get a 'letter' from a character in-game, your main Wii inbox gets a message, and your console's disc tray lights up. i used to think this was a cool feature. now it's just distracting.

GHOSTBUSTERS, y'all. with the original cast doing voice work. uhhh, LEGENDARY.