Call Me a Fan

This is sort of a big announcement for me. Ever since the Winnipeg Jets were sold back in '96, I've been wandering through the diaspora of hockey fandom. I grew up an hour outside of Winnipeg, cheering for the Jets and going to their games. My brother and I even got on TV once during the "Save the Jets" campaign because we happened to sit behind Gary Filmon, the Primier of Manitoba at that time. Over the years, I've tried to cheer for various teams (Vancouver, Montreal, Edmonton, Ottawa... not Toronto - who would?), but nothing stuck. Finally, this year, I settled on Chicago. There are a few reasons why I've chosen to announce myself as a formal Chicago fan:

1. Old Winnipeg presence. As a player, I like Nikolai Khabibulin, the starting goalie for the Blackhawks. He was the last goalie for the Jets back in 1996. I've sort of followed him around a bit over the years (as I have with other Jets alumni like Temmu Selanne or Keith Tkuchuk). He's not Mr. Consistent like Brodeur or Nabokov and the like, but he can pull off some amazing stunts in net.
2. New Winnipeg presence. Two of the team's upcoming stars, Jonathan Toews and Duncan Keith, are from Winnipeg.
3. Chicago is primarily a Canadian team, though it operates in the US. As you can see from their team roster, cheering for Chicago is just as Canadian as cheering for one of the teams that play up here. 1 French, 1 Russian, 1 Czech, 2 Swedes, 3 Americans, and 15 Canadians.
4. In a couple of years, I hope to be studying in the Chicago area, possibly at Wheaton College or Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, both a stone's throw away. I could be a game-attending fan again!

I don't think Chicago will be the champion in this year's playoffs, but with all their young talent, I think they'll be an exciting team to watch in the years to come.

So there you have it. Call me a Blackhawk. I'm in.

Mr. Spock's Kohanic Blessing

Here's an intersection of nerdom for you:

"Leonard Nimoy [a.k.a., Mr. Spock] . . . devised the Vulcan Salute - a raised hand, palm forward with the fingers parted between the middle and ring finger - based on the traditional kohanic [priestly] blessing, which is performed with both hands, thumb to thumb in this position: 

a position thought to represent the Hebrew letter shin ש. (This letter is often used as a symbol of God in Judaism, as it is an abbreviation for one of God's names, El Shaddai. This usage is seen, for example, on every mezuzah.) Nimoy says he derived the accompanying spoken blessing, 'Live long and prosper' from this source, as the last phrase of the blessing is 'May the Lord be forebearing unto you and give you peace' (Numbers 6:24-26)." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Nimoy#Stage_and_screen)

Who would have known that Vulcans are steeped in Jewish tradition?

Early Morning Acquisitions

This morning, Archibald Library at Briercrest College & Seminary is holding a used book sale. I got in there at 8:02am, and already there were more than 20 people skimming the racks. I walked away with a few good titles, such as The Unaborted Socrates (Peter Kreeft), The Christian Educator's Handbook on Teaching (Gangel & Hendricks), and The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament (W. S. LaSor). My favourite is definitely Reverend S. R. Driver's Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Deuteronomy. It's a 1909 edition, originally published in 1902. Driver is one of the bigwigs who put together BDB ("Brown-Driver-Briggs"), a standard Hebrew/Aramaic lexicon of the Old Testament, so you know Rev. Driver knows his stuff. I figure a 2nd edition is pretty good. It's in need of delicate care, and that it will most certainly receive on my shelf!

Exegetical Adventures

The past few weeks, I've had the pleasure of helping out some promising, young Greek exegetes. During my time as a student at Briercrest College, I found there was no task I enjoyed more than a good exegetical paper. It's fun to get buried in good books, and to get lost on journal article hunts, and to have an excuse to read Greek all day long. Now that I've graduated (and am taking very few classes -- just 'interest' stuff now), I've found it to be an even more greatly enjoyable task to turn around and help younger Greek students with their exegetical pursuits. Maybe this sounds like a horrible way to spend time to some people... but I've had a lot of fun spending some hours with a handful of Greek students who were in the midst of writing their very first exegetical papers. (That is a very special time!) It was fun to show them how to make good use of lexicons, grammars, theological dictionaries, and divinely-provisioned software like Bibleworks. Somehow I get a big kick out of all this. Helping hungry minds discover the fun in exegesis is like the can of spinach to this Pop-Eye. Maybe one day I can even be paid to do this!

Out with the Old and In with the... Older

Tax time is happy time for Jenn and I this year. Since we have so much back-logged tuition, we probably won't have to pay the government for many tax years to come. And so this year, we decided to have mercy on our little car that has served me so well since 2003. It's a little white, 4-door, 1992 Chevy Cavalier. I've put plenty of kms on it (and plenty of money into it...). It has been our faithful BA-mobile, but it's time for it to hang up the skates and settle in someone else's pasture.

To our delight, we happened upon a "new" vehicle that will soon be ours. It is in great condition, and has less than 100,000 km on it! And, in a way, it is a bit of a shout out to our old Cavalier. The new car is white, has four doors, and is a Chevy Cavalier hailing from 1990! Two years older, but so much newer!

All we have to wait for now is the big tax-time pay day!

New Pictures

Hello random blog-readers!

This is just a short note to say we've added lots of pictures for you to tide you over until we actually spend time on a new post.

http://picasaweb.google.ca/lukeandjenn

Enjoy!

Luke and Jenn

Fun with the Johnsons

Hello,

This is officially my second blog (I'm sure Luke is beaming with pride as he was always hoping that I would become a blogger...oh dear).

To add to Luke's summary of recent events, we spent two days in Whitebear SK where Luke'sparents own a Minigolf/Fruit stand/Petting Zoo/other misc items and participated in the Canada Day parade. We spent the afternoon at the Kenosee Super slides racing Luke's sisters down the slides and also listening to some random comments from Luke's sister Gina(11): "Will some of my freckles fall off eventually?" and "Did you know that cornmeal is made from Beetle eggs?" Gross! All of Luke's sisters are quite entertaining.

Brett also entertained us with some amazing piano pieces before we crashed for the night. Most of them were theme songs to video games (he's a gamer :) but they definitely sound impressive when Brett plays them. Brett also told us lots of funny stories from the group home that he works at.


I also recently attended a Princess Birthday party for one of my little 4 year-old friends. She is quite the cute little girl and she has become my favorite little person here in Caronport. She enjoyed being Snow White for the day and I enjoyed watching her excitement and joy.


I think most of our eventfulness is over for the summer, but I'm looking forward to spending time with friends here in Caronport.

Thats all for now. Enjoy the pictures!

Jenn