So…some of you, my loyal gilbyonline readers, may have been\currently be wondering why you’ve had nothing to read for the past four months. In response to that question, I give you these three letters: BWO. Now, let me elaborate…

1) I’ve adopted this outlook on blogging, but as I write this entry, I can’t help but wonder if it’s a selfish outlook. I have friends and family who enjoy keeping up with my blog, so am I disregarding them by not making the time to write? Tell me what you think…

2) Bethany Wolfe, aka B.Wo. (the beautiful girl pictured above). Bethany is my future wife! Sometimes (i.e. right now), I can’t believe that I’m getting married in five months. Bethany is such a huge blessing in my life, and my engagement to her is a pretty huge contrast to my former relationship woes (for more insight, read these). I am very excited about getting married, but I also have so much to prepare for\learn before June 20th. Anyway, Bethany has taken up a lot of my time (which is A-OK with me!), and thus, I am citing her as part of the reason for my lack of bloggification in the last four months.

Life in Orlando is great. The only complaint I have is that I must travel 1400+ miles just to see my fiancee. Other than that, I’m enjoying the east coast. Work is frustrating at times, but overall, I’m learning a lot and being challenged to develop efficient solutions to problems I’ve never faced before, like how to write code to store a gig of data in an Oracle database while eating my lunch so that I don’t have to stay at work for an extra half-hour :-).

I’m going to start singing in a quartet…I’m very excited about that. I’ll be singing baritone, and the guys who I’ll be singing with are VERY talented. I’ll be learning a lot about barbershop\performing\singing in general from them.

Well, I’m going to run an errand and then a marathon. One of those things is not true…

Kenya. Egypt. Congo. Canada, The United Kingdom, France, Morocco, Japan, Italy, Germany, China, Norway, Mexico, Stanleyville?…The American Adventure……?

So…yeah, “multi-concrete adventure” is definitely a more fitting term for my travels the past few weeks because in the span of 11 days, I visited seven different theme parks: The Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, MGM Studios, Epcot, Busch Gardens, Islands of Adventure, and Universal Studios. In each, massive paved thoroughfares led to lines which led to momentary thrills which led to gift shops with monstrous cash registers. Although I had fun in the parks (especially with Bethany), I now yearn to take a “real” vacation. I don’t mean to belittle the joys and thrills of theme parks, but in my opinion, nature is much more captivating. So look out Switzerland…or Breckenridge…here i come!

Having Bethany down here for two weeks was great. We got to spend a lot of quality time together…our favorite day was definitely the one we spent together at Cocoa beach. Although the ocean was far from tranquil, our time together on the sparsely-populated sands (thanks monday!) was sweet. I miss her now, and i’m jealous that she gets to be at Doane, one of my favorite places in the world.

I miss school a lot these days. I miss my friends, who were always in close proximity, the liberal arts climate, the beautiful campus, and making music with people I love. Oh yeah…i miss my family, too :-). It’s hard being so far away…sometimes, I wonder if moving down here was the right thing to do. Thankfully, I have an encouraging girlfriend who reminds me that, as hard as it is, it’s a good thing.

I watched Babel last night. To sum it up, i’ll use the words of Dave Calhoun: “If misery is your pornography, Babel is your holy grail.” It’s a very artsy flick…well shot, with many engaging and entrancing sequences…but I think that in striving to create such a beautiful looking/sounding/feeling (beautifully miserable?) film, director Alejandro Iñárritu sacrificed profundity and thematic coherence. Still, while watching the film, I was too busy feeling so crappy for all of the characters that I didn’t realize these things until after I had seen the whole film, so I’d say it connects well on an emotional level.

Well, I’ve got to find a recycling center…my living room is filling up with plastic bottles, carboard boxes, and paper. Make sure to feed the five new gilbyonline fish! (Adam Bowman gave them to me)

Wow…it’s been four months since I last blogged! Although four months isn’t that much time, a lot of wonderful and crazy things have happened to me. I graduated from college, sang at the international collegiate barbershop competition, moved to Orlando, and started a new full-time job. However, most significantly, i fell in love with a wonderful girl. Although I miss her dearly now that I am far from her, I am excited that she gets to visit me in a couple of weeks!

My new job at Lockheed Martin Simulation, Training, and Support is going well. I have met many nice people who are very willing to get me up to speed with the project that I am working on. Although I look forward to making more friends down here in Orlando, I miss all of the ones I have in Nebraska very much.

I took some pictures of my apartment the other day…you can access them by clicking here. It’s not anything amazing, but I love the location, and it shelters me from florida’s daily afternoon rainstorms. I’ll try to blog semi-regularly from now on…it seems like a pretty good way to give you a general idea of how things are going down here. Well, i’m off for my nightly run, which should turn into a morning run…but not yet :-). Take care!

So, i’m pretty much having the best spring break ever. For five days now, I’ve been hangin out in cities around Boston with my good friends who also happen to sing barbershop with me. We call ourselves Downpour, and we love singing together. We’ve sang in high schools, elementaries, restaurants, bars, and hotels. Oh, and we also rang a tag in some random historical building in Marblehead, MA. Anyway, we are having a super fly time.

Today, we spent the day in downtown Boston. First, we checked out the museum of fine art. It was pretty fine. Then, we went to Cheers and had some food and drink. After that, we got a little history lesson on the freedom trail. Now, i’m sitting in my hotel room, writing this blog. After i finish it, i’m gonna search for jazz clubs in downtown Boston, and if the search is successful, we’ll be chillin at one of them tonight!

Also, while on this tour, I got invited to interview with Lockheed Martin in Orlando! I’m so excited…it’s definitely an answer to prayer. I’ll be flying down there on April 3rd or 4th…

The picture you see above is from our first concert on this tour. The woman in the middle is a Doane alumn who is now the principal at a school where we sang. It was a great place to start!

My family and I just got back from a magical trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. You can see pics from the trip by clicking here.

Here is a list of things that were awesome:

-> Eating lots of good food
-> Sunny, 70 degree weather
-> The Tower of Terror
-> Having Phil ask me, “Allen, did you ride the Tower of Terrorism?” Inappropriate.
-> One Man’s Dream…yeah, I don’t know why, but I liked the museum better than some of the thrill rides
-> Eating
-> Eating foreign foods in Epcot
-> Eating domestic foods everywhere
-> Spending time with my wonderful family
-> Talking to random people while waiting in lines for rides…I met some cool folks!
-> Fireworks shows!
-> Music! (Main Street Philharmonic, Voices of Liberty, Mariachi Something, The British Invasion, The Dapper Dans, etc)
-> Meeting the fuzzy characters and watching them interact with Phil…they loved him!…but maybe not as much as he loved them…
-> Muppets 3D: hilarious!
-> Soarin’
-> Eatin’
-> Christmas lights, cheer, festivities, and food!

As you can see, we really enjoyed our trip. Still, there were a couple of things I was disappointed in:

-> Not getting a chance to meet (and collect the phone numbers of) Belle, Jasmine, Cinderella, Ariel, Snow White, Nala…wait a minute…
-> Writing what I just wrote

So, the title of this, my November blog, doesn’t really have much to do with the content, which is kinda its purpose. The following are my random thoughts because I feel like spilling them!

My break has been very nice. I have played a lot of Zelda…probably more than all the combined time I’ve spent playing video games this semester. It’s kinda sad, but I’ve balanced it out by also chillin with my fam and some friends.

I was struck by Renee Zellweger’s beauty and talent today as I watched Cinderella Man. I forgot about her…but she’s one of my faves now. Her face seems so soft…it’s gorgeous, but it’s also like a malleable canvas with which she displays an incredible range of convincing emotion.

Back to Zelda…I think I like it a lot because it’s like traveling to a place that doesn’t exist. I get to visit new locales, acquire new stuff, and meet new entities who influence me. Of course, none of it is real, but still, the part of me that steps out of the real world and into the fantasy really enjoys it. It’s a welcome diversion from the confusion of real life. But it’s also a reminder of the wonder of real life. In the game, my way is set before me. I have goals that are only attainable in a limited number of ways, and if I get a second chance at something, I usually have to go about it in the same way in which I failed the first time. Thinking about that makes me super happy that real life is totally NOT like that, cause if it was, I’d be bored and unsuccessful.

I long for days and nights when I can look into my best friend’s lovely eyes and know (and feel) that she really loves me, just as I really love her. I’m not speaking of anyone in particular here because I don’t know who this girl is. Actually, I don’t even know if she’ll ever exist. But the peculiar thing is that I expect to meet her because of her importance in the life that I hope I have. No, she won’t complete me, and I won’t complete her…but I hope I will enrich her life, just as I know she will mine. Yeah, I think about this a lot. Sometimes I feel ashamed that I do. Obviously, as I write this blog, I am not.

As of now, I have many strong yet unfulfilled desires, and I am far from what I want to be. Still, I am happy, and also “contenter” than I used to be. I have been pretty sad this semester, but not without hope that my sadness would pass in due time. I think it’s passing sooner than I thought. I’m gonna go play Zelda.

I have decided to continue my once-monthly blogging habit by posting for October today. So far, I’ve had a pretty good day. I decided to get up at 9:30 and wander over to Doane’s new coffee shop. It was a perfect morning for relaxing with a mocha: light, chilly rain, fall colors all around, and plenty of thoughts. I am constantly amazed by nature’s beauty, and I attribute it to the goodness of God. Sure, my spiritual life is confusing, but I have always been able to hold on to and be thankful for the beauty that God has allowed us to enjoy. I also cling to my favorite passage in 1st Corinthians 13 (verses 4-7):

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

I strive for that kind of love, but I continually fall short. I get frustrated because I tried to demonstrate that love to each of the girls I’ve cared a lot about, but as of now, I have no requited love. I recognize that I have all sorts of flaws and foibles that dampen my attractiveness…and maybe they are the reason that none of my relationships have worked out yet. I hope that someday, a girl can see past them.

Blogging is an interesting phenomenon, and thus, I feel like sharing my current philosophy on my personal blogs. When considering my thoughts about love and spirituality, I can find no reason to be opaque. I hope that you do not consider my thoughts complaints. I am sad that I do not have a female best friend, but I have so much to be thankful for that I feel as though I can’t complain: I can only pour out my heart and its strong desires. I enjoy the cathartic nature of blogging, and I feel a healthy transparency in sharing these thoughts with you, my friends and relatives.

While attempting to do my homework for econ 203 this morning, my mind started wandering. In my stream of semi-consciousness, I thought about applying economic theories to various aspects of my life as well as using them to analyze previous experiences. Then, I thought about how I didn’t like doing that. Then, I formulated conjectures as to why I don’t have a girlfriend. Ehh…that one little word, “why?” It makes life so much more difficult than it already is. I don’t think I’d ever be upset if I stopped asking myself, “why?” about anything and everything.

Anyway, after thinking about why I think about why, I started thinking about an analogy that one of my friends and I once created. The analogy (for a straight male such as myself) is this: getting clearly rejected by a girl you’re fond of is like ripping a band-aid off really quickly: it hurts pretty bad for a short time, but then the pain is gone, and the exposed wound is left to heal. On the other hand, having to figure out that the girl you like is disinterested in you after expressing interest in her is like peeling a band-aid off slowly: the pain is acute, prolonged, and unnecessary, for the band-aid could be ripped off quickly. Thankfully, peeling the band-aid slowly still allows for the exposed wound to heal eventually.

Next, I thought about hoping for things that I want. Then, I thought about how I wish I could stop hoping for things that I want and just live my life in perfect contentment. Then, I thought about how wishing for that was actually a form of discontentment. Then I made myself go to bed, realizing that, although I am sad sometimes, my life is wonderful. Life is wonderful.

“Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in.”

I’ve never felt like that, but I do agree that there’s an incredible amount of beauty in the world, especially in the people, places, and things that require us to look more closely or invest more time with. I guess I don’t really have much else to say…

The picture you see above was taken by my mother. Good work, mom!

Oh yeah…listen to “Song for Amadeus” cause it’s super cool.