Mom: "We have more national forests now than when Columbus came!"
Me: "Probably because we didn't have any national forests when Columbus came..."
Mom: "I meant trees! We have more trees now..."
*Pause*
Me: "Wait! Didn't Columbus come to Central America, not North America?"
Mom: "Okay, then there were more trees when James Cook came to America...or whoever it was who liked Pocahontas."
Me: "That was John Smith, Mom. James Cook went to Hawaii."
Mom: "Well, that's not too far away..."

Torrey Quotes: The Best of 2010

My Torrey Friends say the funniest things. Here are my favorites...
Note: For anyone who reads these quotes and doubts the character of my friends: they are all good, upstanding, Christian men and women who just say the weirdest things sometimes.

"Mary Kate Reynolds...needs to read the Iliad like the Muses are her homeboys." -Mary Kate Reynolds' Facebook status

"Why do we read Beowulf? Because Tolkein told us to." -Dr. Sanders

Dr. Reynolds: "What's wrong with Homer?"
Cale Wright: "He's telling us to put our heads in a meat grinder?"

"Snogging to church music is weird." -Dr. Reynolds

"That was blind-mowing!" -Rachel Harris

"A daaaamn shoot!" -Rachel Harris

"What the heck are 'sandal buddies'?! Is that a subtle way of saying we're playing footsies without shoes on?" -Sean Tosello

"What do you do with guys? You marry them!" -Elizabeth Bush

[Context: when two people try to talk at the same time in our group during class, they do rock-paper-scissors to see who gets to talk. Some have been known to do this when two people volunteer at the same time to pray for someone...] "Did you just cheat at rock-paper-scissors so you could pray for someone? That sounds like something Dante would do!" -Sean Tosello

"I'm gonna have the biggest ripped esophagus ever!" -Sean Tosello

"Great. Now I'm an Irish gangster." -me

"You're a hot Irish nerd, and I love you." -Elizabeth Bush to me

"There's nothing better than a Biola bad boy. It's like an Azusa Pacific Christian." -Dr. Reynolds

"Dante PWNS Milton." -Juliet San Nicolas

"Real men love Jane Austen." -Juliet San Nicolas

"I have a thing for male vocalists." -Sean Tosello

"R.A. Torrey scared the crap out of me this morning!" -Rachel Harris

"Did you just pray, 'Thank You, God, for his lightening-fast haircut?'" -Dr. Henderson

"It was published posthumously. Of course, it wasn't written posthumously." -Dr. Sanders

"It is impossible to look manly while drinking out of a straw." -Sean Hansen

"How is it that all the good-looking guys are in Torrey?!" -Elizabeth Bush

"Blessings are like the lovechild between fate and destiny." -Dave Martin

"My mom liked Simon and Garfunkle and the Monkeys, and my dad liked the Romanovs. What can I say?" -Mary Kate Reynolds

"Bam, Milton! Suck it! You just got pwned by the Bible!" -Rachel Harris

"I pray that You will make them smart at some point." -Nick Conrad, praying about my Torrey group

Quote of the Day

Mom: "What happened to your Christmas stocking?"
Brother: "I don't know."
Mom: "What happened to all the stuff you get in your stocking last year?"
Brother: "I ate it."
Mom: "What about the flashlight you got?"
Brother: "I didn't eat the flashlight..."

Quote of the Night

Context: Dr. Sanders drew a diagram of the tabernacle consisting of two rectangles which kind of resembled a refrigerator with a freezer on top. After a comment about that this was said...

"I think it's sacrilegious that inside the Holy of Holies is your frozen chicken nuggets."
-Sean Tosello

Kinda made my night.

What Goes Down at Home When I'm Gone

Apparently very little. I walked into the house and literally cringed at the sight of the kitchen floor. With a mother usually wheelchair-bound and one man and one teenage boy in charge of the chores traditionally done by women throughout the centuries, everything is handled in a very time-efficient manner.

They just don't do chores.

Granted, my brother is a three-sport athlete at his high school and also a straight-A student. And in Boy Scouts. And my dad works his heart out to provide for my family and tries to spend quality time with my brother doing whatever Boy Scouts do at those weekly meetings. I know they're busy.

But in four months, couldn't they find one day to wash the floor?

So I got to spend my first day of Thanksgiving break running errands and washing the kitchen floor. I'm not complaining. Cleaning is very therapeutic for me, provided I don't have to do it too often. But sometimes it amazes me how they can stand to live in a house with a filthy kitchen floor.

Then I remember. They're boys.