Maryland sucks.

Senior year of high school, Vean came to us. He was in college, and took a semester from Drexel to do an internship in San Diego. In the opinion of all involved, it was a wise choice. It was the best thing that could have happened to my boys. Vean was, and is, a super chill dude. We fell in love with him, to say the least. After that semester, though, Vean had to go back to school. A few summers later, I think he spent the whole summer with us. Or maybe just visited for a long time? And in the last couple of years, he's come out for short visits.

About a year ago, Vean announced he was moving to Encinitas! Oh, glorious day! We were overjoyed. And we were even more overjoyed to hear that he was bringing his lifelong best friend, Allen, with him. When Vean and Allen moved in, it was kind of madness. Allen was working in Los Angeles and we never really saw him. When we did, he was exhausted. It took a while for us to get to know him. But once we did, we found that he was just as rad of a dude as Vean. Allen quit his job a few months ago, and in the time I spent in Encinitas, I really got to love Allen very much. I've been really looking forward to spending this summer in Encinitas, chilling with my boys (which now include Allen!).

Today, Allen told me he's moving back to Maryland next month.

These are the kind of things about being an adult that I just think are so unfair. It's cool that we're adults and so we move around the country independently. That's what got Allen to us in the first place. But it's just so lame when it works in the opposite direction. I've never been to Maryland. I'll probably never go to Maryland. Fortunately, Encinitas is a really good place, so Allen will hopefully want to come visit. Right? Realistically, though, I don't know if I'll ever see Allen again in my life. The last time I said goodbye to him, when I was leaving Encinitas, I'm sure I just said, "All right, see ya" so I  wouldn't interrupt the seriousness of his video game playing. :)

This is where my creature of habit lifestyle really gets in the way. I don't like things ending. I also don't like not knowing that things are ending until it's too late. Allen is leaving my Encinitas life with about as much notice as he joined it. It's been so fun. So so fun. Allen, you are such a joy. I love you.

Y'all come back, now, y'hear?

Oh, how I love hymns.

So there's this coffee shop we've been hanging out at a lot -- Café Yesterday -- that is owned and operated by some super rad guys, Ryan and David. Ryan is an ordained Wesleyan pastor, and David is a filmmaker. They're super chill, and serve us good coffee while we slave over our theology-reading and paper-writing. The goal of opening this coffee shop is (to borrow a phrase from the great "You've Got Mail") to be a piazza -- a place in the city where people can mingle and mix and be. It's the ground floor of an apartment building, so the residents have a pretty sweet place to call home. Ryan and David's plan is to take the money they make from lattés and sandwiches and give it back to the community in Berkeley. Another of their goals is to be a music venue. Tonight, they hosted two bands -- Ember Days and Ascend the Hill. I was late (choir practice!) so I missed Ember Days entirely, but Ascend the Hill was very lovely. They played a few original songs, but the end of their set was all hymns. Oh, how I love hymns. I chatted with their frontman, Joel, a bit afterward, to say "hey I love hymns" because I doubt that a lot of people ever say that kind of thing to leaders of Christian rock bands. Maybe they do? I think this may have been the first time I ever talked to one. Regardless, he was appreciative. And Ryan and I were talking about how simultaneously weird and rad it was to think about the fact that, tonight, "Rock of Ages" was wafting down University Ave. Doubtful that that has ever happened before.

And Ryan and I were also talking about how neither of us are the kind of person to just put out front that we're Christians and we want to talk about it. Yeah, he's a pastor, and yeah, I'm a seminarian, but we're like, way more likely to talk about it if someone else brings it up. We were laughing about how like, after a few songs, Joel stopped what he was doing and talked for like five minutes about the presence of God in the room because this kid in the front row said something about how he was "lost in the presence" or something. I think that if it had been me behind the microphone I would've been like, "sick, bro" and kept playing. But Joel just sort of organically took that moment to talk about Jesus.

I don't think there are any Lutheran rock bands. If you know of any, let me know. I would love to hear some Christian rock that talks about grace alone instead washing in the blood of Jesus and all of those wack metaphors. So we, as Lutherans, don't have a lot of experience with this setting. But we do have a lot of experience with hymns. Joel and the gang played "Hallelujah, What a Savior" and "How Great Thou Art" and "Rock of Ages" and "Sanctuary" and Amanda and Cara and I sang our harmonies like nobody's business. It was such an unexpected experience.

I love the internet.

Today, I downloaded an iPhone app into which I can enter my zip code and my iPhone's GPS will find the nearest Girl Scouts selling cookies at a public place! This is fantastic, as I am not a Girl Scout nor do I know any Girl Scouts personally from whom I can purchase cookies. This is a truly joyous day for me as an iPhone user and lover of Thin Mints.

On a more serious level, though, today I also played a rousing round of overzealous political tweets and Facebook posts. Things in this country (and world) are feeling a little more hectic than usual. The Middle East is in more turmoil than usual (though at the hands of its own people instead of our politicians, for once!). GOP Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin proposed a budget that will essentially eliminate the rights of public workers to unionize effectively; Union workers have been missing work and camping out at the capitol for a week now. In order to keep the bill from passing, the 14 Democratic state senators fled the state in one courageously constitutional fell swoop. In national budget news, the GOP has proposed trimming the deficit by slashing funding for practically all things liberal, awesome, and vital to the people of the United States: Planned Parenthood, Americorps, PBS, NPR, the EPA, needle exchanges, nuclear power, Great Lakes conservation -- the list goes on and on.

But because of this magical place, the internet, with the click of a few buttons and the tap of a few keys, I reached hundreds of my friends and thousands of strangers by posting links on my Facebook and Twitter to form letters, petitions, events -- you name it! -- that hold the GOP accountable for these heinous budget cuts. I suppose the true magic happens when my friends and strangers respond. We can contact our representatives by phone, e-mail, and twitter to express our gratitude or disgust at their voting record.

The Millennial Generation, who tends to be too self-centered to even vote, is out there on the internet front lines, typing up a storm to voice our opinions. And they'll be heard! We know this, because many of us also happen to be the interns who have to deal with this contact and report to those representatives. We are the generation making things happen in a split-second.

This is what we meant when we said, "Yes, We Can."