So I had two pumpkins left from last Friday. I brought them home and on Saturday, one of my friends named Patrick the Pumpkin decided to have a few drinks to celebrate Halloween and this is what happened:

 
I told him to stop but he just kept on goin. Considering his name is Patrick and he's an Irish pumpkin, I probably shouldn't be surprised. =P

Meanwhile, Charlie my stuffed teddy bear decided to carve his own pumpkin. He did a pretty good job considering he only had his two little paws to work with.


Hope you had a good laugh =)

Hope you all had a safe and fun Halloween.

One day Freddy decided to eat Fanny. But Fanny did not like it and swam away very fast. Freddy was still hungry and decided to jump out of the water to catch a fly. Suddenly, a Giraffe intercepted Freddy in the air and ate him. Then a Jackal came by and said "Hey that was my fish." Fanny jumped out of the water and then the Jackal intercepted it. "I hope you're satisfied now." the Giraffe said.  Then a skunk walked by scaring away the Giraffe, the Jackal and everything else in sight and it farted out this blog.

Thus begins the skipping stones adventures with Wordpress.

Hope you had a good laugh =)

How many of you like sports? I know I appreciate playing a good game in the spirit of competition and to keep fit. I play on an Ultimate team, I have a 1st Degree Black Belt in TaeKwonDo and I enjoy watching Football, Hockey, and sports highlights. While playing and watching these sports I realized something recently that I thought would be particularly encouraging to many people out there.

I've been reading some things on sports psychology lately since my ultimate team hasn't been doing as well as we all had hoped. =P So I tried to look for something that might be able to help.

The first thing I learned was that we're all performers whether we are playing a sport or not.

No matter what I do, I have a tendency to want to perform my best in whatever place I come across. I started questioning myself why am I getting upset after I lose a fight or after my team loses a game or a race?

The second thing I learned was that the only way to perform at my best is to learn to accept the outcome of the game win or lose.

This came from reading an article on a sport psychologist that worked with the Canucks, BC Lions, and other businesses and sports teams. The article also quoted Deepak Chopra who said it is "only when [golfers] can laugh at a bad shot, take pleasure in someone else's victory and feel satisfaction with a round of 97, instead of 80, will they defeat '"the voice of self-criticism" and end the "frustration that holds in check deeper, darker fears." No matter what I think about Deepak Chopra, I know there is at least some truth  to that statement. When I watch sports, I found that it is not just the athletes who have competitive personalities that do well. It is the people who have fun playing the game and can keep themselves calm and collected in a high pressure situation. I also remember hearing while learning martial arts that its not the opponents who are intensely staring you down angrily that you should be afraid of. It is opponents who are smiling back at you that you should be afraid of! That's because when people are having fun and are relaxed, the body muscles tend to be more loose and able to play with more reach and when people are relaxed, people are able to think more clearly. I don't know about you, but I want to be the guy who's smiling. =)

Since I became a Christian, I've always been skeptical of what other self-help or business life authors write in their books because I have to be careful whether the thinking they teach are what God wants me to think. From what I'm reading so far, these two things I've learned seems to fall in line with what I believe.

If you ask me, I always wanted to be the best at everything. But I haven't always loved competing. I grew up wanting to get all those straight As but never getting there. I grew up wanting to go to the same ivy league quality school like my sister, but I never got there with my grades at all. And recently, I've struggled with not having a comparable career or pay cheque to a lot of my friends. Inside my head, there has always been this game of oneupmanship attached to my self-confidence. Yeah, I have a lot of insecurities...but in the end, who doesn't? What I'm trying to say here is that I am personally sick and tired of playing this game. I don't want to offend anybody but I really don't care that much if you were the one in high school that got all the straight As or who was the high school quarterback or was the captain of the team that took the school to the provincials. I applaud you if you were any of those personalities. It takes a certain type of personality and great committment to do it. But for someone like me who is really not a competitive personality, I should not be trying to be someone I'm not. You can disagree with me if you want but what I found that is starting to work for me in sports is that if I play just for the sake of playing and having fun, I am actually a better player. As of last friday, I really don't care anymore if I loose every single game I play. As long as I have fun playing the game, I'm okay with it.

(To my ultimate team: I don't want to disrespect any expectations but I seriously don't mind if our team loses every game. Again you can disagree if you want, I won't take it personally. Yeah I have a history of taking things too personally but I will try my best not to.)

Let's put it this way. Is my team in some professional league that plays for something like a Stanley Cup or a Vince Lombardi Trophy? The last time I checked no...

Am I part of a national team that's playing for some political bragging rights? Definitely not

Does the outcome of the sports (or any other game for that matter) I play have any effect on the space time continuum?  Definitely most affirmatively not but it would be kind of funny and entertaining now that I think of it. =D

Why am I playing sports? To have fun, get some exercise and to glorify God in some way. Maybe to show the other team that I play fair and not dirty. Maybe to gain some new friends from my team or the other team. Maybe also to find the odd opportunity to share the gospel whenever appropriate. I don't know but the possibilities seem endless.
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So here's how I proceed with my own thinking nowadays when I play any game. It is a fine balance between staying relaxed and keeping up some sort of competitive edge. With my personality it is best for me to start laughing off all those those losses and be okay if I have a bad throw or drop something. I know that if I keep myself thinking this way, I can think clearer in a game and I play more loosely and relaxed. I don't know if my ultimate team noticed but I know I managed to catch a few passes and throw the disc down field a couple of times and I was able keep up defending this big guy for a while. That to me was a big bonus. So if I lose, I lose. It's not a big deal. If I win while thinking this way, that's a bonus! In order to keep up the competitive edge, I just leave it to the in game conditions of people on the sideline telling me what to do or people calling me to pass the disc to them. Those things are usually enough for me.

Obviously, this is what works for me. Some people can't think this way because that will just make them too relaxed completely ruin the game for others. So it is up to the athlete to decided what they think since again, it is a fine balance between staying relaxed and loose and staying competitive.