Everything is an Interruption

   Greetings all. (if there are any of you still checking here, that is).

   Sorry about not posting in so long. I've been... busy. I won't make any promises about the frequency of my posts from now on, but I intend to write mostly short posts from now onward.

   Recently it feels like everything I have been doing, I do simply to get out of the way so that I can get on to whatever it is that I should be getting on to. I need a break.

   "Funny how, no matter how busy people are, they are never too busy to talk about how busy they are." -Anonymous

Camp Utibaca

First, I must apologize for not posting in so long, here I have been back from Utah for almost a week and I have not yet posted. However, as they say, better late than never. So, in that spirit, I now shall here record a smattering of the events that occurred over the course of this summer at camp Utibaca (Utah Independent Baptist Camp). Realizing that I cannot retell my entire summer camp experience now, I will only go over the first segment of my trip. I hope to continue this story in a later post; therefore I have entitled this post Camp Utibaca pt1.
I departed for Utah on the 20th of June. Dad took me to the airport early in the morning and stuck around to ensure that everything went smoothly. This was a good idea because as it turns out, for some reason or another, my name was on the terrorist watch list. This made getting through safety a bit more of a hassle but lead to quite a few laughs later on. My flight left (thankfully with me on it) and I arrived in Utah a little earlier than expected. My ride picked me up and we had a great time seeing the sights in Provo for most of the day. When we returned to his apartment with his wife and his sister, we had a wonderful and greatly appreciated meal of barbequed hamburgers. I slept well that night, but I woke up too early. Because of the time change I woke up at 6:00 because it felt like 8:00. I occupied myself around the apartment for an hour or so, and then took a lovely walk around the small town of Delta. However when I returned, I found that I was locked out. I simply went around back to the deck and rested there until my host returned from his job at one of the many boys’ homes in that state.
The drive up to camp was enjoyable; there was great scenery, great music, and great conversation. I will say here that Utah and the American west in general looks like a completely different world. The mountains rise up far on the horizon and in front of them stretches miles and miles of dry sand and shrubs. The sky is perfectly blue, with only one or two clouds to be seen. Everything is extremely dry causing the vast majority of the landscape to be brown. It is very beautiful country.
When we arrived at the camp, those who had been on staff before were busy reviving old relationships and those who hadn’t were busy starting new ones. I believe I was the only one there who didn’t know anyone, but not for long. I was quickly involved in conversation and making friends with many new people. After the rest of the staff arrived we had staff orientation and played a few “get to know me” games. Then we headed out to the game field. One other very noticeable aspect of the camp is that the air there is very thin (it is after all 8000 feet above sea level). This led to a measurable deal of panting, taking-of-breaks, and pain.
The next few days were a blur. We immediately started in moving rocks, cleaning cabins, painting towers, scrubbing showers, sawing logs, building stairs, washing troughs, picking up trash, arranging tables, spreading mulch, operating on engines, digging holes, pouring concrete, construction outhouses, organizing equipment, and the list goes on. We did a lot of work during staff training week, and we all grew closer to each other as a staff and closer to God as Christians. There were three chapel meetings every day, every one more challenging than the previous. There was also much time given for personal devotions in the morning and fellowship in the afternoon. It was wonderful to talk to other Christians about what we were learning in Chapel and our personal devotions. The fellowship up at camp was marvelously rich. Without the distractions of the world around, everyone was very focused on what was truly important.
Now, all this does not mean that we didn’t have fun too, not at ALL! There were many hours spent sitting around, telling jokes or playing games. I finally learned the “cup game” (man, that’s a blast!) and I definitely picked up a more “random” sense of humor. Overall, staff training week was a wonderful!
That’s all I have time for now. I will post later.

Howdy from UT

Hey everybody!

Greetings from the very large, dry, and hot state of Utah! I don't have time for a long post (that will have to wait until I get back), but I just decided to post real quick to let ya'll know that I'm still alive.

Camp's been going great. The teaching has been terrific. The food, fantastic. And the people unimaginabily hospitible.

God has been working up at camp. It's been amazing to watch.

I'll be posting later...

I Won’t Be Posting for a While

   Not like I'm posting on a regular basis as it is. Oh, well.

 
 

   Anyway, I won't be posting, cause on June 20th (Lord willing), I'm going out to Utah to be a staffer at a Bible camp out that way. I'll be waking up at approx. 5:00 am on the morning of the 20th, so that I can get a ride down to the airport by 6:00 am and be at the airport at 7:00am. This is also the same day that Dad's being told that he will be leaving for Afghanistan for 6 months. He was actually planning on retiring here in a few months, but now the Air Force is shipping overseas until December or so. He went to Qatar for about that long a year ago. That wasn't very fun and I thought it was supposed to be the last time, but evidently not. Oh, well. As Dad keeps saying, "How good of a Calvinist are you?"

 
 

   The whole deployment thing completely threw my family's vacation plan out of whack. They were going to come out to Utah, too, go to family camp and see the sites, but that's all off now. My plans, however, are virtually unchanged. As I said, I'm still going out to the camp. I want to be a consular and to I hope to take lots of pictures. That's not to say that I'll post them, I only promise that I hope to take them. I don't know if I'll have internet access out there (definitely not at the camp) (although I will volunteer for camp office tech support), so don't count on e-mail getting through. If I get a chance, there will be an "I've arrived" post later.

 

But for now, I have a little time, so I'll update chy'all on what's been going on. For those of you who check Isaac and Nathaniel's blogs, you know that our troop had a campout at Kiser Lake. It was fun and productive. Three of our guys are now very close to being 1^st class scouts (as in they should have it tomorrow (or later on today…). Anyway, after that, because my family was in Illinois for my sister's second graduation celebration, I went to Isaac and Nathaniel's house and spent the rest of Saturday, Sunday, and the majority of Monday there.

 

Since then, I've been working on planning the planning plan for a canoe trip that we are hoping to do in September (I think. It really depends on adult availability). I've also been packing for going to Utah. I know I'm over packing. The problem is knowing where I'm over packing. I'm well under the weight limit, but those suitcases are still very heavy. Today I helped out at my church's VBS. It was the last day and I would have liked to help more, but I had other things that I needed to do. Besides, even today, I didn't help out that much. Mostly I just hung out, made sure that the 4-year-olds didn't eat poison ivy or something, and ate free snow cones.

 

This evening, my family went to the airport to pick up my older sister, Emily, whom they had left behind when they went to Illinois. She wasn't going to come back until Friday, but now that it looks like Dad might be leaving for Afghanistan on Wednesday, he decided to bring her back early to spend a little more time together. She's going to be at college when he gets back, so that's important. After we picked her up, we went to an Amish restaurant to celebrate "half" of one of my younger sister's (Lydia's) birthday. It's really in July, but she wanted to celebrate it when Dad was still here.

 

When we got back, we watched some "Easter eggs" on the "Incredibles" DVD. I know it's supposed to be a kid's movie, but I still like it. One Easter egg was especially funny: mid-way through the production, Pixar wasn't sure if they could finish the movie in time, so one effects manager created a "back-up" just in case. The video is a shortened version of the movie done with sock puppets. It's hilarious!

 

Right now, I'm listening to some new music I got by a group called Casting Crowns. Their songs (unlike that of many other "Christian" artists is understandable, meaningful, and glorifying to God. Most of their songs call for action on the part of the Church. They have a lot of good stuff. One of their songs that I like more than the rest is "If We Are the Body."

 

It's crowded in worship today

As she slips in

Trying to fade into the faces

The girls' teasing laughter is carrying farther than they know

Farther than they know

 

CHORUS

But if we are the body

Why aren't His arms reaching?

Why aren't His hands healing?

Why aren't His words teaching?

And if we are the body

Why aren't His feet going?

Why is His love not showing them there is a way?

There is a way

 

A traveler is far away from home

He sheds his coat

And quietly sinks into the back row

The weight of their judgmental glances tell him that his chances

Are better out on the road

 

CHORUS

But if we are the body

Why aren't His arms reaching?

Why aren't His hands healing?

Why aren't His words teaching?

And if we are the body

Why aren't His feet going?

Why is His love not showing them there is a way?

 

Jesus paid much too high a price

For us to pick and choose who should come

And we are the body of Christ

 

Chorus (2x)

But if we are the body

Why aren't His arms reaching?

Why aren't His hands healing?

Why aren't His words teaching?

And if we are the body

Why aren't His feet going?

Why is His love not showing them there is a way?

 

Jesus is the way

 

 

I also like "What If His People Prayed?"

 

What if the armies of the Lord

Picked up and dusted off their swords

Vowed to set the captives free

And not let Satan have one more

 

What if the church, for heaven's sake

Finally stepped up to the plate

Took a stand upon God's promise

And stormed hell's rusty gates

 

Chorus:

What if His people prayed?

And THOSE who bear His name

Would humbly seek His face

And Turn from their own way

 

And what would happen if we prayed

For those raised up to lead the way

Then maybe kids in school could pray

And unborn children see light of day

 

What if the life that we pursue

Came from a hunger for the truth

What if the family turned to Jesus?

Stopped asking Oprah what to do

 

Chorus:

What if His people prayed?

And THOSE who bear His name

Would humbly seek His face

And Turn from their own way

 

He said that they would hear

His promise has been made

He'll answer loud and clear

If only we would pray

 

If My people called by My name

If they'll humble themselves and pray

If My people called by My name

If they'll humble themselves and pray

 

Chorus:

What if His people prayed?

And THOSE who bear His name

Would humbly seek His face

And Turn from their own way

He said that they would hear

His promise has been made

He'll answer loud and clear

If only we would pray

 

What if His people prayed?

 

If My people called by My name...

 

Other songs of theirs include: "Praise You in This Storm," "Does Anybody Hear Her," "American Dream," "Your Love Is Extravagant," and "Now My Lifesong Sings." All of these are very good and I would highly recommend them.

 

Anyway, I'll be posting (only not for a while). J

Ad-Hocrisy

Greetings:

I realize that it's been a REALLY long time since I last posted, but I figured that I finally have something big enough to write about. Tonight was one of the most unplanned nights of my life (that I can remember anyway).

This morning, we went to church, the messages are finally getting back around to the guys. Although I've been getting stuff out of the sermons, they've mostly been aimed at the women.

Anyway. With my sister's graduation coming up and all, Dad and Mom are really busy. There was talk of not going to church tonight (which greatly disappointed me). However, I simply remained calm and accepted the fact. After a patiently waiting (though not giving up hope), Dad finally suggested that he drop me off at church at the last minute. I heartily agreed.

Two of my younger sisters wanted to go to church, too, so I was in charge of them. Not a very hard task actually. Our pastor is starting a series on Acts. We got through who wrote it, the outline, and the fact that Luke gives progress reports throughout the thing, but that was it.

After church I was invited to a Bible study at our youth leader's house, when Dad got to church to pick me up, I asked if I could go. He agreed. So, we headed over there. The Bible study was good, too. It was about applying what the Bible tells us. There was a lot more than that, but I can't go into all of that here. We had a few side discussions, but there are some people who read this blog that might take offense. Check out Formerly Dead, because I might post on it there.

When the Bible study was over, I went outside and showed everyone how a magnesium striker works. I have a slight fascination with magnesium and all other things pyrotechnic. HeheheheJ.

Here's where the Ad-Hocrisy (I borrow that from my dad) really started. Apparently, a couple of girls in had wanted to have a "party" at their house, so they invited everyone to their house for a completely impromptu pizza party. I was also invited, so I called my dad to see if it would be alright, he didn't answer his cell phone. I called the house and but he had already left to pick me up. I got his blackberry number and called that. No answer. Almost despairing, I handed the phone back to the girl I'd borrowed it from. Just then I saw our van coming down the road. As soon as my dad pulled in the driveway, a friend and I… I hate to say "attacked him", but that's a good word for it. Anyway, we asked if I could go. The question was followed by a bit of persuasion, but he finally agreed. I rode with this friend and his sister (who, oh-by-the-way had just gotten her license a week ago.)

During the party, KenZ got a couple of phone calls from her parents. Apparently, they weren't ok with her driving other people around quite yet. I got in slight trouble over that one... but only slight.

To make a long-ish story short, my dad came and picked me up around 10:40, and I went home. As I said before, none of this was planned at all. We were going to stay home all night. I definitely think it was better this way though. It was a good experience. The one major thing I learned from it though is: I really need to start carrying my cell phone!

Anyway, I'll be posting. (hopefully more often, too.)

Just a little busy

Greetings:

Sorry about the long pauses between posts, but I’ve been, shall we say, rushed. I know ahead of time that this week would be a very busy, but I didn’t realize just how busy.

Monday was the slowest day all week. All I had to do was schoolwork. Backspace, which went OK.

On Tuesday, thing sped up a bit. I went down to speech club, which lasted the majority of the day. By the time that was over, we had to go to Springfield to try to get something to eat. We met dead at the restaurant eight and headed down to Cedarville for Emily’s piano recital. We did get home until 9:00 at which time, I had a good bed in order to wake up early the next morning.

I woke up at 645 on Wednesday. We loaded up the van and headed to the home of women in our home school group to two end of the year testing there were only a few of the people there includingBumpas and Bugsbee. The testing session was supposed to last from 830 to 330, but the three of us older kids decided to go a little later said that we would have to come back the next day, which worked out very well. Up, damaged the Wednesday was my birthday?

Throughout this whole week, I’ve been trying to fix some of the issues on my sister’s computer. It is a laptop with the docking station. It also had some speakers with a USB Power Supply (that’s just weird). The USB Power Supply messed up the whole talking stations set up and IE could not get any sound out of it.

Thursday I stayed at home. They! Mike Littman room and help and my mom and my sister with a scrapbook that they were making for my eagle scout court of one. The scrap that they’re working on, they made it one day, that’s quite a feat.

Friday was preparation for my eagle scout court of honor. The whole day was filled with driving to church and back. I think I got nearly an hour of driving time in. The COH went well, although I think it could have been smoother. But, they always can be. After we get the church cleaned up I came home and open cards and presents. I got some really cool stuff including a book on eagle scouts from my scout master, an engraved pocketknife from my parents, and a ” 5-in-1 measuring tape”, and a bunch of other stuff. Then I crashed.

Today, I woke up ealy-er. Worked outside cut down a tree, stacked the wood, listen to threats that I’d have to split it all, etc. Right now, I’m just waiting around for supper. After that, I get to have my birthday (ya, we were too busy on Wednesday, so we had to reschedule it). That’s all that I can think to say.

Just one more thing, I’m writing this one my sister’s new computer. It’s a Vista OS, so it has the special voice reconition system and all that. It hasn’t learned my voice perfectly yet, and I wasn’t watching, so please forgive any mistakes it might have made in the dictation.

Exciting and Creepy

For my speech club, one of the things I have to do is to gather news articles for the extemporaneous speaker's research. Today I ran across this one.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18358876/

This looks really cool, but for any of you who have ever seen the movie: "Six: The Mark Unleashed" (or read the book of Revelation for that matter), this is a rather creepy article.

I don't have much time, but check it out.

Long Time, No Post

Wow. I've been doing a really bad job at keeping you guys up to date. Let's see, where to start… Well, I guess I'll just have to hit the highlights. I'm not sure if I've mentioned all or any of this yet, so you'll have to bear with me.

April 13^th-14^th: Our Boy Scout troop went on a camping trip to Hocking Hills. Basically, we got there, slept, woke up, cooked, ate, packed, and hiked. For those of you who have never been there, Hocking Hills is, how to put this?, hilly. And as such, there was very little (if any) flat ground to hike on. This is the reason I was so sore the next day at church. Some of the sites we went to included Ash Cave, Cedar Falls, Old Man's Cave, and Rock House. Rock House was especially fun, because I'd never been there before. It's the closest thing to a cave in the whole area, but other than that, it's very hard to describe.

April 24^th: Troop Meeting at the RCC. We built fires, which we then lit with magnesium (oooOOOooo). After that, we practiced for my Eagle COH (Court of Honor). That could have gone better, but the guys have the basic plan in their heads now.

April 25^th: Something happened today, that I wasn't expecting to happen for another week or so. Microsoft Office 2007 got here. My family thinks I'm nuts just because I was a little excited when it got here. I reality, I've been wanting it ever since Microsoft started the ad campaign. I watched all the tutorials and learned all I could about it. I don't think my excitement was wrongly directed. The UI is a lot easier to use and there is a new program called OneNote which looks to be extremely useful. Going to go to church tonight and practice H-Duo with Andy afterwards.

April 27^th: Planning to go to the SON Rise Party with Isaac, Matt, and Sean. Wait, Sean, you are going right? Anyway, I expect to stay up really late (like 'til 8:00 AM) and have a generally fun time. One thing I've never quite understood about the SON Rise Party is the name combined with the date. I mean, shouldn't it have been a few weeks ago?

May 2^nd: That is weird! Looking ahead at the calendar, I realized that my birthday is next week! I can't believe how that snuck up on me. Used to be that I'd have started counting down the days back in February. I feel old…

May 2^nd: The down side: I have to take end-of-the-year tests on my birthday. :((

May 4^th: My Eagle COH.

I guess I'll stop there. I can tell y'all the rest when it happens. So, for now… Adios.

Computer Issues: SOLVED!

Greetings,

I know it's been a long time since I've posted, but I have a good reason. My Internet has been down. Last night I decided that I was going to get the problem fixed, so I called Dell Tech Support. I made the phone call some time around 11:30 PM and I got off the phone at about 1:30 AM. I didn't get to bed until 2:00 AM. I was very tired. I know most of you are thinking, what's the big deal? 2:00's not late, but I would just like to point out that I woke up at 6:45 after only 6 1/2 hours of sleep the previous night. Also, we went to another family's house for supper and I wore myself out. Also, I can say from experience, that there are few things more boring than waiting for a computer to restart. During the 2 hour phone call, I restarted my system at least 10 times.

Evidently, my problem was that my "socket files" (I have no idea what they are) were corrupted, so I had to delete and reinstall them. I went through a bunch of troubleshooting steps with the guy and finally I mentioned that I'd been getting an error message that said, "ERROR: SOCK_RAW" (yeah, I probably should have mentioned that earlier). He found that bit of information helpful, and we were able to get it fixed. He told me later, that if I hadn't mentioned that error message, the next step was to completely reinstall my operating system.

Just one more thing I wanted to mention, while we were are the other family's house, I discovered that they have a computer that is running Windows Vista. For anyone who has talked with me on the subject of Vista, you probably would be able to correctly guess that I went berserk. It's SO COOL. Definitely a sweet operating system. I'd like to get it, but the combination of the price and the fact that it still has a few bugs to work out, are making me hold off.

Anyway, just wanted y'all to know that I'm back. So, I'll probably be on the IM more often and I have my e-mail access again.

I'm happy right now. :)

Cya

New Post at F.o.r.m.e.r.l.y. D.e.a.d.

Hey guys,

I don't suppose that you check my other blog (http://www.formerlydead.blogspot.com) very much. Mostly because I haven't posted there in over a month. So, that's why I announce it on this blog that (as you can probably see in the title) there's a new post at F.o.r.m.e.r.l.y. D.e.a.d.

While I'm on the subject, I might as well explain the reason for the periods in the name. It could be traced to the fact that in the title, I speak of a definite deadness. (Period Dot, finished, done deal), but that's not the real reason. Actually, when I started that blog, for some reason, I could not enter the word d.e.a.d. (in reality I still can't). After much frustration, I found that my internet filter would not allow me to type the word d.e.a.d on a web form. The only way I could get it to work was to add the periods.

You might also find it interesting to note that this blog's real name is Covered by B.l.o.o.d., but (as you may have guessed), I can't typed b.l.o.o.d. without periods either.

Vista Transformation Pack

One thing I forgot to mention in all of my updating is the reason why I had a long posting gap. Well, here it is: I’m stupid.

I have made some pretty bad choices in my downloads before, like Internet Explorer 7, well that wasn’t bad, just that it was still in the BETA version! I have also before managed to download spy ware and all kinds of other fun stuff. Well, my most recent misguided was this Vista Transformation Pack 6.0. The idea is that is makes your computer look like Windows Vista (I’ll just assume that you all know that that’s the newest Operating System from Microsoft) and it works great. Until you try restarting your system. Then I started getting error messages about Windows Explorer and I couldn’t do anything (operating without a taskbar is hard). Anyway, I decided to restart and same thing happened again. Now, here I should explain that everything else that I’ve downloaded could be fixed relatively easily. Just uninstall and it’s fixed. But this Vista Transformation Pack actually went in and changed some pretty important files, so when I uninstalled it. It didn’t fix those files. The result was that when I restarted again, I only saw a black screen telling me that I was missing a System32 file and I needed my Operating System CD. For about three days, I was restricted to web mail and I thought that I’d lost everything on my computer, indeed, I thought that I’d lost my computer all together. My only consolation was that I might end up with a newer computer (with Vista), but I really didn’t want to spend money I didn’t have. But eventually, I found the CD (which I didn’t even know I had) and was able to repair my system.

I would just like this post to stand as a warning to anyone who wants a Vista look for their computer. DON’T USE VISTA TRANSFORMATION PACK. Even though I have my computer back, I still get error messages for just about everything. I’m still looking around, but I think I’m going to have to buy a registry cleaning program. That will cost a good $30, which isn’t as much as a new computer, but I could have saved myself time and money, by not downloading that stupid program.

Last Couple of Days

AHHH!!!! My titles are starting to sound like Isaac's!

I think I’ve finally found the flaw in my blogging philosophy. I always wait for something big to happen before I post, and when something big does happen, I’m too busy to post. So, with that in mind I’m just going to bring ya’ll up to speed on what all’s going on.

Sunday was what is commonly known as Palm Sunday. Triumphal entry and all that. So we got a break from our regular series (we just finished Song of Solomon, and it was... different than most of the other books in the Bible). One younger sister was sick, so she and Mom stayed home. There was a fellowship afterwards. The food was good. Lots of cakes though, I think we were the only people to bring any kind of cookie.

I believe I mentioned earlier that I got my driving permit. Well, I am now driving and having quite a bit of fun with it. No crashes or even close calls. Though I should say that if you ask my older sister, she is more of the opinion that I’m... what is a word she would use for it? I don’t know, but she didn’t really like that one turn I made onto the state highway.

On Monday, it was mostly school and watching younger siblings. Usually, when I have to baby sit everybody, I don’t get much done, but I managed to get all of my school done. Yay! I also actually ran my first errand. I drove to the IGA to get chicken, but there wasn’t any so I just drove home again. hmmm... Is that an errand or not?

Today, I went to speech club and I actually got some pictures! These were taken during our Impromptu Apologetics class. (Yes, we have some pretty weird people). So I’ll just give the picture, and then whatever derogatory comment I can think of after that.

DISCLAIMER: These people are WEIRD. I will not be held responsible for any mental injury that might occur by looking at these pictures.

This is my brother. Actually he’s pretty nice once you get to know him. He was sick today, so he didn't go to speech club or scouts.

This is Andy. I’m doing Humorous Duo with him. It’s about the Lone Stranger and we have a lot of work to do on it by next week.

This is our club director. Oh, BTW, our club has a website at http://www.aosda.org/, but it is not quite up to date. So, if you want old info, please check it out.

OK. I don’t know how we got on the topic (probably Blake), but somehow, someone started talking about biting toe nails. So, Blake (in back) and Andrew (in front) decided to show everyone how you could get your leg high enough to do that. Yes, they ought to be put away or something, but they haven’t killed anyone yet, so I guess that’s why not.

This is just an average picture of our club meetings. From left to right, it’s Hilary, Danni, Deborah, Blake, and behind him is Jake. Deborah was wearing Jake’s hat for some reason. No one dared wear mine.

Evidently, Deborah doesn’t like getting her picture taken.

Another picture of Andy, behind him at Robert, Liz, and Ben. I could give very interesting backgrounds on all these people, but alas, I have neither the time nor space.

Andrew just being... Andrew.

Ooh. I just had to add this picture of Josiah and his book. It’s not very good, but I like the concept of the person being the picture on the book thing. Oh well.

After speech, I drove to Boy Scouts, which probably could have gone better. We did everything we said we’d do, but I still wish there were more guys. I also drove home. My first time driving at night or in the rain.

And now here I am. Sitting at my desk at 11:30 at night wondering why I just wasted ½ hour of sleep telling you all of this stuff that you probably could live fine without. Oh, well.

I'm too tierd to fight the formating now so, Adios

Not Much Happening

Greeings,

I would just like to say that the title is a complete lie. So much has been happening. I can only cover the big events. Maybe I'll mention some of the other points of excitment later.

I guess I'll start way back at March 9th and 10th. The speech tornement went very well (despite the fact that it was rather small) and I think everyone enjoied themselves. I was entered in persuasive and impromtu (did I already say that?). As usual, our club (AOSDA) basically swept everything. One guy won 1st place in impromtu and homurous duo. By the end of the awards ceremony, my hands were so tierd from clapping that it hurt to turn a door knob. Afterwards, we rearranged everything in it's correct place and headed over to Marmon Valley Farms for the after-tornement fellowship, which was fun.

On March 13th we had a boy scout troop meeting election night. I'm now the SPL in my troop.

Moving right along: on the 17th I got my driving permit. All beware. I do have to say that some of the questions on that test were pretty silly. Such as: Who has the right of way when two cars pull up simotaniously to a 4-way intersection? Answer B was "The person who honks his horn first."

19th: My Eagle Scout Board of Review. That was fun. No, really it kind of was. Basically, three guys sit around and ask me questions about scouts.

23th and 24th: The first campout of the year. Isaac probably has more about this on his blog. The couse of events was get there on Friday evening, sleep, do an orienteering course on Saturday morning and hike 7 miles with 50lbs on our backs in the afternoon. This event really deserves another post. I think I'll have to write up a different one just for it.

Today: Went to church. Pastor just finished going through Song of Solomon. I'm helping out in the 1st grade class which is lots of fun. The kids are so fun to work with. This week we were studying vineyared workers in the Bible. We talked about Ahab and Naboth's vineyard. The teachers weren't trying to go this way, but we wound around to a discussion on the death of Jezebell. All the girls were pretty grossed out. Enjoyable.

A Post

Some (or maybe just one) of you were (was) asking for a new post.

Here it is.

Good night.

more later...

My Weekend is Almost Over

First, an explanation of the title:
At 6:30pm tonight, my weekend will be as good as over. Time will fly from that point on. Everyone in our house has spent the past months or so preparing for this weekend and it's going to be a blur. At 6:30 we leave for GCC (my church) to set up chairs and tables, I don't expect to get back until 9:30 or so. By then, I will be in need of and willing to receive some much needed sleep, because at approximately 5:30am my alarm clock will begin its annoying routine. After that it's a game called "How fast Can Everyone Take a Shower, Brush Their Teeth, Eat, and Put a Suit (and for me put on a tie)" I'm expecting the tie part to take the longest. Any s reading this have no idea how hard it is to get those things the right length.
After that the most likely schedule will probably go something like this: (I know I keep putting up schedules, but right now, my life is just on big calendar)

7:00 - Jump into the car as the last person as Dad is just starting to back it out of the garage.
7:45 - Arrive at church and begin the process of introducing myself to people so that I can help them when they need chairs moved
8:00 - Register and get my name tag
8:30 - Meet with the rest of my club for prayer
8:45 - flood into the sanctuary with everyone else for devotions and announcements
9:30 - Head off to watch the first debate round (note: by now my stomach will most likely be complaining)
9:45 - arrive at first debate round (I'll probably watch the team that won the novice division last tournament)
10:45 - after being bored to by stats and arguments concerning illegal aliens and ists and pilot's licenses, check in with Mom for any tasks and if none, head to watch one of our club's JV students
11:00 - Watch a JV (Junior Varsity) IE (Individual Event)
12:15 - LUNCH!!!!
2:00 - (yeah, really long lunch break) watch debate again

Anyway, that just keeps repeating until 8:30 or so, when we will have closing announcements and prayer. After that, I'm going to be on the general clean-up crew. After everyone else has left, my speech coach and her son are going to spend the night at our house (on Friday), so as to save driving time.
Oh, yeah, I forgot. We're going to eat supper sometime AFTER we get home. Hehehe. (My stomach s these things.)

I would give you the schedule for Saturday, too, but I'm really starting to run out of time. So, I'll stop here and give you a review sometime on Sunday night (maybe). But whenever I get the next post up, I will (Lord willing) have pictures along with it).

That's all for now. Hmmm... That explanation was kind of long. O, well.

A Busy Week Ahead

Greetings,

First, I would like to apologize for not posting in a while, but a lot has been going on recently.

For starters, there is a speech and debate tournament (which I am participating in) at my church this Friday and Saturday, being as the rest of my speech club lives about 45 minutes east of here, my mom has been put in charge of a lot of the organization above and beyond what we need to do normally to prepare. I have no doubt that this week will be hectic. The following is a schedule for my week.

Monday: Prepare for speech tournament, work on room diagrams, practice persuasive and impromptu, try to get some school done (didn’t happen)

Tuesday: Prepare for speech club meeting, go to speech club meeting (leave 10:15am get back 5:45pm), eat supper (and man, I’m glad I crammed that in there)

Wednesday: Prepare for speech tournament, maybe do some school if I get the chance, prayer meeting, probably practice humorous duo with partner at church

Thursday: Last minute frantic preparations for speech tournament, school? (Yeah right), help set up at church for the tournament, go to bed early

Friday: wake up at 5:00am to go to the tournament and run around in a suit trying to get chairs to the right people, hang out with whoever from my club comes (with the addition of bumpas), and probably watch a few of the Jr. Varsity speech rounds, go to bed early

Saturday: wake up at 4:30am to go to the tournament and present persuasive speech and impromptu, talk to friends, play cards, and relax in between rounds, crash.

Anyway, that’s what I’m looking at for this week.

Other than that, I just have a couple of things to mention:

First, on Saturday, my sister found out that see had gotten a really big collage scholarship. Praise the Lord. He was undoubtedly working in that situation. Besides that, she also received another smaller (but still substantial) scholarship. Like I said God is working here, but this part’s even better: There was one scholarship that my sister was for, my mom mailed the package from the post office about a week ago (two days before the sent-by line). Yesterday, it came back to us in the mail without a stamp. Note: this was not our fault; the post worker had forgotten the stamp. Anyway, my dad called the people giving the scholarship and they were very nice and let my mom take the paperwork up there almost four days after the line! God is great!

And secondly, some of you will most likely be interested to learn that I have finally seen Pride and Prejudice (yes the A&E), well at least the highlights. Watching the movie, I had three thoughts, 1) Man, my pastor was right, this is a chick flick. 2) But it is pretty good. And 3) I’m going to memorize and use that first proposal by Mr. Darsey (ok, well maybe not use, but I thought that was one of the most interesting scenes).

So, anyway, I have lots to do.

Good bye.

Same Old and Blue Skies

Friday the 3rd of March 2007 was a typical Friday for me. Mom and two sisters went shopping, I stayed home, watched the rest, and did school. Had a chemistry test today, as I said, I like chemistry. Dad got back from England, we ate supper, and watched the Colgate Comedy Hour with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Yes, it is old, but the comedy was still good. Especially the add-libbing and line-forgetting and ing up. Live TV was so much fun. The commercials were kind of a joke, a mean, the "Halo- it glorifies your hair" line really started to get to me.

One thing I really have to mention about today was the weather. A week ago, I was bummin' because Winter's over so soon, but today was so warm! And the wind... Ah.... perfectly blue sky, scattered clouds, a bright mass of gas blinding me with rays of light... You just have to wonder, if there are days like this in a sinnful world, what will Heaven be like?

Here are a few pictures I snapped to try and capture this heat-wave:

Right now, I'm... well, writing a blog, but I have been working on learning JavaScript. :>)

I hope to be able to use some in my troop's website, or maybe here. hmm... I have to look into that.

Anyway, I'll be writing...

Man, you guys weren't kidding about fits with the blog editor.

Random Thoughts on School

For my first real post, I’ll share some random thoughts on the topic of school subjects. Maybe this will help you get to know me better.

I like algebra. Some people think I’m totally weird for that, but in a hectic life like mine, there are few things that are as predictable as math. Yes, God is my only constant, but I can’t understand Him (He wouldn’t be God if I could). Right now, I’m working in Algebra II and it’s lots of fun. The course I’m using is well... let’s say systematic (if not a little slow) so I haven’t gotten to hyperbolas yet, but I think they’ll be lots of fun.

I like chemistry. Some of you are choking right now. But really, I think it’s incredibly interesting. I love the way everything just fits together, especially the units. Hertz is really cool. I mean, what cooler measurement could there be besides 1/second! Hmm... Come to think of it Joules/grams*Celsius (the unit for specific heat) comes pretty close. If there’s a downside to it would be the memorization (particularly the ions). I not big on that, but I’m having fun with it; I’ve written the names of the 14 most common polyatomic ions on the front of index cards and the chemical formula on the back. I took all of these cards and taped them on furniture around the house, for example, the microwave is Ammonium (NH4 +), I’ve got a poster that’s Dichromate (Cr2O7 2-), and the book shelves are Phosphate (PO4 3-).

I don’t like grammar. I mean, I speak okay already. I don’t need to know that “have run” is past perfect tense. I simply cannot see any practical outworking of this subject. Yeah... Not much else to say about that.

I like literature (mostly). I like reading most books and learning about the background behind them (is that redundant?). Of course, there are some books like The Tale of Two Cities that put me to sleep. I think that was mostly because I couldn’t keep track of the characters. The cliff notes made much more sense.

I don’t know how I feel about speech. I’m not big on practicing the same memorized persuasive speech over and over and over and over... and over. However, the tournaments are lots of fun (well, until it’s my turn, but that’s not so bad any more). I really enjoy talking with friends from my club between rounds. Watching debate is fun, too. Oh, by the way, last tournament, a debate team from our club won first place for novice debate. The two on that team are probably the two people I hang out with most at speech, so I flipped when they won.

Well, those are the biggest school subjects I have right now. Hmm... My stomach says I should grab some food, now that I’ve spent half of my lunch break writing this post.

I’ll be writing...

Hello World!

Greetings!

This is the first of hopefully many posts. This blog will attempt to tell the story of the work of God in my life.

I do not guarantee any regularity in the posts, but I will try to keep ya'll up to date. Anyway, I'll be writing...