Well now I know I didn’t make any New Year’s resolution to work out but for some reason I felt that it would probably be a good idea to preform some sort of resemblance to a “workout.” So now I wake up early three times a week and do what I call a “workout.” Now given my history of sports, including summer workouts in my high school football days that would legitimately kill me today (technically you pass out before you die, at least that is what my coaches always said, but I for sure wouldn’t be able to walk for a week) what I do isn’t really working out. Two of the days I wake up and do yoga for about 20 minutes. I love it. It makes me feel good. I don’t even break a sweat and then I can say with pride the rest of the day that I “worked out.” Well on the last day of “working out” I decided I would run a little and then do yoga. I decided a mile was plenty for me so I started out. Well ten minutes later I finished and then I headed for the trash. Now I didn’t in fact lose my dinner from the previous night, but it was quite the scare. The truth is, I am not in shape. So I thought about how to reform my “workouts” to remedy this problem and I came up with a great solution. Next week when I run, I am gonna run for 10 minutes and I think 1/2 mile in that time will be plenty. What can I say the Lord has called me to ministry and I want to follow that call mentally, spiritually, socially and I think this is a great step physically. It would be a shame to lose the early progress I have made on my Pentecostal Pulpit Pusher.
I “Workout”
Bringing it back
The start of the New Year always somehow has a way of bringing you back to the basics of life. I guess you re-contemplate everything from the ground up. Well after a lot of this deep contemplation, I didn’t really come up with much. But I have gone back to the basics in a few ways. I have returned to school and am going to all of my new classes for the first time. This is always exciting, the prospect of a new subject, new people and so on and so forth. I am also back in the dorm room, which takes a day or two to adjust to being back. The hardest part of adjusting is coming into the room late at night when my roommate is asleep and having to get ready for bed in the dark. When I left last semester I had this down to a science, but the break has caused me to lose some of my nimbleness (not to be confused with gracefulness, of which I have never had any). Point and case, last night when I came in and the lights were off, I ran into every piece of furniture, tripped on multiple sets of shoes and knocked over a pile of books. So I have some adjusting to do. However, the most basic component that has been present so far this year was one of my great loves about 8 years ago. That is going as long as possible without taking a shower. Now this has in theory happened by accident, but already this year I have gone two 48 hour stretches without a shower. Now if we do the math and assume this will continue for the remainder of the year, that means I will go over 100 days this year without showering. You have got to love that.
I Have Resolved
I have never made a New Year’s resolution… ever. This year I didn’t really plan on making one either. I have kicked around several ideas though. Normally it involves ideas like, I am going to work out or eat less soft serve from the ice cream machine in the caf. But I have never been willing to make those a resolution because I figure, what is the point in lying to myself. Plus then there is the added, but totally unnecessary, guilt that I will have when I hit the snooze button instead of getting up to work out or when I am eating that incredibly large ice cream cone that I have been able to skillfully craft only through countless times of practice. So I figure, what is the point. But at the end of this fall I realized that I really wanted to start to blog again. Before I did it a lot out of my own boredom and whether anyone was entertained by it I have no idea, but I was. What can I say, I thought I was clever and witty. But this fall when my brothers moved I realized how convenient of a channel of communication this blog really can be and that it would be foolish not to utilize. I never felt that I had time at school to sit down and write. So this year’s resolution is that I will blog at least once a week. I am hoping to find a specific time during the week that is convenient when I get into a rhythm back at school. I have retooled the format and changed the name. I doubt that I will be as “clever” or ridiculous as I have been in the past, but it is still me writing and hopefully my words will be of some value. So here is to you, the supposed reader… May 2009 be a wonderful year, and may we all be successful in our New Year’s Resolutions, and may I never feel guilty for not working out or eating a giant ice cream cone.
A Year in Review
What can I say about the year 2008? This was an interesting year. I would not say that there were any life changing events that occurred this year, however I would say that I myself changed more this year than I have any other previous years. I finished my first year of college in the spring and my first semester of my second year this fall. While it is only my second year, I am a junior standing due to credits. It really doesn’t make much of a difference other than the fact that I am curfew exempt. This comes in handy for when I am out late… uh studying. This summer I worked pouring concrete. I guess when I look back on that experience I think I am glad I didn’t die and I am glad I am not in jail and it has given me plenty of incentive to stay in school. This spring my whole family went to Mexico on vacation. This was a great time getting to enjoy the company of my brothers, their wives, and their sons. My family was also able to gather together one last time before my oldest two brother moved overseas. This was a wonderful time and it was a blessing to be able to have everyone together one last time before my brothers and their families moved. One last highlight this fall was being able to go to Coldplay’s Viva La Vida concert in Oklahoma City with my roommate. The above picture is a ridiculous amount of glow in the dark confetti that was shot out during the song Lovers in Japan. Overall this was a great year. I am excited for the upcoming year and whatever it may hold, but I am extremely grateful for all of the incredible times that I was blessed with during this year of 2008.
Holiday to Holiday
My last post was over 6 months and came on the 4th of July. A lot has happened since then and it would be impossible to attempt to explain in one post what has happened in the elapsed time. I beg forgiveness for this great leave of absence. I thought often of this blog and wished that I had been keeping up with it, both for my sake and for the sake of you, the supposed reader. However, today was Christmas, what a wonderful day. I always enjoy Christmas and today was no exception. It was a quiet day with just my parents and David. We woke up in the late morning and instead of rushing to open presents, enjoyed our traditional crepe breakfast first. After breakfast we commenced opening presents in a leisurely fashion. When we had finished with the presents, we all took naps except for my mother who tirelessly prepared the lovely Christmas day dinner. Dinner was lovely and David and I both dressed up in order to do such a delicious meal justice. We capped the day off watching Miracle on 34th Street. The day was marvelous and it is a shame I will have to wait another full year to enjoy such a day all over again.
4th of July
Do to the large number of justified comments related to my lagging on blogging, I apologize and am here once again for you all. I have been working on a couple of online classes over the summer which come to an end in just over a week, so the future of this blog is once again bright. But tonight I could not help but enjoy myself almost entirely too much do to the incredible East Helena 4th of July experience. Most of the time on the fourth we go to this show, which really does remind me of the small town feel of MT. We go and along with everyone else park in the middle of an open field. Then everyone lights off all of their fire crackers. At first you feel a little unsafe with explosions going off all around you, but you get used to it. By the end you really see the true beauty of a 360 degree panoramic of fire crackers all around you, in the sky on the ground, parachutes falling, kids running to catch them, kids running away from the fire cracker they just lit. One of my favorite parts is that when you drive in you have to be careful not to get hit by fire crackers being lit on the road. And people don’t appreciate it when you do light them on the road. I mean why wouldn’t you light your fire crackers in the middle of a field of tall grass. I see no problem in that. The actual show is average at best. But the continuous stream of fire crackers before, throughout and after the whole show all around you is priceless. Tonight God even chipped in with a beautiful gold and red sunset, as well as large bolts of lightening to serve as backlighting. I was sitting watching all of this happen around me and thats when it hit me… I felt like I was living in the Sandlot for a minute. The one night a year when the sky is bright enough for a night game.
Snow Day
Wednesday I was filled with the pleasure of working in the snow and when I say snow I dont mean like it was falling and not sticking. There were three inches on the ground and it was still coming down. Snow in June nothing like it. I’m taking an online meteorology class which I hope will explain such a phenomena to me and thats when it hit me… am I home for Christmas break or summer break?
Sky, ocean and earth
I would like to apologize for the inconsistency in blogging and I can’t promise that it will pick back up but I still want to let you know what is going on in my world. I have been working for three weeks now on a concrete crew. We pour the walls that create the foundation. To tell you the truth I didn’t even know that there were walls such as what I am now devoted to building but whatever. My job has been surprisingly diverse though which I never would have guessed. You know how at a new job everything is pretty strange until you do everything once, well the process here is pretty long so we have just now about gone through the whole process and I am becoming more aware of what is going on. I thought I would let you all know some of the very interesting jobs that I have been doing. The first one is being up in the sky. Now I don’t know how well you know me personally but even if you know one of my brothers well you know that we were not blessed with gracefulness or light footedness. This is tough when you are balancing. I had to take a weed sprayer and spray oil inside of the walls that we built, where the concrete would go. To do this I had to climb and walk on top of sixteen foot walls and then spray oil where I was about to walk. The next day we poured concrete into the walls. I was at the base of the walls when this was going on and the noise I heard was much like that of the ocean, just behind the walls in front of me. It was actually kind of cool, thinking about the incredible force that was just behind those walls. The final part of my job is earth. Now this could go for digging and all the other crummy jobs, but I can’t help but think of today when I got dumped on with wet cement that we were pouring from about eight feet above me. It hurt as cement is pretty much just rocks and stuff, not to mention that I was a mess and thats when it hit me… and next time I’ll try to avoid the falling cement.
Don’t take this the wrong way
So I’ve just been working away here in MT, but lest anyone think that it is spring here, oh you have no idea. In fact today is the first day I have taken my hoody off during work. Actually it has snowed about half of the days I have worked in the last two weeks. Yeah there is nothing springy about that. And I have found that while my job does include some specific jobs related to actual concrete, it is more like doing those nasty chores on saturdays, except you get paid. Sorry mom looks like your gonna have to outbid my other job for my services in the back yard. You see the other day I got stuck digging with only a hammer. I was supposed to dig three inches down, but given the fact that it wasn’t just hard dirt, no it was solid rock, that wasn’t as easy as you would think. But to top it off, I had to do all this under two levels of rebar. So I was breaking rock with the hammer and then scooping it out with my hands. For some reason we were short on tools, thus the primitive means, but I did that for a couple hours and I mean I guess there are worse jobs. But the head guy on the crew was working with another guy on something and they were looking for some spray paint, however being that we were short on tools we didn’t have any. So my boss approached well as politely as he has thus far and said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you strike me as kind of a vandal, do you have any spray paint in your car” and thats when it hit me… I do look like a vandal, can’t you see it?
The real world
Well as I’m sure you have noticed I have been very sporadic in my blogging in the past couple of weeks. Well I can pretty much explain that, it’s a little thing known as the real world. I am now home and working a full time job and well it’s not all that its cracked up to be (and it’s not cracked up to be much). I am working on a concrete crew which is something that I have never done so not only is it fairly hard work, I am having to learn everything as I go. The only thing that I really have going for me right now is that it is still really cold here in MT and so at least its not hot, but give it a little while and I’ll be complaining about the heat, because despite popular belief it does get hot in MT, its just not humid. So I go to work at 7 in the morning and am back in the early afternoon, however I don’t get the rest of the night as free time though, because I am taking an online class this summer. It’s a philosophy class which I really am enjoying but its a lot of work and makes for a busy life. In fact I have been so busy that last friday night I went to sleep at 7:30. Thats early! At school the only time I would go to sleep that early is if I was going to take a nap so I could stay up until 4 or 5 in the morning. So my life has changed drastically in the last week and thats when it hit me… when I get out of school my life is always going to be like this. 
This is a pic I found online on a guys post that I thought was pretty sweet; he also had some other cool pics that you should check out. His blog is at blog.ajg.net/.
