when to suck it up and go to the washroom

I was working today on a house and late this afternoon I started feeling the urge to go. So I walked down to the washroom and looked into it. There was a slight draft. This was because the walls had been cut out all the way around at 2' 1/2". So I back away and try and hold it. Minutes go by and I have to go. So I walk down and look at the washroom and notice that the door doesn't close all the way... back away. More minutes. Go back, realize that there is one entire wall missing with a window that doesn't have curtains on the other side of it. Back away. My bladder was giving me trouble at this time, so I finally went in, shut the door as much as I could and went to the washroom. And of course, there was no water so it didn't flush... ah well, I came out with two kidneys and a happy bladder. Hopefully tomorrow's better for me.

my calling

So I've had a few issues with being an RA for the fall; namely the whole thing that I'm not considered to be cool, and I starting thinking that no one will respect me because of me being a geek... but then I read Jeremiah and his call by God stood out to me. So I took it and I paraphrased parts of it to be fitting to my situation.

Jeremiah 1:4-8 (NIV and Paraphrase)

The word of the Lord came to me, saying,

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew ou,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as an RA to the Lehmans."

"Ah, Sovereign Lord," I said, "I do not know how to lead; I am only a geek."

But the Lord said to me, "Do not say, 'I am only a geek.' You must go to everyone I send you and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you," declares the Lord.

---

I took a few literary freedoms there, but I think it conveys the point that God's not going to give me a floor that hates me. He's going to give me a floor that is right for me and I'll be right for them. It's hard to get beyond the idea of 'cool', but it's irrelavent... completely. Will I get over it? Only time and prayer can help now.

unorganization etc.

I was a part of one of the most disorganized church services that I've been to in a long time, but I wasn't in charge, so it's not my fault. It was more of a leadership issue than anything. No one was sure who was leading and it made things end up not good. Arg. One of these days things will get better, but for now...

when prayer helps

I've been feeling kinda depressed tonight. I've narrowed it down to me buying tools tonight and the idea of instability in my life at the moment.

Firstly, I've never really been a handy person. This week I realized that I cut like a drunk with a knife on drywall and I lack the strength to go through. I'm also learning new things every day that I never realized needed to be looked at. The question now is because I was never handy, should I start being handy now? I have a knife and a screwdriver (with a built-in flashlight... who needs it, but it came with two other flashlights too, so why not?). I have a fear that I'll accidentally cut myself with the knife. The only other experience I've had with knives and drywall is after we had the flood in '96 with 2 feet+ of water in the basement, one of the guys who was working on the basement accidentally slipped and cut his stomach open requiring him to get stitches. I keep having this recurring fear that I'm going to end up like that and need stitches. I try to be as careful as I possibly can be, but it's not working out as well as I'd hoped... I'm going to try and be safe on Monday with my new knife.

Secondly, after being comfortable with my life for years, I'm at a point where things are very unstable. I don't have a full time job, I don't have the money that I have had, and it's hard to get together with friends because they're off galavanting elsewhere when I'm free, and it'll be worse when I start the job moving computers because that's from 4pm-midnight monday-friday. But I guess since I believe God has a plan for me, and it may require this summer to get to where I need to be in life, I'll just have to hope and pray that this is right and that the depression is only temporary. Depression killing you? Let the church help.

observations on the world

I've been doing a lot of observing the past few days while working on ripping out drywall (which I suck at cutting, but putting a hammer through it and pulling it out is my line of work). I've done some observations on addictions. There's a few smokers who, in a fifteen minute break, go through 2-3 cigarettes. Out of curiousity, I counted yesterday, and the one guy I work with went through at least 10 cigs in 9 hours. At least the other two guys aren't that addicted and only go through 3-4 per day. It's still annoying.

Then there's language. Two people don't use foul language (myself and another), but the other ones do. I don't know if it makes them feel any better by using words that aren't necessary to survive or what, but it's annoying. The one guy said on Tuesday that he was trying to cut back on language, but as the week progressed he's gotten worse and worse. Every other word seems to be a swear word. I think the reason why it gets worse is because no one mentions that they're bothered by it. Maybe if I say something on Monday it might be less and less until it's gone. But probably not.

Finally, I'm sick of trying to show off by acting like you know everything. Personally, i don't like acting like that or showing off, but I tend to do it around some people. I think it's insecurity about who you are as a person that drives you to want to impress people. But it's more of a turn off than anything... I should probably take that to heart. Done.

worry killing you? let the church help

So my worry was almost needed, but not quite because I ended up with a D- in group Dynamics; just one step above that fabled F that I don't ever want to see. What a relief. Sigh.

wet carpet and other such things.

So I got a phone call today from the student employment centre telling me about a job with Winmar removing wet stuff from the basements of people whose house was flooded this past weekend in the rain. So I said sure and called Winmar to find out that I had 45 minutes to get into Sarnia in order to start.

So I did. There were three of us who were contacted plus another one who's joining us tomorrow. The experience was interesting nonetheless. We went to a house in Wyoming that seemed to be milking the insurance for as much as they could. I think they may have had 2 inches of water in the basement, but they were getting rid of everything. 2 inches isn't enough to harm the washer and dryer. Sheesh. Ah well, I was getting paid to chuck their wet carpet and stuff into a dumpster, so I did. We weren't allowed to take anything that was getting trashed, or else I would have grabbed a bunch of milk crates that they had in the pile for school. Ah well, it was an interesting experience when I saw a plaque on the wall that said "Families are Wonderful" and then saw a picture from playboy out in the garage on the wall. That's not practicing what you preach. By the end of the 2 hours out there, I was getting annoyed with the fumes and my breathing started to go. It's better now that I'm away from the stench. There's masks we can wear, so I'll get those for tomorrow.

I'm also getting together with the guy who I've been in touch with about the computer moving job, which doesn't start until June 11th now, so I can hang on with Winmar quite a few days longer than originally planned, so more money! Woohoo!

I saw the sun!

Yes, there was sun, before the clouds came in again. It may rain yet again, but hopefully it doesn't. We'll figure things out when they get there. I'm waiting to see pictures of the flooding from yesterday because it was pretty rad.

rain rain go away...

So it's rained again for the umpteenth day in a row. Tonight was only different from the past nights because we had the tornado watch included with the regular severe thunderstorm warning. That didn't amount to much, but a few flickers of the power (during me cooking my grilled cheese in the sandwich maker, but all was well again when it came back on)and quite a few loud bangs and bright flashes.

This morning on the way to church, there were lakes in the fields, and Talfourd Creek was flooded out at Hwy 40, which isn't new, but this time it was cascading over the driveway to the east of the hwy like Niagara Falls, but with less height and water. I'm surprised it wasn't coming onto the hiway. Then we get into Narnia after seeing flooded ditches and parking lots along the drive, and I look down Confederation to see that it's flooded and flowing like a river towards Indian. Upon arrival at church, we find that the basement was flooded, yet again. The joys of having leaks along the side of the church and not having the money to fix it. So after two services of not getting much out of church except deciding that I'm creating a philiosophy of RAship for next year and thinking about ideas for my floor at school, I helped mop up the puddles in the kitchen at the church and hopped in the van to go home.

Here's where the funny part happens. We're driving down Devine Street and find out that Indian Road's flooded about a foot deep, so we can't turn there. So we go to the end of Devine, but find out that Confederation from Murphy to Indian's closed, so we have to do a huge circle around Sarnia and come out Vidal hoping to get away from the flooded roads. No such luck. Vidal at the beginning of the valley was flooded across, so we turned onto a side street at the credit union to find that street flooded too. So we turned into a parking lot that we thought went through to the next street and found out that it didn't, so we went via the sidewalk to the next parking lot which did go through to the next street. End of flooding. Not. One more flood across Vidal at the Dow Curve. Sarnia, how I love thee so.

Also today, there was a(nother) spill in the River by Imperial Oil of something that smelt like gas, and Talfourd Creek was rapidy upon arrival at the river.

The joys.

two cool things

Number one. I mowed the lawn for a lady this morning and we were talking afterwards and anyways I ended up asking her to check up on the contact information for a friend who's dad was a Lutheran Church minister in Ontario somewhere. She got back to me, and I e-mailed them wondering if it was the right family and if I could get their son's e-mail address because we used to be best friends during grades 2-6. So I e-mailed them, and it was the right family and they got back to me within 12 hours, which is pretty cool, so I'll be e-mailing the guy tomorrow to see how he's doing.

Number two. I was driving home from the Grove tonight and it was beginning to storm. I've been out in storms before, but never this cool. The whole sky was lighting up with lightning a lot. That really whacks out the night vision, but it's still cool. It started pouring so I had to pull over to the side of the road for a few seconds to wait it out. It's annoying driving in the ruts of the road that have been formed by the trucks and cars driving on it constantly. I sure hope that the people up at Pitch 'N' Praise are doing ok during this. Wouldn't want them to be rained out... again.

thoughts on Colossians 3:12-14

"Therefore, as God's chosesn people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity."

Four Qualities of a Prostar Christian.

1. "Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience."
2. "Bear with each other"
3. "Forgive as the Lord forgave you."
4. "And over all these virtues put on love."

All of these qualities go hand in hand. When you cover yourself with things that are good, you are able to bear with your friends and acquaintances because of the compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. This includes mistakes made, stupid things done, learning, and growing experiences that happen over the course of life. Everyone's just human and we're all bound to mess up. In the bearing with each other, forgiveness for the mixup needs to come. It's hard to get over yourself and forgive, but it's necessary.

You look at it all and the icing on the cake; the catalyst in the reaction; the plot to the movie is love. You do this because you love. First John commands us to love one another because love is something that God gives. It even goes as far as saying those who don't love don't know God because God IS love (4:7,8 paraphrase kinda from NIV). There's a difference between knowing about God and knowing God. Knowing about God is one thing because you have the head knowledge. I was there for a long time. Knew the answers, but didn't know the Answer. Then I realized that there's more than this. I begain to know God. Knowing God is having an intimate relationship with Him and living 100% for Him... Here's where the qualities come into play. How do we love God? By doing what He says. That is an act of worship.

honesty

You know, everytime I'm honest with people having the intentions to help things along, it flys back in my face. I guess I'm right that I have no counselling abilities whatsoever and should just leave situations to the professionals.

worried

For some reason, the worry about failure of one class has hit me today. Ah well, I'm trusting on God and it's gone away for the most part. We'll see when the marks come if I had anything to worry about to begin with.

blog bingo

Ok, I hate the word blog, but I guess I have to use it in order to describe the new game I created.

The game is you start in your friend's blog and find the links section. Mine's on the right, just for starters. Then you look for a link to another blog and click on it. Repeat until you can't go any furthur without backtracking. Count the number of jumps. I've made it about 7 different people that I didn't know before circling.

Variation. Use the previous technique to find out how many degrees of blog separation there are between you and someone else you know. I unintentionally found 6 degrees of separation between me and someone I knew by name from an online message board. Go figure.

there must be more than this...

You know, the usual sitting around being bored 24-7. It's kinda annoying. Though the view out my window's amazing right now with the sunset. No, there's no cute girls outside. It's cold you know. And the only girls that would be outside my window are 10 years younger than me, so they're kinda young, and no, I don't start at them. My blinds are closed most of the time anyways. Where did this come from?

Anywayskies, I have a job, even though it is only a temp job for 3 weeks from the 31st til the 18th moving computers. That's all it is: unplugging, moving to be upgraded, and then moving them back and plugging them back in. There must be a lot of computers if they need 4-6 people for 3 weeks to do this. Ah well, it pays good and I need the money. If only it were 3 months rather than 3 weeks. I'll survive though.

too tired...

Why do I feel like if I leave my house I'm going to pass out? If only I could go to sleep and not have to worry about anything....

It's going to rain soon and I don't want to leave, but I know I have to apply for more jobs or else I wont get them... maybe one of these days someone will offer me a job, but for now...

The Car was there before the sign...

Today's theological question.

Car A was parked on the street at 7:45 AM. Around 11 AM, township people come around and put up a new sign "No Stopping between 8 AM and 9 AM". Car A is safe today. However, say sign said 9 PM instead of AM. If an OPP officer dropped by and gave car A a ticket because it was parked in a no stopping zone, would Car A have to pay because it was there BEFORE the sign?

Thankfully it says AM instead of PM. I can leave Car A on the street.

Note the word 'student'.

"Dear Timothy,

We appreciate your interest in our Directory Assistance Operator position.

While the qualifications you exhibited in your interview are competitive, we regret to inform you that we are unable to hire any additional summer students this year.

Thank you for taking the time to apply and interview with us and we hope you will keep Nordia in mind when applying to jobs in the future. Good luck in your job search"

Yarg.

Get a job.

I know that I need to get a job in order to fund the wonderful thing I know as school. It's hard to find a place to work when I'm not in the right field. Why am I ranting about this again? I wish that I could just walk out the door and 50 people would be offering me money to work for them for the summer... if only.

The Beginning...

So, let's try this journal thing again. It's away from the wonderful world of CGR, but still around for people to read if they so choose. On the plus side, people can post comments if they so choose, so w00t!

I went for a bike ride this morning. It was great, except for the burn that came with it. Well, I guess it's good to feel the burn because that means something's going right. I think I need to do that more often. If only it weren't windy some days. I'd so be out there going to Mooretown or Courtright on a regular basis. I only made it to Rokeby today, but that's furthur than Talfourd yesterday. I want to be able to go to Narnia and back by the end of the summer to save gas, but we'll see how far that takes me.