Gotta catch some sleep

I just spent...a long time... looking for a Pokemon layout for my blog. Yes, Pokemon. Why? I have absolutely no idea. I don't even want to know how long I spent on this fruitless search. I found plenty, but none of them worked. I'm pretty bad at this HTLM stuff. html... whatever... I'm just bad at all this formatting. I guess that's one reason I prefer facebook over myspace. They format your profile page for you. It's so much easier that way. Myspace is so complicated, and it's so much less fun. I pulled three surveys off of there the other day, though. Probably the first time I logged on in at least three months.

I'm still home. Went to the doctor today. She was really nice. Put me on antibiotics. Hopefully I'll be feeling better soon. I just hope this vertigo goes away pretty soon. I can't hardly walk right now. I can make it to the bathroom, or the kitchen, or even upstairs, alright, but I don't think I could walk for a very long time without sitting down, or sit down for extended periods of time without laying down. That won't do for college. I can get away with walking in the dorms and stuff, cuz I have a note, but I'm not too sure about walking all the way to class. Some of them are pretty far. Maybe I'll just tough it out. Then again, it doesn't matter how tough I am if I can't walk in a straight line. Maybe I should just drop out and find some career that doesn't involve a college degree... No, I'm just kidding. Don't worry, I'll stay in college.

I did talk to dad once about doing something besides being a nuclear engineer. It's not like that's set in stone at this point anyway. Is your life ever set in stone? I guess pretty much the only thing you can be sure about in life is death, and with how things are looking now, even that might not happen for some of us. But anyway, I think it would be great just to have something that I love to do, that has nothing to do with money or income. I guess you could consider it a hobby, but I'm talking on a larger scale. In this case, my dad and I were talking about owning and running a camp. Now, maybe I couldn't both own and run a camp, along with being a nuclear engineer, but I'm sure I could at least help out at one. We got onto this topic because I mentioned that I'm not sure if being an engineer is what I really love to do, and I want to have a job in a field that I love, not just one that makes me a lot of money. I don't think I've ever talked to someone who regretted getting a job they loved because of low pay. Yeah, there are plenty of people who wish that the jobs they have would pay more, but they still love their job enough to stick with it. I love working at the camp. Everything about it. The people, the animals, the campfires, the smells, the sounds, the games, stories, snacks, songs, and the amazing presence of God in such a beautifully isolated sanctuary. Every opportunity to visit that place is such a blessing to me. When I told my dad about that, he suggested I invest in a camp someday. Now that was an idea! I could be a part of making and managing the thing that I love! Oh, it seemed like such a great idea, it couldn't be real. I still can't imagine it could actually happen. But then again, that dream is what the Seales are living. Sometimes I try to imagine waking up and having to go feed the chickens and the horses (sometimes when I'm there I don't have to imagine!), having your summer job be right outside your door, and going to sleep next to campers in bunks just a few hundred feet from your bedroom. I'm sure they would say that it's not all as extravagant as I'm making it seem right now - after all, the grass is always greener on the other side, right? - but I still think it would be pretty great. Oops, it looks like my secret's out now. The Seales know how cool I think they are. I guess I'd better not tell them how serious I was about adopting me...

Haha, I look back up at the title of this blog, and I realize that I couldn't have picked a better one. This is my third attempt at starting this post. I'll be surprised if it makes it. I don't know why I'm writing, other than the fact that I don't want to do my math homework. I'll get a due date extension. I'm sick, they'll have pity on me. I hope...

This week has crawled by. I found that the weeks so far this semester were actually moving by faster than I expected, but this week has crawled by. It's probably just because I'm sick, and all I've done since Friday night is lay around on the couch or my bed, eat, play some wii, sleep, eat, play on my ipod, eat, sleep, play wii, sleep... somehow I've managed to keep my devotionals going, but they been hardly anything more than scribbling down whatever semblances of thoughts I have at the moment before falling back into the sleepy stupor I was in before. All of this just makes me even more anxious to get out of this world, and out of this frail, vulnerable body. Paul said somewhere, I can't find it right now, that we'll inherit bodies that are like Christ's. I thought that was pretty cool. He didn't mean like Jesus' body when He was here on earth, either, but like His in heaven. I look forward to that. No more sickness, no more injuries, no more pt...

Ooh, so I got the surround sound system hooked up on Saturday. It's pretty tight. The bass is really nice. 700 watts, I think...

At the hospital, the nurse gave me this stuff called dilotin (I don't know how it's spelled, but it's pronounced dil-OT-in), which he said is ten times stronger than morphine. Yeah. Think about that for a second. Morphine is pretty strong stuff. The guy put this stuff in the IV, and then, about a minute later, it's almost like fire is going across my chest, then up towards my head. I got this crazy head rush, and it felt like someone was pulling me back into the pillow. From the time I first felt it in my chest, for the rest of the night, I kept moving my legs, whether I was thinking about it or not. I was high for like an hour after that. When the guy came in to take me to x-ray my neck to check for some kind of infection, after proper introduction ("Hi, what's your name? My name is Brandon, it's nice to meet you..."), I started talking to him about the musical I was missing, how I was feeling, and stuff like that. He was a really nice guy. His name was Michael...

If you're still reading this, you must either be really bored, or you have a weird sense of humor, like me. Or maybe you just like me that much. :) Thanks.

Are smileys allowed in blogs? Are there any rules for blogs? I saw this cooking blog once that had a post about what kind of stuff you should eat when you're sick. The requirements looked so difficult to fulfill that it seemed to me it would be worse for you to make that food than it would be just to eat whatever you have in the fridge. I would just keep a good stock of canned soup for whenever you're under the weather...

I think I had a point for starting this post, but I can't remember what it was now. It may have just been to complain about how bad I feel, but then I didn't want to just complain, cuz no one wants to listen to someone else complain about how they feel, and it's not good to complain anyway. So, I was gonna turn it into a motivational post about how we'll get new bodies in heaven. I think you saw where that went. It's all Hannah's fault. I just read her new post, and whenever I read one of her blog posts, it makes me want to go and write a really thoughtful, inspiring post of my own, but they never turn out quite like hers do. Just look at this one. I don't even think I want to go back and read it now. I'm scared to...

Have you ever played Donkey Kong 64? That was a cool game...

So I was walking through the Trigon the other day (it's the building with all the ROTC people. they're actual military, not A&M Corps. BIG difference), and I noticed this sign with an Army slogan on it: "I will always place the mission first." I had seen the sign before, but those words stuck out to me that particular time. I thought about what exactly that pledge implied. Always, as in, all the time. Whether you want to or not, whether you like it or not, whether it's easy or not. Always. I imagined a soldier, stuck out there, somewhere far from home. Maybe it's cold and wet, and he's only inches away from frostbite, but he's still crawling across the ground, away from the warmth of camp, towards a deadly enemy. He thinks about his family back home, where it's sunny, and bright, and he feels loved, and welcome, and safe. But he has to push those thoughts to the back of his mind, and keep crawling, farther from camp, farther from home. He must complete his mission. The last thing he wants to do is get any closer to the enemy, but it's part of the mission. He only wants to go running back into the arms of his family, and embrace them, and never leave. But he must complete his mission.

Isn't that kinda how we should be? Think about it. We were placed on this earth for a purpose, a mission, if you will. I don't know about you, but I'm anxious to get to Heaven. Sometimes I wish I could just leave this world and go straight there, and I'm sure many Christians feel the same way. But we must complete our mission. It's tough, yes, and it's not always fun. We have to go through some pretty tough training to prepare ourselves for it, and, many times, we have absolutely no idea why we're doing what we're doing, we just know that it needs to be done. Only after we finish our mission, can we go home. We shouldn't treat this world as our home, because it isn't. We are only here for a short time. This is just camp. Don't spend too much time making yourself comfortable here, because when you leave for home, you don't take your tent with you.

Now, I know this is a pretty loose analogy, but I think it's good for that one point. We're here for a while, and, even if God blesses you with a great life, it's nothing compared to what's in store for us. Just the thought of that should make you anxious to go home. But remember, we have a mission to complete here. And God will never send us through something we can't handle, with His help. We never leave His thoughts, His sight, or His hands. I hope this has encouraged you in some way.

Good Day

Ok, so I have to do this real quick before I go to sleep. Yesterday was awesome!!!

Ok, so yesterday, we were supposed to have pt at 5:30 in the morning, but that got cancelled because it was rainy and cold, so we just woke up at 6:30 for formation.

At morning chow (breakfast), a sophomore said something funny, but I didn't buzz (laugh or smile) at all (you get in trouble for that), even when they were talking directly to me about it.

I took about an hour long nap.

I woke up from nap, turned on my phone, and had a text from Hannah saying "Hey... I don't know if you can get away this evening, but we're going to be singing at care inn in bryan this evening at 6..."

That made my day in itself (made my week, in fact), but it gets even better.

I had just gotten out my shoes and polish, and checked the Corps website. The uniform had been changed to BDU's/ACU's (our camo uniforms, which are easier to wear than our regular ones, and don't require polishing shoes). I put away my shoes and got dressed in ACU's.

I left for my first class when the quad was empty (didn't have to sprint to upperclassmen to whip out).

Ate at Sbisa.

Got smoked. Bad. This was one of two things that didn't go well yesterday, but even the smoking went by relatively fast.

Went to see the Seales!!

Ate at Subway with the Seales!!!!

Went with some buddies to Wal Mart...

...then a movie...

...then IHOP, which was packed...

...so we went to Denny's instead...

...and I ate a lot of food...

...at about 3:30 in the morning...

...got back to my hole and did my devotional...

...and so ended my day.

The title of this post is misleading.

It was an awesome day.

You have to see these notes I took in math. Ok, not really. I guess it’s not that funny. But at the time, I thought it was pretty funny. I just got bored in class, so I drew a little, and I actually related it to what we were learning about. I wish a had a better camera than just the one on my phone, Then I could just take one picture of the whole paper. I guess these will just have to do for now.

They’re from yesterday, by the way. I only have math lecture on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Tuesday and Thursday is Lab and resuscitation, I mean, recitation, respectively. We also have a quiz in recitation, and the one today was inSANE! Most of it was alright, but there was one question that I skipped cuz I just couldn’t figure it out. I was about to go back to it when I realized that the bonus was worth more than that one question, so I tried for that instead. Big Mistake.

Yeah. I spent the rest of the time just on that question. If you don’t know what all that stuff means, I’ll tell you: you take the integral of the first function (the part between the squiggly and the “dx”) from 0 to 1 and subtract the integral of the second function (the same as the first, except between the second squiggly and “dx”) from 0 to 1. If you still don’t know what that means… It’s a calculus thing. If you looked at it and went “Oh, it’s all that stuff minus, something really similar, so…zero?” then I'm mad at you right now.

Why?

Yep, you guessed it.

That’s the answer.

Engineering... Tired... Hungry... Yep, it's Tuesday!

Have you ever had a day that just didn’t exactly start out right? Maybe you had to get up early, even had to deal with people being angry at you, maybe even yelling, and it seemed like you just couldn’t get anything right. Then you hardly get much breakfast, but there’s no time to think about that, cuz it’s off to work, or school, or whatever commitment you have for the day. But that’s not all, because I’m sure almost everyone has had a day, or perhaps many, that have started like that. But have you ever, that same day, walked into an elevator, and, as quickly as the doors slide shut behind you, the world does, too? Suddenly, instead of going down three floors, you’re flying, soaring. For no apparent reason at all, the day is suddenly brighter – literally, it actually looks brighter and feels warmer outside – and there’s a bounce in your step. The rough start of the morning is a fading memory, and life is now something to savor every moment of. And the best part is, it feels like nothing and no one can crush this new feeling that’s just sprung up inside of you. Has that ever happened to you?

If so, you know what my day was like today.

You can guess how it started for me. I’m sure I’ve complained about that more than enough by now. Add an 8 o clock class on top of that, and you’ll find me, later, slipping into the library for a much looked forward to quiet time with the Lord. It helped relieve the almost ever-present depression that’s been slowly growing in my chest for the past week, but only slightly. I had engineering next, and I just managed to stay awake with the help of a short head-on-the-desk nap before class. It was after that class that it happened. I would have been walking with some classmates if I hadn’t taken a minute to straighten my uniform in the bathroom, but the sudden detour left me alone. I decided to take the elevator. As the doors were shutting behind me, dC talk’s “Extreme Days” suddenly started playing in my head (talk about random), and I had the strong, sudden urge to start dancing. I have no idea where all this happiness sprung up from, but I blamed God for it, and began singing praises to Him (mostly silent prayers). I don’t think I’ve ever had such an extreme mood change in such a short amount of time. It’s a strange feeling when your heavy, dragging heart suddenly jumps up and swells as if to burst with pure joy. It makes your day seem more open, too. I was out of the elevator, heading towards the computer lounge, when I suddenly realized that it wasn’t even a quarter to twelve, my next class was over an hour away, and the engineering building I was in was right next to a great little sandwich place. Forget about the future, I’m hungry now, I thought, turning around before I reached the doors.

“It’s lunchtime!” This directed towards a random stranger in the hallway.

“Yes sir!”

Isn’t God great?

New prof, new accent

I'll probably be writing instead of taking notes in math a lot again this semester. My professor has the coolest accent ever! He's Hungarian. "...so zee area yu zee heere is haf dimes... and eets vun over four... too dimes haf, vun minoos vun izeero..." I think I like this class already.

I want a tape recorder.

So, the first day back was decent. Not great, but definitely not as bad as I thought it would be. I slept too long today, so I didn't get some stuff done that I wanted to.

Abby said I never add pictures to my blog, so I thought I would do that real quick...

AAGUUUUGUGHHGHG!!!

I started following my own blog! How do you even do that? More importantly, how do you STOP?

fp's

So, I'm a fish again. Awesome. Back to sprinting in the hallways (not fast enough), speaking to the upperclassmen (in the wrong order, intensity, gender, make, model, accent, whatever), sounding off (not loud enough), sleeping on top of the covers (not long enough), and getting smoked (more than enough). I don't have a first name, and I do have my cadence on me. I don't wear sandals, but my shoes are shined (not!). And, best of all, I have a fresh, snazzy haircut. Life is...slow. Summer can not get here fast enough. Christmas break sure took it's time. The wait totally made it worth it, though, that much should be said. But now, I'm looking all the way to summer, which I know is going to take forever. So, maybe I should instead look forward to spring break, which is in March... or maybe just this weekend. I might be able to leave. But then, we have a blackbelt band function. Nope, sorry fish (and sophomores), no fun, free weekend for you! Nope, stay here in College Station, and do...whatever it is we're making you do, cuz nobody cares... Yeah...

Ok, so now I think I'm done with the negativity... Oh wait, I feel some more coming on.....

I hate the Corps...

Ok, now I'm really done. I'll be positive now. At least the first night wasn't too bad. Third platoon got to go hang out in Mr Thompson's room after outfit meeting to talk about stuff. How the break was, pt, grades, the new fish (we have two new fish this semester, and one is in our platoon), and then we just asked some questions and stuff. Mr Thompson is really cool. He’s definitely one of my favorite juniors, maybe even my favorite. I haven’t really thought about it.

So, we have a bag-in tomorrow, which means we don’t have to wake up to yelling, and then go to formation. That makes me happy, even though I have an 8 o clock class, which means I’ll be waking up at 6:30 or so anyway. I just hope I can actually wake up in time… But still, waking up early to an alarm is better than waking up early to sophomores yelling at me.

I have a big problem with worry. I know I shouldn’t, but I worry about lots of things. Everything from what training time is gonna be like, to whether I’ll be able to find a good job, a good wife, a good place to eat for lunch. Stuff I shouldn’t even be thinking about at this point, cuz I can’t do anything about them (well, maybe I can control lunch, but that’s about it). I bring this up because, for the past day and a half, I guess, up until about 9 o clock tonight, I’ve been super nervous and stressed out about going back to the Corps. Like, to the point of not feeling well, and even having to poop like 20 minutes after I had just gone (yes, you needed to know that). I ended up not going, which almost makes it worse, cuz I didn’t even need to, I just felt like I had to go. I had been packing really slowly, too, sometimes on purpose, but also without realizing it, almost as if taking my time would make it take more time to get here. It didn’t… But anyway, I’ve been worrying about all this, and it hasn’t helped me at all. In fact, worrying has never helped me do anything except freak out and get sick to my stomach. I always wanna put an e on the end of stomach. Stomache. Not right, but I always try to do it. I try to not worry about things. I try to not think about them, but that doesn’t work. Even if I’m not consciously thinking about whatever it is I’m worrying about, I still get nervous about it. I try praying about it, sometimes more than others, I’ll admit, but I still pray, a lot. Maybe I just can’t let go of that stuff. I don’t know. I really wish I did. Sometimes I can do it. Not very often, but sometimes. I don’t really know how I do it, though….

Ok, now I gotta go to bed. A senior just came in and got mad at my old lady (my roommate). I don’t think she saw me, but I’m still gonna get off now. I have a cool post coming soon, though!

i don't do lol

I just don't. I really don't know why. I just say "haha" or "hahaha" or "hahahaha" instead, depending on how funny whatever I'm laughing at is. I'll use "idk" or "jk" or "brb" or "g2g," but not lol. It's just not in my texting vocabulary. I refuse to use it, but for no reason at all. Maybe part of the reason is because of how it looks like a guy who's drowning. lol I bet he's not laughing anymore...

So it's been a while since I've blogged. I got a micro SD card for Christmas, for my phone. 4G. Haven't put anything 'cept a couple pictures on it yet. I also got one of those armband things for my iPod. Works great. I love running with music. I also got this cool guitar thing my brother got me. It's like, ceramic or something, and he painted it to look just like my bass. It's a six string guitar, but still, it's pretty cool. I got a hoodie, too, but it was too big, so I gotta take it back. My dad also randomly got me a bass amp on New Year's Eve, for no reason in particular. I'm gonna count that as a Christmas gift, too. It's really nice. Crate, 50 watt. For those of you who don't know bass amps, Crate is a good name, not top-of-the-line, but definitely a respectable brand. And 50 watts is about medium for a bass amp. It would be big for a guitar amp, but basses are different. The smallest bass amp I've ever seen is a 25 watt, which I own. It's still pretty big for a practice amp, and it has hardly any bass to it. My old youth pastor had a Nemesis brand, which a really good brand, amp with two speakers that was something like 320 watts, I believe. That was a building shaker. It may have been closer to 500 watts, actually. I don't remember. So anyway, yeah, that was Christmas. The bowl game was alright, but I only came back with about $40 out of the $120 they gave us, because I payed back $20 I owed to another bass fish for lamination or something lame like that. It was lame. Anyway, then there was New Year's. I went to one party type thing with the Seales in La Grange. It was pretty cool. I also got to hear them sing before it, which is always a great thing. I met some really cool people there, wherever it was. I don't even know. I just followed them out there. Way out there. I had to leave at 10:30ish to get back home to be with my family for midnight, so we could pray in the new year (one of our traditions, if not our only real one), and then I went to Chelsey's party. It was cool, cuz I got to see a bunch of people I haven't seen in a long time, or hadn't, I guess. Since then, I haven't done a whole lot. Ooooh, except for yesterday. Ugh...

Ok, so my Scout has been broken for quite some time now. It needs a new rear axle and differential. The differential is basically the part that turns the one drive shaft spinning perpendicular to the axle, into the axle spinning in the direction the wheels spin. It does so with two things called a ring and a pinion, among other parts. The ring and pinion both have teeth that fit together, and they basically spin similar to any other type of gear. The teeth on the ring and pinion in the old differential of my Scout were all broken, though, so we had to get new ones. However, as we ("we" being my dad and me) were putting in the new ring and pinion, we saw that another part of the axle was messed up, this time it was something on the ends that holds the wheels in place. It's a good thing we found this out, because, if we hadn't, it's very possible that I could have been driving down the highway (maybe. Probably just a side road, though) and then have seen a wheel, my wheel, rolling past me. So, although finding this problem now as opposed to later was definitely a good thing, it also meant that we had more to fix. My dad decided it was best just to replace the entire rear end. So, anyway, my mom's cousin, or something like that, came to Truck City one day for some reason, and mentioned while he was there that he had gone to some junkyard in Seguin for something, and that it looked like a good place to look for a rear end for my Scout, because they had lots of Internationals. I went there yesterday, and came back rather disappointed. Walking in, I asked the guy behind the desk if he knew if they had any Scout rear ends. He walked over to a map of the yard and showed me where the Internationals were. He was one of those people who seem like they're pretty OK...until you talk to them. After finding out the hard way that you aren't supposed to drive back there (I've never been to a junkyard before, so I don't know procedure), we (Mariah went with me because she had nothing to do, and we hadn't seen each other in, like, a million years) walked down to the Internationals, detouring through the Fords in hopes of seeing some cool old Mustangs. I didn't, but probably only because I didn't look very hard for them. In the International section (International Harvester, or just International, was the company that made Scouts, by the way), there were lots of Scouts, but most of them were Scout II's, which I thought wouldn't work. My dad and I found out afterwards that they might have. Out of all the Scouts I found that were like mine, only one still had the rear end in it. There were also a couple Jeeps that I thought might work. I went back and got the measuring tape, measured the old rear end, and took the tape back down into the yard to check on the axles I had found. The creepy guy I talked to before drove by in a truck while I was measuring some random axles from a pile, and he was, well, still creepy. I measured the one Scout axle, just to be sure, before I checked the Jeeps. Out of every single axle I found, the Scout was the only one that would work, but it was missing the back cover, which, sadly, was also one part we were missing, and the right brake drum. I called my dad about it, and he said we could buy a back cover, and use the old brake drum, so it would work fine, if they offered about $75 or less. We started walking back, and I figured that, if they offered less than $100 for it, I wouldn't try to bargain, but, otherwise, I would try my best to talk them down as much as possible. A worker in a truck stopped by us on our way back, and asked if he could help. I told him what was up, and he gave us a ride back. When Mariah shut the door, she accidentally slammed it, and the guy glared at her and said, obviously joking, "Watch my door!" and then laughed rather cheerfully. I decided that this was probably the only guy at the junkyard that I liked, and Mariah felt the same way. Back at the front, this other guy came out to talk to us, different than the first creepy guy. After telling him what part I was looking at getting, he thought for a moment, and then said "Umm, how about... $300?" It immediately infuriated me, because I knew he was trying to take advantage of me. I then told him about the missing parts (I hadn't mentioned them before, on purpose), and he dropped down to $175. I couldn't do anything then anyway, because they only took cash, and I had less than $20 on me, but I still talked a little bit more. They wouldn't touch it without at least a deposit, which was understandable, but I still didn't like the way he dealt with me. I finally told him I would think about it, and left without any intentions of coming back. They didn't even have any free kittens, which I considered getting for my sister, after seeing the sign on the front door. All in all, I concluded that I liked the junkyard, but not the people running it. Now, my dad and I are searching for alternative sources of an axle for my Scout. I think he said he might be on to something. Hopefully this leads somewhere with nicer people. He did mention a junkyard with this really cool guy that I would like, someone who my dad knows. I just hope he's not like other salesmen, who use friendships like that for their advantage. I guess I'll find out. *sigh*, ok, I really should get off the computer, and onto working on....other stuff.