Halloween

So, it's been almost two months since my last post. Sorry.

Anyway, yesterday was Halloween. Duh. The day before, one of my co-workers was talking about how "everyone" was dressing up. Turns out, 3 people did, and everyone else was normal. It was a "if you want to" approach. I had a speech ready to explain why I didn't dress up and everything. Oh well.

I was thinking about it, and part of it is that I don't like Halloween. However, a big part of it is that I don't want to be someone else. I like being me. Most of you will know how big it is for me to be able to say that.

My speech was going to be something like this: My costume is simple. I'm a new and (hopefully) improved version of Martin from last year. Sure, this version is around $1,000 in debt for every year since he was born, and he was born in the Reagan administration, and he's got a job that barely beats minimum wage. However, the job is a full-time one, so he's making enough money to pay the bills and work down the debt. He's even talking about next year's version being debt-free (other than student loans), having multiple bank accounts, a 401k, owning stocks, and having health insurance from HIS OWN job! It's like he's becoming a real, human adult or something.

Sure, yesterday (Halloween) would have been his parents' 29th anniversary, but 3 years after their divorce, he's finally coming to terms with it.

Sure, he's still single, but he's still relatively young, so there's time on that. Besides, about half a year ago, he was saying that he shouldn't get into a relationship until he gets his "stuff" together, and he's getting his "stuff" together.

So even with all his flaws, why should I be someone other than Martin? And again, he likes himself. And how many people can be as convincing in their costume as I was?

And now out of the speech. I was conversing this morning with a friend, and he asked why I like this job better than the one at Wal-Mart. I was able to come up with 3 answers then, and I've come up with another since then.

1. The pay is enough to actually pay bills, rather than just hold back the tide of debt
2. I generally know what a work day is going to entail: if I'm on checkout, the first thing I do will be to cover the last break of the morning person, then I'll do odd jobs for the managers until the morning person goes off for the day, then I'm at the register for the rest of the day. If I'm not on checkout, it's odd jobs all day--find a manager, get assigned a task for the next half hour to 2 hours, then repeat until time to go home. At Wal-Mart, I was never sure what a day would bring.
3. The third reason is that I actually feel like a "valued member of the team." (and if you ever get a chance, try to get me to say that last sentence. I think my brain rejects the corniness of that, because every time I've tried, my voice turns snooty and British) At Wal-Mart, it seemed like I could just skip a day and it wouldn't really be noticed. At Walgreens now, I walk in, and all my co-workers and the managers say hi, ask me how I'm doing, what hours I'm working, etc.
4. I realized while writing this that I also like this job better because I went into Wal-Mart expecting to only work for a couple months, while this is a "work here until I figure out what I want to do" job, and might be a job for a couple years.

And just for fun, here's a counter for one of the items mentioned in the speech.

Blargh

It feels like I've spent the last few weeks falling apart and trying desperately to hold the pieces together so that nobody will notice. Now I'm simply exhausted. Job hunting sucks. Debt sucks.

I feel so alone.

'Merica!

So, I never actually took the blog down like I planned to. I was going to do it at O'Hare, but their internet is evil, so it never happened. Anyway, I'm back. There's a lot to tell, so for this post I'm just going to list a bunch of firsts. These are things that happened to me for the first time in the Chiner.

1. Sat in a train for 4 hours without it going anywhere (the tracks were flooded)
2. Rode a train (a week after sitting in one for 4 hours)
3. Ate at Subway (Seriously. I had to go to the Great Wall to eat at Subway for the first time)
4. Watched 5 movies during one plane ride (Wall-E, Up, War Horse, The Incredibles, and Shrek)
5. Ran through 6-inch deep water and pouring rain while carrying a 6-year-old
6. Sang at KTV (the Chinese version of karaoke) I went with some Enrique, and later joked that I was "trying to win me a little Chinese bride"
7. Rode a chair lift that didn't make me nervous (I know, riding the one at Adventureland freaks me out, but riding one over a deep valley and up the Great Wall is okay. I'm weird)
8. Saw a sunset at over 30,000 feet above ground--and far enough north where dusk never ended, and sunrise came again before dark
9. Ate lamb

I'm sure I'm forgetting some cool things, but whatever. More info to come in later posts.

Bye (for now)

Well, it's less than a week (counting travel to the airport) until I leave for China. I'm going to be taking this blog down while I'm there, so if it disappears, sorry. If you're reading this for the first time after I get back, hello again! I'm sorry for the disappearance.

But yeah, minor update on my klutziness. I played basketball with some friends on Tuesday night, and I was fairly sure I broke my finger for a while. The swelling and discoloration have gone down since Wednesday morning, so I think it was probably just jammed badly. Then yesterday, I was cooking something in the oven, and when it came time to take it out, my thumb somehow bypassed the potholder and hit the oven rack. So now I've got injuries on both hands.

And while waiting for China, I've been packing a little bit at a time. I've got a fair bit ready now, but I'm still a while from getting it all done. The main thing left is clothes. But yay! only a week left!

3 weeks

21 Days from the time of this post, I shall be on the first of three planes to take me to the Bring Me Hope camp. (In case you can't tell, I'm excited) With the time change, it'll take 32.5 hours for the first two planes.

I woke up at 5:30 this morning to a dream about getting on the plane.

Anyway, I've got a job interview on Tuesday. Hooray for chances to work!

Yeah, short post. Whatever.

Response

Okay, this is going to be mostly in response to recent comments from my uncle on this post, this post, and this post. But first, I'm going to apologize for not posting for a long time. My computer died on me, and so I have to hit up libraries to get online--or use my iPod, where typing is all kinds of fun.

Anyway, on to the response. Firstly, the main reason I post on this blog is so I can sleep at night. If I don't get thoughts down in some form, my brain gets locked on them, and I can't get to sleep. The secondary reason is to let my friends know what I'm up to. So the primary and secondary audiences are mostly--if not all--Christians. So, people who would agree with that kind of thing--just like anywhere else on the internet that uses first person pronouns--and therefore, it's going to look wrong to people who disagree.

Now as to the specific posts. The first thing I'm going to address is from the second linked post--where he wonders what the "impossible that had to happen" was. At this point, I wasn't aware of the possibility of a chiral anomaly. The impossible was the breaking of the conservation of baryon number. Now as near as I can tell from that (and I will admit that that dense wall of quantum mechanics-speak is unintelligible to me and makes my head hurt, so I may be wrong) we don't have evidence showing that that has happened (other than the fact that we exist) so they're only hypotheses--again, unless I'm reading that wrong. And if I'm wrong, I won't say the old "it's only a theory," because I think that people who say that should be dragged to a dictionary, be forced to read the scientific definition of "theory" out loud, then smacked across the face with the dictionary. Like I said, I might be wrong, and if I am, then I'm wrong. I am human, after all.

As to the "argument from ignorance" complaints.... Yes. Exactly. I made logical fallacies. I didn't actually prove the existence of God. I am of the opinion that God cannot be proven or disproven logically--if He could, the debate would have been over long ago. Unfortunately, it may appear that I was trying to prove His existence. The main reason for those posts is that I get frustrated when atheists go in and point out internal inconsistencies in the Bible, and acting as if science has all the answers. There are still holes in science--and in my opinion, there always will be, but that's just my opinion. Now, my belief is that the inconsistencies in the Bible are due to human error--a common factor no matter what field you look at.

As to whether or not scientists should give up because I don't think they'll figure everything out, of course they shouldn't. They should continue trying to increase our knowledge of the universe. And yes, for the most part, the holes have been getting smaller, but we've also found new ones--quantum mechanics vs. classical physics, for example. It's my belief that as they find answers to the current issues, they will find new holes in understanding, so that no matter how long our species survives, we will never have a complete understanding of things in science--only my opinion. Should that be taught in schools? Only the part that there are currently gaps in our understanding--God should only be mentioned in religious studies or biblical studies courses, since it's not science--at most. Show the gaps, talk about experiments that are attempting to close them, that's it.

Anyway, I'm bored with this, and I'm hungry, so I'm going to close this out and head home.

Nerding out

This morning, I had some nerdiness busting out. I was thinking, and I figured out a way to determine how many decimal places come from a fraction. The first step is to reduce it to the simplest form--1/2 instead of 4/8 or 5/6 instead of 25/30. Then you can ignore the numerator. The denominator is all that matters. The next step is to attempt to reduce the denominator to the form (2^x)(5^y) where x and y are whole, non-negative numbers (0, 1, 2, etc.). If the denominator can't be reduced to this form, the decimal version goes on infinitely. If it can be reduced to this form, compare x and y. The higher of the two  numbers is how many decimal places your answer will have. For example, a denominator of 40 would reduce to (2³5¹), giving 3 as the higher of x and y. This is how many decimal places will always be in a number with 40 as the denominator (unless it can be reduced to a smaller denominator). This stems from the fact that decimals come from exact powers of 10, which can be written as (2^x5^x) and anything with those numbers the same (or lower) fits evenly.

Now is there a way to figure out what denominator(s) you should pick to have a decimal that is a certain length? Yes. Let's imagine that you are a math teacher, and you want a problem to have a decimal with 3 places. So you take your (2^x)(5^y) form and set x or y equal to 3. With x, that gives 2³. Then vary y from 0 to 3, giving you (2³)(5⁰)=8, (2³)(5¹)=40, (2³)(5²)=200, and (2³)(5³)=1000. Then starting from this last, vary x down to 0 to get (2²)(5³)=500, (2¹)(5³)=250, and (2⁰)(5⁵)=125. Then you can always multiply the numerator and denominators by whatever number you want to make the problem seem harder. Just be careful to not make it possible to reduce the fraction further than you wanted.

I ran through all of this in about 15 minutes this morning--for no real purpose. Yeah, I'm a nerd. And proud of it.

Support

Well, I'm sending out the first round of letters here in a few minutes. I've got a bunch stuffed and addressed, I just need to get to a post office, which is going to happen as soon as I finish typing this post. So yay! Some of you will be receiving an envelope with my poor handwriting in your mailboxes within the next couple of days! Then you will have a chance to send me money! Hooray for everything! I DON'T KNOW WHY I'M SHOUTING!

Um, yeah. Sorry about the excitement. I'm tired. Bye.

Letters

Today, I bought envelopes. Lots of envelopes. I still need to actually write my support letter, but I should have more than enough envelopes to send it out. I have to start getting going on things for this trip. They're recommending that I have 2/3 of the money raised by June 1--and that's about $2,000. It feels like there's so much to do to go on this trip. And school's wrapping up. And I need to start looking for a job. And I need to sleep occasionally or I get really paranoid.

Anyway, if you're not sure if I've got you on my list of people to send a letter to--or you want to make sure I have an address--and you want to be on the list, feel free to shoot me a text/email/fb message/whatever and let me know.

Anyway, I should go now. I've procrastinated from studying long enough, and I've got a test this evening.

I'm gonna go over here now

So, I probably worried some people with that post earlier today. To be honest, I worried myself. I did end up skipping Spanish, since I couldn't make myself stop crying for more than a couple minutes at a time.

Well, after some time to think (and talking with a third person and texting a fourth), I think I've got a plan. I'm going to drop out of college. After this semester, whether it ends well or not, I'm going to take a break from college. It's just not working. It's adding stress and debt to my life, I'm not making any real progress toward a degree, and I seem to be moving away from God during the stressful moments. So college seems to be just about the worst place for me to be right now.

So the new plan is to get a job, and stay working until......well, I don't know what would come next. Until plans change, I guess. I might go back to school eventually, I might not.

So yeah....if you're still worried about me, I don't know what else to say--partially because I can't help much more than I have, and partially because I can't seem to successfully type the word "say" in one try right now, because I'm worn out. Going through depression is just exhausting.

Me go bed now. Maybe write again after sleep. Me not think so though.

What am I doing here?

Last night, I had my second panic attack in as many weeks. Last Tuesday, it was just a general stressing-myself-to-illness type deal. Last night was more specific.

Last night, Mark talked about the myth of "God called me to ______". He was saying that as long as you follow within God's commands, God will bless you, so you should work within the gifts He has given you. On the way home, I got into a conversation about relationships, and when asked where I was, all I could say was that "I don't think I'm in the right place to pursue anyone right now. I don't have my crap together." I didn't really think about it at the time I said it, but a little while after, I was thinking "How do I get my crap together?" That's when it hit. I'm probably going to fail out of college. Again.

I think I realized what my problem is. I want to go to school/work and work hard there, then go home and BE HOME. I hate bringing work home with me, and I can't seem to force myself to work on that stuff at home. Then I thought, "If you can't bring schoolwork home with you now, what's going to change if and when you become a teacher? Do you think you'll suddenly be able to bring work home then?" Then I started wondering what I am going to do if I'm not in school. I'll have to get a job, and somewhere where they won't look at a person who's never had a job that lasted more than a couple months, and flunked out of college twice as someone they would never hire.

Since getting home last night, I've broken down crying in front of two people (one while sitting down to write this post) and been at least on the verge of crying all the time I've been awake. I don't know where my life is going, I'm not sure where I want it to go, and I don't know what I need to do to go from point A to point B.

I don't think I'm going to Spanish today. I think I've had enough of crying in front of people for one day.

Easter Weekend

I pooped a lot over Easter weekend. Okay, now that that's out of the way, let's talk about real stuff.

It was a long weekend. I woke up Saturday at around 7 or 7:30 (after deciding to sleep in) and proceeded to waste most of the day. Setup and practice for Sunday morning was scheduled for 5:00, and I didn't want to ask anyone for a ride, so I started walking at around a quarter to 4. After a more-involved-than-usual setup, it was time to start practicing the drama (though only after finding out that two lights were burned out, and one channel on one of the control boxes was faulty). Near the beginning, the practice was a little rough, but it got better as the evening went on. We wrapped up at around 10, needing to be back at 7 for worship practice--and the techies planned to be there earlier than that.

After getting a ride home, I had a snack, read a little, and went to bed. I checked to make sure my alarm was set, and then my iPod (which I use as an alarm clock) decided to delete all of my alarms, so I spent a couple minutes resetting all of them (9 in total). So, at about 11, I started to try to sleep. I couldn't. I'm not sure how much sleep I got, because I remember looking at the clock at 12:55 and thinking, "If I can't get to sleep in the next half hour, I'll just get up. 3 hours of sleep is worse than no sleep." I don't remember looking at the clock after that, until I woke up at 4, at which point I thought, "Well, I got 2 hours, and I've still got half an hour before my alarm. That'll have to do." I don't know if my math was just bad because I was tired, or I've since forgotten looking at the clock at a later point, but these two thoughts conflict. I went back to sleep at that point.

When my alarm went off, I had one thought. "Cold." I got up, got ready to leave, and left at a quarter after 5, knowing that my best chance to stay awake during the service was to walk to church. After getting across the Kum & Go parking lot, I turned around to get my jacket, because "I can ignore tiredness or cold, but not both."

I arrived first, and turned everything on. Worship team practice was fairly normal, then the drama people came back for their final run-throughs. During that, we found out that the cord that takes audio from the computer to the sound board was bad--a whipping sound in the video for the drama sounded like bubbles bursting underwater--so we switched out for a more complicated cord system. (This will become more important soon) After switching, the audio from the computer was more clear than it had been for any of Saturday's or Sunday's practices.

Practice finished around 10, so we opened the doors, and had the computer playing ambient music. While I was mingling, the music turned to crackling. I rushed over, joining the sound guy at the board. A mild panic ensued among the techies until the sound guy found out that one of the connections between cords wasn't pushed in all the way, and the crisis was averted.

Then during the opening worship, all sound suddenly cut off. The song became an acoustic song in the middle--which did not seem to bother the congregation much. The sound guy and drummer stopped to figure out what was wrong. During meet and greet, the light guy and I went up to see what the problem was. Before announcements, we had figured out that we had blown a fuse. The pastor doing announcements even said that he was going to stall until the tech guys could get the problem solved--as part of his announcements. The problem was fixed, and when he turned on his mike and his voice came out of the speakers, a round of applause came from the crowd. The drama went off without a hitch--other than one point where a line was forgotten, but he covered nicely.

On the way home, the exhaustion finally hit. I probably should have napped at some point yesterday, but I never did--even when my vision started to go wonky a couple times, and I had trouble typing. I don't think I'm fully recovered, even after a full night's sleep, because my left eye keeps twitching. Hopefully that goes away by tomorrow.

March Madness

So, ESPN was running a Bracket Challenge, with a $10,000 Best Buy gift card at stake. To win, all one had to do was fill out a bracket, then be in the top 1% of entrants. They would then take all these entries into a random drawing, and the one picked gets the prize.

Well, the drawing is on Wednesday. And with Kentucky's win tonight, I am in the 1%. I started poorly, but I finished strong, beating out around 7 million other brackets. I doubt I'll be the lucky one chosen, but as JP (the little kid from Angels in the Outfield) always said: "It could happen."

Monetary Matters Monday

This probably won't be a series, alliteration is just fun.

Anyway, I know I haven't updated on my weight lately. There's a simple reason for this. I haven't been to the gym in a week and a half. I hopped on the scale this morning, and the news isn't too bad--I've only gained 2 pounds. Well, that's not too important, so let's move on.

I just applied for a passport today. I know, exciting, huh? I had to wait behind one other person, and by the time my application was in, three other people had walked in, so I guess I caught them just as it started to get busy. That took a fair chunk of money, since I'm somewhat impatient and went with expedited, and they had to take my picture there--and since my glasses are a little bent, there was almost no way to get away with wearing them in the picture.

In other news, my dad came up yesterday, so we got to talk for a couple hours after church. He's going to help me out when it comes time to do support letters, getting me his brothers' addresses and saying he'd cover a decent amount of the trip--he didn't say how much, but that doesn't matter. The latter was good news, since I don't really know of many people I can send support letters to. Oh well, God will provide.

Gungor!

Okay, first, I realize that I've neglected to update my weight. Sorry. I lost 5 pounds in the week leading up to Wednesday, even though I didn't work out on Thursday or Friday, and ordered a pizza on Friday. Whatever.

Anyway, on to the main body of this post. Last night, I went to see Gungor in Des Moines. It was great. It was easy to tell that the band (especially Michael and Lisa Gungor) love what they're doing. When songs about double in length due to jam-out sessions, and those two are dancing around the stage, it's magic. Of course, they played what is just about my favorite song ever, as well as my favorite song from the Beautiful Things album, though that one was played as the final encore. Definitely worth the money if you can make it to another stop on this tour, or another tour in the future.

It's getting crazy

So, on Saturday, my phone was acting up. It refused to receive any signal in my apartment. The problem was, I needed to secure a ride to setup for church the next morning. So, in the late afternoon, I went for a walk to search for a signal. After walking for a bit, I found it. I tried to send a text and.....no signal. I walked for a little bit longer, and got signal again! So I tried to send a text and.....no signal. This happened a few times. So I decided to walk to church in the morning--a 50-minute walk, and I had to be there at 6:30.

After watching the ISU-Kentucky game (and realizing that I should NEVER watch sports alone) I was angry and pumped up, and couldn't sleep. I think I got to sleep around midnight. My alarm went off at 4:30, and I felt horrible. But, being me, I couldn't just blow off something I said I'd do, so I dragged myself out of bed, hopped in the shower, got dressed, checked my email, and headed out. I stopped at the gas station to pick up something to drink, and headed north. I arrived early, and waited for everyone else to get there. After setup and a short practice, there was a meeting. It was for people interested in going to a Bring Me Hope camp to volunteer this summer. I attended the meeting, not really expecting anything.

Well, today I gave up on my phone, and set off to get a new one. I bought the new one, the salesperson installed the old sim card in the new phone, and I left. So now my phone has a camera and a full keyboard. Anyway, on the way back, I made a decision about the Bring Me Hope trip. I decided that I was going to go unless God stopped me. If you'll remember, that was the attitude I (eventually) adopted about coming to Iowa City. So on my way back into downtown, I stopped and picked up an application for a passport. I then remembered that I needed to check my voicemail, and there was one from my dad, asking if I had any plans for spring break. I called him back--not the greatest idea, since I was on the bus--and let him know the bad news that spring break was last week. Then I asked him if he still had my birth certificate, and let him know the reason. He said he'd look for it, and that he was planning to come up on Sunday, so he'll bring it then if he finds it. So yeah, looks like I will be leaving the US for the first time in my life.....for two whole weeks. I'm not sure whether the excitement is just terror or not.

Weight Watching Wednesday V

Unhappy day. I gained 1 pound in the past week. It probably has something to do with not doing anything during spring break--except working out in the mornings--which causes me to get hungry a lot more often.

Anyway, today I didn't work out for very long. My legs just gave out. I guess 110 pound leg curls, 150 pound leg extensions, 160 pound squats and 438 pound leg press is a bit much--though the only one I could do 10-rep sets was the leg extensions.

Well, short post today. Later.

I can't hold it in

Today in my Speech class, there was a special assignment. Three people had to get up and tell a sad/funny/scary story without using any nonverbal communication--for a get-out-of-one-assignment-free card. Of course, I went for it. The only issue was, if we made any nonverbal communication--a smile, a hand gesture, change in inflection--the other students would call out "strike," and three strikes and we were out. Well, I didn't make it through my story, so now it's bursting to get out of me, even though it's embarrassing. So y'all get a nice surprise.
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It all happened back in 9th grade. I was sitting in class, and suddenly, I had to go to the bathroom. Being too shy to actually say something to the teacher, I just held it in. That was my undoing. With about 10 minutes to go in class, I couldn't hold it any more, and peed my pants.

I spent my lunch break trying to dry my pants with paper towels and the hand dryer, with little effect.

Later in the day, it happened again. Middle of class, and I had to pee. At that point, I thought "What the h**l, I've already done it once today," and just peed my pants again.
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So yeah, sorry for anybody that was made uncomfortable by this story, but I couldn't hold it any longer. And for the rest of you, go ahead, make your jokes.

Weight Watching Wednesday IV

I lost another pound this past week, which is pretty good when you consider that I didn't work out on Thursday or Friday. So we're up to 14 pounds lost so far. And my pulled muscle seems to have healed, so that won't be a problem any longer.

Now, I know I promised a special treat about the retreat talent show, but I'm backing out of that. I was planning on recording myself performing the talent correctly (I began to screw up in the second half when it counted) and then what I would have done to make it different for the finals. However, I'm not doing that, so there. If you want to see it done correctly, it'll have to be done in person.

In other news, the first of two packages arrived today. This one had the Killer Bunnies Starter Deck and the Red booster along with a nose/ear hair trimmer and a haircutting kit. (Naturally, on the UPS website, I nicknamed this package "Bunnies and Hairs") The second package, which contains the Violet booster pack, should arrive tomorrow. Right now I'm debating whether or not to keep the boxes that the booster packs come in, since all the cards will fit in the box that the Starter Deck comes in.

Well, I should go. I need to put laundry away so I don't have to stay up late doing that.

Another retreat, another post

As most of my readers know, this past weekend was the retreat. We went to the same place as the ISU Salt retreat, only a week later--the Embassy Suites in Des Moines. Sadly, I was somewhat disappointed in this retreat. I didn't get much out of it. This is partially due to me focusing on tech stuff so much that I didn't notice much else, and partially because (in my opinion) the speaker didn't "bring it." Whether that was because he had a wedding to perform on Saturday afternoon, or something else, I don't know. He just didn't wow me. Don't get me wrong, he's a great guy, and I'm excited to hear him speak regularly at Salt (we're stealing him away from Cornerstone soon), but I don't think he's cut out for retreats.

Anyway, I met some cool people and had great talks during small group, and the breakout sessions were good. I'm probably one of about 3 people that didn't go to either the politics talk or the women's talk--though I had to walk into the women's one beforehand to pick up my shoes (and somebody seemed quite upset that I was even in that room, even though it hadn't started yet). During the second breakout session time, I went to the arts one, where I got called an "artist" simply for doing tech. Then before Saturday night's session, I was being a little obsessive with how the projector looked--not sure if that's connected to the last sentence, or if it was just my normal mild OCD.

During free time, I played various games with people, watched some History Channel, and hung out--and now I've finally broken down and bought Killer Bunnies, along with the red and violet booster decks--which should arrive in a couple days. I also got hooked on a new show. My retreat roommates started watching it at midnight after the Saturday evening session. It's only 4 episodes old now, but the History Channel is lame and only has the latest episode available, so I haven't actually seen the first episode. The show is called Full Metal Jousting and it is what it sounds like--guys jousting for prize money.

Another big thing on the retreat was the talent show, which I entered--and failed to make it out of the first round. I'll talk more about that in the future--probably later today. So stay tuned for a special treat on that topic!