Big News

So, Mandi and I are engaged. It became official on December 14. I'm happy. That's really all that needs to be said.

Beginning And The End

So the big news of the day is that Dustin has gotten himself a job. Exciting stuff, huh? He'll be doing air emissions testing down in the Gainesville, FL area. Essentially just testing the emissions from different companies and entities to ensure that they're within environmental guidelines. He's excited about it, and we're excited that he's gotten himself this job. It'll be interesting to see how things go. He starts training on Monday up in Cleveland, OH which will last for a month before heading back down to Florida to stay there for good. Did I mention that he just got back from Japan?

I've spent the last two weeks running back and forth between my place and the parent's house as they both, along with Dustin, took a two week vacation to Japan to tour as well as see my Grandmother who lives over there in Tokyo. From what I've gathered in the past couple days (they got back Thursday evening) they had a great time, and got to experience a lot of fun things. My dad finally saw Mt. Fuji (it took 6 trips before they could see it), and Dustin thought that they saw the next Amazing Race filming going on at one of the locations they were at. He and my dad couldn't think of anything else that required teams of two to be followed everywhere by a camera-man while they frantically ran around a park and rowed in canoes out to a little island in the middle of a large pond. I never watch it, so I wouldn't have any idea if it shows up in the future...but if they have an episode based out of Japan in the future, my family saw it happening for real.


All the while, it has been busy elsewhere. A couple weekend's ago I went to the youth retreat for our church just to hang out with the kids and help in whatever way was needed. They have it at a little camp that is specifically set up for youth retreats just outside of pigeon forge/Gatlinburg in the Smokies. It was an intense weekend for everyone involved, and I really hadn't seen so much outpouring of emotion at one of these things before. Our youth minister really is doing a fantastic job with the kids. And it wasn't a "everyone get baptized" weekend or anything like that, but just really a weekend to push them spiritually from wherever they were, and encourage them to grow. Probably the most intense part came for the high schooler's where they had a feet washing ceremony where they were all allowed to choose people's feet to wash as a showing of their love for them and their desire to serve. It was really neat seeing how they all responded to that invitation. I hadn't seen anything like that done before, and it was really quite moving. All in all, a great weekend.

I also went with Mandi up to Nashville for a weekend while she was in class. I had told her I would go with her and drive her to give her a break from the practically constant driving to and from that she has to do, as well as just to allow her time to rest since she's pretty much been going non-stop since the start of October. It was a good weekend, as I had time to work on some church things that I had been asked to do (speaking of which...I need to get that to them...) as well as a few other things over the course of two days, all while allowing Mandi time to rest instead of driving. Something on Lipscomb campus that I found amusing (as it was incredibly similar to Harding) came on Friday when I was just wandering around the campus to see what it looked like since I'd not really had the time to do that before. I sat down in a kind of square with a clock to relax, and saw some students coming out of a building. I looked at the clock and saw that it was about 35 after and just assumed that classes all got out around that time. There were quite a few students coming out of this building and going on to the student center or dorms or whatever, so I didn't think anything of it. About 15 minutes later, the campus seemed to explode as all sorts of students began pouring out of the other buildings. I turned to the first building that had emptied, and laughed to myself as I saw that it was the business building that had gotten out early. I guess some things just don't change.

While Mandi wasn't in class, we were able to spend some quality time with the Boren's, who we stayed with, and who I grew up with and practically serve as my 2nd parents. I hadn't seem them in almost a year, so it was really great catching up with them. Mandi and I also went to the ICE! exhibit which is on display each year at the Gaylord Hotel and Convention center. They hire a whole bunch of sculpters, bring them to Nashville a month before-hand, and they carve an entire exhibit out of ice. It's absolutely incredible the detail that you can see when you get in there. I had never been before, but had heard about it, and figured that this was the perfect opportunity. If you're in the area, you should really check it out. This year's theme is the Grinch and Who-vill, along with a spectacular Nativity Scene on your last stop before the door. Be warned, though, that they keep the building at a balmy 9 degrees, so take gloves (and your camera). I think that I'm ready for the holidays now.

Piano Time

So this past week has been interesting. I got a call a week ago from a lady that works at the local YWCA. They were needing music for a benefit dinner that they were putting on, and the band that they originally had asked to come and play canceled on them. She happened to know some friends of ours from church in Oak Ridge, and I was recommended to them, so I got the call. In the end, both my brother and I went and played at the dinner for about 2 hours tonight while they were mingling around and eating. The dinner was a benefit for the YWCA where they honored local women in Oak Ridge in different fields that they thought had done outstanding service work to the community. It turned out to be a pretty decent evening, and we had dinner to boot.

(Seeing as how I'm editing this 3 weeks after I started...I'll just move on to the next post).

Balloons?

The other day, they were having a hot-air balloon festival, I guess you could say, so Mandi and I decided to go on over there and check it out. It wasn't really anything more than a bunch of local artists setting up their shops to sell some of their home-made items, and having about 20 balloons or so set up and lit-up once it got dark. It was a fun time, and we actually got in at quite a discount since we ran in to a church friend who was one of the people taking payments as people were coming in. How great is that? Here's a couple pics, including the Energizer Bunny hot-air balloon, which they said is currently the largest one in the world.

Soccer has been ongoing, and our team is doing alright so far. We didn't play all that well yesterday, but still managed to pull out a 2-2 draw. Mandi has been playing quite well recently, and even completely schooled a guy on the other team a couple weeks ago. I don't think he really did much else the rest of the game after that. I have to say that I was quite impressed. It's still been fun, which is really the main thing, although there seems to be more and more teams that are really complete jerks. And not just the guys either, but even the girls on the teams are jerks. I'm really not liking the fact that everything was combined in to one league like it was, but what can I do about it? At least our team is pretty cool.

Other than that, not a whole lot else going on. Dustin is still looking for a job, so keep him in your prayers as that goes on. Work is going without too much trouble. We're busy, but not overwhelmingly so which is really about where we want to be at. We're having an open house this week in honor of the company being around for 10 years, so I spent a lot of the past month taking pictures of people and all the instruments at work that I'm allowed to for displays that were set up and such. I guess it really is a big deal to have been around for that long, especially with the start that they got. It should be interesting. Just have to see how many people actually show, considering that they sent invitations out to probably around 1000 people. Should be a good time, nonetheless. One thing is for sure though...we won't be working hardly at all that day.

Pain

This past weekend was spent in Tuscaloosa, AL at the 2008 Club Sectionals Ultimate Frisbee tournament. Unfortunately for me, given untimely injuries in the previous months, I was not able to participate as a player, although I still wanted to be there to see friends and just enjoy a weekend away. I assumed "coaching" duties, and basically handled everything off the field to try and help play go without too much of a hitch. The subbing and such seemed to work well, and it seemed like everyone was alright with how I handled it, so hopefully that was the case. The team did well, finishing 5th out of 12 (our highest ever), even with finishing our last game with 8 players (when you play with 7) since a number of our team had to leave to get to the airport in time to get home. For having not played together in so long, our team played remarkably well for a number of games, with quite possibly our best games coming in the morning, which is absolutely unheard of. We destroyed the 2nd-ranked team in our pool 15-5 on Sunday morning, which for an Apocalypse team is absolutely huge. All in all I was quite pleased, although I wish I could have been playing, but I'm glad that I was able to do my part. Hopefully everyone on the team that played has mostly recovered from their injuries and sore muscles at least most of the way by now. For your viewing pleasure, here are a couple pictures and a video of the action.

3 Months in Review?

Man. I don't even know where to start. I'd actually completely forgotten about this over the past few weeks...or months apparently. There has been a lot going on though...let's see.

The first was the trip to Mexico in late June. The trip ended up going quite a bit better than I had thought it might. I rather enjoyed going, and look forward to going back again. Mandi and I met a professor at the college of Monterrey, who just so happened to be a physics professor. He wanted to give us a tour of the college, and we ended up seeing where he worked, both at the college and at the local high school. His boss also ended up offering me a job should I want to go down there at some point. How crazy is that? It seemed more like just a nice comment, but while we were walking out, the professor said that she was serious. I guess things are just a little more laid back down there. It was a great trip though, and it was good working with the church and the kids especially during the VBS. I ended up driving while down there (that's quite a trip), as well as leading singing for the VBS (in Spanish no less). Mandi and I also got some good time working with the members from the church and the kids that went along. All in all, an excellent experience, and one that we hope to go back on next year...although there are a couple changes that we both hope would be made.

Dustin has completed his internship working with me this summer as of Friday. He's now in to the fun phase of hunting for a job. Hopefully he'll be able to find something that he's looking for and excited about soon, but in the meantime he'll continue to stay here and look around.

I made a trip to SC to visit a Mr. Paul Murphy and hang out for a day or two while Mandi went to see Tara. It was nice to go back, seeing as how it had been quite a while, and I even got to witness how a Murphy vacation gets underway. It's really quite impressive when you sit back and think about it. I'm assuming that it ended up going well.

The summer was spent playing soccer, and getting injured in the process. Unfortunately, that is ruling me out of the frisbee tournament coming up this weekend since I haven't been able to really run or anything for a bit. It's healed up now, and I've slowly gotten back in to running and stuff for soccer, but it's too early to get back to it. Plus, I haven't touched a frisbee for about the whole summer, so I'll be going as the official subber for the team. I guess I'll fall under the idea of a coach. That sits fine with me, and it will definately be good to see some old friends that I haven't seen for a while.

We're once again coming up on the new soccer season with the Champions League getting underway starting tomorrow, and European leagues having been in action for a couple weeks. I'm looking forward to it, as usual. World Cup qualifying is in full swing, with the U.S. team having posted 3 victories in their first 3 games of the semi-final round of CONCACAF qualifying. They are definately struggling when it comes to having any quality forwards...but for the time being it's not as pressing an issue since the competition is still fairly early. However, once the finals roll around later on next year, they'll need to start producing the goods. Hopefully they'll be able to pick it up, and get the offensive end going better.

The new TV season is about to pick back up. Say hello to House. Mandi and I just got through watching most all of season 4 on DVD over the course of the past week or so to get her caught back up, so I'm excited to get things back under way. Last season ended under some pretty strenuous circumstances, so it will be interesting to see how things get resolved with the new season.

One of my most nerve-wracking moments of the summer came a couple weeks ago when I ended up speaking at church on Wednesday for our class. As things are currently, we have all the adults (i.e. college and above) in a single class that has a speaker that rotates around between different members of the congregation each week. I spoke on the need to have a song in our hearts for God. I basically took some of the church's most well-known songs (Amazing Grace, Just As I Am, and Take My Hand, Precious Lord) and by telling the story behind why they were written, showed how people need to have a song for God through how they live. The video is what I played at the end just to try it all together. The video is taken from David Crowder Band's Live DVD, with the Scriptures added in by me, plus I just wanted to try and see how the video thing worked. It's just a taste of what I attempted to do. Overall it seemed to go alright, so hopefully it was able to make something of an impression. The song's title, "I'm Just Trying To Make You Sing" basically sums up the message that I was wanting to get across. Enjoy.

The Month In Review

Hello again...another month has absolutely flown by. What might have been happening you might ask? Quite a lot. Let's get started.

First off has been soccer on the weekends. Our team ended up second in the league I think, after getting wins for the past 4 or 5 weeks in a row. Mandi had quite possibly her best game ever this past weekend with some stellar defense. She even set a pick on someone on the opposite team. Quite impressive. On a much grander scale, the Euro 2008 tournament has been going on, with quite a few excellent games (Turkey vs. Czech Republic being one). There is one more team in the semis to be decided with Spain playing Italy tomorrow afternoon (ABC 2:45 ET). There have been a number of surprises so far (France's no-show, Turkey's continued escapes, 0 free-kick goals) and it has been exciting, so I'm looking forward to seeing who makes it on past tomorrow. It should be a good game.

A major event that Mandi and I participated in late last month was a week-long kayaking clinic. Over the course of the week, we worked on all things kayaking, and got to the point where both of us could flip up from an upside-down position while underwater. The end of the week trip was going down the Hiawassee river on about a 6-hour trip filled with rapids and playtime. It was a good week, although it definitely had it's rough moments, but all in all turned out well. Given my dreams of drowning and death prior to it starting, it worked out alright I guess.

I have been drafted in to play softball for our Oak Ridge church league team over the past couple games. This has been interesting given the fact that the last time that I played softball was about 3 years ago. Suffice it to say that I figured I wouldn't be doing all that much, but then I got stuck at 2nd base. Apparently I've got more softball skill than I gave myself credit for, as I've managed to get a number of nice plays in each game on defense. The same cannot be said of my hitting ability though. Basically, my hitting strategy is to make contact, and then out-run the play to first base. Since it's not an overly competitive league, this generally works out all right since you can count on at least 1 bobble of the ball before they can get the throw off. Just don't get me up to bat with 2 outs since...well, I'm by no means a guaranteed man on base.

My brother has also been golfing a lot recently, so today Mandi, Dustin and myself hit the driving range since there was no ultimate being played like they thought it would be. It was quite humorous to start with, although by the end of our buckets I would say that we were all hitting them fairly well. At least for once a decade golfers. I bet anyone that actually plays would have been watching us and wanting to kill us for our lack of technique and whatever else, but we had a good time killing an hour hitting.


We also went camping with our church group near a friends house that has some property by part of a lake. It was a fun couple of days with swimming, grilling, badminton, some diving for frisbees off of docks, fishing, and general fun just hanging around outside. The pic is just a little panorama shot I was playing around with on my camera. The function would probably work a little better if I had a tripod to keep it steady on, but oh well. Here's also a picture of some fire, since you really can't go camping without a fire. Although, I guess when it's 85 degrees outside you probably don't need a fire, but it's still good for making s'mores. Or for recalling funny stories about fires not being lit by fireworks for big camp presentations.

These pictures were taken with my b-day present, which was a new camera. It's a Canon PowerShot S5IS. I had been wanting to get a digital camera for a while, but had never really seriously looked around for anything about one. However, when my b-day rolled around I figured that it was what I was going to get. I've been quite pleased with it, as it's got a quick shutter, so there isn't a lot of blurred pictures, even during action shots, it has a 12x optical zoom so you can get far objects large in the frame fairly well, it's got some cool features that have to do with accenting or even eliminating colors, the cool panorama feature, and it even takes video with stereo audio included. All in all, it's been a lot of fun playing around with it and taking pictures and videos just to see how it holds up. The only thing that I really have yet to do is to use the cables included and hook it up to a big-screen tv and see how the picture and video transfers when seen on a large set.

So...I think that's just about all the high points from the past month of action. I'm thinking my next post will be on what Luke questioned about regarding US soccer players, especially with the more engaging World Cup 2010 qualifiers coming up (after the exercise tomorrow against Barbados).

The Finals

This past weekend marked the end of the middle school soccer season (as well as my birthday, coincidentally enough). The weekend was spent at 4 soccer games in a tournament setting. Saturday went well, with the team playing alright and soundly beating our opponents. So much so that we could play everyone, which is always nice. Today, however, was a different story. Everyone seemed a step slow, and didn't seem to have the desire to win. We barely scraped in to the final with a 2-2 draw in the morning game, which allowed us to advance on tie-breakers. The final started brightly enough, with our team getting 2 goals in the opening 10 minutes. After that, it was all down hill though. I think the team figured that they were going to coast the rest of the way, and allowed the other team to get a goal back before half-time. After half, our team just didn't show up. We ended up losing 6-2. What can you say though...sometimes it's just not your day. They had a good season though. We had a 7-1-1 record, and scored 56 goals. I can't say that's all that bad.

Due to Whit's questions regarding how the leagues around Europe interact with the Champions League, I'll go in to a little explanation. I think it's fitting, seeing as how the premier European club competition has it's final on Wednesday at 2:45 ET on ESPN 2. The first all English final features Manchester United and Chelsea. There really isn't a whole lot between the two teams, with United just beating out Chelsea to the English Premiership title, although if Chelsea wins the Champions League, I think they will be alright with losing out. It might not be the most exciting of matchups, although an early goal will open the game up. I'm hoping for an early goal, and a United win.

But how did we get to this point? The process really starts two seasons earlier. UEFA (the European governing body of soccer) assigns points to the individual leagues around Europe based on the performance of the individual teams in European tournaments. I guess it really starts even earlier, since these points are determined for the previous 5 European seasons. They are given points (2 for a win, and 1 for a draw) in competition, with the point total then divided by the number of teams from the country participating. So, if 3 teams from Spain played, with a 6-2-4 record, they would have 14 total points divided by 3, for a coefficient of 4.667. Each country that's a member of UEFA is totaled this way. Then, based on their coefficient, the number of teams that are allowed in to the competition are decided. The top 3 get 4 teams, the next 3 get 3 teams, the next 8 get 2 places, and everyone beneath gets 1 place. To make things even more complicated, there is a second tier of tournament competition in Europe known as the UEFA Cup. The point totals are used to determine placement for this as well. That means that the number of teams from a league are determined based on how the teams do 2 seasons prior. In other words, the points are determined in 2007, in order to be used for the 2008-2009 season, and not the 2007-2008 season. For more in-depth discussion, see the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_coefficients#League_coefficient.

Now, the top teams from the coefficient calculation are given 2 automatic places into the competition. These are determined in the previous league season, with the top two teams at the end of the season given the automatic berths. If that's not incentive to play in every single game to win during your regular season, I don't know what is. Did I mention how much money a team gets for being in the tournament? The next teams down play in a play-off with top qualifiers from other leagues that didn't get an automatic berth. Convoluted, huh?

After the qualifying rounds are played, we have the group stage draw. The top-seeded teams are placed in a bowl together, followed by the next group in their own pot, until all 32 teams are accounted for. This is to help keep the stronger teams from being placed all in the same group. Each group of 4 plays a home and away series over the course of the first half of the season. Matchday's 1-6 are played from late September until late November/early December. After these games, the top two teams from each group advance to the knock-out stages. which kicks off once February rolls around. The 3rd place team from each group drops down in to the UEFA Cup competition at the mid-point of that tournament. The 4th placed team is finished in Europe.

The knock-out stages are where the tournament really kicks off. The teams play a home and away series, with the winner advancing to the next round. For the duration of the knock-out rounds, away goals count double in the event of a tie. In other words, this encourages the visiting team to go on the offensive. For example, say the first game of the series ends in a 1-1 draw. The advantage here is with the visiting team. In the second leg of the series, all they need is a 0-0 draw or a win to advance. However, if they draw 0-0, the visiting team is at a disadvantage. Their home game requires a victory, as any sort of tying draw will see the visiting team go through. This set-up really leads to some intense matches, where people know that they either score or go home. Even with this set-up, there are draws where away goals scored are equal. In this case, the second leg of the series goes to a 30 minute overtime period, followed by a shoot out if the scoreline hasn't changed at all.

The round of 16, quarterfinals and semifinals all follow this format, with the winning teams advancing on. The final, played in mid-May, is a one-off game, with the winner taking all the glory. Victory allows celebration for the night, but no guarantee of being back in the competition the following year as that is determined by the final league standings of the individual countries. It really makes each team play for the whole season, as not finishing in the top 2 or 3 teams means that you most likely won't be playing in Europe, at least on the big stage. This tournament really is the best of the best, as it is the solid performers from the individual leagues around Europe that were able to play at a consistently high level throughout their entire season. It's what makes it the best club soccer tournament in the world, at least as far as European teams are concerned.

Hopefully that was a semi-coherent explanation of how the tournament as a whole comes along. It's hard, especially in comparison to American sports, to think how the way your team, and really your entire league, finished 7 seasons earlier can affect your placements so much. If you want to see some great soccer, tune in Wednesday at 2:30. I know I will. At least by recording it.

For future reference, the US Men's National Team has some great games coming up against England at Wembley (May 28), Spain (June 4) and Argentina (June 8). All these games can be seen on the ESPN family, either on Classic or ESPN2. Plus, this summer marks the European Championships, played every 4 years, where 16 teams from around Europe will play for national pride. The entire tournament will be broadcast for the first time on ESPN in the US. Here's looking forward to a great summer of soccer.

The Feeling

Dustin's graduated. It's pretty crazy to think that my brother has finished up his undergraduate college education. I spent this past weekend in Gainesville, Florida in order to attend his graduation ceremony. They split up the college of liberal arts, since it would have been about 2000 people total going in one ceremony, so we had the early session. Now, I don't know exactly how many people graduated at Harding during my walk, but I figured this had to be just about comparable, and I felt like my graduation took about 3 hours. Well, they defied my expectations...and managed to do everything they needed to do in 2 hours. I was impressed. I hadn't heard names read that quickly as students walked across the stage at any graduation I've been to before. The students all had a card with their name on it, getting rid of the need to have a specific list and order to go by, and they simply handed the card to the reader who would spout it off as quickly as possible and move on to the next one. The ceremony started at 2, and we were out the door by 4. I think more graduations should subscribe to the auctioneer style of reading off the names.

Today we drove back down to Atlanta to drop Dustin off for his final national frisbee tournament. He was flying out to Boulder for the week before college nationals kicks off next Friday. He won with Florida in 2006, but they lost last year at some point around the quaterfinals I believe. He's fairly certain that they've got a good shot again this year, but of course they'll have to play well as always. We'll see what happens when next weekend rolls around. Speaking of frisbee...I need to go and vote about captains for the team for the upcoming club sectionals...in September...since when did we do stuff early?

Since we were in the area, we went to the Georgia Aquarium, located in downtown Atlanta. This is the only aquarium in the world to hold whale sharks, and it has 4 of them. They are housed, along with a number of other fish and small sharks, in a tank that contains about 6.2 million gallons of water. The wall of glass holding this in is 2 feet thick, and consists of 6 panels about 50 feet high that were molded together by heat once they were brought on site. It really is a pretty spectacular place to go see. It was even featured on the Today show a number of months back, so if you're ever in the area, I would certainly recommend it. Plus, just across the street, you can go to the World of Coca-Cola if you so desire.

I'm fairly pumped about the next few months of music, as there will be a number of releases which I am looking forward to (in case you hadn't seen the ever-growing listing on the right). Right near the top of that list is the new Kutless cd which releases in about a month on June 24. They released a single for download for free on their website yesterday, so off I went to get it so I could get a little sneak-peak at the album. I'm a fan of it, so check it out if you've liked any of their stuff before. It'll take about 2.5 minutes of your time...or probably about as long as it took to read through what I've written today.

The European soccer season is quickly drawing to a close, with many of the final round games being played either this weekend or next weekend. In Spain, Real Madrid has already clinched the title, and they were applauded on to the field by the arch-rivals Barcelona. As if that were not humiliating enough, they were trounced 4-1, allowing Real to sweep them for the first time in about 20 years. Ouch. The English Premiership also has a day of tense games tomorrow, with the title and relegation teams being decided over the course of hours. Manchester United and Chelsea are tied on points, with United having the lead based on goal difference. Should United win, they will retain the title they won last year. Any other result would require Chelsea to not win in their final game. At the other end of the table, 3 teams are battling to keep from being relegated, or sent down a division. There are 2 more relegation spots left, with each team needing a win to keep from going down.

I would like to see something similar to this in American sports. There really isn't any drama at the end of a season, except for who will/will not make the post-season. Sure, it's disappointing if your team doesn't make the cut for the playoffs or whatever, but there's always next year. There's no threat of being sent down a league and having to play your way back up, you just are humiliated for a season at not advancing out of the regular season, and come back again next year on level terms with everyone. I know nothing like that would ever happen...but I think it does make for a better over-all season, knowing that every result counts, and that not getting the results can see you demoted.

At any rate, it's nice to be back home, as it's been an incredibly long week. It was non-stop at work from Monday at 7 through about Friday at 3:30 or so...and I'm just worn out. It's time to just kick back and relax for the night, which is quite an inviting proposition.

Never Going Back To OK

It's strange, how stuff really can get in the way. Some of it is important, and some of it really doesn't matter at all. Things have been going well for the past few weeks since I last posted a quick update. Work is good, if slightly on the stressful side due to the volume of work expected of us recently. There are just projects that continue to come up, with little or no time to take a breather. It's good, as a whole, since that is what makes the company money. It's bad, from a personal standpoint, because there is never any time to further train me on things that they are wanting me to do. All 3 of us are essentially running around like crazy all day, with me doing the surprisingly large number of things that I can do on my own, and my two bosses more or less trying to keep their heads above water as people keep coming to them with rush work needing to be done in a day (or even less). Hopefully there will be something of a break in the near future, as one of my bosses will again be out of town, and there are a number of things that I'm needing to learn how to do to be able to help out more. With how things are going right now, though, I don't really see that happening.

Soccer is actually going surprisingly well. We are 4 games in to the season, and have won all of them, with scores of 6-3, 6-3, 4-0, and 5-2. They seem more like a set of tennis box scores for the end of a match. We're (the coaches) are not entirely sure whether our team is a lot better than we would have thought, or if dropping down 1 division from where we were last year put us with a bunch of teams that are not anywhere near as good as they were last year. It's a strange predicament. I think we have a better team this year, but not to the point where we're scoring 4 or more goals per game. It's a good place to be though, as the kids are having fun, and we're able to play everyone, whereas should things have been like they were last year, there would maybe be 2 subs out of 5 that we would play, with the other three never getting in. So I guess for all involved, we're doing alright. The soccer that I am playing (along with Mandi) has also finally gotten under way after all the weekends rained out. Unfortunately, they've scheduled many of our games at 5, so we only play a half, but it's been fun nonetheless.

Probably the biggest news to have occurred in the past few weeks is that I will be going with our church on a mission trip to Escobedo, Mexico. I'll be having to work extra before and after since I don't officially have any time off, but we'll be down there for a week working with a church that our congregation sponsors, and putting on a VBS. I've heard that I'll even see Whit while I'm down there, although I wasn't sure if he would still be there come the end of July. It just kind of came up as an opportunity, and I thought it would be one that would be worth taking advantage of. Now, for next year, to have some vacation time and squeeze in camp as well as this would be fantastic.

It has certainly been an interesting couple of months. Although it's been somewhat sporadic due to scheduling conflicts and events, I have been teaching our small group on Sunday evenings. All of you that know me know that I am of the quiet variety and often do not speak. It was difficult at first, but has gradually been getting easier. It's a lot like it was for teaching labs at UT while I was there, in that you're pretty nervous your first few outings, but it gets better as time goes on. I've been teaching on prayer, and it's been a good study for our group, I believe (certainly not based on anything that I have done personally). Some people have been turned off by it I think, since our numbers aren't as big as they are on Sunday morning, but a lot of it, in my opinion, is that a number of people in our group don't want to get in to anything except the superficial. Mandi and I both get that impression a lot, just based on how things go in class Sunday morning, and discussions that have ensued. We've also discussed it a lot between ourselves on how it seems that few people wants to be pushed, but simply show up and have a good time, and throw in a little "spiritual" discussion on the side.

I don't know, but it seems like that is such an easy place for everyone to slip in to. It's like those "highs" you get when you go on a mission trip, or to a retreat or something that is a little out of the ordinary that makes you feel so different for a while...and then it's back to your usual self. The fire that you had is gone, and everything just degenerates back to where you feel comfortable, which is an area where you aren't pushing yourself to grow or to think, but just to go through the motions for another day. I'm not saying that I'm always on a spiritual high, since I know that is not how things go, but it does seem hard for people, in general, to want to get back up to those peaks without some extraordinary event. I don't know if it's even a general trend for people to not want to be pushed while at church or devos or whatever...

I have to say, that doing these lessons, and needing to take time to study and prepare and everything has been a good experience for me. I'm even to the point now that I'm enjoying teaching and stuff, and hopefully I'll be able to do more of it in the future. I just hope that the feeling that I have while I'm doing it doesn't wear off the second my time to teach is done. I know it's impossible to never go back to OK, but I hope that, at some point, I'll be able to find a way that I can keep it from happening so easily. And maybe that will encourage others to strive for more as well.

Move Me

Once again, it's been a while. However, as I type this I am sitting in my new apartment that I have been moving in to over the past couple weeks. Slowly, but surely, things are starting to get settled in. There's still a lot of boxes laying around, and I'm finding random things that I had forgotten I even had, but it's starting to get cleaned up. So that's essentially the thing that's been going on. Couple that with the usual work, as well as soccer coaching and stuff, and well...the weeks just fly right on by.

Work is still going quite well. It's been busy this week, although not quite to the point that I thought it would be since my boss has been out of town all week visiting his family. We've gotten some new instruments to play around with at work which has been exciting. It's an updated system to what we've had before, but it makes everything easier, so now things that needed to be done with polaroids and a ruler can now be done all on the computer screen while you're working with a sample. It's good stuff. I've also been running the project that was assigned to me a couple weeks ago to do on my own, so it's enough to keep one going through the day without realizing where the hours are going.

Soccer has improved since the incidents of earlier in the month. The team still isn't as good as you would think a group of middle schoolers would be, but we've come to realize that and are just trying to make it fun, while hopefully getting the ones that really are far behind in terms of skills a little bit better. We'll see how it goes. There are possibilities for it to be a good year, but just as many for it to turn out pretty horribly. We're just really hurting at a number of positions that are key, such as not having a true forward, and a goalie situation that really is not all that great. But what can you do?

At any rate, just wanted to throw something up here. I've got the weekend to get things cleaned up some more with Mandi at a girls retreat for the weekend, so I'll be cleaning and relaxing for the most part I believe. Hopefully I'll get back to putting up some things of substance in the near future.

Dizzy...

Wow...I hardly realized that it had been a full month since I've updated this thing. Times around here have been busy, for both good and bad reasons I guess. To start, middle school soccer is going...but not well. We had to cut the JV team after having them practice for a month due to a number of kids just quitting, and mostly down to people not turning in paperwork to commit to the team when we've got to have all the info and money turned in by this Friday. And, of course, we've now got the angry JV kids parent's emailing us about why we don't have a team and how come we can't keep both. It's really not that hard, when you're required to have 15 players to make a team, 8th graders must be on varsity, and you have a total of 29 people signed up with 13 of them being 8th graders. There just isn't a way to make it work. Last year, we didn't have any problems with the parents, they were all nice, they were supportive, they worked with us. This year, I guess they figure since we did it for a year we're pros with nothing else to do, and they complain non-stop about every decision and how we're not in constant communication with them 24-7 about why their kid isn't on the roster. I don't know. I realize that parents want their kids to be amazing at everything...but we're not going to put 6th graders on a varsity team with 8th graders that are 2 feet taller, especially when the 6th graders, quite frankly, really don't know how to play soccer for the most part. There were a number of 7th graders that we were sorry to cut, but when you have to cap your number at 18...there's only so many you can take. The head coach just about quit last week because of the constant complaining for all the parents...it's just ridiculous. If they want it done better, they should do it themselves. Sorry, just venting there I guess.

The other thing that has taken up my time has been the whole being sick thing. I'm pretty sure that most everyone in the country was sick this past month, and I was one of them. I'm still coughing a little bit, but it's substantially better. I'm guessing that it's not good to cough for a week straight, but I hate going to the doctor, and then there's that whole insurance thing. On the bright side, I've made it through most of the past few days without really coughing any, so that's been a definite bonus. Boo on being sick.

Tomorrow is a big day, as far as work is concerned. I get to go out and be a project lead on something, which coincidentally enough is for SRS in Aiken, SC. So, perhaps in a couple years, if we continue doing work for them, then I might have a couple contacts down there if we decide to head that way. It's doing micro-hardness testing...which I won't go in to detail about, since I really don't know anything about it. The idea is basically that you're looking at tiny areas (microns), and seeing how surfaces and substances react to having a load (weight) place on to them. It'd be like taking a slab of concrete, setting it up, and then dropping a 500 lb mass on it, and seeing how it deforms. Just on a micron scale instead of something you would see out in public. It should be interesting, and I'll get to play with some expensive equipment.

In church news, I'm leading our Sunday night small group study, which is focusing on prayer. It's been good, I hope, and we've gone through about 2 weeks thus far. (On a side note, I just got interrupted by another irate parent. I don't even know how he had my phone number.) It's been good stuff in the group, and I've managed to steal a few ideas from things that went on at Harding. So it's been good stuff, and certainly something for our group that I don't think many of them have experienced before. Hopefully things will continue to go well. At any rate, just wanted to give an idea of what's been going on.

What Could Be Better

Man, I sure am doing horribly on keeping this thing updated recently. It's been busy, but then again, who hasn't been busy. The job is still interesting, even after a month, and I've been doing a little bit of new stuff every day, which has been good. This past week was especially hectic as one of the 3 guys on the team (including me) was out of the office for 4 days (that was not me). He was on an interview up near where his family lives, so hopefully he can get that job and like it and move up there to be with them. That meant, however, that I got to do a lot, and basically was more busy than I have been at any other point in my time there.

Soccer with Cedar Bluff has been going for about the past 3 weeks now as well. It's looking shaky at the moment as far as getting two teams goes. We've got 27 names of people that have showed up at some point, but only about 21 are regularly making it to practice. We need to have 30 consistently in order to have 2 teams, so hopefully we'll make it. Otherwise we'll have to cut a number of people, and that will not be any fun. Good thing I'm not the head coach that has to make the final decision though. Haha!

The thing that has been taking a lot of time up recently has been the planning of this 55+ dinner that our young professionals group is hosting. It's going to be a lot of fun, but Mandi and I are having to spend a lot of time getting things organized and finished up in order to get it moving. We're slowly getting there though, as we'll have invitations and stuff ready by tomorrow, and I'm working on the slideshow as we speak . I haven't ever used Windows Movie Maker, but it's a pretty handy little gadget, as far as basic video editing is concerned. Hopefully it'll turn out well in the end. The main thing will be getting pictures from all the couples attending to include in it, since the theme of the dinner is "Remember When...". So we're wanting pictures from their wedding and recent pictures as well at this Valentine's dinner. It should be good stuff.

And on a completely random note, how about them Giants? I caught the last 2 minutes of the game, but that was enough for me. I'm just glad they beat the Patriots. Then again, who, outside of Patriots fans, isn't? Note this day, as it'll probably be the only day that I talk about football.

Island

As many people who write these things probably do, I had grand schemes of posting more consistently, and further even having compelling things to blog about. And here we are 3 weeks in to the year, and I've failed miserably in both aspects. Even tonight, I really don't have anything of interest to talk about. I just felt compelled to put a little bit up here since it's been right on a week since I last updated. How lame.

The past week has been busy as well. The job is continuing nicely, although today was quite slow. I put together a long string of left-over paperclips from all the paperwork that I go through while I'm there, I read the news (a lot), I went to a training meeting which lasted for about 30 minutes, and then I started playing around with new computers and equipment trying to get it working. I also saw how you etch a surface of a metal (you get cool chemicals like HF, HCl, and HNO3) and place it on top of the metal, and let it eat it away. It's used to see the grain boundaries (the way the material is fitted together I believe) in a failure analysis, since they're investigating a piece of something that broke during use. Pretty intriguing stuff. Tomorrow morning we're bringing the heavy-duty stuff. I've also been sick with some sinus/head cold symptoms, although it has finally passed I believe.

On a pretty exciting front, our small group is putting on a dinner (for Valentine's day, but not until the 24th) for the 55+ group at church. We're cooking for them (there's a professional chef in our group), and having some games, a slideshow, and pictures of each of the couples that comes that night. I think that it will turn out to be pretty cool stuff. Mandi and a couple of the other people in the group are planning, and I'll be helping out with some of the slideshows and game things. Speaking of games, we're putting on a Newlywed Game type thing with a few of the couples, and a couple from our own group and seeing how they do. So if you can think of any good questions to ask either the husbands or the wives, let me know.

It's been bitterly cold here the past few days. Really since about last Thursday. I know, it's really nothing compared to those northern states, but for getting down to 12 and 13 degrees around here, it's getting pretty cold. I envied the Murphy's in AmSam when they posted the other day about the temperatures. Those were days that I wished I lived on an island as well...Hopefully, in the next few days, I'll have a post of substance. But until then...

Say All I Need

It's been hectic. I've felt as if I should put something on here many times the past few weeks, but just haven't had the time/energy to do so. Work has been going exceptionally well. In the past 2 weeks I have learned how to use a plasma etcher, coat samples in carbon, prepare samples for viewing in a TEM (transmission electron microscope), prepare bulk samples of asbestos (which comes in a variety of sizes), get some basic introductory walk-throughs on using the TEM and the SEM (scanning em), basic training in working with hot (in the nuclear sense) materials, as well as some of the entry-level stuff of logging samples, and handling the paper-work. It has been action-packed almost every day...except on those days when they're working on the classified work they are contracted on...in which case there are some interesting articles on Google news, and some not-so-interesting articles that hold some special kind of appeal on those days. All in all though, it's been a lot of fun.

I had another company calling today wanting to talk with me about possibly working with them, and I've been trying to interface with them, but with being at MCL from 8-5, it's hard to find a time to contact them. We're working on setting up a phone interview I think, but given the relatively short amount of time before my trial period is over...I don't know what will happen exactly. But I guess it doesn't hurt to keep the options coming until I've got something firm. I feel like we're just about there though...

I'm signed on to once again coach the Cedar Bluff Middle School Giants Soccer Team. Man, that's a long school name. But if it's anything like last year, it should be a blast. The only difference being that this year I'm working at a real job, which I don't know if they'll allow me to take off at 3:30 on practice days...hopefully I can find some kind of schedule that will allow me to leave early on those 2 days of the week and let it work. If not...I guess I won't be able to coach. It would be a shame as well, since I really did have a lot of fun last year, and there will be a number of the same kids coming back to play since I think that we only had 3 8th graders. And we've apparently got some incoming 6th graders that are pretty good and have played competitive for a number of years...so we should hopefully have a very good pair of teams. I'll just need to find a way to bargain for my working hours.

Last night was fairly interesting. As I think I've mentioned before, I've been playing basketball fairly regularly (at least once a week) with some people from church and elsewhere that play in a 3-on-3 league. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I am absolutely awful at basketball. I have managed, however, to see some signs of improvement. Yesterday was a fairly significant step forward, as I managed to score about 10-15 points per game (we played 4 on 4 full court to 50), and was fairly consistent at hitting my lay-ups off of steals and quick breaks. You may laugh, but those lay-ups were pretty dang hard to hit...when I was all by myself...standing still beneath the basket...and had about 3 attempts before someone caught up to me...yeah... But last night I was actually making them on the dribble, and I even got my 3-pointers to go in. Now, I have a terrible shooting technique, since I shoot from my shoulder. I think Mandi told me that I shoot like a girl...and I probably do. But I make it work, and nobody outside of brother has blocked me yet, which is strange since he's the shortest person that I've played against. At any rate, my "signature shot" is dribbling across the top of the arc from left to right and putting up my shoulder-level shot which banks in off the backboard. I guess it's pretty unconventional, but I get it to work about half the time. That's about what MJ shot from behind the arc, right? I actually have no idea on that one... At any rate, it is turning out to be a lot of fun, now that I can actually contribute in some way besides turning the ball over after missing easy shots.

I'll try and update the rest of the stuff on the page over the next couple days as it is fairly dated, but for now, I've said all that I need to say. Enjoy the new song by OneRepublic.

Here It Goes

Usually, when there is a long break in posts by someone on a blog, it means that they have been exceptionally busy. For me...that usually just isn't the case. However, in this one particular instance, it really can be attributed to that. Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

About 3 weeks ago, I sent in an applications on the recommendation of a friend. While I was doing that, I happened to see another position that I thought I might be semi-qualified for. So I sent one off for that as well. I wasn't expecting to hear much, with the Christmas holiday coming up, and figured they would end up like many of the other things that I've sent off. I'd picked up dog-sitting for a family from church for the Christmas break as they were going to be in Europe, so we (my brother and I) head off to go to the house and see the dog and let them explain to me everything that they're going to want me to do while they're gone. While there, I get a phone call, and it happens to be from one of the employers that I had just sent a resume to. They wanted me to come in the next day and meet with them to discuss possibly working with them. Of course, I'm thrilled, so I go in the next day, and after about 3 hours of talking with a number of different people, they say that they want to bring me on. It's a small company, and so they want to have a trial period to allow both of us to feel out the position and see if it would work. They ask me to come in on January 3rd to get started, and I agree, going away happy.

The next morning, I wake up and get a phone call from the other company wanting me to come in for an interview with them as well. This position is with a large coke-producing (the burned coal variety, not the beveridge) company called SunCoke. I went in for my interview with them on the 2nd of January, which worked out nicely. I would be working with them as an enviornmental engineer, doing some management work, and travelling to their sites in Indiana, Virginia, Ohio and Brazil to see that everything is being done correctly and that everything is being done in an enviornmentally safe way. They said they'd get back with me in a couple weeks time either way. At this point, I don't really know what I would do if they offer me a position as well...it's kind of a good position to be in I guess.

The small business is called Materials and Chemistry Laboratories (MCL), and they are a small forensic research company. Basically what that means is that they find out what things are that people don't know. Or maybe people do know what it is, but they want to know the exact composition of the materials. Really, it's just a bunch of work to tell people that they have certain metals, radioactive elements, asbestos, or whatever else they can manage to fit into things these days, inside of their buildings, samples, or any other thing that they send us. It's a bunch of chemistry (I know, I'm a physics major...), but it's been enjoyable for the past couple days. I've already prepared samples for a TEM (transmission electron microscope), which is a multi-step day-long process, I've atomized carbon to coat samples, and of course I've done the grunt-work of logging in samples and updating the computer files. But it's been fun, and I think that I would enjoy working there for the next couple years.

The reason for going to the second interview is that the position at MCL that I'm in currently is classified as a temporary full-time position. As I said, it's about a month-long trial period, although I really feel as if I've fit in over the past two days. The people are also training me on just about everything, and not just having me log data, which I would have thought would have been the majority of the work if it was more trial than just a safe-guard for their overall business and everything. I guess you can't really hire on full-time with a substantial salary if they're not sure the person will stick with it or work well for them. So it does open up the option of taking the other position if they decide to hire me...it's really a tough call. Mandi and I had a good discussion about it the other night for a couple hours just weighing everything, and didn't even really get to a conclusion. It's just a lot to think about, and will be even more to consider if it does end up that I get an offer for the other one. I guess that it's a lot better position to be in than I have been for the past 6 months though.

Throw in New Years Eve celebrations (I'm going to have to get pictures off Mandi's camera of our "Ugly Christmas Sweater Competition" sweaters and put them on here), time with the family, hanging out with Dustin, playing some volleyball, Mandi's upcoming birthday, and just all around general holiday craziness, and it's not all that hard for me to see where the past week has gone. It's been a good Christmas/New Years, and it's been a good week, albeit a very busy one. A belated Happy New Year to all who read this. I, for one, am looking forward to what 2008 has in store. So, here it goes.