UPDATE!

Well, I'm here with an update. I thought that maybe you might like to see some of my favorite pictures. I think that they're all of me, but it could be interesting, anyhow.


Here I am in a cave, approximately 100 meters into a hillside, with a beautiful French girl. There weren't any odd creatures or characters in there, much to my chagrin, but it still reminded me of the "Space Trilogy." If you've ever read CS Lewis' "Perelandra," it should bring back some subterranean memories of Ransom. If not, I've just wasted my time typing this.

This is odd. It's a picture that I found on my computer. Near as I can tell, it's a UFO. Either that, or a kite. Either way, it's sort of strange that it's on my computer. Just what is it doing there?

Ah, here I am on my bike. If it's just too Nordic a picture for your taste, I understand. Sometimes it's hard to contain so much Viking on one blog.

Here I am with some of my favorite relatives. I'm relatively hairless in the face, but that's my Uncle Mike, Aunt Cheryl, and their son, John Morgan. That was taken around Thanksgiving of '05. Good times, good times. That was a tasty cup of coffee that I had, too.

I know that this picture seems obscene, but I just had to put it in. Not so that you can see me still in bed at 10:30 AM, but because my little kitten, Oscar, is just so stinkin' cute! He's one of the best cats that I've ever had, and he was just so adorable when he was so little!

Well, I think that's just about all that I have time for now. I'm getting ready to go to bed to get up bright and early for my trip down to West Virginia!

Oh, and one more thing....

I forgot to mention in my last post that I re-injured my hand. I was doing some digging for a friend, and I was using a digging bar. I wound up slamming my hand between the digging bar and a retaining wall that i was digging against. For those of you who don't know what a digging bar is, it's a long, steel or iron bar weighing about 30 or 40 pounds that's used for breaking up rocks and clay while digging. Anyhow, i cut a finger open, broke my pinky, and the force of the crushing impact was so great that my ring finger exploded. Yep. It blew up. My finger was turned inside-out. Sick. I had to push all the fat back inside my skin, tape it up with bandaids, and then ride my motorcycle back home, where I got a car and drove myself to the hospital where I got stitched up. That was one painful ride home....

Here I Go Again On My Own....

Well, I know that it's been a while since I posted, but I thought that enough had happened to warrant a new post. I adopted an abandoned kitten, and I've named him "Oscar." He's absolutely adorable! He's sweet, and he loves people, unlike my other cat, haha! I still miss Waffles a great deal, but I'm over the hard, hurtful part of it all. When I go down to West Virginia, I still put a little bunch of wild flowers on his grave.

I've also put almost 3000 miles on my motorcycle. That's quite exciting. Since it's been broken in, I've noticed a great increase in the smoothness of the transmission, as well as a boost in fuel economy. I've taken it on some fairly long trips (out to Shippensburg and back was about 300 miles), and I've done ok. In the next few weeks or so, I hope to go on an "Iron Butt" ride.

I was appointed pastor at the Arona Church of the Nazarene by the Pittsburgh District Superintendant of our church. I'm also in the assessment process for a district license. I currently possess all the powers and priviledges of being a district licensed minister. That's pretty neat. One new person has started coming to church, which is exciting!

I also start Seminary next week. This week is my orientation, so I'll find out what classes I'm taking and such, so it should be a good week.

I'm also starting on a new religious series of oil paintings. I'm going to try to take some pictures and scan them into the computer, and possibly put them up here. I have one done already, and there are a couple more swimming around in my head. I'm going to try to put them down on canvas today, so I'm pretty excited about that.

Also, a heads up for all you sportsmen and outdoor enthusiasts: Archery season is just around the bend! It looks to be an exciting hunting season down on my property in West Virginia! We've got some good food plots out, and we have some deer roaming through there, and it should be good! I'm also looking forward to muzzle loader season later in the year. Well, I guess that's about it for now, so I'll hopefully post later this week to let you all know about the exciting things going on with Seminary!

Thinking

Well, I just got home from work. As I sit here by myself, I can't help but think. Strange. Anyhow, I was just thinking about how meticulous some of us are in regard to cleaning our dishes. I mean, if there's a bit of crusted food on a fork, do we eat with it? Certainly not! If there's a spec of dirt on a plate at a restaurant, would we eat there? No! However, as I sat here chowing down on my previously frozen "TV" dinner, I couldn't help but wonder why it is that we so intimately trust that little cardboard box that it comes in.

I mean, think about it: we have no idea who handled that box, either during or after assembly. Then, I thought about how easy it would be for ANYONE to slice one open and inject something in there and then glue it back shut. How interesting to think that we trust strangers to pack our food, strangers to handle that same food, and someone strange to scan it and then place it in the bag for us. Yet, we don't think of our frozen little delights (tonight, mine was cheese ravioli from Michelina's) as being angrily molested by strange people with unknown intentions. I guess that we would like to think that, since it's food, people will handle it with the dignity and manners befitting a chef. Poppycock. Our frozen food has been abused in more ways that we could dream of. Assembly line-like processing and packaging, being thrown about, dropped on the floor, and crammed in a filthy truck.

Did all of this thinking about the true nature of my food keep me from eating, though?

Certainly not.

Angry

Well, I'm angry. I just got home and ate a bag of fritos flavor twists (the honey bbq kind), and I was having a pretty good time. Then, I read that the dweebs of the supreme court have ruled that cities can take "imminent domain" of people's private property. Now, I realize that imminent domain has been around forever. However, I can see the huge abuse of power right here. You see, what's going to happen is this: some poor schmuck in the city is going to be eeking out a living in his little slummy house. Then, the city's going to come in and say, "Oh, well, we're going to build a Walgreen's here to bring in revenue." You have a week to leave your house. Here's the fair market value--one thousand dollars. I hope that things go well. Tata." By this point, Joe Shmo is too busy having a nervous breakdown thinking (and rightfully so) that he can't find another house and doesn't even notice that the city is reaming him from behind.

I'm so sick of this bogus garbage. I see it all the time. Cities take nice little tracts of land--oftentimes farm land--and completely destroy the peace by bulldozing the place and putting a Walmart in. This is not right. Do you know how much money places like Walmart get just by coming into an area. Tax breaks, etc. It sucks. Walmart doesn't need free money. Nobody needs free money. Get off your lazy rear and work for what you have.

Oh, I might just point out that it was mainly the "liberals" on the bench who ruled in favor of taking people's land. That's because the liberals want to be in control of everything. You know what I want? I want the government to say as far away from me as they can. I realize that we need a centralized government. That's plain and simple. However, our founding fathers wanted that government to be as minimally intrusive as possible. They didn't want another monarchy.

Finally, I would like to defy anyone to try to take anything from me. It won't be pretty.

Update

Well, I've put my homepage URL on my profile now. Not that anyone cares, but I thought that it would be neat to at least have a pic of me that you all could see. Now, mind you, my home page is merely through aol, and it's completely out of date. Soooooo....... take it with a grain of salt, I suppose.

Good news!

My sister just told us today that she's pregnant! She's due in February! Woo hoo! I've been after her to hurry up and give me some nieces and nephews, so it looks good! I'll update here as events transpire (after all, we've got, like, eight months!).

My Ever-Lovin' Hand

Well, I now have almost full hand-faculties back, so I can tell my story! I was building a set of steps for my brother-in-law's daycare. They have a set of steps that go up a hill behind their daycare. The hill is about a 65 degree incline. Pretty steep. Anyhow, I had cleared all the debris from the old steps away so that I wouldn't fall on a nail (ah, the irony!). So, I had constructed a piece of the steps and was going to drag it up the hill and set it in place, but it was so long (about 16 feet) that I had to drag it around and through the pile of cleared debris in order to get it to a point where I could drag it straight up the hill and set it in place.

Well, as I was dragging it around, I slipped and fell on the steep hill. I reached out with my hand to catch myself on the side of the hill. Catch myself, I did. I felt a funny feeling when my hand came to rest, and, looking down at my hand, I noticed that there was a nice, 6 penny nail coming through the back of my hand. Now, this was one of those carpenter's nails that's flared down along the shaft of the nail and twisted so that it holds the wood better. It certainly holds flesh well, too. I would find out later that it was also bent at a ninety degree angle just an inch down from the tip. This whole thing was shoved into my hand just so.

So, I knew from previous knowledge that if something is stuck in your body, you should never remove it, but let the doctor do that. So, I thought that I would leave the nail in. Then, I realized that this nail was attached to thirty feet of railing. The nail itself was in the base of a 2x4. So, I thought that I might just get my circular saw and cut the board at a spot where I could carry the remainder. Then, I realized that my saw was about 20 feet away, and I couldn't drag this railing that far. So, I called my parents on my cell phone, thinking that they could come and cut the board for me. I got their voice mail. So, rather than sit there all night with a board stuck to my hand, I decided that I would pull my hand off the board and go to the hospital.

I knew that it would hurt, so I thought that I might just quickly jerk the board off. I tried to do so. Much to my chagrin and hurt, the board came straight up with my hand when I jerked (remember, I didn't know that it was bent at a ninety degree angle in my hand!). So, I decided to do the only manly thing that I could do. I stuck my left index and middle fingers under my right hand and I pushed my thumb against the board and I pried my hand off the nail. Now, this act took a considerable amount of leverage, wiggling, and pain on my part. I can honestly say that it was the most painful experience of my life.

Anyhow, I got the nail off. I was surprised to see the twisted, mangled nail for what it really was. It was all corroded and covered in my blood and flesh. Pretty neat, actually. Anyhow, at this point, I realized that I could call my brother-in-law and have him come pick me up. He rushed over with my sister, and I instructed her to pick up all my tools and put them in the trunk of her mountaineer, and then move the wood off to the side. She gave me a few paper towels and a bag of ice to wrap around my hand, too (at this point, all I had was my filthy work shirt to wrap around my hand). On the way to the hospital, the ice melted all over the crotch of my pants, so I'm sure that people thought that I had driven a nail through my hand and then passed out from the pain and wet myself. How humiliating. But, I survived.

I thank God, because the nail could've easily broken bone (how it missed the bone attached to my pinky finger is still a mystery to me!), severed tendons, injured nerves, hit an artery, or maybe my eye, or anything. Yet, God protected me through it all and gave me a calm mind and peaceful spirit. So, all in all, it really wasn't that bad, and I now have a pretty exciting story to tell!