Meme

10 Years ago:
Since my wife was a freshman, I suppose I was a sophomore. Let’s see… in 10th grade I had a crush on Elisa Cook. I devoted way too much of my time trying to figure out how to talk to her in a way that wouldn’t seem strange. Let’s face it, sophomore boys are strange by nature, so I was really stumped. It wasn’t until my junior or senior year that I dated her for a couple days, at which time she decided that she was not actually ready for a dating relationship. However, she did start dating one of my classmates a few weeks later. *sniff*

I was on the JV rugby team, which I very much enjoyed, but was not terribly good at. I had to play rugby without glasses on, which didn’t help things out but doesn’t fully explain my lack of great skill. Everyone should already know, but I was at a boarding school in Kenya at the time. I sang in the choir during that year (and all the other years I was in high school). Due to all of the guys having their voices drop, I was assigned to sing with the 1st tenors. I’m really more of a baritone, but my range went higher than 90% of the other guys, so there I was stuck.

I played a lot of hacky-sack with the other guys, and I think I still have some of the sacks we used to play with. I believe it was that year that a few guys decided hacky-sack was just not quite cool enough. They invented “bottle-ball” which involved guys standing in a loose circle, throwing a Coke bottle around to each other. They had to be in the air while they caught and threw the bottle, which meant you had to move it around very quickly. Needless to say, the game came to a bit of a halt when the bottle-ball hit someone just above the eye and left him quite bruised.

We were really bored back then. Imagine 500 kids, all confined to a single campus, with a huge fence around the entire place. We had rules about who was allowed to go outside of the fence. Basically, nobody was supposed to go out alone, and girls had to have guy with them, or something like that. Actually, I can’t remember exactly what the rule was for girls, but I do remember that it was not the same as the rule for boys. They didn’t really care about equality of the sexes I guess. So, all of those kids together in one place, and we didn’t really have television or video games. Of course, we didn’t have parents around either, so we had a degree of freedom that we may not have had at home. They were some of the happiest and most frustrating times of my life.

My to-do list today:
Help Jen finish cleaning the house when I get home, in preparation for all of our friends coming over. I’m assuming that I will get to vacuum.
Write a letter to Gabriel, the Compassion kid we sponsor. He asked for a picture of us, so I need to find one of those to put in the letter.
Work on writing the next installment of my Escolia story. I’ve been sidetracked on another story for a while, so I’m sorry for those of you that are eagerly waiting on the edge of your seat.
Make sure all of my technologies are ready for the photo scavenger hunt tonight. I need to stream all of the images through my computer to the Xbox so that we can all see them. It should be fun.
Stay awake at work… so far so good

My Bad Habits:
Letting Dustin win at video games. I really need to stop being so nice.
I don’t know if it is a bad habit, but it really annoys me when I get distracted and sidetracked. I hate feeling like I’ve wasted my afternoon because of something that happened to catch my attention.
Looking at your blogs when I should be working.

If I suddenly became a Billionaire:
In no particular order: I would quit my job and find a line of work that was as fulfilling as possible. Find a ministry that I felt really used the money donated to them in the wisest way possible, and then donate a decent portion to them. Compassion International would probably be high on my list. Of course I would invest a decent portion.

Buy a castle that had fun little hidden passageways. Of course it would be outfitted with all of the modern conveniences while looking as authentic as possible. I’d let all of my friends that wanted to, come and live with me in my castle. I would have a fully serviced kitchen with a cook and staff. That would be fun.

5 Jobs I’ve Had:
1. Dairy Queen Crew Member
2. Assistant Grounds Keeper for a church camp in southern Indiana.
3. Assistant Carpenter for my father-in-law.
4. Graphic Designer
5. Flower delivery boy

5 Things people don’t know about me:
1. My first girlfriend, Marci, was the one that helped to get me hooked up with Elisa Cook for the best two days of my High School life.
2. I am a master hacky-sacker (at least I think I still am)
3. I once shot a bird with a mango seed from my slingshot. A man saw me shoot it, and came over, very angrily. My brother Nate and I saw him coming, and went about pretending that nothing had happened. How could he prove anything, the bird had fallen in the bushes. Meanwhile my brother Jon came jumping out of the bushes with the bird, cheering excitedly. Sad day.
4. I once went streaking with two other guys. One guy decided at the last moment that he didn’t really want to any more. He of course took our clothes and tried to run away when we were on the other edge of the field. We caught him very quickly. Lets just say that we were pretty motivated.
5. Did you know that the female chameleon gives birth by falling from the highest branch in a tree so that her belly splits open?