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Light cones
Monday. 8.26.13 7:37 pm
My roommate has been sleeping on the couch for about an hour, now. I feel like he should get up before he ruins his sleep cycle.

I used to consider myself sort of an amateur writer. I've been a dabbler all my life. But now I'm so out of practice that my style is all floppy. Everything I say sort of just...spews out. Which is fine, for nutang, but I sort of lament the loss of whatever potential there might have been to move people with words. I suppose I'll have to stick to ideas, and laughter. Apparently I'm good at laughter.

About the Palestinian guy I mentioned earlier: last night we were at Steak n Shake (after a successful pledge ceremony!) and I...I don't remember properly...he asked the group something and I gave some answer, as a I tend to do. Depending on my frame of mind and the situation, my interactions can be snappy and witty or surprisingly ponderous. I don't think I usually show an image of thoughtfulness or insight, so when I do it catches people off-guard. This was one of those moments, because he asked me if I was some sort of guru.

"Er...what?"

"Yeah, are you some sort of spiritual guru or something?"

Gosh. I've never been compared to a guru. I wish I remember what I said to provoke that because I'm fairly sure it had nothing to do with spirituality. And also I wish I could recall my answer (probably something along the lines of "no").



Roommate won't get up.

Homegirl texted me today. I'd actually deleted her number to avoid this annoying habit I have. I was trying to cut down on how often I texted her, since it seemed to bother her (because I pulled a classic stupid-boy move, to my eternal shame) and that sort of bothered me. The problem was that, in my head, I'd exaggerate how long it had been since I last contacted her, so I ended up pestering her a lot more than I meant to. I figured I'd lose her number and solve the problem. After all, if I need to talk to her I can still use facebook, which doesn't present the intimacy and ease-of-access issues that texting has. So I was befuddled to get such a friendly message from a number I didn't recognize this morning, encouraging me to kick butt in school this semester and have a great time doing it.

Thankfully, I stifled the urge to immediate respond with "Who is this?" I don't feel like explaining that I deleted her number practically out of necessity. Instead, I asked Ben about it, and he recognized the area code, and from there I realized the state of things (good thing I only know one other person with that area code!).

So that's cool. On one hand, I had totally forgotten that I'm supposed to be letting her alone, meaning I'm not relying on her as much for my emotional self-value. And on the other, she actually contacted me, which is a rarity, indeed! I feel pretty good about that, though now I'm wondering if I should un-delete her number or go back to my comfy ignorance. Does this mean we're cool? Somehow I don't think so, which is something of a shame but not unbearable.

I think I'll leave it for now, and see what she does. If she was like some of the girls I know then we could go on to be best pals, but it seems like she isn't and I don't particularly blame her.


Enough of that.

By the way, "Homegirl" is the affectionate nickname we use in our apartment to refer to a girl that tends to elicit drama in our lives. For example, one particular roommate has a tendency to get is emotional fulfillment from being popular with and getting attention from girls (as opposed to from God). So when he says Homegirl I know he's referring to the latest female that he's a bit hung up on. It's convenient and also sort of a joke at his expense. We usually advise him to marry the lucky lady as soon as possible.

As an eternal troll to Katie, I usually refer to her as "Ex-Homegirl," because I know she'd hate it.

Speaking of which, I was going to write about some stuff in my life but I just spent few minutes writing it out to Katie so I think I'll just be lazy and copy/paste it.

Me: I had something of an epiphany on Friday and I'm hoping it will light a fire under my bottom.

Her: oh?

Me: Yeah
I was nominated for a leadership position in the campus ministry
and I turned it down
Because right now I don't think that I'm in a position where I can say that I could do my best in school, work, fraternity, ministering, AND leadership
I think that because I've had a lot of great opportunities the last few years and I have not made good use of them.
I've been following Christ for a year and a half, but I don't think I've matured nearly as much as I would have if I'd been making better use of my time and energy.
The same goes for my grades and work
So...I guess the moral of the story is I'm coming at it from a new angle.
Instead of just trying to make it through and hope I come out better afterwards, I want to go after building better character and all that stuff.
So that means working hard and depending on God instead of just trying to slide by
It'll be an interesting week.

Her: isn't it always

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Places
Friday. 8.23.13 5:22 pm
Back in school. dat Grind.

This week has been fun times. Not too much homework, but rush was very time consuming; set up at six, talk to random guys until eleven, every day. Thankfully we're done with that. We have seven new pledges, so that's exciting! Last semester was a completely bummer because it rained, so nobody came out and we got zero pledges. Hard to swallow.

I was telling our alumnus that one of the new recruits made me a little uncomfortable, and he says, "What? Because he's Muslim, right?" Me, of course, being the so-called "spiritual adviser" in the fraternity since I'm SO CHRISTIAN IT'S NOTEWORTHY. At the time, I actually thought the guy was Jewish, so...that's not it. Still a worrying joke to make about me. I'll deal with it.

Not only that, but the campus ministry is pushing very hard this semester! We're having events every day this week on campus so we can meet as many people as possible. It's been really great! We're doing like a dozen Bible studies, or something. Today I was running around outside (in the hot sunshine) in a green morphsuit for about 1.4 hours, bringing attention to our free watermelon/join us in discipleship table. SO I am quite pooped at the moment. And a bit more tan, I think.

I'm only writing this because I was asked to.

I made a relativity joke in the beginning of my special relativity class. It was well-received.

BIG MAMMA

ALSO we had an all-night prayer and it was CRAZYYYYY I was hoarse and it was beautiful. Carry on!

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Suspension
Monday. 8.12.13 11:54 pm
I'm driving back to Atlanta tomorrow. Huzzah!

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Ten-Point Dismount
Thursday. 8.1.13 12:36 pm
I haven't told you a proper story in a right long time.

Monday was a weird day for me. I work at the YMCA, and in one of the backrooms we have a freezer for emergency ice-packs. I'm not sure how long it's been there, but recently I noticed that there was about six pounds of frost accumulated on the shelves and walls inside. So I took it upon myself to let the whole thing thaw out on the pool deck over the weekend, (the pool is closed on Sunday) which meant I had to come in Monday morning to make sure it got put away before it became a hassle to swimmers. Since we open at 5:20 Monday morning, that's when I had to appear.

As I was wrestling this massive freezer back into the corner it belongs to, I noticed it was leaving scrapes on the floor. No big deal, since the places is basically a glorified closet, but it hadn't scraped on its way out so I was curious if maybe something was stuck to one of the feet and was marking the floor. One by one, I lifted the corners and felt around underneath to dislodge any debris. Unfortunately, as I was tilting the thing back, it slipped backwards and stamped down on my finger.

>.<

The irony was that all the ice packs were melted. I've had worse things happen to my fingers, but MAN I was displeased.

Since I was already up and I'd been feeling sort of spiritually lousy recently, I decided to devote some serious time in the Word and praying. I managed to get out of the YMCA and drive to the airport near my house just in time to pray with the sunrise. It was wonderful and I need to make it a goal to do that more often. Then I grabbed some essentials and headed over to the city park. There's a nice little area near the playground and some picnic tables where I can set up my hammock and just chill. I've had the thing since Christmas and I still haven't perfected the art of hanging it. There needs to be some sag so I can lay diagonally, but not so much that I slip into the center over time.

The plan was simple. I didn't have work until 3:15 PM, and I got there at 8 in the morning. That gave me seven hours! I could spend the day in the hammock and split my time between prayer, reading, calling/encouraging some peeps, possibly playing Chrono Trigger, and of course napping.

Clearly, napping had to come first. I slipped into the bag with some music and settled down to snooze. Unfortunately, I had tied some of my knots with a bit of slack, and a few minutes after I started dropping off, I literally dropped an inch or two when the knots slipped taught. For the brief moment that my heart failed to beat, I thought the tree was falling on me. I calmed down, but kept thinking about what I would do in the event that I was fast asleep and the tree really did fall on me. I probably wouldn't wake up until I hit the ground, and I would the smallest moment to roll out of the way. And that's assuming the tree falls directly over me; if it falls to one side or the other, which is most likely, I might very well be rolling into more danger. It's sort of a scary thought, actually, because I'm not sure there's enough time after hitting the ground to avoid a serious concussion and/or several broken bones, at the very least.

That didn't stop me from falling asleep. Eventually I awoke and went through the rest of my schedule. I'm happy to say that it was extremely beneficial; I got my head right on some stuff, gave and got advice with some of the guys back in Atlanta, and asked a girl on a date. Good stuff fo sho. There were moments when passing families created something of a raucous but it didn't really bother anything except my napping.

It came to pass that near two o'clock I started playing Chrono Trigger on my tablet. It's an old game that's apparently one of the best games ever created. It set the standards for great storytelling and gameplay. You should read about it. At the time I thought I was getting near the end because the plot was getting nuts. It turns out that I was woefully wrong; instead of transitioning into some falling action, the plot as only increased in craziness since then. Anyway, I played for a while, sitting in the hammock like sitting sideways in a canoe. Very comfortable, except for my legs.

It's 2:40. Still plenty of time to get to work.

I hear a weird noise. It seemed to be coming from my left, but I have to lean forward to see around the edge of the hammock. No animals, no kids. Very well.

I hear it again. I recognize the sound as a sort of creaking. I figure maybe my knots are loose again. For some reason this doesn't disturb me right away.

I hear an awful lot of creaking. I glance to the left to see if the rope was slipping or anything. Double-take. The tree is moving towards me.

Honestly, I'm not entirely sure what happened next. Basically, I removed myself from the hammock. I don't know exactly how because it is stupid-hard to get out of the position I was sitting in. Then I was on the ground, and rolling. The tree fell somewhere behind me. I didn't notice until several hours later, but I have a cut on my chest and on my face, presumably where tree shrapnel hit me. The cut on my face is like an inch from my eye. So that's cool.



You can see that it's rolled a bit from where the stump is in the bottom of the photo. I'm not sure how it got to its present position, it seems like it would have to rotate because there isn't as much room for the top half to roll as for the bottom, but I digress. I'm thinking it was falling directly on or very near the second tree. Maybe it collided and fell/rolled to the right. It very easily could have gone in the other direction and then...well, I'd probably be in a hospital right now.

I looked around. There was a couple playing with their kid on the swings nearby. "Did you see that?" He nods. I look at my watch. 2:45.

Guess I'm going to work early.

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