Leaving...in a trailblazer

I'm packed and ready to roll to good ol' Greeley. I'm pumped about this year, although it's a smaller group. We're going hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park the 2nd and that'll be a blast. I've got my massive coat ready, three sets of gloves and some thermals fabricated for the depths of outer space cold. Yeah, I'm ready. Looks like the trip there will be tons of fun. It's been blizzarding in Kansas and Colorado all during the Christmas break. Should be fun trekking through that jazz.

Mena with Kara was pretty fun. We found two nice little coffee joints. One was really cozy and the other not so much, but it had wi-fi. too bad I couldn't merge the two. We also found a nice little park, but due to my hands being filled with "fissures" I couldn't play much. Sad, I know. It was rainy too. We ate at McDs and also Pizza hut. McDs was filled with old people and Pizza Hut was filled with Mena's finest citizens-the rednecks. It was fun though and I look forward to hitting those shops again sometime. Speaking of those shops, I got a nice coffee drink with NO coffee. It was amazing. Really sweet and caramelly. Yum!

Well that's really all I got. It's nice to be back in Faytown with the wireless internet and restauraunts and sushi. I ate too much.

My post secrets

We all have secrets. Thank you for helping me feel confident enough to let you in on them. Megan, you will always be remembered as the most wonderful girl I've ever met. Don' t ever let that change. To all my friends (Megan included), you have no idea how much you mean to me. Just being in the same room as all of you makes me feel 100 times better. Thank you for your smiles, laughs and hugs.

Almost a new day, almost a new year

Now that that's over, here's what else is going down in my life. I just got back from Dallas today. Man it's been a long day. I drove some, but mostly just slept in the car. I'm looking forward to a full day here eventually, although it won't be for the next two days at least. I've got a doctor to gripe at tomorrow about my bloody fingertips and a good friend to hug on Friday. Yay!

I watched V for Vendetta again today and it still makes me want to dress up and march up to Parking and Transit to protest. Oh well, another lifetime perhaps. Speaking of lifetime...okay this is totally not related but I did some research and I might go study in Cairo fall 07. I've always loved Egypt and stuff and there seems to be a good program there. It'll be tough to pull, but hopefully with an internship this summer I will be able to afford it. Well that's all I've got now. I was a little down earlier about being out in the middle of nothingness again, but then I remembered I've got a chainsaw and a bow and some matches. What I can do with those, only McGuiver can figure out but it's bound to be fun.

One last thing. So I just got back from NO this past week and I've never had to defend my work more than ever in the past couple of days. Most of the stuff people said is probably true, but there are still one out of every ten who honestly deserves some help. I drove through Hope this afternoon and there had to have been over 5,000 trailers there in a field just rotting. ROTTING! I'm talking nice looking trailers too. Actual trailers and a few campers. All seemed nice, but were starting to wear. It seems FEMA can buy trailers, but can't actually transport them. Smarties, those guys. At least they tried eh? Well anyways. If you're from New Orleans and you somehow stumbled on this, welcome. Know that I pray for you on a regular basis. I think you should help each other out more, but I know you're also very devastated and stressed.
I hope some nice group of volunteers down there can find you, hug you and start rebuilding your life. Oh yeah and if the Saints win the Super Bowl, the NFL is rigged. Merry Christmas and a wonderfully prosperous New Year.

This is the blind seer, seeing his way into a new year, one post at a time and probably a few posts early.

catching up

12-26-06
Well I saw “Night at the Museum” today with everyone. It was funny in parts, but not as funny as I thought it would be. It was a bit slow to start too. I then went to Big Pop’s where I got some money and one of those pillows that has the speaker built in to allow you to lay on it and listen to your iPod. I liked it, but it was royal purple. PURPLE! I might give it as a gift. Who knows? Speaking of gifts, I tried twice to return one today and both were failures. I was trying to get rid of a UT comforter. It’s nice and all and I like it, but it’s too big and I don’t need it right now as much as I need the money. I NEED me some money. It’s weird how even when I have money, I don’t like to spend it on myself, only on other people. Okay that’s not totally true, I like to buy food. That’s really it. It’s why at the end of the day I’m broke with nothing to show for it. Sad.

I’m not ready to leave here. We’re going home tomorrow because Cory’s girl is coming to town, Chelsea has basketball practice and I’ve got an appointment on the 28th with a dumb hand doctor who will tell me there is nothing he can do but give me more lotion or shoot me in my hand. Losers, those doctors.

Well that’s really it. I did experience some joy today when my grandpa told me about his younger days of being in the Korean War. He did communications. I asked him if he knew Morse Code and he grinned from ear to ear and said “yeah I do. I was in school for 18 months to learn that.” Good times talking to old people. I also swung by Krystal’s and got some amazing little burger. YUM! I finally completed all my Christmas shopping too, although I’m looking for a nice metal briefcase for my laptop still. Oh well.


12-25-06
Well I’m in the big D. It’s nice to be back here where it’s dry and flat and windy. I’ve missed the smell of this place, the people and my grandma. The movies here are really cheap and I’ve been to see “The Holiday” and “Eragon”. Both were surprisingly good. I liked the second one for it’s story and the first for it’s effects and cinematics. It was a well spent six dollars. I also watched the movie “Click” last night with Adam Sandler and I’m not ashamed to say I cried. It was a bit crude at times, but the story was really good and I saw the love of my own parents at times in the movie. It was really good for being an Adam Sandler movie.

It’s been a good Christmas. For the first time I’m not expecting things as much as I’m just enjoying seeing family and being with them. I won’t lie that I want to just set my mom straight from time to time about certain things, but all in all it’s good stuff. I did mention I miss my friends, my other family, but it’s great being with my dad and arguing with my mom and watching my sister admire me out of the corner of her eye and seeing Cory all grown up.

Speaking of Megan, I don’t know what we are now. We’re dating still but we’re not exclusive. I feel like a total hoe for doing that, but I really love her for who she is, but I can’t handle her being away all the time. I barely made it through last semester, I was so depressed, and I can’t do that again. I don’t want to totally break things off with her; she’s so great. I also don’t want to be “left” here while she’s out traveling the world and not missing me nearly as much as I miss her. I just don’t know. I’ve broken up with two great girls because of distance and I hate it. I just can’t handle it without someone around to constantly reassure me of how good I am and hold me when I have a bad day. Back to Megan. She just can’t seem to figure out how to do those things from a distance, but maybe I’m just too harsh on her. I don’t know. I am going to date around if I find anyone who seems nice, but I feel bad because I feel like I’ll just be dating that person until Meg gets back. She’s worth waiting on, but I’m not strong enough. I can’t do it. I’m too selfish and jealous and suspicious and insecure. I am so strong on the outside, but inside I’m in a corner balled up and shivering.

Woo! Done gutting for a bit. Man my hands and back hurt. I swear when you bring a crowbar down on a sink, it hurts if the sink doesn't give. But yeah we finished up a house yesterday and it was very satisfying. It's amazing because on Tuesday we knocked the bejeezes out of that house. We were rolling, with our awesome respirators and all that jazz. Then on Wednesday, we peaked and it was slow rollings. We were tired. It took us like three hours to finish denailing and taking down the ceilings. It was slow rollings. After we finished that house, some of the group left and we proceeded to another house. Inside were three massive (read 3ft tall) piles of blown-in insulation. We bagged some of it, removed the hot water heater and the tubs and toilets and left. It was raining. The crazy part about this area was it was next to a natural swamp area. It looked like a disaster zone. All the trees were blown around and dead. The road was half grown over and you couldn't tell there were houses there, until we exited the interstate and drove in. The home owners told us that water stayed in the house for 9 weeks! You could tell, and we had to use the high tech masks because the mold was SO bad. The home owners were super nice and gladly talked about the situation.

Today started like most days in NO, cloudy and cooler. The only difference is that it was raining and had been raining for a long time. I walked outside and the pathway was under water. I went out front and a manhole cover had been knocked off the sewers by water gushing from it. It was insane. Water was at least a foot deep in most places. Meg and I drove to a lady's house and at one point pushed water with her truck. It was DEEP and also flowing pretty rapidly. The basement of the place we stayed was also taking on water. It is so wild in places under sea level, although I doubt that's the entire story.

That's really all I've got about NO for now and for a while. Not sure if I told you about the poor homeless guy pooping on the corner at an intersection we were stopped at. It was funny, but really sad more than anything. I feel for the people in NO even more if stuff like that is commonplace. The people seem to have lots of hope and that's encouraging, because it's the strong people who are going to have to help all the rest in the city. I believe those strong people can be found at Carrollton Church of Christ. The people are lively, encouraging and really nice. I don't agree with the rebuilding of a city under sea level, but I do agree that if people are going to try then we shouldn't take that away from thenm and we should encourage them because they are trying, and not giving up. So many people would just leave and not come back, but those people see more. They see a town that represents what they stand for and is their home.

Meg was pretty overloaded for the time I was there. She was somewhat snappy at times and it really bothered me, but we had a nice little pow-wow last night and settled the issues. It came down to a little bit of me being a jerk and a little bit of her being herself. She's trying, though, and that's all I can ask and she really wants to be the best girlfriend she can, it's just hard for her sometimes. I don't know what I'm going to do about her being gone next semester, but I do know I'm not going to make it with the relationship like it is. I don't want to go to an open relationship, but I know I can't handle another semester like this last one. I'm not sure what to do. We'll discuss it some more and see what comes of it. Anywho, I'm glad to be relaxing now.

New Orleans or Bust

Okay I've got a ton of stuff to catch up on. I'm in NO for a few days. I've been here since Wednesday. I'll start with that. The trip here was really fun. I rode with Powveria, Carrie, and Courtney. I've never met Courtney previously, but she was a bit quiet but pretty cool. So on Thursday I rode with Megan to City Hall to talk to the head of the building license code. He was an M.E. from the U of A and old. He was really cool and told us how it was and what the problem was. He said lots of people came from all over the place to help "rebuild New Orleans". He would confront them and tell them that they really just wanted to come and make lots of money. He also told me a story about a lady who called about not getting any money for her house. He said that she told him she'd received two checks. He asked for how much and she responded that they totaled over 200K. He asked her if she had a huge house or a double or what and she replied that her house was a single and she thought it was worth more. After we left there, we went to babysit for a bit. The kids were a lot of fun, even though one of them was scared of me and super attached to Megan. To tell both sides of the story, the couple we babysat for had just bought a new house preKatrina. They now live in a small apartment and are working on rebuilding their house. We watched the kids while they worked on it. They were really nice and the kids were a lot of fun. More RFCs arrived, we went out to eat and then came back to sleep.

The next day we started gutting. We hit a double and worked on both sides, after we hit a small garage and totally emptied it. The house was fun, as we took crowbars, shovels and hammers to every single wall. WILD! Jordan Hurst was running around looking for anything left of walls and taking them out. Pow and I worked in the kitchen removing flooring and wall panels. It was fun, but the doctor's masks were hot and didn't work real great. So we've been doing things like this everyday since I've been here. I get up earlier than most, to help Megan prepare stuff for the groups. We make sandwiches, load trailers and all that jazz. We work until 4 or so and then go out on the town or just chill.

Last night we went to the French Quarter to sing Christmas Carols and then Meg and I went out to eat at some Cajun place. I had a nice piece of catfish with some shrimp etoufee. It was really good stuff. Tonight we are extremely tired and I plan on helping prepare stuff for tomorrow so I can sleep late. It's been really fun and a great eye opener. I don't really work for the people here, I work for God and that's what keeps me working when the residents aren't around or don't bother helping us. The house today was really big and had lots of glasses and plates. I took some shot glasses, as the owner only wanted to throw it all out. I also found immense pleasure in breaking some glass, which literally exploded in my hands. Fun stuff.

One last note, Megan's been really good. It took me a bit to understand just how busy and important she is here. People are always looking for her, including me. I try not to tag along everywhere she goes, but I look most forward to chilling with her. I will try to post again before we leave, but EVERYONE here is constantly on here and it annoys me so I try to avoid it.

I just got done hanging out with a great girl friend of mine for the past 4 hours. I'll be honest I thought it was going to be a bit weird, bc we don't hang out much, but it turned out to be pretty good. I got alot of weight off my shoulders with her, because she tells me things too and I know we have alot of trust from knowing the other person could black mail us. hehe. It was good times and I did a little outpouring of things in my life and honestly just flow of conscientiousness. Good stuff that spell checker.

So I'm officially finished with my fall semester of Junior year. It's nice to know I'm almost to the time of another big change. I'll be leaving my great friends here and watching as we all grow up in our own ways and directions. I'll make all new friends at work or graduate school or where ever. It's exciting, scary and amazing! I hope to make it back to the greatest country in the world-Texas. hehehe.

So anywho my final final was today. It was hard, but I feel pretty decent about it. The professor said he's be happy if the highest grade on it was an 80%. Crazy huh? I didn't think it was that hard, but who knows? Not I. I don't much right now, except
1)that I suck at guitar hero
2) caffeine is my archenemy and friend,
3)talking to people who listen and respond is great,
4)friends make life worth it all, close friends make it even better,
5)the world is too large for me to possible go everywhere I want to go, but too small for me not to try,
6) I should've worked harder in high school,
7) Sarah Clark's late night taco-bell runs rock my socks off, and
8) a great roommate like Jordan is a roommate that everyone wants but few people get.

Thanks for listening/reading. I appreciate your comments and suggestions. I have some postsecrets I made, but I feel like making them helps me more than posting them and I don't know how people would respond if they knew my inner thoughts on matters.

Have a wonderful Christmas break, Kara, Megan, Jordan, Sarah, and whoever else reads this that I don't know about. I hope that through my trials, failures and successes you learned something or grew a bit yourself. This is Paul Blair BB Bart Einstein Shelton signing off for a little while.

Almost done!!!

Woooo! I am almost finished with this semester of torture. Geez, I've never struggled so much with classes totally unrelated to my major. I just got done studying for electronics for like four hours with Chris, Joe and Steven. Honestly I got more done with Chris in the 1.5 hours it was just us than the entire time with everyone else. That kid knows how to knock studying out. Geez...I'm totally ready for this mo-fo test. Bring it Dr Schaper, bring IT!

This weekend's been rather crazy. I don't know where to start, so I'll start with last night going to change Sarah's tire. I loaded Steven, Kara and Jordan all into my sexy, fast, little car and drove to toy-r-us. I changed her tire, got paid (woot) and left. Then, instead of going home, I drove to Kristin and Vanessa's house. I knocked and invited myself inside. We chatted and lo and behold Kara showed up! We chatted some more and Steven showed up and then short after Jordan showed up. So they were totally off guard, so it got awkward. I decided to leave and I really did. I got in my car and drove off. Later everyone called me and needed a ride for various "reasons" and I picked them up. We drove to Blockbuster, got "History of Violence" and left. We swang by V and K's and told them goodnight and came back here to watch it. Not a bad movie, but two awkward sex scenes, including some 69 and some stair sex. Weird.

Okay I'm tired of talking about my weekend. Had a nice little pow-wow with Megan today and basically decided I'm not ready to call it quits yet. I love the girl, just not always the girlfriend. Know what I'm saying? I wish I could just make things go better, but it's never that way. I wish I could get her to send that 30 second, pointless email to show she cares. Actually I don't really even want that, I just want to be able to understand how she shows she cares. I can't seem to catch on, however, and it makes things somewhat miserable at times. But then we're together
and it all falls into place. Is that normal? Is this normal? Well I guess I can't compare anything to this relationship with as many "not normal" things as we have.

"why you gotta go make things so complicated?" =)

Hm...I think not

I get down about stuff sometimes. I never can seem to pinpoint it, but I do. It really doesn't matter how good my day is going or how great my friends are, I just feel grumpy. Tonight I went over to Joe's for some amazing food. I shared some laughs and talked about the ladies with my guy friends and ate lots of nice pink red meat. It was good. I walked back through the chilly weather and went to the room. Jordan's worried about his grades. He doesn't say it outright, but I know he is. He's just sad he can't study like he would like to. I can relate. I walked to the hper and played some ball. It went well, but for some reason as I sat there I just really started missing affection. I wanted to hold someone's hand or hug someone a great big hug, maybe even a juicy kiss. There was none there though. Absolutely none, zero, zilch, nil. Sad. Kara tells me how she feels alone sometimes even when all her friends are there and she's having a good time. I can relate. I wish I didn't feel that way sometimes, but I do. I won't say Megan eliminates that, but I don't believe I've ever felt that way with her around.

I'm not sure I'm okay. I think too much and my imagination plays with me. I'm jealous, selfish and proud. I can be bossy and I lie sometimes about stretching stories more than they are. I rely too much on my girlfriend, always have, to be there for me. I feel incomplete without her here. I don't always feel like people in my life realize how much I love/admire/treasure them. Probably never will. I wish Megan knew how much she means to me. No I didn't have to quit playing pool to talk to you, I wanted to. I didn't have to skip out on the movie, I wanted to. I don't have to send you letters, pictures, leave notes, or flowers to worry about your Christmas present, but I do. Is that so bad? Can you feel too much for someone? Meg's the first one I've been able to shell out everything I've got and she doesn't run off. Kudos to you, Megan, kudos to you. The problem with shelling it out, is you secretly inside do it so you might get it returned. She's trying, but I don't often take enough notice of that and I get upset sometimes. She's done the best of anyone I've dated yet. Could anyone do better? I don't know. I made a postsecret for her once. I had it up here for a little bit, but I took it down. I took it down because it was so shallow. So demanding and demoralizing almost, but for the time it was up, it felt good. I felt liberated, because I finally found a way to show myself how I am.

So the RFCs seem to be a topic of much interest to me right now. For some reason or another I don't "feel at home with the RFCs" anymore. I feel like certain people are very fake. I know of one person who was fake and I'm glad that that person is starting to see who they really are and want others to see. The problem is I can't really pinpoint what it is about the RFCs that bothers me. Maybe I'm just an immature Christian and mature Christians aggrivate me. I hope that's not the case, but I wonder whether it's all just me being stupid. It's me being proud and selfish. I wish I knew and could grow out of whatever it was. I'll pray about it, I do all the time and I know God will reveal it to me. I hope it's soon, before I go nuts about it. Thank you for taking the time to read this. I don't know who you are, but to know someone reads it makes me happy.

trembling...

I'm scared. I won't lie. I took a test this morning I thought I was ready for and bombed it. Now I'm getting ready for a test that I can't study for. It's impossible. I worked homework, looked over lectures, notes, examples. I need to do great on both tests to save myself a lot of pain later. It's sad but at this point I'll take a C in MDC, but a B in fluids is unacceptable. I need a massive curve on that mug to get an A, but I think Dr. Davis is a good one to put in power for that. I hope I'm right.