I am not going to lie; I am struggling. Yeah I miss being able to walk to V's house but more than that I miss being around people my age. I enjoy work most of the time, but there's just not college-age presence here. I have quite a few good friends that are either co-ops or new hires, but they're a big stretch on my Christianity. I never knew that f*** and s*** where publicly accepted but apparently they're okay. I have always considered them hardcore words. I digress. I drove 30 minutes to church today and that wouldn't be such a big deal if I didn't have at least four other churches of Christ that were closer. I've tried most of them out but none of them have anyone between ages 18 and 28 and the few that are close to that are married or engaged or have kids. Ugh. The church in El Dorado seems promising, though, so I look forward to going back there.

I am excited about going snowboarding this year and having money. Woohoo! I might even consider buying some gear. Oh yeah... I need to start training though. Ultimate frisbee twice a week is helping keep me from balooning, but I need to work a bit harder and start lifting some more.

This weekend I worked over 2o hours on my house. I put in tile in the bathroom and hall, painted the dining room and waxed the floors. The hardwoods in the bedrooms look soooooo good. I will post pictures when we're totally done. I can't believe the difference once I painted and changed the floors. Night-and-day.

Have a great week. Today was such a gorgeous day and I enjoyed the drive down to Eldo. I've been in a great mood all weekend; the only thing that would've made it better would've been if a certain little lady would've come down and helped. (geez there are a lot of would've in that sentence)

Everybody's working for the weekend

We worked on the house this weekend. Mom, dad, Chelsea, Ted, Susie, Patsie and I all busted it on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and still have more to do this weekend. I will be glad when we're done updating, so I can start not spending more money than I make.

Work has been good. Rather slow this week until today but I am starting to enjoy it. I have some problems with management, but that'll be resolved soon. I don't really sit back and watch things happen that I don't think is right and that's probably going to get me in trouble. I've found some really cool guys at work and they're helping me out extensively on all sorts of stuff. One guy at work was just saved a few weeks ago and we talk about God and church quite a bit. It's a nice reprieve from the excessive cursing and crude jokes everywhere else.

I can't wait for the football game Saturday and next weekend. I am going to eat myself sick on sushi in Fayetteville. That's really one of the biggest things I miss about town. That and a more contemporary church; going to mine makes me want to never go to church again. Ugh...

Oh btw, the first picture shows what the previous owners did about water problems. Who knew that toilet paper could be such an effective water blocker. It's gross because we find it all over the place, stuffed in holes. The wooden floor is where the termite people tore up my hardwood and replaced it with that plywood and the other picture is outside my living room, which has eight total windows.

Busy man

Wow it's been forever since I posted. I've been quite busy. I started an ultimate team here and we're playing twice a week or more. I only live about a mile away, so I normally just jog over to play. We have about 8 or so, but I'm talking to a lot of people about coming. Scheduling is just being a pain. Besides that, I'm working on my house to get ready for all the week we're doing this weekend. I'm repainting, repairing the floors and laying tile. I had hoped to get some tile from some people who built a new house a few years ago, but it was all broken. :( It's crazy how much money you can drop into a house and still find other things to drop money on. I'm hoping to at least be content after this weekend, although I know I'll still need to repaint my room and the bathroom. Oh well.

Speaking of my house, it's a mess. The termite people came in last week and left everything just sitting around. There are all sorts of fast-food cups and dust and the carpet isn't fixed. The carpet was on top of hardwood floors, but they replaced it with plywood, so I'm fighting the company to come back out and put down real floors again. I can't imagine how they could take one thing out and replace it with something totally different. The whole process has been somewhat stressful, not much, but a little. I just want my hardwoods back. I dropped something like $600 last weekend on paint and blinds and just having that 100 or so for hardwoods would be nice. Like I said, it's expensive owning a place.

Work's getting better. I got promoted this week, but no change in title or pay, just more responsibilities. I don't quite understand that, but oh well. I did get a nice shirt though. I am now the head ME for final integration...I think. I don't do a lot more, but I'm the go-to guy for all sorts of new things. I am really developing some good relationships with some of the guys at work. Today one of the engineers and I talked about Jesus Christ for about an hour. He said he'd be interested if I wanted to have a Bible study at my place sometime. He's a new Christian and it's great to see his passion and his trials. He's probably in his late 30s and going through some tough times. He's cool though. Another guy works on the floor and he's really nice, but not a Christian. We talk some about church and such, but mainly I can just feel my presence making an impact on him. Just since I've been hanging around him, he's reduced his cussing quite a bit. One day he was saying something or another and I told him to settle down and watch the language (real nonagressively) and he said sorry and that he really needed to clean up his language. I was impressed. He works almost right up until break and I talk to him about meeting production goals and he's really gung-ho about it. Inspirational, really.

Anywho, I've got to get some sleep. I start work at 6am on most days, but on the Fridays and Saturdays I actually work, I start at 5. Woohoo!

BTW, if you saw the explosion at Aerojet in East Camden, that is less than a mile from my office. We didn't evacuate, but one of the other Lockheed facilities did. Crazy huh?

There is a 100% chance of rain for the next 24 hours. How crazy is that? The rain here has been so calming; not that I've been stressed or anything, it's just amazing to sit and listen to it. I sat in my car for about 10 minutes when I got home and just took it all in.

I finally know what my parents meant when they said it never ends. I painted some stuff today and found more stuff to fix up here. I'm starting to like my house much more, although a bigger AC unit will help me like it faster and more. I guess I'm really just happy to have my own place. Camden's not great and I probably won't get out of this house with much of a profit, but it's not too bad. I like walking around my place in my undies or playing my music as loud as I want. I can watch TV in the morning or TV at night, although I only have rabbit ears so I don't get many channels. It's just nice to always have something to do. At the same time, I'm utterly exhausted every night. I've gained some weight and my feet don't like it. I don't know what I've been doing different, but I'm determined to lose the weight. I just started working out a few times a week and that's already making an impact. It's weird because I look better than I've looked in a while, but I weight more.

I'm pumped about the game this weekend. I love LR games when I don't have to drive there from Faytown. I've got some coworkers who are throwing a tailgate party, so that'll be fun.

Good luck paddling on the river tonight.