Doogie Howser Did It, So Why Not Me?

Welcome to Spokane, I mean Spokompton…Spokavegas…Spokangeles

So I made it here. I finished up Jr. High group last night and (as I posted in the Prayer You section) they made Lenten commitments so be praying for them. But as for me I still am in the process of figuring it all out. But tomorrow, I am planning a day alone on the slopes in God’s Country. It should be a good time for reflection and personal contemplation. I need to spend some serious time in meditation and solitude asking for God to right my heart and provide clarity and possibly some peace.

Waking at 5 this morn was not to be misunderstood as a brisk waking, but rather a enlongated process of personal battle, having retired at nearly 2:30 after a long night of packing and cleaning the (pit of despair) room in preparation of my absence. Trying to sleep on planes and on airport benches is not the easiest thing as many of you probably know from personal experience. But nonetheless it proved worthwhile to make up for the depravity of sleep of the night before.

The moment I stepped off the plane in Spokane I already felt a release of stress and overburdenedness which had be plaguing me for the last few weeks and months. 50-60 hour work weeks were taking their toll and driving me into a chasm of sorrow and doubt. I once again gleamed the light of a new day filled with the prospect of opportunity and hope that had eluded me in the dreariness of routine and labor.

Within hours of my arrival I was surrounded by hospitable company and warmth. The ability to have an open schedule to my disposal was something long forgotten, the breadth of being able to do things at the drop of a hat: refreshing; Jacob’s kind and gentle friendship: once more my companion; I am excited to see how the weekend is going to manifest itself.

Plans began to form from days on the slopes to a viewing of “The Passion” to time with the old youth group. How glorious freedom after slavery is. I am gaining depth into the passages of scripture where Paul talks about being freed from the bounds of sin into a free life in Christ.

So please continue to pray for me this weekend as I spend some well needed time away from distractions and work. More specifically about job opportunities in Ministry, the situation at WaMu, God’s will for this season of my life and also the friendships that will be supporting me this weekend.

Pre-mature Eulogy

So I was reading through 2 Timothy today (my scripture for the week, two days late) and I was struck by these verses.

For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day – and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing. 2 Timothy 4:6-8

As for what I’m doing for Lent, I still have yet to decide. I have some time on the plane to think tomorrow so I’ll spend some time on that. I might even steal Amy’s idea. I thought it was amazing. She’s stellar.

There is no spoon

Sorry it’s been a few days since the last post. Life happens. So I’m not even sure of what all happened since last friday when I posted. I think a lot of work happened. All fri and sat seems to have been spent at work. I think I vaguely remember a meeting sometime sat afternoon at the bank, but I had to leave early due to the fact that I needed to be across the street at Jamba. I did get off early, if you call working for almost 12 hours early. And made it home to a shower and the headed over to Panda Express for some grub. Then I headed over to hang out with Valerie and it turned out to be her birthday. In the spirit of having fun we popped in Cool Runnings. Then John came over and I decided that we needed to do something special since it was Val’s birthday. So what better on a rainy night than to head down to Van Nuys for some hot, delicious Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Oh sooooo wonderful!!!! So if you didn’t know, I never drink milk. I use it for cereal and for making food. And on the rare occasion for dipping hot chocolate cookies in. But NEVER to drink. I don’t know I’ve just never really liked milk. As we were sitting around the table enjoying out Krispy Kreme, I tried to muster up all of my strength and might to try and take a drink of John’s milk. But try as I might, for some reason I couldn’t get my mind into the position where I would be willing to drink some milk. I’m a pretty daring guy if you know me, but for once I could not make myself do something. Weird.

The weekend was rounded off by sleeping in real late on sunday (I did want to go to church) due to the fact that my body needed to catch up on sleep since I had worked somewhere in the range of (50-70) hours last week. But I did manage to get up in time for MUD FOOTBALL. See since it was raining so hard Sat night, I thought to myself what would be better than to romp around in the mud playing some football. So we did. It turned out to be a real fun game and not as muddy as I’d have liked but we all got dirty enough to warrent a shower afterwards. And it rained while we were playing so that was a lot of fun just to be a little wet.

Sunday night went well. It was the parent informational meeting about our upcoming mission trip to Mexico. Then we had some speakers from Royal Servants come to Jive to talk about mission opportunities.

I ended up going home and gathered some sleep before getting up for work at the awful hour of 5 am.

Oh not to mention that I thought I had to be at Jamba at 5:45 but didn’t really have to be there until 10 am. grrrrr…so I stopped on the way home at 6 am to grab some MccyDee’s b-fast, took a short cat nap and then went back to work. Was at work til 2 then got to have a 5 hour break which I mainly spent sleeping. I headed over to my mom’s house because I had told her I’d move some furniture. While I was there I grabbed some lunch and took a nap. When I woke up I had a voice message from my mom saying she’d been in a car accident. Luckily it was not too bad, and she was fine, but was going over to the hospital just to get checked out. That was a relief. I moved some furniture and then headed back over to work and was there WAY later than I was supposed to be. We are scheduled to get out at 11 but we didn’t leave until almost midnight. All my fault, I spent too much time training someone while we were closing and I made us get out so late. My bad, I took the reprimand this morning from my manager and all is well now.

Today is still sit around and wait day at WaMu, so hopefully we will know something by the time I leave as to what the status of my employment is going to be. But I must give it to God and rely on his perfect plan. I do have to work again tonight at Jamba, which I am not looking forward to, but I do need the hours. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can; to quote a good book.

What prompted me to write today was this morning when I was in the shower I was reminded that the Oscars are coming up this week and I was thinking about who is who and who got left out. Then it dawned on me that one of the most anticipated films (well actually two films) didn’t even get a nod nor was talked about at all as a notable movie of 2003. And that (those) movies are Matrix: Reloaded and Matrix: Revolutions. Interesting!?!?!?! Not one word has been captured by mine ears about these two movies during this Oscar season. Was it the lackluster final plotline? The horrendous acting by Mr. Reeves (“whoa!!”)? The mindboggling-not-kept-straight-circular-argument philosophy? The disappointment of two sequels that could not live up to an unparalleled first movie? Maybe it’s like the Tootsie Pop where the world may never know.

So as you sit down to watch the Oscars this next sunday night, just think to yourself, “there is no spoon”, “there is no spoon”, “there is no spoon”. And you may find yourself achieving inner peace.

I am looking forward to my trip to Spokane this week. I’ll be gone from Thurs to Mon, so I’m not too sure how much I’ll be able to post. But for sure I’m going snowboarding at at least one of these two places, either Mt. Spokane or Schweitzer. Very stoked about that since last time I went boarding it was at Snow Summit, which honestly I was expecting a crappy day, but it turned out to be one of the best days I have had in So Cal, which says a lot, especially since I’m now a snow snob, due to the good pow (see powder) in Wa and Id. It will be good to see Jacob for sure, and then I get to see my youth group that I worked for as well as Jeni and Matt. Mainly I just hope I get a lot of time to relax and think. Prayers would be great while I’m on my mini-sabbatical.

Let’s go fly a kite

If we were playing “phrase association” many of you would probably be reminded of this lady. But I bet when you think of kites you remember sunny days in the park with maybe family members or friends.

I bet you never thought this could happen…~da da dum!!!!!

WHEN KITES ATTACK (a sub-division of FOX networks)

oops I guess I linked the wrong address, it’s fixed now.

five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes

Is not the amount of minutes that I get on my wireless plan. You know how I posted that story about how Cingular was going to buy out Att? So after work yesterday I stopped by the local Att store to just ask a few questions about the merger, how does this affect my plan, what are the benefits, etc. Lucky me nothing really is going to change. I get to keep my plan and billing and all that jazz. I’ve been looking into getting a new phone for about the last 8 or 9 months. I heard that Nokia was going to be putting out this new phone around a year ago. I was stoked to hear it was coming out. Except that the price was going to be around 250. Way tooo much for a phone. I had been researching this phone over the last couple of months. And I could never really find a good deal on it. It came down to about 200 but that still seemed like too much. And then one day I was online and I saw they were giving them away if you signed up for new service. Only problem: I had EXISTING service. No discount for Andrew. Lame. When I saw that I called them up and asked if there was anything they could do to lower the price, especially since it was on special and I was an existing customer. Answer: NEGATIVE GOOD BUDDY. Once again LAME. A few days ago I got a mailer in (where else) the mail and it was advertising my phone for only 99 bucks. Bargin city!!! It still seemed a bit much especially since cash is tight. But while I was expelling my onslaught of questions to the rep at the store yesterday, I posed the valued customer. And I finally got a decent response. He said he could knock 50 bucks off the price, plus the mail in rebate and I was getting a phone for -5 dollars (I think it works out where once I get my rebate in 6-8 weeks I will have come out ahead in the deal). Working off impulse instincts I bought the phone. I am now the proud owner of a Nokia 6800 and no longer have to deal with the archaic musings of the Nokia 3360 (which is closely related to this phone).

After I got done dealing with the phone situation I headed over to my mom’s house to help her set up a desk that she bought. It was fun to hang out with her for a while and I popped in the Thicker Than Water DVD.

After being up since 5:30 in the morning I decided to go to a show with Amy and Justin down at the Hotel Cafe in Hollywood. I’d been wanting to go to a show there for a while so I jumped on the chance to go. It’s such a small and intimate venue, and when we got there it was PACKED, shoulder to shoulder. But that created a fun atmosphere. There was even a guy doing a painting while one band played. Pretty amazing. The band we went to see was The Richard Swift band. It felt like you were taking a trip back to 1922 in some speakeasy, then at times it was kinda like Bono and Tom York were sharing the stage. A totally great night of music. I finally got home around 1am. Since Richard Swift was supposed to go on at 11, but the band before them were quite the bit of stage hogs and played longer than they were scheduled to.

As for the work front, it has been another *productive day at work. *Productive meaning I sat here and worked on the blog most of today. The good news is that hopefully sometime early next week I will find out my fate as it still rests in the hands of others.

I want men (and women) everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer (1 Tim 2:8a)

A gleam of sunlight parted the dark ominous clouds bringing hope and encouragement today.

After waking at 5:30 to be at Jamba for the 3rd time this week, I roused myself out of bed. It seemed like the morning would never break the dearkness and shine its face. But no later had I become accustomed to the dark did I turn towards the windows of the store and was greeted by a brilliant view of the hills, highlighted by the early morning sun. My mind wandered from the empty store to wanting to praise the Lord and dwell in his word. Unfortunately I was unable to do so. How I love the quietness and clarity that the early morn brings. All sits still in anticipation of what is to come that day. What a moment to realize God has been working in our sleep to prepare for what we are to do in our day. It reminds me of waking up in Spokane and seeing a blanket of pure white covering the ground. Silent in the night these small flakes descended to greet us when we awoke. God’s sleeplessness yields our discovery of his labor of love. And how thankful I am of that.

At one point during work I got pulled aside by my manager at Jamba (if you didn’t know they are working with me to promote me to an assistant manager) and he told me as an incentive for me to put in more hours to complete training for the promotion he was giving me a raise. Oh rapture!!! This helps out tremendously, it shrinks the gap in pay between jobs allowing me to be more flexible in which job gets the most of my attention. And with the way things are going at WaMu, I’m inclined to ask them for less hours so I can spend more time at the Juice. As for what will actually happen, I’m still riding the fence. Then again that all could change if I get fired. That would make the decision pretty easy.

Had a great lunch with Amy, (and if you didn’t know already, she’s going to be one of my co-workers at Jamba) before I headed back to work at WaMu. UPDATE: Still no luck in them finding my $980, but I did get the opportunity to help on of my co-workers today. She was out of balance before she left and I got asked to go through her work and I ended up finding a small mistake that corrected the problem. That at least made me feel like I accomplished something today. Yet, the hours remain to pass, so that all could change.

Don’t forget to checkout Waking Ashland, help them rise among the many unsigned bands who are looking for a break.

AE and I’m not talking about a patriotic eagle

Not too bad of a day. Working off of 2 1/2 hours sleep turned out to be enough to make it through the Jamba work and a workout. As for getting the loan thing taken care of, it for the most part lost out to sleep. An hour and a half worth, which was definitely not enough. Then there came the bank. Walked in expecting the worse, and ended up not having to be Mr. Walmart. I got to sit at a desk and work on files. Meaningless but not excruciating. The best part of the day was when Outback Steakhouse needed change and in addition brought over a few different appertizers. So I got to munch on a Bloomin Onion, some cheese fries and some chicken wings. Mucho Bueno.

Jr High went well. Amy wasn’t feeling well tonight so John took over and did an excellent job at holding down the fort. It was wear RED night and Converse night. What fun!! After, John and I headed over to the gym AGAIN. And did some work on our biceps and backs. I’m sore. We topped the night with some food from Subway. And then headed over to John’s house for the final night of CELEBRITY MOLE.

(dramatic pause)

Well as it turns out Miss Angie Everhart was the MOLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So sorry Amy, not only was Mark Curry NOT the mole, he didn’t even win. I won’t rub it in. But throughout the night Amy did once again suspect all 3 of the remaining players as the Mole. Quite fun to watch.

That’s enough for tonight, I’ve posted a lot today, so be sure to click on the BOLD BLACK words to check out fun links. I have to get up at 5 again to go to work. But since I do not to much at the bank I’ll try and steal some time to post tomorrow.

Obviously, or someone please prove me wrong

Read This

Just a reminder

In case you forgot Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” comes out exactly 1 week from today. I have great expectations for this movie.

5K, no I only wish I was talking about money

So I worked the opening shift at Jamba again from 5:45 to 8. Not too long but good motivation to be up and doing things for the day. After work I headed over to the gym for a bit of a workout. I was walking up and who else did I run into, but my workout partner John “I hate to go” Bowling. He was finishing up his workout. He had just done a spinning class and was working on abs. So I joined him for that. Last night I made a commitment to run a 5K today. That’s kilometers for those of you who aren’t familiar with the metric system. By the way that’s 3.1 miles. So I got on the treadmill and pumped it up to 7.5 on the dial (it’s actually a small digital readout). It was hard, it turned into a mental game, and joyfully I made it. I was shooting for a consisent 8 min mile. And I think my final time was around 23 1/2 min. Which isn’t too shabby. I stepped it up at the end and did some sprinting. I almost died near the end.

Now I have some time to kill before I get back to work. So I need to call a loan company to consolidate my stupid STUDENT LOANS. On a side note, have you seen that commercial for Lending Tree with that Stanley Johnson guy??? So HILARIOUS. “I’m in debt up to my eyeballs…somebody help me.” (all with this huge smile on his face) Great TV. Sorry I couldn’t find a site where you could watch it.

And I need to take a nap and read through 1 Timothy again.

I’ll try and post later tonight after the finale of Celebrity Mole.