Signatures and Egalitarianism

When I was a child, this life seemed to stretch out indefinitely, every next day hanging forward, out over the abyss of a night's sleep. There seemed to be an endless procession of days, never to be interupted.

As I grow older, I being to recognize that this simply isn't true. Some days, it seemes like the end, the eternity is right around the corner. Some days, I know that this time, the time which I grasp at with faint, fragile hands, the time that has been granted as a gift to me, the time is soon to end.

I'm entering an event horizon, one unlike any other I have seen forth in my life.

Last Friday, I accepted a temporary, 4 month position for the Fall '07 semester to work as the IT Coordinator for the International School of Kabul, Afghanistan.

Why did I do this, you may ask, and you would be justified in asking that question. I've explained it a lot different ways over the past couple of days, and there are many reasons that you can imagine for my doing this.

The simplest reason comes down to this: I have to. I feel like I am being called to do this. The reasons not to go don't add up. I feel like to not do this would be to ignore what I feel God is calling me to obey. If I do not do what I think I am being told by God to do, is this not a sin? If I choose to turn my back, what does this leave for me to do? I have no wish to be like Jonah, shivering in a cold sea before being swallowed by a giant fish.

So I go. I told my boss today. He was not, shall we say, jumping for joy, but I think he understands. I don't know if all of the rest of you will, but if you need to, e-mail me, call me, whatever.

It's still not 100% that I'll be able to go, passports and visas and governments may interfere. But even that will be the Will of the LORD who holds all of us in His hands. I am not as strong as I should be, not as sure as I would like to be, not as mature as I could be. But then, who of us ever is?

Thanks to God, who gives us grace far more richly than we deserve.

Simmering

I played on the Church's Coed softball team last night. We won 13-12. I played OK, a couple errors, 3-4 (I think.)

New story on the sidebar. I think it's my best. Maybe I should clean this up for publishing.

I don't have much else I can say right now. Dallas was a good time. We were learning how to live, we have been learning how to die, so as to live better.

Asymptote

That was a good weekend.

Could be another singularity on the horizon.

I like cheese.

Delta X

the behavior of the training and the deteriorating
the exocet and the rest of the dying factions
preempt the realization of failure notification
post-amputation postal ambulation means the mail is late
and what can be done about it except delineate?
This, too, means to take the whole and differentiate
besides the equality of the forecast is not lost
on the understanding and instruction of the trust
double glottal stops and reeducation eyedrops
frenetic registration declares domain knowledge
containment and realignment were unanswered failings
moors and restructuring for the obligations of the gust
the administrative regions and the relocation of kings
desolation wherein is found the vocation of things

Proliferate

Baron Davis should have been suspended. That he faces no real penalty is bad news for a league with image problems already.

Concrete Aggregation

Far away.

Brain/Glue Deficiencies

I have nothing that's of worth to You, take all I have.



I'm stressing out way too much at work lately. I yelled at a tech support guy (don't worry, I waited until after I hung up the phone) today. I really need to calm down about work, because while it's stressful, I shouldn't let such things rule me. I used to always do pretty good about just letting it flow away, and nowadays, it seems that I let it explode more than I should, in unprofessional and childish ways. I've got stuff that is breaking repeatedly, and it took me days to notice th simple reason for it. Frustrating. I've got like 10 'high-priority' tasks on my list to do, and I'm just churning away at them.

Bipolarity is revealed, because now I'm going to talk about how baseball practice wasn't too bad, I enjoyed beating Jonathan in Supreme Commander (back on a winning streak, baby! Two in a row, and should have been 3!), and I talked to The Formerly-Highly-Pitched-Voice-Dude [Seriously, his voice was higher than the sopranos in Jr. High. I have video.], who told me about his sermon (Available on mp3!), and about how he's finally done with school! Woohoo!

Additionally, the flood waters are retreating, my sisters sent me cool e-mails the past couple of days, and I'm getting married on a Saturday! Ok, the last one is just a probability, but anyway...

One thing I have not done as well as I should have lately is read my Bible for the relationship. I've read enough for preparation for teaching, but not for just the relationship. I am really going to endeavour to do that better in the coming days.



I have nothing that's of worth to You, take all I have.

Frameshift

Is it just me, or does anyone else here find it vaguely unsettling
that you get your theology from Star Trek?
-- Anthony DeBoer
Yeah, he should get it from B5 like us normal people.
-- Paul Tomblin

Turbulence

It rained something like 12 inches in the past two days. It took me 40 (normal = 8) minutes to get to work. I had to park a lot over and take off my shoes and socks to get into the office. It's pretty bad. We're hoping the water doesn't rise anymore, if it comes up 2 more feet, we could be in big trouble, as in, all machines get lost. Bad thing.

Went to a LAN Sturday. Played pretty well, if I do say so myself. Won a SupCom 2v2 and a 5FFA.

Solidified

I went to a funeral today.

Visitation was last night. I saw the boy who played ball for me, sitting alone by himself. I went over to talk to him, but what can I say to an 11 year old boy whose mother just died? I know he knows that his mother is in Heaven with Jesus, but he also knows that she isn't there with him. What can I say to the boy, to his dad who just lost his wife? So, I told the boy if he ever wanted someone to shoot hoops with, give me a call. That we'd be praying for them. What else can I do?

I feel inadequate today.

Carnelian

I ate McDonalds for lunch. For some reason, McDonalds makes me hyper. (It couldn't have been the candy or cinammon rolls, no.)

This is causing me to think it would be really cool if Dan Weyandt from ZAO covered vocals for Alan Jackson (who I had to listen to for a while yesterday morning because someone at work had their radio up.) That would be awesome.

Circumvent

Tech support is going to cower, like a mantis, before the aurora of my wrath.

That, or the harbinger of paranoia that says my employer is going to realize I'm grossly incompetent is going to paralyze me into oblivion.

Or, like a tempest, I'll just knuckle down, and solve the conundrum with the galactically colossal powers of my coding skill.

I had too much fun above, all so one person would enjoy it.

Divesture

These past couple of days have been some of those days.

My birthday was nice. I heard from family, got some stuff, had a good time. While my sister was disappointed that she mis-timed her call and so I was already gone yesterday morning, it's cool to have a message on my answering machine with her class singing happy birthday to me. Even if they were really hyper and not exactly singing, I can dig the screaming, it's cool.

I've felt productive at work recently. I haven't had to deal with near as much silliness on tech support stuff, and I've actually gotten some projects released for use, which was feeling like it was never going to happen, mostly because I've been lazy, I guess. I also got to prove stuff to various tech support departments, who now cower where the mighty call them, for they know their prepared scripts are inadequate against the might of my deductive logic. I've also screwed up some basic stuff, which makes me laugh at the depths of avarice that my ego succumbs to. I have to figure out how to work avarice into daily conversation.

I started trying to go run, which makes me happy but semi-sore. I'm doing 100+ situps a night, which doesn't make me as buff as my narcissism would like because I have too much extra fat around the middle. I am somewhat tired, because I don't like to sleep these days. I stayed up until 3:00 AM on friday night/saturday morning, because I didn't want to go to sleep. I do better on weekdays, since I know I have to be at work, but it's really easy to just say, "I don't care" on fridays. It's not like I do anything other than play computer games, but still, I just don't like sleep.

Baseball is going. I'm not a baseball expert, so my job mostly becomes the encourager/"Work Harder" coach. Which works, but I still feel slightly inadequate. At least it's fun, and the kids can't tell that I'm really not that much better than they are.

For some reason, I've really dug this song that I heard on Relevant.TV by a band called The Forecast. If you go to Relevant.tv and listen to the song, it may puzzle you that I like it, because the song is a light, airy, sappy song of a relationship that seemingly failed. And I really don't get why I like it, but I do. Even more surprising, I heard it on the random playlist right after Norma Jean, and I don't find it odd that I went from hardcore to... semi-country, and liked both songs.

All this sounds fine, right? And I don't mean to make it otherwise. There are just some things that I let keep this from being as good as it could.

First, my birthday isn't wonderful because it makes me miss my sister. It also annoys me when people tell me, basically unsolicted, that they didn't get married until they were my age + X (where X is a random whole number between -1 and 12), and I don't have anything to worry about yet. It's like that low-level pain that comes with a bruise, or the slight headache you can't quite shake. Thanks, I know I have plenty of time, that doesn't make it any less uncomfortable when you remind me that some of that time has passed me by now.

Second, Kidmo, the wednesday night program at church, finished last week. I like helping with that. And next year, it will really be different because the group of kids that I've mostly worked with the last two years will have moved up to the Jr. High ranks. Even though there are still good kids in the program, it's just different. It was really... refreshing to go and help out with that during the middle of the week, and I'm going to miss it.

Third, the mother of one of the kids on my basketball team died on Sunday, somewhat unexpectedly. She was a real Christian lady, and even though I know that God has plans for everything, it's still a sad event for the family, her husband and four kids. They'll have lots of adjustments to make, not just with life, but with school, activities, the kind of things that you have to change when you're homeschooled and your teacher passes away. I hope the kids are doing ok.

That's been the past couple of days for me. Some good things, some things not as good.

I can't complain, all my bills are paid, all my needs met. I just have to truly learn to accept the good with the bad, and use both as opportunities for growth in Christ.