burning the candle at both ends and running out of wax

this saying is more then true for my life. There's a possible full time position at church for a Youth Pastor, which would allow me to focus on ministry rather then having to come and forward e-mails all day, although it does pay a lot of money for the job description, it's not what I'm called to do, I'll update you when I find out more. ok bye.

National Youth Ministry Conference

So this conference was awesome. So much encouragement and resources, and did I mention encouragement in such a short time period. Well that's all I have to say about that. Ok bye.

Picking my Nose... Hair

Today in my Apologetics course the inside of my nose hurt. It kind of felt like my nose hair was balled by a booger and pas pulling against it's roots. so I went up there to try to clear the booger out, and did so successfully. but the nose hair that was clumped was now sticking out of my nose, so I started pulling the hair, and I started counting, the hair that I pulled out. there wasn't a pull that had less then three hairs come out, and the total was 17.... yes 17 nose hairs in one nostril. that must be some kind of record. Well that's all I have to say about that. ok bye.

Hugo

This is my new dog Hugo!



Corrie and I bought him from a breeder in central PA on Thursday, and I went and picked him up yesterday afternoon. He's just 8 weeks old, and doesn't so much more then sleep. Sometimes he'll get playful, but then he'll just wanna take a nap, that sounds like my kind of dog. We're real excited to have him and will make sure we post pictures often.

It makes it all worth it

 

If you click the above picture you will see what I see when I check my grades, and when I checked my grades this evening, I found that all my hard work for the semester had paid off. Now I don't want to sound cocky or arrogant because that is not why I put this up here. I wanted to let people know that working a full time job at the Insurance Company, a part time job(which turns out being more full time) at Church, and being recently married, can still turn into 4 A's(even though 3 had minuses) in a graduate program. Now I can sleep easy, and long and really really long.

In other news, Corrie got a new phone, and now I'm rather envious, so to act upon that envy I decided that I would tell everyone who reads these things first. It's the blackberry pearl, and it's pretty sweet. well that's all for now. ok bye.

A sneak peek

Corrie and I got our tree, and have since put our lights on it. We really don't have many ornaments, and my mom won't relinquish my childhood ones, but I do have this wonderful Mets ball that I placed on the tree first.



Here's a picture of the tree from our couch, I was too lazy to get up to get a full shot, but as the title of this blog suggests, this is but a sneak peak to the finished product. ok bye.

It's been a while

It seems like every day I check the blogs that I've grown accustomed to checking, and everyday I see the title Ghetto Light show, and everyday I fail to update this stupid thing. I think the major reason is because I feel like there's just too much to say. But anyway, I got bored researching some stuff, and decided that it was about time. Major updates on life since Fathers day are as follows.

1. This summer I wanted to be at the beach any free day I had, so every free day I had that is where I was. I feel as if I got pretty good at riding waves, except for
one that took my wedding ring. Yup, that's right I lost my wedding ring less then a year after being married. Stupid Josh.

2. I got to see Matt and Abby get married in Grand Rapids Michigan one weekend, and then got to participate in missions trip in Grand Rapids the weekend after that. man that was a lot of driving.

3. I've started my Masters of Divinity degree this fall at PBU, and although I have felt a little overwhelmed at times, feel real good about it. I'm taking Greek 1, Bibliology and Hermeneutics, Psalms and Wisdom Literature, and Soteriology and Angelology. I think I might even rock a 4.0 this semester. Which would be pretty flippin sweet.

In other news. Work is good, I'm an over paid mail opener/filterer and couldn't be more satisfied with my position.

Corrie and I are doing real well, and are about to finish our ballroom dancing class that we started a month ago. I'm a little bit disappointed with the class as a whole, because I feel that Corrie and I could have handled a little bit more of a challenge, but it is fun nonetheless.

Also the biggest news is... We're getting out of this hole that we presently call home. And on November 24th we'll be moving (no thanks to anyone that reads this j/k) to Lawrenceville Gardens, where there's a washer/dryer and dishwasher in the apartment. And even if we don't get the parking spot to our door we're still way less then 3 football fields away (as it is now). We're real excited too because we can get a dog, which we will be doing as soon as an English bull dog is born and affordable.

So that's about it, no picture updates at the moment, because our camera is broken, but that will soon be fixed. Hope everyone is doing well. ok bye.

The Ghetto Light Show

Have you ever wondered what happens when you wrap a shopping bag around a stick, put it in the fire till it lights, then lift it high about the fire so it drips back down? I know a lot of you have so I'm hear to tell you. It's an amazing ghetto light show with sound effects too (in the form of laser like sounds similar to those heard in classic games like centipede or other such old games). On Fathers day weekend Corrie and I went down to her parents house for her dad's 50th get together... I don't think he wanted a party, so it's a get together for all intensive purposes. J and Cheryl were up which is always a good thing as well. So later on in the night when the old people left (no offense is meant to be taken by that statement) I told the story of how I learned how to make cool looking lights and sounds from burning plastic, after that I decided that I should give a practical demonstration and it worked pretty well. I was pretty amazed at how cool the "ghetto light show" was, and that everyone was so enthralled with it. Here are some pictures from my demonstration.

This is me preparing the plastic for melting


Now that I have it burning we can watch it drip


...


...


Don't judge how excited they are by their faces because they really are.


They were too

In other news.... Triples minus 1. ok bye.

Pinnacle Memories at 4 in the Morning

So it's 3:45am on a Saturday morning, and you may ask what I'm doing awake. Well I fell asleep on the couch watching the Mets game, and then I woke up and watched the important parts over again, and have found that I'm not really tired, so I decided that this might put me to sleep. I was on facebook and I looked at my groups and saw the one for Camp Pinnacle, and looked at the pictures that were posted, and realized that most of them were really lame and didn't represent the greatness of camp, so I took the liberty to add some of my own, and make a comment about how great Jonathan Baron was, better then some people we know, not to mention any names... coughthebeardcough. So I thought I'd share some of those pictures with you. That's about it. ok bye.

The Futuristic Greek sub culture of Gharmaism

I have recently received my Bachelors of Science degree in Biblical Studies from Philadelphia Biblical University, all with a GPA of 3.0, which isn't too shabby. I'm not telling you this to show you how humble I am but to show you something that I once wrote while I was in Church History class my sophomore year. This class was more then boring at times, so I would write in my livejournal to stay awake. One day in class I was half awake and half asleep, so I decided it would let my fingers type whatever my half coherent mind would think. When I read these sentences I realized it was pure genius, I made up one word, Gharmaism, which could possibly be a real word, but yet it isn't. So anyways I thought I'd share them for you here.

"Stop the cord before it explodes into a thousand light bulbs which illuminate the toilet water in the three liter bottle which has been recognized as the winner of the Nobel peace prize twenty five years consecutively."

"If only the bells had been whistling a different tune then the grand piano would have had a chance to research the ecology of the eastern European nation of Turkey."

"Stop before the white line or the chance of flowers growing in the upstairs bathroom will increase greatly because the fertility of the soil in the Grand Canyon is great."

"Don't fall into the deep telephone because the drop of dew on the third to last fire pit is highly conducive to 4 year old children"

"Plaid floor tiles are taking over Mars. They need to be started or else the gaseous pine sol will integrate into the futuristic Greek sub-culture of Gharmaism."

Ok bye.

Two cars and a file room

So I told you I'd post some pictures of our cars so here they are.

This is the '99 Hyundai Sonata



And this is the '03 Lancer


Like I said before we feel very blessed to have both of these cars, and we know that God rewarded us for being (at times reluctantly) patient.


Finally to give you more of an idea of what it's like to work in a file room at an insurance company. I give you the file room. This is of of 10 or 11 rows of files. There are over 24,000 active green folders, and a lot of active blue folders, which aren't pictured. So maybe you can grasp a little bit better what I do daily. But hey I like it.



ok bye.

I got the job

This morning when I came to work, my manager asked me to come to her office, which is really just a big cubicle and extended an offer for the claims staff assistant. So I took it. Rock on.

Moo!!

For those of you who read this, you'll probably be amazed to see that there's a new post up here. A lot has happened since I last publicly announced the going ons of my life.

I think Corrie and I were looking at buying a Chevy Blazer the last time I blogged, and that couldn't have changed more drastically. We ended up buying a '99 Hyundai Sonata, and a '03 Mitsubishi Lancer. We have finally said goodbye to the Honda which was limping on an amputated stub. It's amazing how we can see God working. It was almost a year and a half ago that I wrecked my car, and I have been without one ever since, There has been different opportunities that came up, but it seemed as if nothing would work out. God definitely told us yes when we purchased these cars which is awesome. Hopefully I'll get some pictures up of both cars real soon.

Also there is a big change in the daily happenings in my life. Instead of sitting home and watching Sportscenter over and over again (Sportscenter repeats in the morning, which makes it worse) I go a job at Munich ReAmerica, which is an reinsurance company in Princeton. One night I just decided that I was too bored with sitting home, so I put my Resume on Monster.com, and the next day I got a call from Ajilon, which is a temp agency. By the end of the week I had a job. Now you may laugh when you hear what I do but you wouldn't be the first. I am a File room Clerk, and there are files that need to be put back in numeric order. So they give me a pile of files and I put them away, and then when I'm done with that there's more files to put away. It's very cyclic and monotonous, but I like it, so much in fact that I've applied for the full time position, which would be a significant pay raise and a pile of benefits. So I'll let you know what comes of that.

As for Youth Group we have been having a lot of fun lately. Last Wednesday we had our annual "Fun Fest" at church. This is a huge community outreach, and over 700 people attended, which is great. At the fun fest, we as a Youth Group were in charge of creating a booth so people could get some information about what we do on Wednesday nights. So one of the students suggested that we have a petting zoo, but we dress up as the animals. I was weary of this idea to begin with, and I changed it from a petting zoo to just a zoo, for obvious reasons, but we bought some fabric and made costumes so that we could be animals. this went over really well. The costume that I'm wearing is not one that we made, but it's still a pretty good one. Hope you enjoy the pictures. ok bye.

I need a job

When I was growing up, I can remember wishing school was done. I would count down the days until it was finished for the summer hoping that time would move faster. Then the final day of school came and I was free for the summer, and everything was grand until about a week into it when I was bored out my mind with nothing to do. This is how I feel right now. I do not have a job other then working at church, and although that takes a lot of my time to plan and follow through with, there are still numerous hours of downtime in which I do nothing. When I was working at Olly and had put my 2 weeks notice in, I counted down the days using the magnets in the store, wishing time would go faster so I wouldn't have to work anymore. Now that I haven't been there for a month now I wish I was back, well actually I don't wish I was back at Olly cause I had had enough (no offense Ang). So to sum it up I need a job, and to stop being such a lazy bumtard. If you know of anything, make sure you let me know.

Corrie and I will b buying a car pretty soon, which is exciting. It's a Chevy Blazer and it looks like it's in pretty good condition. I have a friend who is a mechanic at a Chevy dealership, and he said he'll look at it before we buy it to make sure there isn't stuff that is horribly wrong with it, or that it isn't worth buying, so that's exciting. Other then that nothing too much is new. I've been playing the wii a lot because I'm lazy, and married life is great. I think this is a record for me with two posts in one month YES!!!

Here I go again

You know it's real bad when you go to post a blog, and the automatic title that comes to your mind is one that you used at the end of October. I really don't know why I don't do this more often, I mean I check everyone elses blogs on a daily basis and always expect something new, yet I don't pull through, maybe I'll turn over a new blogging leaf, but I can't make any promises cause I probably won't.

What's new.... I'm married. Yup it's true. The countdown that I had for so long finally came to end a little more then two months ago, and I couldn't be more happy with every part of it. Corrie and I are now living in Hamilton NJ in a small apartment, which is on the bottom floor. If I can make any suggestions to people who are looking to rent an apartment it would be to find an upstairs place, so that you can be the one that walks around in your high heels all day and all night, or you can be the one that takes showers at 3 in the morning or have loud music playing at 6am. Now if you're not to into wearing high heels, then the other things would work fine in annoying the crap out of the people that live below you. This is something that is pretty difficult for Corrie and me, it seems like they are always home, and there is no rest for them, they're always moving, but I guess/hope with time we'll get used to it, or our lease will be up and we'll move, whichever comes first.
I still work at my church as the Senior High Youth Director and that is something that I enjoy more and more every Wednesday night. I feel as if I'm really getting to know the students, and that I'm really starting to connect with them where they are spiritually. It is trying at times, but the trying times are nothing compared the good ones if you know what I mean. Other than church I'm not doing much right now. Kind of looking for a new job because I stopped working at Olly shoes, but I guess I'm going to be picky cause I want something that will be flexible with Youth Group. Financially Corrie and I are okay for the moment but once my school bills start to come in, my want for flexibility will probably be out the window, so I'll see what happens.

As I was writing this blog I thought that something fun to do would be to show all of you who read this the evolution of me... how I became the good looking guy that I am, then I looked at the pictures that I had of myself, and realized that I'm not all that good looking, which made me remember a story about something that happened while I was in college.... A professor at PBU had just gotten engaged and he made an announcement of this engagement in front of the whole school during chapel one morning, now this teacher was/is not on of the better looking people in the world, he was a little overweight and I kid you not you could only see his eyes, nose, and mouth because of the amount of hair that covered his face, but he was smart so I guess that made up for it. But anyway, the happy couple made their announcement in front of the whole school, and I was late. I was just walking in the back door when he made his announcement, and I was standing right behind another professor who was talking to his daughter. Now this was probably the funniest thing I've ever heard in my entire life, and it's probably because it was coming from one of my Bible professors, but he said to his daughter right after the announcement was made and the applause died down "Well.... I guess everybody has a chance..." You're probably wondering why I've told this story, and the simple answer is because if you were to look at pictures of me growing up, and the awkwardness that I've portrayed for the better part of my life, you'd probably agree with me when I say that there's no logical reason why a goof like me should be married to a beautiful woman like Corrie, but alas, God must like me a little bit. So here's some pictures showing my progression, and I think that's all I have to say for now, hopefully I'll make this a more regular occurence. Hope you enjoy my awkwardness. ok bye.

6 month old awkwardness


4 year old awkwardness



8 year old awkwardness, although Michaelangelo helps a little bit in taking the notice off my rocking socks. by the way TMNT in theatres 3.23.07.

21 year old awkwardness, this is a painting just so you know.... How'd I convice her to marry me???
ok bye.

Elliott

This is my nephew Elliott. Today he is 10 months old and look at him walk. There is no sound to the video because my sisters camera doesn't do sound, and it's a little bit shaky but it's still great. Hope you enjoy.

ok bye.

Update on Life

I really can't believe that there are only 68 days until Corrie and I get married. Life has been pretty hectic since my last post; my responsibilities at Church will hopefully be stepped up in the next couple of months. The Junior High Director will be moving to Michigan at the end of the year, and although I will not officially be taking that position, I will attempt to take on as much as I can. We have had some cool events at Youth Group as of late, I'll put some pictures up so you can see the craziness that is Bible Baptist Church Youth Group. One thing I wanted to let everyone know was that Corrie and I were looking for Apartments in the Hamilton area, and when she went out to look for them she only found one that was semi-big enough for us to live in, so we went up there and filled out an application on Saturday and today we found out that we got approved which is amazing because my credit isn't so hot So later this month we're going to move my stuff in there and I'm going to live there until we get married. This is really exciting because I've always had to find a place to stay, whether it was at my grandmothers, or Matt's or School or even Bruce at times, but this apartment will be Corrie's and mine, isn't that great. In other Wedding news, Corrie and I have the invitations wax sealed and almost ready to be sent out. We just need to buy stamps and send them out. It's pretty exciting, because we'll be married and that is definitely exciting. So that's about that. Maybe I'll try to update this more often. Ok bye.

White Water Rafting

So many of you may know that I'm the Senior High Youth Director at Bible Baptist Church in Hamilton NJ... I think I might have mentioned it once or twice, the reason why I bring it up again is because Tuesday will be the first event that I have planned since being at the church. Now I might have made the mistake of expecting a lot of kids to be interested in White Water Rafting because I paid for 20 of them to go, and now it looks like I'll only have 12 or 13 which leaves me short. I really need prayer on this, so that I'm able to come close to "breaking even" with the church when this is said and done. But if I don't then I guess I live and I learn. So new things with me have been, nothing really. I'm starting to realize how soon my wedding is and how much still needs to be done for it, but I have faith in Corrie... it should all be alright. I booked the honeymoon, but I'm not allowed to tell you where, cause Corrie might be looking at this right now. I just need to find some cheap tickets so we can actually get there.

Well that's all I have to say for right now, pray that I'll be able to get too many kids on Tuesday, because too many is better then not enough. ok bye.

Summer Days halfway over... YES!!!

So it's been a while since I've written in this wonderful connection to the outside world. I last updated in the beginning of June and said that my grandmother was real sick, the next weekend she passed away. That has been a difficult thing for me to handle... Actually I haven't been sure how to handle it, but I guess it'll get easier as time goes on.

I finished my summer classes shortly after the wake and funeral for my grandmother, and am happy to say that I have only 14 credits left in my College career, at least for the undergraduate work... I don't know if I'll go on to get my Masters but the thought has crossed my mind a couple of times. I do although have to write some papers for the group dynamics class that I took in the very beginning of the summer, but I'll probably hold that off until the last second...

Some of you who read this may know that I am now the Senior High Youth Director at Bible Baptist Church in Hamilton NJ. The experience has been a good one thus far. I've made some minor changes and some more major changes for the group since starting there in March or April (I'm not sure the exact date). The most major change that I've made is the institution of Small Groups which we will be starting on Wednesday, so I'll update on how that went later on.

Summer has been going well for me so far. I got to go to Ocean City for the week a couple weeks ago, that was good that I got to spend time with Corrie and her family. Sometimes it's good to just be able to get away from things, even though I didn't get totally way from everything it was still good.

Well I think that's all I have to say about that for now. I would like to mention that I am a die hard Mets fan and they are playing pretty well right now, and for that I'm pretty excited. I'm even more excited that I'll be going to the Mets vs. Padres game at Shea on the 8th of August. I'll get to see the Mets and the return of Piazza to Shea, so it should be an event to remember.

I'll leave you with some more pictures of my nephew Elliott and all of his baby chubbiness (I'm not sure of that spelling). Ok bye.

P.S. - The reason I'm excited that summer days are almost over is because my wedding is less then six months away. YES!!!


 

A weekend full of driving

So here I am at the beginning of my last session of the summer. Only two more grueling weeks left and then I’ll finally have a free summer ahead of me. One thing that kind of upsets me is that I won't be at camp this summer, but that may be a good thing judging by what's going on up there thus far this year. I'm excited to see what happens; hopefully it won't be as disastrous as I think it will be.

This weekend I went to Albany with Corrie to see my grandmother who is not doing too well in the hospital. When we saw her she didn't look too good. The sad part about the trip is that I probably won't see her again. I really don't know how to deal with sympathy either. People say that they're sorry that this has happened and I don’t know how to react. My abrupt, blunt, tactless self says whatever but that's not what I mean. I will be devastated when she passes, not only because she has done so much for me and the family over the years but because she is not saved either. I feel hopeless in this because there is nothing that I've ever been able to say that has gotten through and now she really isn't coherent enough to listen. So if you're reading this pray that the Gospel will be presented effectively before she passes. On the brighter side of things, I got to see Elliott the big fat baby this weekend too. He is such a happy baby. He's always smiling, and is hardly ever cranky. Corrie and I got to spend a lot of time with him so that made the weekend a lot better.

Corrie has been planning a lot lately for the wedding. I'm starting to get really excited about it. I'm starting to see different parts come together like the photography, the order of the ceremony, the reception etc. Only 215 days left and we'll be married... It doesn't get much more exciting then that.

I better start paying attention now. The pictures in this post are of my nephew Elliott... isn’t' he fat and cute and happy. Ok bye.