After a lot of prayer on both of our parts, time spent talking with others, and time spent talking to each other as well, it is now official - Kelsey Scoggins and I are now dating! I wish it were easier to convey my excitement on this rather unexciting medium, but suffice it to say (or ask my roommates), I am thrilled to see how God has worked all of this out!
What a cutie! (The one on the left silly geese!)
This past week has been a great one - busy, yet enjoyable! I really wanted to mention some of the things which I really enjoyed in having my sister come and visit. What a great time! It was such fun to get to spend time with her - talking, eating and praying. She really enjoyed getting to meet some of my crazy friends and was even able to pick up some helpful tips for leading a team overseas from Lindsay Wilson. I think that she was able to take care of her Mexican food cravings (surprisingly, they don’t get a whole lot of good Mexican food out in Pennsylvania) as we got to go to both Abuelo’s and Ted’s. WOW!
Some of my favorite times:
1. Myriad Gardens - fun times looking around and taking random pictures (example below):
2. Talking - it was neat to hear the things that she has been learning and finding out how to pray.
3. Praying - what a blessing to know I have a sister who is praying for me and cares about me!
4. Cards - a rousing game of Hands and Feet (an awesome card game) with Trent and Lindsay
5. Eating - pancakes at home, Abuelo’s, Ted’s, Applebee’s
6. Movie - Hotel Rwanda, a thought-provoking movie about the genocides in Rwanda.
7. Hanging out with friends - Trent, Lindsay, Crumpy, Corby, Rob, Chris McCormick
I survived! I had a wonderful time on Friday night at our “Nite o’ diversion!” It was quite a grand old time. We headed to Coach’s at Bricktown around 6:45 or so, and we were all sitting down at one LONG table at 7:15. We ended up having twenty-two people for dinner, so it was certainly a bit hard to talk to people on the ends of the tables. I had a great time there - pulled pork is always the way to go at Coach’s - and it seemed that everyone else really enjoyed their time there also.
After dinner, we headed up to Edmond to Kelsey Scoggins’ place. A few people had to leave after dinner, but some more joined us in Edmond, so it ended up being about the same size group at Kelsey’s pad. We started off the evening by playing a few rounds of Catch Phrase, but interest began to wane (I think that there IS a point where Catch Phrase isn’t fun if your group is too large). Then, we busted out a little bit of middle-school madness and played three rounds of mafia. The first round was pretty intense, it made it all the way to the final round - One mafia member and two townspeople (down from three mafia, three night watchmen, one doctor, and ten general townspeople). I was the narrator for the round - describing the deaths in all of their glory each morning and trying to facilitate the mayhem that ensued at the town meeting each day! Then, we realized that it was a little bit after 1:00 in the morning and most of us had about a 45 minute drive home, so we said our goodbyes and headed back down to Norman. What a fun evening!
Last night a few guys came over to our house and we played some cards, today was church (I’ll be going back for the evening baby dedication - NO I do not have any babies to be dedicated sillys) and the weekend draws to a close. I think that some people are coming over after church for some dinner and random entertainment (don’t ask me what that will be, but I am sure it will be random).
I finally broke down and took the Napoleon Dynamite quiz and here are my results:
I guess it was because I ate some holy chips or something.
I am going to Bricktown tonight with Impact. We are going to Coach’s for dinner at 7:00, then heading to Kelsey Scoggins’ house to play games. It is going to be a crazy time - we’ll see if I ever post again after tonight! :~)
I don’t have a Washington Mutual Account!!
What is the deal? The past four days I think I have gotten about twenty emails telling me that many different people have been trying to log into my Washington Mutual account with the wrong logins. The spelling alone certainly makes it VERY official - take the following for instance: “If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choise but to temporaly suspend your account.” So, I have promptly followed the link, input my social security number, my bank account number, my check routing number, my billing address, my credit card number, my mother’s maiden name, and my blood type. Honestly! Let me know if you need all of that information from me - if you would just set up some very unprofessional website with a few boxes that I could input that information, I’d be happy to get that information to you. But, at least make it with a bank that I actually do business with! OK, enough of that, I do just think it is pretty hilarious!
This is certainly a topic which I feel that I can comment on with some expertise. Having worked with National Merit Scholars for the past five years, I have seen a lot of people come through the office. People who are normal, people who are nerds, and people who are downright weird. I prefer to think of myself as falling in the first category, but, before the comments hit the fan, know that I am probably a combination of all three. So, a couple of stories (someday I should write a book). My favorite story of all time is one student who came into the office waiting for my boss, Craig Hayes. While he was waiting, he wandered around the office meowing. We had one student who graduated three years ago who always came into the office barefoot and wearing a full wizard costume.
Today, I met another student who is high up on my list of intriguing National Merit students. He is one of those guys who is probably telling the truth the majority of the time, but who you really never can entirely believe because his stories are so far fetched. This guy would definitely consider himself a player, but our student workers who were in today assured me that they couldn’t see how he does it. It sounds like this guy is a total chameleon - sensitive or arrogant depending on what the situation demands. He spent about an hour in our office, telling us stories of classes he had been in where he told students off for asking dumb questions (obviously he is in the position to measure that), telling us about this girl who he met two weeks ago who broke up with her doctor boyfriend for him and who he is definitely going to marry. He told us about the wedding he is planning on the beach in California where the orchestra will actually be wearing wet suits and standing in the water, and the other wedding that he will have in France. I determined that he is definitely the postmodern man and I am wondering if I could possibly be his agent so that he could have his own TV show. This is definitely one of the things that I love about my job - the people are so varied it blows my mind!
Work was quite interesting today. One wouldn’t have thought it would have been too terribly hard; we only had two families visiting. However, a combination of one of the prospective students having a broken toe and walking on crutches, and both of them having similar yet different schedules made it intriguing. On top of that, apparently my communication skills are fairly bad. I called the person who was meeting with these students two hours before they were supposed to be there and I left a message detailing the issues and letting her know that we would be about fifteen minutes late. Of course, that message was never received, so I got a call on my cell phone with an urgent request to know where I was (I was actually walking through the door right at that time). Other than that, the day has been going well - I have worked on setting up appointments for future visits (hopefully they will work out better than this visit today), checking the list of students which I will be calling to see how they are doing in their college decision, and answering numerous questions from parents and students. Not to mention the fact that some really weird guys - Brian Clifton and Terrel Fish - stopped by the office. Yikes! There you have it, another day in the life of a guy who works in the National Scholars office.
Ahh, the first morning back to Men’s Fraternity. I always love it once I get there, but those early mornings as my alarm plays some joyful tune make me wish that I were a polar bear in hibernation. Today was a good introduction of what we will be covering throughout the semester - I am certainly looking forward to some more wonderful insight!
I got together with Jay Hudson yesterday to talk about the possibility of working up at Coca-Cola as a benefits manager/project coordinator and found out more information about the job. It sounds like it would be fairly challenging, as I would need to learn some new software programs, would be interacting with both insurance agents and administrative personnel, and would be working on new projects dealing with both accounting and benefits issues. At this point in time, it sounds like the job would open up around the beginning of May (possibly slightly sooner), which would be just about perfect (assuming that God gives me the go-ahead to take the job) since I have committed to work at the National Scholar’s office through the middle of May. Certainly no final decisions have been made as of yet, but at this point in time, my gut-level feeling tells me I would really enjoy this job. I would get to work with Jay Hudson, would be learning a lot, and would be staying pretty busy while at work - sounds like a good combination!
In other news, today we will be welcoming our new roommate from Korea, Young Chun Kim. I will be picking him up from the airport at 7:00 this evening. I am looking forward to meeting him and getting to know him, looking forward to the possibility of learning a bit of Korean, and definitely looking forward to the possibility that I could learn to cook some Korean food. Sadly, our duplex is still somewhat furniture-less (I know, that really isn’t a word, but it really fits the situation) so we won’t have a nicely decorated duplex to welcome him to. That should change here soon, though (if your couch disappears, pretend nothing ever happened :-p).
Check out 1 Corinthians 1:20-31! I read that this morning and was reminded of the glory of God - certainly something it never hurts to be reminded of. It amazes me to no end that God is willing to use us to shame the wise of the world!
I managed to make it through a long weekend without any major mishaps (I guess that is not particularly exciting, or even particularly weird, because I am fairly sure that for the most part I have made it through every long weekend without mishaps, but that is beside the point). I had a great time doing some fairly random things during that time. I enjoyed playing cards with Crumpy and some of the ladies of the compound (Susanne, Allison and the addition of Becca as well) - we played du-rat [sic] (aka “six card”), Texas Hold’em, and a bit of Egyptian rat puke (at least that is what I call it). Saturday afternoon, I went with Amy Van Dyck, Susanne, Becca, Allison and Crumpy to watch In Good Company. There were certainly some funny moments and some moments which tried to be a bit profound, but seemed to fall a little bit flat when the emphasis was just on having a good family and enjoying your job. That evening, Crumpy and I fixed some dinner (not so gourmet: spaghetti, dinner rolls - from WalMart, and green salad) and ate with Allison, Amy and Susanne.
This weekend, Impact celebrated it’s fifth birthday (perhaps “anniversary” would be a better term), so I went to Trinity Baptist later on Saturday evening to celebrate that fine occasion. And what an occasion it was. Since I had already eaten over at the compound, I didn’t eat any of the multitude of pizza that was there, but I did eat some of the birthday cake which we had after we played games. We had a piñata (and for those of you who are wondering, it was NOT a likeness of Summer Wheatley), had a few rounds of tug-of-war, and played a bit of put the glasses on Dave Edwards. I suppose that in some ways it was like pin the tail on the donkey, except Dave Edwards was blindfolded as was the person who was supposed to put the giant glasses on him. I managed to get a bit dizzy after being spun around, was directed by the friendly crowd into the wall, and successfully put the glasses on Dave’s neck. What a riot!
Sunday after church, I enjoyed a trip up to Sam’s Surplus in Oklahoma City with Kelsey Scoggins. She tried to tell me she is a crazy driver, but somehow, coming from California, I just couldn’t see it. We made it to Sam’s (which is in the finest part of OKC, I assure you) and they tried to sell us all kinds of things. As we were leaving (honest to goodness) the owner’s son told us he was getting in some underwear which never have to be washed and some dripless ice cream in the summer, so we needed to go back and visit. Apparently he thought he could sell me anything, which was partially true, as I did leave with a pair of goggles (which I am taking back since I found some I like better online), a neck warmer and a goggle cleaning cloth. That was an experience to remember! That evening after church I chatted with Trent for about an hour and a half about his time with the army and some of the things that he is thinking about doing in the coming years. That was great to hear some of that! Yesterday, I celebrated the King (Martin Luther King, Jr., that is) by doing some much needed shopping. I got some food, some pots and pans, and an Ansel Adams picture. I celebrated the finish of a great MLK day at Bison Witches, with a soup and salad special: potato bacon cheddar and the green turkey sandwich.
Hey all! By “all” I mean no one, since I haven’t even let anyone know that I have a blog site set up! :~) Seriously though, I held off for the longest time on actually starting one of these blogs, because I thought they were kind of crazy. Now that I think about it more though, I realize that it could actually be pretty fun. Not only because people can see what I am doing, but so that I can remember what I am doing. So, what AM I doing on a day like today. Well, honestly, it has been a bit of a slow day. The big developments have been talking with a few prospective students while at work, writing some emails and asking for some time off for a ski trip with Impact. So, not a whole lot going on. Philip Braswell, my roommate of these past five months, left for Houston this morning, leaving our living room and our hearts a bit emptier (all of our couches in our living room belonged to him, so now all that is there is one lone recliner). That’s pretty much the extent of the news for now - I may think of more as I continue to mess with this site and get it up to par with the high standards that I set for myself!