weekend

When it is worthwhile.

Thursday
The IM guys came in this weekend for another event at First Baptist, which is always fortunate for me, because that means I get to hang out with some of the coolest bunch of guys I know. Thursday evening, Ben and I hung out at my local haunt, Live Wire, and had some good conversation about life, love, and relationships. It is one of the two most recent conversations I've had that have made me feel a little bit better about things. If Erin W. is reading this, I'm sorry if I've acted like a douche, and thanks for your caring and patience.

Friday
I had an eye doctor appointment in Lexington in the afternoon. I finally am wearing contacts again after running out of them over two months ago! It feels good to wake up in the morning and be able to see. I'm pretty excited because my prescription didn't change hardly at all. (whoo hoo) Hung out with Ben and Topher a while that afternoon. That evening hung out at Live Wire some more and caught part of the Jazz Crawl that took place in downtown Richmond. I've never in my life seen so many people crammed into that small coffee shop! Back at the ranch, some friends were in town, and we played a card game called, "Oh Hell". Good times, good friends.

Saturday
Slept in. Went to St. Awesome's at 3:00 to volunteer as Video Switcher. For those of you not "in-the-know" the video switcher is the guy that sits in front of a lot of buttons and a wall of TV monitors and "switches" from Camera 1 - to Camera 2 - to a DVD playback - to Camera 3 - back to Camera 1... etc. Of course this is all done via input from the Video Director. It was fun. It was also my last weekend volunteering before my summer gig at Jenny Wiley. Another thing that made it fun was that it was something different, and it was challenging. I love working outside my normal comfort box and learning new things. That evening, my friend William had a housewarming party at his BRAND SPANKIN' NEW HOUSE! Not only is his house awesome, but we all had a lot of fun, and I met some really cool new people, too.

Sunday
The morning came way too early, as it usually does when I volunteer on the weekends. At St. Awesome's at 8:15am to continue my Video Switcher role. After the last service, Matt, Casey, Patch, Tim, and I grabbed some quick lunch from Backyard Burger, and headed back to the church. Back at the church I helped lead a Lighting Seminar with Matt for the rest of the guys. It was fun, but I'm so horrible at that kind of thing. I teach much like I learn, by doing rather than being told how. After the seminar, I went back home and crashed hard. Slept for a few hours, then did homework, and went to bed.

Revue. Rewind. Replay.

The Short Version.

Let's go back all the way to last Tuesday...

Tuesday | April 17
Normal LONG day. Went with some friends to a free stand-up comic that was on campus after my last class of the day. He had high points and low points, but overall, I laughed a lot.

Wednesday | April 18
That night I went to see All The Great Books, Abridged presented by EKU's Theatre Department. The three guys cast in this show had great chemistry and awesome timing. It was a fun night.

Thursday | April 19
I had my first "The Dame" experience. Went with Logan, Lucy, and Chris to see Unknown Hinson. Google him, or check him out on YouTube. He's an interesting character, and a lot of fun to watch.

Friday | April 20
After some quick laundry, I drove to Louisville to hang out with a couple of friends and go to Thunder Over Louisville. Marshall and I played a LOT of Guitar Hero II (on Xbox360) that night.

Saturday | April 21
Headed down to the river at around 10:00am to get a good spot. And get a good spot, we did. At 3:00pm the festivities got going with an air show that was awesome... and loud! When it got dark, the real thunder began... the largest pyrotechnic display in North America! It was amazing! (I'll post photos later) After the festivities were over, we went over to another friends house and played more Guitar Hero II... this time on a HUGE screen TV. We rocked until about 2:30am.

Sunday | April 22
Slept in. Took naps. Had lunch. Drove home. Picked up General Tso's chicken from Tsing Tao on the way home. When I got home, met the girl that's going to be dog- and house-sitting for Dustin and Katie while they're having fun in Paris. That's right, France.

That's all. Now scram.

Tragedy again

Sometimes life gives you lemons.

There's no making sense of situations sometimes. Much like the awful scene that took place yesterday at Virginia Tech. I was talking about it with my mom on the phone, and she was talking about how frustrating the reporters were handling the press conferences. They were desperately searching for a "fall guy", and asking the same questions over and over, to which the person had no information about.

In a time when we should be sorrowful and prayerful, I'm thankful. A couple of my cousins graduated from Virginia Tech, and just thinking about the fact that if this happened a couple years ago, they could've been victims in this tragedy makes me feel a little sick to my stomach.

If you do nothing else today, please, take a moment of silence at some point and pray for the families affected by this event at Virginia Tech.

weekend

I haven't done one of these in a while, let's see if I'm rusty or not...

Thursday
Woke up to some troubling news about a fire in the Paddy Wagon. The Wagon was a cool Irish Pub downtown. By far my favorite watering hole in Richmond. The truly scary part for me was that my favorite place to hang out was only a couple doors down from the pub. Luckily it was only closed for the day (due to that section of Main Street being blocked off), and it reopened on Friday. To console myself, I grabbed General Tso's chicken from Tsing Tao.

Friday
I spent most of the day finishing up my costume design project for class. We had to design costumes (and changes) for two of the main female characters in Fallen Angels. When I get all my projects back, I'll scan them in or take a photo of them so you can see what I've been up to in that class.

Went to class and my teacher was very impressed with the progress that I've made since the beginning of class. He was very complimentary. This project had to be painted in watercolor. I'm terrible at painting, but we've been practicing in class, and his comment made me feel much better about my work.

While sitting at home, I got a call from Ben. He and his wife were in town! A pleasant and unexpected surprise. We went to dinner at Casa Fiesta and caught up a little bit. They were in town for a funeral of a friends mother. :( So a good thing under not-so-good circumstances. Later that night I went to another local watering hole with my friends Casey and Michelle. One of Casey's friends was playing at the place that night and so we went and listened for a while.

Saturday
I originally had other plans for this weekend, but they were sort of changed, so I was able to enjoy relaxing at home for a little bit, watch TV, and straighten up the room some (not serious cleaning, just a little). Later that night, I met Ben, Rebekah, Chris and his friend at Miyako's for sushi! We actually sat in the sushi bar section since Rebekah finally realized she likes sushi. :) After dinner, Ben, Rebekah, and I hung out at Rebekah's parents house. We chatted, watched some stand-up, watched a little National Treasure, and Ben and I played a little bit of Lux.

Sunday
Woke up and went to church at St. Awesome's. They started out the service with a Mute Math video. Pretty sweet. Went home and lounged around for a while. Dustin, Katie and I hit Qdoba for dinner, and then I went into solitude to relax, watch TV, and read my homework for class the next day.

Tragedy

too close for comfort

maxx7736: I have some really bad news...
skipthehero: what?!
maxx7736: The Paddy Wagon was on fire this morning.
skipthehero: OH NO!
maxx7736: They had a lot of downtown blocked off to fight it.
skipthehero: ohmygosh
maxx7736: It reached the bar next door to it, but last I heard that was it. So on the brightside livewire should be okay.
skipthehero: that's good.
maxx7736: It looked pretty bad though, at least from what I could see.
skipthehero: that stinks... do you know if anyone was in either of the places?
maxx7736: The report said that they believe everyone made it out safe.
skipthehero: good

My List

What dreams may come?

Inspiration abounds after I saw this on Erin's livejournal. One dream for each year of life. That's 28 for me. Here they are in no particular order.

1. Graduate College
2. Have my own place of residence
3. Have a decent paying job that I enjoy
4. Get married
5. Go on a cruise
6. Visit Stephanie and Chris in London
7. Travel to Ireland
8. Make my friends and family proud
9. Watch all the classic movies
10. Act on stage again
11. Be a better man (person)
12. Be a better Christian
13. Learn a second language (French or German)
14. Tour with a show at least once
15. Tour with a concert group at least once
15. Visit my father's grave
16. Be a Big Brother (for Big Brothers and Big Sisters)
17. Learn to play the guitar better
18. Learn to love more
19. Teach my (someday) children about life, love, and laughter
20. That everyone I know will know and understand how much I care for them
21. Have a beer with my son on his 21st birthday
22. Play Mark in RENT
23. Play Seymore in Little Shop of Horrors
24. Spend more time with my family
25. Travel around the world with good friends (and/or significant other)
26. Learn to dance (and lead)
27. Own a boat
28. Make others happy (and laugh)


There's my list. Now it's your turn.

Happy Easter

The REAL good news.

I setup and ran lights this weekend for the Easter services at St. Awesome's. The energy in a room of over 1000 people singing in praise of their creator is just simply put, incredible.

Normally to setup for a weekend, we meet about 1:00pm on Saturday. Since this weekend was a bigger event, and there were a lot of things that were being added and incorporated, there were about six of us that showed up on Thursday and Friday evening to get jump start on the setup. It was probably one of my favorite stage setup's we've done at church. Here's a couple photos I took this weekend. Click on them to see a larger image.

My Savior loves
My Savior lives
My Savior's always there for me

My God He was
My God He is
My God is always gonna be

Good News

About time something went right.

Yesterday I applied for a job on campus (that would start in the Fall Semester) at ResNet as their Publication Designer.

Today, as I sat down in my last class of the day, I got a phone call from them. I have an interview with them on Monday! I'm very excited. It would be awesome to have a job to come back to after the summer when I return to classes in the fall.

almost there

The tunnel opening is just ahead.

I registered for my classes this morning at 12:30am (as soon as EKU's registration site was ready to go). I'm taking 13 hours next semester (4 classes for you non-college lingo type). After that I'll only have 3 classes to take and will graduate in May of 2008 (cheering all around). For all you stalkers out there, here's my class lineup for Fall 2007.

08:00am - 09:55am MW  TEC313 (Digital Photography)
10:10am - 11:00am MWF ENG212 (Literature II)
11:15am - 12:05pm MWF BIO121 (Principles of Biology)
12:20pm - 02:15pm W   BIOlab (Biology Lab)
02:30pm - 04:35pm MW  GCM217 (Electronic Publishing I)