happy new pictures!

happy new year's eve everyone!



happy new pictures!

everything i know about love

everything i know about love, i learned from my dog



1. sometimes you'll feel like chewing up the carpet. take some midol; i'll just deal with it. things will be better in a few days and there's no point in letting it bother me now.



2. any healthy relationship requires exercise. if i don't take you out and let you chase a frisbee at least once a day you start pacing around the house, whining, and you won't stop harassing me until we go somewhere. i can't afford arby's every date, sometimes you'll have to settle for krystal.



3. i can recognize subtle hints. i used to not catch the looks and not-so-blatant suggestions, but by golly, now i can! i know exactly what facial expression says "i really need to go outside and poop now."



4. teaching you to walk on a leash takes time. i'll be patient. you have to learn for yourself to not pull against the choke collar.



5. commitment is a lot of work. it requires a lot of quality time, praise, plenty of shoulder rubs, and the other little things like flea medicine. but in the end all the sacrifices are worth it. it's a lot easier to prevent the fleas than to get rid of them once they're in my sheets.

who does that?!?

i cut my nose shaving this morning... who does that?!?



today's a big day: happy birthday katie!



oh yeah, it's christmas eve too. merry christmas, y'all.

my big head

i've been in milledgeville for a couple of days. katie came up and we did our little christmas thing. one of the things she got me was an augusta national hat. this is really cool cause you can't buy them at the masters or anything so it's a pretty exclusive gift (her mom works there). go ahead and laugh: even though it's adjustable, the thing doesn't fit. like i can loosen the strap, but my head's so tall that it looks ridiculous and doesn't stay on so well. so yeah, i felt bad cause she put a lot of thought and effort into getting me a pretty unique special gift and she felt bad cause... i mean, what do you say to someone who can't wear a one-size-fits-all cap? i kept it and am going to give it to my dad, but it was still just... weird.



Sweet 2614: haha that's funny

Sweet 2614: i thought your head was just big in the metaphoric sense

Sweet 2614: but apparently physically too





(this was the biggest big head picture that i could find.)

cabin fever

i haven't updated since i left school. finals came out alright. i got a B in one of the classes that i was worried about, and it was well-deserved 'cause i was lazy and stupid. in retrospect i should have put at least an ounce of effort into one of two graded assignments, but what's done is done and this is the last i'll say about it.



my trip home to athens has consisted of a lot of looking at a lot of sites listed through www.photoblogs.org, and not much else. i worked the after school program my first week here. yesterday (sunday) we had christmas on my dad's side. i took about a roll of (hopefully) cool pictures of the farm, was given a desktop cd organizer, and got some money. my brother's driving has gotten worse so i attempted to sleep through it unsuccessfully. got some good shots of eric sleeping in funny positions though.



the gifts that i ordered for kris and katie got here today. they were a day behind schedule, but i guess i can't complain with the holiday rush. i did the shopping sitting at home, didn't have to deal with any saleslady badgering me, and i'm happy with the results. hopefully they will be as well. i need to go atl to see kris and mr. and mrs. henderson sometime soon. i'll try to go tomorrow, but if that doesn't work out, i have to go next week.



i get to see katie on wednesday! we both need to get out of our parents' houses. she needs to get away from her clothes folding job at rich's and i need to get away from myself. i'm super excited. her birthday's on christmas eve so i had to do double duty shopping. hopefully the stuff i got her will make her laugh. i got an array of stuff. it's like a stock portfolio, at least one thing that i give her is sure to perform.



and for all of you haters out there who know my history and never let me live it down, our first date was on halloween and i haven't freaked out once!



went downtown with eric today. got my oil changed, had the worst meal i've ever had at the grill, bought some gloves at masada, and a few random things at junkman's. i was wearing my boston hat, and the cashier at the grill goes, "i love your hat." i said thanks and put my change in my wallet. then she adds, "that's the best braves' hat they ever made." i just smiled and left. some things are better left uncorrected.



(sorry, no photos on this computer. i finally splurged and ordered a macro lens saturday, so expect some extreme closeup pictures shortly. i also bought a camera a junkman's that takes 4 pictures per frame, dividing it into 4 frames and tinting each frame a different color. we'll see how they all come out.)

i love my dawg

blue caught the frisbee for the first time today. i was one proud papa. even better than that, he started bringing it back. it's like he understands that it's more fun to chase a frisbee than it is for me to chase him. while that game is fun, chasing the frisbee and getting rewarded when you bring it back is more fun. i've read that border collies have this insane desire to please, and i'm starting to see that.

i've also just about trained him to walk beside me instead of pulling me. we even managed to walk by a flock of geese without him getting distracted. when they flew off he got sidetracked, but still, that's a huge improvement. i've decided he learns really fast, i just have to find the right motivation.

one more final and then a month of nothing!

urge to art

i went to bed artistically frustrated. i was in an artsy mood, but couldn't come up with anything to create. i read most of the latest issue of spin, listened to bob dylan (something i never do) and listened to elliot smith. i started a song but didn't think much of it because i was exhausted and it didn't feel like it would amount to be anything special. there weren't any artsy movies on my 5,000 movie channels, only jerry bruckheimer blockbusters. i fell asleep at like 8, woke up at 10, walked blue, and went back to sleep. woke up this morning at about 8 and finished the song. it's great, my new favorite. but i guess that's the point. keep getting better and better. i really want to start a band, something i've never done. i've got some guys in mind down here, and i think they're all willing, so hopefully i'll pull something together on my christmas break and maybe get up the guts to ask my camp owner for the money to go into the studio. he's offered so many times, but i couldn't ever ask him for it. maybe i'll pitch it as an investment opportunity to him and that will make me feel better about it. the only problem with that is i have no business sense. i've always enjoyed working with a friend of mine on recording projects, but seeing as he never gave me the final mix of the last one, and it was like 2 years ago, i'm not going to work with him anymore. he had his shot and treated me with terrible customer service cause we were friend and i guess he thinks he can do that. if any of you ever talk to him, i've still got the money waiting for him as soon as i get the cd.

i pulled an all-nighter thursday, so i took a nap at katie's while she packed and did stuff she had to do around her house. when i woke up i helped her load her car then we made our relationship "official" and she made fun of my commitment issues.



i've got a lot of pics scanned, so expect a lot soon.

inside my head

i got to teach all day again today. i really enjoy it, but i wish my host teacher could be there to give me some feedback. i've only got one more day there and i'm going to be so sad to leave because i love the kids and love the teachers who i work with. oh well, more on that thursday when i'll be crying my eyes out over the things that the kids are going to do for me when i leave.



ever wonder what goes through my head at 6 am? didn't think so, but i'm gonna tell you anyway. i typed this out during my planning period:

only 75% of a bar of soapgets used. you've got the part that washes away when you're not using it. you've got the part that absorbs water, swells up, and gets stuck in the dish. and then there's the part at the end when the soap is useless. what do you do with it? it doesn't lather anymore. it's too small to hold. it breaks in half if you use it long enough. i guess there are a few different ways you could handle these remains. one way is to consolidate it into a new bar. the part that absorbs the water serves as a good bonding agent to connect the two bars. another is throw it away. then there's the drop-it-and-leave-it-in-the-drain method. this works fairly well until you realize that it isn't going away and is just clogging your drain. it works like concrete and rebar. the soap and hair fuse together to create an indestructible obstacle that dams the drain flow. then there's the flushing method. this doesn't work as well as it sounds. the soap doesn't always go down on the first flush. now you're stuck with the dilemma of flushing again and again until you luck out and get enough flow to push it down, or letting it sit there. you're either going to waste water in this game or you're going to end up with some cloudy, funky looking water. and if your soap has dye in it, you have to explain to your company why this mystery cloud is rising out of the bottom of the bowl. it's like you're being overcome by rapidly producing plankton that are about to consume your house like a red tide. so yeah... these are the thoughts that go through my head when i'm in the shower.

smelling fear and other tales - thanksgiving 2004

so i stayed in milledgeville until thursday morning when i drove to grandma's. i got a lot of work done and got to spend some time with this girl who's growing on me every day. i had to swing by blockbuster to drop off a dvd, and out of habit left my door open while i slid it into the slot. well, apparently blue sees open doors as an escape route, and he decided he'd run away from me in the middle of the busiest part of milledgeville. there's this little five lane road called 441 that runs in front of blockbuster, and blue decided to run into it. a car expected him to get out of the way, so they didn't slow down until the last instant. i don't know how they missed him, but i've never seen him run so fast, so scared, from in front of the car, right back to me. i've heard of smelling fear, but i've never actually smelled it until then. i don't know if blue leaked something or what the smell was, but he smelled awful until about an hour later. and he wouldn't sit in the passenger seat like he usually does. he curled up in the floor behind mine. i don't know how he fit back there, but apparently he felt more comfortable there. at the farm he got to run around in the mud and scare dogs twice his size away from him. this lab was barking at him, but whenever blue walked towards him to play, the dog jumped over a fence back into his pen. we spent a few hours with the family before justin and i headed to athens to grab our bikes and his jeep for our trip to the smokies.



we stayed in this rundown holiday inn in knoxville. it wasn't too far of a drive to cades cove, the place we camped every year of our life until i was about 20. we had planned on biking the 11 mile loop road that goes arond the cove, but it was too cold, and there were too many cars, so we took a 5 mile hike to see abrams falls. there are a lot of log bridges, and blue wasn't too keen on walking across them, so i decided i'd let him cross through the creek and let justin catch him on the other side. bad idea. justin chased him until his asthma made him stop, and i ran after him a little longer. people tried to catch him on the way, but he had decided to go swimming in the swollen creek that leads to the falls and was soaking wet, so they let him go when they saw that. finally, about half a mile down the trail, he decided it'd be fun to play with these kids. then he turned around and ran by me, i tried to grab him but just pulled out a little fur, but justin however was sick of chasing him. he dove on him, tackled him like a pro, knocking a fairly large downed tree at the edge of the trail out of the way in the process. i risked slipping off the bridges from that part forward while carrying my wet muddy puppy. it's amazing how many people will stop and talk to you just because you have a dog. i got used to saying "thank you" instead of "howdy" whenever i saw people because all i heard was "pretty dog, pretty dog." we saw a bunch of deer and met our quota for black bears when we saw a momma out in a field. apparently her cubs were nearby and a lot of people pissed her off enough to where she'd stand up to scare them off. this guy got really close to take a picture, and i had him in the frame waiting for her to chase him off, but unfortunately she didn't. i wished i had a telephoto lense, but i'm not going to buy a new lense until this christmas and it's going to be a macro. maybe i'll get a telephoto with my first paycheck next summer. my friend lori who lives in maryville came to see us that night and brought a friend. we went to chili's for dinner and hung out at the hotel for a while. blue is getting so much better with company, he's calming down faster and faster.



we went offroading yesterday at tellico. i've never seen so many crazy machines. people will build anything and everything to take it offroading. from a suzuki samurai on 35s to just a frame with an engine in the front and a gas tank in the back. we rode some trails with about 10 other jeeps that are in my brother's club. justin impressed me. his driving's gotten a lot better and he handled a lot of things that scared some other guys with better jeeps with bigger tires and lifts. poor blue was trying to find a way to stand where he felt secure and it just wasn't happening. it was funny to watch him lay in half of the crate and slide from side to side as we climbed over rocks. he was really good the whole trip though, minus the times when he wasn't on a leash. we listened to the insanity of the uga/tech game on the way home. i fell asleep when i got back to milledgeville at about 9.



i'll post some pics when i get them back from walmart.

not a habit

i'm not going to quote stuff often, but this is really good and i'm so busy doing school work on my thanksgiving "break" that i won't have time to write for a while. happy turkey day, and i'll see y'all when i get back from the mountains.

Throughout history,

people with physical and mental disabilities

have been abandoned at birth,

banished from society

used as court jesters,

drowned and burned during the Inquisition,

gassed in Nazi Germany,

and still continue to be segregated, institutionalized,

tortured in the name of behavior management,

abused, raped, euthanized, and murdered.

Now, for the first time, people with disabilities are

taking their rightful place as fully contributing citizens.

The danger is that we will respond with remediation and

benevolence rather then equity and respect. And so, we offer you

A Credo for Support

Do not see my disability as a problem.

Recognize that my disability is an attribute.

Do not see my disability as a deficit.

It is you who see me as deviant and helpless.

Do not try to fix me because I am not broken.

Support me. I can make my contribution to the community in my way.

Do not see me as your client.

I am your fellow citizen. See me as your neighbor. Remember, none of us can be self-sufficient.

Do not try to modify my behavior.

Be still and listen. What you define as inappropriate may be my attempt to communicate with you in the only way I can.

Do not try to change me, you have no right.

Help me learn what I want to know.

Do not hide your uncertainty behind "professional" distance.

Be a person who listens and does not take my struggle away from me by trying to make it all better.

Do not use theories and strategies on me.

Be with me. And when we struggle with each other, let me give that rise to self-reflection.

Do not try to control me.

I have a right to my power as a person. What you call non-compliance or manipulation may actually be the only way I can exert control over my life.

Do not teach me to be obedient, submissive, and polite.

I need to feel entitled to say no if I am to protect myself.

Do not be charitable to me.

The last thing the world needs is another Jerry Lewis. Be my ally against those who exploit me for their own gratification.

Do not try to be my friend.

I deserve more then that. Get to know me. We may become friends.

Do not help me even if it does make you feel good.

Ask me if I need your help. Let me show you how to better assist me.

Do not admire me.

A desire to live a full life does not warrant adoration. Respect me for respect presumes equity.

Do not tell, correct and lead.

Listen, support and follow.

Do not work on me.

Work with me.

By

Norman Kunc and Emma Van der Klift

laundry

mooching laundry services off of people comes at a price. at audrey's apartment, they make fun of you for sorting your laundry. oh, and you get accused of calling her roommate fat when you said nothing of the sort. at katie's, the dryer is so dang hard to figure out that it takes like 3 hours to do just one load. i didn't think i was ever going to get out of there. ;-)



and then there's brett. brett, brett, brett. at brett's place you have to face a little yippy dog who doesn't think it's funny if you growl at him. then there's the philosophical, political, and theological conversations that you must engage in to pay for your stay. and worst of all, listening to him complain about not getting any. bethany, please come home. your husband is driving the rest of us crazy.





(how you get some in a shirt like that is beyond me...)

indelible impressions

certain people in our lives leave indelible impressions on our hearts. and no matter how things go when they leave our lives, we still hold them dear. whether they rip your heart out or you leave on amicable terms, when enough time has passed they usually manage to regain the respect and and fondness that you once held for them.



and when they take advantage of that, just to push your buttons, they rip away scabs and scars that you had gotten used to thinking look more beautiful than they really are.





(this was growing on a trail at the kolomoki indian mounds. it's funny how the last pictures on the roll, the quick shots are so special.)

fights: everywhere they shouldn't be

(i dared kim to wear the tacky head band and all she got were compliments... go figure.)



i'm flipping channels friday night and come up on the end of the pacers/pistons game. everybody's seen it, it's ridiculous, both fans and players were way out of line. fast forward to the clemson/usc game. yusef kelly, laughing about it says, "it's no worse than the pacers and pistons last night. they actually got the fans involved. at least we kept it to the football teams." friggin' 400 year old lou holtz was out in the middle of it trying to break it up. way to send your coach out in style you idiots.



skip ahead to last night. kim (pronounced kee-um) invited katie and i to go with her family to the macon trax hockey game. no good fights!!! the game itself was disappointing, macon got killed 5-2 and didn't play well at all. to make things more pitiful, the teams had staged a fight, so as the first face off puck is dropped, all the players stop to watch these two guys go at it. except they didn't really fight. it was kind of a, "i'll swing at you and miss a few times while you swing at me and miss, then we'll hug for a few seconds until the refs decide they can break us up even if we aren't laying on the ice because we look really gay right now."



other than the pitiful game, we had a lot of fun. their tickets are on the second row (on the glass is a lot more money) so there were a few good checks right in our faces. both of kim's boys are the cutest kids ever. her four year old son aaron is pretty shy but finally opened up. and her 6 year old, zach, tried to beat me up like he did last time i saw him, except this time he was a little more persistent. it was my fault for getting him so wound up, of course. oh, and just like when he fell in love with larissa, he fell in love with katie. as we were walking to our seats doug told him to hold his hand, and he ran back and grabbed katie's.



after the game we grabbed some wendy's watched florida finish off fsu (congrats zook) and fell asleep watching saturday night live. i woke up to showtime at the apollo, and i swore it was still snl because it was so terrible. blue was happy to see me when i rolled in at 2.

gray street

i've been thinking about a lot of the gray areas in my life spiritually. sometimes i'm totally against them, and sometimes i'm pretty apathetic or even supportive of them. i'm not sure if it's directly related to where i am spiritually at the time or not, but it's just funny how opinions change. we can justify anything we do and we can condemn our every action. we're our own defense lawyers, and we're our own prosecutors. right now, with all that i've got going on, i'm my own therapy.



i guess i truly know the answer. sometimes i just refuse to accept it.

When there is any debate, quit. "Why shouldn't I do this?" You are on the wrong track. There is no debate possible when conscience speaks. At your peril, you allow one thing to obscure your inner communion with God. Drop it, whatever it is, and see that you keep your inner vision clear.

-Oswald Chambers (http://www.myutmost.org/)

spilling the pintos

ok, katie just left and i'm not tired enough to go to sleep yet, so i have time for this thing.



saturday: katie and i went to atlanta to see the van gogh exhibit at the high museum of art. my friend court bought us tickets earlier in the week so that i wouldn't have to pay the surcharge, and we picked up the tickets from her and took her to her accounting test @ georgia state. it was a whopping 10 minutes that i got to see her, but it was still nice. she was my best friend down here last year and i was pretty upset when she transferred.



there wasn't as much van gogh as i had hoped to see, but it was still neat to see the originals of works that i've only seen in books and on posters. it's unreal to me how colorful and realistic looking works of art, even from centuries ago can be. the museum was pretty crowded, and it was funny to watch people walk around with headphones on listening to the commentary. i never got a photography permit, and probably wouldn't have been brave enough to take their pictures though. it was pretty dark anyway, and you can't use a flash in there.



the museum's huge, and we walked around on every floor, stopping less and less to look at stuff as we got ready to leave. i felt pretty uneducated and unhip, and it was always comforting to hear other patrons make remarks like, "ooh, this one's cool. it looks so real." i don't buy all that artspeak anyway, although i'm sure plenty of people would disagree.



after the museum we drove up to alpharetta to see kris. i haven't seen her since august, so that was a must-do on this trip as well. we sat and talked at her house for a while, then went to eat at the cheesecake factory @ north point mall. it's not as cool on the inside as the one in buckhead, but the food was incredible. katie said it was her new favorite place to eat, to which i said, "oh great" pretty sarcastically. she said she'd pay the next time which i told her wasn't going to happen.



i woke up pretty congested on saturday morning but was excited about the day and didn't let it bother me. i didn't really feal bad until we went out to eat. driving home was pretty rough too, but the good company kept me awake.



today: today started on a pretty low point. i found out that tara, the coolest, craziest mother of two that i've ever met, is going to be moving to oklahoma and leaving the cohort after this semester. i'm pretty devastated. who else can i ride with and jam out on john mayer and maroon 5? who else will buy me a bouncy ball from a vending machine when we go out to eat? who else will have a son who refers to me as "jason mraz?" it really stinks, we're not even a quarter of the way through this program and i'm losing the one who keeps me sane. man i'm going to miss her!

katie came over tonight and brought me some dinner and cheered me up. she brought some work with her, and we had our laptops out and were productive for about... oh... maybe 30 minutes. well, i worked longer than that, but she was on im the whole time. she's a super sweet, super cute girl who i'm getting more and more attracted to. brett says i'm smitten. only time will tell. (i hear all of you now laughing at that comment and doubting me. it's okay, i can take it.)



well i'm gonna be a good little student teacher and get some sleep so i'm not dragging in front of the kids tomorrow. hope you enjoyed this long post and this picture of blue and a kitten.

feeling a little better...

i'm getting better i think. i could actually breathe this morning when i woke up, so that was an improvement. not good enough to talk about yesterday's trip to atl though. =P i'll just keep you in suspense. i finally got some old pictures developed so here's a taste.

i refuse to be sick

i'm sick, but i don't want to be, so i'm going to pretend this is how i feel:



(yes it's a jump rope. find this and other exciting things in jessica's car!)

2 sudafed and call me in the morning.

happy

i know i don't say it or feel it much, but i'm happy. everything in my life is lining up and going so well. i've got pressure, but i'm succeeding and relationships are good and things are just working out.



on a sad note, my cohort leader dr. jackson's brother died today. we don't know hardly anything at all about her personal life, but it's just incredible to see how loving my cohort is and how they all stepped up to buy flowers and offer up prayers to our Comforter. God is good.

good times

today was a great day. God is good. (all the time!) i've got so much going on and so much coming up, but everything is working itself out so well. whether it's school related or personal stuff, everything's exciting right now. my host teacher's daughter was sick today, so she and her co-teacher agreed to let me teach all morning. things went really well, and i'm learning more and more by doing. i skipped math today (which also has a positive effect on the emotions) to attend one of my student's sst meetings (the first step on the way to being identified as special ed). it was really encouraging to see how involved his parents are in his learning. they aren't married, but they came to the meeting together and seem to cooperate well and help him a lot. i felt empathetic for them. that meeting can't be a comfortable time. i can't imagine sitting there while people around the room take turns discussing the areas that your child struggles in. they handled it very well considering it was a lot of information, and to the teachers' and staff's credit, they handled it very professionally and gently. i don't want to leave that placement. a bunch of the kids drew pictures for me today. i even commissioned one to make me something for katie. all i told him was, "i want something that i can give to a girl." he started it out by drawing "i love you" in bubble letters, but then flipped the page over and drew, "i like you a lot." then he drew this awesome butterfly. he's such a ladies man. if i can't do it on my own, at least i've got my kids. =P

crunch time

we talked about all of the projects and tests that we have in the next few weeks, and for the first time this semester i'm feeling pressured. i'm going to have to start working on things now so that i can finish them all on time and do well on them. oh well, enjoy this picture that mcginnis took of me a couple of years ago.

i refuse to get sick

here's to hoping sleep fixes things. goodnight.

my very own blog!

so this is it. i've been paying for this domain for a while, and now i have finally found some use for it. shouldn't i be doing work right now? of course. but i found out tonight playing with this and reading photography magazines is a lot more fun.

speaking of photography, why can't i find cheaper hobbies? i mean, outdoorsy things are cheap, but i've spent hundreds of dollars on gear over the past few years. then there's the road bike i bought years ago that i haven't ridden for years. not to mention the mountain bike that got stolen while i was at tech. oh, and that guitar habit i have isn't cheap either (although i haven't bought a new one in over a year). then there's that cd habit (300+ and counting). with photography, i just bought a digital camera a few weeks ago. and then there's that lens that i want to buy for my 35 mm... so yeah, i need cheaper hobbies.

anyway, i need to get to work on my science center that i'm introducing to my class tomorrow. they're gonna sprout seeds in different environments to determine that plants need and grow towards light. i love second grade. =P