dora tha explora

way too busy for a decent post.

good times with good hearts

we had a great weekend. the good ol' not-so-trusty campus view bus pulled out of the parking lot around 5:30 friday afternoon headed for sky valley. the kids seemed like a pretty tight-knit group, and they weren't so anxious to listen to what we adults had to say. but they were all pretty well-behaved. we arrived at the cosgrove's amazing cabin (i use that term loosely because it was 3 stories. the only thing "cabin" about it was that it was made out of wood.) and ping pong and pool games ensued. after some fresh air bar-b-que, more games, and a few of us watching madagascar, midnight had rolled around and then came the challenge of getting 16 teenage boys to go to sleep. i tried guilt ("remember guys, we're concentrating on putting others' needs before our own this weekend, and most of us are trying to sleep"). the chaperone sleeping on the other couch threatened. i fell asleep then got rudely awoken, stumbled over kids to get to the noisemakers and was a little mean ("in case you haven't noticed, no one is laughing at you anymore because it's annoying and we're trying to sleep"). if nothing else, it was effective.

got up pretty early saturday to take a shower before getting everybody up. the sun on the valley was gorgeous

and the kids were pretty good about getting up and putting away their sleeping stuff. we drove to joe's country cookin' and had an amazing breakfast (huge portions, cheap). finally got to cataloochee at around noon, and after the usual headaches of getting skis and lift tickets, me and a kid who had skied a lot before headed for an intermediate slope to warm up while everyone else took lessons. we did it a few times, then headed for the top of the mountain to hit the black diamond. the slope itself wasn't sso bad, it was the idiots who had no business being on it falling all around us. there was the occasional "i know what i'm doing and will fly by you" person, but most were "i have no idea how to stop, i'll try not to hit you on my way down." the most fun i had during the day was teaching other people how to ski and reassuring them and taking them to the intermediate slopes. there were lots of great stories from the beginners of them struggling and finally getting it, as well as the embarrassing ones of getting run over by the lift and falling when getting off of it.

we ate dinner at a little family-run sports grill on the way back to the cabin. after being on the road about an hour, the kids started singing worship songs. my voice lasted through about 2, and it was fun to just listen the rest of the time. it's good for the soul.

it wasn't too hard to get them to go to bed last night, although i'm not sure we succeeded in getting them all to take showers.

it was a really inspiring weekend with a bunch of good kids that i didn't know before we left. i'm gonna ask a few of them to work at camp. they've got good work ethic, but more importantly good hearts.

now to do some homework i've been putting off too long. tomorrow i start student teaching.

3rd active weekend in a row

(oohhh yeahhhhh! that's me)

i'm enjoying this "work during the week, do something on the weekend," but i'm not doing enough work during the week, and it's catching up with me.

i expressed interest in going skiing with my brother's youth group at my church back home. the guy leading the trip (i won't get into the lack of youth minister cause i don't know much about the situation) was excited and invited me to be a chaperone (a.k.a. free trip!) because the other adults going weren't going to ski. i'm praying that i can balance the school work i have to finish with being whatever these kids need for me to be this weekend. it's an interesting situation because i haven't been active in that church (or any church frankly) in quite a while. i'm just going into it humble and open for whatever God wants me to do. as adam would say, watching his hand. i'll have my reflective listening ears on and be whoever it is i'm supposed to be.

and hey, what's more fun than skiing in 50 degree weather anyway?

6 a.m. in the garden of good and evil

this is probably the strangest time i've ever made a post this long. i haven't slept well the past few nights (i blame it on a hotel and the fact that i've probably been snoring cause i'm all clogged up).

to play off of brett's augusta entry, riding with brett is anything but a lesson in music appreciation. he has very interesting tastes, but alas the only cds in his console were veggie tales and the wiggles. so we listened to whatever radio stations were in range and got some interesting selections. we didn't get iced in while in savannah, but we got "ice ice baby" on the way there.

davis was following us, and needed gas so we stopped off at a bp on the way out of town. brett got a chicken finger basket that was probably cooked 3 hours earlier, and i had the pleasure of teaching a young man how to operate a newspaper box. the guy was probably my age or a little younger. i was waiting on brett and davis to pay for their food and gas. the victim pulled up in his ford explorer, music thumping, cigarette in his mouth, and 2 quarters in his hand. he put them into the slot on the machine then pushed the coin return button. "maybe he doesn't want the paper after all," i thought. he did it again. and again. and again. then started talking to himself, saying things like "this thing don't work." finally after putting his money in and getting it back a few more times, he said "hey man, you know how this thing work?" i said, "yeah, you just pull the blue part." (the coin return is black, and you push it, this should be sufficient directions, right?) money in, push coin return. "no, no, you pull it." two more times. finally i walked up to him and the special ed teacher finally kicked in. he had failed enough on his own. he put the money in and i said "stop, don't do anything. see where it says 'PULL' right here. it's the door, pull that and it will open." he finally got it. "thanks folk" he said as he retreated to his ride, now playing a new song. i tried not to laugh but it was amusing to me that he was getting so frustrated. guess i wasn't much of a special ed teacher after all. i laughed.

other notables on the way to savannah included, but were not limited to:

• a large tree in the median of I-16 decorated like a Christmas tree
• an older couple parked on the side of I-16 picking up walnuts off the ground
• the "everything's better in metter" billboard (i lived in metter until i was 2)
• the "pruning" of crepe myrtle trees in the median (they whacked them off until they were only about 2 feet of trunk)
• a bumper sticker that read "say no to drugs: don't eat imported shrimp." (i don't get it either)

we checked into our $49 a night ghettotel,

(notice we got 2 of the same picture)
and after an almost nap, met davis outside to head to the executive board meeting. it was the shortest one that i've ever been to (3 hours) and i told davis (now the student president) not to get used to it. after the meeting we grabbed some checkers and i hung out with the juniors staying at our hotel for a while, brett and i helped davis write a speech, and went to bed. friday came too early and the students worked their butts off to make the conference run smoothly. i had soaked through my dress shirt from running around and carrying heavy things, so i didn't take my suit jacket off. after lunch we had a guest speaker. i'm not really sure what he talked about because he was long winded and i never got past the introduction because i wanted to set up for the student business meeting and make sure i had everything lined up because i was a little nervous. the speaker went an hour over, so it became my mission to make the meeting really short. i managed to squeeze in all the reports, goal making, and elections into 30 minutes. i passed the gavel on to davis and my presidency ended. i was happy.

went back to the hotel, showered, put on some jeans, tennis shoes and my nike hoodie (all luxury items after wearing a suit all day) and waited for the girls (lyndsay, kristina, and emilie) to pick us up to go out to eat. the trip to river street was adventurous 'cause none of us were that sure how to get there, and savannah has a tendency to get ghetto very quickly. after sitting down at the pirate's house and everyone agreeing that we didn't want to pay that much for dinner, we went down to spanky's and had some of the best chicken fingers i've ever had. after bargaining for a haunted trolley tour and getting the price dropped from $25 to $10, maybe even $3 a person, we decided it would be too late and we wanted to go to bed at a decent hour since lyndsay and i were presenting at 8 a.m.

saturday's presentation came

and there were only 2 people there at 8:10. we recruited about 10 juniors and 2 other non-GCSUers showed up. we warmed everyone up with a sound and motion story,

bui talked about masks, we did role playing with 4 groups presenting various scenes from charlotte's web,

and i talked about puppets and how to use them. i checked my watch, saw that it was 8:48 and started my conclusion. presentations were scheduled every hour, and i was wrapping ours up so that we could fix the room back to the way it was (we cleared it out to give us room to play). i looked at the door, and ashley has a really panicked look on her face. then she moves off to the side and a not so gentle man swipes his hand across his neck to say "cut" as in "end your presentation." i nodded and went back to wrapping things up, pointing the participants to some books that were good resources for further reading, asking for questions. bui went to talk to the man to tell him we were wrapping up. i heard him say "y'all are on my time now" (it was 8:49, his time was from 9-10.) then he walks into the room, while i'm still talking and announces "y'all have to stop, i have to set up."

i was in shock, my group members were in shock, the audience's jaws collectively fell open, and ashley's look said "i'm so sorry, i have no idea what to do with this guy, please don't be mad at me jason, what in the world can i do, i can't believe he did that." i didn't say anything, just stared back at him and then resumed my conclusion as he bustled around in the the doorway. when it was over, bui, being the bigger man that he is, sincerely asked the not so gentle man how he wanted the room arranged and what else we could to for him. kill him with kindness, thattaway bui. we straightened the room, left, and i just kept my mouth shut about the whole thing. all of the participants in the session complained enough for me. i heard he apologized later, which i was glad to hear, but in all honesty, it didn't bother me personally. i was mad, just more in shock that it happened, not really offended. i don't know if it's his business man tenacity (he was presenting his product that he was selling at the conference) was the reason or what, but hopefully our response to it taught him a little something.

i did a few other misc. things the rest of the day, including getting an applause for showing a lady how to make her laptop send a signal to the projector and supporting katie rann in her presentation. took a brief break from the conference to get some lunch with lyndsay and kristina because lyndsay couldn't eat what was being served. the awards ceremony was fun to watch, the highlight being a student at the georgia school for the blind and his tearjerking success story of advocating for himself and getting out of an abusive home. brett, bui, and i left pretty quickly after lunch. about an hour into the trip home, brett asked bui to drive because he was falling asleep (i had come really close to napping, i'm not sure if i fell asleep or not). after about an hour of cruising down I-16 at 90 mph, bui met a deputy from treutlen county. this guy was so impressive, he pulled over bui and a pickup truck at the same time. bui got his yellow slip for 19 over (sound familiar?), and we were back on the road after being told to set the cruise control on 80. "no one around here will bother you for doing that," the deputy advised.

i'm gonna jump in the shower, head to athens, see my puppy, and do some laundry. 1 more week of class then it's back to creekside for 10 weeks of student teaching. i'm excited.

headin' to savannah

(grandma's)

georiga council for exceptional children conference all weekend
thursday night - executive board meeting (usually about 5 hours, my last one!)
friday - job fair, running the student business meeting (handing over the presidency!)
friday night - trolley tour of savannah with 2 hours on rivier street (i'll be good, i have to be, here's why...)
saturday - 8 a.m. presentation. will people actually get up and come see it? who knows...

the conference ends at lunch on saturday. i've put so much work into it. pray that it goes smoothly.

guilty pleasures

(notice my cousin on the right's eyes)

in response to eric and ben posting their guilty pleasures, i figured i'd follow suit. you should appreciate this, because i'm exposing some things that are hopefully amusing, quite embarrassing, and might even change your perception of me. here goes nothing.

CDs - we'll start easy. i have this complex that i have to buy the next new/cool thing. i don't even talk to other people about music that much, it's really for me. to give an example of my obsession, i just bought every derek webb solo album. yeah, all 4 this weekend. i've been known to do crazier things, and i don't think anyone has joined bmg more times than i have.

TV - i watch tv way too much, and it's not the things that you'd be expecting. sure there's the discovery channel, cnn, and college sports, but there are also these wonderful programs:

• vh1 & e! celebrity gossip shows. i have no idea why i watch them but i do. i can tell you more than you want to know about paris hilton and jude law. the cars, the cribs, the love lives, you name it.
  
• jeopardy - as annoying as alex trebek is, i absolutely love the show. i guess it's my nerdiness and my pride by actually being able to answer a large number of questions. i need to be whooped up on by sinyard in trivial pursuit to humble me again.
• not so popular reality shows - surreal life, project runway... yeah, not so masculine either.
• gilmore girls - like ben's love for dawson's creek, i enjoy this show because of the wit, great dialogue, and because i have quite an attraction to alexis bledel. i don't watch it that often, but i never complain when a female friend asks to watch it or i flip over to abc family and it's on.

the web - i'm addicted to the internet. facebook, photoblogs, and of course, eric, ben, and adam's blogs. i constantly check my e-mail, read people's aim away messages, look for new pictures on facebook, and i have about 50 favorite photoblogs that i look at just about every day.

lebron's lightning lemonade bubble gum
sonic chili cheese coneys
fig newtons
rudy's farm sausage biscuits (i eat 2 every morning. they're the secret to my success)

snow flurries and big dreams

(i miss my puppy)

chad and i drove up to nashville on friday, making a stop in atl to pick up his djembe with its new head. we got there at about 10:15 (ga time) and there were snow flurries which was pretty cool since it doesn't snow in milledgeville. we hung out in lindsey's apt, watched hitch and then i finally went to bed. well, when i say bed i mean the floor. by that time chad was sound asleep snoring away in the bed. we got up pretty early to go to breakfast at the cracker barrell and then lindsey went to do some officer training for her sorority.

saturday morning was very cold. and when you add the big buildings funnelling the wind down the downtown streets, you get some crazy low wind chills. we ended up parking in this really run down parking deck on printers alley. it had metal plates covering holes in its floors and there were two strip clubs across the alley from its first floor. everything was closed except for a few record stores and cheap souvenir shops. everybody was asking us if we were there for this nascar thing. did they look at us? i didn't have a moustache or a single corporate advertisement on my body!

chad had a gift certificate to lifeway, so we looked around at cds and books for a while. they were all sold out of derek webb. we left broadway and headed to discover mills and walked around for a while. i went into the gibson store to laugh at anybody paying that much for a guitar. (my chet atkins sst is now up to $2,400 in their store... my ebay price looks better and better.) i paid way too much for 2 derek webb albums at tower records, but i've wanted them for a while and figured i'd buy them since i was on vacation. (that ridiculous sales tax in tennessee will kill ya. i'm sure having no state income tax is nice, but it's really depressing to be a tourist and pay that sales tax.)

we ate lunch at the food court then went back to lindsey's apartment. chad and i jammed a lil bit, but we were pretty tired and so we put on bad boys. there were a lot of people in the apt, and we couldn't really watch the movie, so i took a nap. we figured if we went to cheesecake factory at 6 we'd be able to get a table. we were wrong. people had been waiting since 4:30 and 5:00. the wait was 2 hours. it's new to nashville, and thus very popular. speaking of new to nashville... when the heck did it become so metrosexual? all of the billboards are for designer mens shoes. i felt like a redneck in my rei polo and new balance shoes. where are the justin boot and stetson ads?!? we ended up going to a steakhouse called calhoun's.

lindsey's friend kelly went to dinner with us. meeting this girl made the trip super worth it. she reminds me of my friend julie: republican, super proper, and super ambitious. the girl drives a friggin' cadilac. so kelly basically has her shtuff together and will be very successful in the music business once she graduates from belmont. i played some of my songs that i think would work as country songs, and she made a list of newer artists who she could pitch them to. it was fun to hear how the music biz really works and talking to her definitely got me dreaming about a songwriting career again. she said most of the folks at belmont are better at the music than the lyrics, and well i'm better at the lyrics. translation: lots of cowriting opportunities with her contacts. i'm gonna send her a cd with my songs and we'll see what happens.

we left sunday morning, swinging by chad's cousin's apartment in antioch. i don't know much about comics, but if that's your thing, he's pretty talented, and supports himself that way. we bought some fireworks and suffered through a horrible lunch at long john silvers in a town that looks like it's built around the big daddy's fireworks store.

believe it or not, i didn't take a single camera to nashville. no more 3x5s. oh, and that looking for a place to apply for a job and a place to live... didn't really get around to that.

ridiculously long day = my new life

7:30 - snooze (multiple times)
8:25 - finally left for school
11:15 - lunch
11:50 - taught the new p.r. girl how to use dreamweaver and update the websites
12:45 - a few minutes to veg out
1:25 - class finally resumed
5:45 - left school after working on standards for an obscene amount of time
6:00 - went to walter b. park to run (yes it was dark and yes it was stupid, if for no other reason breaking my ankle on a tree root i couldn't see, but i really really want to make running a habit)
7:00 - dinner and tv
7:30 - pitiful example of a jeopardy episode
8:00 - midnight - ordering transcripts, other miscellaneous school things, cec things (professional organization of which i'm the state president for 1 more week)

i'm worn out, but somewhere in there i talked to lindsey and she's letting me stay with her when i go up to nashville this weekend to poke around and get an idea of where i want to apply for a job based on neighborhoods and where i might live, etc.

i was talking to my friend chad (who plays djembe with me) about moving to nashville, and he asked me if i was serious about doing it. i told him yes and he said he thought he'd like to move there, so he's going to go up there with me this weekend. hopefully he'll decide to move up there and we can both find jobs and a place to live. i got more excited about it when he told me he was thinking about moving up there. just gotta keep praying about it...

taco and whatnot

(neighbor's dog, i don't remember his name, but if i named him it'd be "taco." i assume this is what blue does all day when i'm not here)

so after a meeting, class, meeting, camp business calls, class, my school day is finally over. i was informed that i said the word "whatnot" 11 times during a meeting. this is funny to me, because if you would ask me about the word, i would tell you that it was not in my vocabulary, because it's one of those reflex/comfort words like "um." i taught myself to quit saying "um," i guess i picked up "whatnot." i've still got a lot of work to do before the conference next weekend, and i've got a lot of camp stuff that needs to get done as well. this is going to be the story of this semester. i guess that's life. hopefully i'll adjust soon, cause right now i'm really stressed and whatnot. yes, that was on purpose.

disgust

3 things disgusted me today

1. on a joking note: being back at school and all the craziness that this semester's going to entail.

2. on a serious (or, sirius) note i flipped over to hear howard stern this morning for about 30 seconds. they were talking about ejaculate and that was enough, i mean too much, for me. according to cnn, he promises to have live sex on his show. it's so disgusting and really sad. i love sirius, they have some great music channels (i flip among about 10 of them) and i've been a subsciber for over a year. but the fact that they are betting so heavily on howard stern, and the fact that it's paying off is very sad. i guess that's the world we live in.

3. a theater in utah is refusing to show brokeback mountain because of it's homosexual content. great, good for you. but it's such a double standard. what about the other rated r movies? is the theater showing them. it's easy for people to be repulsed by the idea of homosexual relationships and what they involve, but what about the heterosexual sex scenes? or the drugs, violence, and other immoral things that so many rated r movies depict? does the theater refuse to show those as well, or is it okay to make money off of them, just not one with two gay cowboys? it just doesn't make sense to me.

farewell childhood

so i've just come to the realization that today is my last day of freedom. it's my last day to be lazy, last day without responsibilities. today is the last day before i start classes in my final undergrad semester. this semester will be my toughest and so defining for me. i'll be student teaching, looking for a job, doing whatever assignments i have to do, and getting ready to run a summer of camp. and just when i'm wrapping up camp, i'll be pre-planning for my first year of teaching. so this is it, the real world starts today.

¹¹When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. ¹²Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. ¹³And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13

who am i kidding... i'm always gonna be a kid. just a more responsible one. ;-)

3 things

3 things (could easily be 3 different posts, but these are the things that go through an artist's head on a daily basis. it'll be something new tomorrow)

1. donny deutch did his show about teacher sex scandals. that will never be something i have to worry about, but what does concern me are the crazy parents, especially the ones who think that society owes them something and will take advantage of others to do something about it, and the false allegations that could follow. i already know not to put myself in any type of situation that could even be perceived as compromising, but being a male and in something as delicate as special ed, i have to be ultra-cautious.

2. random 1 is quite possibly the best show on television. what was interesting to me about tonight's episode (#8 i think) was that the 2 guys who go out and meet the people they are going to help asked the people in the rv (the people behind the scenes who do all the work on the business side of things) if they would come out and meet the beneficiaries. their immediate reaction wasn't one of willingness. they were willing to help in their roll: calling businesses and others for help, etc, but they weren't as eager to step out from behind the scenes.

we've all got roles. what's yours? figure out what your body part is in the church, in the world, and go with it. i think that's when we'll realize our dreams: when we follow what we're truly called to be.

3. i've gotta buy derek webb's solo albums. reading his myspace blogs gives me a lot of hope. i've always connected to the songs he wrote with caedmon's call (more so than the others on the albums) but reading quotes from the new ones makes me say "hey, that's what i've been thinking!" he seems to be quite a christian liberal like myself. what does that mean? we care strongly about the social issues that the republican party likes to ignore. first and foremost we are christians and the bible is our authority on law and life. a lot of the republican agenda ignores the basic ideas of christianity. abortion and homosexuality are not the only christian values.

in honor of the cold weather returning...

here's some more frost from my car on that day when it was thicker than i've ever seen.

justin (not my brother) came over tonight and really liked some of the songs that i wrote a long time ago, so we'll work on learning those. he played my les paul a lot, and it was good to hear it in action. it'd be nice to have the money to spend on an amp for it, but i don't see that happening any time soon. chad (the third member of this little trio we've got going) just moved into a house, so we'll be able to practice without worrying about annoying the neighbors. we'll get together again saturday and hopefully put together something of a set-list and play a local coffee shop soon.

if you ever decide to coach in the nfl, break the rules by doing something ludicrous like streaking across the field or something, just don't use your cell phone on the sidelines... the falcons' coach got fined $25,000 for using his cell phone near the end of a game. now that's one expensive call!

blue and buddy

buddy and blue play fighting


see, i told you they were just playing:


so the game lived up to the hype, and i was pretty excited that texas won. there were one or two calls when the refs screwed up and texas got a break, but usc was up by 12 at the end, so you can't blame the refs. i think everybody got sick of hearing about usc, and i think leinhart came off as a bigger jerk now that he had finally lost. at least pete carroll was a gentleman about it. leinhart just needs to get away from l.a. for a while to see what the rest of america is like. i wonder what grade he got in his ballroom dancing class anyway...

frost on the car window

one of many pictures i took of my car covered in a thick frost. this is the back passenger window with the sun coming through. i just love the patterns.

so the dr. thinks i have/had a kidney stone. i was in a lot of pain and my side/abs/back felt like it was cramping up. my dad called the dr. and he told me to jump up and down. i thought it was a joke, but apparently if that makes the pain worse, then it's appendicitis and not kidney stones. whatever it was i'm feeling a lot better and ibuprofen saved the day again. if i don't feel bad tomorrow (later today) i'm gonna head back to milledgeville to once again attack my messy apt and relax before embarking on the final semester of my undergraduate marathon.

only one more football game and i can start to get back on a decent sleep schedule again.

to see my latest creation go here: gacca.org it's nothing fancy but i think it looks clean and professional. if the client's happy, i'm happy.

princess

my second cousin

and in black & white for whit ("it emphasizes the christmas tree")

retro blue

here's a little retro feel for the new year.

spent new years up on lake burton with the camp owners' family. shot a lot of fireworks, got to see the lake down for the first time, and most importantly: got to see the progress on the new gym.

why am i so excited about a concrete slab and a roof? because it rains just about every day up there, and that makes for some pretty miserable campers. having a place to do activities during the rain makes our camp a lot more appealing and marketable as well, so i'm thrilled to see it being constructed.

lightning hit our front yard last night and took out a tv and our internet temporarily. that makes it quite difficult to build a web site for my dad, but now we're back on. i'll post a link to it once it's up.