sandals

ever since the weather started to get a bit warmer i have been wearing my sandals. now, these sandals are very comfortable and i really love them. for some reason though, diana totally hates them! ive had them for about 9 years and they have treated me good, ive taken them everywhere with me, from iowa and utah, to mexico and germany! these things have seen the world. sure they may be a little worn, but thats what happens to something thats strong and reliable. yes, i know they are hideous and an eyesore, but they have character!
i guess this is just another example of having to compromise in a relationship. but why is it that every time there is a compromise i end up having to throw something of mine away?!?

stocked out

last night was my last day at work. i was supposed to work until the end of this coming week, but i was getting a bit antsy. i was ready to be done working at the grocery store, and kind of wanted a little bit more time to enjoy my summer. i know that soon enough i will be back at the daily grind of teaching, so i figured i should really live it up these last weeks while i can. i talked to my boss and he was totally cool about it, he said 'yeh, id do the same too!'

so i am a free man once again! usually in the summer i love to stay up late and sleep late, but i think ive already taken that to the extreme while working at the grocery store! so maybe ill totally confuse my body and only stay up till 11pm, and wake up at 7am. man, that would be so crazy!!!

(more pics)

the big clean

now that i have my power on, i figured i would take advantage and do a little cleaning up, you know, with lights on. i figured id start off in my kitchen. i wiped down the cupboards and cleaned them out. i tossed a lot of stuff that i had tucked away and totally forgot about. i found quite a few old items. among them was a container of slim jims. i hate slim jims. so, you might be asking yourself, why did i have a whole container of them? well, about 5 years ago the guys came down to see me, and sarah came along with them. the hulk movie was just coming out (no, the older one...) and she saw a package with hulk on it and figured id love it. i appreciated the thought, but i was certainly not interested in eating said slim jims. so out of obligation, i tucked it away in the cupboard. well, i think i have fulfilled my obligation and can now get rid of it...

and then there was light

finally, after 78 hours, 'stormwatch: powerless! '08' has come to a close. after leaving panera bread thursday night i went home and sat out on my porch again and played my nintendo ds. i set it down for a second to get a drink and then suddenly, with a blinding flash, the lights of the strip mall at the end of my street lit up! bing, bing, bing! each progressive house along the street began shining brightly. and then it happened, at exactly 11:08 pm central, my home once again buzzed with electricity!!! i threw my fists in the air and let out a shriek of joy 'hurray!!'. i had just enough time to get the house in order, set the clocks, and then i got ready for work, excited by the fact that i was no longer living like a pioneer of old, but was once again a bellow citizen of the twenty first century.

all is once again well with the world. you may now resume your normal activities. i have.

darkness creeps in

we are now entering our 73rd hour of 'stormwatch: powerless! '08' and i am still left in the dark. literally. i called this morning and they were hopeful that the power would be on this evening. well, i am just about out of hope at this point. i really want to throw a hissy fit, but am trying my best to keep it together.

ive been spending most of my time awake here at panera bread, but they close at 10pm, and i dont go into work until midnight, so i have been struggling with what to do for those extra two hours at night. last night i pulled out a chair onto my front porch and just played my nintendo ds in the dark, which was actually a lot of fun. ive been playing 'zoo keeper', which is exactly like bejeweled, but with animal heads instead of jewels. very addicting.

i guess ive been growing accustomed to living in the dark at this point. i no longer have a hard time sleeping without a fan, its not ideal, but i now have learned that it is possible. at least the weather was really cool today, so that helps with staying sane. other normal tasks, like taking a shower in the dark is quite strange- i never know how much shampoo i am using! the one thing i havent tried, nor plan to, is shaving in the dark. i just know it would go horribly wrong... but that means i really really need to shave. my neck has been so ichy!

thaw out

i had been waiting until this morning to do it, so i finally did it: i opened my freezer and threw everything out! i figured id wait until trash day so it wouldnt have to stink up my house with the turned meat and stuff. i was afraid of how bad it was going to be, but i was pleasantly surprised. there was still bits of ice still in the ice trays! the only problem was the old ice cream that had been sitting in there for a while- it got really soupy! but at least its done now, while i have some free time.

(more pics)

fallen trees

i came home from work this morning and am still without power (stormwatch: powerless '08 continues...). but i kind of wanted to drive around a bit and assess the damage. with the worst of it now being cleaned up, it seems that the only real remnent of the storm is the huge amount of trees and branches that are down.

here are some more photos of the destruction i saw: 1, 2.

calm

it always seems brightest after a storm, huh? last night the weather was beautiful after the terrible storm monday. the sky was still a bit cloudy, but the sunset was just amazing! seeing the beauty of God in the weather helps put the problems of the storm into perspective.
(more pics)

still nothing

we are now entering hour 51 of 'stormwatch: powerless '08'! i figure when ever the news has some sort of disaster or anything to cover they always come up with a crazy title and graphic for it, so i should do the same.

it was monday around this time that we lost power, and there seems to be little evidence that it will be returning any time soon... i called the power company this morning and they werent even willing to narrow it down at all. i asked 'can i expect power later today, or by the end of the week?' and i got nothing. 'sir, we are working on it.'

talking to a few other people who are still without power, they have been saying that they have heard anywhere from thursday afternoon, to sometime in the middle of next week. argh! ive already spent more time here at panera bread than i have at my house this week, i dont know if i can take much more of this!

damage report

i went home this afternoon and the power was still out. argh. sounds like its not going to be on until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest. checking out some more news reports, it seems that they have determined that it was a tornado that touched down about a mile and a half from my house. in fact, griffith has been declared a disaster zone, they even sent in the national guard!

i stopped home and took a shower in the darkness (powers out, but water still works!). i figured id drive around and survey the damage. much of it was just north of my place. it took out a strip mall, and a couple streets, one of which my buddy scott used to live on! his apartment building no longer exists...

(more pics)

disaster zone

the weather here last night was amazing! the rain started around 7:30 or 8, followed quickly by thunder and lightning, and chased by 80 or more mile an hour winds! around then the power went out. i decided to stand outside and just watch it all happen. i called diana and told her 'i think this is the end of the world!' thats how crazy it was outside! with nothing to do, i went to bed, set my phone alarm for work, and dozed off. i got up for work, but figured we wouldnt be having it. i had called the store 5 or 6 times through out the evening, but never got an answer, so i drove over to the store and there was no power at all. with no lights, and no cars in the lot, i figured God blessed me with an extra day off- score! i went back home and went back to sleep. when i woke up i still didnt have power. with nothing to do i figured id head over to panera and see what i could see online.
as it turns out, the town of griffith, which i live in, has been declared a disaster zone! yikes! my house and car are fine, but i guess not everyone faired quite so well... there is a strip mall and kmart just a couple miles down the street and they were totaled. no roof, no walls, nothing. a bunch of houses were destroyed as well. the think it was a tornado, but i havent seen any reports that say it was for certain.
it sounds like they have been getting the power back on in the area, so im going to chance it and head home to find out. cause man, i could really use a shower...

life of riley

monday i was able to spend the day with diana. she had the day off, and i was coming down from grand rapids. i have her back her car, now with shiny new breaks (thanks again, jeffry lee!). we didnt really have anything that we wanted to do, so we kind of took it easy and just stopped at different places through out the day. we grabbed a bite to eat, walked around the mall, peeked in at value city (just because), and rummaged through the shelves at a discount book store. we stopped at steak n shake for a little snack- yummy milk shakes! while there we thumbed through a magazine diana got that is supposed to help with wedding planning. according to the timeline they suggest, we are doing pretty well in our planning, which is good to hear. afterward we went to a few more places and did a lot more nothing.

tool time

for months (ok, years) now i have been complaining about my cell phone service. i can almost always get good reception if im outside my house on the front porch, but if i walk in and sit down, then all bets are off. and i certainly cant go into the kitchen or my bedroom, there is almost no chance at all of reception there. well, i figured id try and do something about it. so, i got one of those bluetooth headsets. i figure i can set my phone on the window sill in the living room and i can walk about and the reception might stay strong. i have to charge it first, but im looking forward to trying it out, and im hopeful that it will result in less dropped calls.
the problem though, is that im not sure if im enough of a tool to use it. i know i couldnt actually wear it in public, im just not that lame. but maybe ill be ok in the privacy of my own home... maybe...

more car work

sunday we began working on the car again. jeffry lee pulled off the back wheel and began working on replacing the part. rex was back at work on his car beside us, and aaron and bethany came by for the afternoon and sat out with us and enjoyed the weather and conversation. we spend some time trying to think of the best ways for aaron to decorate the outside of his house. we came up with many great ideas, including a fountain, a gondola, mannequins in assorted stages of death, and michelangelos statue of david, albeit slightly modified (i would explain more, but i really dont think i should...)

after about 4 hours of trying to get the part on and get the piece to form a seal, he took a look at it and realized that the part itself was broken and it was impossible for it to create a clean seal. we were relieved and angered. relieved because it meant that the problem wasnt with jeff, but angered because he had just wasted 4 hours and a couple of trips to the parts place trying to get the faulty part to work. we went and got a replacement for it that was actually working correctly (thank you auto zone, no thank you napa), and finally started making some progress. by about 10pm the part was replaced, the seal was good, the break line was bled, and the car was ready to go!

man, i owe jeffry lee big time!!!

(more pics 1, 2)

fridays on saturday

after finally finishing for the day, jeffry lee, aaron and i headed over to fridays for a bite to eat. aaron was still sporting his pirate hat, and jeffry lee changed out of his 'hulk smash' shirt, but had forgotten to take another one, so he wore one of mine (which was really weird looking to me). we got some food and talked about how exhausted we were. jeffry lee had just spend about 10 hours working on the car, aaron had been out in the sun all day looting and pillaging, and i had been sleeping and sitting around. im pretty sure i was the most exhausted of us all...after fridays i figured i shouldnt drive the car too much with the fluid leak, so i just crashed at jeffs. we stayed up for a bit and watched 'charlie bartlett', and then quickly fell asleep.
(more pics)

getting greasy

when the guys returned from getting parts i had found aarons air mattress and made myself comfy. i was exhausted, i had finished a midnight shift at the grocery store, and finally around 3pm my body gave out. i slept for about 5 hours when the guys finally came in and woke me up. they had been busy at it working on the cars. i got up and just sat around and watched them, helping them with whatever i could (which would be very little...) finally around 1am everything was good to go. except that it wasnt. we had noticed that one of the back brakes was dripping fluid. it was too late saturday to do anything about it, but we could try and fix it sunday.
(more pics)

car ninja

in order to properly prepare for working on a car, jeffry lee asked me to cut off the sleeves of one of his ratty old t-shirts. i figured it would be more fun to make it look like he had busted out of the sleeves and made them jagged instead of just a clean cut (we called it the 'hulk smash' style of sleeve). jeffry lee wanted to wear the sleeve on his head as a headband, so i figured it needed something written on it to express his role as car fixer guy, so i wrote: car ninja!!!
(more pics)

pirates!

aarons coworkers are a bit strange... he was telling me that some of the guys at his work go out on lake michigan every year and have a 'pirate fest'. they decorate their boat like a pirate ship, dress like pirates, and drink rum all day. this year aaron was invited, and he and a couple other coworkers decided that they wanted to have a pirate ship toom the only problem was that none of them had a boat. so they figured they would make one themselves... they spend a week or two building a boat out of wood and styrofoam. it ended up looking more like a floating plank than a boat, but it actually stayed afloat! turns out that they werent allowed to tow it out on lake michigan, but they were able to have a lot of fun with it in lake macatowa.
(more pics)

thems the brakes

this weekend diana had to work, so i headed up to grand rapids by myself, with her car. for a couple months now she has said that she needed new brakes on her car, but we knew that was going to be really expensive. i asked jeffry lee about it, and he said that he wouldnt mind replacing them for us. so i finally found the time to go up and have him work on them. we had set aside all of saturday to work on it. i arrived in town at jeffry lees apartment around noon (i had to first stop at aarons in holland to get keys for his house, where we were going to be working). we headed over to the house, met up with rex, and took a look at the breaks. jeffry lee decided that it was in fact something that he would be willing to do, i.e. not too much rust, and so he and rex went to get all the parts they needed. they could only fit two people in any of the vehicles available, so i was out of luck. though, for some reason, they did need my wallet...

poco time

this week diana had wednesday off so she came over and we got to hang out. we really didnt do too much, we went out to eat, got some sneaky, and milled about at meijers. she had to get some hair stuff, and i really wanted to get the new stargate sg1 movie! she even brought her little dog poco. we went for a walk and just enjoyed our time together, which is never enough...
(poco pics)