Poems, Prayers and Promises

Check this out. I so want to try this. Out of a well made compost heap you can build a system to output methane gas, hot water, and of course compost. But what's really cool is you can then use those outputs to do everything from run your truck to heat your house to generate electricity. I mean I knew it was fun to play with dirt but this takes it all to a whole new level. Now I can play with dirt and make explosive gasses and scalding hot water. Here's a websight about a guy that used this idea successfully: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/methane_pain.html

that's actually where the picture came from, and if you back the link up to the journeytoforever.org sight it's got some other interesting ideas. A little on the far side on many of the things but interesting reading none the less. Alright, yeah I know I have something else I need to be doing lol.

If you all couldn't tell from the disturbing absence of me over the last several weeks, it's been pretty crazy. There's all the things on the to do list that never shrinks, futures to figure out, oh and not to forget school and work somewhere in there too. But God is good and He knew I really needed a boost this week. It worked out that I didn't have anywhere I needed to be or really anything that needed to be done yesterday evening. Which was cool enough to start with but it gets better.......

I had talked to Philip earlier in the week and he mentioned that He and Eric and Steve were going to come up that evening so I was pretty excited about that. It's always fun to have people up whatever the reason. I was a little concerned about what we were going to do though.... 'cause normally you would think we might discuss that a little ahead of time. Just a simple "hey yeah lets watch a movie" or just hang out or go get something to eat. But everyone was always a little sketchy on exactly what we were going to do once they got up here. Not to mention that I thought it was a little fishy that Eric wanted to drive all the way up here and then all go over to see Lafayette Aviation, but I was willing to go with it. I mean even if they just came up and sat on the couch and chatted for awhile it would have still been cool. But then.......

Philip and Eric and Steve show up just as I finished washing some of the dishes that had been living in the sink for a good while. Josh had just been getting ready to go sweep the woods looking for them 'cause he figured they had to be hiding out there waiting in ambush or something, so it's a good thing those guys came when they did 'cause otherwise he would have come popping out of the house dressed for battle and toting his soft air guns and run right into.... well you'll have to wait, that parts coming. Alright so the three guys came in right before Josh launched off and we all said hey and we started discussing dinner, and then it's kind of foggy what exactly happened 'cause I was pretty surprised shortly after this point, but if I remember right one of the guys pretended to have to go back out to the car to get something and opened the door. Well, on the other side of the door was a bunch of the rest of you from church. I don't remember how many exactly and I could probably count it up in my head if I could count that high, but it was a bunch. Needless to say Josh and I were totally surprised! I still haven't stopped smirking every time I think about it today. And it would have been awesomely encouraging just to have had them make the trip up, but not only did they come up but they brought a TON of food for a full scale cookout.

The whole evening was just awesome after that. The fire, walking down that steep hill behind our house into Happy Hollow park, getting lost, jumping out of the woods to scare the rest of the group that lost us (all except Josh who said he could have predicted my choosing that exact spot to do that very thing. And Jae gets the best scream award lol.) My initial fear of trying to figure out how 8 hamburgers were going to go for all those people were put to rest once the girls commandeered the kitchen to make apple crisp and all kinds of things that smelled and tasted really good and broke out chips and hot dogs and countless other items. I'll tell you what, you could tell a lot of planning went into the whole thing too, every little detail had been thought about. There was even a bunch of cool candles for the food table out by the fire.... so I guess that qualifies it to be a candle light dinner. It was all a major encouragement and I hope all the rest of you had fun 'cause I had a blast lol. Thanks for coming up for all those that made it up and extra thanks to those who planned it all out. Oh and thanks to Steve and Trent for .... um ..... helping clean out the fridge lol. They drank what remained of my 2 month old Apple Cider. Bla. But hey, if they hadn't drank it, who knows how long it would have sat there.

Well I would love to sit here and think about last night, but I better get on with dinner and homework and just think about it while I do those things lol. It's awesome to not know what to eat 'cause there's so much food for a change. It might just have to be an apple crisp dinner tonight though. I've been eyeing that all day.

"Give thanks to the Lord of Lords, for his steadfast love endures forever, to him who alone does great wonders, for his steadfast love endures forever."
~Psalm 135:3-4

After a day like today, there's no way I have enough energy for a coherent post. So if you really want to read something interesting, earlier this week when I had some time I made some comments on an interesting post Stacey had..... so you could check that out at www.landofpromise.blogspot.com . Good stuff, and James's comment near the end is really good, he kind of goes back and looks at the credibility of the atricle all the comments stemmed out of and had a comment on that. And I guess as a guy I should just learn to be sensitive to the Lords leading and go for it if that's the right way and not put the girls in a situation where they have to Pursue anything other than Christ. All at the same point, I don't know what's so different between screaming at the ground at 100 miles an hours with a student flying and starting a relationship with a girl you feel God might be leading you towards that makes the former no big deal and the latter so intimidating. Pretty much I should just keep working on the task God has given me right now and then when he makes the Girl thing clear I should just go for it, no tiptoeing around. But yeah, you can read the comments if ya feel like it.

Alright, it's one thirty and I'm beat. Josh and I went to Cici's tonight just for the fun of it so that was cool, but the rest of the day wasn't so cool. I had class and work literally all day from 8:30 this morning till 9 PM. Ugh. Fall break is going to be so needed....

Quick update.... I have way too much to do to be writing anything. I just had to say it somewhere but today went pretty awesome! When I was flying the sim today the instructor gave me a totally unexpected engine failure right after lift off (one of the worst times to have it) and not only did we deal with the emergency increadibly smoothly, but the rest of the flight back around to the airport and the approach went awesome. The instructor even said that my engine failure climb out was one of the best he's ever seen. In fact he didn't even believe it was for real, he just thought I got lucky. So he made me do it all over again lol!. This time we were expecting it, so we knew exactly what to do. I know y'all don't care but it made my day, cause up till this point I've just been trying to keep up with what's going on in there. And then after that one of my students actually caught on to the whole landing thing. That's always exciting when someone catches on to something you've been trying to teach them. So that was pretty cool too.

Then I came home after work tonight, and I saw some of the girls from church on our sidewalk just kind of chilling I guess. So I said hey to 'em as I drove past and pulled into the drive. They didn't really say anything back when I said hey, and then I saw them high tailing it out into the woods next to our house in the rear view mirror. Yeah, I still don't know what that was all about but it was worth the entertainment value. Actually it didn't really surprise me all that much, I tend to have that effect on people from time to time. Alright, the homework's calling my name; or is that coming from the woods?

Concrete and I haven't had the smoothest relationship today. I got up this morning and as soon as my feet hit it I knew it was going to be one of those day. (Although I actually got 8 hours of sleep last night no thanks to the concrete). Then I drove to work, and concrete was nawing on my tires the whole way. While I was working, my student kept trying to aggravate the tension I felt in my relationship with the concrete. Josh even got to witness one of our, ahem, solid impacts with it. Then tonight Josh and I went out to try out some mountain biking moves on the street in front of our house, and then concrete and I had a real run in. I went to bunny hop a curb (a newly learned trick in my arsenal of mt. bike tricks that I really want to try out now) but in the dark I misjudged my distance and didn't start soon enough and I went knees first into the sidewalk. Yeah ouch. So then I just crutched my way back into the house with my bike, hobbled around to find an ace bandage and ice, and hit the couch to prop my leg up and check emails. Now I guess I'll sit here and play guitar and drink apple cider till my leg quits hurting and then go to bed.

Besides my little quarrels with concrete, it was an alright day though. I really have been enjoying this fall weather though. Everybody love fall. How many times have you heard someone say they hate fall? The crunchy leaves, the sharpness in the fall air, brilliant blue skies. Something about it seems to make time stand still for a moment while I look around and enjoy the beauty of God's creation and evokes deep feeling of longing to share that with someone. It's the kind of weather that makes me want to run off to a state park, or go walk around some of the shops in Nashville, or head out to the orchard to get some cider and caramel apples, or just go find a nice grassy area in a park and cuddle up with someone and watch the world go by (Josh doesn't really meet this need though, so I guess I'll just have to put this activity on hold), really just about anything but homework and work would do. It gives you that kind of reflective feeling like when you really have to use the restroom and you get all zoned out. Well, maybe not totally like that and I really just destroyed that word picture but it was about time for it to end anyway.

Well I was going to say something else but trying to figure out if I should so brutally end the last paragraph as I did or not made me forget it.

Gentleness out y'all (see about a half dozen posts down)