Uniquity

I have a headache. But the aspirin is casting it out slowly.

The day after tomorrow I am being sent to "Fire Academy" where we get to play fireman out at some Firefighter training academy up in the mountains for some 12 odd hours - dressing up in the gear and putting out fires. It's for work, since we're the first responders for fire emergencies as well as medical and pretty much everything else.

This is an interesting job, in a lot of ways it reminds me of being an on-call chaplain in St. Paul. Last week I had to respond to a call where a girl was cutting herself to relieve stress and ended up doing a worse job than she'd intended. NOT what I'd want to see, but I guess I'd rather it be me than someone else responding to it. I got to talk to her boyfriend a couple days later and he was very grateful for what we did, and said that she was doing better now. He said I was very "calming".
I seem to have that effect on many people. It's almost like I'm a sedative or something. I remember when I was little my mom would have me read to her to put her to sleep, which was very annoying to me because I want ppl to enjoy a book with me if I'm reading it to them, and if they're asleep that's hardly what I had in mind. Brandy falls asleep when I read to her too.

The first round of Layoffs @ SPU is over, and Safety and Security got through it unscathed, as far as I know. Next year they'll reassess and see if we need to lose more ppl. Praise God I kept my job, I really do like it here. And it's nice being at a job where I expect to stay for longer than two years. I wonder, it would hardly do for them to lay me off now that I'm accepted to go to school here, since I'll (Lord Willing) be bringing in more money with grants etc... than they pay me in a year.

Brandy & Theresa caught a crab at the beach on accident while gathering shells two or three weeks ago. it's a little tiny shore crab (about as big as a dime) with a white carapace. Brandy decided to keep it as a pet and got rocks and sand and a round fishbowl thing to keep it in with barnacles and krill and other tiny sea creatures that came along for the ride in the bucket. She goes to the beach every couple of days to get fresh seawater for the new "aquarium". Then night after she decided to keep it she had a dream where it grew huge and got out of the cage and I was trying to catch it but it was too fast, and then it turned into a dog, like the Scrunt from "Lady in the Water". Hopefully that doesn't happen. When Theresa found it she was washing shells in the sink and it jumped out, and she tried to hit it (Brandy & Theresa like to kill small things that crawl) but only succeeded in knocking off two of it's tiny legs. But yesterday it molted and its legs grew back. Brandy says it looks a lot bigger now, and I laughed and said as long as it doesn't turn into a dog we're all right. She laughed because that's what she was thinking about too.

Just listened to Andrew Petersen's "Far Country" on the drive in tonight, made me tear up. I haven't listened to that album in a long while, but it's so good, especially "Queen of Iowa". His voice is kind of nasal, but the words and the passion make up for it. I remember when Dominic got me that album off Itunes he said it reminded him of me. That whole year it seemed like everything I was reading and listening to had to do with Heaven, the New Heavens and Earth, and the Resurrection. That was a good year but intense. I want that kind of intensity though, I want to be urgent in everything that has to do with Jesus and the Gospel - even if it gives me ulcers. Like the four month period (more like a year off and on) where I was trying to reconcile the accounts of the resurrection in the gospels & that was a huge issue because it would decide whether or not I would be able to believe in the inerrancy of scripture. I want to take all these things seriously, because if they're real, they're pretty much the only things worth taking seriously, and if they're not, than they're not worth "taking" at all.

The last couple weeks I feel like I've been in isolation, all I've been doing is working, I hardly feel like I've been able to spend time with Brandy or the kids, but I haven't really done anything with anyone outside of the house.

Well, that's not entirely true. T.J. and I have been working out about once a week, and I'm almost to the level I was when I'd stopped working out in college! It makes me happy. Although I ran two miles on the treadmill this morning and it took me 18 minutes!!! that's terrible - more of a jog than a run. AND I dropped my Ipod.

But I do want to DO something. Something important. I really need to start getting some bible studies ready.

TJ and I had a long talk about the upper middle class after working out this morning. I don't like the upper middle class, and he wants to be the upper middle class. I guess for me when I think of the upper middle class I think about the seed sown on the thorny ground, where the thorns which were the cares of the world and deceitfulness of riches grew around the plant and choked it. But that doesn't give me any right to dislike them I suppose, I should love them... But I don't trust them.

Almost finished with a book cover for Beth that I promised to do at the beginning of the year...horrible - why do I take so long with everything? I finally got the scanner at work to work and was able to get the image on my computer. T.J. looked through my sketchbook and spent the rest of the hour trying to convince me to go into freelance graphic design and make lots of money. I thought that was funny. Also, it seems like every time I draw people, the guys I draw look like me. I've got to start drawing other guys out of magazines or something to get out of that rut. It comes from having to use myself as a model and getting facial proportions off myself for my concept of what the male face looks like. But it's odd, I don't try and make them look like me.

I want to read "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand, after reading "Anthem" I really want more. Apparently they're making a movie of it too.

And now I've got to get to work.