Webcam back in action!

So after a brief hiatus, the webcam is back in action. It can be found on a link to the right. I’m just lazy and never take the time to set it up. I’ll try and be more motivated from now on.

Stop staring at me! :)

Whirlwind Weekend

This past weekend was pretty whirlwindish (yes it’s a word and I stand by that). I just had a lot going on in terms of doctor and hospital visits, new activities, and start ups of old activities. This is going to be long, but that’s what you get when you want to know about my life. :)

It all started on Friday. I had been having discomfort in my chest all week from what I assumed was some sort of heartburn. I had started to feel pretty crappy last Monday, and I just felt wierd. Anyways, I went all week feeling pretty under the weather, with all sorts of stomach and chest pain. So I figured I should go to the doctor to at least get a diagnosis just in case. I ended up going on Friday to a doctor I just found off of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Website. I didn’t goto my normal doctor because he doesn’t work on Friday’s and I really wanted to get it checked out. In hind sight I could have waited until Saturday to see him, but I just wanted to make sure nothing was wrong. I had had some checst pains, and my sister does have heart problems, so I guess you can never be to careful.

Anyways, I headed to the doctor and I ended up being there way too long. I wanted to be in and out, verify it was heartburn and maybe get some medication. Well, because I hadn’t been to this doctor before he asked me all sorts of questions, and even made me do a forced air test (to test your breath capacity when you have asthma). I don’t have asthma, but I do have breathing difficulty when I get allergies sometimes. Anyways, he pretty much told me I had Acid Reflux without doing any types of tests, which worries me a little bit, but he did give me some medicine which I am now taking. It’s quite possible all of my stomach issues are related to the fact that I eat poorly (for all those who would like to say I told you so now is the time), but hopefully this will help. I’ve decided I’m not going to stay on it though, because for a month’’s supply it cost me 50 bucks, and that’s with insurance (Yikes). So the doctor decided to do an ECG (which everyone pronounces EKG- who know?) just to verify my heart was OK because I had complained of some chest pain.

Well they me strap to all the wires and run the test. It turns out the machine thinks I have An Incomplete Right Branch Bundle Block (A condition where your lower valve pumps slightly out of phase with the upper branch), which could be because my heart doesn’t get enough oxygen (Woah is right). So he tells me it’s probably nothing because of my age, and that my body shape probably has something to do with it (I guess basketball players sometimes have it) and it’s not anything to worry about, but he’d like me to see a Cardiologist just in case. So at this point I’m only slightly worried (but I did have thoughts like “It’s OK if I die right now, I’ve got Jesus”). So the rest of my day I kept trying to tell myself it wasn’t a big deal. The machine wasn’t hooked up right, or because of my frame it came out wrong. So I make the appointment with my sister’s cardiologist for this coming Wednesday just in case and call it a day.

So Saturday rolls around and I goto the GermanFest in Lincoln Square with Mary and Corinne (two friends from my old Discoh Bible Study). We’re going to the Fest for my birthday, since we never got to do anything around when it was my birthday. It was a grand old time. I had a beer, we watched some dancing, we got brats and german cakes to split. I highly recommend it for anyone next year. They actually have one in June as well called MayFest (don’t ask). So after the fest we go back to Corinne’s places to watch a movie. The movie we picked was Fun with Dick and Jane which was pretty hilarious. It’s pretty much a spoof making fun of the whole Enron Scandal.

During the movie I start to get a headache and my stomach doesn’t feel real well either. So the movie ends and I’m starting to feel a little nauseus, my head hurts and I’m feeling a little faint. I all around don’t feel good. So at this point I start to feel my pulse (because I was just told the day before maybe your heart could go bad at any moment - not true, but these things seem to pop into your head when you don’t feel so good), and it feels like it’s racing pretty good. At this point I start to panic a little bit because I’m just sitting on a coach and it feels like my heart is going a mile a minute. I had Corinne check my pulse and she agreed with me that it was going really fast, and that she thought it was beating irregularly (Great..). So at this point I make the decision that maybe I should goto the hospital. This could be all in my head, but maybe I should go get this checked out just in case because of what I had learned the day before.

Corinne was nice enough to drive me to te hospital. We went to Weiss Hospital which I had never been to before. I was one of two patients sitting in the waiting room and it still took them an hour to even see me to take initial readings. Anyways, they get me to a backroom, and then stuff starts happening pretty quickly. The do an ECG right away, which turns out just normal (that’s right normal). They also do some bloodwork, which also turns up fine, but because of high white blood cell counts they opt to take a chest x-ray just in case. That turned out fine too. So after spending 3 hours in the emergency room my anxieties are greatly relieved, because whatever came up on the ECG on friday was probably wrong. The doctor thinks my response on Saturday before I came to the hospital was Psychopsomatic. I worked myself up into a frenzy because I thought it was my heart, which just made my heart beat faster, which in turn made me worry more. Boy was that a vicious cycle. Anyways, I’m just fine. I am going to go see the cardiologist on Wednesday just in case, but most likely there’s nothing wrong with me (insert glib remark here).

So that was Saturday. Sunday I had Church, where was not supposed to be doing sound, and when everything went haywire just as I got there I had to step in and help out. I ended up running half the service, along with fixing several sound issues, and making the DVD play properly. After church I helped tear down the sound system, as well as setup for the potluck we were having to celebrate our Church’s third anniversary. I scarfed down some food and then headed to small group.

Small group was really good. It was our first meeting since taking a break for the summer, so I’m really pumped about getting that started again. We’re going over the Patriarchs in Genesis, which I already have some experience with since we covered it at the Journey, so it should be a good time. Plus I just really like doing community with those guys. They’re all super awesome. :) After small group I went home and watched part of the Bears game (sorry Josh), and then headed to Youth Group.

That’s right, Youth Group. :) Tonight was my first night, and wouldn’t you know it we didn’t have any youth show up. We’re a pretty small church, with no kids in the junior high / high school age range, so the youth group is going to be made up of neighborhood kids. We had two interns for the summer who kind of started it, but since summer is over and they’ve left the kids haven’t really been coming I guess. We did some brainstorming and prayed for the community and any potential kids that might come in the future. I’m really looking forward to getting involved in the youth ministry, but I’m also worried that I might be overocmmitting myself, since this is the third ministry I’m doing at church, plus all of my extra curicular activities and work. Ah well, we’ll see how it works out. I do think God is calling me to this right now, so we’ll see what he wants to do next. Only time will tell.

So that was my weekend. It was quite the whirlwind, but now it’s over. :)

My first comment!

Thanks to Josh I have my first comment. Kudos to the fact that the man isn’t afraid to express himself. See the glorious comment here.

Tiësto Backstage!

So it’s been awhile since I posted, so I figured I should write something. Actually I’ve had several things I’ve wanted to post, but just haven’t gotten around to sitting down and writing. So I’m going to start with something cool.

Perry, Brian, and I went to the Purenation Festival this past Saturday at Northerly Island. I’m pretty sure the sellout of tickets is imminent. :) Anyways, the show was from 12pm to 11pm, so we ended up showing up around 6. We didn’t want to deal with being on our feet all day, plus the good acts were later on in the evening. We were able to see half of Bad Boy Bill’s set, Deep Dish, and then finally Tiësto. I had seen Bad Boy Bill and Deep Dish before, but this was my first Tiësto event.

And boy was it memorable. The night started off pretty normally. It was your typical DJ show, loud music, cool lights, weird people. We were positioned in the middle of the crowd probably about 300 feet back. It was a pretty good position, but you’re not close enough to see everything. They had all of these plasma screens showing cool effects, when at one point they flashed a number that you could text to get backstage. I texted it, and while I was doing it Perry asked me what I was doing. I informed him of what I was doing and followed suit. It’s a contest with thousands of people entering, so we figured we wouldn’t win, but it didn’t cost us anything so why not. A little bit after this Brian arrived and we just hung out listening to music. Probably about 15 minutes into Tiësto’s set, Perry and Brian decided they were gonna go to the restrooms and grab some more drinks. I opted to stay behind. About 10 minutes after this I get a text from Brian telling me him and Perry are going backstage. My first thought is of course that they suck. :)

This is where the story gets cool, though I wasn’t there first hand. So after Brian and Perry leave me to go to the bathroom, Perry gets a phone call on his cell telling him he’s won the backstage contest. He’s told to meet up with some guy from Pure at the security exit, along with a friend. At this point they’re given 2 backstage passes that say Artist on them. Well as fate would have it they try to go through the security station to get backstage and the security guard won’t let them through. He doesn’t work for Pure, he works for Northerly Island, and for some reason he thinks the Yellow passes are no good. The Pure guy who gave them the passes argues for a minute with the security guard, but he won’t budge. So he goes back to his trailer and gets two more passes. One is purple and the other is yellow. He hands the purple pass to Brian face up and the Yellow pass to Perry face down, making it look like he just gave out two new purple passes. The guard lets them through this time and they get up on stage.

The nice thing is, the Pure guy never took their old passes. So now they’ve got 4 passes (3 yellows and a purple). They chill up on stage for a little bit and then Brian comes back and gets me. He gave me a yellow pass and then we went in a different way and were able to get in just fine. So due to an oversight all three of us were able to get backstage.

It was pretty cool. The Pure guys were a little rough when we got to close, but we were probably 20 feet from Tiësto, and we got some pretty awesome pictures. There’s actually a couple of me where I don’t look totally out of it. All in all it was a fun experience, though the music backstage wasn’t nearly as good as the music out in the audience because the speakers are pointed out into the crowd. Ah well, you can’t have everything. :)

The full gallery of the evening can be found here.

View from the audience…

The three of us chillin backstage…