More Comment Fun

So I had this gem of a conversation with Pam this afternoon…

>5:16:06 PM Pam: wow… I missed a whole lot on your blog
>5:16:40 PM Jeremy: really? I’ve been pretty sporadic
>5:17:10 PM Pam: I don’t mean what YOU wrote… I meant the comments!
>5:17:28 PM Jeremy: LOL
>5:17:31 PM Pam: :)
>5:17:42 PM Jeremy: of course…upstaged by the comments….AGAIN
>5:18:07 PM Pam: that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?
>5:19:06 PM Jeremy: so true…so true

As I wrote in my last post (about a day ago - we’re making progress) my website has started to take on a life of it’s own. The comment bonanza on yesterday’s post is further proof of this. Let’s be honest. Without the comment submissions this site would have been pretty dang boring in recent weeks. Luckily I have friends who enjoy making fun of me (and each other). I’m so glad Google has indexed this for all time. My kids (and maybe yours) are going to love this stuff. :)

My Blog Without Me

An actual conversation I had over IM earlier today (OK yesterday for those of you who actually look at the time I posted this)…

>3:34:38 PM Josh: comment submitted
>3:35:04 PM Jeremy: I think I’m just not going to submit anymore…..and let you guys take over my website…you’re way funnier
>3:35:13 PM Josh: NOOOOOO
>3:35:14 PM Josh: POST
>3:35:18 PM Josh: then we’ll rip you
>3:35:25 PM Jeremy: yes I know
>3:35:27 PM Jeremy: I was only kidding

And kid I have. For you are currently reading the newest blog post by none other than yours truly. In recent weeks my website has taken on a life of it’s own. This has been spurred on by the likes of Josh, Erika, and Sara. They’ve had quite the time commenting on my last post mostly because I’ve been too busy to post anything. It’s all very very exciting and frankly more exciting and funnier than I could ever be. Perhaps I should stop posting and allow the readers to run rampant. Perhaps I should let Josh’s insult machine run free. Perhaps I should let the world come to an end as we know it. Or…perhaps not. :)

The Week In Review

I was going to put these all in separate posts, but the last time I did that I set unrealistic expectations on the number of posts that could be expected, and we all know how that story ended. :) So here it is, the last week in review in shorts bursts. Buckle your seat belts and hang on.

**Last Saturday**

Last Saturday was the second quiz of the 2007-2008 quizzing season at Kankakee First Church. It was originally supposed to be at Danville Southside, but because of overbooked hotels we had to move it. My kids did OK, taking 15 out of 17 teams. At our first quiz we took 16th out of 17 teams, so we’re definitely moving in the right direction. I’m still working on getting my kids motivated to study. If I can do that I think we’ll be able to crack the top ten. After the quiz we went out to Blue’s Cafe for pie with the team. The girls (Agnes, Angel, and Leann) didn’t want to try the pie (supposedly the didn’t like pie), so they just got ice cream. Of course after all of us adults got pie they had to try each one and they said they liked it. Kids are funny sometimes. :) If you ant to see pictures from the event check them out here.

Also, a tragedy occurred when I woke up. As many of you have been following my eye injury (the stat on the right hadn’t changed since march), I am sad to report that I injured my eye again as I woke up on Saturday morning. My eye just got really dry and stuck to the inside of my eyelid. Fortunately it injured to the right of my pupil and not over my pupil so my vision wasn’t affected. However, it did make for an interesting morning as it felt like I had something in my eye for 3 or 4 hours. I have since updated the stat on the right to reflect the newest date. Oh so sad. I’m beginning to think I’ll never wear contacts again. I have started putting ointment in my eye before bed again, so hopefully that’ll help. I think the onset of cold weather is what’s causing it and I’ll just have to be more careful in the future. I’m also going to reinstate the use of a humidifier in my room.

**Last Sunday**

Sunday was pretty standard; church, small group, a brief nap, and then some volleyball with my small group peeps at an open gym in Glenview.

**This Past Monday**

My boy Peter visited me on Monday. He flew in to town for a client meeting on Tuesday morning, so he took the opportunity to visit me by flying in Monday night. I picked him up form the airport, we headed to Lou Malnoti’s for some deep dish pizza, and then hung out and talked for awhile at my house. As I’m sure Joshua will bring up in the comments (so of course I’ll preempt him here) we watched my performance in the Wizard of Oz when I was in 8th grade as well. Boy was I short back then. It was great to see Peter, and was a slight preview of my trip next month to see Joshua in Arizona. Of course when Joshua gets involved we’re going to take it to a whole new level.

**This Past Tuesday**

Tuesday was game night. We played the Age of Renaissance game again, and I think I finally figured out how to play it. It’s a rather complicated game of trading/attacking set during the Renaissance. I did terrible the first few times I played it with the guys (mostly due to the Crusades card which gives a player a free sport on the board), but this time I was able to pull out a win.

**This Past Wednesday**

Wednesday I had German as usual, but I left during the break to head to Glenview to play some volleyball with my small group peeps. They joined a league on Wednesday nights and I was subbing for one of their guys who couldn’t be there. It was a ton of fun. I don’t think I’ve had that much fun playing volleyball in an awful long time. I was just playing well, getting blocks, hits, good passes. It was pretty amazing. We won 2 out of 3, though the game we lost was by a score of 29-28, and the last point was actually ruled incorrectly, so we might have still yet won. Ah well.

**This Past Thursday**

I got to play racquetball with Ben, something we haven’t done in forever. I also got my YMCA ID card made, after a year of being a member. Ben whooped me in 2 games (15-6 and 15-7), but it was a ton of fun to play again.

**This Past Friday**

I was pretty sore on Friday after playing volleyball and racquetball on back to back nights. It was a good kind of sore, but I was sore none the less. I also had quizzing practice on Friday night, which was fun, but a little stressful. Mary and I spent a significant amount of time trying to explain the Trinity to Agnes, Angel, and Leann. I never realized how hard a concept that is to convey to junior highers. I think they got it, but they’re still young so they’ve got some time to figure it out.

**Yesterday**

Yesterday was semi relaxing. I went to worship practice in the morning, and then spent a majority of the afternoon relaxing. I really meant to do some work / work on my room, but after my super busy week at work, etc., I just had no energy. I also attended the second annual Chili Party at Simon and Becca’s place. That was a ton of fun. I arrived late (due to reading the start time incorrectly and helping my mom with something), but I arrived just in time to have my chili judged in the competition. After sampling the myriad of chilis available mine didn’t have any taste anymore. :) We also played this super fun game called Telephone Pictionary. The concept is that you draw a picture, pass to the person on your right, they write down what they think you drew, then they pass it to the next person who has to draw what the first person wrote. You continue this way around the circle until everyone has drawn everyone elses’ picture or word. It was pretty hilarious to see some of the progressions of things. I think my favorite was the word “Half Zipper Fleece” turning into a “Magnetic Bear Trap.” Try drawing it, I dare you. :)

**Today**

Toay was also pretty standard. I had church, then hung out with some church peeps while I waited for small group, then had small group, then watched the end of the Bears game. After that I went home, cleaned off my desk and my night stand, did some work on my computer, and watched game 7 of the ALCS pitting the Red Sox against the Indians. I wasn’t really routing for either team, as I’d be happy with either making it, but it was a fun game to watch regardless. We’ll see how the Sox do against the red hot Rockies come Wednesday.

There you have it; my week in review. Please remain seated until the ride has come to a complete stop.

The Reason

This post is merely to explain myself. This is to let my faithful readers know why I’ve failed you once again and why I should be reported to the center for better blogging (no Josh that is not an invitation).

Two reasons. The first is I’m just busy. You know how it is. I’ve got work, all of my extra-curricular activities, and countless phone calls from women wanting to give me affection. It’s just too much for one man to handle alone. In all seriousness I have a ton of side projects and things I’m involved in. I have quizzing, german class, various ministries I lead at Church, and several websites I’m doing on the side. It’s really a lot of stuff.

The second reason is I get demotivated to write anything, or to better state it I get overwhelmed. I simply have so many things I want to write about that I just don’t do any of them. I feel the need to start at the beginning, but the amount of effort required to “catch up” to where I’m at is just daunting. I also try to put in a lot of detail. I like being through, and it takes a ton more time to write out everything that happened, rather than a brief summary.

So it comes down to this. I need to just throw away everything I was going to write about (or start from a relatively close point in time instead of 45 days ago) and start writing shorter posts that at least get the gist of what I’ve been up to.

So look forward to some new posts soon. I’ve already started working on them.

I Can Run Again!

As some of you may know I haven’t been able to run in quite some time. I’ve merely wanted to run to get in better shape, feel less tired, etc. Plus it’s just good for you. Unfortunately, my knees have some issues which have prevented me from running for awhile. I have (I think) a tendon on the outside of both knees, which gets very sore and swollen when I run for over a mile. I think the tendon gets stretched, or something similar, when I go running since it’s a repetitive motion. Running isn’t that great on your knees to begin with, but mine simply couldn’t take it. I also had the same issue when playing sports for extended periods of time. I just couldn’t overuse the tendons in my knee.

Well, I went to the doctor last week and he suggested I start using a knee brace. My first thought was one of those honking braces people use when they tear their ACL or something similar. He was merely talking about the neoprene sleeve that goes over your knee with a hole in the front for your knee cap. It provides a little bit of pressure all around the knee. At the Day of Fun this past Saturday Becca allowed me to try on her knee brace for when we were playing sports all day. To my shock I didn’t have any tightness, swelling, or pain all day long. Granted we weren’t super active, but it was enough that I should have noticed something.

So I decided to go buy 2, one for each knee. I did that Monday since I had the day off. When I got home I put them on and went for a run. I made it about a mile, before I got really winded and tired (That’ll happen when you don’t run for a very long time), and I had no ill effects. Normally I would run a mile and I would have started to feel some pain or tightness. I was so excited when I didn’t feel any.

This morning I decided to run again, so I put on the same braces and headed out at 6:30 in the morning. I made it about a mile and a half and again had no ill effects. I’m fairly certain I could have gone further, but I didn’t want to push myself. In probably 2 years I have not been able to go more than a mile (and even that required some rest before doing it again) and I just made it a mile and a half. You can imagine how excited I was. :)

So now that I can start running again, I think I’m going to try and run three days a week. I’m going to get up early (between 6:00 and 6:30) and go running. Then I’ll have plenty of time when I get back to shower, get ready, do my devotions, eat breakfast. My life will become more ordered and I’ll feel better because I can run again!

Up With Me

So another 15 days have passed. Time to update everyone on what I’ve been doing. All sorts of stuff, that’s what! :) I’ve been really busy with work, and several side projects, and lots of various other extracurricular activities.

Work has been for the most part pretty overwhelming the past few weeks. We’ve got a ton of projects, short deadlines on a lot of things, and not nearly enough resources. We’re looking to hire another guy relatively shortly. The only thing holding it up is me actually posting on careerbuilder.com. We posted an ad on craigslist, but got very few applicants. I think we got 3 resumes, only one of which was worth taking a look, and then 15 to 20 “we can do your code offshore” emails. Simply fabulous.

I also did some preparation for my very first quiz practice. Unfortunately, none of the kids showed up due to some miscommunication and some cold feet. We’re going to try again for this coming Friday, so hopefully we’ll get a better turn out. Karl, the guy who is helping me get the quiz program at Northside started, told me earlier tonight that he had 4 kids we didn’t know about last week looking to come. Last week we only knew of 2. It could get interesting since I currently only have one set of jump seats which can only accommodate 5 people. I guess they’ll have to take turns jumping. :)

In the realm of Harry Potter, I was able to finish book 3 (The Prisoner of Azkaban). The books keep getting better and better. Of the three I’ve read, this was by far the best. I’m really looking forward to book 4.

I also participated in “Day of Fun…the second.” My small group (and a few others) got together to hang out all of last Saturday. We played Tennis, Ultimate Frisbee, Basketball, Volleyball, and Settlers Of Cataan, interspersed with eating lots of food. It was pretty awesome. I highly recommend planning your own day of fun with your friends if you get the chance.

I also had my 28th birthday, which was actually more than 15 days ago. I had already had my birthday before my last post. It had always been my intention to post about it, but I never got around to it. Needless to say it was pretty fantastic. I went out to lunch with my work peeps, then went out to dinner with my family and my friend Matt. Dinner at Chili’s was the best birthday dinner I’ve ever had. Our waiter was fantastic (and also named Jeremy :)) and I got a chocolate volcano desert thingie. Yum. After dinner I got a few presents (mostly some books and a few dvds).

So I think that’s about it. I’ll try my bestest to keep this updated so you guys don’t have Jeremy withdrawal. :)

Visiting With Gram

I visited my grandmother 2 weekends ago and I promised I’d post about it in my last post. We hadn’t seen her in close to a year (well, at least I hadn’t), so we went out to Virginia for a four day weekend to visit and hang out. We left on Wednesday night (after an hour and a half delay) and came back Sunday night. It was nice to get away from work for a bit, since it’s been so hectic there, and it was nice to see Grandma.

We went out to eat a lot, and watched a lot of Law and Order: Special Victim’s Unit. I think I saw more SVU in 4 days than I have all year. :) We also watched some Nationals games, since Grandma is a Nationals fan. We also got to celebrate Grandma’s 83rd birthday with her since she turned 83 on the Friday I was there. We were able to get her some gifts during the day and then take her out to eat that night. It was cool to be there for it, because we hadn’t been around for her Birthday in a long time. I actually can’t remember when we had been around for it.

I also finished Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets (the second one) since I had some extra time to read at night and on the plane. It was pretty good. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series.

I also suck because I didn’t give my friend Lexa a call or go visit her while I was there. It just slipped my mind. I suck at life. Next time for sure you’re on the list Lexa. :)

The Last Month

Joshua has a way of persuading people. His last comment (which to my surprise he actually posted), has forced me to finally update my blog. I mean, really, who wants to know about his boring life? It’s about as exciting as watching paint dry. :) I have in fact done this many times, so I consider myself educated enough to make this comparison.

In actuality, his life isn’t boring. He’s got quite a bit going on down in Arizona. He has a lovely wife, a couple of cats, and a beautiful house I plan on visiting in the near future. He has a good job, and he’s a really good programmer (I will not at this juncture hold his love of Microsoft against him. I do however hold the right to return to it at some point in the future.).

It’s been more than a month since my last post, and I know several of you have been wanting to know what’s happening with me. Joshua gets the daily updates via IM, so he’s not in nearly the pitiful state he claims to be in, but I can understand those who have not talked to me in awhile. I’m not going to write about everything, but here’s a quick bullet point list of what I’ve been doing.

* I went to kids camp (3rd through 5th grade) for a Monday afternoon/night and a Thursday night. I was an official counselor for one day since I had to get back to work, however I would have loved to do the whole week. Maybe next year.
* I officially decided to coach the Chicago Northside Bible Quiz Team. It will allow me to get more involved in Junior High and High School ministry which I’ve been wanting to do for awhile now.
* I worked a ton. We launched a site last week for local chicago artists. It’s located at http://secondwavemusic.com if you want to check it out. Feel free to comment about how I work to much. I know. :)
* I went out to dinner with Missy, who is a friend from Bethel. She was in Chicago for a few weeks doing a medical rotation for school. That was a ton of fun, and allowed me to reminisce about old college times. Boy do I miss college. :)
* I got a little burned out on my church. I’m doing Sound, Setup, and working on the church website. It’s just been a lot with all the other stuff I have going on. Hopefully that’ll get better soon.
* I packed and left for Virginia to visit my grandmother. That’s where I am now. I’ll try and post about my trip shortly.
* I successfully completed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (the first one) and started Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (the second one). Boy that took me a long time to finish. I guess I should try being less busy. :) I thought the first book was pretty good, albeit it had a few plot holes. On the whole, it was rather entertaining. The second has been just as good, and I’ve had a little more time to read it here in Virginia.
* I finished The Adventure of English (an audio book I’ve posted about before). It was a good listen. I plan on listening to it again in the near future since language fascinates me. At the conclusion of that audio book I started Don’t Know Much About American History. It turns out Disney got the Pocahantas story wrong.

There might have been more, but that’s all I can think of right now. To all my faithful readers, I’ll try and be more on the ball with posting in the future.

Rookie Camp 2007

This past weekend I had the opportunity to serve at Rookie Camp, which is another camp put on by the Chicago Central District Church of the Nazarene (of which EC Camp is a part). Sara gave me a call earlier last week and asked if I would be willing to volunteer since they didn’t have enough counselors. I quickly verified I could get a half day on Friday and agreed to do it.

Rookie Camp is a 24 hour camp. It started on Friday at 2 and was done at 2 on Saturday. It’s for 1st and 2nd graders and allows them to experience what Church camp is all about with a limited time commitment. Once they get to Kids Camp (3rd, 4th, and 5th grade) they get a whole week. They get to do fun things, like water games, night games, crafts, chapel, snack shack, and an obstacle course. It’s pretty cool.

Anyways, I was given 4 boys from Kankakee First Church, since that’s where they were from. I was supposed to have 5, but one of the boys was sick, so he didn’t come. It was a blast. I had a really great time. Six and seven year olds are just plain fun. Sometimes they have problems listening to you, but other than that they’re great. At first it was a little weird because I didn’t know anyone, but the kids quickly grew accustomed to me and I to them. By the end of camp I really didn’t want to leave. I almost wish it had been a week long camp so I could hang out with those kids some more.

Chapel was pretty amazing as well. The had two chapel services, one on Friday night and one on Saturday morning. Pastor Jill (who taught) did an amazing job of preaching the gospel to these kids and teaching them to respect themselves and each other. I really liked the songs too. The had motions and everything.

Probably the coolest part of rookie camp was right before camp ended, when we played counselor hide and seek. The counselors were told to hide and that the kids would get points when they found us. I went and hid behind the chapel for about 15 minutes, when Tatum (one of the kids in my cabin) found me and to my surprise had a water balloon ready to throw at me! :) I let him throw it at me, but it bounced off and popped on the ground. He almost cried. I tried to let him hit me, I really did. After that I made my way back to the middle of the campground (since it would be more fun to let people find me). Pretty soon I had 10 or 15 kids chasing me with water balloons. A few got me, but most missed. They then proceeded to grab a 5 gallon water cooler that was half filled with water and ice and tried to get me wet with that. I don’t think they would have gotten that idea if they hadn’t seen one of the other counselors grab one of the two water coolers. Anyways, they got me wet with that and then proceeded to put the ice down my shirt and shorts. It was hard to fend off when there were 10 or more of them. I got some revenge on some of the kids as I put ice down their shirts and doused them with the hose. They got me way better than I got them. I got really wet, but it was a blast.

As I usually do I took some pictures, a few of which are below. You can see my entire rookie camp 2007 gallery here.

Caleb (one of my kids) and I.

Six and seven year olds praising Jesus. It doesn’t get any better that that. :)

My Near Death Experience

I went to Kankakee last night for a post camp meeting with Sara and Caren. We have to do a report after camp is over that explains how camp went, what we’d like to see changed at the campground, as well as the expenses we incurred. We went out to Baker’s Square and had a grand old time.

After that I decided to tag along with Sara, since she was headed out to camp to hang out with the senior highers. Senior High camp is this week, and I know a lot of the kids from either quizzing, or from camp last week as several of them volunteered. I figured it would be fun. I’d hang out for awhile and go home.

We get there and we’re just hanging out when we see kids getting ready to leave on a hayride. It’s not really a hayride as there’s no hay, but it’s fun non the less. You pack about 45 people on a rack behind a tractor and go. We were hanging out “by” the hay rack when several of the kids tried to get us to go. The finally convinced us and both Sara and I jumped on. We do the hay rack ride at EC Camp, but being a director I haven’t been in a few years, si I was looking forward to it.

We spent the first 20 minutes driving really slowly down the road. We finally came to a turn off into the woods, and the tractor driver gunned it into the woods on these back trails they have at camp. It’s a little freaky at night, but nothing to frightening. We got stuck in the mud a few times, since it had been raining earlier, but with the help of some of the guys we were able to push through it.

We reached the middle of the trail and then turned around. Somehow on the way back we took a wrong turn (probably because it was dark), and ended up driving next to a river bed that had dried up a long time ago. As we started to drive past it the wheels on the right side of the rack started to slip and give way. At this point I thought I was a goner. The rack is going to flip over and crush me, along with most of the kids on the ride. After a momentary fright I started looking for ways to grab people and throw them off the back (since we were relatively close to the back) in order to get them out of the way. Luckily the driver realized what was happening, so he stopped the tractor and one of the adult leaders frantically told everyone to get off. We were still slipping a little bit, but as people get off it started to stabilize. Once everyone was off the driver was able to pull forward and everything was OK. We then proceeded to walk back (Sara and I and another camper), while everyone else jumped back on.

Let me just tell you. Frightening. I’m not even kidding. I swore I was going to end up on the nightly news. “Teens and Adults Die in Freak Hay Ride Accident.” I think it’s going to be at least a couple of weeks before I have the courage to get back on one of those things. :)