New Place, New Adventure, New Home?

Well, I'm basically moved into my new place, minus a few things left at my mom's.

I really don't like moving. For me it's exceptionally painful because of all the stuff I've gathered over the years; be it books, video equipment, or just junk that I choose to keep. When moving it I pretty much made a huge pile of my possessions on the floor of my room (3rd floor... again :( ) and ever since I have been sorting into new piles and then finding ways to build up or tuck away everything so it fits.

Moving has also had some physical strain to it. Jamie (my roommate) and I were given a refrigerator for free by someone at the church. We picked it up, even though it had a non-functional freezer side. We figured we'd get it fixed. Nice, big, spacious, expensive... ours. So we loaded it on the truck and brought it to the house. The thing weighed a ton, so Jamie and I shimmied it to the door, where we did our geometric calculations of if it would fit through the doorway. Our neighbor, James, was quick to inform us there was no way. So we proceeded to remove the doors... for about an hour. It was ridiculous how much trouble we had removing the bolts with a wrench set. But after some hard work (not really that hard), and me mostly just watching, the doors were off... and so were the gloves!

We acquired another helping hand neighbor, Justin, whom we had never met. So Jamie, James, Justin, and Jsteve embarked on a mission doomed from the start. Four men, verse an enemy of immense proportions... The Refrigorator (spelled wrong purposely for dramatic affect).

Even with the doors off, this fridge was huge and barely fitting up our stairs. Jamie and James took the top half, while Justin and I were at the bottom. The two of us on the bottom had to push this behemoth up the stairs on it's side while James and Jamie drank espresso. Ok, they didn't really, but I do feel like the bottom half had a much harder time. Justin quickly became injured, spilling his blood all over our box of bruises. Champ he was though, he continued on, just missing 3 fingers and an earlobe after the accident.

Now the setup of our house is this. Walk in, take a few steps, greet the stairs, walk up the stairs, come to a brief leveling off, turn 90 degrees right, and walk up a few more stairs. We remarkable got the fridge up the first flight of stairs, and even more remarkably, finagled it into the area separating the two sets of stairs. It really just fit in there. As we were pushing and pulling and kicking and punching and firing our handguns in the air, Jamie almost died. It's true. On a push, when Jamie wasn't paying good enough attention, the fridge almost smashed his head against the wall, concluding in instant death. Now I've since though this scenario through, and have no doubt that our thin walls would have given out on the other side of his head before an eyelash would be bent. But overall, I think we all nearly died or lost a limb in this exercise of appliance moving.

We were almost there. Only 5 steps separated us from a new half-working fridge in the kitchen. Unfortunately we were stuck. It wouldn't fit. Wedged. Ahh! Even if we could push it through somehow, there was a door frame sticking out at the top of the steps that it wouldn't get by. So after ripping up our carpet, scratching off most of the paint on the walls, causing a man to bleed, and nearly killing Jamie, it was time to abandon ship. So we all jumped in the fridge and rode it down the steps like a tabogan. We slid out the door, taking the door with us, and right into the Allegheny River, which conveniently found its way right out side my house at that moment. Ever since we have been sailing the Pennsylvanian sea, in that fridge, looking for booty of the female variety. Yaaaarrrrrr!

So anyway, now we have a new smaller fridge that works. We have a furnished living room, dining room, and we're working on a study. I feel bad that Jamie is all set up mostly, and I'm still sorting my crap. But thus is life.

I feel secluded in this house for some reason. I feel kind of like I'm a million miles away from my friends and family; which is strange because I'm about a mile away, much closer than my last place. The house doens't really feel like home. Perhaps when some friends visit and some memories are formed it will be more homey. But I think this will be a fairly long-term living situation for me, so I'd better get used to it. It really is a very nice place, I just need to finish my room so I can relax a bit.

I'm pretty tired and need to do a little more work before bed, so off I go.

Tired And Lazy

I don't know what's up with me. Since I've been back in the Burgh, I've been pretty tired. At first I was blaming it on catching up from Big Wow and pre-Big Wow chaos. Then I thought it might be due to me feeling like crap from eating several pieces of pizza covered with cheese. Yes, cheese. Made from milk; the secretion that comes from cow boobs. That mixture of fat, protein, calcium, vitamin D, and pure evil. My throat is nearly clear of the mucus, presented as a trojan horse peace offering, in the form of pizza. That was a week ago, and I'm still not 100% back. So those things were definitely contributing factors to my sloth for much of the last week, but at this point I think there is another culprit. I call this evil doer... the apple of my eye... the excitement of my life... The Olympics. These things go late. I think China should move closer to America, or just adopt our time. The wolrd should live on AT - America Time. Surely we have not taken over the world with our self-addictive tendencies enough, let's keep dreaming, let's keep striving... AT - "What time is it AT!" That will probably seem a lot less amusing when it's not after 11 and I'm falling asleep.

So yes, going to sleep late and still waking up early is surely a major reason for me being all tired. I'm also just being lazy cause I don't have much going on, but I've gotten used to a solid 8 hours of sleep starting no later than 12:30. Olympics, respect me!

Only another 8 or 9 days of this though (I think). Eventually I will be back to a schedule again.

Men's gymnastics are starting. I'm out.

Go For The Gold

I have no idea what I'm going to blog about, but I feel I should. I am not even going to title this until the end, because who knows... I could title it Feel The Burn and have it end up being about purple lollipops and unicorns. Now unless I'm burning lollipops and unicorns it makes no sense, right. That's why I will be wise and wait.

I went over Kristin's last night. I was under the impression that it was going to be an "Olympics party," although not really a party, just the two of us. When I got there I became aware that it was a board game party. We played scrabble with her mom and mom's boyfriend, Wade. I won because I'm sooo smart. Then we went inside after numerous mosquito attacks to play Monopoly with her little sisters... Spongebob Monopoly. Spongebob's eyes on the box follow you as you move, creepy. The Olympics were on during the game so that was good. Kristin's sisters don't understand the point of the game, even though they are like 12. They only buy property that they like the name of, or their favorite places on the cartoon. After 6 trips around the board they both had like 2 properties, due to declining most times when asked if they want to purchase the property they were on. We ended the game after playing about 30 minutes.

While watching the Olympics I realized something about the infamous Michael Phelps... his face is a mix between Justin Kozak and Jake Baker. Not sure if you agree? Well lucky for you I'm a Photoshop wizard. Check it out.

::::Jake and Justin::::

::::Michael Phelps and Michael Phelps::::

Alright, so it's not a perfect match, but that's mainly due to lack of better photos and my Photoshop skills not being adequate enough. If you know both of them though, check it out next time Phelps is on TV. P.S. I also made Justin's ear a little bigger in this pic.

Speaking of Phelps, I watched the U.S. relay team tonight in the Olympics. Amazing. Coming from behind in the last half-a-lap and winning by almost nothing. That'll show those cocky Frenchmen. Why don't they just go make out with their girlfriends French style and forget about swimming!

Oh, so how about this... I'm moving into a duplex. I don't know when our move-in date is, but Jamie and I are moving into a place in Crafton. Tierney got me the hook-up through Julz. I'm using a lot of names in this paragraph, which will leave many of you unaware of who all these people are. Julz is a friend of mine through school and Tierney (my cousin), and her parents own the duplex I'm renting. It's a pretty big place for the cost, which is nice. It will be hard at first with money and all. Deposits and other expenses that I have to pay soon... but overall it should be very affordable when everything calms down. It will just be nice to live somewhere again.

It's later than I thought it would be. I need sleep.

Goodnight.

The Big Kung-Pao, Cow-Wow

Alright, it's just called The Big Wow, but I think we may change the name to The Big Kung-Pao, Cow-Wow.  At that camp we will serve Chinese food exclusively... especially a beef Kung-Pao(why am I continuing to capitalize kung pao?).  We'll also start an establishment called The Big-Meow, Bow-Wow, which will be a Chinese restaurant that can feed all the people feeling left out from our Big Kung-Pao, Cow-Wow, by feeding them Chinese style cats and dogs... you know the Chinese are into that stuff.  Seriously... they are.

So yes, camp.  Camp was really great this year.  Jamie, the children's pastor did an awesome job for it being his first year in charge, or even regardless of it being his first year.  There were a ton of variables, so we were bound to have a few unexpected obstacles, but I don't think it was anything that the kids really noticed, and I know all of them had a blast.

My favorite part was probably the return of games.  Being at Faith Ranch, we didn't have games, because there were other activities like horseback riding, archery, and crafts.  It was neat seeing all the old games coming back to life on the field and in the gym and pool.  The Tower of Doom, Rubber Chicken sling-shot, Ketchup Relay, Big Shirt Pool Relay, Egg Catch, Poop Deck, etc. were much fun to watch and video.  My only regret is that I could not be a little more actively involved... although I did man the Tower of Doom a few times, flinging darts and sponges at kids.

I'll have to put the videos online soon so all can partakes of the madness from the comfort of their radioactive computer screen of death.

Video was especially hard this year because it felt like there was always stuff going on that I needed to be videotaping, and I really didn't have much help on the tech side of things.  But I think it turned out pretty well, and this is the first Big Wow, where I had DVD's for sale as soon as we got back to the church.

I hope the awesomeness of camp and the DVD's I made will help get more kids to come next year.  If we could get 50-80 kids there, we would be unstoppable... once I used my Kung-Pao mind control device on the children.

I'm in Erie now visiting family, which is fun.  My car is in the shop here because it's leaking oil.  I'm supposed to leave today, but that probably depends on my car.  I'm really looking forward to the Big Wow staff pool-party tonight, so I hope I get back.  I can just foresee tonight being awesome, carefree fun, where we can jump into water full of toxic poison, which will be readily absorbed through our skin.  I'm sorry did that last part ruin it?  Maybe I'll just put my feet in for a little bit.

Alright, that's all you get.  Say thank you and go browse some other less gratifying blogs... I mean Daily Accounts.

Leaving Larryville

Today is (was) July 31. That means it was my last day to move out of my room in Lawrenceville. I had been chipping away at it or a while, but there was still a decent amount of stuff and some big items like my futon and desk.

Early this morning Jamie came over with me to help me pack up some stuff; especially my computer stuff for The Big Wow, which is tomorrow. Then we unpacked some and packed in some other stuff. We went up to Laurelville (not Larryville) to set up stuff. Despite it just being the two of us and only having an hour we got a whole lot done. Then we came back.

As soon as I was back in Pittsburgh, I got a call from my friend Raymond, who is an almost homeless man that I met on the street. I picked him up and brought him to my place to hang out and help me pack. He didn't really do too much, but did help a bit. I'd notice him practically falling asleep on my futon due to the heat.

Jesse, Jonathan, and Richelle also came to help. Once they go there we began moving the big stuff and Raymond snapped into command. It was pretty funny how assertive he was once everyone was there. We'd just smile at each other as he would tell us how to do things.

All in all the move sucked and was pretty rough. I've also been sweating basically the entire day non-stop. I feel gross.

We moved the stuff to Michael's, which I just finished taking up to my room after having to drop of Raymond and go back to Larryville to clean the room.

On the way back to my old place, while I was stopped at a red light, a man asked me if I knew the area well. I said I know it so so. He was asking about a gas station, and kept talking really fast like he was in a rush and needed gas for his car that ran out. I asked him to get in. He was an African American gentleman. I honestly do get a little nervous, especially with them... but maybe that's because I don't have many white guys coming up to me after 11pm either. Anyway I asked him if he wanted a ride. In my head I did picture him pulling out a guy, but I don't know why. He kept talking fast and anxious. His car ran out of gas and the cops gave him 30 minutes to move it. He kept validating himself as not a bad guy by saying things like "I'm wearing a $100 shirt" and "I never need to ask anyone for help" and thanking me for "being human."

I forget the man's name. It was a little rushed. Anyway he told me that he does car interior work, and made it sound like he'd be willing to pimp my ride for helping him. He kept saying that if I ever go to his shop that I can't tell the guys there cause he'd never hear the end of it. He also said he just moved to Monroeville 3 days ago... or maybe from Monroeville... yeah that probably makes more sense. We got to the gas station and he needed money because they require a deposit on the cannister and then money for gas. He took $25. I didn't know if I wanted to give him that much, but it happened quick, and he promised he'd pay me back double and this and that. I gave him my card and such. I hope he does get back to me because I only was left with a few dollars after that. Also, I'd like to get to know him a little more. I enjoy making diverse friends. I find in building relationships and helping people, that they intern will bless you back. Lately I feel I depend on those blessings, and I think that's a good thing.

It's been so neat overcoming fear and meeting people, even in situations that might seem compromising to some. I like offering rides. You never know who you will meet that way. I've met homeless people, Christians, a car interior guy, a college cook, etc. It makes me sad that there are people out there who have to corrupt the notion of offering a ride with violence. I suppose overcoming fear adds another dimension to the experience for me, but honestly I wish I didn't have to feel brave doing it... because I'm not brave. I'm just trying to be obedient and trying to "be human."