Long...Time

So I have not published anything on here in ages...which means that nothing is the same since I last published because everything changes whether you realize it or not. :P Life continues on and if we don't take hold of it, it slips us by before we realize it has gone. Of course we get to choose how we engage life so that is nice. :)

Ok this was hilarious and I found it quoted on a friend's facebook.

"For most men, if they can't make women laugh, they are out of the evolutionary contest. With women there's no need to be rendering yourself attractive to men in that way. We already find you attractive, thanks." -Hitchens

Figured I'd include it. :)

My New Job

Having graduated since I last published a post on this website, I am now about to begin a job in Conakry. I shall be Uncle Brad's personal assistant and be working on various projects which he is too busy to devote his full attention to. It will be quite fun I hope!

This will be the first time I have spent a substantial amount of time away from my family however so please pray for me as I begin working that I would work hard and that I would not miss my family too much.

Back to School

Well I am sitting here at the table doing math...gotta do tons of math and
science. That is all I plan on doing for the next couple days...we are back
in Kankan now, having returned with a good trip. There were several hair
raising incidents along the way but the closest and most dangerous was a
truck with a wide load that didn't have any markers to warn oncoming
traffic. We literally veered off the road for a bit in dodging the thing.
Nasty thing driving in Africa.

Just Hanging in Conakry

Well it has once again been ages since I have posted on this thing. I am currently in Conakry enjoying town power, they have electric fans here that actually work! Then of course they have pop which is something else we don't always get either. Today was a nice day...I started reading a really tough book. It is supposedly the hardest read I shall have to read this whole school year. Paradise Lost by John Milton. It is a great book but it is unfortunately the type of book that also leaves me dozing...maybe it doesn't challenge my mind enough or something...nah...it is well written with a wicked complex formatting job that requires lots of concentration in order to understand. So probably what it is is that it requires so much work out of my brain that after about 10 pages my brain is totally exhausted and begins protesting the amount of work it is being forced to do. That is more likely. Darn...Milton is going to give my brain a real work out if that is the case. Or there might be other reasons too...maybe I need to go to bed sooner...or maybe I should just take a nap when I get tired and resume reading when my brain is a bit more coherent...I don't know.

tomorrow I hope to be able to shoot a few scenes from the movie! We already have one major part done that I couldn't do on my own. So glad that we got it finished. i wasn't sure what I was going to do about it.

Now I just need to go through and figure out which scenes are the easiest to finish with who will be around. Yep yep...that will be interesting...we shall see how it turns out.

Well thats all for now folks! Ciao!

Hmm...still don't got no pattern

Well I still don't have a pattern for posting on this thing...but of course
when one gets busy with school it is that much harder to post. I read
Beowulf and am convinced that using the Old English and Modern English
translations I could make an Old English Dictionary. That would be fun and
quite an accomplishment...only the type of thing a brainy person would
do...which I can be brainy if I like. I have also been considering creating
my own language...for use with friends and stuff. I think I know how to do
that (I have made a few minor attempts at codes before but nothing major).

But mostly I have been doing school and working on my video! I wish I could
focus on the movie making process more but as it is, I have school and
currently a lot of the props I can lay my hands on just yet since I have to
buy them and my parents still haven't come up with any odd jobs for me to do
around the house.

I had a fantastic bike wreck today. Landed on my right shoulder because the
bike literally grabbed my right leg so I couldn't jump off to safety. It was
most painful but nothing broken just a bunch of burned skin (from the
friction) and a few scrapes and bruises.

I went hunting for locations to shoot a film and rode out of town on the
main road towards Conakry until I got to the SOS orphanage/school and they
had some neat half built buildings out there that might be possible to
use...the only problem would be transportation...that would be a problem.
Yep yep...so I shall have to keep looking or figure out a way around the
transportation issue.

I post Again

Well it is Saturday and I intend to chat today at 4. Yesterday was awesome
because I got to chat a little with Spencer but sadly was supposed to be
doing other things than chatting, looking at blogs, and email. So I was a
bit...non-communicative. Today though I shall chat if anyone is upon the
internet. If not however...well I guess I will send my emails and tinker
around for a bit...hoping someone gets on. Wish I could check blogs with
this connection and all...it is really too bad that satellite modems are so
darned expensive...we are going to start a log book with that and begin
tallying up our precious kilobytes. 1000 bytes in a kilobyte and 1000
kilobytes in a megabyte I believe is correct? Nes pas?

Well I am currently listening to Desert Rose by John Tesh and it is awesome!
Yep yep...John Tesh does a good job with most of his songs but most of them
are too slow for me...but this one is good...not hard or anything but it has
a mystery to it. I tis mysterious.

As to whether it is more foolish to ask a lady her age or her weight, I
think it would be wise to refrain from either and just let them tell you of
their own free will if they ever feel so inclined (which if they are picky
about that will never happen). You will live longer and be healthier in
general if you stick to those guidelines. Much healthier than going around
asking girls (who have sharp nails mind you) what they weigh and their age.
Though I don't think younger girls mind so much about the age thing. But if
they are out of college...might want to be careful about the age stuff.

Umm...Maybee...I may be ancient but unfortunately I can't get along with
adults THAT well (not like you...I wouldn't choose to sit with adults and
wouldn't necessarily enjoy it...unless the adults treated me like my age and
included me in the discussion...but generally I would hang out with the
young whippersnappers).

Yeah thanks for sticking up for me Spencer! I am far from feeble. Why in my
old age I am stronger than I have ever been! I was rereading your comment
about how you wouldn't necessarily go so far as to call my feeble Spence.
Yep yep. Feeble is going too far. I mean one can be elderly and still be
sturdy and hardy. Yep yep...I should answer your email Zap...you spilled
water on your computer three times! Dang! What is that law stating that
anything that could possibly go wrong will go wrong? It certainly sounds
like it is a very accurate law if you ask me.

Busy busy busy!

Hmm...have to get used to posting on my blog via email...I am rather out of
email currently due to school work (exceedingly large amounts of it I might
add). So yes Spencer you are indeed correct in saying that I seem to be out
of touch lately. Indeed it was rather irritating to miss on my Hoop
Scoop...but I was traveling at the time (back to Kankan) and had tons of
school to worry about (exactly 4 modules and a mess of experiments to worry
about at the moment in Chemistry) and so I plead business for my excuse.
Although it is my fault I have been so busy because if I hadn't
procrastinated in the first place...so in the end it is all my fault. I
admit it. Though I shall only be out of touch temporarily.

In the mean time ye may comfort yeself in the fact that I am slowly getting
used to this email publishing thing...yep yep...it is rather disorienting
reading your comments as emails...much different from actually seeing them
on the web page. But thanks for commenting. I thought I had written you
already Spence! Oops! My bad! I shall hop to it immediately! Fare thee folks
well! Actually the only people who read this thing are Zaphod Beeblebrox the
V and MB...oh well. The show must go on! (despite the lack of audience...the
show must go on!)

Last night we watched...er...what was it called...oh yeah! Singing in the
Rain! Don O'Connor was in it and he was totally awesome! The movie was great
(very entertaining indeed) and the songs even better! Love good musicals
with comedy and dance (with music too).

School is crazy...I am officially late on my Chemistry now...I get a grade
lower because of that. But the work must go on! I am going to go back to my
busy work now! (after writing Zap an email that is!)

Conakry again!

Well I am posting this via email. Even though I am in Conakry I figured it would just be easier to post with a quick email. Less hassle and it just goes right to my blog and I haven't even got to sign in in order to do it! That rocks! Lately I have been doing tons of school work and in between I mess around on the internet, hang out with friends who stop by occasionally or do whatever. But I have plenty of school to keep me busy too. So I should wrap this up and go do some more school work! Ahhh! gotta hate school! I have a love hate relationship with school. Yep yep...school will drive me to my grave! Ahhhhhh!!!1 Save me! Mary Beth left Guinea on Monday night...actually probably they left super early on Tuesday morning (someone said that they heard a plain leaving at 5 in the morning). Then they missed the connecting flight which is a bummer. Anyways so they ended up having to spend another day in Africa in Dakar. How interesting....that they got to do that. Well got to make sure they get the full African experience right? Well I have to go eat soon so I shall wrap this up!

The Battle of McAfee!

I very kindly updated McAfee security system. That way it would be current and feel all nice and new and be able to handle the viruses it is supposed to cause trouble with. But it decided to backstab me, the master who initiated the update that gave it all its nice new gadgets (or whatever got updated). So I declared war in quick session of congress (me, myself, and I were all present and the vote for war on my McAfee program was unanimous). Well McAfee began the conflict with a huge advantage. Launching a fast and vicious offensive it cut me off from my blogspot address blocking the web page you are now reading. This was what drove me to insanity! I can't stand McAfee and it had been marshalling its forces and biding its time. Apparently the Privacy Service resented being disabled every day whenever I got on the internet and it blocked my friend's blogs (please! it seriously has the wrong idea of what adult content is...I mean...we are talking excessive here!). So now it was launching a fierce counter-attack and little did I know that, having updated it, all the settings had been reset and I could not just disable the privacy service anymore! In fact...there was no privacy service to disable! The four sections of McAfee had been unified to fight against me in the most frustrating manner! Furious, I ordered my fingers to take the fight to McAfee itself! I clicked on the little icon in the taskbar and went straight to the homepage and frantically sent them rushing about trying to find the parental controls or web browsing options. No luck! Only the administrator can access those! I was going crazy and went to my father's account. Surely he would be the administrator! No luck! My mom's account! No luck there either. I, in desperation called in reinforcements and more brains (my mom the other techiest person in our family). She couldn't figure it out either. Swiftly I searched through the help menu for any weakness i could find in the defenses! There had to be a weak point some where in the McAfee defenses! Aha! Creating administrator's accounts! I began digging through McAfee, becoming intimate with all the twists and turns it took me through...but to no avail. I changed some settings but to no avail! Finally in desperation I right clicked on the taskbar icon. It said, sign in as new user, huh? new user? I, hoping against hope that I had found a weakness, clicked it...signed in and behold! Became the sole administrator of McAfee! I busted my forces through the enemy defenses, ransacked the system and put down the rebels! having taken over I swiftly added my friend's blogs to the accepted websites lists, changed the parental control settings a bit, and restored peace and order to my computer! I have proved triumphant over a computer! This is a glorious day indeed! Since I am no computer geek or anything. Don't know that much about them...yep yep.

The rest of my day went fine. I did school, lots of chemistry and reading today. Some speech too. We leave for Kankan on the 31st I believe. So we have a couple days left here. Hope you enjoyed my narrative!

Rain, My Parent's Trip to Alaska, and More Rain

Ok so yesterday was my parent's Anniversary and the rainiest day I have ever seen as far as I know. It poured all day long. We aren't talking a drizzle the entire day. We are talking it was raining cats and dogs all day long with very few pauses and while sometimes it didn't rain as hard it was still coming down pretty fast. So what does one do when the weather is dreary? Stay inside and mess around the house. My parents spent the day preparing for their romantic dinner tonight. Since neither me, nor my sister, are first rate cooks (we can make stuff out of a box...but I know barely enough to get by...I just don't cook stuff) mom and dad cooked their meal and got it all set. Then it was my job to serve the meal, Evan took pictures and provided entertainment, and my sister was the Captain. The setting, they were on a cruise ship visiting Alaska. So we all dressed up and got spiffy (meaning I put on a nice shirt with a collar, wore my tie, and put on some dress pants), and then I served them a fine dinner. Dad had set up one of the rooms here in the Guest house and hung pictures of Alaska all over it and gotten everything just so. He had Charlie Peacock playing in the background. It was great! So then I came in as their waiter and got their food. The "wine" was in a fancy vase with ice to keep it cool (it was really Fanta) and all in all, you could hardly tell that one was in the CMA guest house. A lovely game of pretend. Then after dinner (for my parents) they went "ashore" and visited Alaska via the cyber waves.

Then of course we had rain...and more rain...as far as I know it rained through the night until this morning. Over 24 hours of practically non-stop rain. Not light rain either. Not sure how many inches we got. Have to go ask Uncle Charlie. Thankfully the rain has finally stopped! Yay! Now it is just extremely cloudy.

Well my little brother would like to use this computer...he wants to play Lego Star Wars. Fun fun...I shall get off and allow him to do so. I was wondering...does anyone have any idea who Billy Jo is? Cause she commented on my last post...better yet. Billy Jo! Who are you?

Me and My Clone

Hey folks! Ok so the title of this post may be rather...misleading. But it is half true. Here is the story. Ok so I upgraded my yahoo messenger and it had this microsoft outlook program or something that it wanted to install and it would use that to coordinate all my contacts and find which ones I could possibly chat with. So I did and it found several people including myself. I have no idea why it came up with myself...except that I have two email addresses...anyways so I hit the send invite button thing to invite them to chat with me. And then next thing I knew I had been added as a contact in yahoo messenger and there was an exact profile pic of myself sitting there. So I thought, can I really chat with myself? In curiousity at this peculiar occurence I selected my new clone and typed in a greeting. Almost instantly it was replied to me exactly as I had written it (rather freaky I might add). Well after doing a bit of that I got bored and went onto other things. Well now tonight my sister was lamenting the fact that none of our friends were online to chat with us. I told her that Grandma and Grandpa were and also that I was also online. Then I commenced to show her how I could chat with myself. Well after a few lines I typed in "this is stupid" because i was just reading what i wrote as a reply to myself every time. Somehow the computer took a bit longer to type something than it took me so I commented on my clone's slow typing abilities and believe it or not it told me that I was a slow typer! Sheesh! I type faster than it does!Why all it does is copy me! The nerve of that clone! Anyways so I was getting riled up and at the nerve of that dumb clone and it said everything right back to me! Here is the exact discussion that took place between me and my computer clone counterpart:

jondehoover: Hi
jondehoover: Hi
jondehoover: How are you
jondehoover: Are you doing fine?
jondehoover: Are you doing fine?
jondehoover: You type rather slow
jondehoover: You type rather slow
jondehoover: I don't type that slow!
jondehoover: I don't type that slow!
jondehoover: How dare you insult me!
jondehoover: How dare you insult me!
jondehoover: This is stupid!
jondehoover: This is stupid!
jondehoover: I don't have to listen to you!
jondehoover: I don't have to listen to you!
jondehoover: You idiot!
jondehoover: You idiot!
jondehoover: What!
jondehoover: What!
jondehoover: Did you call me an idiot!
jondehoover: Did you call me an idiot!
jondehoover: Why how dare you!
jondehoover: Why how dare you!
jondehoover: I can't believe this!
jondehoover: I can't believe this!
jondehoover: Oh I give up!
jondehoover: Oh I give up!

Now how strange is that? I was dumb enough to almost get riled up about that though! Heheh! Well I shall close this post now! ADios!

Rainy Sunday

Once again the weather is perfect for surfing the web. Drizzly and rainy outside. This time I have eaten breakfast. Mom and Dad aren't up yet and so I just got it all out and made the milk. Cold cereal of fix your own oatmeal. Neither is too hard.

I just posted on my xanga and now I am posting on this thing. Yep yep...Blogger rocks! I mean I can set it up so that it emails me comments! I just can't get over that! I know xanga has a thing that tells you what happened on your account that day but they don't email you your comments. You have to be connected to the internet in order to read your comments. Yep yep...which will be no good to me in the village with a Sat modem. Pretty much all we can do is email with a Sat modem. Speaking of which...need to see if we can get that satellite modem working.

All the PBT missionaries are leaving now...the guest house is slowly emptying and losing occupants. It was chock full this past week and now people are returning home to get back to work etc. Although several are staying to get supplies here in Conakry. That is important. We actually need to get our car fixed. It sounds as bad as those taxis they have. Whenever we hit a pot hole something in the engine rattles and shakes. It reminds me of...umm...what was that show? Mythbusters! Have any of you seen it? These two guys go around finding the strangest myths (like they were testing to see if a portapotty would explode from the fumes of decomposing waste if someone lit a match inside of it). Well they took this car, pretty much destroyed the drive shaft trying to get it to drop into a pot hole and pole vault the car and possibly flip it. They finally managed to doctor it up so that they could control when it snaps off and drops into the pothole. Then they found that even if they hit the pothole dead on, the car was going too fast for it to catch the pothole (30 mph) and so then they had to slow down. They finally did manage to get it in the hole and the car did this nose dive thing and the back tires rose up a couple feet off the ground. No flip though. The drive shaft got driven straight up and into the trunk of the car though. On the exploding porta-potty section, while they did manage to blow open the door of the porta-potty, they only managed to do it by taping up all the vents and pumping it full of methane gas (they had lots of methane too). They said that they busted that myth but if you ask me, any possibility of being roasted by a porta-potty explosion is enough to keep me from playing with fire and porta-potties. Yep yep...anyways...tonight we have to lead teh worship at church...that is going to be a scary new experience...why me? OH well...I will just have to persevere! Never led worship before...I can just look at it as having a new experience and growing wiser and learning more.

Bright New Day

Awesomeness! I just found out that Katie has a blog on blogger now! That is great news! Though she never told me what it was called...hmm...course I didn't ask...but that was because I didn't realize she already had one...:-) Anyways I am going to go check it out and I highly recommend others to do so as well if you can.

Today is Saturday! Saturday is a wonderful day because it is when I usually get on the internet to do email. The only thing is that I don't have to do that today...so I am just finding all my friend's blogs and commenting on them. Fun fun! I am updating my blogs too. I posted on my xanga today and now I am posting on my blogger. The only blog I have not yet posted on is the Random Story Blog because it doesn't appear to be working yet. But maybe it will start working again soon.

Hmm...today looks to be a good day! I have already commented on most of the blogs I need to and maybe I shall be able to chat with some friends this wonderful day. This evening our family goes out to eat at Joel's house. Fun fun!

Hmm...in the meantime I guess I shall go see if mom...umm...nope breakfast isn't ready yet. Hmm...well what can I discuss? I don't know...hmm...well maybe I shall just ramble! But what to ramble about? Well I can always ramble about the weather. It is currently the perfect weather for sitting at the computer. It is rather grey outside so no one can come tell you to go out and enjoy the sunshine and it is cool enough that one doesn't sweat a swimming pool out of himself every minute. Perfect. Of course if I get up and start running around I will be sweaty in no time. Cool! Time to eat! Well I shall go enjoy my breakfast! Enjoy this post! Hope your blog starts working better John! It was great chatting with you last night! You are hard to catch online! Even though you computer says it is on all day long...but I hope you get lots of paper representing gold from the working place! Oh shucks...the random story blog still isn't working...is your blog working any better John?

Return to the Light!

Hello blog! I have returned to the lightside of blogging! ;-) Just kidding. But John calls this the lightside of blogging and viewed my switch to xanga as "falling to the darkside" and all. Unfortunately xanga doesn't allow me to email posts so therefore I think I shall be switching to blogger again. John is right. Blogger rocks! I loves it! Only problem is that the Random Story Blog isn't working for some reason...gotta get John to fix that up. yep yep...must have him look into that. In the mean time I shall continue on to other things.

Well my week of work is over. PBT just had its branch meetings and I was helping babysit a dozen kids. Tiring work. I am tired right now actually. It has been awhile since I have posted on this blog. Anyways I am back and shall now begin giving y'all the scoop.

Joel and Katie helped out in babysitting. They were great! Katie of course, was bothered. We had a blast bothering and probably drove the poor girl crazy. If you are reading this Katie, thanks for coming to help out! It was great fun! Hope you also had some fun!

As for the babysitting, we had all the usual fun. Helping kids do crafts and all sorts of things like that. Most interesting. I shall relocate to the guest house now since town power is on and I hear keys jingling downstairs. Don't want to get locked in or end up having to lock up without access to keys.

Ok so I am back. Our new president, Uncle Greg has just arrived in from the U.S. I am not sure exactly when he or if he has assumed full responsibility of the mission yet. But he used to work here in Guinea. OH yeah! For the readers info, I am currently in Conakry, Guinea. With nifty wireless connections no less. You won't find a wireless connection anywhere but the University in Kankan.

Our week babysitting was...interesting. It involved a game called "musical costumes" in which Joel and I, two BIG boys ended up having to wear dress up clothes that were made for little girls for the most part. I shall leave it to your imaginations to figure out what we looked like but it was rather embarrassing especially for poor Joel. Quite hilarious too. I have started a blog for Agent Funny Face now. I highly recommend all my readers to acquaint themselves with this character as it may become essential to some of my future posts. You can follow along as I repost his adventures on my new blog for him. I am also editing them so the reader shan't have to work so hard to read the post. Oh yes...and John, please fix the Random Story Blog. I don't know what happened but it isn't working now.

7 Days

Well I have approximately 7 days remaining in the U.S. My mom is now completely recovered and we are packing up and preparing to leave on December 5th. I still have plenty of packing to do...got to pack my bike...pack my clothes...pack a bunch of little things in my room...sort through my brother's stuff with him. Yep tons to do in a week! Packing is always so hectic. I have never heard of anyone who had all their stuff packed and nothing left to do for the last 7 days before they left. Everyone seems to slowly increase their frantic packing as the departure date draws near. Funny that. My family no exception. We are starting to pack like crazy. Of course I haven't increased my packing too much simply because I have most of my papers and books packed and now it is simply a matter of finishing the small stuff and a couple larger objects. Like some board games and my bike. Bike is quite important of course. yes yes. Guinea is the ideal place for biking. Lots of potholes and mud puddles in the roads. Well whenever there is any rain there are mud puddles. Otherwise it is all dry. Nice and brown. Yep that is what Christmas in Guinea is like.

Hmm...I shall have to continue the story via email through John Wilkos. From the time we leave for Africa he will be posting in my stead when it comes to the story...which is a really cool story! Yessiree! I like it! Of course I am one of the authors so of course I would naturally like it.

I shan't be able to post on this blog regularly once we return to Guinea. I may begin posting every couple months whenever I can find a good internet connection or go to a cyber cafe but that might not be very often at all. I may just not bother until I can get a good connection for free...whatever happens though, I think once I return to the U.S. I will most definitely pick up blogging again. Yep yep! This a most interesting way to express yourself. Not that many people read it but at least I can express myself to whoever is patient enough to put up with all my ramblings. Hopefully I can post a couple more times before we leave. We shall see.

Mondays

Mondays are definitely up there for worst days of the week. On Monday you have to go to school or something always happens on Monday. For my little brother, he had a root canal. Poor guy. In Africa there was this guy who gave my brother and his best friend a sucker every day. As a result his baby teeth are horribly cavitied. My parents have spent over 2000 bucks to save his baby teeth so his permanent teeth won't be ruined. I never had that problem but then my brother has it easier than I ever did in many aspects of life. Mostly because my parents are more experienced at raising kids now than they were with my sister and I. I am the experiment in my family. Yep yep. That is me. I guess I have come out ok.

This evening my sister and I were trying to out score each other in our arcade games on the computer. My sister has the high score in many of the games cause I don't play them as much. I am proud to say that in Sushi Suzi I got the high score and my sister couldn't touch it! Of couse the exact opposite happened when we played lock-out but that is ok. You win some you lose some.

Hehe! Mom is watching wife swap right now and it is driving me crazy. They pair two families of opposite beliefs and habits and switch out the wives. There is one wife who is a vegan and believes that the sun replenishes your calm and is like eating a meal. This lady doesn't believe in punishment and that the child should punish themselves. The problem with that is that childten aren't that responsible yet. The reason children has parents is because their minds aren't developed completely and their parents are supposed to help teach them the correct way to live. They have to teach that there are consequences and punishment is one way to do that. Sure there may be other ways but I just don't think that letting a ten year old punish themselves is the best way to do it. Now you could let them choose their punishment. My parents let me do that once. It wasn't pleasant but better than the grounding I was going to get. Yep yep. The other lady believes in meat eating and I agree with her on many points except she lets her kids eat tons of sugar which makes them extremely hyper and troublesome. Wife swap is quite interesting. Amazing what some families do. Of course my family is pretty different in some aspects of life.

Persecution Sunday

Howdy do and howdy day! What a wonderful Sunday this has been! Yes indeed! It was persecution sunday and so at church they were discussing persecution world wide and it was rather interesting. In Guinea among the Maninka there is a lot of persecution but it is not the normal stuff that everyone thinks of. It is more like being shunned and rejected and people just make life difficult but nothing physical (like beating people up or anything). Today I had a homemade rootbeer float with my pizza. I think they are just as good at home as at the store. So why bother paying 3 bucks at a restaurant for a rootbeer float when you can just pay 10 bucks for a 2 liter bottle of rootbeer and a half gallon of ice cream and have over twice as much? Yep much cheaper for more yummy sugar! Today I told mom that the best part of lunch (which was chicken stir fry with broccoli and all sorts on unidentified vegetables; blech!) was the bowl of white rice with butter and cinnamon sugar that I had after it! Yes it was delicious! I don't like broccoli. Though most people I meet seem to love it for some reason. My sister likes it for one reason. She likes it only because I dislike it. I remember the day she started liking it very clearly. Or maybe she is just trying to please my mom and dad but I doubt it. She decided she liked just to spite me I tell you! Sisters are always doing things like that. Just because you dislike something is reason enough for them to enjoy it immensely! I may think something dumb or dislike and my sister will immediately like it! Ahhhh! Ok so that is not always the case but hey, she can really make life annoying sometimes. She can be very annoying. So can I though. Life goes on and brother's and sister's bother eachother like usual.

Party Time!

Well today we had my brother's birthday party. For those of you who are steady readers of this blog you all may be saying "Didn't you celebrate his birthday days ago?" Actually I am not really sure how many regulars I have so....my brother did have his birthday earlier this week. And yes we celebrated it but the key word here is that it was on a week day. Meaning that we couldn't invite any friends over (cause they all have school and we don't). So that was just the family party. This is the one where you invite all the friends and they come and party party. No did not just write the same word twice on accident for those of you who think that was a typo. (My sister would single that out instantly and find anything she can to twist my words). Anyway so that is the reason. I had a blast! Besides the fact that half the people invited already had other parties to attend, of course. We watched Veggie Tales: The Lord of the Beans (I highly recommend it to all talking vegetable fans), ate delicious cake and ice cream (I made mine into a root beer float; yum yum), Evan got a remote control car, had pizza! But the best part was the combat! It all started with my little brother, who is quite the fighter (I have him well trained to wreak havoc!). He was sword fighting Andy (my friend from school and one of the three guests who came to the party). Then I sort of joined in with my knives, and my sister and her friend (Andy's sister who is the same age as my sister and the second guest to attend) and her friend's sister (slightly younger than my sister) joined. Soon my sister inevitably dug out the heavy guns (my nerf weapons) and teams were automatically established (boys versus girls) and the girls happened to have three of the four heavy duty weapons! hardly fair if I do say so myself! Not to mention that my little brother joined the girls! He really is a ladies man I guess...so it was 2 on four. I think we managed rather nicely with darts flying all over at us and one gun between Andy and myself. I was knifing people left and right until the girls managed to steal my knives and hid them. I must say I died quite a bit myself. By the time I lost the knives I managed to get one of the guns though (unfortunately they aren't much use in hand to hand). All in all I did fairly well. I don' t believe anyone won. Though I must say there was a pretty swift exchange rate of weapons. Yep! It was marvelous playing that! Just like the good old days in Kankan when I made everyone card board swords and we had hundreds of paperballs at our disposal. the living room was transformed into a papery battlle field and strewn with paper and cushions (from the fortifications; aka couches and chairs). Those were the days! We would have all sorts of fun with those! Well enough dwelling on the past. After the party we watched Around the World in 80 days which I have read before. It was quite entertaining. Not a classic movie but entertaining. Ah yes and during the party we of course played Moose moose. You don't really know my family until you have played Moose Moose with us! We are killer Moose Moose players (though today I was an off day for dad and myself). It is an intensely fun game which requires lots of discipline (to keep from laughing so hard you can't play and thereby being demoted in the game to the lowest rank). Our family has developed some interesting strategies for playing it. Hehehe! If you ever need an activity and we happen to be around just say moose moose and we will hop to it! Only draw back is you need lots of people who will listen to the rules and aren't impatient etc. Anyway so now here I am, writing on my blog for lack of anything else to do. Lately the internet is really boring. Normally I would chat with guineagal or John about our story but no one is on the internet lately and usually in a rush when they are so...yeah. People get busy and the internet gets boring. Yep yep. Well...I don't really have much else to say. I saw a cool documentary on a battle in the English Civil war but that was a couple days ago. Hmm...yeah I am pretty much out of topics. Now I shall discuss my lack of topics for a topic. After all that is something, though it is rather boring, don't you think. Ok I guess I will spare you from my ramblings. We are starting to look for plane tickets. That is good and bad.

Birthdays and More Pictures

Well yesterday was my little brother's birthday. He got some cool star wars action figures but what I think is the most interesting gift was the new veggie tales movie, Lord of the Beans. Though I have not yet seen it, it looks to be quite interesting. It is about Toto Baggypants and his magic bean going on a quest to discover great biblical truths etc. Yep! I can hardly wait to see it! I gave my brother a gameboy game. Lego Knight's Kingdom to be exact. He has been playing that quite a bit. Seems to enjoy it too. That is good. Today we got up and went to get pictures for our church. I have this ridiculously large smile on my face cause the photographer was constantly saying "say boogers" or "stinky feet" or some such thing which got me wondering what I could creatively say besides that and was rather amusing etc. Good photographer. Anyway while we waited for the photos to develop we walked around the mall. I made straight for the video games while Mom and Elizabeth went to this ridiculously pink store to look around. It was pitiful. Dad said he managed to stay in there for three minutes and dared me to stay in longer. I didn't want to. Alien planet. Too much bright pink and jewelry and what not for my taste. How do you girls stand it? Well I had to go in there a couple times but I wasn't in there very long at all. Just long enough to tell mom where I would be next. We got to go to G.I. Joe's (A sports store) next door while we waited. i looked for some fencing and archery gear but all they had were compound bows (the bows with all the pulleys and multiple strings and that appear as though you need a phd in order to shoot). I hate compound bows. I prefer the good old fashioned recurve or long bow (which require strength to shoot). See the whole purpose of a compound bow is to make it easy to draw back the string. I want to be like the English and Welsh longbowmen who just hauled back on their hundred pound draw weighted bows and let fly arrows that could punch through armor at 300 yards. Yep yep! I have heard that the English archers could shoot around ten arrows a minute and that is formidable. Especially back in the old days when rapid fire weapons did not exist. I love archery! As for the fencing I didn't find anything at all. It is a sports store though so I guess I shouldn't have expected to find any fence posts there. Maybe at a hardware store. haha! I am trying to find equipment for saber fencing but it is almost impossible to find much of anything. Rather annoying but oh well. Dad found an ice cream maker and was really excited about it until he read the instructions and finally noticed the ingredient ice. We don't have ice available in our house in Guinea, or even a refrigerator for that matter. Hehe! So much for that. I guess I shall continue improvising. I have found that shin guards work well as bracers. Next time I get in a sword fight with anyone I shall wear my shin guard bracers and my arms will be invincible! Hahaha! I practically feel like an armored knight just wearing them. I can always make card board armor in Guinea too. That sometimes works (and sometimes doesn't). I also have my stash of homemade bows and arrows so that should suffice for the archery (not as nice as the ones here but they work).

Continuation of the Washington Venture

Now let me see...where was I? I totally forgot...a bit of review here and, ah yes! New Testament Survey! yes well I was late and all that stuff. Now onwards! See what happened next...I am not sure if I went to chapel next or if I went to financial aid but I think it was chapel. Most likely chapel. Chapel was an improvement of the previous night since we sang songs that people knew a bit more. Plus someone included me! Yay! Usually I am a loner and sit by myself (until I find a friend) but some college freshman called me over and had me sit with them. Of course they were sitting near the back, but hey at least I can sit with someone. Next we went to financial aid I believe. That was interesting. I learned a bit about financing my college education. Then we had lunch and watched some of Batman Begins in the student center. Now the student center is awesome! They had a pool table, widescreen tv, and there was always someone there. Always some movie on and I got to practice my pool playing. I am ok at pool. My dad maintains that I was adopted from China because of my terrible pool playing but I don't think I am that bad. Heheh! I finally went to a class called Business Math and that was cool. All the math is practical and so it was quite interesting (even though I didn't understand hardly anything they were saying). That was my final class of the day. Then I hung out at the Student Center until it was time to go to the SING program. Catching a ride with my room mates, we went and got some pretty good seats near the front. We then watched a series of skits and sang some cool praise songs which was fun. A speaker gave a great message about how we need to respect God more. Not put Him off all the time etc. I will give you the gist of the skits. One was a dating game show with this guy pretending to be a person with a split personality. He is trying to decide between three people. A lady who is crazy about cats, a lady who is crazy about fire, and his second personality. It was hilarious! Another was about four camp counselors who get locked in the bathroom by the campers and are trying to get out. Throughout the skit all you could see was four pairs of feet sticking out and and moving when the person talked. Plenty of sound effects though. Hehe! That was one of the funniest! Anyway we went home after brownies and ice cream. I watched "Man on Fire" until about 3 to 3:30 in the morning and then went to sleep. When I woke up I went to a special breakfast and listened to the College president give a cool speech which I have only retained a generally idea of what it was about. I met a girl who has actually been to Guinea and that was neat. Didn't get to chat much though. Helped pack up some stuff...played pool at the student center until dad picked me up. We then got my sis and went to my Aunt and Uncle's house to visit with my cousins and all. They are ok but rather annoying. All below the age level that I enjoy playing with most (around 12 or 13 and up to college age I guess). I was really tired though. I started sleeping on the way over and when I sleep in the car, well...if my head is down and lolling all over I sometimes drool and that is rather embarrassing. Sometimes. Unless I am just too tired to care. Hehe! Anyway I was pretty exhausted. I managed to be rather presentable at my cousins but I finally ended up on the couch sitting with hat down over my eyes dozing. We then drove to the town of Ellensburg that same day so Dad could speak there on Sunday. I slept and drooled on and off the whole way there of course. My parents will every once in awhile comment on some beautiful landscape or whatever but I don't care. I just want to sleep. It was snowing (we don't get a chance to see much snow in Portland and Seattle) and I didn't care. I just wanted to sleep. The next day we had to go sit through Sunday school with my parents while they discussed everything that we already know along with a couple things I don't know but now do know. I was in a trance, head down, listening and dozing at the same time. I heard every word they said. I even understood everyword they said. My brain just shuts all else down except what is needed to listen. So everyone thought I was dozing off in Sunday school. Too bad the church has no youth at all. Only about 4 kids, one high school senior and some people who look to be in their 30's. That is what they consider getting lots of young people. Everyone else is at least 50. I managed to stay awake for dad's sermon though. usually I can only manage an open-eyed doze in the middle of service. I can sleep in church with my back totally straight, not move a muscle and just completely zoned out and relaxed and still hear the preacher. Though sometimes I zone out too much and have to move myself before I fall into a deeper sleep so I can keep listening to the sermon. I have it down to an art. I still listen and comprehend the sermons too! Really cool! I can even analyze it if I try and test the pastor's main points in this trance like state. Yay! I really try to stay awake and alert and it is so hard for me. So hard. I managed that time though (usually Dad's sermons are interesting anyway). Hurrah! Huzzah! Haha! See then we went and had a potluck like thing with the church and drove home. During which time I slept and drooled more of course. During the latter part of the trip (once we reached Oregon) my sister and I began goofing off and dancing to music on the radio in our cramped seats. Just for something to do. We ate at Sharis when we got back in town and then came home and got back settled in! yay! So there we go. A quick overview of my Washington Venture. Hehe!

Home Sweet Temporary Home

Long time no post. That aside I shall now recount a tale of my venture into the wilds of Washington and the college world. Well it all started at the college fair I attended awhile back (for those of you readers who have been reading this and know what I am talking about, good for you!) when I found out that we wouldn't be leaving until sometime in November. I had found out about Puget Sound Christian College's SING performance and INVITE seminar thing for prospective students. I had been invited and had declined saying that we would be in Africa by then. Only to have my dad correct me saying he had just made arrangements and that I would be going to the INVITE seminar. That was rather dismaying news at the time since I was hoping to be in Africa by then but I am glad I got to go. I shall now fastforward to the part where we travel to Seattle. The trip wasn't so bad. We stopped at a museum about Mt. St. Helens on the way up and got to watch some movie about the U.S.'s largest volcanic eruption (I think it was the largest?). That was pretty cool. After watching the volcanoe rip the landscape up about ten times in the movie and listening to survivor accounts we then got to look at the rest of the museum. After lunch we continued traveling until we reached the great city of Seattle. We stopped by a church by the name of Plymouth something or other (I don't retain everything about all my trips) and saw my dad's childhood friend Allen. He has just been hired as the head pastor (I guess he is technically referred to as the senior pastor; same difference) and is moving into Seattle. This is good news for dad cause now he can see his friend every once in awhile now. Well maybe a little more than that. Anyway I got to meet Allen and of course didn't recognize him (I guess I was just a toddler the last time we met :) ). I hate it when that happens. My dad was all excited and I really didn't feel that excited. I don't know him though. I am glad my dad had a good time though. Next we raced (well we got stuck in rush hour traffic; so we crawled) up I5 to the city of Everrett where PSCC is. We registered for the INVITE. Went to our apartments, and then to the introduction thing for the INVITE students. The introduction Escape service as they call it, wasn't that great simply because of three things. The worship music was too loud (amazed my ears are still working). The songs were all foreign, uncommon, or unknown to most normal people (really annoying when you can't sing the song cause you don't know the words and you can't hear what the lead singer is singing because the music is too loud anyway so you can't really pick up the song very easily either). Finally the overheads weren't working (so not only can you not sing along, hear the lead singer very well, or understand the words to the song, you can't even read the words in your head! That was really annoying and inconvenient). Anyway we went to bed that night (Thursday night) and my roommates played poker while I watched a movie called "Waterboy" that was really quite interesting. It was on tv and I really wanted to finish it so I ended up going to bed at around 2 in the morning. Had to get up before 7 too. I enjoyed the dorm part of life at college. I got to use the internet in the dorm (on my host's computer) and that was cool. I was able to comment on some blogs and reply to emails that way. The next morning I woke up at 6:45 and showered, shaved, and got ready for the day. I went to breakfast and enjoyed it (muffins and fruit) quite a bit. The company was good (lots of people who go to summer camp with us who I vaguely know) then off to my first class of the day. New Testament Survey. I got lost on the way to class (the neat thing about PSCC is that it is a city campus and so it has all it's buildings in downtown Everrett. So you have to walk around town to get to any of the buildings for classes etc.) but with my expert brains managed to find my way to class after taking a couple of wrong turns. Just have to get my bearings :). New Testament Survey was great and we discussed Acts. I was late and it was a little embarrassing walking in with the whole class watching (usually I am never late to class; not used to feeling embarrassed about that sort of thing). But I survived. Hmm...it is getting late so I shall now post this and continue with my tale on the morrow. Good night readers. Will have more on my travels in Seattle later.

Off to Sleepless Seattle

Howdy readers! I am sorry it has been so long since I posted. I have been working on www.randomstoryblog.blogspot.com. It is progressing quite rapidly and the story is much improved now that I have someone else to discuss my ideas with etc. Thanks Guineagal! Couldn't do it without ya! Well I could write a story but it wouldn't be nearly so good without guineagal to set me straight everyonce in awhile. She is a splendid writer and has contributed much to the story in the short week we have been writing together. Only a week! Wow! It seems like I have been working with her for ages! My goodness! Time flies and crawls all at once!

Well as you may have deduced from the title, I am off to Seattle. Well actually our whole family is going. We are going to a college tour thing-a-ma-bopper that will let us hang out at Puget Sound Christian College and see all the cool stuff that goes on there. Different classes etc. Anyway I get to go stay at the dorm and learn about college life. Actually last home assignment we had several PMI's (Pioneer Missions Institute I believe) at colleges and the food was great! There would be tons of fellow missionaries, fellow MK's from all over to associate with, and lots of good food! I loved it! Anyway this won't be anything like that. Thursday at 6 pm the college sessions start and they end Saturday morning I guess. Mom and Dad are gonna drop us (my sister and I; she may be a bit young but this is one of her only chances to go to something like this) off and then we are all on our own when they leave. Cool! Nothing like being "free" for awhile.

Once the event is over we next climb in our beloved car and drive to Ellensburg. A small town in the middle of Washington. My dad will speak at a church there on Sunday. At which point we will make the long, boring (driving in the U.S. is always boring; well when you are with family it usually is) drive home. Probably get home tired and late at night. I don't recall enjoying our visit to Ellensburg last year. Most of the churches that support us have little or no youth and I don't recall being able to connect with the two kids my age there. I do remember the drive home was really boring though. You know they need to put curves in the roads here in the U.S. to keep you awake. The construction crews should make sure to keep the road a little rough too so that you are jolting around and can't sleep if you wanted to. Then we wouldn't have nearly so many problems with drivers falling asleep. If you are alert cause you are worried about pot holes you will also stay in your lane (unless you are dodging a pot hole that is; in which case you can use the other lane if there is no one in it).

I meant to post about what I did on halloween. We were "volunteered" to help out at our churches Harvest Party. My dad didn't go 'cause he pointed out that we aren't really celebrating any harvest, no one who went is probably a farmer or knows much about farming anyway, and he had a couple other reasons involving children needing parental guidance etc. I forget the details. Anyway we went and "volunteered" to help out. Now I will have you know that I was even planning on volunteering of my own accord but my mom went ahead and did it for me. Which then made me not want to go. That coupled with the fact that Dad wasn't going, and I was chatting with guineagal and we were going over the story etc, and having fun creating it. I went anyway and still had a decently fun time. If you can call scrambling around collecting giant horseshoes for four lines of kids fun. The giant horse shoes were almost like throw pillows. Very soft and flexible. Anyway there were twelve of them and four poles that the kids had to try to ring. I spent the time (from 6 to 8) rushing around collecting horse shoes, speaking in a cheerful voice (it gets hard to maintain a cheerful voice when you get tired), switching to southern accents for the cowboys, yoda for the jedi, and calculating a batman's batarang skills, all the while gathering horse shoes and returning them to the throwing line. I was tired by the end of the two hours. Soooo many kids! The only other person manning our station was a neat guy named Adam. He has a real English accent which is pretty cool. Half the time I spent speaking in an English accent. They are such a cheerful accent. :) anyway I need to go to bed. So, my good readers, I shall post upon my return. Well I might take the computer and get a chance to post up there...but I won't count on it. :) Good night. Tomorrow we travel to sleepless Seattle!

The Number Thirteen

Well yesterday I couldn't post because it was too late and I was exhausted. My body hasn't gotten used to day light savings yet. Well now Guineagal and I will begin working together to create the Randomstory Blog. The story is gradually taking shape now and you readers should all go check it out! You can hit the link that says "Our Awesome Story" or go to www.randomstoryblog.blogspot.com in order to read our story and please feel free to critique it or give praise for it. Both will be most welcome. Guineagal is actually going to post her chapters through me via email so I will try to have a little paragraph at the bottom of her chapters saying who wrote it. Now there are 13 posts on the story blog! Yay! Hooray! Hmm...I was writing when inspiration hit and I had to go enter a rhyme I came up with. Anyway 13 is my lucky number! Yay! It is a splendid number and just to be contrary I say it is a good lucky number. Hehe! Anyway I don't really believe in luck that much. Sure there is the luck of the draw or chance and all that stuff. But a lucky rabbit foot won't do anything to improve your luck. That type of luck doesn't really help you at all. It just gives you more confidence. Which could be useful but does nothing to affect chance.

Yesterday I attended the Faith Bible's High Five match. High Five is basically a gameshow with two teams from two schools face-off answering questions on everything from science to current news, history to geography. it is pretty cool. Only I wouldn't do that well. I think much too slowly for games like that. Yep yep. All too true. I have to think stuff through and can't think fast enough. Anyway our team tied the other team up and then lost the tie breaker. It was SO close! The tie breaker was an easy question too. Well if you have heard about the lone ranger. The question was "Who is the lone ranger's sidekick?" Do any of you know the answer? I guess it makes sense that they would make the question an easy one so they would definitely get a winner. Still that is really tough. Have you figured out the answer? Was your answer Tonto? Because that is the answer. The answer that tripped up our high five team in the finals. Rats. Oh well.

Then we went to the school's Harvest Party. Even though I am not going got Faith Bible anymore! I got to see most of my friends and had a great time. Splendid wot, wot! Anyway I got to participate in the doughnut eating contest and pinata beating game. Yay! In the doughnut contest I did pretty well. You eat a doughnut swinging on a string. did I mention that there are no hands allowed? Yep they made me work to get my doughnut and I was covered in powdered sugar when I finally got it. (powdered sugar doughnuts). Then on the pinata contest I excelled! The first two boys hardly hit the pinata. Between the both of them they managed to loosen one of the donkey's legs. I removed both legs with my expert usage of sticks! Yes siree! I am a splendid stick fighter! yep yep! I made that stick dance! Then it broke apart from the strain of being jerked around on the rope, and, as I maintain, being weakened by my repeated blows! I now call myself the Pinata Slayer! Yeeeha! Lets hunt some pinata!

Today we went to church like usual. I managed to stay awake through the whole sermon! Yay! On the other hand it was still hard to remain focused. The sermon was about church growth. How churches should grow and problems that may occur etc. There are always going to be problems as churches grow. It was a pretty good sermon.

Nasty Yard Work

Well today was spent cleaning my Dad's Mom's backyard. It was really nasty business. You see my Dad's sister can't really keep track of her money and always ends up living with Grandma again somehow. Anyway Grandma had to keep my Aunt's dog (a big dog) in her tiny backyard. My Aunt and her husband are very messy so not only did the big dog create a mess, they also created a mess. Now Dad had drafted my help because he was going to "winterfy" Grandma's porch. We ended up cleaning it. It was nasty. There was dog hair every where (fortunately the dog was gone; actually my Aunt had to have it put to sleep), and worst, dirty socks (I assume my Uncle's), blankets, a tent that was to be thrown away, and all sorts of junk. Really, really nasty stuff. Yuck! My Uncle isn't very tidy. Anyways Dad and I cleaned it all up, then we winterfied the back porch by nailing plastic tarp all around it except at the second back exit. It creates a greenhouse effect and then my Grandma keeps her plants there. We also raked the yard for Grandma. Yes my Uncle isn't that great. Still I try to get along with him. After all Jesus does love him.

All day though I just wanted to get back home so I could get on yahoo and chat! I had such a blast chatting with Guineagal yesterday! Today I got to chat with Katie though. Yes yes! We discussed the finer points of Star Wars literature for the most part. Heheh! What an interesting topic Star Wars is. Yes indeed! I have this one idea for a cool Jedi attack. Hehe! The Jedi could use it if facing multiple enemies from a distance, in a relatively confined space, where he needs to close with the enemy fast or die. The scene: a hallway, there are say half a dozen enemies armed with blasters at the end of the hallway. The Jedi throws his lightsaber down the hall guiding it with the force, the light would draw the eyes of the enemy, and simultaneously, to evade most of the opening shots, use the force to enhance his speed, and jump/run along one of the walls curving the lightsaber back towards him as he lands. He could even have it slice through the first two enemies, have it begin swinging at the third as he catches it. The whole attack would have to be instantaneous though. Otherwise the soldiers would shoot down the jedi. I have another idea. The Jedi just uses the force to jerk all the blasters to himself. Hehe! Much simpler. Not as cool though. Just not the same as running along a wall with blaster bolts flying past.

We watched "The Musketeer" tonight. For action fans I must recomment this movie. The second scene in the movie has an awesome fight. D'artagnan, the main character, walks into a tavern to get some breakfast and gets in a fight trying to protect a boy. He takes on about five enemies at once. At one point in this first fight he is balancing on a rolling barrel, uses his sword to jump into the rafters, and braces himself between two beams supporting the ceiling, while dodging thrusts from four men below. It was so cool! They do all these cool stunts and it all could almost be possible! That is the neat thing. Unlike those kung fu movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon where the fighters literally fly (they appear to be jumping but they are basically flying). Yep it was awesome! Plenty of fighting, lots of cool moves, and even a part where the main character is hanging from the bottom of a racing carriage like Indiana Jones! Hehe! It is a must see for anyone who enjoys creative action.

Chatting is a marvelous thing!

Well howdy do and howdy day! What a lovely day! Well not only did I get to go visit my old school today, but I got to finally talk to the mysterious Guineagal! Yay! It was quite enjoyable! I have apparently met her before but my memory fails me. I dearly wish I could remember but I can't. I discovered one important thing while chatting with her though. She is a genius! Just like John and I. Katie too! Once again people began stealing my words and sentences out of my head. That or they are genius! Well to say the least the encounter was interesting. It was fun talking to another MK! Well I do talk to John fairly often too. It is always fun chatting with other MK's though! The other piece of good news is that now I know someone has finally read my whole story! Well so far! Hehe! Guineagal read and said she enjoyed it! Yay! Yes that alone could practically make my day! I was literally bursting with happiness. I had a huge smile on my face. Just now I figured out a comfortable way to use the computer on the internet and sit comfortably in the living room! What a great day this is! Yep, yep, yep! Of course it had its minor irritants (computer problems) but those were finally solved. Yes indeed.

Right now John and I are exchanging verbal assaults. It is fun! We both have "duels with words" and use fantastic philosophy and logic to out think the other and smother eachother with reasons why something is better than another object. Hehe! It is almost like sword fighting taking turns making attacks and defending your point of the argument. We are debating I guess you could say. We do it about all sorts of things. Hehehe! Anyway. I will now go post on my story blog.

Youth Group! Yay!

Well today I had a normal day. I got up, had breakfast, etc etc. Yes I did my chores and all that. Tomorrow I get up early to go visit my former school and get a permission slip so I can go to their high five contest. It sounds like your quizzing is pretty close to our school's high five, Katie. I am not that great at quizzing or high five, (however you want to call it) simply because I like to think through my answers before I give them. I usually don't like rushing through anything. I feel as though I might be missing some important part of the question. Anyway I want to get a permission slip to accompany them to their match. That should be interesting. See how smart I am.

Well youth group was great! They had a guest speaker, a little old lady named Flow I guess, and she told about her life. She has witnessed many miracles in her life. Quite amazing! She was our youth pastor's grandma. It was really cool. On the way home from youth group I was flipping radio stations and I hear "you are going to die" on this one channel. Hehe! How pessimistic! Yes it is quite humorous. Of course I am going to die someday. It is nearly inescapable. Yep! Might as well accept it. Maybe I can go out in a burst of glory! Or maybe I can just end my life peacefully as an old man. Whatever the case I hope I accomplish whatever I was made to do here on earth. Then I got to a station that had some strange music. Nice tune but I couldn't recognize any of the instruments. I had something else to write here but like the absent-minded fool I am, I forgot it. Once I had to place a post-it note on my forehead on the way to school in-order to remember to turn in a payment for a field trip. hehe! I rode the bus all the way to school and didn't take it off until I had completed my all important mission. I had spent a week forgetting so it was necessary. That is just one of the many examples I could give you of my absent-mindedness. Well now I shall go check some more blogs and see if I can come up with the next portion of the story for our Randomstory blog. Go to www.randomstoryblog.blogspot.com or click on the link "Our Awesome Story" to view the story. Tell me what you think of it. I would really like to know. So far only one other person has read it (Uncle Dwayne) and I am not sure if he has read it recently. Happy reading and good night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite.

John, Mr. T, and Homework

I just finished chatting with John. It was great! He showed me a website (I believe it was www.newgrounds.com) that had sound boards with the voices of actors. Ahh, here is the exact website address. www.newgrounds.com/collection/soundboards.html. That should take you to a list of different actors and you can click on them and hit play game to get a list of lines from shows and movies they were in. It is cool. I chose Mr. T (we use dial-up so I stayed with him since it would take forever to try to do anyone else) and then commenced to have conversations with John. He chose a whole host of different actors. Unfortunately almost all Mr. T says has to do with "fool" only he says it like so, "foo!" Doesn't pronounce the l at the end. Then my sister started messing around with the mouse since I didn't need it while John and I chatted normally. She started hitting the line "Understand" whenever I said something. If you have ever heard Mr. T talk you know he is a real tough guy. Hehe! Anyway as I was telling John he MUST post on his blog my sister hits the button immediately after so the computer growls "understand" and John and we figured that John had better post or Mr. T will come after him. Hehehe! It was fun! Besides checking blogs today (better post John or Mr. T'll getcha) I didn't do much outside of the ordinary. That is to say I woke up, cleaned my room for an hour, did my french lessons, did some sort of physical activity, washed some clothes. The exception is that yesterday we got our first school assignment of the year. We will be studying church history this year and I am to research Jerome, an early Bible translator. I also have to read Acts and memorize a verse. Not much. Mostly just reading Acts and the one page paper on Jerome. Memorization never was too hard for me. Just took lots of time.

Hmm...now I believe Guineagal asked for jokes. Hmm...my Old Testament teacher was a great source for jokes last year. Hehe! He called everyone by a nickname. He even wrote people's nicknames on detention slips. The rest of the teachers always had to ask him who was receiving the detention. Fortunately I never had my nickname on a detention slip. I was an angel in class. :) I never talked at the beginning of the year. Didn't know anyone. No reason to talk. At the end of the year I still didn't talk in class anyway. Cause I can wait until the teacher usually. Yep! Anyway...a good joke...I have one from my OT teacher for you, Guineagal. It was hilarious. Though I normally don't use the vocabulary in it. Still it is funny. Well you know about David and his sons right? Remember when Absalom invites all his brothers to a feast? They all rode donkeys and mules to the feast. Now one of Absalom's brothers had raped Absalom's sister. As a good brother Absalom wanted revenge and so he killed that brother. The rest of the brothers got on their donkeys and fled. As my OT teacher put it, "They got their asses out of there!" I thought it was hilarious! He really makes the Bible interesting. Like one of Esau's wive's name was Oholibama. That is how it is spelled. All year long we were joking over that one. Some of my class mates claim that they will name their daughters that. There were some other funny names too that I can't recall at the moment. Who knew it could be so fun to read the Bible? Well that's all folks.

Family Pictures Again

Well today we went with my dad's side of the family AGAIN to get family pictures. Last week the pictures weren't satisfactory so we didn't buy them and went to a different studio this week. Anyway we spent the better part of an hour taking the pictures at a Walmart and then wandered around it. Amazingly enough the pictures all came out great. They even got a picture of me with a real smile (quite hard to do in a picture). Usually I have this fake smile for the camera. I have had to endure too man pictures in my life time. Anyways it turned out great, well the pictures at least. I don't really get along with my dad's side of the family that well because they are so different from me. There always seem to be problems and issues that need resolving and someone is always stressed in that family. Unlike our family which is fairly easy going and we don't worry much at all, my dad's mom always worries. Over everything. And everything has to be just so. Where I grew up, with MK's and missionaries no one really cares that much. Everyone is flexible. In fact it is important to be flexible and accept what life throws at you in Guinea.

Hmm...I think I need to change my profile. It is a little out of date. I seem to do well posting. Only I haven't figured out how to put pictures into my posts. No matter I hope everyone enjoys my blog regardless the lack of coloring.

We also visited my Great-Grandma and that was, well, the conversation was lacking. I just can't really discuss lightsabers and different ways to "use" the force with my great-grandma. I am not sure if she knows what a lightsaber is. I also met this 95 year old lady at my g-grandma's nursing home. Lovely lady. She seemed to like me because she started telling me about how she ran away with a sailor and was happily married to him for 40 years. That is awesome! I always thought those were just stories, running away with sailors and all but she really did it. And the amazing thing to me is that she said she had only known him for 3 or 4 weeks before she married him. Who said love at first sight doesn't work? Well maybe it doesn't work normally but that was a neat story. She actually started talking about her marriage because we were discussing grandchildren briefly (after all I was my great-grandma's great-grandchild; and she asked if my brother was my son. heheh he is only five and people have asked if I am a senior in highschool before. Anyway I explained the purpose of my visit). She said she highly disapproves of couples living together before marriage and I naturally agreed and she went on to tell me not to get married until I was about 25 (heheheh, she was already ordering my life for me :-) ) and had a good job and home. I told I wasn't planning on getting married anytime soon. Imagine though! All that conversation while waiting for an elevator to take my lil brother to the games room! Life sure is interesting sometimes. Wonder if she was a Christian.

Church and Potlucks

Well today was rather boring. All I did was read and go to church and go to a potluck (which wasn't that great; good food though) and now I am writing on my blog. I was bored enough to beat myself in war. The card game. It was rather boring. I should try playing Egyptian Ratscrew, aka Egyptian Ratcatcher, by myself sometime. I have played Marco Polo by myself. I am proud to say I was so good I couldn't catch myself. Lol! Hahah! Yep. I am a Marco Polo freak. I could play it in the swimming pool for hours on end. Not many people seem to keep up with me in Marco Polo. Well not many people want to play it for hours either. :-) That is the game I am most likely to play in the pool. Quite entertaining. I am really hard to catch besides.

Hmmm....coming up with another topic....ah yes....I am reading the sequel to Eragon. It is so far very good. Just as good as Eragon itself. The dwarves are rather interesting in that story but I still like the way I have designed my dwarves. All dwarves are short and stocky and strong. In all stories it seems to be that way. Yep. They also have red hair or black. And of course beards. Yep. Can't have a dwarf without a beard. Although in my stories I say dwarves aren't allowed to grow a beard until they reach full maturity which is about 50 years old. Custom of the dwarves...the beard is a sign of maturity. Hmm...in ancient Greece the Spartans had cowards grow half a beard...maybe I can adapt that to the dwarves and...well that is for later. Good night.

Back!

Hello folks! I am back! Yep I was gone for a few days but I was usually writing email but more likely hanging out with John in Tibia! Of course I kept dying in Tibia which is rather depressing (cause you lose all sorts of things) but that is ok. I can persevere. It is only a game.

I create these imaginary worlds and still play (believe it or not) imagination games etc. They always have fighting in them. That is a must in any story or game you play. Anyway usually when I am cutting down hoards of foes with my lightsaber, or cleaving through orc shields and helms with my sword named Brightblade, I will get so excited I'll go tell my dad about it. My dad always will listen to me and then he says something like, "Jonathan, orcs don't exist." I mean talk about ruining a guy's game! Right at your moment of glory, "Jonathan, lightsabers aren't real." Who wants to think logically? What is the fun in that? My dad seems to do that without fail quite frequently. It is sort of funny in a way. I will be holding my great sword in battle ranks and suddenly my dad will call to my attention that it is only a stick. hehe! I don't mind it too much. I tolerate it. STILL it does deflate the magnificence of the game. If you want an idea of what my imagination games are like go to this web site (www.randomstoryblog.blogspot.com) to see the story John and I have been creating. Well John hasn't started his part of the story yet. Unfortuneately to read it all in the proper order you have to read it backwards because of the way the blog lists all the postings but that is a minor problem. I have had someone tell me they really enjoyed. Hope you do too.

Now lets see...what to discuss...any of you Harry Potter fans out there? I have read the first five books so far and enjoyed them. I am not a rabid Harry Potter fan but I do find the books to be quite well written. I would recommend them for leisure reading. Just read them when you have lots of time on your hands. You could get sucked into the plot and swept away. We actually watched the Prisoner of Azkaban just half an hour ago. It was ok. I was rather disappointed with it somewhat. It failed to deliver the visual effects as well as the book can with my own imagination. I like to think I have a highly developed imagination too. I am creating a mythical world name Arania. It is slowly taking shape. Right now I am developing the Dwarves. They are pretty complicated. Like how they wear their hair. How is their leadership designed? Hmm...how did I ramble onto the topic of Arania? Oh well. No matter. That is what happens when I just start typing away. I jump from topic to topic as it enters my head.

Well good night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite!

College, Financial aid, Pictures and all that stuff.

Well today was busy for me. Uncle Dwayne and his wife left this morning and we went to get family pictures with my dad's side of the family. Almost nothing goes exactly right whenever my dad's relatives do a family event it seems. In this case we spent what seemed like ages just trying to get everyone in the picture. There were only nine of us but we were packed into this tiny studio and the camera was bolted down and so you couldn't really move it well so we kept having to retake because someone had their face cut off or some such thing. Then! When we finally did it Grandma decided it wasn't good enough! I was ready to accept whatever we got but now we have to do it all over again next week! AHHHHHHHHHHH! I hate family pictures! I always have a fake smile on and rarely get a good picture. Besides there is always something amiss no matter what side of the family we take them with. When I am an adult, you aren't going to find me saying "hey lets go to Walmart and have a family picture." Nope. If we need pictures we can take them ourselves. Well maybe once a year but that is just not very fun in my opinion. Not at all.

Then I came home and messed around on the internet, checked my blog, checked John's blog, and checked Kate's blog. The usual routine and all. Got to chat to some friends via google talk. Got to talk to John just now. Quite fun. Hehe you had better be going to sleep by now though John. It is only 10:30 here but 12:30 a.m. for you and you have Calculus to take. I am going to take Calculus this year too. If I ever get back to Africa that is. I love a good challenging class. Well I love completing challenging classes.

Then we went to a Christian college fair. They had tons of colleges and even though I am still a couple years from entering college, I need to start looking for scholarships and all that stuff. In Africa we don't have access to the resources needed to apply for scholarships and grants and all that stuff. Well it is harder to get access to those resources. I am still not entirely sure how we are going to do that. But my top three choices for a college are currently Seattle Pacific University, George Fox University, and Puget Sound Christian College. The three most interesting majors for me are Engineering, Christian Missions, and Business. I can be a Business Engineer Missionary when I grow up. Hehe! I wonder how many minors I can take. hmm. Maybe I can double major and double minor. That would be fun. And a lot of work. Still I could minor in French. You could get around most of Africa by simply being able to speak English and French. Have to use Chinese in Asia. I want to learn every major they have at all the colleges practically! It is so hard to choose a major. I still have a couple years though.

Holes!

I have returned from seeing a great movie! Guess the title. Holes! Haha! It was a splendid movie! If you have read the book I highly recommend seeing the movie. I actually read the book about five years ago and I believe that they did a great job following the book in the movie. Yep. The plot was intricately woven so that everything fits into place by the end. It is an awesome story. The funny thing is that Dad and Uncle Dwayne were saying that they didn't really want to watch it. Neither had read the book and Uncle Dwayne went as far as to say that he didn't think it looked like a good movie. Ha! It is a splendid movie with a brilliant plot written in such a way that it links the past to the present and practically every detail has some role to play in the story. Yep splendid movie. In case you haven't read any of my earliest posts I use splendid when I really liked something. Splendid is such a splendid word. Don't you agree?

Well today we went to a church in the town of Vernonia. Quite interesting. I got to listen to dad explain everything we do in Africa. Then we went to one of the Elder's house and had lunch and talked. Quite boring. I was bored stiff. Hehe well not that stiff. I did figure out two of those puzzles. The type where you have two metal pieces and you have to figure out how to seperate them. I can never figure those out and I am not really a puzzle person. Well you may find me puzzling but everyone is strange in their own way. My sister loves to find a second meaning out of what people say. Anyway I was happy that I finally figured out the puzzles. I had nothing else to do after all. On the trip home I was exhausted (I am always exhausted in cars; well in the U.S. at least) and dozed off. I really went to sleep because when I woke up my head was tilted forward and I was drooling on my shirt! I hate it when I do that! Still it is sort of funny. Hehe. My dad does that if he doses off. Never when he sleeps at night though. I don't drool at night either. It is always when I am in the car dozing. That or when I am concentrating so hard that I forget the minor detail of keeping saliva in my mouth. That rarely happens and thankfully not in public. Hmm. Yep it must be a sign of genius. Or lunacy. Of couse some lunatics were ingenius. Well I figure I will go look at some other blogs and then go to bed.

War!

Well I got these cool Nerf sets with blasters that shoot darts with velcro on 'em. You then put on this colored vest and the darts stick when they land. It is really cool and really fun. Uncle Dwayne happened to be coming and I happened to have bought some more ammo for the guns. The result was a huge gun fight, my li'l brother and I versus my Dad and Uncle Dwayne! I would have to say that it must have been a draw (though I did get a couple good shots in there if I do say so myself) considering both sides were hit all over the place. Thankfully eye protection was provided with the guns. I got hit right in the glasses and pretty much all over but my vest was not hit nearly so much. That is the target in my opinion. Quite exciting though! We were sweating by the end. Of course mom and Aunt Helen retreated to the kitchen so as to avoid the darts flying everywhere and stuck in almost every imaginable location. The funny thing is my sister just sat playing her new gameboy on the couch through the entire fight, totally ignoring us and engrossed in her game. She has been there all day. Well practically all day. Hehe! The calm during the storm I guess is what my sister was. She never once commented until the end when my brother was saying that we had won. Then she said that nobody had won and I had to agree. That was great though! I can't wait until I can try it out with my friends in Kankan. Well once Nick and Mosie get back from boarding school that is.

We went to pick out a movie at Blockbuster and I am now back having seen The Kingdom of Heaven. It didn't really look like heaven to me. Nope. There were several big battles though. Basically it is about the crusades but it is pretty neat how they created the story. They actually had some decent characters with good beliefs. I will have to think on what they said but it was pretty good in most cases. Well what the main character had to say was pretty good. He was more worried about saving people and not the treasures of this world. Well not the gold and silver and religious treasures at least. The real treasures are the people of this world. Sometimes they seem to be a curse too. Strange. We were made for this earth and yet we destroy it quite frequently. Must be the result of sin. Too bad. Still all the sword play was awesome. Of course I am a boy and generally we get all "pumped" about facing the danger and despite all odds defeating it etc. For proof you should join John and I in Tibia. We take on the goblins and orcs, rotworms and Amazons readily. We call them all sorts of names while beating them and then when they prove to strong or numerous for us we hightail it out of there. You never saw anyone run so fast as us when we were fleeing an Amazon lady. Beat by a girl no less! Well that is what we should expect when facing girls. Sheesh they can be mighty dangerous sometimes. No offense meant. Hehe! It is a good thing we fled though or she literally would have had our heads! Yep girls can be pretty tough. That was all a game though so it doesn't really matter that much. I think I would freak out if our house was attacked by goblins or orcs. Now how did Aragorn and Legolas handle them orcs...hmm...well that is for another post sometime. Ciao, Audios Amigo!

Long time no Post

My goodness I haven't posted in over a week! Well a bit has happened in that time. We went to my family's (well half of my family's) "Gilson Family Campout". I had an ok time. You see the Gilson family campout is basically all my mom's relatives traveling to my late great grandparent's farm and then working for a couple days to clean it up a bit. Hurrah. That was a sarcastic hurrah. I am not really a farmer. Although I have to say I did a good job splitting wood considering that I haven't ever split any wood...well anyway it was ok. My cousins (all younger and than me by at least 7 years; very annoying and unreasonable quite often) were everywhere. I ended up "mortally" wounding myself. The rug has a metal strip that holds it down but in actuality it is sticking up elevated off the floor. Now there is a floor mat on it but my Aunt just had to move that mat while cleaning unkowingly sealing my fate to slice my toe on it. Didn't really hurt that much. Bled all over though. Thankfully my Aunt also happens to be a nurse so she doctored my toe up real nice like.

Lately I have been playing Tibia. It is a splendid game. Yep! A simply splendiferous game! hehe! Highly entertaining if you have a friend to play with. If not, it is still interesting but you can't have the thrill of bragging with your friend when you demolish some orcs or goblins. No one to celebrate with when you level up either.

Well lately, since I have no work, no school (yet), and am putting off packing (I always seem to put off that sort of thing; no incentive to pack yet) I have tons of free time! Yay! Now normally I would try to be on the internet half the day and read the other half. Only my parents told me I couldn't be on the internet all day. So I instead read all day (unless I am doing chores), play video games and then get on the internet at night. I nice schedule. Yep. I like it. Except for the fact that my brain is slowly turning into a puddle of mush. As I told one of my teachers from last year, "Soon my head will be a box of rocks!" quoting on his catchy line "You're dumb as a box of rocks!" He sounds like my dad! Hehe! When my dad taught Nicholas and I science he called us "knuckleheads" everyday! hahaha! It was great! We were knuckle heads too! That is the funniest part. At the time I believe we considered ourselves quite smart. Hehe! Yep Dad sure "unknuckled" us. Well he took out some of the knuckles in my head.

Church, Sermons, and Sleep

No matter what I do, I almost always fall into a doze at church. I can't help it. I spend hours on the Internet until I notice that it is almost midnight, then I go to bed and get up to get ready for church. Whether I am tired or not seems to make no difference. I go to church and in the middle of the sermon, while still listening to the pastor my brain slowly winds down until I am nearly unconscious to the state that my head starts drooping. I then wake up and struggle to concentrate on the sermon, which I have by now most likely missed a key point. I then start to zone out and wouldn't be surprised if I have actually gone to sleep with my eyes open. The only thing that would possibly give me away then is the fact that I am not moving. But I literally zone out get tired whenever I listen to a sermon. I can't help it. It just happens. Maybe I need to go to bed earlier. I cannot remain conscious in a car either, unless driving. I just begin to drowse and my head starts to flop all over (especially in Africa when there are plenty of potholes).

The sermon today was something about how the Church should be. The pastor said that we needed to work to belong in a group. I guess he was talking about small groups. Anyway he talked about the Church in Acts chapter 2 and described them as appealing to everyone. Back then everybody noticed the Christian church and wanted to know what it was about. Now few people seem to be interested in the Church and many want nothing to do with the Church. A sad change. I believe it is the Church that changed though. The way Churches operate somehow. I am not sure what exactly we must change in the Church though to show non-believers how real Christians live. I have a couple hunches but I need to ponder them for a while. What do you think? Surprised I remember the sermon? Well I don't sleep the whole time. I do try to pay attention. They have some good (if a boring presentation) stuff to say in church. I try to analyze everything they say with my knowledge of the Bible. That keeps me awake a little but not much.

Well I am quite tired today so I believe I will go study the RandomStory Blog and try to edit my story there and then get off and go read or more likely take a nap while trying to read.

No More Work!

Hurrah! I am finally done with my summer job! Wahoooooo!!!!!! Now I am free...uh...well I still have my chore (washing the laundry) and then again I also have to pack up my room and prepare for the trip back to Africa. I also still have to do French lessons each day and exercise and some type of work. Well I guess I am not exactly free yet but pretty close. Nah I doubt I will ever be truly free in my whole life. There are always things to do. Must wash clothes, or fix dinner, or clean the bathroom etc. Even as an adult I suppose there is never really complete freedom. Because if I had complete freedom all I would do all day is read, watch a little tv, play video games, and if my friends could, play with my friends. Oh and write email and post on my blog.

This is the last day of September and such a splendid month too. September is the best month of the year in my opinion simply because it is my birthmonth. That is reason enough for me. In Kankan it is one of the most comfortable times of year. The humidity is low and the rainy season is finally slowing down. All the plants are green, the grass is seven feet tall, and there are mud puddles every where so when riding your bike you are constantly dodging and weaving through a total maze of puddle filled pot holes. Not too much dust either since it has been washed down by the rain. Yep I am definitely missing Kankan.

Of course I will miss some things about working at Burgerville. For one there were several workers who, while most weren't Christian, they were still nice people and I got along well with just about everyone. There was also one customer who I always talked with and I could get her to laugh most of the time. I am not sure if she was a grandma or just an old mom but she was really nice and when I told her it was my last day her son (or grandson?) seemed upset. I guess I made an impression on him because he kept waving until they left the drive-through. Sometimes I hate moving all over the place like we do. But now I don't have to work 40 hours plus a week and can relax more at home...err...I mean pack more at home.

Well I will now close this post. Close.

Retreats, books, movies and all that stuff

Well I had a blast at the retreat. I am actually writing this blog and instant messaging my very good friend John at the same time. I now have google talk and it is awesome. Everyone should also take a look at our story too. We haven't come up with a name for the actual story but so far it is just John and I who are coming up with the story. Well actually it is just me but John will soon post his first section of the story. I can't wait to be introduced to his character. John's good friend Alex may also join us in the story.

Well I had a blast at the retreat. It was awesome. I got to meet all my good friends from school again. Well most of them. I got to worship God with them. It was great. I went and we made a sand sculpture of the sinking Titanic and did a fair job of it. We won the award for the most historic sculpture of a sunken nautical vessel that is now at the bottom of the ocean award.

I had a good time in the free time that we had. I tried this dance game thing that proved very difficult for me. It looks easy. All you do is step on the different squares when the arrows tell you to but there are so many arrows and it is hard to coordinate your movements. I did horribly. I am a beginner though.

I finished the book Eragon. For those of you who are fantasy lovers, I highly recommend Eragon. It has fantasy a plenty and is the type of book that you can't put down once you pick it up. I am definitely going to read the sequel. Someone said it wasn't as good but I don't care. For those of you who don't like fantasy, well, um, I don't know how to save you from your plight. The only way you could save yourselves is by reading Eragon I suppose. For those of you who don't like reading, how do you survive? No offense but reading is awesome. Just as good in some aspects and better in others.

I am now focusing on the Wheel of Time series. I am reading the eighth book and it is quite good. I have enjoyed the whole series and the eleventh book, a Knife of Dreams, will soon be coming out. If they ever make a movie out of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time it will take years to create. You could have a whole movie series on it. We are talking 12 three hour movies! That would be cool but it would take so long to make them!

Speaking of fantasy movies, The Chronicles of Narnia look fantastic. The only catch is that by the time they come out in theaters we will be in Africa. *Sigh* Oh well. We will just have to wait until the Marine house gets it and then we can go see it. In the capital city the Marines (who guard the embassy) have a Friday movie night thing for ex-pats in the country. You can go and buy hot dogs and watch two movies, swim, and play volley ball with the marines and other foriegners. It is pretty cool. I have been there once or twice.

Well fare well. Be sure to check out my story. You access the webpage via the link on the right side of this text. The link is "Our cool story".

Retreat! Hurrah!

Hey you may think that retreat is a bad thing especially when you are in a military engagement. Well this retreat is good. My old school is going on a retreat to Wi-ne-ma and I get to go with them. We will spend the night there and then return home on Friday. That means that I must wake up bright and early tomorrow and drive to school by eight o'clock and catch the bus if I want to ride with any of my friends. I also have to pack tonight but that is a minor problem that is easily taken care of for me. I simply throw two pairs of clothes, my toothbrush and bathroom accessories, a book or two, and some entertainment of some sort (cards, balls, etc) and then I am packed. Oh yes mustn't forget sleeping bags and pillow. Now I am packed. Quite simple really. I have spent my whole life learning how to pack. When I was younger I would stuff my backpack with "necessary items" and then lug them all over and not use more than a couple of them. Now I still cram my backpack but with every trip I make I pack less and less "necessary stuff" and more and more "useful stuff". The difference. Well "necessary stuff" is only what you think (your brain tells you that you need) you need, and "useful stuff" is the stuff that you actually do use on the trip. No matter how little I pack there always seems to be anywhere from 25 to 50 percent of it left unused by the end of the trip. It is quite annoying and I wish I could whittle it down but I think I know what it is. I usually try to conserve things and so I conserve what I use and end up with extra.

Well today work was horrid. It started fine but in the middle of the day the computer froze on a credit card payment and wouldn't accept credit cards. So we lost two meals through that and then finally got it fixed. Then I was taking a lady's order and accidentally entered the wrong number and was trying to get the computer to change it. So I went and got back-up, got it fixed, came back and the money from the order was gone. I had taken it, and then because the computer wouldn't work and open the cash register so I could get change, placed it on the window sill thinking that the lady would want to make sure that I didn't do anything with it. I just wanted to avoid any more complications. Well any way it was gone and I assumed that she had taken it back so I asked for it and she said that she had handed it to me. I will admit she was a great liar. I told her it wasn't on the ground, no one had touched it besides me, and I hadn't put it in the till (cash register) since I hadn't been able to get it open anyway because of the stupid computer! She started saying she wasn't going to "pay again" for it and so I said I would go check to see if any other employee had taken it (which I doubted but hoped someone had). Nope. We got the manager and he just said to let them go because he didn't want to deal with anyone like that. The very next guest in the drive through said he had seen her quickly jump out of the car grab the money and get back in and wondered what was going on and if she had been stealing or what. There was my confirmation. Some people just aren't honest and I hate that. It just ticks me off. I was also rather sad that some people will do things like that. Well now I know not to leave the money in the window when getting back up. Wish I didn't have to learn it the hard way though.

Well I will tell you all about camp later then. See ya.