Sunday, August 28, 2005

Hurricane

So I was watching foxnews and they showed this website to look at live webcams of the New Orleans area. Thought I might share it with y'all.

www.nola.com

Let's hope this thing steers clear of the city. In one of my countless geography classes we learned about the levee system that new Orleans has. If Lake Pontchartrain starts pouring over the back side of the levees it's nothing but trouble for that area. Good Luck N.O.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

That time again...For the last time...Let's hope...

Well, I've totally managed to throw my life into a never ending cycle of school-camp-school-camp-school. I'd actually done semi-well until this summer when I got my numbers mixed up and wasn't able to go back to college to take the last course I need to graduate. I'm not at all complaining about the camp part of that cycle. I truly love camp and everything about it. I am just frustrated with the whole school thing. Of course I feel that a degree is important, and I'll be totally happy when I earn mine. I just hope that it actually equals something. I hope there is a job out there for someone like me. My ideal job? Well I'd love to run camp, but I can't make enough money there, and more importantly I need to get the heck out of the Kerrville/Ingram area.

Seeing as how my job experience is limited to camp for 6+ years of my life and that one summer of cutting fence lines in south Texas, I'm not exactly qualified for many things. This scares me... I do have enough confidence to know that whatever I find, I'll be dang good at. I learn quick, and strive to move my way up. It doesn't really matter what job I have, if I turn out to be a drug dealer I want to be the best drug dealer ever. There's no way I'm going to be a drug dealer, just the first example that popped into my head. Something that I've thought about a lot lately, is maybe getting out of the states for a while. I'd love to go down to Mexico and learn Spanish. That would be great. I dream of being completely fluent in another language, and if I had to choose one, it would be Spanish. I'm not too terribly bad at it right now, well I could get around down there if I needed to, but I wouldn't call myself anything close to fluent. I can say what I need to say, probably not always grammatically correct, but people get the gist of it. (Mexico by James Taylor just popped up on my Ipod...A sign maybe???) I figured I'd lose my Spanish motivation when I lost my Spanish connection, however its as strong now as ever. Of course I hope that my Spanish connection comes back, but for now I'm not putting my money on that one.

Well getting back to what I started on, tomorrow I make the long trek to Lubbock. I'm going back for this schedule: Tuesdays--12-1:15; 6-9. Thursdays--12-1:15. Now does that leave me with a little free time or what? I wish I had a lot more money, I do some serious exploring in the heartland. I've always wanted to get out and see that part of the country. I guess I'll have to settle for finding some sort of job, and work enough hours to support my free spending habits. Another frustrating thing for me, I always seem to spend money in bunches. The only time I have good money management is when I have none. You can't spend 0 dollars on anything, so I don't.

So for the next 3 and a half months of my life, I'll be in Lubbock, taking 6 hours of class, and feeling sorry for myself. What I could really do, and what I want to do with it, is turn it into a positive experience. (Yes I'm the annoying guy who finds the positive in everything.) How many people get a time like this to really straighten things out in their lives. It gives me 4 months to figure out my next step. It gives me 4 months to find the right things to say. It gives me 4 months to really just find myself. I think that last part is the most important for me. I've been pretty much weaned off of the parental teat, voluntarily though. I'm sure if I needed anything, I could ask, but I want this independence. I need this independence, and my Dad really deserves to be able to spend his money on him and not me. This is the first time I'll pay for my own tuition. I'll be making all my own payments (as little as they are). It's all on me though, and I welcome the challenge.

I had an interesting conversation a couple of weeks ago in Marble Falls with a very good friend of mine about where we are now, and where we'd always pictured ourselves at this age. What I told her is that I picture myself 2 years behind where I should be, and where I want to be. I never intend to grow up too fast, I want to keep my youth, but I hope in the next year of my life, I'm able to get caught up. I'm not saying I want to be married, and have kids. What I'm saying is I'd like to not have as many questions. I want the big questions flowing around in my head right now to be answered, and only be worrying about "what's going to happen next?", and not so much about "do I have everything taken care of now?". I know I can't answer every question I have, if I could I'd be friggin' brilliant and would already have finished college and be on my way to the top of the country. Dang I'd make a good president...

I realize without even going back and reading what I've typed so far, that I don't sound too excited about heading back to Lubbock. I'm not, but I am happy that I've got a good contingency of friends up there. They always make the transition better. So here's to the next three months, may it go by quick, but not too quick where nothing gets accomplished!

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Panic Button?

After another hair pulling loss tonight, the Houston Astros are lucky to still be in the lead (actually a tie) in the wild card race. I really thought that what they were putting together after the All Star Break was more than just a hot streak. This is a team with boat loads of potential. The top 3 pitchers could be aces of most any staff in the Majors, however when they don't get any runs, they are handed loss after loss (I was going to say earn, but that's not right). The bats are here and there, the only real constant has been, uhhh, well no one. I guess Ensberg would be the closest thing we have to it, but he's hot and cold.

I realize they have done well in the second half as a whole, but I feel here lately that the train is heading down the tracks instead of uphill. Should we reach for the panic button? Everyone on PTI a couple of days ago said that the Astros are still the best bet for the wild card, they are paid to report on sports, so surely there should be some validity to their predictions. Let's hope at least. After losing two series at home, one to the Pirates (who they should have swept), and one to the Cubbies, they are looking mortal again. This was the team with the best home record in baseball, well not anymore. I'm sure that waiting 'till the end to pull it out will end up selling more tickets, and getting better tv ratings. However, it's not good for my heart, so Astros, I'm going to keep my hand near the panic button, but not touch it yet. Get this thing wrapped up mid September, and lets start focusing on the braves in the first round. I dislike the braves....

Monday, August 15, 2005

Scary Moments

It amazes me how the mood of a moment can be changed by one event. It can be an icebreaker in a tense situation, or a scary happening when everyone is having fun. This past weekend I saw probably the scariest thing I've ever seen in my life. It happened about 20 yards in front of me, and involved a good friend of mine.

After a fun day at the boat races in Marble Falls, we were heading back to this friend of mine's house, and I was following him in my truck. He was riding a little electric scooter that had to struggle to reach 10 mph. There were three of us inside my truck and two more in the bed sitting down. Behind us were two more trucks with some friends in them. We were heading down this hill, cracking up about the way our friend looked on the stupid scooter. Well he lost control and went face first into the concrete, flipped over in the air, and landed flat on his back with his arms straight out from his body. I froze for a second, and only pulled over when the people in the back of the truck were yelling at me to drive closer and pull over. One of the guys in the back of my truck, and another one in a truck following us were the first ones to run up to our friend. He was laying there unconscious on the ground. I won't go into too many details about his appearance, but just let me say it wasn't pretty. We called 911 and the police, paramedics, and so on were there in like 2 minutes. Great response time, I was truly impressed. I guess in a small town, you get quicker service because there isn't as much going on. Well to continue with the story, our friend was laying there with all the paramedics beside him. He finally regained some consciousness, and talked to the medics. He told them his name, and where he was, and where he was from. They decided they needed to airlift him to Austin to make sure there weren't any major internal injuries.

Afterwards we all drove to Austin, and checked on him, he turned out to be okay. It was just a super tense, scary, uncomfortable moment, when everything was hanging on a string, and there was no telling what was going to happen next.

My point of telling this story isn't really to tell of the accident, but more of how totally unprepared I was to handle the situation. I've taken CPR/ and first aid classes before, but standing there after it happened. I was about as worthless as I could be. I like to think that I helped in other ways. I talked to the cops and medics and I flagged down the ambulance (which I'm sure knew exactly where it was going anyway).

I wonder to myself though, had it been someone I didn't know, would I have been able to handle the situation any different? I truly hope to never find that out.

Going back to what I said at the beginning of this post. It's crazy how one event can change the mood of everyone around you. One minute we were all talking about taking a little nap, and then getting up for a little get together at this guy's house. The next minute we were back at his house, packing our bags, attempting to get ahold of his parents, and headed out the door to the hospital in Austin. All it took was a split second.

Without wanting to be cheesy at all here, I hope that it made all of us cherish every moment we have. With the unpredictability of life, we can't bank too much on what is going to be next in our future, whether that's our immediate future, or our plans for years down the road....

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Sleepless Nights

It seems that since Camp finished, I haven't been able to sleep through the entire night. I'll be tired while I'm up and at it. I'll be yawning all day, or ready to go to bed at around 8 or so. Then when I lay down at 10 or 11, I sit there and stare at the ceiling. There are so many things rushing through my mind right now that I don't know what to think. Life, Love and the pursuit of happiness. Something like that. I look at my life right now and realize I'm a good 2 years behind where I want or need to be. When I look at some of my other friends, I really want what they have. They are already living in big cities, have great jobs, and are well on their way to cutting a slice of the American Dream. All I have is my thoughts, and what I want to do, without much of an idea of how I'm going to get there. I thought I had it figured out there for a while. I knew I was behind schedule, but I had part of my future planned out. All of that just evaporated in front of me. I should have done way more to stop it from happening, but I was too proud to suck it up and realize that my pride should have taken a backseat to love. I always think about what I should have done, or what I should have said. All that leaves me with now, is what might have been.

I realize it seems like I'm completely depressed right now. I'm not though, I am terribly heartbroken, but think what happened may have been temporarily for the better. All I know is that when I have these sleepless nights, she's on my head 99% of the time. I'd like to think that I've learned my lesson. Only time will tell, I hope so though.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

A late flood

Here at the Vista office, it is as usual quiet. It seems that once the war canoe race is over, that things die down pretty quick. Justin and I had about a weeks worth of stuff to do. All of that could have been easily compacted into 2 days or so, but we figured why not make a week out of it. It was either that, or work for 2 days non-stop and afterwards sit in the office for the rest of the week and play on the internet. Which brings me to what I'm doing right now. This morning I worked on some earlibird paperwork. We had 277 earlibirds. I'm not sure about what the numbers have been in years past, but I definitely think that 277 is a sign of a good staff. I keep telling myself that this 2005 staff is the best ever. That may be true, the 2001 staff will be hard to top though. It's just great to get a crew of counselors that loves camp so much and wants it to succeed. In the past I know we've had people here who were more worried about their own agendas than the well being of the kids. I don't feel that was the case this year at all. Don't get me wrong, we most definitely had our problems here and there. The burn out of the 6th and 7th week hits everyone hard. I think the morale was high enough on the whole to cancel out the little bits of bad attitude that popped up.

So like I said earlier, after camp, a week of work, and playing on the Internet. That brings me to right now! Playing on the internet. This was the first summer in a while that we made it the entire summer without a flood. Last night around 10, the weather started to get a little crazy. A lot of thunder and lightening. My electricity flashed 2 or 3 times. That put a small damper on my reading. I read an entire book last night. It took about 2 and a half hours, but now that camp is over, I have nothing better to do. I really enjoy John Grisham books, usually they are all about lawyers and things of that sort. Those things interest me because of my Dad's profession. He has a few other books that aren't about law though. One of which was A Painted House, which I absolutely loved. The other is the one I read last night Bleachers. It was one of those that once you pick it up, you can't really let go of it. It wasn't anything too exciting, just extremely well written, at least in my mind at least.

So getting back to the storm last night. (I hate how I get sidetracked like that). The thunder and lightening persisted all night pretty much. I haven't been sleeping much since camp finished. I think part of it is because I am not out and about 15-18 hours a day anymore. I think another part is that its just now hitting me that I lost the most dear thing in my life while I was busy at camp. I finally got to sleep sometime around 2. When I woke up at 6, it was still raining. I didn't know how much though, I just figured it had been off and on all night. Being that we live in a trashed out house, I had to get up early and turn on the hotwater heater before my shower. I slipped back in bed for another hour or so, and when I got up, it was light outside and I could see that Henderson Branch was up a bit. Henderson Branch is that puddle that runs along side my house, and splits our property into two pieces. After showering, and getting dressed, I headed here to camp, and for some odd reason, decided to take the backroad to get here. I usually take the front road out of pure laziness, but I was up a little earlier, so I figured why not. When I got around to the front road, I saw the Low Water Crossing was up quite a bit from where it was the day before. I probably could have still made it, but I'm glad I decided not to try it. With my luck, my truck would stop in the middle of it!

Once in the office, the rain picked up a bit, and while I was neck deep in earlibird stuff, Justin commented how the river got muddy fast. So when I looked I was surprised to already see loads of tree clippings and dropping heading down the river. I love it when it floods, it means that we've been getting some good rain, but some of the stuff that comes down the river in a big flood makes you wonder about who lives directly upstream. I remember I time a few years ago when a friend of mine sat outside his house and tried to rope deer, cows and cats out of the river. Crazy stuff. Wish I would have been there to see it. (I think they all survived).

Again, coming back to where I am right now, it looks like the rain has stopped and the wind is carrying the surface of the water back upstream. Guess that's all we get. It was a good thrill though.

Seeing as how I'm the only one who reads this, I guess I'll talk to me soon!