So the illness that set me back on Saturday subsided Sunday just enough for me to be able to go to church. I left early because a friend called me and needed help with something, but I made up for it last night by going to the Quarterly Business Conference (the conference will be explained in greater detail soon).
My fantasy football team won this weekend, 92-81. I now stand at 3-2 on the season, but my team should be a bit better. Peyton Manning is my QB and hasn’t done nearly as well as I would have hoped (I picked him with the seventh pick in this year’s fantasy draft). Ronnie Brown has been a bust at running back this year. I got a big contribution this week from Lee Evans (15 points), who was Buffalo’s only offensive hope against the Bears, which lifted me. Donald Driver was hurt and barely played — I only got two points from him. But I still won and I’m happy about that…best performance from a Chris Brewer-owned fantasy team in about 3 years.
Moving on to yesterday, after waking up late I called Kevin to see if he wanted to play disc golf. He said yes and proceeded to beat me by one shot even after he had a monumental collapse on the 17th hole. He finished at 2 over par and me at 3 over. We also saw a water moccasin on the bridge spanning the 6th hole. Not cool.
Then last night was the quarterly business conference. We recommended Cameron and Stephanie to be set forth as ministers in the COGOP and it passed unanimously…I even seconded the motion to set them forth and I’m dang proud of it. Then came some fireworks in the form of some people who hold membership in the church but never attend, faced with having their names removed from the membership rolls due to unfaithfulness (in physical attendance, financial support, etc.). Very complicated situation and it might require some in-person explanation, so in part I don’t know why I’m typing it here — all I will say is these people have tried to impede the progress of Lakeside Church and the conference didn’t allow it to happen.
And today I was popped for a “random” drug test. This is the 13th I have taken during my Air Force career…an absolutely ridiculous number if you think about it. You’d think after the first twelve tests I took and nothing showed up, that they wouldn’t need to do anything else. Wrong. I hate the AF policy on drug testing. Why not take out the money that is being used on stupid things and use it on things that really matter, like maybe hair follicle testing equipment. Much more reliable and safer than — ahem — our current method of testing.
This absolutely sucks. I slept from about 2 AM to noon today, but when I woke up my head was ringing and my nose was running like a faucet. I’ve felt horrible all day. I have no clue how this came about…only thing I can think of is that my body is run down, but from what??? What’s even worse about being sick is that it happened to me on the first day of a three day weekend.
Same thing happened to me last weekend, and I think there is a direct correlation between football games for teams that I cheer for and me being sick on the same day. Last Sunday I got some stomach flu and threw up a couple times before the Seahawks game and they got blown out by Chicago 37-6. Today I have some sort of head cold and tonight the Oregon Ducks got throttled by Cal 45-24. This is not good. I better be feeling good tomorrow so my fantasy football team can win (and I can show face at church).
Today I took on the task of re-capturing all the footage I shot while in Iraq to my Mac, and editing the namekeys and info for each of my news stories in Final Cut Pro. Then after doing all that, I’ve been exporting them to high-quality MPEG-4 and QuickTime files for inclusion on a new DVD that I will be compiling for my demo reel, should I want to apply for jobs in broadcasting. Also, for a limited time I will put the high-quality files on my site. It’ll eat up bandwidth so they won’t be up there for long. But I’ll let you all know when I put them on here.
Pray for me, I am terribly frustrated today. Not only am I sick, but Aftan hasn’t been around for all but a small portion of today. That sounds like a dumb prayer request, but at the time I needed her most, she hasn’t been available. It’s not her fault at all, she had a football game today, and her dad was in town….but I am just horribly sick and tired of the time difference between us, and us both always being busy at the worst possible times. This is the main reason I can’t wait to get out of Virginia, and the sooner the better because I can’t take this long distance stuff anymore.
Anyway time for me to go to bed and try to sleep off this massive head cold, sickness or whatever you want to call it. And don’t try to tell me that I don’t have enough faith to be healed because I’ve already asked the Lord to take this sickness away and He has flatly said no.
Yes my fine friends, it is almost Friday, which in turn means it’s almost time for the weekend. Three-day weekend, that is, because Monday is Columbus Day and for some reason they have felt necessary to deem it a federal holiday. Thank God for Christopher Columbus because if he never would have discovered the New World, we would never have the second Monday in October off of work.
Speaking of work, I’ve got roughly one more month left. For those of you who feel compelled to count down with me, the countdown stands at either 26 or 36 days, depending on whether they give me ten days of house-hunting permissive TDY like they’re supposed to. Yesterday I got my separation orders — basically official documents I have to hand to different squadrons when I outprocess — and I was extremely giddy when I saw that the option “Honorable” under Conditions of Discharge was checked.
Tomorrow I’m finally going to do something about my car’s transmission. I am the owner of a 1995 Chrysler Cirrus that has treated me really well despite me beating the living crap out of it (speaking in terms of wear and tear on the engine and related items), and the transmission has been slipping when it hits third gear. Not good in city driving, and especially not good when you consider I have a cross-country trip coming up. So today I called Cottman Transmissions, over on Warwick Blvd. in Newport News, and they penciled me in for a free diagnostic tomorrow at 10 AM. And in case the whole thing needs to be rebuilt, I have a coupon from their website for $100 off the repair job. Not too shabby.
I can’t say enough good things about the kind folks at the St. Helens branch of the Oregon DMV. They’ve been really helpful and understanding about my tags being expired and me needing them mailed over here ASAP, even though it’s been tough to do since I’m not the primary owner of my vehicle — Dad is, and he’s in Missouri so that makes it even tougher. Despite the quagmire that’s put us in, a couple nice people at the DMV have helped me sort it all out and I should be getting my tags soon. God bless them!!!
Aftan’s MIA so I’m gonna go find her. How do you all like the “Since Your Last Visit” feature in the sidebar?
Ah yes, we can now relive Monday Night Football in all its glory. This YouTube clip captures the pure essence of MNF during the Al Michaels/Dennis Miller/Dan Fouts era in five hilarious minutes.
I was researching a bunch of conspiracy theories online and was figuring out if I actually believed any of them or not. Wikipedia’s got a pretty good list.
I actually tend to believe a couple of them to an extent, if you can believe that or not. The ones I have trouble believing the official explanations of are….
The Apollo Moon Landing– I don’t think we ever really put anyone on the moon. I honestly think it was an elaborate ploy by our government to increase public morale during the Cold War. Not only were we fighting communism, but we were also in an intense space race with the Ruskies. Russia’s space program was right on par with ours until the “moon landing.” I also think the photos were faked as well…the quality is too high. Also if we sent people to the moon in 1969, why aren’t we putting people up there today??? I know, they’re weak arguments, but I find it hard to believe we have actually landed on the moon.
TWA Flight 800 — I don’t think it was shot down by terrorists, but I don’t believe the government’s official explanation that it was caused by a spark in the fuel tank. I’m unsure of this one, and I don’t think we’ll ever know what the real cause of TWA 800 was.
I’m sure I could think of some more stuff, but I’ll turn this one over to you, the readers. Do you believe any conspiracy theories? Or do you take everything as gospel truth and not ever think about it???
Ok, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and predict the 2006 playoffs…
FIRST ROUND
Twins over Athletics in 4 games
Yankees over Tigers in 5 games
Dodgers over Mets in 4 games
Padres over Cardinals in 5 games
LEAGUE CHAMP. SERIES
Twinkies over Yankees in 6
Dodgers over Padres in 5
WORLD SERIES
Twinkies over Dodgers in 7
I think this year is extremely hard to call, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I go oh-fer the entire playoffs. This is the best educated guess I could come up with, though, because the Tigers collapsed at the end of the season, the Twins are on an absolute tear, the Dodgers have the best pitching in the NL and just enough offense to win when they have to, the Cardinals backed into the playoffs and don’t stand a chance. As for the other teams I’m not too terribly educated to make any conjectures.
While walking to my car this morning, I noticed how absolutely beautiful it is outside. Beautiful blue sky, temperatures in the mid-70s with the air getting a little bit crisper…fall is definitely on its way.
For some reason, I am excited about fall and winter this year. I think it’s a combination of thought processes — I’m moving back to Oregon where it is so beautiful this time of year (I am a sucker for nature, can’t you tell?), I went to Iraq last year and didn’t really get to experience my two favorite seasons, and I know Thanksgiving and Christmas (my two favorite holidays) are on the way.
Don’t know why I posted this, but I just felt like I wanted to share how wonderful it looks outside.
Nothing too terribly important taking place, which is good news. On a larger scale, pray for victims and families in the Pennsylvania school shooting today. God bless.
Went to Washington, DC yesterday with a bunch of folks from the youth group. It was ok. Would have been better if we hadn’t have got home at 3:30 this morning. I skipped church because of this and slept in until 12:30 PM. Got sick this afternoon and it’s really being made worse by Seattle losing 27-6 to the Bears so I’m going to bed.
