Sawblade's speeches

Adding a link to The Tab World...such a great site for getting chords to popular tunes like the Chili Peppers, Bon Jovi, Hoobastank (DV knows what I'm talkin' about), Eagles, Evanescence, and more to come, I'm sure. It's really fun to experiment with these chords, especially with this new guitar I just got (Yes, that was the surprise waiting for me when I got back to Delaware)!

This is day 8 of my 12 day week. By that, I mean I work from monday-friday, then spend the weekend in transit, then work for another monday-friday. It's just that traveling all weekend in a car tends to take a lot out of you. Anyway, I spent this weekend transporting some more stuff to the Moosetrap.
On second thought, I take it back; it wasn't an all-exhausting travel weekend. Cinnamon organized a reading of A Mid Summer Night's Dream in one of the gardens on the lawn, so after I unpacked my stuff I went and met some of the SotLites over at cabell. We read through the play with cheesy accents, making fun of everything up and down the board, and some of the people there even acted out the final scene! Now granted, I don't understand shakespeare all that well (probably why I'm a techie), so some of his dialect went right over my head. Still, it was a lot of fun... plus, Emily brought in a cake to celebrate Katie's birthday! Granted, we didn't eat very much of it. Heck, we went to Mellow Mushroom after reading the play, and we carried the cake in with us! So it was a pretty good Saturday after all...after dinner, I came back to the Moosetrap. DV and April stopped by on the way back from a trip and I showed them what we've done with the place so far, and played a few tunes for them on the guitar. I think I'm coming along with the guitar, although I should probably try to resume those lessons I began last summer.

On Sunday morning, I went to the service at Wesley Mem to see the new pastor. While I was there, I said hi to Alex, Deborah, Joel, and Matt, exchanging a little bit what's been going on this summer with all of us. Granted, I didn't have a lot to say, but that's why I have ears!

The new pastor had a very interesting sermon about dealing with chaos, and somehow when you ask God for something, God gets the last laugh on you in odd ways. I thought she was good, although I guess it's tough to evaluate someone after one service. After the service, I took care of some billing stuff, and then DV, his brother, Sarah and I took a quick lunch out at Quizno's before I began the trip back to DE. And there was a surprise waiting for me in DE (!), which I am still evaluating...

Hooray that cicada season is over until 2021!

6/19/04: 5K time: 22:43. Guess I've lost a step! :-P

It was fun to see the family on the way back to Delaware. I stopped by my grandma's and we had a Jobe-sided family reunion for the day. My grandma's sister, Rubinette, and her daughter, Joan, was there, along with my aunts, uncles, and cousins. My cousins were up in the DC area to come see DC United play. Bryan's a big soccer fan..in fact, he plays soccer at his high school (he's the goalie), and their high school was something like 6th in the state (North Carolina)! One of my cousins, Bryan, is probably about 6'2 now, although he's 2-3 years younger than me! He's got an exciting trip coming up..he's planning on going to both Italy and Mexico during the summer. My other cousin, Katye, has also grown a lot..she's saying that next summer will be her big traveling summer! Nick and Henry are a bit too young for that though, although they are both about to turn 1 year old! Henry is still "the judge" though (that's what my grandma calls him)...always a serious look on that little guy's face. Anyway, my grandma took us all out to a restaurant called "Red hot and blue". Unfortunately my mom and I were a little to full to eat much at the restaurant, since we had stopped at an IHOP on the way back from Charlottesville. So when the family left to go to the game, my mom and I stopped by her parents' place at the retirement community near Calverton, MD. I asked my grandpa how he likes the place, he says "More negatives than positives". It's a shame..he never wanted to move out of his old house. So after paying them a quick visit, we headed back to Delaware, where I spent the next day trying to mow the lawn; the whole time I was doing the front lawn, I was being circled by a handful of bluebirds that probably didn't want me anywhere on that lawn. (Well, too bad, we own the lawn!) Somehow, they followed me when I went to the backyard! Now, we're home, living through this nasty weather mess that's been going on..some places around our area suffered some lightning damage. Well, at least no twisters as far as I know...although one of the cells that hit our area had produced a lot of funnel clouds in Maryland. Ironically, during the storm, I was watching Storm Stories on TWC about a twister that ripped through Salt Lake City.

Well, I'm beginning the "move-in" process. This weekend, I took a trip down to the moosetrap to start moving some stuff in. It was not an easy drive, going 45 minutes or so through a downpour so intense that I couldn't see more than 4 car lengths or so in front of me, and I couldn't see out the back because I was bringing a bookcase that blocked the rear windshield...nevertheless, after several hours of messy driving, my mom and I got to Charlottesville, popped in and said hi to DV, and then we all moved the stuff in. My mom is very impressed with the place; it's the first time she's seen the inside of the house. Although she's convinced that it's being wasted on two guys!

I talked to an old friend from high school the other day...he's now at UD and he's doing lab work over the summer, apparently organic chem stuff. I admire him for keeping up with everything by doing this over the summer, but wow..I don't think he's ever coming out of the basement of his house other than to go to class! You know, it seems like most of my old friends are doing summer classes...especially the ones at UD. Some of them are trying to graduate in 3 years, some just got screwed by UD's scheduling (which is apparently worse than it is at UVA), and some just trying to make up work. I wonder if I should have taken a summer class. Well, then again, I am in a financial bind so I guess it's good that I'm just working to try to earn some money. Besides, out-of-state tuition and all, agh!

S'il peut m'en dire, il m'en dira, je l'espere...

"Ohh, we're halfway there
Ohh, livin' on a prayer
Take my hand and we'll make it I swear
Ohh, livin' on a prayer " - Bon Jovi

I just want to blast out of this limbo that I've come accustomed to. I'm not going to say I wish for this, because some interesting, but usually uncontrollable, karmic results occur as a result. You know, be careful what you wish for... I'm doing what I can, just trying to call some old friends, even when I was in Texas! Although I had better luck reaching them while I was in Texas, ironically. Arggh...suddenly my social life is more defunct than the Pacers' offense was against Detroit in Game 6! Well, the Pacers are done, but I hope I'm not. I'm already way ahead of the game from last summer, when I talked to and/or met a friend maybe 2 or 3 times the whole summer, and you couldn't get me to talk on that phone! It shows that an intense fear of isolation makes you look at a lesser fear of embarrassing yourself badly and say, .. (ok, well this is a public blog so I guess I won't write it down...but it probably is what you think I'm thinking!)

My life finally seems to be moving forward a little bit..now that jury duty is done, my job begins. I'm hoping that I can be an important help to them, and also do some work that's interesting. As far as I know, I've always fulfilled the first half of that statement, and after developing that conversion program for Julia, I think the second half began to come into effect. See? Even though I'm not a CS major anymore (ok, so I never was declared as a CS major, but that's beside the point), the background I've gotten from several semesters of it has really helped out.

Other than that, not too much...since my brother's guitar is here in Delaware, I've picked it up and have been trying to play it. The song which I've quoted a passage from, has the chord changes that I'm currently trying to learn. Yeah, I realize my fingers have gotten pretty soft from not playing for a while. But I've gotta believe that I can get it back.. I'm not really sure why I chose "Livin' on a prayer." Well, for one thing, the song's not very fast, which is certainly helpful considering I suck at chord changes! And also, it just has some sentimental value to it for me, for a couple of obvious reasons! (No, the fact that Bon Jovi owns Philly's arena team isn't one of the reasons)

I went in for jury duty yesterday, and actually my mom had it today. What are the odds of having 2 family members have back to back days of jury duty, huh? Anyway, we both were excused from being on the actual jury. It's strange...the director said that most people get a sense of satisfaction once their service is completed, that they have completed some kind of civic duty. I guess I missed that! To me, it just seemed like going in for a long and difficult meeting. After sitting in the waiting room for some time, I got called with probably 40 or so people into the court room to learn a bit about the case. Some people were excused by the judge due to their personal biases, and then 12 of us remaining (including myself) were selected into jurors' chairs. Then 5 minutes later, they called my name out and said, "You're excused." Humph! No challenging a juror with any type of question...I just sat in a chair, and then they told me to leave a few minutes after. The court says you shouldn't take it personally if you're challenged...I wonder why they didn't challenge anyone (at least not before I was excused). Just back to the waiting room...although by 12:30 we were all out...the assistant director said, "The Messiah has spoken, and he says, Let my people go!" Interesting way to end it!