To tell it straight, I'm trying to build a wall

Change, change, change,
I want to get up out of my skin
tell you what if I can shake it
I'm 'a make this something worth dreaming of


So folks.... I am back from Hawaii for awhile and, much in the same vein as Eric, I have delayed far too long to post about it. I might do a post with some of the pictures I took later on. It was a good trip overall. Elaine has done me a service in posting a complete record. I was there one more day than she was. Good trip even though the family aspect can be hard at times. I never quite feel like I belong. I love my family but sometimes being with them, especially on long trips, I feel really alone. Anyway, since I returned I haven’t been up to that much.
The current status of my higher education is me preparing to take the GRE in August and apply for my masters program for the winter term. So there it is. It won’t happen in the fall. It is a relief in the sense that it gives me more time, but it also creates a huge gap. I intend to get to California in this gap.
It’s scary, honestly, pushing forward again. I don‘t feel ready for the GRE and things always seem to get so busy. I am now in a place where I have so much riding on it. I have been telling people my plans for such a long time, as if it were a sure thing - as a way of explaining why I don’t have a job in the field I spent so long studying for, as a way to justify not making enough money and even just so that I can still have a path to follow. It gets murkier each year and now with the next set of hurdles fast approaching all the anger and the eloquence are bleeding into fear. I am pursuing this goal, even though it seems that I never get closer, because it is the only thing with vocational applications in life that I am really passionate about. If you have to work you might as well do what you love, what’s the point in anything else?
It’s weird how foreign the idea of pursuing your great loves and personal fascinations vocationally is to so many of the people I know. They all have this idea that the goal is to maximize income doing whatever job has the best and easiest opportunities, and so it seems wasteful that I would give so much to this quest.
God built me in such a way that I see him most clearly in nature; I was born for this in a way. Granted, I am not the smartest person and many other people will be better in this field than I will. But for me anything less than seeing this through would be settling, not because it was right but because it was easier.
In the meantime I am working two jobs as a way to ease our finances and do my part, so it’s not all on Elaine. I work at our church as a glorified janitor. And now I am also be a nanny for the rest of this month as well as the next. I am watching two boys for a friend’s brother while he’s at work during the day until school starts. The boys are 7 and 8, good natured and well behaved. I feel burnt out after a day watching them, but not because of them acting crazy. It has even, so far, been an interesting experience and I will probably post more on it later.
The jobs are both ok but sometimes I catch myself wondering what the hell I am doing with my life and begin to feel like a failure. Soon enough I will move on and I know I can accomplish good in these positions. It’s just that some nights I can hear the old voices and mocking laughter on the wind and see the raised eyebrows in my mind’s eye. Aren’t we all just so wonderfully haunted?

Part 4 (the guitar)

We went to the Shirock's house (the pastor who married Elaine and me) and he showed us this guitar he hand made. It was the most beautiful guitar I have ever seen. No picture could do it justice.

Part 3 (fishing)

While we were in Michigan we stayed at homes immediately adjacent to lakes the entire time, and they were awesome. The Griffins, who we spent a lot of time with, were soooo generous. With them the soda and beer flowed like an unending river and candy was as numerous as sand on the seashore. Their lake house was gorgeous, and the lake it was on - picturesque.

Being on the lake so much afforded a few little moments that I could snatch to fish.

The first house we were at I only had time to fish a little, and never had any luck…except losing a lure and having a huge bass taunt me by swimming around the dock. Of course, it hid anytime anyone else came out onto the dock. “There was just a huge bass here!! I swear”! They would nod, walk off and only then it would swim back. I named it Starbuck the Bass of Reason, Bringer of Madness.
At the Griffin's lake house the fishing picked up and I landed a Crappie (pictured) a large Bluegill, and hooked two fish big enough to break the fishing line.
We spent our time there hanging out, drinking soda, playing pinball, going for boat rides, and fishing at their lake house. It was easily my favorite part of the trip.

The wedding itself was good. It had the best wedding slide show I have ever seen. That is saying something as I usually really dislike wedding slide shows.

damn she's hot

Post 2...(if I had a bakery)

While I was in Michigan I got this idea for a bakery name.
So I present to you the bakery I don’t own…

I also thought it would be interesting if the quote on your tombstone was the last sentence you said while still alive. If that were the case and I was about to be in an obviously fatal car crash, I hope I would have the presence of mind to turn to whoever else was in the car and say “prepare to end your life in a glorious fashion”!

Michigan part 1 (Henry Ford Museum)

So now that I am well over two weeks overdue, it’s time for me to post. I begin with the Michigan trip. Elaine has pretty well covered a generalized timeline of each day and, as such, I feel no need to repost the same thing. Simply put, it was a decent trip. I mostly enjoyed myself despite spending a significant part of our time with strangers and tending several accident prone children. So, outside of the wedding stuff, I will post the events of most interest to me.

We will begin with the Henry Ford museum. I like museums and so our time there was a well spent afternoon. Let’s just say it had huge, and I mean HUGE, trains - a tank seems flimsy and small by comparison. I was impressed. The museum is dedicated to transportation which means that some of the exhibits were….not so impressive. It is true that cars like the 1980ish Honda Accord do represent significant steps forward in the automotive trade, but the fact remains…it’s a 1980 Honda Accord and nobody is impressed. I passed at least 5 cars that were in the museum... and also in the parking lot. That aside, it had a lot of very cool stuff.
The other thing that was weird was that since it was a “transportation etc.” museum, they didn't address anything war related or anything that had military connotations. It kind of annoyed me. Not that they were trying to, but I hate it when people ignore parts of history. History is what it is and it should not be censored or modified just because some aspects of it are uncomfortable. Even in the darkest parts of our past there are still valuable lessons to be learned and valuable innovations it would be foolish to ignore just because their setting is awkward.

In the section on flight they omitted World War I and World War II. Never mind the fact that virtually all advances in aircraft technology arose from military research and applications initially designed for war. It made the exhibit choppy. I mean, you look at one exhibit and it’s a very early model French plane; the next exhibit is a Curtis Jenny with a huge number of advances and technological improvements that were developed over the course of WWI.

Oh well... it was still a cool museum.

The other aspect of the museum that really almost deserves a post on its own was the live music. They were called the Mom Candy Band - that should say a lot on its own. The musicians (a term I use loosely here) were three women in their 40s. The vocals were, how I say this nicely…abysmal. The biggest problem, however, was their song choices. The ABC song is simply the ABC song. It doesn’t matter how fast you play it, how many guitar hooks you throw at it, whether you attempt the lyrics as if you were a emo-screamcore band, or try to harmonize with your band members - it is still the ABC song. No matter what you do, it will never “rock.” The same goes for Oh Susanna, Frere Jacques, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star or any song designed specifically for an audience that has difficulties with basic motor skills (and yes I know Oh Susanna is a traditional American folk melody but irregardless at this point it is a kid’s song despite its history). Needless to say, they played all these songs in a fast, scream core style.

Yes there were a few kids there who seemed to like them and danced to their songs, but those kids were a very undiscerning audience who would have danced to a recording of cats yowling played at high speed. Mostly, people avoided the portion of the museum where they were playing. Come enjoy the trains but for your own sanity bring ear protection.

The other thing that I thought was odd was that on the museum’s signs they have as a subtext stating: “the best museum in the united states”. This seems a bit presumptuous to me; better than the Smithsonian? Really? You want to claim that? Ok.

I got to thinking - what if museums were honest about their limitations? Maybe it would look something like this:

If you can't read the subtext it says "you wouldn'y fly out here to visit us, but since you're here you might as well."