A Good Day

Today I went to a different church than my usual one and I am very thankful that I did. Not only did I hear an excellent talk from the director of the local P.R.C. but I also got to spend some time with my extended family and have a good time playing outside in the snow. Besides the above I also had the distinct pleasure of hearing three extremely funny lines throughout the afternoon.

The first came in between the prayer service and the worship service. I was sitting in a pew and the pastor and the guest speaker were walking down the center aisle talking. After the guest made a remark about sitting in a pew several rows in front of me, the pastor responded, 'In this church, if you want a back pew seat you have to come early.'
It was funny because it was true, yet I couldn't help but wonder if it would have been funnier if it wasn't so true of so many churches.

Second great line of the day. I had been invited to lunch with the pastor and his family, which we had just finished. I was telling him that I would like to get together and have a talk with him in his pastoral position. Just then his five year old son walked by and right as I said,'as a pastor' he let out a loud 'hahahah!'
We both (the pastor and I)immediately burst out laughing. When we got our breath I asked, 'Is there something I should know?' and he came back with, 'Just ignore the man behind the curtain.'

Later that day I was out playing in the snow with the pastors family, some of whom were trying to build a snowman. The same five year son had a plastic sword that he was waving around and chopping up imaginary bad guys. After a little bit he came up to his mom (who was working on the snowman) and asked if the snowman needed a hole. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your point of view) he is still young enough to not have all his ennunciation down, so what we heard was, "Mommy, does the snowman need a ho'?" The mom was quick to assure her son that the snowman did not in fact need a ho'. In my defense I was not the first one to start giggling at this but as soon as it sank in I joined right in.

And that is the way to start a week off right. With family, friends, and good christian fellowship.

ALLLLL RIGHTY THEN!!

I just want you all to know that this is actually my second post of the day. I just finished another one which didn't get posted because I needed some time to think over whether or not it should actually be put up yet or not. Why did I just take the time to tell you all that? It was just to torture those with an over developed sense of curiousity :-)

I know that this will be hard to believe but part of the reason for my lack of posts is I've been having trouble thinking of either a topic or of making a topic interesting enough to take the time to write about. I still haven't though of a subject that I want to write about, but journaling is less about wanting to than it is putting events down for remembrance so here is a bit of memory material.

As described in the last post my car was totalled. While I have been waiting for a new one I have been driving my siblings cars. I first drove my brother's car, an Escort sedan, until last Sunday when after church I turned it on to start warming up when it was discovered that the heater fan no longer worked! So after scraping all the ice off, I drove it the thirty miles from my church to his house.
(A quick side note to all those living in the south. Thirty miles doesn't sound bad, until you realize the circumstances. It is about 15 degrees outside, there is absolutely no heat in the car so you are bundled up in coat, gloves, hats, and any other article of warm clothing that you can find. All of your breath instantly freezes on the windsheild, so the longer you drive the less you can see. I had to pull over twice and scrape the INSIDE of the windshield so I could see the road. Needless to say it wasn't an enjoyable experience.)

Once I got to my brother's apartment I switched his broken one for my sister's working one. She has an subaru outback legacy gt sedan, which I really enjoyed driving. At least until one of the brakes started sticking. I twas bad enough that I had to take Thursday off and take it to my garage to get it fixed, because I couldn't drive it on the highway the way it was. I ended up spending almost three hours reading there while waiting for them to try to fix it, fail, then order a new brake caliper, and install it. As bad as it is to have your own car break down, it is infinitely worse to have someone else's car break down while you are the one driving it. Oddly enough the different repair bills were all withing twenty dollars of each other. Not just my brother's and sister's but also my own. That's right, I am now the owner of a '95 ford escort wagon(automatic). I got a great deal on it, but before I could drive it I had to have the rear springs replaced because they were broken. However I now am driving my own car, which makes me very happy and relieved.

I think that that brings you all pretty much up to date on my life. Not edge of your seat exciting, but then you are reading W.C.'s blog and not Clark Kents' :)

I wish I knew of a Good Title

Well something very big has just happened recently in my life, but I'm not really sure how to go about recording or telling about it. Simply put, Sunday morning on the way to church I was involved in an accident and ended up totalling my car. To clarify the word accident, nobody else was involved. It was simply me, my car, and the guard-rail separating traffic.

I wish that I could spin an exciting tale out of what happened, but the root cause prevents me from embellishing or expanding too much. Let me just start at the beginning and tell it as I remember.

Sunday morning started out, normally enough. Getting ready for church while watching tv. Unfortunately whenever the tv is turned on I often get sucked in and give it far too much time and attention. That morning was no exception. I was suppposed to meet my brother and we were going to carpool to church together. However, because of the tv I was running late and in a hurry. It was lightly snowing, and there was maybe a half inch of snow on the roads. (Can you see where this is going?) Feeling confident in my driving skills, off I started-ever aware of being behind schedule. As I entered on to the highway, I felt that I had things in control and started going faster to make up some of the lost time. Pretty soon I was going a few miles above the speed limit, normally no big deal, but when driving on snow very, very stupid. All was going well until I started going around a slight curve. As my front end started turning my back end just went straight on, starting a dangerous sliding spin. I knew enough to try and correct, but instead of helping it only made things worse.

(At this point I really can't remember how or in what order things happened, but I think things went roughly like the following.) I'm pretty sure that I overcorrected as well as hit the brakes to hard which stopped the spin one way but instantly threw me into one going the opposite direction. At some point I would have been perpendicular to the lanes of traffic and then I finished a 180 and crunched the passenger side my car up against the barrier separating the directional traffic. This spun me back around so I was facng the right direction where I coasted off to the side of the road, mostly out of the way of traffic. Needless to say I was badly shaken up but thank the Lord not hurt at all. Once I had enough of my wits together, I turned off the car, got out, called my brother to let him know what had just happened and then called AAA. After making the calls I looked at the car to see just how bad it was. The front passenger corner was demolished, with some apparent engine damage (I could tell this because the hood was jammed shut and anti-freeze was leaking out at a steady flow). Also the rear passenger corner was pretty much gone. The back passenger door was jammed shut, and the trunk gate was visibly out of alignment. Here are a couple of pictures taken with my camera phone a day or two later. You can get a pretty good idea of the damage though as usual, the real thing is much more impressive.








I just have to thank God for family in the area, both blood and church. I also have to thank Him for watching over me even when I definitely didn't deserve it. The day after when I stopped at the auto body shop they told that the car was definitely not worth even trying to repair. When I found a junk yard to take it away, I was surprised how much it made me sad. Even though it was just a piece of machinery I had become attached to it, and to see it just hauled away all smashed up knowing that I would never be able to drive it again filled my heart with a heaviness that I wasn't expecting. And now I am driving my brother's car (being much more careful) while I wait for something new to come along.

If there is a moral to this story I think it would probably be: Slow down when driving in snow and don't be stupid. And AAA is a really good thing to have.

Question and a Promise

Question first.
The other day I was on Blogthings and took this test. When I got the results I was rather surprised becaused it was amazingly accurate for only the five or six questions that it asked. So I guess the question would be, 'does it work as accurately for any one else, or was it just a fluke?' So just try it and see, it only takes a minute.

How You Life Your Life

You seem to be straight forward, but you keep a lot inside. You're laid back and chill, but sometimes you care too much about what others think. You prefer a variety of friends and tend to change friends quickly. Some of your past dreams have disappointed you, but you don't let it get you down.

How Do You Live Your Life?

And here is the promise. Pictured below are several shots of THE HAIR from several different angles. The angles are a little off but you still get the general idea.

Not Much

Well it has been well over a week and no new posts or comments so I guess I'de better put something up. Christmas went well, though my dad was sick most of the time that I was down there so that was a definite bummer. However I got to see my family again as well as many of my friends so it was definitely worth the eight hour trip both ways. What wasn't worth the eight hour trip however, was coming back to find my room vandalised. The first thing I noticed was a pink ribbon on my door. Then when I walked in, I was greeted by the sight of many pink ribbons strung across and around my room. My landlord's family had come over to spruce up the place and while they were there they had decided to do a little redecorating of my room as well. Pink ribbons on the ceiling, a pink ribbon sash around the window, the letters W.C. in pink ribbon on the wall and to top it all off a 'My Little Ponies' poster on the wall. I groaned, then laughed, then since it was one in the morning went to bed. Needless to say I took it all down the next day, except for the W.C., that is still up.

Tuesday, which I took off so I could recover, I ended up going into my local Red Cross Center and donating platelets. It is the second time that I've done it, and I certainly have plans to do it again. If you have never donated, either whole blood or platelets, please consider it. Not only are you doing a good deed and saving lives, but you also get rewarded for it. I came away with a really nice long sleeve t-shirt. I now have five blood donor shirts that I have recieved. My goal though is seven, one for each day of the week :-)

I know that this is going to excite you all terribly, but this last week at work I got to work in a transformer for the first time. Basically a transformer takes low amperage/high voltage electricity and turns it into useable high amperage/low voltage electricity. I'll admit that I didn't do anything other than help hook up wires but it was still an exciting first.

This weekend I had my first meeting in many many months. I can't prove this but it may have been my first since I have graduated F.B.I. over a year and a half ago. Over all it went fairly well, though I did a lousy job preparing for it. So lousy I was still writing notes ten minutes before I had to present it. No one stoned me though (of course that could just be because we were inside) so I have hope that it wasn't unbearable. And now I'm home again looking forward to taking tomorrow off, in which I plan to get some important things done but also enjoy myself as much as possible.

And yes I still have the hair pictures in mind. Fear not, they will be forth coming.