Texas Trip

Hey all. We recently got home from a week long trip to Texas to visit Lindsay's parents. The trip started friday morning at 2:15a.m. Lindsay didn't get home until after midnight from working all day and I was able to get to bed around 10:30. Needless to say......which is probably the most useless phrase in the english language, the trip started very sleep deprived. We left about 3:15 after getting the truck loaded up with all necessities for the trip, including the motorcyle and trackday gear. We made it to the track by 6:30 which was an hour earlier than we needed to because the track website had the wrong information. We got setup for the day and ended up having a lot of fun. I hadn't ridden at the track in awhile so it took a couple sessions to get up to speed. Well 5:00 came and I was hot and tired. The bike was just as pretty as when we first got there and I didn't have any new injuries so it was a good day. We took off from the track for what we thought was a 3 hour drive and was actually a 5 hour drive which we turned in to a 6 hour drive. I feel like starting a new paragraph.

We got to the in-laws house a little after 11:00 that night, but about 10 minutes before we did we met some of the local wild life. We saw a deer on the side of the road so I flashed my lights and honked the horn. The deer overcame the shock of my headlights and darted back into the woods so Lindsay said "Wow I am glad we did not hit that deer" and a second after she finished the satement BAM!!!! the deer ran into the right front quarter panel of my truck and bounced off the hood. That stupid deer was a vengeful creature. He left a basketball size dent in my truck that I was not too happy about. Anyway we take out the deer and continue on to our final destination. We pull into the driveway tired and ready for bed. I had taken my shoes off for comfort's sake. I get out of the truck and walk about 10 feet toward the garage where Lindsay is greeting her parents. All of sudden I feel this intense stinging/burning in my foot. I lift it up and a freakin' scorpion scurries its way to the garage. I STEPPED ON A SCORPION BAREFOOT!!! At this point I am hopping a one leg, holding the other while pointing to mini satan running away and producing a sound similar to when the doc tells a 10 year old girl say "AHHH" so he can look down her throat. Someone grabs a shoe and kills the satanic messenger and then my all too sympathetic mother in law says "that's why you wear shoes in the country". Linz and I get a good laugh out of that response throughout the week. It was not quite the start we had hoped for, but we were there mostly safe and there was a shower and bed waiting.

The rest of the week was much more fun. A couple visits by the grand parents, some shopping, some yard work, cooking and cleaning, house decorating, ground school and good time to sit back and enjoy being away from home/work and with family.

Of the many exciting things I experienced that week the best was getting to fly the T-6 simulator at Randolph AFB. A HUGE THANK YOU to my father in law David and his friend Dave for setting up the opportunity for me to get some stick time in the trainer. It was really incredible to see what it's like to be in the pilot seat. I am very anxious to see if God has pilot slot in my future. I look forward to getting many more hours in the pilot seat!

There are many more stories to be told from the week, but it is late and I am tired so you will have to hear them in person unless Lindsay gets off of the beach in Curacao and gives you her side of the trip. Good luck with that.:)

I am in Wisconsin right now with the Air National Guard and Lindsay is in the Carribean with a friend she was deployed with. I am sure we will post an update when we get back home.

See ya.

Summer Time

Wow it has been awhile hasn't it. So that means the suspense must be killing you and I shouldn't let you down with a short, piddly update entry.....right? Well sorry that's what you get for now. This summer has been really great! I knocked out 6 more hours of school with "A's" which leaves me with 12 hours left in the fall and then I am done. Now that is suspense for ya, well for me I guess. You're probably not as excited for me to graduate as I am. Oh well, you had your time. :)

I am almost completely done with Wal-Mart. I only work about 12 hours a week now with the original intent of going back to full time after summer school, but I really don't want to. I have been working with Linz at the Sand Plum and enjoy that much more. I haven't quite decided what my work will look like next semester, but if it was up to me I would full time at the Sand Plum. It will take some more prayer and waiting to decided, but I will let you know what happens.

Linz has been busy, busy, busy! I haven't minded so much because I have been up there with her. She just experienced the worst wedding to date which ended with the cops being called. It's a long story though so you can ask her about it when you see her.

We are leaving tomorrow morning at 0300 aka 3:00 in the A.M. which leaves us with far less than the desired and much appreciated 8 hours of sleep the good Lord intended us to have every night. I am riding our GSXR750 at Eagles Canyon Raceway all day tomorrow and then we are heading down to Lindsay's parents house for a vacation of landscaping. That's only part of it though. It will be fun and we have both been looking forward to seeing them again.

Anyway this is already longer than I intended so I am off to salvage as much shut eye as I can before we have to get up before the moon. The truck is loaded, I am packed, the house is clean, breakfast is setout and ready, so now I just need to get my wife home so she can pack and get to bed. Goodbye.

Stupid Alarm Clock

So it is Tuesday morning and I don't have work or school until 6:00 tonight so I was going to "sleep in" (I use that term loosely) until 5:30 because I volunteered to help move some stuff at the church at 6:30. Well when I was setting the alarm last night for 5:30 I accidentally set the actual time ahead by 1 hour so instead of "sleeping in" until 5:30 I actually got up at 4:30 which is really only "sleeping in" about 15 minutes compared to usual so it doesn't really count for anything. I already ate breakfast and was waiting for my green tea (I think I may be getting sick and green tea is supposed to be loaded with little disease fighting ninjas called antioxidants so I thought it would be a better choice than coffee) to cool before I realized what I had done. By then it was too late to salvage a little shut eye so here I am updating you.

Yes school is out....well sorta. The spring semester is over but I just can't seem to get enough so I am currently taking an intercession class which takes up my evenings from 6-10 and my weekends from 9-5 so that is pretty exciting. It's a bummer right now but I get to graduate about 5 months earlier so it will be worth it come spring next year. I then have a summer class June 1-25 which is 3 hours a day Mon-Thur. I really don't mind these classes I am just really burnt out on wal-mart right now. 4a.m. wake up calls 4 days a week are just wearing me down. I am cutting back on wal-mart for about 6 weeks starting June 1st. I will only be working Thursday evenings and Friday mornings to ensure I have ample time to do necessary studying for class. I will work with Linz at the Sand Plum in my free time whenever that will be.

I really need to spend some time with my little bro also. I have seen him an average of once a month for the past few months and I am supposed to see him every week. My problem is that I have a hard time thinking of activities to do with him so I just don't do anything, but I am going to get over that this summer and actually see him on a regular basis.

I still have yet to hear anything back about a pilot slot. The 3-4 weeks I was told it would take has since turned into 6-7 weeks which I expected. I am still hoping and praying I will get a slot now. Linz and I got excited about filling out my (our) dream sheet for base location just because of the thought of living in Europe, but I would be pretty disappointed if I don't get a pilot slot.

Linz and Cheri started up P90X again. They are doing really well and seem very motivated to complete it. Way to go ladies!!! I decided P90X is not really my thing. For 1, it is hard. And 2 it is more designed for toning and weight loss which is not my goal. Explanation of reason #1. I understand exercising is supposed to be tiring and push your body to limits in order to break through those limits and that's all well and good, but I don't like working myself to near death in order to achieve a goal that is not exactly what I want. I can go to the gym and lift weights, which is also very difficult, to the limits of my body and not feel like dieing when I am done. I still feel like I got a great exercise and it's more in line with my goal of building muscle and getting stronger. I decided to try the workout plan I did while I was in Turkey. I put on about 18lbs of muscle in 3 months with this workout and I am hoping to do it again. It focuses on strength training and the workouts are only 30-40 minutes 5 days a week compared to 60-90 minutes 6 days a week. It does not include any cardio, but I plan doing that myself through swimming and mountain bike riding. As the summer progresses we will post up results.

Well I guess that is enough blabbing for now. I am going to go eat breakfast again and get ready to go to church and start my day.

12 Days

Over 20 years ago, I began my formal education. In 12 days, I will finish it. A long way from my striking performance of "Red bird, red bird, what do you see?" at my preschool graduation, this one will feature a visit from my parents, a grown-up party (we are serving appetizers!), and the satisfaction of never doing homework again.

Don't get me wrong, I am not done learning by any means. I would love to take more classes, but because I want to. Photography, art, theatre, maybe even a theology class here and there. But the mandatory, life-controlling aspect of attendance, papers, and group projects will be a thing of the past! Somehow I managed to 3 vacations this summer to make up for the past 6 years of being in college. I looking forward to spending time with my friends. But most of all, even if I am not on a Caribbean island or the east coast, I get to finally see Jason again!!! After a handful of hours a week, we will actually have the time to jsy watch a movie, actually go when people ask us to have dinner with them, or just do nothing, because we can! Now Jason will still have classes next semester, but the chance of us being home at the same time will rise dramatically since just one of us will be mentoring, attending two college campuses, trying to do homework for all those classes, and oh, yeah, working full time! He is such a hard worker and I am so proud to call him my husband. 

This is only a season and it has been and educational one (not just because of school either..) I think we have learned to depend on each other, but most importantly to depend on God to be everything for us. Marriage does not complete you as a person and it was never intended to. It enhances your strengths and teaches you to improve on your weaknesses, so that you may serve God even more as a team. 

And that's what I think about that...

Money Money Money

Dave Ramsey just finished up a 3 week money and the bible series at church. It was a really good series and I am sure it gave some great guidance to thousands who watched it. Stemming from the series Lifechurch is now offering Financial Peace University which is Dave's "learn about saving, getting out of debt, inversting and giving class". I began going last night. It will be a 13 week class held every wednesday night. It looks like a lot of it will be principles I have already been exposed to and am currently following. I need direction with investing and budgeting every month.

I set us up with Dave's online budget program and it looks like it will work well for us. It will just be a matter of us following it by planning ahead for all purchases and using cash instead of the debit card. I just set up a couple money market accounts and opened up a Roth IRA for Lindsay so now we have a couple of good savings vehicles and we both have IRA's.

I am really excited to get going on this budget and investing. I am tired of being so non-organized with our money. We will now be able to be very purposeful with our spending and giving. It will be a little more work, but definitely worth it.

Everything else is going pretty well. I started getting a sore throat yesterday and it is worse this morning so that is not looking good. I am taking my final test for my pilot application. It is the TBAS. It is basically a computer/simulator game to test my hand eye coordination and ability to multi-task. I am pretty confident about it. I will be taking that tomorrow around 1300 and would appreciate any prayers you could toss up on my behalf. Thanks.

That's it for now. I am off to go make some breakfast and get ready for school.

Winter is here...again?

Hey, Lindsay here. I know I started this blog, but Jason has done such a great job updating it...

So we are just sitting here this evening watching Friends and waiting for it to SNOW already! Will this be Blustery Blizzard 2009?!? It hasn't impressed me yet... I guess if it does get bad, you can blame me because I put my winter clothes away last weekend. Sorry 'bout that...

The graduation countdown is at 42 days!!

Quick Update

I have a lot of homework to do so this will be quick. School started up again this week and is in full swing. All of the homework I was going to do over spring break and surprisingly enough didn't do, is now due tomorrow. Wow I think there was just a high speed pursuit past our neighborhood. Cool.

Lindsay has sponsored a local stray dog and is feeding it vanilla wafers and water. It is a very shy dog and won't actually come up to anyone but will certainly eat our food. Hopefully its owner will find it soon.

I finally think Porsche (our car) is going to be ok. I replaced the last motor mount and flushed the radiator. The violent shaking we had in reverse is now for the most part gone. She still only has about 50 horsepower but I don't think there is much we can do about that.

My boss is working elsewhere for the next two weeks and then taking vacation for a week so I am in charge at work which isn't really a big deal. It will just be a little more difficult to keep up with everything being one man down. Oh well just another example of wal-mart tacking on extra responsibility without proper compensation. We watched a Wal-mart Hate video in my Labor Relations class yesterday. I found it to be pretty humorous, but also mostly true.

I don't know anything further on my becoming a pilot process. The person who is supposed to get me started with it didn't really know what to do, so she is going to find out and then get back to me. I will keep you updated as I progress.

Well that is all I can think of for now so time to begin my homework.