Yeah!

to be perfectly honest, i really couldn't think of anything to write at the moment. therefore i share this very special photo of the oh-so-sexy bum of the dishwasher. hehehehehe 

jogging and stretching is a wonderful thing. it leaves you with such a nice warm, relaxed feeling, at least after my ears and fingers recover from 48 degree winds, which are not so warm. but i shouldn't complain. i like coolness better than hot. it wouldn't be that cold if i had a light jacket. but i digress. of course, that's all i do in this blog.

today i got a guitar! isn't that great? it's a hondo twelve string, made in korea, complete with a broken neck, given to my by james out of the kindness of his heart. hahaha! actually i really appreciate it man. so now all i have to do is learn how to fix it. and then actually fix it. and then maybe i should learn to play it... hmmm, yeah. it's kind of cool and exciting though.

ubiquitous \yoo-BIK-wih-tuhs\, adjective:Existing or being everywhere, or in all places, at the same time.
In spite of the ubiquitous beggars, gypsies and 'naked urchins', Skopje was an attractive town in the early part of the century. --Anne Sebba, Mother Teresa: Beyond the Image

Political Sigh-ence

as i was sitting here munching on doritos and creeeeeamy ranch dip, it occurred to me that i'm really going to like my poli sci class. i can already hear papa gasping in surprise, and possibly delight as well, "so, he's come around politically afterall..." of course, the reason for this is entirely due to the teacher (maybe i could give myself a tiny bit of credit for being more interested in politics). but whatever. he's going to be great. since i missed class last week (i'll maybe write about that later if i haven't already) i got made friends with and got notes from the friendly people i'm sitting between on the front row, sarah and brent. sarah has very neat handwriting over which she is all apologetic and full of anxiety (like, "oooh, do you think you can read it? i'm sorry it's a little sloppy"). brent is very much a class participator, with plenty of comments, intelligent comments i might add. he also draws some facinating swirls, letters and designs on his note paper...

better get back to my chips

hey look mom! i'm farding!

if you missed the post about farding, you might read this to better understand. 

Woes of Technology

i'm experiencing the worst computer difficulties i've had in a long time. this post is coming from ever's computer. my machine is currently acting up in the most inappropriate manner, refusing to open windows and in the process of trying to do so repeatedly restarting itself. right now it is... about half-way through saving my documents onto a backup disk. one of these days that disk will have all the bare necessities saved and i will totally erase my harddrive and reformat the thing. blah.

anyway... what's going on? yesterday was my one year blogging anniversary. i checked my backed up word document and there's almost 70,000 words. not bad for a years worth of work. looking back at some of my first posts makes me chuckle. some seem kind of ridiculous. some of my current posts are probably ridiculous as well.

first week of classes is going well, still. i'm sick, but not too bad. guess what! i've been practicing the saw today! yes indeed ladies and gentlemen, i got out my saw and turns out it has a beautiful tone when combined with my violin bow. i've been playing some christmas music, and anything i can think of that isn't too fast. one needs nice smooth flowing tunes for this "instrument." amazingly enough i've actually been studying and not wasting time on the computer (even when it was working properly. actually i've probably been spending more time on it now that it isn't working...). also been reading james herriot, all things bright and beautiful. wonderful book. to anyone who loves reading and isn't aquainted with herriot, i strongly recommend any and all of his veterinary biographies (those are the ones i've read). enjoyable and humorous, with lots of fifty dollar words. and of course (now for something completely different) there's the guitar thing i have going. i've almost got all of my classes and schedules set in stone for the semester, and the last ones will be determined tomorrow. once those are finalized i can hopefully fit in some time to build my instrument! now that you've had your boring random conglomerate paragraph, i'm off to check on my computer.

Christmas Photos

sleepy smiling boxer

stockings in a row

here's the fine christmas tree in our new home

have you noticed, either in yourself or other people, the need for support in conversation? even if you one doesn't actually need it, we tend to look for it if it might be available. this is especially evident when talking amongst family and close friends, particularly between spouses. just in conversation last night i noticed myself looking at mom occassionally when i would say something, not because i had any doubt that it was true, but maybe just to see her agreement. i'm really not sure. same thing when she would say something and look at papa, or vice versa. and with steve and billie our guests there seemed to be a need of confirmation (pardon me, i hope you don't find it embarrassing that i would mention you in this discussion). so what do you think?

JITB

since the dorms openend on friday and i went ahead and moved in right away, we ate out a few times since the cafeteria wasn't open yet. for some reason we always seem drawn to jack in the box, even though the service is horrible. it probably has something to do with how close it is to campus. i also have to admit that the food tastes pretty good if you can ever get it, and get what you actually ordered. this time they actually got my order right on the first try. so i'm pretty happy, munching on my burger, enjoying my last days of "freedom" before classes begin. there were no other customers in the place, and most of the employees were just standing in the kitchen talking (or singing - i shudder and laugh simultaneously in recollection). as i looked around the room i thought i noticed the lady at the register looking at our table. she looked away immediately. maybe she just happened to catch my eye. i under the table the table with my toe... "ever... is she staring at us?" i turned carefully, seductively stuffing my face with curly fries and ketchup, and glanced out of the corner of my eye. yep. staring straight back again. okay folks, i enjoy attention as much as anyone else, more or less. i certainly like friendly smiling people. but middle aged women ogling the dining patrons of whatever establishment by whom they may have been hired, is to be, may i say, frowned upon? i don't know if it bothered ever and nick, but we all tried to stifle our chuckles and retreated to the outdoors, where we could express our mirth a little more openly. wendy's... you have secured our business.

let me say that music lit with dr ayer already feels like a breath of fresh air, with promise for a fine and much improved semester of possibly the most challenging music course (at least for me). i noticed there are quite a few people i remember from the same class last semester. of course there's also a plethora of hold outs who have been waiting for dr mann to retire.

dr nelson is her usual crisp, dry intelligent self. i can't decide if i really like her as a teacher or not. but mainly i lean on the side of liking her, which is sort of obvious since i'm taking my last semester of theory with her again. not exactly a fun teacher, but concise, easy to follow and ready to work with her students in whatever they find difficult.

as for dr petti... he's the same, yeah?

that's all my classes for today. everything went great. what can i say?

the working part of my break is officially over. i just shipped BallQube their last order...and i trust that payment will be forthcoming. and speaking of payments, i have something to spend it on now (besides school and fillings).

i'm going to use some of it for my guitar! ooh, i like the sound of that... my guitar. hahahhaa, anyway. so today i had a terrific guitar making session with steve. i do hope i wasn't too much of a nuisance by staying so long. i had to skeedaddle when billy got home. ;-) but we looked at a bunch of stuff today. steve showed me some sanding on the headpiece that he glued the ears on last week. then glued some veneers onto the top of the freshly sanded surface. also i watched him cut, fit and glue a bit of bracing to a guitar back, and clamp it with some wonderful go-bars. and i helped him cut and fit the bone nut for the same piece with the freshly glued ears and veneers. :-p understand, of course, that my watching and helping mainly entails listening, trying to think of intelligent questions which will help me in the future, and flipping switches. so far i have found it all quite enchanting, with the possible exception of the smell of bone dust which wrinkles my nose and conjures up memories and images of dr gandy's office with it's rows of tiny drills... needless to say, i can hardly wait to get started on a guitar of my own, or at least on a few scraps to start practicing.

today you might say i made the first step toward that "guitar of my own." we looked at a bunch of wood steve has in various nooks and crannies and closets. there were a great many fine specimens, which despite my quiet admiration had me almost drooling. i suspect steve may have been too, but they're already his afterall. it must be a dreadful and wonderful thing at the same time having all that beautiful wood and needing to wait patiently for the right customer. by golly, it must drive a poor soul crazy. with a little jerk back to reality, steve found an excellent african mahogany piece for me to get started with. much more conservative and less expensive than some of the exotic stuff, but beautiful none-the-less, and much better suited for a beginner's first instrument. then we looked through a stack of faces, while he listened to their tone by thumping, culled out the ones that weren't quite so good (or that were rather nice and he'd prefer i not have :-) at last with the options narrowed down to 4 or 5 of his recommendations i made my choice. shoot, now i can't even remember what kind of wood it is. but hey, it has my name on it now. thus i was introduced to W.A.S. that is, wood acquisition syndrome. *grins* so far there are no plans to seek medical help.

renascent \rih-NAS-uhnt\, adjective:Springing or rising again into being; showing renewed vigor.

Good Lookin'

i mentioned before that the kitchen in this house has very many mirrors. it can be quite distracting. also, with only two small bathrooms in a household of 8, the facilities can become rather congested with bedtime activities such as brushing teeth, etc. because of this, some of us occassionally brush our teeth in the kitchen. after bringing the activity of tooth cleansing into such close proximity to the mirrors, mom found it necessary to enact a "farding, not flossing" policy. we support all sorts of vain self-admiration, primping and slicking back of hair, but white flossing flecks on the cabinet doors are beyond unacceptable. ;-)

i finished all the baseball cap holders (i wonder how many times i've written that in black marker the last week). WOOHOOOO!!! hopefully i can get another week's worth of work from them. but it's nice to have an order completely out of the way. besides delivery, which will take place on monday. oooo, speaking of monday, that's when i'm scheduled to have my cavity filled. my heart leaps within me.

diktat \dik-TAHT\, noun:1. A harsh settlement unilaterally imposed on a defeated party.2. An authoritative decree or order.

Silence is Golden

sometimes i wonder what the best thing to do with hours of monotony is. now i don't mean lazily doing nothing, but doing boring tasks. and i'm talking about being by yourself too. how do you employ your mind while doing numbing work? my typical solution is listening to music. however, when mitering moulding wearing full sized headphones with the volume pumped up to 25 decibels and a hat pulled down over them to shield the outside noise, the eardrums take quite a pounding. something i've noticed though, is that i need more music. not only am i getting tired of listening to all the things i have, it's just as mind-numbing as thinking about nothing while staring at my hands doing their work. so i try to think about various things that might be useful. the last few days i've "written" some letters. i thought of all kinds of things i want to say to people, did a bunch of cutting and pasting, but haven't actually typed or penned any of it. i plan to actually do some of that tomorrow. i've also noticed i can have some real mood swings as i sit out there "thinking." not that anyone would really notice since i'm not talking to anyone or expressing any emotions. but i've got to be careful what i think about. sometimes i can think about really depressing stuff, and start feeling really bummed before i even realize what i'm doing. i also recommend singing. really loud. afterall, what's the harm when there's nobody to cringe? i also thought about guitars today. hahahha. and i also suddenly thought of a question for steve about something i read in matthew, which suddenly occurred to me. i've noticed i get in the habit of reading things and when i don't understand something, i occassionally skip over it and don't notice what i'm missing. as i was randomly "thinking" about this passage i was like, "wow, i wonder what that really means!" so look out steve! unless i figure it out before i see you again. :-P

i had a rather productive day today, and hopefully i can finish this job by tomorrow afternoon, and ship it monday. then i'll either get them to make one last order, work a week for dale (if he's got anything), or maybe do some intense reading and practicing before school starts up. i feel horrible about how little i've practiced over break. alrighty, i've got dinner to eat, books to read, and movies to watch, so i'm off!

recondite \REK-uhn-dyt\, adjective:1. Difficult to understand; abstruse.2. Concerned with obscure subject matter.

And his fondness for stopping his readers short in their tracks with evidence of his recondite vocabulary is wonderfully irritating. --"Books of the Times," New York Times, February 23, 1951

cram packed to the rim. and not just with rice and tortillas, though that is also true. so i started out this morning by getting home from work in the wee hours, and getting less than 5 hours of sleep. since i'm pretty much an 8 hours in the bed kind of a guy, i wasn't a happy camper at workin' time. or at least not a fully functional camper. but by the time i got on the road, the heater warmed up, and i was chug... i mean sipping a nice tall glass of chocolate milk, i was doing ok. i took out all but one bench seat, and filled the van to the brim with my precious cargo and carted it off to laneville.

i tell you what, there was nothing fun happening there, so i raced back as fast as i could. when i got home i packed up my paintball gear and headed over to swift-and-silent. ended up getting there about 25 min late, but the guys were waiting on me. then a horrible thing happened. when i unpacked my gun and started assembling it, i realized i had somehow left out my hopper adapter. we searched high and low, but nothing. it was a weird shape and they had none to fit it. we couldn't even find a tarnal allen wrench to fit it. after a bit of weeping and gnashing of teeth, i finally made the strenuous 2 mile trek by van back to my house, picked up evan's gun (which he graciously allowed me to use, even though it's brand new) and we got to play. we quickly made a brother-like spectacle as we were shipped off to the course in a mini-van. there wasn't quite enough room for an extra bottom in the open hatch-back, so i jumped on and laid sideways accross everyone's lap. then we were off, with boots bouncing in the dust, guns bristling, and a free flow of male humor coming from our current position and a previous conversation about socks and barrel plugs... then we shot eachother up.

with the stench of battle still in my nose, i scrambled back to the house. departed again with several other people in tow, and i was dropped off at steve's house. we had a great time working on and talking about guitars. at least, i know i did. he showed me how he makes the necks, and did a little work on one peg board. we looked at different kinds of guitars and their unique peg board designs and trademark shapes. i saw lots of different kinds of wood (there's going to be a lot of those to learn) both in raw form and in instruments at various stages of completion. steve also showed me how he braces the inside of the instrument, and tons of other stuff related and not related to that. when i left i took two books to read up on, which will hopefully spark some additional curiosity and questions, and perhaps answer a few as well. anyway, i'm really excited about all this, and i can hardly wait to get started on one myself. better get going on that reading.

tomorrow looks like work... right now looks like... dessert and sleep.

exegete \EK-suh-jeet\, noun:A person who explains or interprets difficult parts of written works.

Gandy

to continue my last post, i'll start with my visit to the dentist. it was the typical uncomfortable deal that it always is. who teaches those ladies to floss so hard? and oh the aching of the jaws. maybe i should chew gum to strengthen them up for my cleaning visits. oh wait... that's hardly a good solution. also, of all the horrible setups, there was a huge window facing east, out of which my chair was looking. since it was 8:45, or shortly thereafter, the sun was just high enough to top the trees, and just low enough that the ceiling did not block its rays. but fortuneately i was wearing my sunglasses on top of my head. "don't mind if i use these do ya ma'am?" but all sadness. in my deeply reclined position the light went straight under the lenses, making them 100% useless. since they would have been a distraction and a hindrance if they were resting on my upper lip, and because i was mildly self-conscious laying there in-doors with my sunglasses on, i removed them. every few minutes i would make a mental note of the extreme tension building up in my body and try to relax my hands and shoulders. i had to keep saying, gosh jordan, is it really that bad?? and apparently it was. my teeth are squeaky clean now, but dr gandy found a little decay on one tooth. isn't it amazing how they do that? every time?!? i went for 6 or 7 years without even stepping foot in the office. what did they find? one little cavity. actually that one was kind of big. now i come back for a regular check up after 6 months or so, and what do they find? another little cavity! i bet he would find one every week if i kept going back! as you have probably guessed by this largish paragraph on the dentist, i don't have much else to talk about.

worked all day, and am about to return there, having had my dinner. i got an extra tiny job making a prototype mirror frame for foretravel this morning, which delayed my production of ball qube products. i hardly minded though since lee made it quite worth-my-while.

sine qua non \sin-ih-kwah-NON; -NOHN; sy-nih-kway-\, noun:An essential condition or element; an indispensable thing

my morning most definitely didn't go as planned. so anyway, i finally made it to work after lunch. then i spent a fabulous afternoon inking the ends of hundreds of pieces of moulding. also cut some matt board, set up the drill press and underpinner, ate a hamburger, sandwich, bag of m&m's, and a 20 oz dr pepper. and water of course. i think i am a much more healthily hydrated person when i'm at work than at home. i can drink water all day long. ahhh. oh yeah, i was talking about work. speaking of which, i need to go back over there right now.

i have a dental appointment at 8:45 in the moanin'. i can hardly wait. until then, sweet dreams.

gastronome \GAS-truh-nohm\, noun:A connoisseur of good food and drink.
If "poultry is for the cook what canvas is for a painter," to quote the 19th-century French gastronome Brillat-Savarin, why paint the same painting over and over again? --John Willoughby and Chris Schlesinger, "From Poussin to Capon, a Chicken in Every Size," New York Times, September 22, 1999

since i should be in bed, i decided to blog instead. today i slept in, and made up for staying up late on the eve of '06. then i went to work and there blissfully spent the rest of the afternoon. and evening.

so, my goals for the new year. i want to build a guitar. yes, that is officially a goal. steve has most graciously agreed to facilitate that by teaching me and helping me get the materials. i can hardly wait! also i have decided to get a 4.0 this semester. woohoo... i can hardly wait. haha! no seriously. another goal is making it through the summer with long hair. that won't exactly be a difficult task, but the chop date and shipment to locks of love is definitely going to be right before the summer of '07, after the spring semester. that will give it a full two years of growth. i also wish to purchase a car this year. let's see... yes, at the end of the summer it's going to happen. hmmm, what else. that's a good enough list of things i think i can actually accomplish. some will be harder than others. of course there are additional goals for the year, but i'll keep them to myself. :-D toodles.

plenary \PLEE-nuh-ree; PLEN-uh-ree\, adjective:1. Full in all respects; complete; absolute; as, plenary authority.2. Fully attended by all qualified members.

2005: Part the Third

unfortunately our phone line went out last night and i wasn't able to post. but no one is reading anyway, so what's the rush. :-/ it's already the first of the year, but what else happened in '05?

i would say this has been a very difficult year for me in many ways. of course i've already mentioned a few school, work, and moving related issues. but spiritually and emotionally it's been trying as well. i've found out a lot about myself. during the past year, and especially this semester, i've realized just how important my faith in christ is. i think my verse of the year is one found in philippians, "be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known to god, and the peace of god which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in christ jesus." this verse has given me so much comfort the last few months. but not only this verse, all of them! i can't even fathom how precious and wonderful the entirety of god's word is, for encouragment, conviction and instruction. this stuff is the whole reason for living. i know that some of those who may read this would disagree, but this is what it means to me. when i try to live without christ there is nothing but emptiness. it doesn't matter how much fun i have, or how hard i work, or how much money i make, nothing is satisfying. however, when i'm spending time praying and reading the bible and seeking god, everything is brighter and worth living, even when things are going badly. there's so much of this that i know in my head, and it's finally becoming clear. i'm learning it for myself, experiencing it for myself. i just wish i could learn it faster. i wish i wasn't so slow in understanding god's blessings. i'm also incredibly thankful for his patience and willingness to teach me anyway. and guess what? i'm not going through half the struggle many people i know are tasting. if only we could take to heart the famous words of jesus, "blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted..." (matt. 5:3,4) afterall, christ came to heal those who were sick, cuz who needs to be made well who is already healthy? i think i'll take my trials as they come if i can have the comfort of jesus to support me. and then hold onto him forever.

that's all i got for now. everyone have a wonderful new year. try not to break those resolutions before the week's out. come on, let's go for a record... 10 days... ;-) anway happy 2006. "god bless you, every one."