Posts Tagged ‘Calvary Baptist Church’

It always goes this way — I’m never loyal to my journals. I’m just so lazy.

I’m sitting in the school parking lot, wiping sour cream off my Taco Bell order, and waiting for my computer science class to start. School is going pretty well. Next week I have my first exams in math and physics. Physics is pretty tough, but Mr. Jorstad says it gets much easier from here. Math is extremely boring. I took this class (particularly) with spastic Mr. King before dropping last semester. Now Dr. Mesri very slowly over explains everything. It’s better than being too difficult, I guess. My programming class is just an introduction to C and it’s not too tough. some of my days are long (M/W: 9a-7p; T: 830a-3p; R: 830a-930p), but I never have classes on Fridays.

I met a girl at work named Danielle who recently moved to Lompoc (the same street as us.) We’re going to the gym together Mondays-Thursdays before class/work. She picks me up at 4:40 and we do weight training or spinning until Matt picks me up on his way to work. Danielle used to be a Marine and loves to work out, so she is the perfect motivator. This is only our second week into it, but I feel fantastic all day long! I’m very sore and hopefully soon I’ll start toning up. I’ve put on entirely too much weight over the past year.

We also started going back to church after about three months. We were going to a small group at Jim’s on Thursday nights, studying Acts, but we hadn’t been able to attend since school started up. He found a group for us on Friday nights at Wayne & Rena’s, studying marriage. They live right across the street from us and are so great! All of the other four couples in the group have children older than us, so it is interesting to hear about their experiences.

Last weekend Answers in Genesis, a group that teaches creation backed by science, came to Calvary for a two-day conference. We took in a few lectures about apologetics, astronomy, and our foundations. Matt had heard Ken Ham, the founder of AiG, speak many years ago. He believes in intelligent design, a six day creation, that we are the center of the universe, that there was a worldwide flood, and that dinosaurs lived at the same time as man, to name a few. Some of it still sounds pretty out there to me, but some of their evidence was pretty convincing. And science aside, there’s a lot said in the Bible that I never knew about. We picked up some DVDs and a book to research these ideas further.

Andrea sent me a really cute new journal the other day, which I suppose inspired me to pick up the pen again. I’m not letting myself start new journals without finishing the old ones anymore.

Last month we decided what we’re going to do when Matt leaves the Air Force. The plan was: I’d move out to Colorado over Christmas ’07 and go to CSU in the spring. At the beginning of March he’d follow and find a job around Fort Collins. I have two years left in my physics degree and we would try to buy a house. The last time I went to work I learned that many people in my shop will be leaving, another squadron is moving out with us, many full-time positions will be opening up, and they want to promote at least one SrA. The full-time job will be a GS-11 position and we’re getting new equipment that someone needs to learn and teach to everyone else. It’s extremely tempting to stick around for another two years after signing on full-time

Wow, it's been a while. Well here's the scoop … Matt's parent's were out last weekend from New York. They flew in to San Diego to hang out with Matt's uncle for a day then took the train up to meet us in Santa Barbara Friday night. We went out for Hawaiian BBQ at L&L for dinner then headed home. We pretty much just sat up and chatted before crashing. Saturday we split up: Matt and Dad went golfing while Mom and I toured around Solvang. She and I had lunch at the Solvang Restaurant, of course (I had to introduce her to the delicious Aebleskiver!) We stopped by my favorite local yarn shop, hung out in a windmill, and took plenty of photos (on her camera … they'll be posted as soon as I receive them.) Saturday evening I cooked my "famous" chicken parmesan and we played Star Wars monopoly. Sunday morning was church. It's about time we attended. A mixture of my TDY, Matt's wacky weekend work schedules, and super-laziness have kept us away from church for months. Although we can still only attend every other Sunday, it's still very nice to be back. After church made the winding drive out to Jalama Beach to bottle some sand, wade in the frigid water, have a terrific hamburger lunch, and pick up a really cute coconut windchime. We made sloppy joe turnovers again to enjoy over a game of Mad Gab. Over the weekend we watched a few movies (our #1 must-share, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, provided us with much shrieking laughter) and spent a lot of time just relaxing and chatting. Matt and Jason both had to go to work early Monday morning, but we stopped by Matt's work for a picnic lunch before heading down to Santa Barbara. I dropped them off after getting lost around the town so they could enjoy a few days of 25th anniversary celebration. It was a great visit! Other than that … nothing else terribly interesting has happened. Matt's on his Panama schedule now, so he works all of this week (but had Wednesday-Thursday as a "weekend"), but has all of next week (minus Wednesday-Thursday) to hang out at home. It's a little wacky, but once we get used to it I think we're really going to like this new schedule. Matt's computer has been on the fritz lately. We've taken it in to get checked out twice now and they can't find anything wrong with it. It reboots after 5-10 minutes consistently when it's at home. Gaming is impossible. Whenever it tries to boot, there's a very high chance it won't POST and will just beep every three seconds. Of course, Best Buy can't reproduce this and has run through all their stress tests and it's been behaving excellently all week. It must be our room. It's been a nice break from gaming, though. We spend more time doing crafts, reading, and, well, sitting in front of the screen still I guess. Matt's been cross stitching this cool wolf scene (only his second attempt at the craft) and it's really coming together. He still has a lot to do, but it's a big project. Here's what he has finished so far (about two weeks of on-and-off work):

Math is going all right. I have a test next week and, of course, we've all ready started into new material that won't be covered on the upcoming exam. I hate doing learning and doing homework for new material when I want to focus all my attention on studying old material. We still haven't gotten our first exams graded and returned, but I hope we will on Monday. My teacher is always so excitable about problems that we do. He'll write a problem up on the board and tell us to take five minutes to do it. He will get so antsy that he can't contain his excitement and will just do it for us within the first two minutes, telling us all the time how we will be think it's so cool. I like math. I'm pretty good at math. I've just never felt really excited about it or found anything to be particularly beautiful. Until last Wednesday. I had checked out a book from the library last week about cool tricks and neat things in math. It had introduced Euler's formula, e^it = cos(t) + isin(t), which is really neat, as well as the awesome relationship between five fundamentals of math: e^i(pi) + 1 = 0. I thought this was all very cool, but the book didn't say too much about them. I was psyched on Wednesday, though, because we ran into these while discussing homogeneous linear differential equations and got to prove them! It suppose part of the excitement came from not being mostly lost in class and that I actually recognized something that we hadn't yet talked about. I'm sure non-math people can look at the two equations and not care at all, but really, they are very beautiful and amazing. I think it was the first time I really appreciated an equation as elegant and realized what a genius Euler was.

Yes, it certainly is. Matt was a sweetheart and picked me up at the airport last Wednesday looking all handsome in his nice suit, and greeting me with chocolate and a rose. It's been a nice, relaxing week for me to adjust to being back home. It's cool hanging out with Jason and having him around. We play a lot of games together and whatnot. It's also nice having a third seat at dinner; we don't have leftovers that will never truly be eaten. Last night the three of us went over to my buddy Brian's house (joined by my other school pals Missy and Evin) for some food and Office Space and [if we had not been tired and stayed a little longer] Halo 2. It was a good time and it's nice to introduce Jason to some new people. We went to a new church that Jason picked out last Sunday and stayed later for a great potluck. It was a good time and a nice, small church and it suits Jason really well. Matt and I are going to return to Calvary, though. There is a lot about that particular church that we like, we just have to find a way to be more socially comfortable. That's up to us, though, and not really any fault of Calvary's. We also went to Jalama Beach last weekend, which is a very pretty, tucked-away beach right in our backyard.

We had a good time walking up and down the beach and sunbathing. The water was nearly freezing, but Matt and Jason jumped in anyway. They got a tad sunburned and Matt has been suffering all week, but we plan on going back hopefully every weekend. Good times. I also finally got a chance to upload the photos I took while TDY. I have an album up of visiting with Andrea. I said earlier that we did some origami and crocheting while I was there, here are a few of our finished products.

I also got a chance to do a bit of crocheting while I was hanging out by myself in the hotel room. I started working on a baby afghan and worked on a bunch of squares for Mama's afghan. These are the squares I completed:

So there's that. Jason and I played a bunch of pool today. I never really learned how to play, so today was sort of instructional. Of course, I've played plenty of games before, but I learned today that I've been doing everything incorrectly. We practiced for almost two hours and had a grand ol' time. I got an email from Andy yesterday saying that he had been sailing from San Diego to Santa Barbara as part of some crew, proving his seaworthiness in order to be part of some large Mexico –> New Zealand trip. I was so excited to hear he was in Santa Barbara and sent off an email immediately making plans for today. Alas, he called today from Colorado as soon as he received my message. I was a little bummed that he was in California and didn't even think to get together. He's a world-traveler now and I'm not sure when our paths will cross again. I'm sure they will. I think sometimes I just get nostalgic for times in my past. College in Colorado was fun most of the time and I do miss the friends I had then. Being that they're all males, I often feel it's inappropriate to keep in touch or be as close as I'd like to. They're good guys and I think of them often. It's always good to see someone or get an email hearing about all the great adventures. Matt and I are planning a quick trip next month. Neil Gaiman will be up near San Francisco, about 4 hours away from us, for a book signing. He's cutting back a lot on his appearances and I don't want to miss an opportunity. I've never been to a signing before, but I think it sounds like a good time. And of all the famous people I know of, I think he is the one I'd like to meet the most. Matt will take a day or two of leave and we'll probably stay the night up in the bay area. We had only been once, for a Switchfoot concert, and didn't get to explore the city at all. So maybe we'll make a big event of it. Anyhow, I'm excited to pick up Neil's Fragile Things and get to say hello. Wednesday was my first day of math class. I was really nervous about the whole thing and ready to drop the class that day. I received a text message from Erick earlier reporting that they just started chapter 5. I had just finished chapter 2 and started freaking out about how I'd never catch up. It really bummed me out a bit because I've been struggling on my own with the coursework. Then I received another text informing me that they had skipped chapters 3 and 4, renewing my confidence. I went to class and found I wasn't really that far behind. I just have to do some super-studying for our first exam two weeks from now. I'm not working (though I am researching some exciting jobs) and this is the only class I'm taking, so I shouldn't have any excuses not to do well enough. I went to the dentist today for a first exam and cleaning. It went well enough at first and I really like my dentist. Before going to Georgia I had toothaches and learned I needed a root canal due to decay around some poorly installed Air Force filling. Bummed about that, got over it though. I still need to get a crown on my tooth-stub. Today they found another filling that had improperly bonded and didn't do it's job. So I have some deep decay in that tooth as well and will go in to look at it again next week and see if we can avoid another root canal. And another Air Force filling cracked and will need to be redone. And my gums are receding around the implant I got when I was sixteen, exposing the metal. It could get worse and become a bad thing, so I need to go to someone else to see about some bone grafting. Fun … and cheap, I'm sure. Ughh. So it was somewhat of a disheartening day at the dentist, but that's life I guess. I'm just wondering how our wallet is going to take to all this work. Well, that's my overly wordy update for the week. Jason starts work on Tuesday, then I'll be home alone during the week. I have class at night on Mondays and Wednesdays, but during the day I'll be alone … studying, crocheting, and most likely blogging. So ta ta 'til then.

Well, just posting so you know I'm still alive. Mostly. School's been going well. I was taking an honors calculus 1 course, all independent study projects, but I dropped it because I think it was just too much work. I have enough to worry about between the others. Which are going quite well, actually. It's just a lot of work, but it's fun. So, Matt and I gave up on City of Heroes. Not that it wasn't cool … I think it just got old faster than I expected. The best part was creating a new character … playing it was well … okay. I think the thing is, I need loot in my game. In CoH, you don't have an inventory or find treasures or anything like that. We decided to get sucked into World of Warcraft last weekend. That definitely hits the spot! I heard all the ranting and raving about it, I just didn't think it would be so much fun! We spent way too much time gaming over the weekend and while doing so, I came down with something awful. I feel like I get sick way too often. I think it was just my time to get sick, but the staying up late on the computer Friday and Saturday really didn't help. I missed school on Monday … everything was just so painful and I couldn't speak. Tuesday was hardly much better, but I had a physics quiz, so I dealt with it. I'm now 95% healthy. I surprisingly don't have much news. Really, my life is: wake up -> school -> home -> dinner -> hang out with Matt / play computer games -> sleep. So exciting! Last night we were playing WoW and our pastor and two other people from church stopped by unannounced. That wasn't a problem at all, but if I had known our pastor was coming by, I would have straightened up! It's been a sick/lazy week … Anyhow, we're relatively new to the church and they stopped in just to say hello and chat. Get to know us a bit more. They asked a lot of questions … you know "if you died today, do you know for sure you'd go to Heaven?" "if you died right now and were standing before God and He asked 'why should I let you in?' how would you respond?" You know … kind of morbid stuff. It was nice to talk to them, though, just about any general questions we had about the church or our walk or anything. I kind of want them to come over more regularly, because I have plenty of questions! It was a nice visit, just kind of caught us off-guard. And one of the guys left his coat here … I guess I'll bring it to church with me. :p The last three weeks have had quite a few ups and downs. I know I worry unnecessarily about things. All the time. I guess every now and then I just panic and go "what on earth am I doing? Why am I studying EE? What will I do with it? I want kids, right? I don't want the daycare center to raise them, I want to, right? So, what's the point? For after they're grown? Why all the hard work?" I dunno … I guess I've just been worrying a lot about the future and what it is I really want. I do want to learn all this cool physics and stuff like that, and half of me wants to do awesome things with it … and the other half of me just wants to have a family and take care of them and be a mom who's around for them and possibly homeschool for parts of their education. But then would this education go to waste? Or maybe I'll use it 20 years down the road. Then I think about kids. I want kids, I want to be a mother. I think the idea of it is starting to scare me a little bit. Silliness, I know. Some of it is selfish: "ohh, having kids will prevent us from being able to do this and that and whatever else selfish stuff". I know the argument for that, of course, but I still think about it. I think for some reason I'm also fearing having kids. Part of that is a guy Matt and I know from work tells the most terrifying horror stories about his wife's complications in birth and all that and it just got me really freaked out. For like … the past year. I guess I'm just perturbed because since I was young I had "a plan". I know, that's silly too, because you never know how things will turn out. But still, I had one (or a few rather, throughout my childhood): a timeline of how I wanted my life to go. Now my plan forks all over the place … I don't know exactly which path I want. It's okay, it's all part of the journey. I think because school is tough and it's hard work, I just want to make sure it won't all be for nothing (well, other than my satisfaction of learning something interesting). I'm sure it won't be. So … Hurricane Rita. =\ My carpool and study buddy, Erick has been freaking out about it all day. I guess I just haven't been keeping up with it all that much for it to scare me so. It's a big deal and I'm glad people are evacuating and all that. Especially after Katrina, it is really scary. His father and older sister and (as of yesterday) a new baby brother all live in Houston and are unable to leave because the gas stations are all empty and the traffic is horrible. And they can't find plywood anywhere, everyone has run out, so they're panicking a whole lot. So Erick has been a mess all day and he really wants to do something to help. I don't know what to do either. We can't drive down there and hand out gasoline and plywood. We're poor. We're just praying. My father lives in Dallas and my sister lives in San Angelo, so I'm not really so worried about them. I guess Dallas will get hit with some 70mph winds and rain, but that's not as scary. Like I said, Matt and I are playing WoW now. We're playing with friends of mine from Fort Collins: Tim, Joe, and Dave. It's really great to have friends to play with, even if they are far away, and I'm very glad Matt likes them so much. The five of us are having a blast. I think now that I'm talking to these guys I used to hang out with at CSU more, I'm getting homesick. I haven't really been homesick since I got to California. I think now because of the guys and also the season … it's fall, my favorite time of the year, but here in Lompoc every season seems the same. Leaves don't turn colors, the air doesn't really get brisk. I keep daydreaming about Fort Collins in the fall and I'm getting too nostalgic. I hope Matt gets orders soon. I really, really hope they're to Colorado. Anyhow … off I go to do homework, sprinkled with World of Warcraft. Or maybe the other way around.