oh...yes...Tech support!

For those who need a light-hearted thought for the day, here it is. i get a daily email from crosswalk.com. This one my family and i found really funny.

TODAY'S CLEAN LAUGH

*Stuff You Don't Want To Hear From Tech Support*

"Do you have a sledgehammer or a brick handy?"

"...that's right, not even McGyver could fix it."

"Looks like you're gonna need some new dilythium crystals, Cap'n."

"Press 1 for Support. Press 2 if you're with 60 Minutes. Press 3 if you're with the FTC."

"We can fix this, but you're gonna need a butter knife, a roll of duct tape and a car battery."

"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."

"In layman's terms, we call that the Hindenburg Effect."

"Okay, turn to page 523 in your copy of Dianetics."

i hope you all enjoy! :-)

All thanks to Emily Ralph

Emily Ralph is a DJ on for the WORD FM Morning Show. this year she's bee trying something new every day. so she has inspired me a little. today i did something new with out even knowing it. i rode in a Dodge Durango for the first time ever today. now, i've ridden in trucks before. well, a truck. my granddad has a Nissan Frontier, but it's about 10 years old, and it's small as far as trucks go. this is probably one of the bigger vehicles i've been in. see, i had a leaders meeting this morning for Christian club. and i always ride back with one of the three people in the group who have a car. i'd gotten in the habit of riding with this one girl, but this time i decided to ride with someone else. i really don't like being in big vehicles like that. i know he's an okay driver, but it was still a little scary. fortunately i had distractions. one being the beautiful sunrise.(it was so amazing! God is so amazing painting the sky like that!) so anyways, it was interesting. and all thanks to all that, i got some more ideas for songs. it was good. so thank you Emily Ralph, for your wonderful example. i don't think i'll be eating dog food or trying out various part time jobs like Emily does. but i'll try out the little things. it could be fun!

Day by day

so on my way to lunch today, i got to talk with a friend of mine from church. he's a senior in high school, and when he asked how i was, i told him crazy. junior year is so stressful. so then he decides to tell me that it's going to be like that all year. but thankfully, he offered a glimmer of hope. he said if there's one piece of advice he could give me, just take it day by day. one step at a time. if you don't, you get overwhelmed, and then nothing gets done. so i'm supposed to just keep chugging along with my senior high project. the past few weeks have been a whirlwind. and from what it looks like, it's going to stay that way. so i might as well get used to this stress level. and i've decided that i'm going to have to set aside time to relax. otherwise i won't survive. so saturday and sunday are going to be relaxing days. i'll probably still do homework and housework, but i'll make sure to reserve some time to just watch a movie and knit. or read a book. last saturday i went shopping by myself, and i really liked using that as some relaxing time. especially when i'm just by myself and have no certain time i need to be back. i just go home when i start to get hungry, because my budget is too tight to eat out all the time.

so i just want to apologize to everyone in advance if i'm not the most pleasant person this year. i'll try my hardest to be as positive as possible. but maybe it won't be that bad after all. i mean, we're already through the first marking period. well, almost, the end of the marking period is next week. so i just need to hang in there until thanksgiving, and then i'll have a break. from there i just need to hang on until Christmas. but that's too far ahead. how about i just make sure i have all my music together for tomorrow's Christian club...

It's been quite the day

So i was walking home from school today, and witnessed the funniest traffic jam of my life. there was a combine in the middle of the street i live on. now, while i'm not giving away the street name, i will say that it's parallel with Main St., and is the second busiest street in town. so to have a piece of farm equipment in the middle of the road is a bit of a hindrance. they were trying to get it through the street, making sure they didn't hit any of the parked cars, not to mention the cars heading the other way. many drivers got very frustrated and did a k-turn to go the other way and take a detour to their destination. i've never seen anyone do a k-turn on my street! i've seen people do u-turns, but not k-turns.

so while i was walking towards my house, i figured i'd just go in and ask my parents and sister what was happening outside. maybe they had some inside scoop that would be useful to me. well, when i asked them what was going on, they wanted to know what i was talking about. so i told them about the combine trying to get through the street. so Dad and Anna went outside to see what was happening. then Dad sent me back inside to get the camera, so we could take a picture to send to my mom's uncle. a high percentage of my mom's extended family are farmers, or grew up in a farming family.

i would just like to say that i never ever want to try to drive a large vehicle, such as a tractor trailor, or a combine, through town. i'd probable run into a car or two. my parent's van hits the limit when it comes to driving big vehicles. well, i guess i'd drive a 15 passenger van if i had to. but i'll stick to small cars. there's that small stuff again. and i felt really bad for the person driving the combine. i would hate to be in that situation. but he got through it.

then when i went back outside to leave for piano lessons,(this is twenty minutes after the combine thing) i saw police cars down the way. i really don't want to know why they were there. then there was all kinds of traffic hold ups. the van in front of me going through town would randomly put on his break every five seconds. i can get very stressed out driving to piano.

well, i need to go study for my physics test. i tried to go to the review, but we kept getting off track, and didn't get much done. so i hope i have a good hold on this stuff. hopefully i'll post more this weekend. don't forget to tune into the Squeaky Show!

Be sure to listen!

yeah, i haven't posted in a while. and i'm very sorry, but i guess that's how life goes. anyways, i'm going to be on the radio this saturday. so you will have to head over to my Squeaky Show blog to check out how you can listen. i'll be on from 8-11am eastern time. i know it's really early for a saturday, but hey, these things happen. if it makes you feel better, this will be the second saturday in a row i've had to be somewhere at 8am. i just really feel bad for my west coast friend, Liz, who i know will not get up at...5am on saturday to listen to my show. although that'd be pretty cool if she did. i'll just be playing some awesome music to get you up and going for your saturday morning.

busy, busy, busy

that's how this past week has felt. but last night, that just took the cake. so the homecoming football game was supposed to be last night, but it was canceled because of rain. but it didn't really matter to me, because i had to work. so i got to work, and the parking lot was a lot fuller than normal. i've become accustom to parking in "my" parking spot, which happens to be in front of the light pole. and normally there's no one else that parks even close to that area. all the other workers park near the plaza itself. i figure i don't want to get in that habit, because once the stores in that area of the plaza open up, we won't be able to park there anyways. so some of my fellow workers were parked near my spot.(but thankfully not in my spot.) so i parked in my spot, and got out and said hello to Morgan, who got there at the same time i did. we were marveling at all the cars in the parking lot as we walked toward the building. we weren't sure if they were all there for the Pizza Buffet or not. see, there's this other restaurant that just opened up the other day, and it's two doors down from us. so we thought maybe all the cars were people wanting to check out this new restaurant. well, we walked passed the restaurant, and looked in the window. there were less than ten people in there. so everyone was there for us. it was a really crazy night. i've been so used to working on tuesdays, thursdays, and saturdays. the busiest out of that three is saturday, but it's not nearly as busy as friday. so when i work till close, i'm used to working till 9:30, 10 at the latest. so it was strange when it was 9:45, and i knew there was no way we were even close to being done. but we had a lot of people there to help out. so i got out of there a little after ten. except i had to stop at the grocery store to get a gallon of milk, so i didn't get home until 10:30.

and then i got to get up and go to school. it was for the PSAT. basically most of the junior class came in today to take them. it went alright, but it was so weird sitting there in a class room on a saturday. but i got used to it after awhile. and it felt like the end of a school day, or at least it reminded me of finals, when everyone was standing outside waiting for their ride to come. i drove to school for the second time this year. :-D so i chatted with a friend of mine for a little while, and then walked over to the van and headed home. the traffic was the same as a school day too. well, except there wasn't quite as much. but i tried to wait a little while so i wouldn't be caught up in too much traffic. but i wasn't stopped for a long period time at all while waiting to get out of there. so that was good.

well, i think i'm going to go practice piano and guitar a little bit, and then do some homework. and hopefully i can get to bed a little earlier tonight. i'm so glad i'm not going to the homecoming dance tonight.

"Just ask Abby"

that's what my physics teacher told everyone in class today. apparently hardly anyone else in the class understands what we're doing. and we did this one problem today, and i did it, and then just sat there. and then she had me go and explain it to her and how i did it. so then apparently i had a really good handle on what we are doing. i should pause to say that my class has about 15 students in it, so it's rather small. before i knew it, several of my classmates were around me asking how in the world i did the problem. oh, and for those of interest, we're in the unit of "Vectors and Projectiles". except we're still on the Vectors part. this problem included head to tail addition, and solving components, which is when you make a few right triangles from the vectors, provided they're not horizontal or vertical. from the one right triangles you could figure out the other sides just by knowing the hypotenuse and one of the angles. in this particular problem that helped you with one of the sides of the R-value. and then you just subtract for the other side, Pythagorean theorem your way through, and there you go! well, then you need to find the angle touching the y-axis or something parallel to it.

so sorry if i just confused a bunch of you. anyways...i couldn't explain it to other people from my messy drawling. so i ended up just drawling it again, and doing each step at a time. as willing as i am to help my peers with these things, i don't think i want to become a teacher. but i'm not used to such power. i'm not usually the only 0ne in an entire class that "gets it". it's quite strange. but i'm sure this won't last for long. it'll probably be a week or two before everyone is asking someone else for help. and that's perfectly fine.

and the product of all this?

a new song! and it's going to be a bluesy, jazzy song. it's a new endeavour for me, but so far it's working out just fine. i'll probably get really frustrated once i work it out on the piano, but the words and melody is working out great. basically the song talks about the mini-crisis i went through yesterday. once i get all of the lyrics worked out i'll post it on here. but i feel much better today than i did yesterday. Christian club really helped with that. in thinking about it, Christian Club and WJTL saved my life today. at least, they made things a little more bearable. it's amazing how God can work through a radio station to have a very helpful song playing right at the time i need it. God's pretty cool like that.

here we go

youth group was good. the people were really nice, and a lot of them started conversations with me. that made it easier being new. but it was a bit of a "culture shock" as my lunch table called it. thank goodness they were on my side explaining to the person who invited me why it was such a culture shock. i don't really have anything against that denomination, because my mom grew up in the denomination of the church i went to last night. the only reason i'm apart of the Churches of God General Conference is because that's what my dad was apart of. so my whole family is apart of that. it's what i've grown up with, and i'm used to it. my church is more traditional, and i'm used to that.

but this is definitely going in the book. i just need to remember to write it down later.

so.....

...i was invited to this youth group. it's tomorrow night. and it's at a really big church. let's just say that my church is very small. and very old. those aren't bad things. it's just different, that's all. there are so many churches around this area. and many of them are what we like to call, "Mega-churches". these are churches that have about 1000 or more people in their congregation. but this person invited me, and i'm not really sure why. but Liz says i should go because then i can put it in my book. btw Liz, i started a list of some stories to put in my book. i'm going to need your help later to makes sure i list everything. anyways, back to my story. Liz also said i should go b/c then i can tell her all about it on thursday! ;-) so i'm going. but not just for those reasons.

but when i recieved this verbal invitation last week, i was warned. yes, that's right, warned. the person who invited me told me that worship at "big churches"(i believe was his terminology) is a bit different than at small churches. frankly, i could decide whether i should be offended, or whether i should laugh. i took option three. that option was to calmly explain that i had been to some events of some larger churches, so i know how they worship. and i'm okay with that. maybe he thought that in my small church i had been sheltered from whatever in the big churches. and i guess i could understand how he might think that. but i don't concider myself sheltered.

it's just interesting to hear what people think about small churches. i don't think it's really a big deal how big or small a church is. lately i've realized that i'm more for small things. churches, towns, businesses, schools, cars. i'm rather short myself. i'm just trying to figure out the big picture with all these small interests, and small actions.

it happened again!

i was able to write some more music! this makes me so excited. i decided a few days ago that i should write a sequal to that song i shared with you all a few weeks ago. the one where the chorus starts out, "Can we put our differences away for awhile and find something good to talk about?" but i knew that i needed to wait on God's timing to write it. well, during church today i came up with a chorus. it's a chorus that's going to need some work, but it's a base to something. then after church i was seeing if i had anything more to add to the other song i was working on, when i decided i should try and come up with something for this new song. so i did. and i think it's a pretty good start. i was even able to come up with some of the lyrics, though i still need to write them down. i'll probably work on this more tomorrow night and on tuesday morning. i'm really excited that God has given me these gifts that i may glorify Him. even if i never do end up writing the next big praise song bound to be sung in churches all over the nation. i've often wondered why i even write songs if i know i'm gifted in radio. but i figure that shouldn't stop me from writing them down, because God has a plan for them. and i know God has a plan for the music too. so i should keep at it.

creative moments

and i just had one! i was just practicing guitar, and figuring out some more chords to a song i've been working on. then i decided to figure out what the chords would be to part of a verse i wrote. the verse goes as follows:

"blink your eyes, time goes by
here we are on the side
figuring out what we want to do with our lives"

and i thought i was going to have to spend twenty minutes or so figuring out what the melody was, and what chords went with that and stuff. but no. it took me under a minute because the chords just came to me, and i just played them. and all i have to say is Thank you God, and that was amazing. i hope that can happen more often. now i just need to come up with the rest of the song. but i pretty much know the chord progression. i also wish this could happen to me on the piano, but i know it will when the time is right.

the gift of life

yeah...today i gave blood. twice a school year the PA Bloodbank comes to school, and people ages 17 and over can give blood. surprisingly a lot of juniors and seniors give blood. anyways, since i turned 17 three days ago, a few weeks ago i signed up for it in homeroom. my parents give blood pretty regularly, so i figured why not. also, i'm not exactly freaked out about needles. i don't like to look, but it's okay. so i was scheduled to start the process at 9:45 this morning. so i filled out some papers, and drank some water. note to self: drink more water next time. so then they did my temp and blood pressure, and answering all those questions. then it was off to the bus! basically, they have two buses, with four chairs each. there were a lot of people giving blood at the time that i was! i was really nervous about it, but knew that i would get through it just fine. and i did. i felt really great while i was pumping the blood into the pouch. those nurses are really good at making sure you're okay and making sure no one will pass out. then after i was done i sat and ate a few crackers and drank some orange juice. another note to self: eat more crackers next time. third note to self: don't take the smokehouse cheddar ones, take the oreo looking ones.

so then i walked back into the school. it was only a few minutes before lunch so i just waited around. but walking to lunch, through the food court area, and to my seat was quite interesting. i felt really light headed, and felt like a bunch of energy had been sucked out of me. so i ate, but felt like i should've eaten more. i made sure to keep drinking water through the afternoon. if i make a lot of sudden movements then i get light headed, but i know that'll go away in a few days.

so now i'm getting ready to have a really nice meal of spaghetti. on a side note it was interesting being one of the younger ones to give blood. because a lot of my fellow juniors were asking me about my experiance. i can't count how many times i told people the worst part was when they pricked my finger. and how walking to each class i just felt really exhausted. but then again so many of us upperclassmen. i'm glad i gave blood today. and i think i'll continue to give blood whenever i can. so sign me up for the spring blood drive!

how ironic!

so, to start off with, today is my 17th birthday. and no, that's not the ironic part. as always, there's a long and involved story with this. so my friend, the same one who i went shopping with on sunday, got me a gift, and she was going to give it to me before school. but she didn't get there as early as she normally does, so i didn't see her before homeroom. so throughout the day i forgot about this gift i was supposed to get. then comes 6th period, which is my government class. we had started off class, and then got off track, which was strange because we never get off track quite that much in government class. anyways, after that was done, my teacher was talking, and then he stopped and picked up a gift bag and gave it to me. he told me he was told to give it to me, but he forgot who he was supposed to say it was from. but i knew, so it was okay. that's never happened before. so then everyone told me happy birthday, and some people attempted to sing to me. i was puzzled for a second as to how it landed in his room, because my friend doesn't have this teacher for government. but then i figured there was another person she could've given it to that probably left it there for my teacher to give to me. as it turns out, i was correct.

anyways, the ironic part. today we talked about the separation of church and state in government class. we had this worksheet that we filled out that listed all these court cases that delt with the separation of church and state. my friend gave me a t-shirt for my birthday, and it says "Pick Jesus", and it has a big picture of a guitar pick on it. i thought that was ironic how it landed in that room on the day when we talked about separating church and state. i thought it was pretty funny.

so far that's been the most interesting thing during my day today, with getting a gift in government class. after this all came about, i knew i had to post about it here, because it was just too good to leave unposted.

traveling in light vs. traveling in darkness

A few weeks ago, my friend Cait and i went shopping on a friday night. so i drove to her house to pick her up, and got lost on the way there. that's because she lives in a developement in the area, and i don't have much experiance driving in those developments, they're pretty tricky and all look the same. anyways, i did finally get to her house, i just missed her street and had to turn around. after i dropped her off when we were done, i got lost going from her house to mine. i missed the road to get back on the route that would take me into town. so i figured i would keep driving and find a road to turn off of and then turn around. well, there were no roads to turn off of. so i just kept going. after what seemed like forever i came upon a town. i saw a sign for a church, and figured out what town i was in. then i saw a traffic light, and this is going to sound really strange, but then i knew exactly how to get home. since it was about 9:15 or 9:20pm at that point, i decided to stop off at the McDonald's parking lot to call my parents to let them know that i was on my way home and i just got lost a little. i told them i'd be home by 9.

yesterday we had another shopping adventure. and when i dropped her off at home this time, i decided to go that same way, just to see what it looked like during the day. it turns out that during that drive there's a steep down slope on the ride side of the road. and at the bottom is a stream. i'm kinda of glad i didn't know that while i was driving in the dark. but i'm also glad none of my right drifting tendancies came back to me either. also, the drive didn't seem as long. when i came to the town, i was sure i missed something. and i've realized that with other things too, how it seems longer in the dark.

when i was driving in the dark, it seemed to take longer because i didn't know where i was going, and i could only see 250ft in front of me(300ft when i had my high-beams on). but during the daytime, i was able to see a whole lot further than that. i was about to see as far as the next curve in the road. so i saw the town sooner, and the intersection sooner.

i'm wondering if the same could be said about life, and different situations of it. i'm having a hard time applying that analogy to my own life, but i have thought of how it could be applied. maybe someone went through a situation before they became a Christian, or during a time when they had fallen away from God. during that time it may seem long and never ending, and if they know that they're lost and not on the right road, they may even be a little panicky because they have no clue where they are. so that would be driving on the road in the dark. then, maybe when the person becomes a Christian, or has a closer walk with God, they can see the same thing a whole lot differently. maybe they can be in that same situation, yet it's not that bad. they can see what's a head, and they know what's coming. i knew that i would pass through the town eventually. and maybe they'd know which part of that situation was coming. anyways, i felt much better about driving on that road during the day. it wasn't quite as fun as i thought, but it made for a great story. i just need to stop getting lost so much.