An Untitled Mess

My friend Alex sent me a message today with some very sad news in it.  We went to college with a guy named Hunter Barnhill.  He was in AFROTC and was also a member of Arnold Air Society with us.  He was a year or two younger than Alex and I but he was a great guy who we were friends with.  Hunter posted on his Facebook page that he has been diagnosed with brain cancer.  He had a small seizure on Easter and after an MRI, they found he had a low grade glioma, which is a tumor.  He will be going in for surgery on Thursday so the doctors can find out exactly what it is and if it is benign or malignant.  He is taking this news with a grateful heart and a trust in Christ.  To quote his post, which was shared with me by Alex since I am not on Facebook: ...I assume this burden with joy.  There's a lot of reasons for this, but the main reason is this: Christ's strength, mercy and love is shown best through our pain and suffering.  For me, this cancer is an instrument of righteousness

That's the text I sent to my sister tonight...#Committed.  I made an investment today, which is something that I do not do just lightly.  I've been very torn with this decision but I think it will work out.  I don't have a lot of money, and I don't have a job that pays me a lot of money.  I barely break even every week after paying my bills.  I've been fortunate to have some savings set aside as sort of a cushion, so I was able to make this investment and not be totally hurt if it ends up being a bad move.  And it helps to know that I have a roof over my head and food in my stomach no matter what happens to me.  I thank God for all of that. So, I spent most of my day off today "not doing anything".  Well, that's what it felt like but I was doing something.  Research, I suppose you could call it.  Looking for ideas and inspiration.  I found both, which helped me a lot to make this decision today.  I'm very confident I can make this work and that g

Okay, so tonight is the night of nights.  It's THE night...the night where I catch you up.  Most of this will be new, some of it might be leftovers reheated for you to gag down once again.  But hey, this is what you signed up for. Ever see an alpaca in the nude? We have naked alpacas.  Those poor things.  There are these people who come to the states once a year to shear sheep, alpacas, and I'm sure various other woolly animals.  So, since we are proud owners of alpacas (Al Pocalypse and Al Paccino), my parents had these people over to the farm to give the good old buzz cut...the "zero against the grain", as it is called in some places.  A Navajo warrior couldn't have scalped these guys in any finer fashion.  I was actually at home when I got the call that they were about to start.  I had to wrap up some things I was involved in and grab my camera but by the time I made it out to the farm, they were already packing up to leave.  Sadly, I didn't get any v

Little Bee Much apologies for not posting.  I can run you through the usual excuses but you've heard them all: I've been busy I've been working I'm just lazy I'm uninspired There's nothing going on I was abducted by aliens I had to take my pet ostrich to get his nails trimmed I come in from work after 11 p.m. sometimes and it's all I can do to shower, eat a super late dinner and get to bed.  When I wake up, I have a lot on my plate.  The end of the month means running errands and paying the bills for me.  I help at the farm and around the house plus I'm starting a new side project.  I swear I will get you caught up...with photos, of course.

Siri Cookie Monster Commercial I was busy yesterday...sorry.  So today's post will be about yesterday...and then maybe, just maybe, I will post again later tonight.  That means this could be a Double Post Thursday (DPT).  Holy crap...was your mind just blown?  Because mine was...I was totally not ready for that. Had the early shift at work yesterday.  I was the only one doing prep work all morning, which was a mixture of extremely frustrating and extremely serene.  Frustrating because I had to do everything myself.  Serene because there was no one to bother me so my morning flew by.  It made for a long morning though.  Usually I have someone else there with me doing prep so I'm usually out of there by about noon.  Today I was there past three, which was good for my paycheck but threw the rest of my day off a little bit.  Here's the funniest thing that happened in the kitchen...someone forgot to set the timer for the rolls... Staying so late at work yesterday, I m

So my dad's parents have been in town since Friday.  I've been working pretty much non-stop since they got in and tonight I did not have to work.  So we went out for dinner together.  We went down to the waterfront to the place formerly known as Captain Bill's .  It's called Southern Salt now.  To be honest, the food was pretty good, the service not so much.  Maybe our waitress was new, or maybe it was a bad night in the kitchen, but our food took so long to get to us that the manager even asked us what was up.  When the order came, it was missing side items and was not very hot.  What was hot was the bar tender.  And she had on these jean shorts...oh my.  Anyways, got a few shots off the deck before the sun fully set.  I was disappointed that the sun actually set behind a bunch of buildings and not behind the island like I hoped it would. Besides the short comings of Southern Salt, we had a pretty good evening.  We laughed a lot, but that was a good thing.  We

Happy Easter!  I hope everyone was able to spend some good family time together today.  It's nice to have a break from school or work and enjoy the ones we love the most.  But lets not forget the meaning of Easter, that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, allowing us to be free and forgiven of the judgment that we have rightfully earned.  What a great gift, better than any peanut butter filled chocolate egg out there (and that's hard to beat because those things are the best). I was able to go to church this morning with the family but went straight from there to work until about 8:30 this evening.  I actually had a good time tonight and I'm thankful that I work with a good group of people with good attitudes.  They are a different kind of family, and though they are no substitute for the real deal, it was kind of nice being with them today.  The only down side was that I missed Cory's phone call twice.  I hope he realized that I was working and he calls back later tonig

The most exciting thing to happen today was that my eye is starting to feel better.  This morning the cyst on my eye lid burst, I suppose that's the right term for it, and started oozing gunk out.  It hurt like whoa but about ten minutes later it felt much better.  Work was a long day but at least it was payday. These came from my brother and sister.  Just gotta love the net: Later Days!

I spent nearly the entire afternoon at the doctor's office and the pharmacy.  Waking up this morning, my eye hurt and was burning and itching.  I wanted to rip it out of my eye and feed it to my pet raven.  Okay, I don't have a pet raven but that would be pretty bad ass.  I did the whole hot rag on the eye thing plus drowned it in Clear Eyes but by time lunch rolled around I was miserable and just went to the urgent care. Not pleased to waste my day here... The up side was that I was off work today anyways so I didn't technically lose any money in that way.  Beach Care in Morehead City was not busy.  What I mean by that is that I was one of two people sitting in the waiting area.  I saw the nurse rather quickly, which was a plus.  I did the whole eye chart thing.  Spoiler alert, the eye that I came in for them to look at had worse vision than the other.  Never would have guessed.  I got kind of worried when the nurse brought this tackle box into my room...not only wa

I had a rare Monday off today. Woke up this morning and my eye was swollen.  Not shut but it still looked like someone punched me. Not sure what it is but I think something is in there. I opted to buy some eye drops instead of going to the doctor. I will know in the morning if that was a good idea or not. Seems to be doing better. Went into town this morning to a meeting then came home and tooled around some. As nerdy as it sounds, I partitioned a hard drive. Yeah fun. The absolute highlight of my day was a phone call from Cory, one of my best friends. I almost did not answer because I didn't recognize the number. I'm so glad I answered though. I have not heard his voice in about eight years. We only got to talk for fifteen minutes but it was awesome to chat with him and hear that he is doing well. The baby chicks in the incubator are hatching. So far we have three. I met mom and dad at the new Zaxbys in Morehead City. I think it was opening day for them. It was my first time

So, Amazon shipped me an entire desk faster than they could ship me underwear.  I'm sure there is a good reason for this other than the fact that I didn't wan to pay extra for them to ship items as they become available.  Since Capital One was kind enough to pre-approve me for a credit card, I decided to get some shopping done over the weekend.  I purchased a new desk seeing as I completely demolished my old desk trying to move it from one bedroom to another.  Since I was already shopping on Amazon, and since I don't have enough underwear to theoretically last me an entire week, I bought me a packager of boxer briefs.  I also threw in a stylus for my tablet and a car mount for my cell phone.  I went a little wild, I know, but it's interest free until 2018 so it's hard to say no to that.  Well, the desk arrived today...everything else has yet to even ship. This is what I saw as I came home from work today. Thankfully they are already out to the farm but I have

I signed into Blogger to start typing this and notice that Google, the almighty and all knowing, had a notification waiting for me.  It read: Your new album is ready, Sunday Evening in Atlantic Beach."  We'll get there. Woke up sort of early this morning, around 8:00 a.m.  Well, that's early for me seeing as I mostly work nights and don't get to bed until around midnight or later.  So I get up, check my email and some news, start some music on Spotify.  Get the bug to do some push-ups so I do some.  I've been slacking in this area the last few months so I need to get back on track.  I need to find somewhere to do some pull-ups as well.  Anyways, as I'm getting my morning started, I do the dishes for mom and dad while they are at the farm and I realize that there is no milk.  Of course, being the amazing son that I am, I hop over to Food Lion to take care of that.  I grab a gallon of the freshest, fattiest, most full-flavored milk I can find then remember that

So, Wednesday night I woke up just hurting.  I didn't want to believe that it was anything more than something a few Tums could handle.  Typical guy thinking there.  Two hours after chewing on a few Tums, I wake up again, this time feeling way worse.  So I did what any sensible guy would do...I made myself throw up.  That's right, the 'ole finger down the throat trick.  Well, I wasn't ready for what happened next.  Everything from dinner starting coming back up.  Everything.  And not the easy way, oh no, it had to start coming out of my nose too.  I heaved for a good five minutes and for a second wondered if what I had just done was actually a good idea.  When it finally subsided, my stomach felt better but my body felt like crap.  Oh, and I had ran four miles right before dinner too so that didn't help matters.  When I thought I was in the clear, the unthinkable happened.  I pooped my pants.  That's right, I'm man enough to admit it.  Thankfully I was still