Halfway through December

A little update on my life the last few weeks:

Thursday, 1st:
Not too much going on today. I went to work and got a lot done, had a hard class, then worked some more until 5:15. After work, I came home, planned the evening and then went to Kroger real quick for some incredients and then started cooking dinner around 6. I made a great chicken recipe with rice and carrots. Liz and Laura came over right when it was ready at 8:00 and we three had a nice candlelight dinner together. It was a lot of fun to have both of them over. :) They stayed until around 9:30 and then I walked them out to the car in a raging snowstorm! It was crazy, but didn't last more than 15 more minutes. :( I went downstairs, lit the fireplace and played guitar for a little bit. Me and the guys did Oreo-time a little after 10. They pranked me and I ended up eating a giant chocolate ant! Ugh! It was very crunchy and tasted really weird. :-/ We all had some good laughs though. I went down and played guitar again for awhile until about 11:30 when I went to bed.

Friday, 2nd:
Today was fun. I went to work and had a good day finishing up the undo/redo stuff. From my overtime earlier I got off today at 12:30. I went and met Liz at Backstreet's for the pizza lunch buffet. I had a very nice time with her and the food was good. :) We chatted until 1:45, then went over to Kroger real quick and got some chocolate, then drove down to Christiansburg and surprised Liz's dad at Charlies restraunt where he was eating with her mom. It was his birthday, so we brought him the chocolate and spent a few minutes saying hi. :) Then, I took Liz back to her car so she could get back for her piano class in time. I ran bank/rent errands before heading back home. Then I just spent some time cleaning my room up, organzing some paperwork and then started budgeting my spring semester out. Not looking too good. :( Kristin called me up around 4 and wanted a ride out to Christiansburg, so that was kind of a surprise. I picked her up at 5 and we went out in search of lots of cardboard for an art project for her. We went to the Maytag place and sifted through their cardboard for awhile, measured and ripped down some pieces in the freezing parking lot, stuffed it in my car, then drove Kristin back and helped her carry it into her dorm room. A little bit of work, but I had fun helping her out with that. I got back around 6:30. Then grabbed some movies and went over to Liz's. Me, Doug and Liz watched the Negotiator starting a little after 7. I love that movie. We watched it until a little after 8, when Liz's parents got back and we had pizza dinner with them. :) Then around 10, we finished up with last hour of the movie. Had some dessert with her parents a little after 11 and some fun/interesting convos, especially with Mr. P. I headed home just after midnight, spent awhile talking with Big Steve and Shai which was fun and then got to bed around 1.

Saturday, 3rd:
Pretty lazy day today. I got up around 8:30 and mozied around for awhile. Surfed the web, got some things done, wasted a lot of time. The morning was gone and I made some lunch around noon. Started reading Acts for awhile which was cool. I talked to Liz on the phone for a bit and then spent some time downstairs praying and thinking. I let Shadow out in the backyard to play too and she had a good time. :) The next hour or so I spent finishing up my budget for the spring semester, which should give me some good guidance for spending my money wisely. Liz's dad called me around 3:30 and said he was ready for me to come over and help stain some cabinet doors. I went to leave and my car wouldn't start...I guess the gas was too low. So I walked up in the freezing sleet to the gas station, got thier gas can, filled it up and brought it back to my car. That got me going enought to drive up to the gas station the second time. I finally got the the shop around 4:30 and then me, Laura and Mr. P spent the next two hours staining and then edge banding some cabinets. It went well and I was happy to help out. :) Got back to my place around 7 and was greeted by news that the dryer had broken. So Chris and I spent the next 40 minutes taking the whole thing apart because we thought it was clogged with lint. That didn't fix it, so we left it for later. At 8, the Hokies game was starting and I was having a party. Paul, Will, Liz, Laura, Doug, Kristin, and her friend all came over to hang out. I made sausage cheese dip, Liz made brownies, Paul brought egg nog and I ordered some pizza and we had a nice time together. The game didn't go so hot- the Hokies got beat pretty bad, but oh well. Not a big deal to me. The game ended after midnight and everyone left by 12:30. I cleaned up some and then went down to talk to Chris and had a lightbulb moment. The dryer wasn't broken- it was just the exhuast hose on the back had cracked and couldn't connect anymore. So we played with trying to fix the hose, but I sliced my finger really badly. :( That sucked. I fixed it up and got to bed about 1:15.

Sunday, 4th:
Had a good day today. Got up kinda late at like 8:15, then wasted some time on my computer before realizing what time it was and panicing! I raced off to pick up Liz at 9:30, then Kristin on campus and we made it over to Sunday school just in time around 9:45. It went well and then service was pretty good too. Afterwards, we took Kristin back and then Liz and I had a quick lunch before driving off to Roanoke. We had a great talk on the way there and then we went to the Roanoke Opera house to watch a show called the Appalachian Christmas which was pretty cool. They had some artists do some local folks songs, singing and stuff. It was pretty neat. :) We got there a little after 2 and talked for a bit and the show ran from like 3 until a little after 5. Afterwards, we went out for dinner together. We walked around Roanoke a little, but nothing at all was open. So we drove over by the mall and ate at Logan's, which I love. :) We had some good food there and a nice talk. It was fun being on a date wtih her. :) So we were at Logan's for awhile and then hit the road on back for home. I think we got back to her house around 8:30 or something. Spent the rest of the evening studying and stuff and we talked for a little while. I left there a little after 11 and got to bed a little before midnight.

Monday, 5th:
Today was kinda hard, but I made it through. I was tired and dragged out of bed around 7. Went into work at 7:30 and then worked until 11:30. The big snow had come during the morning in big force and was starting to pile up, so I decided to go home and do the last four hours from my room. So, I went back and worked from noon until 4 on my laptop. After that, I spent some time cleaning up my room. Liz came over just after 5 and did some homework with me. Around 6:30, I made us some pancakes and eggs for dinner. Then we got back to doing homework. She had a lot to do for a paper she was writing and I was starting to study for my final coming up. It went okay; not too exciting. We breaked for a little dessert around 10:15 and chatted and then did a little more work after that. I think Liz left around 11:15 or so. I got to bed after that, a bit before midnight.

Tuesday, 6th:
Today was okay. I got up at 6 and had a decent quiet time for the first time in awhile. Then went into work, had my last day of class (weee!!!), got out early and then worked until about 4:45. Work went pretty well. Then I went home and the sunset was incredible over the snow, so I grabbed my camera and ran out to the farm across 460 and snapped a few shots during its last 5 mintues. Then, got back and spent the next two hours trying to salvage my harddrive which Partition Magic screwed up last night. :-/ I tried all sorts of things, but I still can't get it to boot. All of my info is still there, but it refuses to boot for some reason. :-( I finally gave up at 7:30 and drove over to Liz's house for dinner and stuff. I chilled for about an hour with her and then we had a nice dinner with her family. Afterwards, I worked on studying for my final a little until like 10:30. Then Liz and I read our booklet for a bit and talked about some stuff and ate pecan pie. :) I left just before 11:30, got home and tried to get to bed around 11:45.

Wednesday, 7th:
I had a real nice day today. I got up at 6:30 and decided to change up my schedule a little. So, I hurried up my morning get-ready phase and then ate breakfast and had a nice quiet time from 7-7:30 and then went into work at 7:45. It worked out really well. I studied Acts and really enjoyed it and was awake enough to think. :) Work went pretty well today and I got some stuff fixed up nicely. Got off at 3:45 then came home and spent some time searching for a letter from Eastman that Steve claims he saw. I went through about 4 bags of trash in the backyard too and nothing. :( Then I spent another hour trying to get my computer to boot up, but no luck again. :( Oh well. At 5:30, I started making dinner for Liz and I before Awana. She came over a little late, like 6:15 and we scarfed down our dinner in less than 10 minutes and then raced over to Awana at 6:30. Got there just in time for her to do piano and then the rest of it went real well. I really enjoyed working with the kids tonight, leading a team in the games, being silly with them during the Awana Christmas gift thing, and then wrestling with the younger boys afterwards. Good times. :) Liz and I came back to my place to chill for a little. We were briefly caroled to by Joey and Curt's Bible study group, which was funny. :) Then Liz and I spent some time talking on the couch about some stuff. Liz had a hard day today, so I was trying to encourage her. We had some ice cream too and a good prayer time. :) She left about 10:45, then I went up and messed with my computer some more. Still no luck. I finally gave up and went to bed around 11:45.

Thursday, 8th:
Today was fairly boring really. Went into work for my eight hours and got stuff done, then came home and worked on my computer trying to save the harddrive. I finally gave up and decided to start clean, but wanted to pull the music off my harddrive before reformatting. That proved to be another adventure, but Linux saved my butt and I was able to do it. Liz and I didn't do anything tonight because there was an ice storm that started and it was just nasty outside. So I ate pizza by myself and just spent the evening doing this computer stuff. I saved my music off, reformatted everything, reinstalled Windows and started to reinstall a few programs. It went really well for the most part and felt great to start clean on that computer. Me and the roomies had a short Oreo-time at 10, but other than that, I just did computer stuff until like 12:30 when I went to bed.

Friday, 9th:
There was an ice storm last night and this morning and it was just nasty, so I didn't go into work today. I worked from home, but that proved to be a pain. My laptop LAN connection went wacky and I couldn't get on the VPN, so I tried doing it on my tower machine and it was all screwed up. All in all, I spent like 2 1/2 hours trying to get on the VPN and 40 minutes on the phone with Chad. :-( It was nuts. Then spent a lot of time re-installing the software and source code. I finally got to accomplishing things for the last three hours or so. I took off work around 4:45. Then spent some more time installing software and tweaking my fresh machine to my specs. Around 7 I went over to Liz's house for dinner. I spent some time studying with her while she worked on projects. We had a nice dinner with her family. Also, we had some really good talk time later on to work through some stuff about how we had been communicating. It was good to work that out. I stayed with her pretty late, left around like 12:30 and got to bed around 1.

Saturday, 10th:
Today I got up around 8 or so and then spent the morning working on my computer. I got a bunch of software installed, preferences set, etc, etc. It went really well and I'm just about back to where I left off. :) At 1:45 I went out to a late lunch at China Inn with Steve Cosky, Steve Winning and Dustin. We had a fun time there talking and great food as always. That lasted until like 3:15. I went back with Steve, dropped him off and then headed over to Liz's house. The rest of the afternoon and evening was pretty much just spent studying for my final exam. Liz had a ton of work to do so she did that. We stopped for some dinner and stopped a couple of times to chat, but for the most part it was just a lot of studying. It was good to get that done though. I didn't stay too late because I was really tired. I think I left around 11:30 and then was to bed around midnight.

Sunday, 11th:
Had a good day. I got up around 7, read the news for awhile and then had a good quiet time in Acts. Then I spent the rest of the morning cleaning up my room/the house, doing miscellaneous chores, going to Kroger, etc. I got a lot of good stuff done. :) Picked up Liz for church at 10:45 and the service went pretty well. We had a pastoral candidate today speaking. He was pretty good theologically, but not excatly my style of preaching. I suppose everybody has their own tastes, though. After church I had fun talking with people for quite awhile. We left around 12:45 and then went to Liz's for her to change and then waited for my parents to be ready for lunch. We finally all went to El Rodeo at 2 for lunch and had a real fun time there. Then came back to my townhouse and threw a little graduation party for Liz. We had good cake (party piece!) and ice cream for her with a present. It was fun and really nice of my parents to do that for her. :) They left and took Kristin on back home around 4:45. Liz and I stayed at my house for another hour and worked on studying and stuff before leaving for evening church at 6. They had the Christmas play tonight which was pretty cool. :) Then a short service and afterwards a little going-away party for the Billingsly's and Denton's. That went really well and I really enjoyed talking with a poorer family who came to church for the first time today. My heart really went out to them and I tried hard to talk to them and make them feel wanted here. So that was cool. Also had a good time talking with Jeff tonight about church stuff. Liz and I left and got back to her house around 9. Then just spent the evening studying while she worked on her paper. It went pretty well and we had a short dinner with her family too which was fun. I left there around 11:45, got home and to bed just after midnight.

Monday, 12th:
Not very much today. I got up at 6:30, got ready, had a good quiet time and then into work at 7:45. Work went pretty well today; I kept busy with some CenterLink stuff. Got off at 3:45, then went over to Wal-Mart to pick up some stuff. Then went over to Liz's around 4:45 and spent the evening with her just studying while she worked on her piano composition. We had an excellent meatloaf dinner with her family and some dessert and then studied more after that. I got some good studying in and feel a lot better about my final. :) I left Liz's around 11:45, got home, played with Shadow a little and was to bed just after midnight.

Tuesday, 13th:
Today was basically a repeat of yesterday. Got up at 6:30, nice quiet time, work from 7:45-3:45 and then went on over to Liz's. It was reasonable outside, like just under 50 degrees, so we took a little walk around which was nice. Then spent the rest of the evening studying and her working on her piano composition. We stopped a couple of times to chat briefly which was nice and fun. :) Had some spicy stew for dinner also and then cake with her family. All told, it was a good night; I got some good studying in and Liz was encouraged with her piano work. I left just after 11, got home and was to bed by 11:30.

Wednesday, 14th:
Pretty crazy day today. I was up at 6:30, had a good morning and quiet time and then into work at 7:45. I worked until 1:45 and then went over to campus for my final exam. The exam went from 2-4 and it was pretty hard. I think I did well enough on it to pass the class, but I don't think I did extremely well. :-( It was quite a challenge and my head really hurt afterwards. I came on home, grabbed a glass of wine and sat around for an hour to mellow out. I went out around 5:15 to pick up Liz and we went over to Beamer's for the Phoenix Christmas party. That was a real nice time. At first it was a little awkward, but by the end we had a lot of fun talking with people. We sat at a table with Chad and his wife and Howard and his wife and that was a lot of fun. :P They had good appetizers there and then a big dinner. I got some great grouper fish and Liz got some really good jambolia pasta. Then we had an incredible dessert called Boston creme cake. mmm! Beamer's food proved to be pretty incredible. It was a long night there. We got there around 5:40 and left just before 9:00. Then we drove over to Mill Mountain to meet some Harvest peeps who had come from Awana and hung out with them there for awhile. I had a nice time for the most part. I was supposed to go out with Curt at 10, but he didn't call. :( So, Liz and I stayed at the Mountain until 10:30 and then I took her home. I came back to my house and then had a fun time with my roomates. I talked to Chris for a long time and the Steves for a while too. It was a lot of fun and I was glad to catch up with all of them a little bit. :) I finally made it to bed around 12:45.