In sight and mind, in time and memory

Motivated yet?

2011-11-16T20:17:00.001-06:00

Nay, surely not! I refuse to continue this whilst the world carries on! Yet do they need me? Need I say a word and benefit a person other than myself, reserving these monologues for some long sleepless night?
Are these monologues even meaningful? Perhaps thought only occurs to me when I wish to speak out, and the rest of the time my mind is content to lie as fallow ground. But then surely I shall speak out more often, lest that mind remain fallow ground until it can no longer bring forth any value, much less that of its own former self-imagined glory!
Background for this thought: didn't I last month say something to the effect of I'm done not writing? Well golly, every time I say this sort of thing, the length of time only extends itself. Plus its extremely redundant. I'm tired of saying such things, as you surely are tired of reading it, because you and I both know how long it has been but are both rather glad to be hearing from this keyboard again. (Oh yeah, and I might be typing on it...)

Perfection is a hard thing to strive for, and takes up way too much time. I sometimes wonder, how can somebody be back from an event for a mere 15 minutes and already have their entire collection of photos easily accessible to the public? Did they skip the important editing process? Was the editing process merely deemed valueless, to be relegated to those pictures that might have some slight chance of being printed?
Background for this thought (though it hardly seems important enough to italicize): I've got about 140 pictures from the past few months chilling on my hard drive, waiting for me to sort through them and find something to do with them. Yet a lot of the time, it seems I'm the only who will get value of them at any later time. When was the last time you said to somebody, "Can I see the massive collection of pictures on your hard drive? I'm sure there's something there that will mean something to me."
How that one does go on and on. It takes a special kind of person to handle these sorts of thoughts -- specifically one with time to go and do what I have committed to and still deal with their normal life! (Engineering, how thy pursuits do test the limits of a wakening day! What shall be done with thee?)

Knowing that all this can only defer to a higher power, I must protest! Why are you still reading, anyway? Anna has written a wonderful piece reflecting on Psalm 23 -- go read both of them! (the poem and the psalm)
John Bunyan, I have recently found, is well known for his well known book, The Pilgrims Progress, and not without reason. I realize I just stated the obvious; Yet is it not the place of such as I to state the obvious, knowing that somebody may not have realized or heard the obvious!
If you desire recent news -- well, for goodness sakes, are you not reading this on your browser? Get thee hence, remove thy eyes from my page and catch up with the rest of the world out there. I can hardly claim to be up to date, this place keeps me about a week behind everything except for big news, and I am content to dwell in peace for now.

But, say you, I wanted to hear how your life is going! Mine? You desire news of my poor existence? It's definitely not an entirely unique fact that I live where I live, nor that I carry out normal operations of a day such as many others, but the way I respond to those normal operations and anything that falls outside these norms may be classified as relevant to my appearance as an individual.
Remember, individuality is sourced in the fact that one is made as in the image of his one and only Creator. Ehwhat, what ho?

There are many countless little changes that seem to have little effect on the long term, on the outcome of the "eventual", though those countless little things add up. I had not previous to this moment realized how radically different the room I currently sit in is from what I had imagined or seen previously of my life. I have been blessed with a guitar to play should I so desire and it currently resides a mere 3 feet from my seat, while a wonderful keyboard that my roommate purchased (James! Oh how I could go on about him, and perhaps I should...) resides another 2 feet in the same direction. Man how I do love that particular combination.
Being the first thing that came into my mind as I was writing this, the significance of my access to musical instruments and the ability to practice regularly (or lack thereof because of engineering again) can't hold much to the significance of other things. But I digress.

Perhaps I should mention my "Air Force motivated" tendencies? Due to some circumstances this semester that I had not foreseen, it has become more possible that I'll be able to fly in said AF with some of the most incredible pilots and aircraft in the world! How great would that be??

Composure regained

This brings me to the end of a previously allotted time for me to sit down and write. I must leave you now, perhaps to focus strongly on another predetermined goal such as homework.

God bless!
-Petr

Of Yore

2011-10-08T23:08:00.000-05:00

In days of old, one named Petr did write upon these pages.

Then came the days. Yes, you know them well, the days that touch lightly upon one's soul, doing their very best to become mere memories in as short a time as possible. Soon these days were overrunning Petr's life, and the empty pages remained empty, unexplored opportunities, while 'real life' was to be valued.

But perhaps those days are themselves only passing.

Even so, this person has always had an obsession with updates, the lack thereof, or the continuity of time between said updates. Curious.

_________________________________________________________________________________

THE ARCHIVE HIGHLIGHTS:

"This is going to be a week with more sleep than normal. I'm out in the middle of nowhere (a small place called Douglass :)"

"Where to begin? How about with the carpet killing."

"Infinity over infinity is equal to Hillary Clinton."

"But then, why not just "leave that question to the philosophers"?"

"What is this thing we call trust? Can it be defined by what we know? Google won't help here. Nor wikipedia. Believe me, I've tried."

"Wisdom from the rabbit: "If you don't know what it is, it will probably kill you.""

"One of them introduced himself as Philos, inviting Petros to come and play a game of cards."(Coincidentally, Annie, I have since discovered that my cousins really were right. Petra is the proper usage. I apologize for the misleading.)

"Now if anybody understood all of the above, please mention it and I will gladly buy you ice cream"

"Individuals -- what a concept!"

"Well hey, I guess I'll have to learn to be perfect huh?"(As a point of interest, we are now in the midst of a drought that may take until 2020 to recover from)

_________________________________________________________________________________

And so we find ourselves on the evening of October 8, 2011. My past is full of references as to how time desires to speed along hastily. I need not refer to them anymore, perhaps?
But maybe my approach these days is different. I can remember writing some of that stuff, and others now that I'm looking at them wonder where in the world did that come from? I'm not sure it came from the world. And the world isn't where I'm going.

So here's what I'm saying -- why lament the speed with which time passes? Does it not bring us closer to God, be it death or judgement day? I'm ready for that day. How many will not?

Sobering or uplifting? A bit of perspective is extremely helpful, and perhaps that little bit of perspective is so often lacking, even in my own life. Writing things down has apparently helped clear my mind.

Then again -- perhaps "things" are such as the best way to implement (xy' + yz + x'z)z' in which case it'll only leave me befuddled (not this particular problem mind you, I'm pretty sure that simplifies down to x' + y + z').

Any stories you wish to hear about? Perhaps one you have that must be shared?

God bless!
-Petr

2011-05-26T22:28:00.001-05:00

"109 Posts, last published on Dec 18, 2010"

______________________________________________________________________

Well now folks... here I am.

Howdy and a very good day to ye :)

For those amongst you who happen to have RSS feeds -- thank you for subscribing, I would imagine this sort of long silence followed by a solitary (or maybe not) post is just what it was designed for. Long is, of course, completely relative, and solitary isn't very well defined, so it might be possible to leave this behind!

______________________________________________________________________

One of the easiest things to do at this point would be of course to post pictures and leave it there. That would be something, wouldn't it? All this leadup, just to leave it hanging again...

Come to think of it, there's an awful lot to look through if you haven't seen them. A&M is a good place for taking random pictures:

2011 Spring College Station

And of course there was the skiing trip over the Christmas break! It's hard to beat an annual ski trip with family. (it's rather difficult to remember the camera on the mountain...)

Vail11

If you're the type to keep up with all the speech/debate escapades from what is now my past, there was a rather enjoyable New Year's party with ICOM...

ICOM New Year 2011

And of course more recent than all that, Reformed University Fellowship Summer Conference in Panama City, Florida.
From Monday 'til Saturday, we did naught more than go to conferences (i.e. prolonged studies on God's word and the application thereof in our tiny often misguided lives) in the morning and chill on the beach in the afternoon. Evenings were a mix of large group and hanging out with friends from Texas A&M RUF and other places around the nation, with the exception of Wednesday evening when we all took the evening and went for dinner as a campus group. (it's difficult getting a place for 60 people to eat! We probably severely strained the supplies of the ice cream/gelato place next door as well)

It's hard to beat living yards from the beach! I don't normally take more than about 150 pictures when I go somewhere unless I'm really trying; this time around, there were nearly 130 -- and I wasn't even trying.
Of course in the interest of upload space I'm sticking with a good deal less than that.

RUF Sumer Conference 2011

Wonderful times, y'all, I'll have to go back there -- physically and mentally, of course.

______________________________________________________________________
Texas A&M does put one in a state of mind that reflects "howdy". Or is that just me?

God bless!
-Petr

Adventures of a tool

2010-12-18T18:27:00.001-06:00

Day one:
#1 I subconsciously reach up and touch my hair, then think (2 weeks after the last haircut) "Wow, my hair is really long!!"
freshmen have to have "white walls", basically shave our heads, to be qualified as good looking in uniform.

#2 (to be repeated, no doubt) Talk about my roommate, only to receive blank stares. Oh yes, I must have said "Old Lady."
It's not a blackbelt (freshmen/sophomore) privilege to have rooms, so we don't have roommates either. We have an old lady, that we have to take care of very carefully.

#3 Free time! What do I do? Sleep? Well, polishing shoes may be more important this time.... Oh yeah, I don't have to have them two-barred tomorrow.
Our black shoes need to be so reflective that under fluorescent lighting you can see the individual bars. Basically mirror-finished polish. It looks good, but it takes a lot of work.

This in the space of about 3 hours. We'll see how things continue in the near future.

Day two:
#4 Realize that I haven't explained yet what a 'tool' is.
Tools are those people that just can't give up the Corps games, even when they're not really in the Corps at the moment. These games are often excessive and seem completely out of the normal for any normal person. We're not exactly normal people, you know. Not even after just a semester. It gets worse if the sophomores, juniors, or seniors are tools.

#5 Realize that for some odd reason, I'm not using many abbreviations, or those I do use I want to know exactly what they mean.
Corps games you know. Freshmen aren't allowed to use acronyms, so we get along just fine either knowing and saying exactly what they mean, or else just not using them.

Day three:
#6 At the tournament, find out that somebody knows what the haircut (long as it is) implies, and unfortunately tell them some of the silly things we tools do, not knowing that they would be treating it like an inside joke from then on.
The game in question -- if somebody whacks me with a garrison cap, I have to thank them and ask for another. These things are far less common as an upperclassmen, so I'm looking forward to that.

Lost track of time:
#7 Show off how much I can... or rather, want to physically train myself. It may be excessive.
We're supposed to stay in shape over the break. I'm mentally preparing myself for said staying in shape. It's high time I actually started to do so.

Note that there's probably a dozen examples of each, along with many unmentioned. You know, when they said we would get tool training, I think they meant training on how not to be one. It didn't work very well. O_o

______________________________________________________________________

This tournament I mentioned -- I'm a judge this time. First time ever. Alumni get food paid for and provided, as long as they judge some. I rather think judges get the sweet end of this deal this time :)

Pictures so far, if you look again later on I'll have more up. (as of 6:30 12/18/2010)

Brenham Meltdown 12/10

More to come later? Who knows. I got one post in last month, maybe it'll be one more this month.

Thoughtfulness... well, I'm afraid I haven't any for the moment. You see, it's so hard to find thinking time sometimes, when all is on the go. But I suppose this is worth thinking about -- how much time does it take? Just because you spend a long time thinking about something doesn't mean you were thorough, and just because you were done thinking fairly quickly doesn't mean you were not!

God bless!
-Petr

Through the months

2010-11-25T22:40:00.000-06:00

September -- 1 post
October -- 1 post
November -- well, let's see :)

'Time flies when you're having fun, and fun flies when you're waiting for time'
paraphrased, from Mom

In case anybody was wondering, I have been thoroughly enjoying life in A&M, in the Corps -- every once in a while, that is. Sure, fish (freshmen) sort of get the bad end of the deal. But that's the best way to learn and become part of the traditions at A&M. Bonfire is personal for all the men of Falcon 16. The twelfth man is the most important player. Buddies are made for life, and never let down. Respect is given until it is lost. Privileges and responsibilities are earned.

This is the life of a Corpsmen, at least summed up in ideals.

For something more 'realistic', take a look at these :) (yes that's right, I do like to take pictures)

2010 Fall College Station

Here concludes this short update. My laptop battery is dying and I'm getting ready to crash.
Farewell, dear readers, and God bless.
-Petr

A new day dawns

2010-10-07T20:35:00.000-05:00

That is, tomorrow morning. I'm kinda guessing it's a little late to dawn at the moment.

For those who like pictures, look here!
(Pictures on the other side of this link, fyi)

Corps trip #1 tomorrow, we're heading out to Arlington. Yippee! (kind of)

Can't wait to see what happens.

God bless! Even my short life is enough to demonstrate that He can and does.
-Petr

Take shelter

2010-09-07T11:40:00.000-05:00

Or so says the Maroon code warning. Tornado headed your way, ACK!

______________________________________________________________________

Okay y'all, I'm sitting in the Evan's library at TAMU, somewhat wet, and probably late for a class or something. Bummer.

But hey, I'm surviving :)

For y'all on facebook, look up my mother's pictures. For those who aren't:

That was last weekend, first real Corps stuff for me. FOW is over, the buffer week for getting used to classes is over, now the real work begins, and the upperclassmen have decided to crack down on fish that aren't perfect. Well hey, I guess I'll have to learn to be perfect huh?

Not here I won't. Only by God's grace can I see any improvement -- and there's been a lot of grace around here. Never far from sight, anywhere and everywhere. Amazing to see.
__________________________________________________________
Why did nobody say it would take half an hour just to get to classes? :P

-Petr

For real

2010-08-21T22:52:00.000-05:00

First, an update.

June 28 through July 10: Stillwater, Oklahoma. Ooooklahoma how the... (it's a song, it keeps going, and that one particular phrase gets very old pretty quickly)

OK&VBS2010

The original plan, and the one that was carried out, was to visit family for as long as a week, and then head home. This in and of itself creates such an occasion for joy and mirthful days that it's worth mention by itself! Hey N's, y'all sure know how to have a good time and make family feel at home :)

That encompasses about the first 6 pictures in the previous album, the first week spent in Oklahoma -- one of family going on small adventures hither and thither, staying cool inside, long hours of dialogues on world peace and small furry creatures. (the board's official report has yet to be filed, much less published)

That week went by fairly rapidly... as has much of this summer. My immediate family left that Saturday, and that's where the first plan and the second plan diverge.

See, a week later, the Stillwater VBS was going to start. I like to go out of my way to be at this particular VBS (my past records should show this). So I stayed at the N's for another two weeks! Take the first week of incredibleness and extend it into two weeks, only plus a few more people... but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Saturday Aunt Liz took Stephen and I out to the Alabaster Caverns for most of the day. It turned out to be more of a long drive with good music, a history lesson or two, followed by a lot of hiking and gaping at scenery, followed by the drive back home that had the same as the first. Field trip officially, unofficially a really good reason to go hiking and wandering through a cave.

Monday and Tuesday were quiet, cleaning up days. And also a bit of Calculus review.
Wednesday was to be another quiet day, except that one of the VBS official team members arrived early. The house wasn't very quiet until after the sun went down! Thursday the rest of the team arrived, and all tallied up accounted for one from Ohio, one from Kansas, two from California, one from Scotland, and one from Northern Ireland. Add my person and two of my cousins to that lot, and then extend it to the rest of the Stillwater crowd, and VBS had a lot of workers.

I have to add in a spot of something here. Stephen and Megan, a Northern Irelander and a Scot respectively, certainly added a lot of flavor to this particular week. And they sang Oklahoma some. You can never tell!
A shout out to those who came across the pond to help out! :)

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday went by smoothly, Friday being the day that the entire VBS team went on the OSU ropes course, both high and low (things such as the human knot). Fun fun. (feel free to gape at the pictures again)

Monday the 5th of July was the first real day of VBS work -- and it wasn't properly working really hard. We set up the field that was intended to be used for VBS, ran through our rough plan, all without the kids. July 4th was the day before and the rest of Stillwater was still taking a break.
Okay, make that Tuesday as the first real day of work, but even then we got rained out and only about a third of the total people who would have shown up could actually stay out with us in the rain.
Evenings were either really tough or really fun, depending on how you look at it -- basically the VBS team went to some populated area of town and started knocking on doors talking to people. Some confrontations on spiritual matters ensued.

Wednesday and following VBS was held at the YMCA, just in case the rain came again. I could (and would) go on about the details... but how time flies by! (or something)

July 10: Departure. Aunt Liz drove to Dallas, while Mrs. S. and I came along for the ride (Mrs. S. was visiting with Rachel, who is in fact staying there with my grandparents. Funny how things work out like that!)
For the sake of not rehashing too much of my melancholy, I'll avoid the part where I say it was sad to leave -- ask my cousins and family, they will most likely clue you in.

July 12: Enid VBS begins, only without me. I was in Nacogdoches, getting ready for Calculus 2! That's the reason for random review during this long trip. Summer II semester dual credit at SFA -- a packed month. However I'm very happy to report a final GPA at SFA (this is merely coincidental information, it doesn't transfer) of 4.0! That gives me hope yet for this coming semester.

Skip forward to August 14, when I had my official graduation and Eagle Court of Honor. Yep, big ceremony, lots of hullabaloo. I honestly didn't hope to make it a big deal -- it just makes things official. And is a good source of barbecue (thanks Mom!)

Grad/CoH (mine)

The major upside being that I get to see all sorts of people from all over that I hadn't seen in forever :)

On a completely unrelated note, I am now in possession of copies of:
Newsboys In the Hands Of God
Tenth Avenue North The Light Meets the Dark, Over And Underneath
Fireflight Unbreakable
Coldplay X&Y, Viva la Vida
Jars of Clay Long Fall Back to Earth

All of which I would offhandedly recommend. Again, I think the advocation is best left to somebody else, mostly because I won't be here, or have the privileges to listen to these in public...

This semester has become the future that I both looked forward to and dreaded. Now it's here! All packed up, moving out tomorrow, how odd.
My life is about to become very inaccessible in all sorts of ways, one of those being that I am now cutting contact in many fashions, save only gmail and this blog (if I'm doing well). For those who are yet unaware, I'm going to Texas A&M and be in the Corps of Cadets (I hope you have heard of the latter if you have heard of the former). Fish Orientation Week starts tomorrow, and if you are currently reading this, I am most likely unreachable until... ?
I don't know much of the matter, except that it's going to be a major trial.

That in mind, this is Petr, Amigo de la Sombra, your friendly neighbourhood... (okay I'm not digging that deep) signing off until further notice. You'll know when I'm reaching through insurmountable odds to get here. Your prayers are much appreciated.
Until we meet again, take care and God bless!
-Petr

Out to lunch?

2010-06-19T10:32:00.000-05:00

Double post! These titles went together too well to be one :)
And there's so many pictures to look at I figured I'd better post them separately. It helps to have an appreciation for one's camera!

Regionals 2010

ICOM Graduates/Galveston

Nationals 2010

Enjoy

AWOL or --

2010-06-19T10:31:00.000-05:00

Howdy!

Yep, that's me folks. I shan't comment on the time since last time was now... except for what I just said, and that may remain a mystery for a while.

What follows is both a couple excerpts from life and a somewhat reasonable stream of consciousness. If it was on my mind, there's a chance you'll be seeing it on your screen.
("These are the tales of a wanderer looking for adventure, and what an adventure he finds! Coming to computers near you!")
________________________________________________________________________________________________

Geekiness from last month aside... not many complaints about the new computer. It's very nice actually. Fairly fast processor (2.4GHZ), 1GB video card, 4GB RAM, 9 cell battery, runs both Kubuntu and Windows 7 reasonable, though I'm still working on that hardware acceleration issue...
Ross managed to rip Dr. Who dvds to his hard drive, so I moved those over to mine and will be taking it with me :)

Oh wait, did I just go geeky again?

________________________________________________________________________________________________

:A rant about the ideology of ages follows.:

There's clearly some value that our society places on the idea of age, beyond the basic idea of young, middle aged, and elder, beyond generational distinctions, beyond even what the government or insurance companies require to make "important" decisions (never question the bureaucracy!). Ask a young child their age and they may respond "six going on seven!!" For those in their teenage years, 15 and 16 may be different worlds, much less times. Beyond 40 some will tell you very emphatically that they're not a day older than 42 or some such age. Those older than 70, while they have much less of the tendency, may in fact be going for a family record (okay I was stretching with that one).

I was going to go into detail on this, but a little bit of research later, and it turns out there's not a whole lot that I can tell -- 48 hours and a lot of reading, maybe I could tell you something you don't already know.

Something you probably do already know -- a quick glance through the Old Testament sure says a lot about elders. They are the ... well... elders. They sit at the gates and talk, they carry out the letter of the law from the prophets to the people, they give counsel to those who need it.
The wisdom of the elders is something that should not be underestimated, especially by those who most need wisdom. For some reason, living longer gives one a lot of experience, can you imagine that!

As for the young, what most easily comes to mind is the idea of innocence, faith like a child, being awe-struck by what seems to be everything. These are not hard to find if you really look. We are told that faith like a mustard seed, child-like undoubting faith, is what moves mountains. And can't a child move a mountain if they're determined enough?
Not in the literal sense no. But I'm sure the parents in the crowd can attest to the sometimes incredible tenacity of those younger than 10?

Well here's the point I was going to make, but I'm not sure it can be made anymore: For those of us who fall into general categories, what difference does a year here or a year there make? When you first meet somebody do you ask them how old they are or do you ask about what interests them? Or if you've known somebody five years and can't remember their age, does it matter? Sure there is a level of maturity that a 20 year old has over an 18 year old, but does that apply to separate individuals? Again you can look at individuals and say "that person is mature beyond their age" or of another "they are very immature" (referring to people as long as 20 years apart) -- what relativity gives us these ideas? When you come to expect something of somebody because of their age, you're not looking at them anymore, just a (dare I say it) stereotype.

Human beings, man, we are given the responsibility of taking care of creation. We are created, and God's most loved creations. Surely that says something about each man, woman, or child? They're made with a purpose, with a plan, as somebody separate from the rest of the world. Individuals -- what a concept!

:End rather unorganized monologue:

________________________________________________________________________________________________

For those who might wonder, I've done a lot of traveling lately. Yes but Peter, don't you always do a lot of traveling you say? Certainly. I love traveling :)

A brief glance at a calendar recalls to mind these occasions: NCFCA Region IV Regionals, in Austin at Concordia University, a visit to Houston for a graduation and beach party (yes it was the first time in 15 years I'd been to a beach), New Student Conference at Texas A&M (with all that information overload), NCFCA Nationals in Virginia Beach (Somebody offered me a ride), another trip to Houston today for the ICOM end of year party (I love my club!!), and tomorrow departure for Stillwater Oklahoma. I've certainly got my fill of traveling this year.

I know how much you like pictures. They're forthcoming, and some of you may have already seen them...
The rest of the pictures will have to wait until I've actually taken them :)

So this is it, farewell for now! If you're reading this, there's a good chance that I'll be around there sometime soon... then again, there's a good chance that I won't. We'll see.

God bless!
-Petr

NOT a typical day

2010-04-30T19:54:00.000-05:00

So. Last night I installed Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx. This morning, I got up and said "hey wouldn't it be cool if Windows could access the files on Lucid!" I went and got some nice software that was supposed to help it work. It turned out the software only worked with ext2, ext3 with inode size 128, or ext4 with some similar option (I have ext4 Linux file system, so it didn't work). So I uninstalled the software and decided to live with it. The software demanded that I restart the computer, so I did. Here comes the BIOS display-- and then a blinking line and a blank screen. No keyboard input or anything. GRUB died! The only thing that worked was the live cd!
Here I am, about six reinstallations of Ubuntu (Lucid) later, and I think I might have both working. Here's hoping.
*Assuming* it does work, the next challenge is transferring files from another computer to my new hard drive. I'm trying to use a direct network connection between them and since one has auto-negotiation (or duplex, or whatever you want to call it), I don't need a crossover cable. In theory.
This was my entire day, interspersed with lunch, park day (with a few homeschoolers), and dinner (at a homeschool business meeting). Oh yeah and I was so distracted that put a notice up at the wrong place! The original plan was to have the meeting at Maroney park (5 minutes from here), but we got rained out. I was tasked with putting the notice of location change up at Maroney -- but I was so distracted that I went all the way to Pecan park (15 minutes from here).

And then God said "Do not be afraid, only believe."
"Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have." ~1 Peter 3:15
"For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died and then rose again."~2 Corinthians 5:14,15

This has been your compulsory rant of the month from Petr, followed by a wake up call in no uncertain terms.

The region IV invitational speech and debate tournament is next week, starting Wednesday morning, and I am... not likely to do a whole lot better now than ever before. But that's okay. See above -- it's not so much that whole thing about winning that counts anymore.

Now if anybody understood all of the above, please mention it and I will gladly buy you ice cream :)

God bless!
-Petr

Repeat of a past non-intrigue

2010-03-28T22:22:00.002-05:00

Hi there!

Yeah, it's me again, back at "ye ol' drawin' board". Somebody pointed out to me that this poor ol' blog is rather neglected, and I agreed. Maybe it's time to get back to the mindset of "I wonder if I could blog about that..."

So, as a fulfilled promise, I give you these further sources of funny looking html code. To the average eye it may appear like a simple picture with a link, but don't be fooled!

Ski trip 2010

Texas National Open 10

Farmington 10

The last is the one freshest in my memory, though I suppose a brief recall of events may help those not previously involved.

So -- Ski trip 2010: see previous post :)

TX National Open: The NCFCA tournament held in Texas open to debaters all debaters, not just those from region 4 (TX, OK, NM, AK). Worth mentioning is the fact that Joshua Jones got first place speaker!! (not place, mind you. There is a difference)
Furthermore, I competed in extemporaneous starting this tournament and will continue to do so through at least one more. Basically, they give the competitor (assume the name "you" until further notice) 3 topics to choose from, all based on current events: "Will the A350 be a viable competitor to the Boeing 787?" and the like. "You" has (have?) thirty minutes to prepare a seven minute speech on one of the three topics. Further, You has been doing research on hopefully any and every current event for the past 3 months and will print off any and all articles from any and every source. You then can quote anything s/he likes from these articles, provided they can fit it and their entire speech outline on a 3x5 index card. At the end of the thirty minutes, You must go give the speech in a separate room, taking only the index card.
Sound fun yet? :)

Also worth note is the fact that I finally got my Humorous Interp (basically a ten minute, one person comedy) memorized and almost reasonable. Alas, it was still several minutes long. So I used a different script altogether for the...

Farmington, New Mexico (CHILE Qualifier) tournament: Held in Farmington, NM, open to those from region 4.
Worth note -- my new script is based on a folklore tale. Thanks to Mom for finding it!
Further, I (finally) broke to outrounds in debate. Strangely enough I beat the first person in octafinals, but then lost in quarterfinals, winding up with 8th place in the tournament. I'm quite happy with that :)
Even more information -- the reason for so few as 17 pictures from this tournament and so many in/from a car is that during the tournament and before I could really get the pictures I was looking for, the camera was used as a video camera and all memory card used up. No, taking pictures is not my passion, but I still lament not having more space or another card.

Feel free to ask questions. Those who know me are familiar with the fact that I answer questions more easily than volunteering information... (though that statement came rather easily. I wonder why)

Have I missed anything yet? My my, it appears to be near the end of March! If I'm to keep up once-a-month postings, I might as well start very soon this week.

I rather wish Annie would return, it's beginning to look rather lonely around here without her claws...

God bless!
-Petr

In celebration - of?

2010-02-14T00:24:00.003-06:00

The question of the day...

Or is it?
_________________________________________________________

Good evening, my dear friends! It may even be morning for some of you. But that makes no difference to the likes of myself -- we have things that need to be done at such late hours!

Ok, so there's another reason. Has anybody heard of Terminal Man?
http://www.wired.com/autopia/tag/terminal-man/

No, that's not what's going on here. Just similar. I wonder if he ever stayed the night in Denver...

Long story short, if you desire. Debate tournaments, much traveling, ski trip, stuck in airport overnight. Short enough? :)

This latest adventure started last week. Roughly. Almost a week and a day ago, in fact. 12 AM Saturday night -- we got up and drive 3 hours to Dallas, got on a plane at 6, watched the sun come up somewhere outside from between complete strangers. And that was just the first flight. From Denver we took a mid-morning flight to Aspen (and slept the whole way). A lot of hurry-up-and-wait-ing going on, or certainly after we arrived in Aspen. The ski place (oh yes, did I mention it's a ski trip?) had weird management policies, the condominium wouldn't let us in until 4ish, and lunch wasn't exactly easy to come by.

How about I sum up again? This entire past week consisted of a whole lot of skiing, some eating, some sleeping (you think!), and of course just enough debate/speech prep to realize that I'm not doing nearly enough.

The snow conditions in Snowmass were almost ideal: powder the day we arrived, snow for most of the week to keep that layer of powder there, and a whole lot of back country (extreme terrain, YEAH!) deep powder. Yes I did "drag" several people down the tough ones quite a bit :)

I might well have some pictures up from said trip soon. However, realize that I didn't take a whole lot of pics, and they're not all much to look at.
But I've got some from the last tournament!

DFW Feb 10

(That's a whole mess of html, by the way. Not that I would know what all of it means)

_________________________________________________________
I have the great privilege of achieving 100 posts. YAAAAY

So is it competition or cooperation that got me here? :)

God bless!
-Petr

Eh what?

2010-01-01T10:39:00.000-06:00

Lets see now, how did I do this last year?

goes sifting through archives

I take it back, I didn't. That would be... 2007? Man it's been a while. Anywho. (ready for this yet?)

WHITE CHAMPAGNE!!!

With some rabbits thrown in there for the purists

Have you a good Christmas/Incarnation and New Year? I know I did! Blizzards and such... that's another story for another day :)

God bless!
-Petr

My shoulder is looked over

2009-12-23T22:05:00.000-06:00

I can only stay away for so long... and my attention span may be lacking something. Eh. (Let the philosophers among us consider that one)

Pictures! (and there was rejoicing -- no? maybe it's over-hyped a bit)

Ryan's 14th party/PB

That was... November. 'Twas fun, thanks Ryan :)

ICOM Christmas 09

December 17 and 18th, in Houston, with the large speech/debate crowd. Lotsa fun. :)

Homeschool Harvest Party 09

This would be the Homeschool Harvest Party, in case you prefer to read my own writing instead of the actual labeling of said album. Let you consider this the official labeling then!

Biking 09

This set of pictures is from the second most recent camping trip that yours truly has gone upon, also back in November. Again, if you can't read the label, this would be the biking trip!

In case you wanted to know, the most recent trip was the "cooking" campout. We had one actual cooking competition while out there, and the... Rangers? won it. But the big deal would of course be the fact that most of the time we were out there (Swift & Silent Paintball) we were playing paintball! That was an unofficial activity, since BSA is unlikely to allow such an act. But we had fun with it anyhow, even my own father! :)

Ok, well I don't have a lot to add to that at this point, I'm afraid. Must be off soon.

And just in case you were wondering, yes, I think somebody really is looking over my shoulder as I type. Don't mind any stray typos...

Cheerio! God bless!
-Petr

Edit: Allow me to rescind yet another statement of "I'm done". As the editor I feel it is my obligation to inform you that the previous post was typed up by a guest writer. While I haven't gone over every single potential grammatical or spelling error, let it be known that I am at this point willing to back up her statements. That is all.

Of Christmas in Greece and General Awesomeness (Mine)

2009-12-23T19:53:00.001-06:00

This is the story of a young writer. His name was Petros. He was spending Christmas in the sunny land of Greece. Each day he took his laptop outside and sat in the sunny, Greek sun and worked on his stunning Greek tan as he wrote his blog. Writing for his personal blog didn't make much in terms of money, but it was an enjoyable read - Petros thought, anyway - and his tan was coming along nicely...

But then, one day, as Petros was sitting and typing away on one of life's many indescribable profundities, a group of people came along. One of them introduced himself as Philos, inviting Petros to come and play a game of cards. And Petros, eager to take a break from writing on his personal and very profound blog, and somewhat afraid that his skin was beginning to burn a bit, readily agreed.

In a moment of carelessness, he left his laptop lying on the whitewashed stone wall. This was very sad, for a laptop could not write a blogpost on its own, and it was not much at acquiring a tan either. But fortunately there happened along another writer, who was not much at writing blog posts or getting a tan either, and she was able to sympathise with the poor laptop's plight so well that Petros, observing the two of them exchanging sob stories so agreeably, suggested that this writer take a turn at writing his blog.

And so, while Petros gambled his livelihood away in a desperate game of Slap Jack, the writer tickety-tapped out a tragic story which, although undoubtedly containing more than the usual amount of pathos, is word-for-word true. No exaggeration. Whatsoever.

That writer... is me.

No, I am not Petros, nor am I Philos. My name doesn't even end in -os. It must remain hidden, for it is not mine to tell my own tale, but another's to blow it hideously out of proportion--I mean, recreate it with poetic exacticity.

(Here it must be known that the reader is not allowed to question whether there is any difference between out-of-proportionness and poetic exacticity, nor whether proportionness and exacticity are actually words. These things are a given.)

But Petros is unaware - oh, so unaware - about the nature of my true identity. He thought by giving me the computer to write a blogpost that he was doing nothing more than providing his gambling-crazy friends with a laugh. He never thought he was giving his laptop to ME, providing ME with internet access and the ability to communicate with my superiors and thus fulfill my super-secret-agent tasks.

Yes, I said super-secret-agent. For that is what I am, and (what's more) one of the feline variety. Silly humans think we're cute and whatnot. But while I bat 'harmlessly' at his keyboard and he and his friends cackle at me with glee, what I write could very well bring down the whole gambling industry. Slap Jack just became a boxing match - and the card-players ain't gonna win.

I've always been opposed to gambling, ever since I watched the nextdoor kitty squander his livelihood in betting matches with the neighborhood raccoons. Of course, everyone said the cat had been killed by the coons, and they weren't far off the mark - but what they didn't know (and what I had seen) was that the poor beast had to flee for his life because he owned the Masked Mob (terrors of the alleyway behind Mr. Jenkins' Meat Mart) billions in Kitty Chow currency, and he couldn't manage to procure the necessary compensation. I believe when last seen he was trying to placate them with dry food. They demanded fresh meat. It got ugly. I didn't stay to watch. But I saw enough to know that the whole industry had to be brought down.

Next step in my career to actually stopping gambling took place when I met a fella named ... actually, I don't know his name. His Family called him Tiger, although I got the notion that it was something more degrading than that. He was unwilling to give details. Pretty ginger beast, but a bit of an ego. Probably fancied me. Who wouldn't?

Anyway, I met him and he gave me all the right names and put in a good yowl for me. In a matter of days I was sent to this family, where I was promptly shown the expectations I would face. The summary of expectations came in the form of the current house cat, who was everything fluffy and fat and pampered. I objected, naturally. My feral roots would not bear such horrendous treatment. I must admit that on occasion, when I am scratched behind the ears or provided with an extra succulent meal, that I have been known to purr... but never on command, and never as a general rule. I knew young Petros would be in trouble, so I followed him to Greece, though he didn't recognize me. Everyone sees cats everywhere, and nobody bothers if one looks similar to another. Anyway, I got a haircut first; threw him off properly.

So, here I am, waiting for the right moment when I can run in and create enough havoc so Petros and I can grab the money on the table - they claimed it's a tip for the waiter, but I know better - and make a run for it. I began this story by saying it was the story of a writer. Then I deviated so that it would seem to be the story of a cat. But neither of those is true. This is the story of the demise of the underground Greek Slap Jack gambling industry. And you are all going down. Yes, Philos and cronies, that means you. It starts.... now.

One... two... crouch... and... spring!

-Annie the Feral Feline of Fleet Ferocity

Things from hither

2009-12-09T09:57:00.001-06:00

HI!

What's up y'all?

A friend hinted that I should put something here. Fear not my friends, I shall return!

... in time. Man, how the time does fly when you're not posting on the ol' blog.

Current projects, distractions and obsessions (beware, this may turn into a ridiculous list of random words jumbled together attempting to describe my life):

#1 School! All of it. Dual-credit classes at SFA, just like my two older bro's did, only I'm only taking this one semester. 10 hours of course, and what with 3 finals and a paper coming up waaay too fast -- it's taking a little bit of my time. (wait a second, did I mention this way back in September?)
Also, I've been accepted to Texas A&M. Now just to schedule that NSC to make it official.
Whoop! Only, I won't be allowed to even know about that. Corps of cadets and whatnot.

#2 ... Let me think about this.
Ah yes, that elusive Boy Scout Eagle rank. Difficult, yet very worthwhile. I'm at the point of getting authorization for a project, and aside from that I have very little to do.

There is no #3. The rest just go in that jumbled list.

Allow me to rescind that statement. It came to me. Speech/Debate in the NCFCA. Yes, I know, I said I wasn't coming back this year. Well, good news (or bad news, depending on your perspective): I'm coming back. So, plenty of research on the new resolution (competition is superior to cooperation as a means of achieving excellence), plenty of research and card outlines for apologetics (all 100 questions, randomly drawn, 4 minutes pre-speech prep), and finalizing/refining my humorous interp (calvin and hobbes, 10 minutes).

Jumbled list!
ICOM business, emails (seriously, I mean it), piano, a small homeschool group band, various camping trips, an old RC plane model found in the closet, planning stuff for this spring and summer

In the sake of following the complete train of thought, #0 is glorify God. That's 0 because it's not just a priority, it's a current event, and will (Lord willing) remain so.

________________________________________________________________________________________________
Some pictures coming up, to be sure. From where, and of what, I don't know. But they're coming :)

God bless, haffagudday!
-Petr

One from hither

2009-09-17T20:47:00.000-05:00

The silence is overwhelming. Enough to prompt something from... somebody asking for a blog post from me. Well, I can't very well pretend that I've got a ton to say, but I'll dredge up something reasonable. Maybe just rewrite and come back tomorrow :)

Here's some pictures from recent trips, as well as a few (a lot) from Lillian's trek at Philmont.

Venturing crew 342 @ Philmont, NM

ICOM Camp 2009

AquaticsCampout 09

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Well, I've been awfully busy recently. Terribly awfully dreadfully busy

Classes started at SFA three weeks ago (ONLY?!), and I'm taking dual credit - English, Calculus, and Political Science. It's enough to drive me quite crazy trying to keep up with all that homework alone, and then adding on top of it apologetics and debate... I'll never have a boring day for the next 4 months! :)
________________________________________________________________________________________________

Ok, a couple theories about that strange combination of waves in the air that form something reasonable to our ears and brains, especially those that come in the form that we know as music :)

* Music has a profound effect (and I do believe effect is the appropriate word) upon its listeners. This comes in many different forms, sometimes merely a subtle change in attitude, sometimes prompting a particularly long musing, quite often even changing a persons view of the world in 5 minutes. That being said, be careful what you're listening to :)

* It's a proven fact -- people who listen to or play a lot of music will start to 'hear' mentally music that isn't being played and sometimes can't even willfully stop doing so. Sure, some of us get a particularly annoying song get stuck in our heads, but it just might become incessant.... (or how about waking up thinking of some song? Not just thinking *about* it, but hearing it... is that normal, or do I fall under that classification? :D )

* Tastes are mostly acquired through long periods of hearing some one particular style. I mean, how many clerks at walmart, kroger, hobby lobby, and so on can not get used to Christmas music playing *over and over and over again* all season long??! (Pet peeve of mine)
I can name probably a few people who at one point couldn't handle some type/style of music, but through hearing it over and over again against their will, decided either to ignore or come to like it. Yes, I'm referring to country music, those who know me that well. I couldn't stand country music probably 5 years ago. Now, it's not quite so bad... I could even like some, depending on who is doing the singing!

Anything I forgot?

* DON'T try to foist your own opinions about any particular song/album/group on somebody else. They'll come around eventually if you make a reasonable case :)
________________________________________________________________________________________________

I know, I'm probably on one side of a fence here. Or sitting on it? Man, I just can't get away from life sometimes...

Anywho, here tis the conclusion of one more night's typing away at a keyboard. If you absolutely must hear something from me, send an email, send a comment, or just look around in the archive, I did write things in the past :)

So, folks, I'm off. Goodnight, God bless!
-Petr

Living up to a past potential

2009-08-15T20:15:00.000-05:00

Wisdom from the rabbit: "If you don't know what it is, it will probably kill you."

Wisdom from the dog: "If you don't know what it is, it's either dinner or it's invading your territory."

Courtesy of the Hippo's mouth, somewhat indirect. Ironically, the Hippo is about as far from a hippo as is humanly possible.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

A bit o' music. Newsboys, riel kewl stuf (IMHO). You know it's the 40th anniversary of Woodstock? No, I don't intend to link to something from that :)

Wherever we go

________________________________________________________________________________________________

You just might be working hard if the heat from the day is having little effect compared to your own body heat. And the sweat dripping from your forehead? It can hardly distract from the imperatives of getting the job done. And even that poorly hidden desire to have had more to drink and eat that morning can do little to change the way you work.

You might have your second wind if the throbbing headache or the pains of an empty stomach die down and turn into roars of "BRING IT ON!!". Then again, that might be the barbecue that you know tasted much better going down, and would be poorly advised to come back up on your hard work. Not that it happens, of course, because you really have a second wind, and the most lethargic that you can possibly be is as much as walking around in circles for no particular reason.

Then you might be tired... if that throbbing headache returns, if you are both light headed and heavy handed at the same time, if you start having thoughts of when the day will be over, and most importantly, if you start trying to define 'tired' and come up with potential posts on a blog.

I had a long, but good day :)
________________________________________________________________________________________________

What is it with sunsets? Especially in strange places, where the novelty is striking. The sun setting behind a mountain range, shadows being cast over the strangest of objects, darkness where there won't be any for another 12 hours. That last one is quite possibly a motivator for interest. There's a sense of finality in shadows extending to places, in lack of direct sunlight for the end of a day. And then it starts all over again the next day! How's that for regularity?

________________________________________________________________________________________________

I would write some sort of update upon current situations, but time draws short. I may be back later. Until then, stay tuned...

God bless!
-Petr

(What, you mean this is going on the internet? Where people will read it??)

oh, and White Rabbit

2009-07-31T22:21:00.003-05:00

Greetings, friends. Here I am, in the middle of a short quiet. Perhaps in the eye of the storm known as life...

In other words, I've not gone on any grand adventures recently that you do not already know about. 'Tis true, I did go on a short trip to Dallas with MizJ and Joshua for a debate camp, and did learn significant things about debating this year's resolution (resolved:that competition is superior to cooperation as a means to achieving excellence). I even took pictures! *GASP*

So to add on top of all of this, I have a few things to note. Firstly, the pictures from not only debate camp #1 but also pictures from El Rancho Cima.

DFW Debate Camp 09

El Rancho Cima 09

Also, I have a couple notes upon the look of this blog. I changed the name, made some changes to the colors, moved some links, and was startled when I returned. "What, it's changed?? Oh yeah, I remember doing that."

The most significant, and unfortunately saddest, change, is the moving of several blogs from "Them in Texas" to "The Ancient Archives of Blogs Gone By". The result of this is that I no longer have a link section entitled "Them in Texas." A moment of silence for those closed blogs, and my hope for you writers -- carry on with what you did, as good as it all was.

If you are reading this, you are perhaps one of the few who still post in the world of bloggers. Do not let it die! (This has been a public service announcement funded by nobody in particular because it did not need funding)

I would sing the praises of a blog above and beyond the time-consuming facebook... but I can't very well be objective, firstly because Blogs were around before facebook, I've had this particular blog for a significant period of time, and I've not actually experienced the great and terrible power of what is called facebook. My-Face, Space-Book, whatever the name :)

Well then, I've not much more to say. I thank you for continuing to read these sometimes misguided musings. Stay tuned.

God bless!
-Petr

P.S. Wow, looking back through the archives... there were some very interesting strings of comments. You guys always know how to make things exciting :)

92

2009-07-07T14:52:00.002-05:00

92 posts. And many faithful readers. Thanks :)

So, where did I leave off? Pardon the break in the logical flow while I go fish up the last post, so I don't tell you what you already know...

Ok. I believe I left off before Scout camp. Man that was a long time ago. Just in case anybody's keeping track, White Rabbit :)

I shall begin with a status report. It's only been two weeks since I got back from Summer camp. 9 days, if you want to be technical. It was so long ago though!

So summer camp was quite an interesting place to be at. El Rancho Cima is out in the middle of nowhere (practically, though the immediate vicinity is well populated), in the desert land North of San Antonio. They're currently in a drought, so everything is either white from the dust or brown and dry. The only exception is the Blanco riverbed, where we were actually camping.
Google Maps

Our typical day was started off with food provided by the commissary. Not the best meal of the day, but filling. Everybody headed off to their respective merit badge classes (where they -- what do you know -- earned merit badges :). Come lunch time we would receive yet another meal from the Commissary. I don't know how that was, I was gone most of the day.... More MB classes in the afternoon, some free time, some scheduled camp wide activity, and then dinner at the dining hall. Real meals! (some may argue that the rest were also real meals, but if so, these significantly dwarfed the others in quantity and quality) The whole process of getting to eat was rather slow and painful. Each troop would line up (sit down) on the rock wall outside the dining hall and wait for the cooks to be ready. Since it was a first-come-first-served basis for the troops, there would be people as early as 45 minutes before dinner actually started, sitting in the heat saving a spot for their troops to show up and... sit in the sun waiting. Sort of the "hurry up and wait" mentality for the masses.

After dinner was the best time (in my humble opinion). There was sure to be something going on that we'd be interested in, troop swim (in the river, much fewer people), death march, or if all else failed, dominoes and card games at camp.

My story is a little different. Every day was something of a struggle, getting out just after breakfast to the *other* camp (Horseshoe Bend, as opposed to Cockrell River Camp) for ARC lifeguard training. Lunch was out there, and I wouldn't be back at CRC until shortly before dinner. The class was the weirdest ever... no explanation desired. I was glad to be through with it at the end of the week! Thank you for your prayers!

Joshua, Cody (an Eagle scout, now 26? Came back as an adult) and I went with a random contingent of scouts on the longest hike possible -- Death March 3. 13 miles of up and down, starting early evening. By the end of it, we were all quite tired and out of water. But just to emphasize that we could keep going, Joshua and I did pushups while our fearless leader told the rest of the camp how hard it was. :)

Pictures may/should be forthcoming, if my camera worked. The batteries were running down, and I may have used a roll of film so old that it already had something on it... but I can hope.

___________________________________________________________________________________
And here is the prerequisite musing for the day. Week. However long you like. Or however long it takes until I next post!

Relient K - Maintain Consciousness

Ok, you know I like music. I may have mentioned it before. Once or twice. You see, so often you get something meaningful with a reasonable tune to it! Perhaps this will show you what I mean.

"...and that one thing of the moment
that we all happen to like will
only very temporarily
kinda break the cycle
of the double edged sword
of being lazy and being bored
we just want more and more and more
till it's all we can afford

to keep our eyes open for just one more day
to keep on hoping that we'll stumble on our way
to keep our minds open for just one more day
cause its completely up to us
to maintain consciousness"

There are several things that are so true in today's world.

"The Double Edged Sword"
Being lazy and being bored. Two things that should never be an issue by themselves, much less together. However, the society of "more now" has brought the idea that 1) I need to be entertained (boredom) and 2) I shouldn't have to work very hard to get it (laziness). Now what is immediately apparent in that? (the obvious questions are often the most enlightening)

Consider for a moment man's purpose. The Westminster confession/catechism says "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever". Now tell me, what part of that says anything about enjoying myself? At what point in life am I supposed to glorify God by, say, attempting to get the most out of my satellite tv subscription? Boredom is not to be taken lightly, by anybody involved. Chances are whoever it is needs to be doing something, and is merely avoiding it.

God said there would be toil. From the day that Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, from the day that the ground was accursed because of our fallen nature, man has had to work to bring forth food from the ground (and by implication, any source of nourishment). Sorry guys, no free lunch.
Proverbs 10:4 "He becomes poor who works with a lazy hand, but the hand of the diligent brings wealth."

Ok, you knew that already, didn't you. And if you didn't, read it again. It'll be important someday.

But what is more imminent for the believer is the trap of apathy. When a man simply doesn't care enough to carry out God's will on earth, he's already sunk deep in. The intermediate temptations are rather obscure, making them easier to fall into than ever before.

So often there comes a time when our time becomes a daily drag -- get through the day, make it to the next. One day down, another to come. While many of us (this I freely admit) are quite willing and able to carry out God's will in some big adventure, in traveling to Mexico to minister, even just getting on the road again, it's the typical, the ordinary, routine, that our adversary can use against us -- unless we guard against him. (Be sober and self-controlled. Be watchful. Your adversary the devil, walks around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. -1Peter5:8)

What has become of us if we are no longer passionate for the gospel? People, pay attention.
"Do I have any pleasure in the death of the wicked," declares the Lord GOD, "rather than that he should turn from his ways and live? ~Ezekiel 18:23
The wicked are many in number, and it brings glory to the Lord that they "turn from their ways and live"!

________________________________________________________________________________________________

An addendum to the last post -- Friday, June 12th. For a post-VBS night, we went to Cici's pizza for dinner. It was very well attended, by a large group of people that were totally unrelated to anybody we brought :) (It turned out to be the OSU golf camp)

Afterwards was in my opinion one of the better parts of the two weeks (though there were an awful lot of better parts). We went straight from Cici's to the White Barn estates (or something like that) to play minigolf. They have a very fancy minigolf course -- water hazards, scaled buildings, and what appeared to be high quality turf ;)

I would love to show you a picture or two of the windmill/watermill right in the middle, but I didn't bring my camera (sadness). If anybody has pictures of said location, for the benefit of all involved, please bring them forth!

All else is dealt with, I believe. That's all folks! God bless.
-Petr

The end of a chapter

2009-06-19T22:41:00.001-05:00

Before I go any further, I must dispel any wild rumors (that may have been created by a. the title and b. this comment) that this blog is going to disappear. Rest assured, dear reader, that I intend to remain 'on the web' with a periodic text and/or image post about my life and imponderables that require deep thought. I'm going nowhere, don't you go and disappear either, thankyouverymuch!!

But of course an explanation is due. I request only that you have the patience to read through a flow of consciousness about recent events... of the kind you may not hear about in the daily paper or the drudge report.

Oklahoma VBS 09

Of late I have been away from home. 'Of late' being nearly 3 weeks. Yes, yes, to predict your questions, I had fun. That wasn't the only purpose of being away though. I believe I've given a rather short preview, and a review may be in order.

Pine Cove -- Physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually challenging. Not so much as I would like on the second and last matters, but to my satisfaction. There were some interesting topics brought up, I may just referance them in the future sometime. Interesting to find studies of Zephaniah in a non-denominational type camp. Gained a few friends among the campers and staff (funny how that happens)

Oklahoma -- two weeks! From Monday evening to Friday afternoon most of the days were spent assisting in VBS (basketball camp!) and going door to door in Stillwater. No pictures of that, I'm afraid. We had a lovely hail storm Friday morning, it made the entire sky (did you know there's more sky when there's fewer trees around? :) dark as early night. I'm talking major storm, and then cleared up for a hot day in a matter of hours. It left baseball sized hailstones all over town, with miraculously few damage reports.

Anywho, Saturday we goofed off until 3ish (watched a Doctor Who movie), at which point we received two invitations -- frisbee golf or airsoft out in the middle of nowhere. Airsoft won the popular vote, but the ticks afterward became unpleasantly common.

Sunday (after church in Stillwater) was rather slow paced compared to the rest of the week, only one major trip to Enid for an evening bible study and preview of the week at the Wagners.

That Monday through the Wednesday became a week similar to the previous, except with an entirely new setting and new schedule... so not really anything like the previous week. Stayed at the Wagners' home (THANKS!!), went door to door in the morning (when the temperatures were only in the low 100s -- drink more water if you have a headache, please!) and had VBS in the afternoon. I really can't say what it all was... "a thousand words cannot say..."

Training in the much needed witnessing. That's what it was. The Christian atmosphere, very delightful fellowship -- though I loathe to reduce them to side points, that's really what became of these past three weeks! And now I get to go into a non-Christian environment (Boy Scout camp) and continue this witness. Your prayers are appreciated.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Shifting gears -- your patience has paid off. I hope. Ok, so recently I gained a new perspective on life -- life after the current situation, that is. Questions crop up such as, what after this high school period? What after college? Where and When? Such questions that make me close this chapter of life, resist the temptation to hold on to what I have now, and push onward, upward. Now I don't intend to get all philosophical on you, but here is the ending of all those hopes for my high school years, the closing of remaining open doors, finishing of projects... Fill in the blank. I wonder how many others have done this before me. (rhetorical question)

___________________________________________________________________________________

I had an idea to continue on to something long right about here, in this space beneath the line. Such ideas have slowly evaporated in front of my eyes, as the clocks ticks time away. As life goes by. Anybody ever think about time? I have. It's truly amazing.
http://ardic-is-cool.blogspot.com/2009/03/surreality.html

And thus ends another night at the keyboard. I shall remember you, friends.
God bless, keep up the good work.

-Petr

smallish post?

2009-05-30T20:46:00.000-05:00

Greetings and salutation once again, friends, family, passers-by, unkowns, anonymous fellows, and anybody that I could refer to as "dear reader". Yes, that would indeed be you =D

Before I get into anything serious (maybe coming up in a future blog post), some sort of prediction of the future is necessary.

I fully intend to be gone for the next few weeks, with the exception of June 6th, 7th, 21st, 22nd, and the 27th ends the extended leave. What could possibly take so long, you ask? Well I'm so glad you asked =D

Pine Cove this first week... Christian summer camp in Tyler, and I spend the entire week there. Isolated from the outside world. No news updates, no following people's blogs or anything of the sort. The next week I'm off to Oklahoma to visit my cousins and help out with their VBS -- did I mention they were here from Monday to Thursday morning. We had a lot of fun with them. I'm afraid I didn't get any pictures (I fully intend to haul a camera around for the next few weeks just to show you what happened and who was involved).... SO as I was saying, the next week after that (21st - 27th) I'll be out in central Texas at El Rancho Cima boy scout camp. That of course will be the icing on top of the cake, just one more wonderful trip to add to it all. And I'll be sure to sleep about 48 hours straight when I get back, just to make sure I'm ready for whatever next comes up.

So while I'd love to stick around and type until I can type no longer... I just can't do so for much longer. Perhaps I have already done so. I shall return

-Petr

Trust?

2009-05-05T10:47:00.000-05:00

What is this thing we call trust? Can it be defined by what we know? Google won't help here. Nor wikipedia. Believe me, I've tried.

The first time you meet somebody, perhaps see them in passing, little is known of them. They're merely one more person in a whole world of people, sometimes of little consequence to you merely because you don't know them. Possible exclusions include authority figures, ranging from your congressman to the queen to the chief of staff at the CIA. This person that you know little of may or may not know as much about you as you know about them. At some point, some force brings the two people into contact, making them communicate in some form. Perhaps a common interest bringing physical range down to a matter of feet. Perhaps a personal drive to meet and greet by one of the two parties involved. At what point does acquaintance become trust, and trust become friendship, if they can be considered consecutive? Perhaps, yet again, an outside force, force you into close proximity for extended periods of time. Maybe something drives a need for the ability to work together.

Again, at what point are you willing to trust the other person, even to a slight degree? IMHO, trust can be considered as on a scale. First impressions may have positive or negative effects on your trust of them, and second impressions can change everything you ever knew about them. Following contact provides a general experience of the other person, wide or narrow. By the time you really know them, they most likely know you quite well, you've seen them in action and in crisis, and you could blackmail them with their past. Do you trust them, and do they trust you? Is it possible to really trust them? My own experience tells me that time after time, it is only possible to trust one person after either you having trusted them with yourself, or the other way around.

Here comes a fact of life. It is impossible to get the full context of any human being, including yourself. Sure, you are the only human allowed in your own mind and the only to see your deepest thoughts (save God Himself), but even then, nobody is willing nor able to sound the depths of their own soul! So from this fact of life, it can be drawn that you will never fully know, nor even fully trust any human being, as both you and them are fallen, imperfect, sinful. Hold that thought.

So then take a person that you know well and trust, and now depart from them for a period of months, even years. As time prolongs the separation, it becomes easier to tolerate... and drives alienation. Both people change, and when you meet again, you know not who exactly this person is, what happened to that person you knew way back when, and they are having the same thoughts. It takes, yet again, one person actively trusting the other before the trust is mutual.

More can be derived from this thought of trust, that is, love (don't shimmy away, it's not that kind of "Love"). Behind this concept is much more than trust, both having their foundations in the time before the fall, even before creation in the Trinity. So then, how much love and trust can a fallen man truly have? The answer is that he will never have more than a fake, a shadow at the best. In a world of the fallen, only the man of God can truly have love as it is, can truly trust and be trusted, albeit imperfectly.

Coming back to the previous -- "... are fallen, imperfect, sinful". So then, what of the trust we are to have for God, in His Trinity, and so infinite? Enter His revelation, the Word of God, that book we know as the Bible. Every word written there (ok, maybe every phrase) is a revelation of who He is! Trust is based in knowledge, perhaps? We have the revelation of who God is, in all of what can be comprehended by a human mind.

Better yet, is not trust mutual? Know that the infinite, unchanging, everlasting God alone can truly know us as we are. And He alone had the greatest love to have Jesus (I don't know if 'send' is theologically correct, being Trinity, 'send' implying that the Son is separate... take it with a grain of salt) die an infinite death, taking the punishment of His church throughout the ages. (John 15:13 "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.")
And now, even as we betray his love daily, He trusts us, fallen, sinful, imperfect man to do his will on the earth! How amazing must this love be, how thorough this knowledge, how great this trust!

And for some anticlimax, I think of the people I consider at the moment to be like brothers and sisters, much like extended family (at least those who aren't actually extended family -- I'm thinking of my extended family as well as those others!), those who I would trust my life with. What happens as I don't see them, don't talk to them, know nothing of what God has done in their lives... is truly disheartening. Should I happen to meet them for a day, we will both find ourselves much different from when last we met, and trust must be built -- again. Sure, many happy greetings may happen, but if it really has been long enough to change them or I, I may find a different person in front of me.

Not to say that you shouldn't trust those people you know, or knew. In light of what has been said, and what God has done, we should be all the more willing to love people for who they are, not who they were, or who we think they are!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I dunno. People tend to think that I get philosophical late at night. I blame it on debate -- makes me question/examine the basic assumptions that life is founded upon, including but not limited to sociology. Humanity is so strangely unlike the rest of creation...

-Petr

Rarity

2009-04-01T22:23:00.000-05:00

Just in case anybody should feel that this should have more posts on it, here is one. I am still alive... no worries there, for the time being :)

For this post to have any substance to it, here's a link to pictures. They're from the most recent debate trips. Enough said, I think.

San Antonio_Alabama debat09

ALTHOUGH it is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Is that true, and if so, what is the relative worth of my massive collection of pictures? Is a picture truly worth a thousand words, when fewr than those thousand words can tell more of a story than the picture can? Hence I am of the position that a ratio of roughly... 100 words to 1 picture is appropriate. At least for my purposes. You may find that people who are more efficient in their storytelling (fewer words), or just plain better at it (many more, and probably more eloquent) have a different ratio, but that's up to them.

So although I cannot provide a full 100 words for my many pictures (when in fact it is closer to a [...] to 1 ratio), I shall provide something else for your minds.

Random trivia: "Something for your mind" is the title of a techno song

To sum these past two weeks up in a couple sentences...

First, I went on a trip that turned into two separate trips, one to San Antonio, one to Trussville Alabama, both for the purpose of speech/debate in the NCFCA.

Second, both tournaments were rather a disappointment for me on the ballots. Many rounds were too far south

Third, the last tournament was really a breath of fresh air. I have met (and I don't mean just met, I mean gotten to know) several people, all of whom put my whole speech and debate career in a different light, inspiring me to view my life in a different life... summary of the summary, see the page title. Quotes are so nice :)

Fourth, see if you can identify some of the people in the pictures. If you can't, I'm sure the person in question may come along and post a comment on their own picture, at which point you may be one step closer to understanding just who these strange people are that I *must* (HAVE THE PRIVILEGE OF) working with on debate.

Fifth, I believe my audience is fluctuating, both up and down in numbers, as one comes and another leaves. Farewell, may you travel in peace, those who depart, and greetings to those newcomers, though you be close friends or distant acquaintances -- you are welcome here!

"That's all folks!"

-Petr

Surreality

2009-03-19T16:31:00.002-05:00

Surreal (adj): Marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream

It all adds up. Sitting here in the hotel office listening to my friends down below enjoying their own company, receiving emails this morning about next year's debate camps, knowing that soon I will have to leave this and them, and those wonderful places I was this year. Such wonderful people, and yet after regionals I may never see any of them all together again! Even seeing Andrew's description of life in the Corps -- is this what I want to do, and what will happen to these people should I do the same?

Even the description my cousin gave, of going through her parents' old stuff, and seeing how this communication and others slowly die away (I shall send you an email, F.B.!)....

What of the reality of space and time? Imagine, one moment, frozen in time, and all that is there. Each air current in each room such as this, affecting molecules in the piece of paper lying there, and the same for every other in every room of the building, and in each building of the city, and each city of the nation, and each nation of the world, and each planet in this system, then each vast empty space, and each star -- all dictated down to the tiniest detail, the quarks, or if there is anything smaller, down to each of those.

Now take this one moment of time and stretch it to each second... of each minute of each hour of each day of each year of each millenia... How great is our Lord!!!

-Petr

New month

2009-03-02T12:32:00.000-06:00

And everybody knows that along with the new month come white rabbits...

But I'll leave off that subject, since I'm sure you're already tired of it! Here are pictures from the recent trip to NM. I may eventually have some pictures from this most recent National Open in Houston, but I didn't take many so don't count on it.

NM tournament and trip

I am off to do important things. Toodles

-Petr

Notifications

2009-02-21T23:06:00.000-06:00

Consider this, fair friends, your notifications have been noted. And filed for use in the future, should I need to bring up your exact quote :)

I shall briefly describe to you my past couple weeks. Beyond that... even I hardly know.

We went skiing recently. Recently being... end of January, beginning of February, just after a debate tournament (as in the day after). Oh did I mention the debate tourney? Pictures for you.

January Warm-up

ICOM did fairly well in this tournament, considering the size. I finally broke!!! If you know the significance there, celebrate with me? If you don't, it means I got at least 3-3 with high speaker points and thus got to the outrounds. Now admittedly, I did face off against the person who later turned out to be the best speaker in the tournament... but it was a split decision and I very nearly won. Fun stuff.

"It's all gravy from here." ~Joshua Jones

The day after the tournament, Mom and I got up early to go to the airport for the flight to Albuquerque. Uneventful. Met up with family, skied an entire week, and returned with them to Dallas, from where we came home. See the pictures and ask for details, I suppose. Does not a picture tell a thousand words? And yet, were I to use enough words, you would not need to see a picture. I'll just say I'm lazy in those affairs.

Ski Trip

This past week, three Davis (grandmother, mother, and competitor), Joshua, and I had a long drive through Amarillo and Albuquerque (again) to reach Farmington, NM, for another tournament. As I am yet recovering from that, you are permitted to ask for details later. For now, rest assured that ICOM did exceptionally well that tournament and I am proud of my younger collegues for getting first and second places overall in LD. I let them off easy :)

I would post pictures from said tournament right now, except that I cannot continue into the night, attempting to get everything just right. Goodnight folks!

-Petr

Repost

2009-01-11T20:42:00.000-06:00

Random. Uncoincidentally, this is not the second time to post this one :)

Pictures from winter camp

Winter camp 08

For what it's worth, I have no regrets posting this right now.

Short and sweet. I don't push for loquacity after reading so much (Job, worldmagblog, google's favicon)

-Petr

More Theocracy

2009-01-02T23:33:00.001-06:00

Well, I finally found the lyrics to the longest track on the album that I was listening to last night. I thought surely somebody would like this.

link

And in case you should want to listen to it -- with the music

Mirror Of Souls

-Petr

)Edit(
But this wouldn't be right without mentioning one of their other works.
another link

Did I mention the election? I won't.

2009-01-01T21:38:00.001-06:00

Here on the couch, typing this up and watching Monk. Really strange one too.

I finally figured out why Evelyn puts "now playing" on her blog posts. I can guarantee that this post would be much different were I listening to LOTR. But I'm not, I'm listening to Theocracy (another one of those rocks bands -- quite good this one).

Anybody who noticed the date mark on the previous post would know that it's been a while since I visited this blog. In fact, this is the first time since reinstalling Ubuntu that I've even looked at it. But here I am :)

___________________________________________________________________________________

So in the back of a car last night I was listening to said band (Theocracy) and thinking about reality (space and time and so on). If man is limited by space and time, then there's so much that can't be seen! Sure it seems obvious, but scary at the same time. Each moment in one place is one more moment that can't be spent somewhere else, doing something more or less worthwhile, seeing somebody that may not exist otherwise, as far as the person observing is concerned. Each moment comes and goes, and is gone forever.

So reassuring to be working for the one that made it all!

What is this thing knowledge? Isn't it all next to nothing in the big picture? One moment I'm thinking, gee, what is it like to throw yourself out of an airplane with nothing keeping you from hitting hard save something strapped to your back? Most people will never know from experience. Is it such a good thing to know so much?

(man, so many questions. Note to self in future posts: try to clarify without asking so much :-)

"You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor."

Nor his knowledge! So he knows hows to assemble the world's first perpetual motion machine. What do I care? The only knowledge I need is this
"Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son."

This and this alone is the most important in this life. Decisions now apply to all eternity.

___________________________________________________________________________________

So then, an update on recent events?

Christmas was great, if *comparatively* uneventful. None of us went anywhere. Mom's side of the family came over Saturday. No traveling to OK this year :(

The 27th, the same Saturday just mentioned, Ross and I went with several other scouts to GWP Winter camp. I was responsible for helping with two different merit badge classes, and took two other. One was a combination of two, so for teaching and taking, I ended up with 5 total.

The pictures look good. I'll post them soon. Maybe edit this post later when I get them up.

So tomorrow, at 5AM I'm leaving for Houston. I need to get rest. Bye!

-Petr

Left for dead?

2008-11-19T09:19:00.002-06:00

Hardly.

I'm not dead! I hope you didn't think so? Not getting any more or less alive here!

So you wanna (go back to Egypt)... er...

Life. Well, that is a deep subject. The most important criterion have been met... responding to stimuli and such... but to truly live? Now that's a different issue altogether. Or are we talking about conscious life? Rats are self-aware. Does that mean they're conscious? Define consciousness. ARGH.

No white rabbits for me! I missed the November period, thought about getting you then, but it didn't work out the way I wanted it to. Now I find that my brothers, both probably a lot busier than I, are more regular than I! This cannot be tolerated! Or can it? I dunno, that's all up to you. I think I'm past the third "post already", and into the 5th or so, then becoming a mere acceptance of the fact that I shan't. So now I do?? Does this truly throw the whole thing into reset, and I'll be bugged until the 5th "post already" again? More likely, it will be accepted that I don't very often, and it'll only be the second or third before acceptance is pressed upon the most loyal of readers. Ah, well, RSS is your friend. And so is Google, did I mention? Lets just hope they don't go the direction of... other companies *cough cough*.

It's all about the big picture. And unfortunately, this is nothing about the big picture. My train of thought is derailed by constant LD references, inside jokes, and cries of "definition, definition!" What, pray tell, has happened?? The looming, amorphic debate season has begun.

And obviously, there is little or no definite beginning to the season. You just know when you're into it. And I have this knowledge. It started to prepare for beginning this summer, when I was sitting in Schlotzsky's, eating a cookie. The cookie was pretty good. Somehow, through the many twists and turns we know as the internet, the voice of Mr. Sivils (my debate coach) came floating to my ears, oddly twisted by Ubuntu's noncompliance with Dimdim. Then was when we were planning, beginning our first steps into the "Idealism vs. Pragmatism/India policy" year, writing the basics of cases that will no doubt haunt us for the rest of our lives. Now, Joshua and I have gone through one tournament (practice, but still official enough to have us on edge for weeks). Joshua managed to get a hold of 6th place in LD, 8th place speaker. I'm still working on getting a better than half record. :-/

Next week I'm going to Mexico with Aunt Susan!! Oh, and Lillian and Annalee are coming too. Heard of this yet? Well, essentially we're building houses for people. And as long as we're at it, we're also helping out the local pastor. Pray for us, please.
____________________________________________________________________

OK, yall, I now must get to my Trig, Physics, History, and maybe putting flows (of opponents' cases) on the website.... And while I'm at it, trains of thought need to go all the way down the line :(

-Petr

of course

2008-10-19T22:10:00.002-05:00

Greetings to all those out there from where I am.

Right here, typing on a laptop...

Anywho, kewl stuff goin on around there, no doubt? But I'm supposed to tell you what's going on with me. Weird how that works O_o

I told somebody that something was another story for another day. Today is another day, so I shall tell you, even if you are not that somebody.

Walking through little-known streets and large neighborhoods. For what? Popcorn. Anybody want some? That's exactly the point!

Ah yes, the beginning would help. Simply put, BSA (Boy Scouts /of/ America) is having a huge fundraiser for all the local area councils. So scouts of all ages like myself put our dignity on the line and walk the streets ringing doorbells, talking to neighbours, posting blogs *ahem*, all for the purpose of selling popcorn. "On average, 70% goes to local scouting!" Whatever. The actual turns out to be roughly 30%, and if they're right, 40% more *trickles down* to the actual guys doing the actual dignity-on-the-line selling. And what happens to the rest? Nobody (that I know) knows. It merely disappears into the system....

And so I find myself rushing to be ready and meet at the high school with the rest of 342 (cubs, scouts, and venture-ers). I forgot to be ready ahead of time. Fortunately, Mr. Armstrong had some extra water bottles. We needed them. Perfect day to be wandering small town streets? Maybe. Cool weather, Saturday morning... at nine AM... Nobody awake?!

The local troops (in general) had Nacogdoches split into portions, one for each group. We were to cover the entire Northeast side of town, despite time restraints (9-noon selling). Mr. Armstrong split us into smaller groups and we headed out with our respective designated drivers. I wound up with the trailblazers (patrol) driven by Mr. Armstrong himself. The first place we covered was the "wood" subdivision north of the loop: Timberwood, Parkwood, Redwood, and so on. Not many people were awake, and those who were said either "not interested" or "there was a cute cub scout who came by earlier...." And so it went, until the whole place had been covered by one scout on each side of the street. Total sales/donations: Ryan $1, Ethan $20 some odd, Jonathan $18, myself $0.

Mr. Armstrong then picked us up and drove us to the next location, off Appleby Sands just before Starr, Pinecrest. Here we spent a good portion of the rest of the day, going down streets and side streets, eventually meeting up and moving on. Total sales by the end of this: Ryan $130 some odd, Jonathan $130 some odd, Ethan $80 some odd, myself $140 some odd (I forget exact numbers).

Moving on to the next location, a long almost straight road, maybe 1/2 mile long. Jonathan and Ryan started at one end while Ethan and I started on the other. I forget records about then. One more smallish section (it was nearing noon) and we headed back: totals roughly EthanA $180, JonathanC something three digits, above $100, Ryan same, myself $250 exact. Don't ask me how I did it.

There were some very interesting people along the way. At least once I was tempted to mention the Obama sign on the front lawn, but weirdly enough most of them who showed at the door bought something. O_o
Quite a few old folks. Did you not know, Nacogdoches is mostly (and I'm using the term lightly) old folks and college students. Quite a few elder citizens were quite willing to talk, and many had sons in scouting or had been involved themselves. One man told me to get Eagle before I start driving, because there's not enough time after that! I suppose it's too late for me... despite the fact that there's already not enough time in a day to do what is desired.

^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^

Hey! Who wants popcorn? :-)
www.orderpopcorn.com
And you'll need this
TERF02X

NO you don't have to. I am perfectly content having you as friends. :)

______________________________________________________________________________________

Pictures of escapades are here
It helps if you click on the "here" -- it's a link ;)

Ok y'all, I'm done here. Time to go to bed. Night!

-Petr

Yet another month

2008-10-01T14:43:00.002-05:00

I'm terribly sorry to clue you in, but the last post was September 1st. That's right, one month ago! I have no explanation about the delay that anybody would accept as a good excuse.

I would probably have gotten up this morning to give you a white rabbit, but I'm not really feeling up to date. What?? New month already?? The last one was too fast!

And besides, Evelyn beat me to the punch.

Hurricane, being out of town for a week, pioneering campout, staying with Jones, SAT prep, earlybird debates (on the internet)... it all adds up. And I'm not sure I like the sum.

But ok, here's another post. I hope to follow up with something bigger, but not this time.

Hafagudday!

-Petr

A new month!

2008-09-01T07:54:00.002-05:00

In the weather forecast today:
highs in the lower 90s, lows right about 70
Chance for thunderstorm, 30% chance of precipitation
and
WHITE RABBITS.

:)

-Petr

And this is still life

2008-08-28T15:11:00.005-05:00

Greetings, friends. Having a good beginning of the next school year, anybody?

How about not having the beginning of a semester? Yeah, I know. Maybe it would be considered off easy, but I personally think of it as "vacation time". Working through the summer has its ups and downs, and this is one of the ups.

Maybe.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Currently listening to Evanescence. I can guess at the various responses to it, but I kind of like them(or else I wouldn't be listening). It has something of a rock side, decent singers, and a solid foundation.

(this format familiar to anybody? :)

A typical pre-season day goes somewhat like this.

At 5:00 this morning, and several morning before, Dad woke me up and asked if I wanted to go exercising. My response was somewhat typical, "mmph." Not that it would make a difference, unless I happened to have some physical (not mental) reason to not get up that early to work out.

Details aren't important here. Mostly, I made it through the morning, as always, somewhat tired but better off in the end. Reading material is almost unlimited around here, so I normally take some sort of science fiction book (preferably Isaac Asimov) along to read while running on the elliptical.

After getting back at 6:30, Mom fixes breakfast, we both read the paper, and then all three of us go separate ways, Dad to work, Mom to a shower, and myself to either reading, sleeping (try getting up that early and not napping!), or checking emails. In fact, this lasts until 9 AM or so, at which point I decide that it might be worthwhile to do something that looks useful. Just the other day, I was on the computer most of the day (with the exception of Lunch) looking for computers (O_o) that Mom might like. Today, I had to catch up on several assignments and updates from a couple separate sources of debate homework.

Days like these are so weird: An hour of worthwhile something, followed by maybe half an hour of not much, succeeded by perhaps some random computer game. And I have to admit -- they're weird partially because I've made them so. But there are the factors of A) Andrew not being around, B) Ross not being around, therefore C) Three girls in particular drive me to leave off usefulness in search of peace and quiet. It doesn't always work :(

Today, as previously mentioned, I started some assignments, finished others, updated some more, and searched Google for a solution to a .docx problem. Lunch came eventually. The afternoon was a good deal less productive for myself (if indeed you can call that productivity), with a good deal more goofing off until 4:45, when I drove (with a front seat driver-passenger and a back seat library-goer) to a party at a friend's house. I suppose I must say that it was "sort of" a party. Various homeschoolers milled about until receiving permission to jump into the pool, where they splashed around until dinner call. After a good dinner of hamburgers and hot dogs, a meeting was called and an order established among the 16 teens on the yearbook staff. I was graciously appointed, by a pre-meeting conference among the editor-in-chief (chief for short) and two advisers, to Sports assistant editor, with two underlings.

Make of it what you will. I'm (almost) perfectly neutral on the matter.

No decisions were enforced producing my direction of an automobile back home. Mom drove. Showers were taken and some television was watched. I decided that one hour was enough to get my clothes folded, and I didn't care to hear any more about corpse techs, thankyouverymuch. So I returned to the computer (O_o), to finish this post which I had started before said party. I was suspended in my attempts by new developments on my Google home page, and saddened to the point where I couldn't finish unaffected (I still can't). So here I sit, typing about latest developments of life, thinking that it might change your mind about something. :)

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Well (a deep subject is started upon), this editor business is not the only position of authority I have received recently. Many weeks ago I was requested to join the ICom student council (an honor to be so considered! there are only so many elder debaters, though). I expressed an interest, if somewhat limited by the fact that the meetings generally occur in person in Houston. To my pleasure, it appeared this Monday that I was accepted for Support VP (did I mention that there are three other VPs?). Support meaning, in this situation, mostly moral and morale support for anybody and everybody. Not my particular bag of chips (Outoftheblue, I know) for leadership position, but the best position for a person is not always the one they like. Not that it matters, I didn't even know the positions, much less my preference to one or another. I'm still somewhat neutral toward said position, though it is warming up to me some.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

This isn't exactly experimentation, but it's not so typical. Hey, I'm just going for alternative ways of writing a blog post. :)

This is a closing comment. Goodnight, good morning, good afternoon, it all applies.
Godspeed.

-Petr

Post-production update.
Got the new Relient K album. I like it.

Such as you make it

2008-08-19T17:15:00.004-05:00

Hello again! Long time no see, perhaps? Well, see the last post and maybe you'll find out why!

Yep, I was gone three weeks. Not straight, I had internet access now and then, but as a general rule, I was fairly cut off from *all this*. Yes you know what I mean. If you don't, just make it up.

I don't like posting pictures of myself on this blog. It's just not my way. But, since one or another wanted to see this, or something like it

See? No braces! That's old news.

See my profile for the other one.
____________________________________________________________________________________

Glad to get that over with.

Here's something from Andrew, whether he likes it or not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKma07ugFnk

And yes he is in there. Watch carefully
____________________________________________________________________________________

I've put this off long enough. Mom's only bugged me... twice now? I think I normally get more than two before I write a new post. Old news.

Something before the major operation: On the 27th, a trip to Dallas, to visit our grandparents and several relatives. I forget what exactly happened, but generally that means a trip to half-price books and plenty of reading. Some napping is usually involved as well. We left the Tuesday after.

"It" started on a the next morning, 30th of July. That morning, Dad and I left for Oklahoma, specifically Stillwater. Long, fairly uneventful trip, myself driving roughly 5/8 (starting at the south end of the turnpike). I care not to comment further(good or bad). It was interesting to see what happened because we weren't expected until 24 hours later... but Evelyn knows more about that than I do.

F.B. put together such a nice post earlier about these couple days. I can hardly improve upon it. :)
Ok, so yes I have a couple comments. Logan had quite a few people over to his house Saturday night for Indiana Jones. "We" (various parties, always including Laura Stephen and I) spent a couple afternoons swimming at the Y.
Small side note: Football doesn't start with "ultimate", as far as I know. The nerf game was real, like a 4 player ultimate frisbee with a nerf ball in the water.

Unfortunately, I had to leave Sunday morning for PIne cOve. I have to admit (in fact would like to say), for a non-denominational Christian camp, they are reforming. It was worthwhile (as opposed to previous trips).
And aside from that, in general, it's a really cool camp. (on lake Palestine!)

Another slight break, getting back Saturday the 9th, and leaving the next morning with Joshua Jones for Nathan's house (Caleb and Mrs. Jones going along for the drive). This was sort of our birthday present to him, staying there until the Wednesday Mrs. Reynolds debate camp started. Much playing of computer games, some airsoft, some trampoline-ing, and watching Olympics. To any observer, it would appear like a large waste of time, but all three of us knew better than that. ;)
We actually did go to a homeschool group open house to show off for ICom (our speech and debate club), meet some old friends, make one or two new.

Wednesday at around noon, Mrs. Noman came by to pick up the three of us to take us to the Reynolds' (THANK YOU SO MUCH!!). And of course it is difficult to properly explain that. A whole bunch of debate materials went forth. Andrew Roybler and Samantha Nasser gave a large group of debaters (almost all of whom I had known from previous encounters) many lectures on the many points of debating. And best, afterwards, we went swimming and skiing on the (professional man-made ski) lake! After sunset, the crowd (maybe 20 people) played volleyball until 10(stopping only for ice cream and showers).
I suppose you may have noticed my temporary priorities. I guess I'll have to focus more this year than previous, being my last. :'(

Anyhow, I'm back now. Still tired from these past weeks of late nights.

I'm sure I've missed a lot. Tell me about it. No really.

-Petr

Did you get the memo

2008-07-26T21:03:00.002-05:00

Andrew got a blog? At the bottom of the last post. I suppose I should put it at the top if I wanted it to be read...

anyhow, how about a little traffic for the departing hero?

http://www.hippobirdy.blogspot.com/

Another memo for you.

3 weeks. That's how long I'll be gone. Big plans, and a journey of a thousand miles begins with a step toward the car. Unfortunately, this means I'll have to do some driving. Oh BOY.

And another memo.

Letsee, Dallas (mostly Mom's side of the family), Oklahoma (Stillwater, here we come! Ohyeah, that would be Dad's side), pĩn cőv (or are those the wrong special characters?), and finally, South Texas for debate camp.

So those are the memos. Questions, comments? THAT'S TOO BAD! :)
(just post something, if you must)

-Petr

Lea-who?

2008-07-06T20:01:00.006-05:00

Ever try listening to Leahy while driving? Ok, how about Leahy played at 30, plus a little amplification from the mp3 player?

Stoney Lake & Juniper Island)
Moment

A little something about gerbils. They don't appear to use their brain to demonstrate wisdom: "What's this, a wheel!? Food! Wow, something to chew on! What's this, a wheel?!" But, they're a bit smarter. My own personal experience is that Esther (or Nathan I called him) would indicate when he wanted to go back to his cage by first nibbling and then biting me (grr, that hurt), and that he got used to being carried eventually (but it took him forever to get over the fact that he's not exactly on solid ground). The latest hyper gerbil (also used to being carried, became so a lot faster) will actually attempt to move in the general direction of his cage, if he can see it. According to Mom (best research ever -- google didn't help me here), gerbils have quite a bit of maze memory. But I still can't get over their "Up! Down. Up! Down. Poke poke... Up! Down."

So yeah, something random for you.

Relient K -- Devastation And Reform

Fear can drive stick
And it's taken me down this road
A road, down which, I swore I'd never go

And here, I sit
Thinking of God-knows-what
Afraid to admit I might self-destruct

So lock the windows and bolt the door
'Cause I've got enough problems without creating more

I feel like I was born for devastation and reform
I'll destroy everything I love
And the worst part is
I'll pull my heart out and reconstruct
But in the end, it's nothing but
A shell of what I had when I first started

An injury I'll caust with my own fist
It seems to me to be slightly masochistic
But there'd be no story without all this dissension
So I inflict the conflict with the utmost of intention

So lock the windows and bolt the door
'Cause I've got enough problems without creating more

I feel like I was born for devastation and reform
I'll destroy everything I love
And the worst part is
I'll pull my heart out and reconstruct
But in the end, it's nothing but
A shell of what I had when I first started

Thank-you, God, for giving me an insight
So I might make these wrongs right
If and when, there ever is a next time
'Cause failure is a blessing in disguise

Pull my heart out, reconstruct
In the end, it's nothing but

A shell of what I had when I first started
A shell of what I had when I first started

I feel like I was born for devastation and reform
I'll destroy everything I love
And the worst part is
I'll pull my heart out and reconstruct
But in the end, it's nothing but
A shell of what I had when I first started

*************************************************************************************

So you wants to hear about summer camp, does you? Ahh tells yah, it's a long story. (made shorter! :-)

So we leave here Sunday afternoon, after much loading and hauling and such and such to try and get everything we need into the appropriate vehicle, and deciding we didn't need this that or that (which incidentally we did need). After a 30-60 minute drive with lots of chattering, we get there and wait for another hour or so for the paperwork to go through. When we finally get done, we have just enough time to get our swim checks and get to dinner. And no, nobody could say "oh your the SPL aren't you" to me. I'm just not obvious enough.

The rest of that day was mostly setup, with a little bit of fun later on in the evening. No, I can't remember what it was, but I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be fun. Or else that was our evening off to setup camp.

The rest of the week went generally like this:
WAKEUP!
Meritbadge classes 7:something - roughly 12
LUNCH! (yum)
more Meritbadge classes 2:00- roughly 4, except for those unfortunate few who had bonus period classes. But I really needed that MB! *sigh* I so wanted to swim that week :(
5:15-6:00 get ready for and goto flagceremony + dinner
afterdinner: some sort of campwide games, activities, so on. This included...
Campfire Sunday (staffer intro, staffer skits, staffers show);
Campwide games (duh -- but they made you sign up for it! So unusual. Previously you could just show up for this sort of thing. And we did, and they acted like we didn't have to sign up, just whoever showed up played -- couple exceptions) Monday;
something tuesday (my memory escapes me);
commisioners campfires (4 different "campfires" where the troops got to show off their skits jokes songs etc. to be picked for the big campfire) Wednesday;
Cobbler cookoff, scoutmaster guitar hero competition (which our scoutmaster won by a huge margin -- he even almost beat the resident staff champion), an ice cream social, and a special SPL thing (see below) Thursday;
Family day/closing campfire, at which the troops got to show off. We got chosen to do this for our quarter of the camp, I know for sure. For some odd reason, the camp director called the wrong skits from each commissioner site, had somehow obtained the wrong list. And then if that wasn't enough, the whole thing got rained out and we moved to a large shelter (helter skelter), at which point the Order of the Arrow (wierdos that they are -- yes I mean that) started their call-out.
Saturday was fairly easy. We got up, had a come-and-go breakfast, which we (being the ideal troop that we are) showed up at exactly the right time and all in uniform. We thereafter broke up camp, took a few pictures, got an approval of departure from the office & commissioner, and departed. Putting things back in the scout hut was terrible, we just sort of threw it all in. A reorganization has been on the agenda for a while (postponed by wasps at the last meeting).

My days were far from typical. I had to wake everybody up, make sure they were all ready, and then get ready myself. As told before, mostly everything was my responsibility, except for the few times that I could successfully delegate and Jesse graciously intervened (THANKYOUSOMUCH). After hustling them all to and from breakfast, myself and a band of brothers (two other elder scouts) went to C.O.P.E (challenging outdoor personal experience -- another story by itself) and stayed there until lunchtime. Most of 342 could get there without my help, thankfully enough, since I was almost always late. After lunch and 30 minutes of cool-down, the 3 of us went off to our next mb class, climbing, a strenuous merit badge that requires you to almost be able to run the whole system without authorized personnel. Fun, but difficult. From there, one of our crew, who didn't have to get this particular merit badge, spent his free time like free time. Jonathan and I went to the back of the scoutmasters lodge for a citizenship in the nation merit badge during free time. It may have been worth it. I don't know yet. From then on, it was pretty easy, get to dinner, get to whatever post-dinner stuff is going on, up until about 11 pm when I would tell everyone to be quiet, and nobody would be quiet. Suddenly (after many hours, but suddenly) the next day would start.

This small SPL special deal? Every SPL from every troop had to work together to retrieve a "secret file" on a computer in a cabin in the woods. The challenge was working together such to not set off the laser tripwires (real deal here) and be captured by staffers in black, get inside, get the dealie and get out, yet again without tripping anything. Half or more of the group, against all suggestions, came bumbling up to the cabin and set off everything. I tripped. So for the next half hour, we (2/3 of the SPLs) sat around waiting for the rest to either run out of time or be captured. It would be interesting, to be sure, if better executed, maybe one at a time, but....

Did I mention the OA? Abominable. Some scoutmaster thought that BSA needed an honor system, for those outstanding guys. Well, I can live with that. But then he and his associates had to use the Native American (politically correct way of saying the indians) system for their ceremonies!! So the entire thing is based around people dressed up weird calling on the "spirits in the sky" to make these special scouts special. *shudders*
Needless to say, being a Christian, homeschooled trooop (NACHEA supports us, owns the equipment), we never participate, and the ceremonies are bland.

*************************************************************************************

Andrew (Admiral Nelson, Hippobirdy) has a blog! www.hippobirdy.blogspot.com
Or just use my handy sidebar link

*************************************************************************************

That's all, folks.
-Petr

Edit: Finally got rid of that annoying red lettering!

Another Edit: Does anybody know if Relient K has a new album? I think it's called the Bird and the Bee sides. Hmm. Worth researching.

Placeholder #1

2008-07-03T21:02:00.002-05:00

This is a placeholder. It's holding my place, did you notice? :D

My attempts to scrounge up a post on the web log have failed up until this point. I hate to continue this failure, considering my faithful readers have waited so long. :(

But I assure you, further attempts will be made. Being nominated for Secretary of State does not make one a better speech writer, nor even a better blog writer. For some, it is merely more material to type (*cough cough* er, write) about.

Off topic slightly. This is, for all intents and purposes, a post to hold my place. Yep. Fer sure. Mayhaps in the next few posts, I could manage to get hold of somebody's pictures from the great camp attended during summer, at which I had the excellent privilege and responsibility of acting as a high-and-mighty senior patrol leader (needless to say, being my first experience as high-and-mighty, I wasn't too pleased).

I am now satisfied.

-Petr

is

2008-06-15T07:39:00.001-05:00

Gone for the week. Leave a message.

-Petr

Bits and pieces

2008-06-03T21:05:00.002-05:00

*somewhat overdue*

Greetings, fair friends. Greetings, unfair and not so fair friends. I know you're lurking out there somewhere, so hi to you. :)

Summer is officially upon us! Me! And how long has it been since summer started? A month, month and a half? I suppose somebody will be here with the \official\ declaration of when it was/will be. And yet only now has it really arrived for me, seeing as how my workload has (appeared to) significantly decrease(d). I have time to update my blog, imagine that.

*BIT 1*
Andrew! Get on the ball! Time's a wasting, and you're Eagle Scout unavailable date is fast approaching! Just recently Andrew started and completed his Eagle Scout project, a demonstration of leadership skills, management skills, and cooperation. His project was to build (of all things) ballet props (fake houses). No, don't laugh, I'm serious and it seriously did make the working hours requirement. It was an incomparable improvement over what was left of their last set, and it took lots of time out of many schedules to complete. There are pictures!

http://picasaweb.google.com/okfearing/AndrewSEagleScoutProject

*BIT 2*
"I've got my head in the clouds and my feet in good dirt" -Newsboys
This really made me think about how reformed churches in general are kind of "head in the clouds" sometimes. It is very interesting to hear and participate in the conversations involving how predestination works and why the presuppositional approach is better than the "scientific" approach to witnessing, but it sometimes gets too much. APPLICATION, FOLKS. That is all.

*BIT 3* And Beyond
So who's seen Indiana Jones? Chronicles of Narnia? I've seen the first, but not the second. Funny it is. I'll just spoil Indiana Jones then, shall I? I can't exactly say much about Narnia at this point.
DID YOU KNOW Indiana Jones went and GOT MARRIED?? Very un-typical of him! (well, let's not fail to mention his twenty year old son). And the aliens were kind of weird, but part of the plot. There were the compulsory few gruesome deaths, the capture, escape, capture, escape, and capture of Indiana Jones, and the villain that always sticks on his tail like glue. Strangely enough, the bad guys weren't Nazis.

I feel like a new chapter has begun, a new beginning for Troop 342. Another location, changing leadership and the likes, beginning with falling sentimentalities toward our hosted building's owners. My opinion of said place (private school, great reputation yet poor reputation) was not helped by their inconsistency when it came to our helping them (weird as that sounds).

For example, when one of our scouts put in a volleyball court as a project he suggested that they put concrete in, to protect from washouts. The interested party said no, it would be fine without concrete. Along comes great rain and washes out the volleyball court. They tear up the volleyball court and come asking said scout to rebuild using concrete. ^_^

Later still, and the source of much trouble, was when this private school decided to expand on their building. Much of our equipment is in a shed out behind their building, which they kindly allowed us to use the land to build on (raised on cinder blocks). Come the week before construction really begins, and they tell us the shed is too close to the expanded portion. Note the words "a week before construction". They also say that should we fail to move the shed, they will /probably/ knock it off it's blocks and drag it to a temporary location, with all the equipment inside. We're still waiting for the outcome, and praying for someone to help us move the shed.

This is where the new beginning comes in. A new location, a church, is allowing us to use their building to hold meetings and even provided a place for the shed. New leadership comes in the form of myself, being promoted shortly to Senior Patrol Leader. I hardly feel senior, much less senior patrol leader (essentially scout leadership responsible for everything). I shall do my best.

And so far I've done fairly well as patrol leader (one of the underlings of the SPL, in charge of at most 5-7 guys in a patrol). I have plans established for the upcoming Scout summer camp at Pirtle (at which our current SPL will be unavailable, making me the acting SPL). Significant, far reaching plans. And as for organization of these nutters, I'm not sure yet. ;)

Oh yeah, and I got my braces off.

-Petr

The K's

2008-05-26T20:52:00.004-05:00

Said I'd do this. Thought I'd make at least one more post of this type, possibly many more. (haha)

"Life after Death and Taxes"
~Relient K

Hey taxi, send me straight to the heart of it
The nucleus of politics was somebody
Somebody started it
Cause they taxed me with a scalpel piece by piece
they cut me deep and let me dry until there was nothing left to bleed

And this is how I choose to live
As if I'm jumping off a cliff
knowing that you'll save me [2x]
and after all the stupid things I did
there's nothing left that you'd forgive
because you already forgave me
yeah you already forgave me

Keep driving
leave this deceit miles behind me
so far back I'd have to wrap my mind in
just remind me
I can't try this to pick myself up
and then move on
think about the life I'll have
when this fragile one is gone.

Never forget
there's life after death and taxes
Forgiveness come
and all of the rest
is what passes away
Death and decay can't touch us now

Every breath that I inhale is followed by exhaling traps the one who never failed
I know you'll never failed me

Never forget
there's life after death and taxes
Forgiveness come
and all of the rest
it just passes away
Death and decay can't touch us now

http://youtube.com/watch?v=t_jj5bzkBQ0
Napster removed it and a couple other albums, for reasons unknown. :(

And then I went and changed the blog look. Is this more or less cheerful? Can't have a somber blog now!

-Petr

Mr. Smith

2008-05-08T09:20:00.003-05:00

I might be doing this a lot in the near future.

Michael W. Smith "Rocketown"

A friday night affair out in the city heat
Always a party there along the sordid street
And it was guaranteed the place to be was rocketown
...

There came a certain man a stranger to the crowd
We didn't understand what he was all about
He walked a different pace so out of place in rocketown

What was his mission? Where was he going?
Why was his heart light always glowing?
All i was missing he stood there holding
What was his secret could i know it?

Rocketown
(napster is so much better than youtube. And make sure you let it popup the player)

Edit:
youtube version. The best I could find wasn't great though.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ANNdVi6GcEs

Makes sense

2008-05-05T10:23:00.002-05:00

http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComick.mpl?date=20080120&name=Zits
http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComick.mpl?date=20080127&name=Zits
http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComick.mpl?date=20071111&name=Zits

Life -- again

2008-05-04T21:19:00.001-05:00

Long overdue. Requested at least once, probably twice (or ... *gasp* more?!). Something like life for a while back.

BTW, did I mention the 21st was my 16th? Good.

Since I can't start at the beginning, I shall begin somewhere near the now, from April 22-26. In the last "post", I put a link to hundreds of pictures. Those hundreds of pictures actually came from another NCFCA tournament in Houston, the Regional invitational. I didn't actually compete, but that's beside the point. That Wednesday, we (the usual East Texas group of debaters, all 3 of us) had the privilege of watching court procedures for an adoption. Quick and easy, not much talking, all the paperwork had been done before. This particular adoption was a 3 year old being adopted by Mrs. Jones brother and his wife, the very same that we've been staying with for every Houston tournament, and some other obscure details that I won't bother telling you the full story about. Anywho, it went well and Taylor is officially a B_____. Almost their entire family was there, and that's saying a lot. A lot of "howdy"s and "oh isn't Taylor cute in that jacket?!".

The adoption was "the other" reason for being there. The reason I was there was to watch and add moral support for Joshua, being the one that qualified for Regionals, but I have to admit there was a lot more than just him and his debating. There was Nathan, Rachel, Erika, and Kevin and their debating. :) And of course lots of speeches, as there always are. I timed 9 out of 12 speech and debate rounds. Starbucks giftcard, yaY! I shan't go into details right now about every speech and what they're all about, that's available upon request. Wednesday, we had an unofficial club meeting at Nathan's house. Thursday was a typical tournament day full of -- what else -- speaking and debating. Friday was the same. Saturday was finals day. Joshua and Rachel made it to octafinals, but no further, getting 11th and 13th (may be wrong). Rachel won 1st in OO!!

That was two weeks ago. Last week, strangely enough, was fairly uneventful, aside from Aunt Susan and Grayson (cousin, Uncle Mike and Aunt Ria went somewhere and Aunt Susan offered to bring him here for a couple days) coming Friday and leaving this afternoon. Also, yesterday, for the first time in ages, I managed to get out to the fields, wave flags, yell at uncooperative people, and get sunburned. That's right, refereeing soccer. The only reasons I ever do it is because I get paid and I'm often dragged along. But it went fairly well, and I was paid as usual.

Now it is almost 9:15. I would love to give you a blow by blow (love the thoroughness, F.B. ;) but I don't have it. More stuff tomorrow, if possible.

-Petr

Here's the deal

2008-04-27T15:24:00.002-05:00

So here I am, back from another long trip, with another set of pictures. I like pictures. I hope you do too, because I am now posting "official links" to them.

http://picasaweb.google.com/pcfearing

Still somewhat wiped out. TTFN.

-Petr

Much promised. And delivered.

2008-04-08T18:11:00.002-05:00

Arkdbate08

You have no idea.

2008-04-07T10:21:00.002-05:00

I wonder what I'm supposed to be doing right now. Probably something useful, like school, or maybe reading up on (oh yes, she finally got me to do it) The Driving Manual, or whatever it's called. Yes indeed, friends, I have been worked into starting to learn the skill of driving. Oh boy. No weirds jokes about "the roads are unsafe now", those will be considered SPAM until further notice. I can name a few people, places, and vehicles that are much less safe than some poor high school student. Don't make me.

Nice long paragraph, eh?

For the past two weeks, yours truly has been gone. That's right, you heard me: gone. Off in the great land of the debaters, speakers, and homeschoolers. You of the local area: you were actually asked about! Someone came up to me and said something like "is there a group of homeschoolers in your area?" (rabbit trail)

The next few posts will likely have pictures and/or descriptions of said trips deep into this "other world". Don't go away!

-Petr

Post #63

2008-04-01T08:58:00.003-05:00

Currently 70 degrees Fahrenheit, partly sunny. Possible chance of WHITE RABBITS.

Should you happen to check my blog before you check F.B.'s. Cause I'm sure she's probably white rabbited any poor souls that happen upon her blog this morning.

To be continued....

-Petr

Who needs sleep

2008-03-23T22:00:00.003-05:00

Me. That simple enough?

Happy Easter. And happy Thanksgiving, and merry Christmas. As I'm sure you know that every Lord's day is.

So about that thing people call real life. I happen to have one. It's not as real as it sometimes seems, and it's perhaps less real sometimes than it should be. And many debaters are sorely disappointed when it comes to call.

Ah, the analytical paper. I know, I know, two pages isn't much, and sure, it's about the evils of socialism (ever read The Jungle? *rolls of eyes*), which many people have much to say about. But that won't change the fact that I shall lament this paper until the day I'm done, until the day I'm gone into the wild blue yonder....

Debating. And such is (real?) life.

-Petr

March! Already?

2008-03-14T11:53:00.002-05:00

Whatever happened to February? And now we're on the verge of April! Gotta get some more posts up... but you already know that. :D

Recent events include: Debating in Houston, debating in Dallas, debating in Arkansas, canoeing trip, debating Joshua, debating Erika, debating empty air, rewriting cases, rewriting cases, researching...

Yeah. Anywho, the last debate tournament was in Houston, a national open. Anybody in the nation could come to this one. And come they did. Most of the people were from region 4 (this general area, several states in the south--I don't remember which ones...), but there was also a large group of "outsiders". I think the "outsiders" actually won both LD and TP, while the region 4 people struggled just to get to the outrounds. And of course there were the unfortunate many, who lost 5 out of their 6 rounds. :'(

All in a short 4 days. Much talking and visiting.

"Shut the door when you go through!"

Must you ask about daily life? Ok. But it's not all fun and games, I have to warn you.

The past few days (for me) have been mostly isolationism. Isolationism this, isolationism that, we need to isolate because of our oil dependence, can't because of the UN, should because of the UN, no way! Assertions all of it! Is NOT! Is too! And the rest of the time is either "typical" school (impossible trigonometric functions, redox chemistry, The Jungle) or just sitting. Plenty of extra time, just not enough motivation to post again.

The cats are shedding. And happy. The gerbil is eating as much as ever, and still chewing through half foot cardboard tubes in less than 10 minutes. "The Girls" all say hi to you too, Daisy.

Had I a picture, I would post it here.

-Petr

QUESTION... er.

2008-02-28T09:09:00.002-06:00

What do you plan to do with your extra day this year? Wash the car or something....

-Petr

P.S. No complaints to quality assurance will be accepted at this time. I assure you, I plan to type up an iffy post eventually.

Some such day -- and undisturbed wandering

2008-02-14T21:28:00.004-06:00

Did you know that valentine's day is one of my pet peeves? (well you do now)

It's reeeaaaallly quite pointless for anyone under the age of... say, 18 (being conservative here!). Why all these highschoolers are obsessed with it I'll never know. But needless to say, I have renamed February 14th. I call it "God's own time" day. ;)

SOOO ANYWHO.

Today was fairly productive in the general sense of the word. Productive:producing or capable of producing, yielding positive results. I spent a majority of the morning and a good deal of the afternoon scrubbing doors. Yep. Scrubba-dub-dub. With a wet rag, some degreaser, a "magic eraser", some "goo gone".... I would post some pictures! But I don't have any. Regardless, it was a major improvement. Many doors and walls still need paint touchups, and an occasional drywall repair.
The whole purpose of this (aside from breaking my back 25 times over) was to complete a requirement for the Family Life merit badge (more boy scouts!). This is a Eagle required MB, so I'll have to finish it at some point or another. The rest of the plan for this string of requirements is to have the entire family participate in a serious car washing. All cars, all cleaning. Let's do it!

Now playing: Random Michael W. Smith. No, this is not another hard Christian extreme ROCK person. His music is (NOT) older than Petra, milder than Newsboys, better lyrics than Relient K. Apply the universal knowledge of a google search for further details and maybe some youtube samples... or something. Yaaaah, right.

Technicality man. Nerdy? Slightly philosophical?? Hard core LD... er... wanna be. Hey, that was just a setback! I might get to regionals this year! I won the "Hope of the Future" award! (that really was something my debate coach gave me last year. It came with a Marble Slab Creamery gift card)

And I finally finished that Woodstock latchook that you saw me working on so long ago, Arwen. It makes a nice pillow now.

-Petr

Brief note (re-verbed)

2008-02-06T09:34:00.000-06:00

Imagine that. I have this nice big long post on the 31st, a notice on the 1st, and all you (not you-- you) can say is "is that it?" Have patience, my friend. :)

Notice for webbers and bloggers reading: I don't like to respond to comments with comments. I mean, who comments on their own post? Don't answer that literally. I know a few people too.

Yes I got an email. Yes I read it. Yes I am waiting expectantly and hopefully for a brandnewunlostreallygood cd. The last one, of course, disappeared. Searched the house, scoured the house, stripped the wallpaper looking for said cd (the house is painted mostly, so that wasn't really a big deal) . Looked in the place where it should be. Couldn't find it. So I ask for it. And it comes. :)

I'll find a good picture now and post it for your enjoyment.

Somewhere in Germany

For surely that is the point of this blog? For viewer/reader enjoyment? Surely not!? Now I have some point besides just typing so that you can read it. Or do I? Well I have to admit, part of my motivation is the feedback from the "comments" section (maybe I'll rename that). Part of it is just -- hey, why not? Some people tell me more writing makes better writing. Ummmmm... yeah. I'll be sure to try and remember that. I wonder if I should try to disprove that....

I'm done. :D

-Petr

New month

2008-02-01T09:29:00.000-06:00

For your February message, please redirect yourself to Evelyn's blog.

-Petr

P.S.
I mean it. Go there. Seriously. That goes for you D's in OK too.

Leave it to the--

2008-01-31T09:34:00.000-06:00

What exactly is the point of a philosopher's life? Somebody with really cool quotes. I should know. I've had to incorporate them into debate. It's such terrible fun to find one with the same ideas that you have in your case *roll of eyes*.

A lot of people would say that their goal in life is to find out their goal in life. That would be the "why" phase (inside joke -- go read the hitchiker's guide to the galaxy -- or don't). It's obviously pretty hard for someone who denies the existence of God. According to the "average evolutionist expert", we come from pond scum, we probably return to pond scum and add ourselves to the nonexistent oil reserves for future generations. And on top of that, we like our life, even if we don't know what it's for, so we have to become immortal to continue pondering said questions until we just give up. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we shall surely die!"

It occurs to me that said philosophical question can be answered very easily by any theologian. In fact, the theologian spends a whole lot of time considering what we do after we find this answer. So perhaps the "average philosopher" is a wayward theologian? Or just stubborn.

But then, why not just "leave that question to the philosophers"? :)

&)_&)_&)_&)_&)_&)_&)_&)_&)_&)_&)_&)_&)_&)_&)_&)_&)_&)_&)_&)_

What kind of creature is that??

Anywho.

Cold, wet weather. Thunderstorms today for Nac and College station... temperatures roughly 60 to 25 degrees Fahrenheit. Snow in Stillwater, it would appear. A gloomy, rainy, cold day. Maybe I'll go mess around in the rain sometime today, get really wet and really cold, and then come in and play inside all day. Oh wait, I'm supposed to be doing something useful today. What a shame to waste a perfectly rainy day. :-\

I'm putting up a new picture. Have patience.

-Petr

Hey

2008-01-20T20:47:00.000-06:00

So I figured, hey, it's a Sunday night, not quite very late yet, why not update on that 'ol blog for the benefit of the readers, pass along some messages, maybe have some fun.

To the D's in OK: Traffic in Norman was ABSOLUTETLY terrible. Much ice, slow moving vehicles, took us thirty minutes to get through what should have been a five minute area. Yet again, I never liked Oklahoma for it's weather.

So maybe it isn't me, but I thought I'd show you something of what the trip was like. Said skiing trip was in Breckenridge, CO. Much snow. Light powder all week. Absolutely the best snow I've ever skied in. Of course, the downside was that it snowed all week long, and was much colder than any other ski trip that I can remember being on. The result was that most of us looked sort of like the guy in this picture, but with sometimes oversized coats, hats (instead of helmet), gators, and in general attempting to bare as little skin as possible to the cold air rushing past. I say rushing, because some of us like to go fast, down the hardest "runs" on the mountain. That is, the hardest ones not exposed to lots of wind.

Up on the very peak of the mountain (peak 8 it's called), the wind was no doubt blowing very hard most if not all of the time. The powder was sometimes knee deep (more fun for the skier!).

Currently playing: (intentional, I assure you) LOTR TTT soundtrack; Gollum's song

Kinda gloomy. Whadya know, it's Gollum.

Has it ever occurred to my readers that it takes motivation to type up a good, original, perhaps inspirational post? It does. And it also depends on something, or rather somebody.

Something so simple as typing on this keyboard takes God's hand. And how many times has it been taken for granted... ? Countless, no doubt. Such a simple thing, yet so hard -- to rely on God for not just the big, bad, scary things like attempting to rush down a "double black diamond", but also for daily life. Simple? Surely not! The daily life of an average US citizen ("American" is so overused) should be example enough. Hard to face such a fact, it is.

(F.B., I've now moved on to LOTR ROTK The End of All Things. I don't type as fast as you can. ^_^)

The track's almost done. I am done. Such a "coincidence". Whadya know.
Gnight y'all.

-Petr

Does noboby read the title?

2008-01-12T13:25:00.000-06:00

Brief schedule update:

January 1st-2nd -- In Houston, talking, debating, explaining to and having explanations presented by... friends.

January 4th-11th -- Dallas, Denver, Breckenridge, Dallas, home again. Week long ski trip with my mother's side of the family.

January 12th -- Explain to blog readers what I've been doing. That's what a weblog is for, right?

Right?

______________________

-Petr

Pre-script (P.S.)

2007-12-21T10:30:00.000-06:00

A so-called "brief note" or two

Does anybody remember when I promised to have pictures up from the Double H trip this summer? Well it finally happened. They're /here/.

The second "brief note" that I have to post... just before I leave for Dallas where much extended family is and Stillwater OK where more extended family lives to be there for Christmas... is sort of like a blogger announcement.

Ross has a blog! The url is cadetsbigday.blogspot.com ... OR ... click on the NEW link in my sidebar (hopefully it's there...)

Dad's posting again! Same type of posts, different blog. URL: ardickoverthetop.blogspot.com
Or yet again you could click on the link to your right ------>

Farewell fine friends!

-Petr

(post publish comment)
scroll down on Ross's blog for a reeeaallly great picture of bonfire.

Do-it-yourself (?)

2007-12-11T21:22:00.000-06:00

Just in case you wanted to carve swans from watermelons, wikihow has just the thing for you. Follow the directions and the tips and you're "sure to be successful!"

Now I just hope they don't have anything on how to live your life. I'm afraid that's out of the online how-to department....

&&&&&&(page break)&&&&&&
(hey, I figured if *others* could use it to good affect, why not I?)

And on top of that, Petr has returned to his blog!!

Well whadya know. Sometimes I even wonder what's the point in putting anything here. Maybe it would be better with almost all picture content, sort of a picture-web-log. Try to shorten that now -- picblog? ^_^

But still I return. To what purpose, who knows?

^^^^^^^(break 2)^^^^^^^

Friday, December 7th, 2007. A day which will live in... well, maybe my memory for a while. I know it now as the beginning of the most recent T342 cooking *trek, voyage, expedition, etc.* camping-trip (known as the camp-out, campout, campowt to the lowly scout).

Saturday, December 8th, 2007. A day to live in more infamy than the previous one. The Ranger patrol sadly made a few critical mistakes. Glories were lost. Taste was diminished, or else spoiled. The great feat of a chocolate cake in a dutch oven (!!!) ... LOST because of a burnt crust. A sad day for the loyal Ranger. Once again, despite all efforts to "save the day", the /other patrol/ swept the cooking competition. (I'm personally upholding the idea that on at least one decision both judges were biased)

Sunday, the day after Saturday. Problems were forgotten, dashed hopes returned, and a new day dawned. Camps were broken, tents were disassembled, trucks were loaded with personnel and equipment, and yet another successful two-nighter brought to a close.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$(break 3)$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

So enough of the funny viewpoint. Back to good 'ol first person.
This coming Saturday, the annual teen-white-elephant-party held at our house. Surely you've heard of this occasion, when teens in the homeschool group, and some non-teens, bring presents and have a sort of exchange. It's always more fun when you realize that most of the "presents" are worth less then their face value. Let's take the example of Evan's gift last year. He brought a nice pair of shoes, pre-worn, pre-damaged, pre-scuffed. They even came in a collector's box! But had the receiver looked closely, he or she would have noticed that a sole was missing from one of the shoes. What a scandal! :)

And I find it incredible that the D's could get in town for the Spring party, the Summer party, and the Harvest party, but not the memorable White Elephant? What a shame. I suppose we shall have to do without, and merely wish for their presence, as so often has been the case. Or perhaps, once again, I am merely posting exaggerated sarcasm. As has sometimes been the case.

(break)

http://picasaweb.google.com/nandn7/Mexico2007
Does this link work?

-Petr

A couple things

2007-12-02T20:18:00.000-06:00

First of all, I thank all of you who supported us on our Thanksgiving journey (trek, adventure, ... any others? I'm sure Frodo would have a whole list of such words). Whether it was by helping us with finances or praying for the whole (insert such word here). Anyhow, that was one more thing to be thankful for that chilly, wet Thursday.

And more about that (excursion, jaunt, junket, outing). Starting with pictures, one of which I intend to make my \new\ picture. First some opinions though. :)
http://picasaweb.google.com/nandn7/Mexico2007

However, now is not the time to wax eloquently about the (expedition, pilgrimage, tour, safari, voyage). I'm still working on remembering the details you might want to hear about. ^_^

And something funny, as I often intend to put in my posts. Credit goes to one of my debating friends.
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/llama

-Petr

Pending

2007-11-26T19:18:00.000-06:00

Short explanation.

I have been gone since Tuesday the previous week, spending most of that time either in Weslaco or Reynosa. I just got back a few hours ago. Further explanation pending.

And Happy Thanksgiving to you too! Lotsa thanks to give! Now obviously, these are not randomly thrown thanks. Who do you thank, and for what? Just something to consider.

"We apologize for the inconvenience."

-Petr

TRULY random, none of this...

2007-11-12T09:50:00.000-06:00

Have you ever wondered how a computer is programmed to generate a random number? It's not. You cannot program a computer to generate a random number. It is simply too predictable. All 1s or 0s (or shorts, if you wire it wrong). A computer is designed to follow instructions perfectly, so even if your computer is totally messed up beyond all shadow of working, it's still predictable. That's just how it works.

Shadow already knows all this, right?

BUT>>>>

True Random Number Generators.

[Random.org]

[HotBits]

[lavaRND]

Now under this last link, there are two very interesting demos. One is a "LavaRND Haiku", essentially random poetry generator. I was strongly encouraged to show this to E____, who is highly involved in poetry. The other is "LavaRND CorpSpeak", a Dilbert-like management memo generator. And you can read all about how these are both generated by a TRULY random process. None of these computer algorithms...

Where p0liticians come from

And this morning, Andrew and I were discussing--of all things to discuss in the morning--infinity and rational numbers. The comment was that two of my sisters spend all of their free time on the computer. No, every irrational portion of every second of spare time. So then I started thinking, what is the ratio of rational numbers to irrational numbers between 0 and 1? There are infinite rational numbers between 0 and 1. Between every two rational numbers, there are infinite irrational numbers. So the ratio of rational to irrational numbers is infinity over infinity. That region of irrational number between two rational numbers... that's where politicians come from. So.... Infinity over infinity is equal to Hillary Clinton. :-)

-Petr

Fascinating

2007-10-28T22:39:00.000-05:00

The "link" box is useful. I like links.

This post is much rambling and some unfinished business.

To begin with, I will bring up a... prominent issue on the internet. Does anybody wonder what it takes for a word to be used a lot in internet "slang"? For example, "interesting" is a very useful word, but I think that its usefulness has been overvalued. "Interesting" is no longer interesting to me. The word that I now am attached to is "fascinating". But that's beside the point. Perhaps I can get some input on this, considering all who read are internet users?

Continuing my ramble.

Did you know that in IM terms, *<<<<<-| is a Christmas tree? I thought you might want to know.

F.B., my intent in posting the picture is for you to laugh, or at least grimace, when you see that picture. It always make me just the more merrier. I hope a little jollification from across the Atlantic doesn't hurt you too much. You can only be expected to be stern most of the day. :-)

From the previous post. We don't know who wanted to sleep out there. They must have been crazy, we all agreed, to want to sleep out there, what with the temperatures dropping into the 40's during the night, and probably worse out on that peninsula.

-Petr

Gnarly!

2007-10-28T22:32:00.000-05:00

By the way, click on the title.
==================================

October 26-28 2007

"Gnarly" was the "word of the trip" for this year's NACHEA (not NAHSA anymore--I know, it's a little bit of disappointment. I am not big on the idea of an acronym that sounds like a sneeze :) family camping trip. I don't know if anybody knows what I'm talking about, so I'll elaborate.

The camp ground was out near the Trinity River, at Trinity Pines Camp. Some people may know it as "the place Evan and Caleb worked all summer". It's sort of like a family campground area sort of thing out by a lake. I don't quite know how to describe it. Anyhow, the NACHEA families went out and camped in the RV area, and not just with RVs. Some of us had to use *gasp* tents! Needless to say, we survived despite the hardship of tents and bringing our own food. Speaking of we, I need to explain that too. (don't worry, gnarly is making a comeback in the near future)

Unfortunately, we were not able ...Isn't it so splendid having the possibility of work emergencies (some really sick person) even when your off? And not getting even that much time off? I'm sure Dad loves it... to go as a family. So Andrew and I were invited by the Jones family to come along with them. So we is either a general Joshua, Joy, Mrs. Jones, Andrew, and I, or else the NACHEA group as a whole on the trip.

Shortly after "we" arrived, I found Aarin off doing his own thing and describing things as gnarly. I declared there and then that we needed a word of the trip, and that it would be "gnarly". I'll now end this short paragraph with a confident :D

A short video from the trip.

Following are some pictures from what we did all weekend.

Dodgeball, believe it or not. Each team tries to get the other team out by hitting them with little foam balls. Fun. Note that I was unable to get in action shots because of grumpiness expressed towards the camera man.

And of course, the good old truck. It managed to be useful through the whole trip. Bandwagon, bleachers, equipment truck, cargo truck....

Find the hole that is infamous for its difficulty.

I might throw in some scenery from the trip later on, in another post. Toodles for now, my friends.

-Petr

Just thought you'd want to know

2007-10-17T09:27:00.000-05:00

Monday, October 15th is a day that shall go down in infamy. Good 'ol Nathan, Esther, gerbil, giblit (don't ask me where that came from) died during the night. 'Twas a silent night, full of silence in the space where rattling and chewing would have filled the air. We shall remember you, old pal...

____________________________________________________________________

In other news, a new picture has appeared, not from Evelyn's photo banks, but from a different source...
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Something funny to think about. Turn up the sound after the screen goes white.

-Petr

It's official

2007-10-15T21:15:00.000-05:00

Here is where I put something related to the title and related to the general gist of the post. Well, today is October 15th. That's official. This is my forty-fifth (45th) blog post. Today is Blog Action Day. I'm not too impressed at the moment.

It has indeed been a long time since the last post. I cannot say what has delayed this one. Perhaps it was the overwhelming task of journaling my early fall events. Perhaps it is the doom of eminent debating that hangs over my head (I still think this is too early in the 2008 season to really get serious, considering everything else that hangs over so ominously). But I intend to address the highlights of these past few months in what might seem a monotonous post to those of you who are obviously more expressive than I am in their descriptions. Boy, doesn't it seem like I'm repeating myself?

Anywho, somewhere back in the mists of time gone by... (I'm don't know myself where this is going, where I should start... where it would be safe to assume your knowledge, or lack thereof)
I suppose I shall start with the most recent. Forget chronological order.

From Friday evening until Sunday afternoon, troop 342 from Nacogdoches, or whatever of it decided to come (you might want to know that Venture Crew 342 was there too), attended the 2007 Naconiche area Camporee. This was a rather well organized event. The purpose of a camporee in general is to gather Scout troops from around the area for... an instructive and fun mini camp. This year it was all about search and rescue. Mr. S, area camping chairman, managed to arrange for the fire department to come out to demonstrate and an EMS helicopter to fly in. Very interesting for all involved. The cooperation and effort of the troop (a small concern for me because of the recent shuffling) was actually one of the higher points of the trip for me, despite half of our older, more experienced scouts not coming. The younger guys managed to work it out quite nicely.

Perhaps this was a "coincidence", but on the very weekend that this took place, at the very same place, not too far from our campsite, the model fliers had their little planes going. For two hours of free time, a group of scouts watched them fly the RC planes around in circles. Fun stuff.

The previous weekend was one of the highlights of this fall so far. On that weekend, Dad, Andrew, Robert D. and I took a trip to Houston, for the 23rd annual Wings Over Houston airshow, probably the biggest in the state. Were the computer running at full speed, I might post some pictures. Oh well, I don't even know whether they have been taken off the camera yet. "Pictures are worth a thousand words", yet I don't intend to use one for a thousand, or even a hundred. Maybe it'll work later.

Well it's now 10 PM or later. I'm finished for now. Now this post too shall vanish after a few weeks, assuming we have a few weeks...

-Petr

Life

2007-09-20T19:08:00.000-05:00

-!!!!!!!-
Look at the last post. Did I not say that I would post about the events of life in the near future? Well here is this post, consisting of almost purely life events.
-!!!!!!!-

Yesterday, I'm sorry to say I missed the announcement, was International Talk Like A Pirate Day. February 19 each year. Go google it and find some interesting facts. ARRR!

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Going all the way back to the end of August...

Debate Camp!

This trip into the Rockies for the purpose of debate theory was figuratively the calm before the storm. Calm flight in, long road trips from the airport out and back, calm flight out. Lots of mountains. Hey I could've just sat on the front porch of the admin building watching clouds float by or hiking up and down and up and down and oh by the way some ups and downs. I did neither. I missed the only chance to do that. :(

So instead, most of the weekend was spent inside a small conference building listening to useful lectures about the value of isolationism, immigration history in the United States, economics, lectures about case structure, values in general, cross examination, "judge reading" (!), philosophers, time management, club exercises, and probably some more that I didn't even write down. There were lectures about certain debates or group activities or flowing a certain speech in a debate. Lots of theory!

The day after we got back, or rather the day we got back at 1 AM, I slept until 12 PM with little trouble. The next day, the storm broke. I had, and still have daily, to work through algebra II/trigonometry, advanced chemistry, SAT preparation, history (lots of reading or lots of essays), and several DVD and tape lectures. It's hard to keep the algebra equations separate from chemistry formulas and funny looking constants (2.18x10^-18? 6.63x10^34?). And all this the day after I get back from a weekend in Colorado.

Later that Tuesday evening was the first Boy Scout meeting I had been to in a long time. Speaking of which, recently boy scouts have been hectic. Just this Tuesday we had elections and a huge mixup over who should be in what positition and who should be responsible for deciding those positions and what the standard was in the past and what the standard should be now. We still don't know some of the details from the elections and appointments.

Small sidetrack, but necessary for the topic at hand, Life. I mean the life that I can observe, ok? Not the life of somebody in Kansas or Arkansas. :)

I'll skip forward a couple weeks to... Saturday, September 15th.

Last week was the NACHEA (not NAHSA anymore :( teen photo scavenger hunt. Mrs. Yerkes got Jeremy *somebody* to organize it. Several teams of teens ran all over SFA trying to get pictures and solve some clue thingies, leading to the thing that evil Sinisterguy (or something like that) had taken from him. My team never found it, and we weren't told in the end. Regardless, there were some pretty weird pictures we had to get. Big sign reading 5:18, team in stranger's truck, three legged race with non-participant, and some other strange things. At 6:30 all the teams had to gather at this house for an afterward party thing. We found that we had gotten third and the peanut M&Ms to go with it(!!!). It lasted late into the night, of course. It's always strange to be staying after the party, to clean up. The house is so... empty. Sort of like when relatives come and then leave. Not much fun to be left behind.

Well it's getting late again and the black cat is bugging me. Go away Beamer! I can't pay attention to you right now. :-)

So good night to you all, and God bless! Have fun in Ireland F.B.!!

-Petr

And furthermore

2007-09-10T20:30:00.000-05:00

Well I finally got back. I'm posting, can't you tell? This is a post. It is meant to be read, so don't comment unless you do so!

:)

I've had this post formulated in my mind for a long time. A looong time. Unfortunately, I don't remember the original formulation, so I'm just going to, well, go with it.

So beginning with the not so difficult stuff. I remembered Philip's "Potatoes" video this weekend when a video similar in its concept came up in a small discussion. Along with posting this video, I must also mention that I no longer intend to post videos, just their URLs. Web page, if you didn't understand the first time. But back to this video, its essentially repeating something in the right context so much that it's funny. Oh, just follow the link already.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tin6NJqQQsM

____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________

Another interesting thing, not so much fun, more disturbing than anything else.

Debate brings up some interesting things. Sure you learn how to debate, speak, etc., and included in this "etc." is researching. Now I was researching for my Affirmative case when I stumbled across something. Perhaps things are a little out of hand... well it's about the supposed "North American Union", told off by Bush and others, but I think this takes the cake. But be warned, Hal Turner is very blunt with his language. I really think some people have taken it too far this time.

====================================================================

A page update watcher, originally found and posted by Shadow. JCPenney requested this, but I think that more people can benefit from it.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pwatcher
It is the one that I am currently using, and will tell you if anything is different. Even a slight html code change.

====================================================================

To answer your predictable questions, yes I did change the template. I am planning some other changes as well, eventually. I wonder if eventually will ever be now...

Considering the purpose of this post, I don't intend to relate current events. That's coming tomorrow or some other time in the near future.

Goodnight, and God bless.

Procrastination

2007-08-29T13:43:00.000-05:00

Isn't it such a terrible thing? I mean, right now I'm supposed to be writing an Affirmative case for my debate camp--that we leave for tomorrow. Now obviously I've been working a while, so I'm taking a break to leave a nice post for some of you guys, that post that you have (or maybe haven't) been waiting for so patiently and yet hasn't come for a long time. So now is a post to break the silence and fill you in on some of those crazy ideas that I thought weren't worth posting about.

Side note:JCP I just went back into the archives of your blog and found the houseplant song. Funny, but doesn't quite compare to "some of that Petra". :)

Isn't it weird how the good ideas come to one's mind in the weirdest of places? I can remember multiple times where in the middle of my shower I am struck by some life-changing idea, but then ten minutes later, I forget about it completely. Or maybe I'm just about to fall asleep, when... BAM!! Just sort of appears and totally ruins the next day cause I'm too tired. Or even while I'm toting a gas powered rotating-wire-head on a stick (commonly called weed whacker) across some random parking lot, thinking about this post and what I should mention on it. Even this mention of random location ideas came to me in a random location. O_o

One such idea came while I was listening to some rock music (that some people might consider too hard). I was thinking about how many Christian friends I had in so many different places, and how many of them had different views on different things, for example their opinion of music, whether hard rock is "neat!" or just... "interesting". Or some people who have theology that would be very questionable to others, yet they are indeed (as far as man can tell) Christians. Then another thought came from that idea--no matter what different views they may have on some subjects, they all have the same common factor, the goal of life being to glorify God. This is hard to put down in words :-\ I think some dots can be left for you to connect.

Anywho, the other few ideas that I was to put in this maybe long post have jogged my memory. I shall probably be back to edit this post later.

TTFN.
-Petr

EDIT
====================================================================

"Dinky little pole! A mere breath from my massive lungs with send it flying!"
(suitably edited)

By a request from JCPenney, credit for (finding) this video goes to her. *hrrumph*
I liked this video. I included an inside reference from it. It needed to be posted. I'm tired.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkWjVAFjUBw

Least original title

2007-08-13T21:24:00.000-05:00

In the world. Maybe not, but I like to think that not much is new as far as my titles go.

I don't really intend to directly answer the question why I haven't been available. I'm going to do that indirectly.

Some of you may have heard of this place called "Pine Cove". I shan't post in detail about it. Go look it up with Google if you must. A Sunday afternoon three weeks ago Mom attempted to send Lillian, Annalee, and myself off for a week at this place(note that we were actually going to individual camps so there was no form of contact between the persons) . It turned out we were early. So the next week we made the 2 hour drive again, to be left there for an entire week. It was fun. If this were a speech it would be very monotone. :D

So there you have it. A week of my summer spent in Tyler at a camp. One of many weeks this year that I've been gone. Shall I sum up? Much of the early year was spent gone on debate trips, summer was split between various things like the Double H hiking trip and two week Oklahoma trip, as well as a couple other random things that I can't really recall right now.

My aspiration with this post is to be brief. Inform the public and go to bed, seeing as it's fairly late in this region of the world. F.B., I assure you I will probably type up an email for just you sometime soon. Fear not, general population, I shall return.

-Petr

some descriptive words

2007-07-24T13:20:00.000-05:00

Greettinns. I am back from Oklahoma after a two week trip, leaving here only shortly after getting back from Double H, soon to be gone on another trip.

This has been a busy year. I'm sure that I've probably described many vacations since the start of the year, with the exception of the one I just got back from. Be warned: for me, this will count as a long post.

You all heard of the Double H trip I'm sure. I still don't have pictures by the way. The Monday of the week after we got back, we went on a rather short notice trip to Stillwater, having the primary purpose of Mom's trips with Grammy, reaching to the far reaches of OK and almost into the next state for quilting materials and such. Mom tells me they had lots of fun, got lots of material, and gave up after the second day.

This was the same week the the Reformed Presbyterian Church was having VBS and I was of course volunteered to help with the management and proceedings (it actually was fun). Starting Tuesday, I was to help all week with watching and directing a small group of young men (approximately 7-12 or so) through the various activities that were planned for them. I was also helping with the skit Logan had come up with, a "Cowboy's Progress", a spinoff of Pilgrims Progress. And we were pretty good actors too.

Also during that seemingly short week, the teenagers in the Church would go out into the community during the afternoon to ask questions and hand out pamphlets (that's such a strange word). I was invited to join them, which I did of course.

Well we were gonna stay there until Saturday, and leave early morning. CHANGE OF PLANS. While the rest of my family (Mom, Lillian, Annalee, and Mary) went home, I stayed in Stillwater with the expressed reason of staying and doing the exact same thing over again for another week, only this time in Enid.

inserted: I am doing this post over the period of several days, do not mind the disjointedness of it.

Perhaps I should mention the facilities? Well I will, wether or not you like it or not. In Stillwater, the Salvation Army was kind enough to let us (them? How do I describe the people from the church with myself included? Another random thing to ponder) use their chapel building. It was a good building yes and worked quite well for the VBS purposes. There was a place for running around and screaming and shouting like the small folk there liked to do, there happened to be appropriate places for everything (everything being the rest of the things that I care not to describe at this moment), with slight improvisation, and of course the stage and chapel made a good place to act in.
In Enid, we were at the YMCA. If we were inside, we were most likely to be in the downstairs exercise room. (side note: F.B., there were about 20 people on average during the week) not quite so versatile a room as the chapel at the Salvation Army building, but it worked. And did I mention that it makes a terrible stage? I had to improvise several times. (side note: I was playing Christian the Cowboy all week in Enid) "The Y" being what it was made it great for the activities section of the schedule, having at least two accessible places to play dodgeball or other games and an indoor pool (BTW we swam in it Thursday).

I feel strongly that in my description of said week I must include something about lodgings. In Stillwater, my family stayed in the N's house (my cousins to those who are ignorant). If you don't already know, it's a really cool house and I really liked staying there all week. In Enid, the group of people helping VBS stayed at the W's house, another really cool house, and another great place to stay all week.

On Tuesday of the second week, Mr.W took a select group of people to the Air Force base in town to show them the flight simulators, as well as to set this group of people up in scenarios and see if they could avoid crashing. We did not manage to carpet bomb Enid, sadly (F.B.). It was only an unarmed T-6 that was being simulated. I was in that first group. Another group went Thursday night.

Sadly enough, the week had to end and on Friday night most of the helpers went back to Stillwater. Two guests remained in the W house, myself and David H (fun guy). Daisy and Stupendous had already left, attending the N's trip to Colorado.

Saturday the second week was an all day trip to Carl Blackwell lake (is that right? The one right outside Stillwater) for the W's and David and a few friends and myself (alright, who wants to be on the list now??). They had a rental boat and some water skis (a kneeboard came along later). I hope I needn't describe this small outing in great detail? It was fun. So there.

Well, my extended period of time away from home soon came to a close. I was going to Dallas on Sunday after church with one of the W girls, where I would be met by Mom, who would take me home (you want long sentence? That's nothing). End of Story, goodbye.

Plus some pictures from my good cousin ERN.

Was it fun? Sure...

2007-07-07T11:48:00.000-05:00

Now I'm sure everyone has been so patiently waiting for my next post, the one that is sure to contain something about that Double H place that I've been talking about forever...

Well, I got good news and I got bad news. I'm not gonna waste my time trying to describe what can best be described with a picture, which I don't happen to have a lot of at the moment, and the rest of it--well, maybe I could try.

But anyway, the trip up there was an eye-opener, with lots of open places, mountains, dust devils, horizons(!!), and that sort of stuff that you might expect to see on a trip from East Texas to New Mexico. "That sort of stuff" also includes three movies on someone's DVD player, three movies that I didn't get to see until the return trip. It turns out they weren't much to see.

Sure there were nice views and good picture chances... but I have pictures for those coming soon.

Oh yeah, the basic premise of the trip. Well, they drop us off in the middle of nowhere, expect us to hike to a mid-week camp where we get to have fun and ice cream, then they send us out again into the middleofnowhere to get picked up and sent home. I wonder if I could post a picture of a map later...

I must go now. My next post shall have pictures, surely?

-Petr

May 20-June 2nd, and beyond

2007-06-02T20:54:00.000-05:00

It's been a while, hasn't it? Ah, well, as JCPenney put it so accurately, "I get busy packing beforehand, and afterwards I think about so many things that happened that I couldn't possible get them all into a post so I just don't try." I totally understand you. :)

So about the entire last week, I was gone to a Boy Scout Summer camp out near Bastrop. Really hot and humid. It was not the funnest camp I've been at, but it wasn't the overall worst either. I got the geology merit badge (does any of this matter to anybody?), got a partial on cooking, and took an all afternoon all week long C.O.P.E course (Challenging outdoor personal experience or something). Despite my presence there all week and a pool along with a lake, I only swam twice. The first was swim check, the second was "troop swim". Boo. I wanted to do more of that. :(

Who is asking about what Ross is doing? He's currently in Lufkin working for Temple Inland as an intern. That means that every weekend he can come home and spend the weekend. It also means that I don't have to solve every computer problem around here.

Yesterday was... "fun". Another day spent on lawncare. It was a new job, a really big one. We spent all morning on it and after lunch another 2 hours. After that we went back to the Reese's house and swam and played AA. :)
Oh and yeah I get payed a little bit for working for them.

I am not gonna put a lot of effort into this post right now. See ya later.

God Bless.

-Petr

Well...

2007-05-20T17:03:00.000-05:00

I say hello to anyone who's listening...

I don't get it. We're heading into summer and more time on everybody's hands (most everybody that is) and yet the blogger community around me has... well, decided it wanted to move on. (note: this excludes JCP and Ellentia--who have both been hanging around the place for quite a while. thanks) So I will post what I can think of for those few who are still watching.

Random thought #1: Is it just me, or has the entire idea of a "blog" died away in this country? Or at least you don't see nearly as many reports about "bloggers say X" or "bloggers think Y is cool, but Z is out". Coincidence? Perhaps, perhaps not. Perhaps it's my imagination.

Somewhat random thought #2: Bummer. It just left my mind.

Recent events:
Last night was fun. The Reese's had a 50's party. For the first two hours, it was talk and eat and a couple competitions. For the rest of the time (until around 10PM) people were dancing to 50's music and talking.
But even before that, there was a "crawfish boil" out at Fern Lake. One of Dad's hospital "parties". The best part about it was the food. Good food, and lots of it, in many different kinds. But that was nothing compared to the Sock Hop.

Ummm...

These weeks are almost hard on me. I know, I can't complain, especially after hearing what college students are going through. Trust me, I haven't a clue what it means to be bogged down by "all that work", but you have my sympathy.
Even after that disclaimer, I will say that my Algebra 2 is getting annoying. Circles, ellipses, hyperbolas, and parabolas are apparently a section that nobody likes. I certainly don't.

As the summer goes on, I find that I can be home on weekends more and more. I suppose you heard about the fiasco of spring debating? Gone or sick almost every weekend. I start to miss listening to pastor Mark's sermons, even if they are long. More weekends means more working out to try to be ready for Double H wilderness in New Mexico. They drop us in the middle of nowhere, let us hike around for a week, then pick us up again. It's supposed to be a lot of fun. I really hope so.

Ok, so I need to get off now, mostly because I can't type forever and my source of info starts to get tired of typing. Farewell.

Another month passes

2007-05-01T07:57:00.000-05:00

It is now past the end of April! Yippeee!

Big whoop.

So for the most important thing right now, I just want to say to anyone who gets caught, "White Rabbit".

Where to begin? It's really been a long month. And yet a short one at that. So perhaps I should start with the 21st.

My birthday. And yet still Dad made me mow the lawn and go up and down stairs and ramps and around in circles at the SFA stadium. Sure I got some good presents. Gus sent me a card (with valuables in it!), my sisters got me a Sony E003F (go look it up Shadow--for the rest of you, it's an mp3 player/fm tuner), Mom and Dad got me a... something off of my wishlist (hasn't yet been gotten), Aunt Susan sent a coupla nice shirts--that fit!--anyone I missed? Snail mail takes too long. It just does.

So the week after, I got to go to another debate tournament, only this one I didn't have to compete in. This was the Regional Invitational (the region being Texas, Arkansas, and New Mexico--I think). So I mostly sat around and watched :D Joshua Jones got 8th in the region!!! And another person from my debate club got 2nd in the region!!! Unfortunately, they only gave 4 slots for people to go to nationals. So only one person from WHSDC (debate club in Houston that I'm working with) went to Nationals. But that's still impressive!

Do I need to write anybody some emails? I guess I have a few emails sitting in the inbox that might need to be re-read. Och. So TTFN. Toodles. G'bye. Farewell.

North-South explained

2007-04-12T08:00:00.000-05:00

I don't wish to comment about this particular subject at this point in time. Follow the link. Get off the computer and go do something more productive. :)

http://singdanceandplay.blogspot.com/2007/04/north-south-finale.html

Strange times are upon us

2007-04-08T18:15:00.000-05:00

Well, yesterday was an ordinary spring day in an ordinary Texas small town with an ordinary April shower... with a couple variations on "ordinary".

For example, it was below 50 degrees Fahrenheit all day long, but strangely enough, never below freezing. (off topic--have you noticed how much I like "..."? Bad habit or just strange habit? I wonder...) :)

And there was that slight change in the precipitation itself... "ordinary April shower" might be changed to "ordinary April blizzard". It snowed all day long. And on top of all that, that was mowing day. So Andrew and I were mowing in the snow. Kind of unusual for Nacogdoches, considering we rarely get more than a couple flakes of snow at all during the entire year. Coincidence? Maybe not. If we are to believe the "experts", this unusual occurance is due to *gasp* GLOBAL WARMING!! This is just the beginning! Today snow, tomorrow... SUPERCELLS! GASP!!

I assure you, this is almost purely sarcastic musings. But I was interested by the amount of snow we got. Had it been cold enough, the snow would have stuck and we would have gotten 1-2 inches, maybe more. As it is, we got the equivalent of that much rain, because it was all melted by about noon today, even in Lufkin, where they got it heavier and longer than in Nacogdoches.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this was, as said before by F.B. (Evelyn on my links), was that the snow was lying on top of such things that you would see in Spring. The trees covered in green once again, the grass growing at an alarming rate, such that I had to mow it, the, erm, flowers (I'll let someone else deal with the descriptive term for them :D ), surely you get the idea by now? It was nothing usual.

OK, now that I typed all that up, is there anything else interesting going on... ah, yes. Older news than you are used to...

JCP finally figured out how to go North-South. Would she be so kind as to explain that for us? *ahem*

Well, as far as my debate stuff is going, its not really going. I didn't make it to regionals (kinda bummed that I haven't won anything since January), and although I may be useful as moral support to the people who did break, I'm not actually debating anymore this year. Sort of intend to next year. I have the assignment of helping the people who broke by critiquing their cases and strategies and stuff, but it won't be quite as hard core preparation as fixing my case was. But you may still see "gone to debate tourney" signs on this blog.

Nothing else that really need to be posted about, so toodles.

Edit:Ross came by this weekend for Easter break. He also brought with him one of the Mummes who was also at A&M. (friends of Mom and Dad since medical school)

And while I'm on that topic, Happy Easter. (Happy? Why happy? Why not jolly? Or joyful, or something like that? Perhaps I can start a new trend. Joyful Easter everyone! Praise God!!)

Long post...

2007-04-01T19:02:00.000-05:00

Well, it is the first of April, so...

WHITE RABBIT!!!

Plus, its the first of April, so...

APRIL FOOLS DAY!!!

That long post promised? Its not gonna happen! I feel so jolly right now...
Alright I'm not quite as jolly anymore. Goodbye, friends, till we meet again.

"Interesting things"

2007-03-13T09:04:00.000-05:00

Hello people! This is my first post since... February 28. Long time? Maybe... but not quite so long as (hint hint) certain people who have not even hinted at updating since sometime last year...

Well, anyway, you get the point. Right, certain people?? :D

Here are a couple "interesting" things as keebler requested.

Obviously a quilt, but whose quilt? MINE! Mom just spent the past few months making this quilt. I like it. Don't say you don't like it, or I'll... I'll... um... well, you'll soon /find/ that you like it. >-D

And "Esther". Or rather "Fester" as certain people call him... I sorta like Moses myself. Not a permanent name, but something to call him besides "Esther" or "the gerbil". I hope nobody has any problems with that... ?

Edit:I have actually settled his name as Nathan. Nobody has problems with that. I shall make that a fact.

Latest going ons involve mostly debate. Don't ask again what the topic is every time. It is one topic all year round that we get to debate about, "That Democracy is overvalued by the United States Government", and we get a new topic (I think) either late spring, early summer, or early fall. Whenever nationals happens.

As could be imagined, um, I totally forgot what I was saying. Bummer. I guess you guys won't get as much info from me as you wanted. :) Ah, yes. I was saying that there are many approaches to this topic. MANY approaches. Its hard even to write them all down in the club stuff, not to mention here. Don't ask.

Anything else may be mentioned later, but I doubt it. Tell me if you want more info. Cya later, people. (some of the strangest things...)

Oh BTW, Grace and/or Meagan and/or "Goldilocks" or whoever you are, I know you are reading this, there is no need to withold comments. And if you aren't... there's no point in my posting this... :D :D :D

Debate

2007-02-28T16:14:00.000-06:00

Yes indeed I am posting again... or at least will have typed this up by the time you read it. Who is "you", and are you still watching this blog and others for updates? Or have you guys just given up on me?

Debate has finally caught up with me. And Boy Scouts. And Skiing. I have been gone... just about every weekend since January!! The most recent event that I was gone at was yet another NCFCA speech and debate competition, in Bedford. I was gone from Wednesday to Saturday debating and supporting debaters in the West Houston club (joined the club with an online extension). And out of 6 debates that should have happened, and at least three that I really think that I shoulda won, I only won 1, and that was by default because there was no negative side. A 0-5 record?? :( Not very good for one's self-esteem. (inside joke involving Rush Limbaugh) :)

And coming up this weekend is yet another event, something in preparation for a summer Boy Scout event. That will be over a week and many miles. This weekend we will be hiking 28 miles in three days. Quite hard on the legs.

So, who has not heard that I got a gerbil? Or did I already post that? The "Esther" matter. No big deal. I got a used gerbil from the Reeses. It mostly lies around sleeping, at least most of the day, and a good portion of the night. Strange rodents they are...

Mom finished my quilt! Yay!

No pictures for anybody yet. Can't bother with the time involved. :~D

Fairly short post. But aren't those the ones that get lots of comments, regular and... strange?

UpToDate Today

2007-02-19T20:29:00.000-06:00

HI!!!

Finally, some of you may say, I am posting again. Yes, I am indeed posting, but don't expect to hear much out of me after tomorrow, at least until this coming Sunday.

So, more pleasant details of my life. um... skiing? We went to Crested Butte, where Ross had a small "incident", as some of you may have heard. He went off a small large jump thingie and came down, surprisingly, on his skis, but lost his balance and hit his head on the hard packed snow. He was out for twenty minutes. The ski instructor was absolutely hysterical!! Probably something to do with legal matters, which we had the great pleasure of not pursuing.

That was five years ago. This year, things turned out significantly better, except for the snow conditions. They should've had around... 40 inches of snow up to that point, and they didn't have nearly that much. Temperatures were above freezing at the base area for at least half the week, but it wasn't quite so bad on the mountain, meaning it wasn't too bad.... In my opinion, a rather decent return trip, though we could've used a larger mountain with all the skilled skiers. Not nearly enough blacks, and nobody would go on the double blacks with me... *muttered*

Then more recently, just this past weekend there was that shooting camp trip, Boy Scouts, of course. We mostly shot off shotguns all weekend long. There was a small factor of eating and sleeping, as well as trying to keep warm in the really cold weather...

This has been a long post, at least from my point of view. I shall now retire to my bed.

Edit:It took a while to write, but now that I think about it, it isn't all that long...

Here go I

2007-02-02T10:30:00.000-06:00

Again, I must answer the pressing question that JCP presents. (why must you always ask those weird pressing questions?!)

Why is(are) she and Ellentia on both link lists?
Why not? I mean, sure they live in OK, but that doesn't mean that they aren't still "friends of Texas". (should I maybe change the title to the links? I seem to never be sure of anything...) And besides, this is my blog, shouldn't that choice be up to me? ;)

So... I'm a gonna be gone for the next--entire--week!! Nobody will hear anything from me, unless I can manage to hijack a computer, which is very unlikely, so to all I say "BYE!!!"

And BTW, I'm going skiing in Colorado, in the same place that Ross "bumped" his head... I'll explain later.

So bye again!

Changes and latest updates

2007-01-28T17:28:00.001-06:00

Well, the first thing to deal with would be last week... the minivan.

The D's were stopping by our house last Sunday, for some reason or other, and while they were saying "bye" and stuff... some green smelly liquid came out of under the hood, along with smoke (or was it steam?). This resulted in the D's having to stay for a while (2 or 3 hours), eat dinner, and figure out that they would take our Suburban (big blue car) to OK City. It turned out that a transmission hose had come out, getting transmission fluid over the driveway. Well, at least it happened in our drive, instead of on the road!

For more details, ask JCP. That's all I'm gonna say for now.

In more recent updates, Joshua Jones and I, as well as his mother (duh), went to a debate competition in Houston, staying from Wednesday to Saturday night. I'm in the West Houston club... very well prepared! In general, I spose I did OK, but I only won 1 of 6 rounds. Someone in the club did get into the LD finals, Erika got second place! I personally thought she coulda won that round...

But anyway, that is where I have been for the past few days.

So for the changes. JCPenney wanted to be moved to the OK link list. But, if you noticed, I called it "friends of ___" and I have to point out that JCP is still a friend of TX--are you not, JCP? And I also added JCP's sister to the links.

Don't got much more to say...

Boundless joking

2007-01-17T17:19:00.000-06:00

A little explanation, that was a joke too, the "JCP situation" deal. It just happened that Shadow and I had a little "chat" after the first comment about "dear shadow" and my "dear post". So right about now, several inside jokes will be started, and nobody will have a clue what anybody is talking about, until they read my comment box.

Apologies, Penny, you weren't the only one taking that too far. :)

I knew I had to post sometime soon anyway...

So in honor of a "new post", I shall bring up a new topic, rather than an old one.

If anyone has been paying attention to the weather around here for the past week, they would know that we have gotten a lot of rain and sleet, and just a couple flakes of snow. It has turned miserably cold (for some people anyway) and driving has been slightly affected by all this weather.

One such occasion of driving being affected was Cada staying here overnight. His ma didn't want him driving all the way from the middle of nowhere out here for chemistry, then back out again, and back in, and back out, and maybe one or two more times, for fear he might get hurt in all that traveling on icy roads. Now this wasn't any really big occasion, which is just one more reason why I am making a big occasion of it...

Nice weather today, wouldn't you (dis)agree?

Because of debate and other such circumstances, it may be a while before I post anything other than comments (on my own blog--wouldn't you know it!), so no begging from anyone (Penney!) to post until it has been at least two weeks.

another dinner quote

2007-01-13T07:27:00.000-06:00

These days are crazy, I tell ya. First the girls, then the other stuff...
What other stuff?

I guess the only real news lately is...

Lillian and Annalee went to the homeschool skating whatsit with the Ys and came back about two hours later with Courtney Y and Hannah H, under the pretense that they were going to sleep over. So all yesterday afternoon and evening, five hyped girls have been running around the house, doing all sorts of strange girl stuff.

This hyped up girliness prompted Dad at the dinner table to produce another strange tongue twister.

How many toes could a tow truck tow if a tow truck could tow toes?

Try saying that fast!

BTW, Looney Tunes is good!

Questions, comments, or requests for information will be considered.

comins and goins

2007-01-08T21:50:00.000-06:00

If anyone has wondered where I have been, wonder no longer because the explanation is here.

If you don't yet know, I am debating in the national homeschool league, the NCFCA. On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I was at a practice tournament with the West Houston Speech and Debate Club. That, as you may or may not have suspected, has taken up a lot of extra time, seeing as how I need lots of evidence and quotes and such stuff like that (Shadow, I know, Google, but there are others, that give results that the average debater might not think about...). "Research".

And tonight, I went to that big Renaissance ball that one of the homeschoolers was having for her 16th birthday party. Really quite different from your typical party...

Short update, more may come later, I make no promises.

Whats new?

2007-01-01T10:54:00.000-06:00

WHITE RABBIT!!!!!!

HAPPY umm... NEW YEAR!!!!!

or should that be...

WHITE what now? white what? what is white at the New Year?
CHAMPAGNE!!!
happy new, year guys.

Whats new? I can still sound like I'm confused, but thats not new. ohhhhh...
:)

A long post of sorts

2006-12-29T10:50:00.000-06:00

Where to begin? How about with the carpet killing.

This was Tuesday night, that is Tuesday last week, a time that now seems oh so long ago, almost once upon a time...
The plan of the evening was that we (various and assorted scouts that came to our house for chemistry) would drive in Ross's 91 Ford Mustang convertible to the scout meeting and from there any Fearing scouts at the meeting would go with Ross to the "welcome home" party for Mary Watson (just got back from California, see "Maryincalfornia" link), and of course from there head home. That all worked out just fine, up to the point where we all went home and lived happily through the night and all. But changes in the plan took place, and my sisters ended up staying the night at the Watson house and I, hearing about Evan's plight (he had to have the carpet up out of the bathroom by 8 the next morning, and had only gotten about a third out...), took pity on him and figured, hey, I might as well go with him and help pull carpet. Mom and Mrs. Yerkes ironed out the details, of course. So somehow I found myself at their home using destructive tools to pull the carpet and staple whatsits holding the carpet down. The next morning was mostly spent by me messing around outside and inside.

Long enough? To be continued later...

*Saved as draft*

To continue

The big deal that I intend to post about is the trip that I was talking about earlier, and if you look at F.B.'s blog (Evelyn on the link), you will find the entire Fearing family in a long and drawn out post about one day. Naturally, I can never quite achieve that long description of just one day, but I can certainly tell you 'bout the rest of the trip.

day one
We left the house at about 2:30 after many different delays of many different types. The plan had been to leave at around 1, but.... The long seven-eight hour trip was without major incidence. It went like most long trips do, listen to radio, fall asleep, eat snacks, talk about random stuff, listen to CD's, fall asleep again, eat dinner, rather uneventful. There, that was the word I was looking for.
We got to the N's house at around, er, what time was it? 9-10 PM? Rather late. Went to bed after late talking and such.

day two
Um, I can't remember really doing anything worth mentioning.
I guess F.B. can probably fill in if she really wants more details.

day three
Sunday, of course, so we went to the RP church in Stillwater-did I mention we were staying with the N's in Stillwater OK? The crowd stayed for the first and second services. Did we go to the Chinese buffet on Saturday or Sunday, ern? Again, a rather uneventful evening, I suppose.

Monday, day four
Read f.b.'s blog.

Tuesday, day five
In my opinion, saddest day of the week. We "had the great privilege" of leaving Oklahoma for more Southern locations. We left at around 9 AM and got to Dallas maybe five hours later. Can't say much about what we did in Dallas, the details fail me.

Thursday
Left grandparents' house for Kristen Cargill's wedding around 2:00, give or take about twenty minutes. I don't care to give big major details on the wedding. From the wedding we came back home, late.

If you aren't satisfied with that thoroughly un-detailed description, tell me and I MAY someday fill in a little bit.

I'm getting a little tired of typing this post. What's wrong with me? :D

Edit:
I hope everyone had a merry Christmas!

December 20th

2006-12-20T08:52:00.000-06:00

In honor of Evan's slow connection and "squeamish" complaints about how his link was unnoticably removed, I have added his link back to my page and was about to change the entire template and all that, but I figure I better not.

Some people reading this may later hear more about my adventures in Evan's house and pulling up carpet in the bathroom...

later

But for now, I am updating almost just for the sake of updating. If anyone has any questions, comments, ridiculous comments, or other, err, statements of err, fact... just put it into the comment box and I will get to you shortly.

Thanks for the email F.B.

A sign

2006-12-09T22:11:00.000-06:00

Before I say anything else, I have to say this.

:)

I have switched to the beta version of Blogger.

hehe, hoho, haha, hohum, bigwhoop.

So like the title says, I have a sign. A sign to hang on the welcoming whatsit of this blog.

"GONE DEBATE RESEARCHING."
I'm sorry, people, but I just won't be getting any really serious long posts for a while, just consider this a token of my, er, uh, well, just download the file and have no more worries about endless hours checking blogs.

(I hope this is the right link...)

http://www.download.com/Page-Update-Watcher/3000-2370_4-10468474.html?tag=lst-0-1

2006-12-01T12:23:00.000-06:00

WHITE RABBIT!!!

... And I'm gone.

2006-11-21T21:23:00.000-06:00

I just got back from a speech and debate conference, see? And now I be going. I'm almost gone. I have somehow managed to hijack a computer in Dallas, but I don't have much time to say a lot.

So I'm going to Mexico on a mission trip. We're going to a small "colonius" or something, a place somewhere across the border from McAllen, to build houses and spread hope. And also get some merchandise off the local tiny places for a slightly increased price. :)

I have a, err, /profound/ observation from the big DAD to quote for you. F.B. might enjoy the strange quotes from her uncle.

Bubble bubble toil and trouble
How does your garden grow?
With cockle shells and pumpkin smells
All tied up in a five pound note.

:D from Dr. Fear.

I'm back here now

2006-11-19T20:29:00.000-06:00

And yet somehow, I will be gone sometime soon, just Tuesday morning, on a trip to Mexico.

But the big thing from last week was the CFC conference that Johua Jones and I went to. Here is an excerpt from an email to my cousin. I don't want to spend a lot of time retyping it.

boy am i glad that it was NOT a tournmaent. i am NOT ready for a speech or deebate tournament, and it will take a wile to get ready. im gonna havta do an average of about an hour a day research on "Resolvd: that democracry is overvalud by the us govrnment." i do havto go to a turnament in january. *groan* i dont know if i even want to or not. i gues if it coms to that, mom says im going.
the confernce went well, as well as a Communicators for Christ conference normally goes, i gues, evn if ther wer more people ther than they wer used to. i spent most of wednesday thursday friday and saturday sitting and listeningto someone talk about spechifying or debating. they did hav a small competition thrusday afternoon. i did an interpratation and an impromtu. the interpratation was a small peace of something written by someone interpretied by me in som way. i spose i did ok in that. the impromtu is a limitd prep speech, i draw a subject from an envelope and have 2 minutes to prepare a max length 5 minut speechify. i can normally do prety ok, but i dont think that one really went. like "howd it go?" "it didnt go" i didnt do wel on that one.
i need to brek that big long paragraph. thursday night we did a group interpretation of robin hood, limited by time and preparation time. we got mayb max two hours to prep and the interp wasnt even much of the robin hod story. but oh wel, it went well.
saturday night i got to be in a "group debate", a sort of funny incomplete debate with a bunch of people. we got the resolution (it was a value debate--you know the difference between team policy and lincoln-douglass value, yes?) "that carrots should be valued over candy". i was on the affirmative and didnt do much except answer cross-examination questions. we only went through the 1NC anyways.
did any of that boggle you? it was ment to. :#D
is that... a bloody nose maybe?

And with a bloody nose and this small note, I will end this short post. I have made up my mind, I WILL DO IT!! Right this minute I will switch and not delay any longer! "Goodbye cruel world!" or something! Lets hear it for cliques used out of context!

A small conclusion dedicated to my friend Evan:

Evan, where did that happiness go? You decided to be happy, and it all disappeared. Where did it go?

P.S.

OH! I am so INSULTED! They go and tell me for a week or two that I should switch, and when I try to, they tell me to WAIT!! AARRGH!!

Debate and Blogging

2006-11-13T20:38:00.000-06:00

If I believed in such, I would say "wish me luck", but since I don't I'm just gonna havta trust that God will bring me out of this without any "serious" problem.

I'm going to a speech and debate conference tomorrow. The conference doesn't actually start until Wednesday, I think, but we'll be there early. A five hour trip...
I don't know how many of you already know, but I was really discouraged by the debate tournament I went to last year. I don't think Mrs. Jones would like to hear such news, but I am getting stressed out by the idea of... well, I spose its mostly the preparation and all, or something. I'm not even sure myself.

(Now would be a really great time to get an eletter from F.B.)

Those Bloggers out there who have recently updated have not doubt gotten the same notification I did. The new version is ready. This new version should make many things more convenient, but also change the blogosphere forever. I say we do it. I already have my Google account, I don't really have to do much at all. What say you?

Another update

2006-11-05T20:06:00.000-06:00

More words on Lillian.

It is... just about 8:00 PM and Lillian has had a compound fracture. Yes, that is the worst kind I know of that you can get. She has to have surgery. Tonight. Its gonna be a long night for lil sister.

Request for prayer

2006-11-05T18:00:00.000-06:00

Its Lillian. You know, gimli, my little sister, biggest little sister, that person. She broke her arm falling off of a chair. She really isn't taking the pain very well, so pray that the pain would lessen a lot.

"This reminds me of a time back when..."

I can just imagine an old man saying something like that. Oh, Peter, you're so heartless, making jokes with your sister in pain. Tell me about it.

:(

hey guys

2006-11-02T09:07:00.000-06:00

Ok, I admit it, I am a little slow on the update. And I haven't seemed to do anything longer than - not very long. So here is a clipping from an email sent to F.B.

By the way, the mispellings are intentional. Its sort of a "tradition" in our emails.

chemistry was interesting, learning about the mole. no, not the smal fuzy thing that digs hols. the mole is a sort of shortcut for 6.02x10^23, like a couple is 2 and dozen is 12. it is best put this way. there are 6.02x10^23 atoms in 4.0 grams of Helium, and the atomic mass is 4.0. it doesnt make much sense yet, does it? chemistry is not my big spot.

and logarithms arent either. mom and i spent all day trying to figur out one problem that depended on the definition of a logarithm, and didnt figure it out until i loked at wat she had don and said "heres why its right, becase it is right". that was one werd problem, and yet so simple. like i said, it turnd out to be somethin rely simple that jus avoided me the whol time.

Hey! It took me half a second to write that all! ;-)

If you don't know, that was a short summary of Tuesday's not so well working stuf.

Tuesday actually did go rather well, to the extent that I got maybe 2/3s of the stuff done that I needed to. I normally end the day with plenty left to do tomorrow, but that Tuesday I had God's grace.

Wednesday went fine. Planned events happened, not much went on in the Bike Shop, I FINALLY FINISHED THE ESSAY!! :D

Anyways, this Thursday is going OK, not exceptional, I need to get to work. Bye, people.

Dinner

2006-10-27T09:12:00.000-05:00

Recently overheard at the dinner table:

"Does every state have its own national bird?"

Yes, every state has its own bird, even if it isn't a national bird.

:)

This was funnier when coming from Annalee!