Prepare For Liftoff

Hey everybody,

So, I decided to make this blog for a variety of reasons. For starters, it's almost eight in the morning, and I'm really bored. Then there's the fact that I should probably be keeping my writing ability up, so instead of just wasting away during the summer and school year I hope to be able to update this regularly. With my traditionally length posts, of course (though this one should be quite short).

The third reason is probably because I want to see how much I grow over the time period that I remain at Harding (two years to go) as well as to give me a day-to-day (ish) compilation of what I've done. This includes during the summer, during the school year, and quite possibly beyond.

So, I shall begin by telling you all what I did yesterday.

It most certainly wasn't my favorite Friday of all time. I needed to talk to the youth ministers (or the equivalents of) whom I wanted to intern for, but that involved me completely interrupting my usual summer sleeping habit. You see, if you sleep from dawn until dusk, you can't really get a call in to people whose work hours are from 8am-5pm. It just doesn't happen. So I had to sacrifice some sleep yesterday in order to talk to them.

The results? The cancellation of one intern attempt, leaving me with two intern positions open. At the beginning of this week I actually had six. In less than a full week I've managed to eliminate them to just two (I got turned down for both the Burnt Hickory Church of Christ in Georgia that I wanted as well as the Whetstone Boys Ranch position that I wanted). The only ones left are Cross City Church of Christ, my current favorite, located in Cross City, Florida, as well as Cedar Church of Christ in Wilmington, Delaware. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the traveling cost to get that far north. We're talking about a thousand dollars easy for travel, and I still have no clue how much they're actually willing to pay me for the summer and whether or not they're planning on compensating for travel expenses to get there. Not exactly my favorite, but if that's what I end up with...beggars can't be choosers. An internship is an internship.

So, after doing that yesterday morning I managed to get my attention caught by the History Channel. I had a brief while (about thirty minutes) where I was very angry at them. Have you seen this guy, this 'Naked Archaeologist'? First of all, that's a horrible name, as the guy is nowhere close to naked in either clothing choice or in almost any other form that I can think of. Maybe intelligence, as he seemed to be lacking quite a bit. He seemed to want to convince the viewers that the Danoi (as in, those who supposedly the two epic poems which Homer wrote are based upon) are somehow connected to the Tribe of Dan (as in, one of the twelve Israel tribes). If this 'Naked Archaeologist' had some sort of conclusive or archaeological proof that such a connection existed, then I might have listened further, but his evidence made no sense at all. Comparing Samson to Hercules? Saying that they're the same because they migrate a lot? Because they had ships? Are you kidding me? First off, almost every civilization from that time had a strong man story. You might as well call all of the civilizations the same exact thing (I know, initially they were, but that's not the point here). Point invalid. False sir. Second, all of the tribes of Israel were migratory. That doesn't mean that they're the same as the Danoi in Greece. And ships? What type of idiot nation wouldn't have ships if their land was touching a sea, teeming with fish and trade opportunities? The Israelites did many things that were idiocy (how many times must you leave God's side before you realize that it's a really bad idea to do that?), but these people weren't stupid when it came to surviving with the resources they had. They wandered for forty years in the desert. That means that these people probably know how to live off the land, or the sea as the case may be. The entire Mediterranean area did it as well. Were they all Danoi? Nope. So, sir, until you find more conclusive evidence then please stop spouting off stupid theories of yours.

There were other things about that particular program that angered me, but that'll have to not be mentioned. Mainly because I don't remember them. The next show, though, was on Wild West Technology: Execution. It detailed the various forms and stories behind the styles of execution back in the American frontier days. While this program spent what I thought to be too much time on the hangman's scenarios (45 minutes out of the hour), it was overall an interesting show. The show on Witches that followed afterwards was quite entertaining as well, as it went all the way from the origins of Wicca to the Inquisition. From there it went to the obvious Salem Witch Trials and then on into an explanation about the current Wiccan movement. Rather interesting.

After this I drifted off into a restless sleep. Seeing as how thunderstorms have been rolling through during the last forty-eight hours it has been pretty much off and on for sleeping throughout the entire household. I got to sleep until a little after five, when, for the second time this week, I was woken up by a small child (the first being Justin being plopped down upon me while sleeping...I totally thought it was Brenden until I let him fall next to me and realized that he wasn't making a sound as well as was rather small to be Brenden).

So, after waking up I groggily answered people's texts and waited for my chance to return to sleep. I went to sleep about nine, woke up about two this morning, and have been up ever since. Me and Grandma went to McDonalds and grabbed some cokes (I was really thirsty for some caffeine) and then we went to WhataBurger for a sandwich. What've I been doing all night since then? Researching various topics as they come to my fancy. I don't particularly remember any of them in particular, but that's what eight in the morning does for you.

Anyways, I'm going to go to sleep. Dad's concert is tonight, and I'm really excited to see Sandra Dee and Steve McGranahan (The World's Strongest Redneck...and World's Strongest Preacher, coincidentally) since I haven't seen them in the past few years. I'm also excited that hopefully we'll eat at the truck stop again and I'll get to have a conversation with Dad, Debbie, and a few others that I haven't gotten to have extensive conversations with in a while. I have no clue who's going to be there.

Audios. This is the end of the first post. From here on out, we're lifting off into the unknown, the unseen, and the unforgettable.