10/15/09

Done with schoolwork for the week!

So, since I'm done with schoolwork for the week, I'm going to do a survey. :D

dy: 50 of the most random things you probably never needed to know about someone. REPOST WITH YOUR ANSWERS

1. whats your name spelt backwards? senoJ wehttaM


2. What did you do last night? consoled Tasha, went to sleep REALLY early


3. The last thing you downloaded onto your computer? updates for my computer


4. Have you ever licked a 9 volt battery? No, I would guess it would shock you.


5. Last time you swam in a pool? Geez, it's been a LONG time. I get to sit in a hot tub this weekend, does that count?


6. What are you wearing? underwear, jeans, red t-shirt, sweatshirt


7. How many cars have you owned? Personally owned (as in my name's on the title), 3. Total driven that I could all 'mine', 7


8. Type of music you dislike most? New country music. Just don't really like it.


9. Are you registered to vote? Yes


10. Do you have cable? Yes


11. What kind of computer do you use? HP Pavilion dv5


12. Ever made a prank phone call? Oh lordy yes. Many times.


13. You like anyone right now? I like my wife! :D


14. Would you go bungee jumping or sky diving? Uh, no. Too much of a chance of death.


15. Furthest place you ever traveled? I would guess Paris.


16.Do you have a garden? Yes, it's in front of the house


17. What's your favorite comic strip? Published, probably Pearls Before Swine. Online, there's a couple. Probably Ctrl-Alt-Del


18. Do you know all the words to the national anthem? Yes, know most of the second verse. Can find the other published versions in like 2 minutes.


19. Shower, morning or night? Either/Or. I produce lots of oil, unfortunately.


20. Best movie you've seen in the past month? Actually, no we haven't. There's not a lot of good ones out right now.


21. Favorite pizza toppings? Pepperoni


22. Chips or popcorn? Chips


23. What cell phone provider do you have? ATT and Verizon. Long story.


24. Have you ever smoked peanut shells? Not personally, but I like smoked peanuts


25. Have you ever been in a beauty pageant? No, but have been to a few.


26. Orange Juice or apple? Apple


27. Who were the last people you sat at lunch with? Uhh, I guess my parents since they were the last people we went out to lunch with.


28. favorite chocolate bar? Hershey's


29. Who is your longest friend and how long? Amanda Murphy, at least 10 years now


30. Last time you ate a homegrown tomato? A while. Will probably have some at Mom and Dad's this weekend if they used any in sauces.


31. Have you ever won a trophy? Baseball, Soccer, and actually chess!


32.Favorite artist? Van Gogh for painting, Ansel Adams for photography, too many to name for music

33. Favorite computer game? MLB 2k9 right now.


34. Ever ordered from an infomercial? No. But I have bought things that were in infomercials from Wal-Mart.


35. Sprite or 7-UP? either/or. Depends what's on sale.


36. Have you ever had to wear a uniform to school/work? Oh yes. Many times. The joy of working in food service.


37. Last thing you bought at Walgreens? I think cough drops. They have Root Beer throat drops!


38. Ever thrown up in public? I guess that would be when I threw up in the parking lot at Publix in Carrollton in 2002. Stupid headaches.


39. Would you prefer being a millionaire or finding true love? I've already found my true love, and it's worth more than anything in the world. :D


40. Do you believe in love at first sight? I do! And thankfully enough, I don't have to again!


41.Can exes just be friends? They can, but it's difficult.


42. Who was the last person you visited in the hospital? Heather. She was recovering from having her spleen taken out.


43. Did you have long hair as a young kid? Not very. I don't like long hair.


44. What message is on your voicemail machine? Hi, this is Matt. Leave me a message.


45. Where would you like to go right now? Gatlinburg. Going there this weekend!:D


46. What was the name of your first pet? Nemo


47. What kind of back pack do you have, and what's in it? I think it's a JanSport. I've had it since I went to Shorter. Dang, that's a decade ago almost.


48. Last incoming/outgoing call on your phone? Tasha


49. What is one thing you are grateful for today? That I found a home for a kitten that decided to come to the house. :D


50. What do you think about most? What I have to do next for class.

9/3/09

Heart stuff

So, here's what's going on. After my episode with my heart down at Kennestone hospital, they wanted me to follow up with a primary care doc. Went to one in Cartersville and pretty much just saw the doc, no tests, no bloodwork, etc. Tasha was less than thrilled with this, and neither was I. I ended up going to another doctor down in Marietta who is connected with the hospital, and have already been given another EKG, bloodwork to test for high cholesterol, and now I've got a stress test and electrocardiogram in a few weeks. I'm guessing that my new doc saw something on my paperwork from the hospital that she wants to get checked out, but I'd rather get it done and know I'm in the clear rather than only take my high blood pressure medicine.

On a less concerning note, I have been accepted into Liberty University's online program for Christian Leadership. I'm not quite sure where God will lead us with it, but I do know that it's the right thing to do. It's a one year program of study that will get me ready for a bevy of positions within the church or church organizations. I'm not quite sure where God will put me for a ministry, but I'm trusting completely!

Got to run for now. Inevitably, I have yard work to do and it's raining. :\ More later...

8/11/09

One more quick thing...

There is one more thing for me to state here. I feel that God's really been working in my life recently, so it might be for a reason that I may not be at Bank of America for too long. I think that God is leading me towards a place in the church, but I don't know where yet. I just know that every time that I pray for guidance on this, I know that God is completely there and leading me to this. I'm not sure what path I have to take yet, but I know that I'll get there soon. :)

Ok, more later...

Wow, long time.

So, Dad reminded me that I have a blog and I should post something! :D

Things have been sort of crazy for me the last month or so. I got a job with Bank of America, and a week later I came down with bronchitis. No big deal, take a couple of days off and then I'll be back to normal. Not so much. The week after I come back, I get sick that week with an ear infection stemming from the bronchitis. Well, I get back to work, work for another week and a half, then I come down with heart palpitations. I went to the hospital and got everything worked out. I stayed out for the weekend this last weekend, and then yesterday, came home AGAIN with high blood pressure. I went today to the doc, and they have me on medicine for it, so hopefully I'll be fine. It's just that I've got to talk to my supervisor when I get back. Not so good. We'll see what happens this week, and I'll update everybody.

Got to run for now, bad storms coming. More later...

5/29/09

Sleepy

So, here it is, 2:15 in the morning and I am still pretty much awake. Having insomnia doesn't help things too much when you're fighting a headcold. At least I know that I get to sleep in tomorrow and that vacation time is coming up really soon. We've set a decent budget for this coming month so that we can go to Florida and Virginia. I know we're going to be in FL for 5 days, then in VA for at least 4.

It feels like graduation was a month ago now, even though it's only been two weeks. I sort of dislike this long layoff before work starts for me. I did get my letter of intent to work for Bank of America the other day, so it is in the mail. I think that this is a good starting job for me, even though right now I'm not exactly thrilled about working in collections. Nevertheless, it's a job, and it'll help put food on the table for the time being. I'm going to keep my resume out for a while longer, and we'll see what happens.

Ok, going to try to get to sleep. Hopefully it'll come pretty soon. :) More later!

5/22/09

Graduation

So, I was looking at graduation pictures on AJC.com and saw the Kindergarten graduation pictures for some kids. Ok...first of all, what exactly are we celebrating? Congrats! You don't pee on yourself anymore! I mean, honestly. This kid had the cap and gown and a tassel. His parents must have dropped nearly $100 for this. Is it really necessary? What are we going to have next, class rings for kindergartners?! They already have them in Middle School, so why not?

I guess I just don't get it. :P

More later! :D

5/18/09

Doctors...

I am getting so tired of doctors not explaining things to us BEFORE they do $400 worth of work. Today, because Tasha didn't have any cysts (thank God), they said that any prescription or any work done would be in treatment rather than just diagnosis. They didn't even mention this to us at any point. Tasha argued with them, so they took $100 off, but we still have around $250 left to pay. Grr. And the worst part of all of this is that basically they are charging us full price for stuff that a regular OBGYN could do with us only paying for a co-payment. So, in essence, I guess we're going to stop taking all of the meds for a while, stop going to this doc and just go to the OBGYN again. If they aren't going to do anything more than them, why keep wasting our money? I mean, honestly, we aren't even halfway through the year and we've spent over $2000 on just doctor bills! Who needs savings, right? Thank God again that we haven't fallen behind on any of our regular bills.

I'll let y'all know how things go...more later...

Doctors...

I am getting so tired of doctors not explaining things to us BEFORE they do $400 worth of work. Today, because Tasha didn't have any cysts (thank God), they said that any prescription or any work done would be in treatment rather than just diagnosis. They didn't even mention this to us at any point. Tasha argued with them, so they took $100 off, but we still have around $250 left to pay. Grr. And the worst part of all of this is that basically they are charging us full price for stuff that a regular OBGYN could do with us only paying for a co-payment. So, in essence, I guess we're going to stop taking all of the meds for a while, stop going to this doc and just go to the OBGYN again. If they aren't going to do anything more than them, why keep wasting our money? I mean, honestly, we aren't even halfway through the year and we've spent over $2000 on just doctor bills! Who needs savings, right? Thank God again that we haven't fallen behind on any of our regular bills.

I'll let y'all know how things go...more later...

5/6/09

End of School

So, this week is the last week of school for me. What a weird feeling it is to realize that after nine long years that I will be participating in a commencement ceremony. It has been a long and strange journey the last couple of months. I never thought that I would be the kind of person who would be involved in an internship, much less completing one!

I have one last paper to turn in tomorrow in the morning, but that's going to be the easy part. I have about a week after that to tidy up the house and to clean up the yard for all of the people who will be coming to the house. Needless to say with all of this rain, I'll have to mow quite a bit and weedeat a lot of the yard.

Ok, got to get to bed, the morning is fast approaching. More later!

4/21/09

Things are better...

So we got things straightened out with the registrar's office finally. Basically, the computer system at Kennesaw didn't recognize the numbers from West Georgia when it transferred over and we had to replace those that didn't work with some that did. What is most frustrating is that KSU hasn't recognized these since I got there. I could have been able to graduate LAST year. :( Oh well...at least I finally am.

More later...
Oh, I'm pretty po'ed today. I just found out that the registrar's office at Kennesaw hasn't been counting all of my history classes from West Georgia. They didn't count 6 (SIX!!!) of my classes from there. In other words, I could have been done without taking all of these extra classes! Dammit! I'm so frustrated that I could spit nails. All I know is that I had better walk in graduation in three weeks or else I'm leaving this school....arg. So mad.

I'll update everyone later this week on what they are going to do for me...more later....

3/22/09

Fireproof

I just wanted to give you a quick update on things that have been going on spiritually in our lives of late. We left Oak Leaf Church, not because we didn't like the worship style, but for me personally, I felt like 1) I was getting pigeonholed into a service position that I wasn't comfortable with, and 2) that the pastor wasn't exactly being straightforward with some things happening in the church. This is not to say that he isn't the right person for that church, but I find it hard to follow a person who says that you should give up a vacation to give money to the church and then turns around and goes on one to Las Vegas within two weeks of stating this in front of the church...

I think that what was happening with that church is an overreaction to a financial situation that they did not plan accordingly for. That said, I still pray for that ministry and hope that it is extraordinarily successful. In the end, we ended up being just another face in the crowd, and weren't using our spiritual gifts to the extent that they should be used.

We have been going to Cedarcrest Church of late. It is an offshoot of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church, and it is much more controlled in terms of how the church is run, their beliefs (which are more transparent and concrete than a few other churches we have seen around Cartersville, not just Oak Leaf), and were more than willing to let us serve in a variety of ways. So far, we are already helping in Elevate. That is the children's material out of North Point Church (I think). (I saw that Sherwood Baptist down in Albany {the one that does the movies...see below} uses it on their Wednesday night services, too.) We had a field day today as well where families could play games together, and also where people could just congregate and get to know other people. The church is already running around 1000 people, but it still feels like a small church. This is the most difficult thing for a quickly-growing large church to do, and I think that they are accomplishing it so far.

We also have been attending a Community Group. It's pretty much a small group (same idea, different name). We were originally attracted to it because they were doing a study on marriage called "The Time Starved Marriage". Not that we really are time-starved, but we still wanted to do something on marriage. In any case, this group has been together for nearly two years, are already pretty well entrenched (but not hostile to 'outsiders'), and have formed strong bonds between one another. This said, we have fit in very well with one another already! It doesn't hurt that there is a good mix of people in there from all different walks of life, and it doesn't hurt that there are two other teachers in the group as well.

Tonight, we watched Fireproof in our Community Group. Man, what an awesome movie. It's sort of sad to realize that a lot of relationships could be saved with some simple communication, listening to one another's needs and wants (both emotionally, physically, and spiritually), and respecting one another. God's love to us was shown through sending Jesus, and it is most definitely symbolic in a marriage of how we are supposed to treat one another. As a man, I have to look and see what sort of man I am being towards my wife. Am I treating her the way that God wants me to treat her? Do I listen to her needs and wants? Sometimes, it can be very difficult to do the right thing, honestly. It takes a lot of work to make marriage work!

It is always easy to be in a marriage in the easy times, but of course of late, it's not been so easy. It seems like we've been poked and prodded every way that we can be...although I still haven't had to have an ultrasound of my 'boys', so you're still up on me, Nate. :D It has been tough on our marriage to lose a baby. We were so excited that we were already pregnant and then we lost the child. For about two weeks, our marriage was sort of in a funk, and it was mostly due to me. I didn't know how to react to Tasha in a way, and I didn't know how to deal with my emotions. I felt very close and very far away from God at the same time. I wanted to know why we couldn't be parents yet, but I fell heavily on his arms for strength at the same time. It took a lot of prayer to realize that God will give us a child in his due time, and that I have to be awfully patient and rely totally on Him. This all said, I know that our marriage is truly 'fireproof' from this experience.

I know that God gave me the ultimate mate in Tasha, and I thank Him for her every day. She filled a hole in my life that I had been searching for for so long, and I know that she was sent to me by God. I hope that my life and the way that I treat her is a reflection of God's love to us, and that we can be a shining example of how a marriage should work. I hope that it is also a reflection of how God can work in other people's relationships.

Ok, got to get to bed. I feel better now..:) More later! :D

2/26/09

What a year so far....

It's been more than crazy so far this year. I'm taking only three classes, but they seem to be the most reading-intensive classes that I've taken in a long time. One of the classes is called History of US Religion. In the five weeks that we've had class, we've already had three books to read, and we still have another three to finish. Thankfully enough, the other book reviews for this class are only two page papers, which isn't hard at all.

I have African-American History since Reconstruction. This should be an interesting class, but so far, no dice. It's mostly lecture. This is something I would expect out of a 2000 level history class, so I'm not exactly happy with it. I also haven't really learned much in that class because we're just sort of hitting the high points and not really discussing the reasons behind what was happening during the Gilded Age for blacks. In my previous African-American history classes, it has almost always been discussion-based classes which I prefer more than straight lecture.

The final class is my internship. What I am doing is researching the Cobb County NAACP chapter. They donated their materials that they had in their office to the Kennesaw State archives last February, and I've been working through what they donated. I also will be setting up interviews with people from Marietta and Cobb County to talk about their involvement in the NAACP and how life changed between 1945 and now. I've been reading a ton for that class as well, mostly oral histories. This coming weekend, Tasha and I are heading to the Georgia Association of Historians meeting in Dahlonega later today.
The other major thing that has been happening is that we've been trying to get pregnant. It's been more than trying, especially of late. So far, we've spent around $1200 out of pocket to doctors to figure out what is going on with Tasha and my bodies. We have one more procedure that is going to cost about $1500 that we aren't exactly sure how we are going to pay for right now, but I know that God will bless us.

Of course I am looking for a job right now, too. The job market in Atlanta is pretty bad to say the least. Also, most businesses who are looking for people are looking for either sales or for someone who is way more experienced than I am. I've been applying at different places, but so far, no real interest has been shown in me. On March 26th, there is another job fair on campus at Kennesaw State, this time for government and non-profit jobs. I feel way more confident in that than I have in a while about any job fairs.

Lent is here now, and I really am thinking that God is leading me to give up my job search (other than the job fair on the 26th) for Lent. I know that it's crazy because I would only have about a month before graduation, but I think that God wants me to do this so that I can focus on God more and rely on him more. Any thoughts?

Ok, got to go for now...more later...:D

2/4/09

It's been a while...

So, I just realized that I haven't updated since the beginning of the semester. I had my first paper due today, and I think that it went well. The internship is kicking my ever-loving hind end. I've been reading a TON, and I have to work more in the archives than I have been. It's very informative for me, but it's been hard. Anyway, got to get to bed, I'll write more tomorrow.

More later!

1/12/09

The beginning of the end...

So, here I finally am at the cusp of the final semester of my undergraduate degree, and of all things, I have mixed emotions. I am of course happy that in 16 weeks (1 off because of Spring Break), I will finally be ending a very long and winding path towards my degree. I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would have taken nearly a decade to finish, nor that I would have transferred schools two times since I left high school. Looking back, it's funny to think that I figured that I would end up in music, but now I am in history. I also thought that I would have graduated at about 22 and had been married at 23 or 24, but obviously, that didn't happen (and it's most definitely for the better!).

On the other hand, I'm also sort of scared out of my wits. I am quickly realizing that I have a LOT of work to accomplish by the end of this semester. I have an internship with Dr. Scott, my advising professor, and it will be great. I just hope that somehow a job may come out of it and I won't have to look too hard! (I know, wishful thinking..as Clark Howard puts it, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is...)

In any case, I know that it's going to be an exciting time for our family. It's going to be weird to have to wear that stupid hat for the first time in 9 years....:D

More later!

1/5/09

Goals for life

So, this was a challenge that our pastor did for himself and I stole the idea. Here are some of my goals for my life (some from short, some from long)

1) Go back down to between 200 and 205 (I've got at least 30 pounds to go)
2) Be debt free within the first year after I am employed full-time (other than the house and the land)
3) Get a doctoral degree
4) Go to at least one World Series game
5) Be married as long as I possibly can!
6) Be a good father for my children (whenever we have them)
7) Graduate from Kennesaw
8) Take Tasha to Europe
9) Work in the National Archives on a major project (yeah, I'm a history dork...)
10) Learn how to sew better than I already do