Day 1: Church day

Well day 1 at Texas Bible Institute started well. We woke up, showered and got ready, and headed out on a bus to Katy. The church that is run by the pastor who runs the school is an hour away from campus---all the way in Katy, Texas.

Church was a shock. They ushered us into this big black-curtained room and everyone started freaking out and screaming and praying "in tongues". It was pretty hard to swallow---especially after about a half an hour of it. Everything at the church was loud and wild and it was too much for me. I actually walked out with my ears ringing. So I've discovered what my mission right now is: to start getting over my differences with these people. I'll explain here in a minute.

Anyways, we ended up going to Katy Memorial City Mall after church. This is like the BIGGEST mall I've ever been to... Lunch was really expensive, but the Apple store is pretty amazing.


Ok in order to explain what I was saying... I met a couple of kids who sat down with me and talked real to me. They shared their experiences from last year and all the places they'd come from and things they did. I'll admit to being judgmental about everyone here from the word "go" I walked into this school with the pre-conceived notion that everyone here's gonna be a crazy, stuck-up holly roller or they'd be a total phony. These two kids I met yesterday proved me wrong. I'll get pictures of em eventually I'm sure.

After we ended up back at the campus, we went into town and bought groceries and other supplies for the room. Couple of the guys made grill cheese and coffee before bed.

Anyways, life has"started rolling" here at TBI... I'll have more news in the days to come.

Showing in THREE DAYS!

Another good day. Last night I'd forgotten that I wasn't due in to work until noon today, so I still went to bed early and still woke up at 6:30 like always... but then I remembered, so I went to sleep and got to get up at 8:30 today! Man... it was nice.

Anyways, so I went downtown to check in with Café Centrale to see if they needed anything from me before Friday... but I never caught anyone cause it looked like they were real busy... July's photographs were still up, so I figured they wouldn't be needing my gallery yet. So I went down to the courthouse and got my registration renewed, and while I was down there I stared for a long time at that old Catholic church next to Sacred Heart school... I'll be back over there to take pictures for sure. It's a neat old building... one of these days this summer I'm gonna go around getting pictures of old houses and building... for sure. Old busted cars and trucks are cool too.

Went by Sonic cause I've been wanting to talk to Rick about stuff since I'm leaving and all... I kinda have a relationship that goes further than Boss-Employee with him. I've always heard that if you wanna make it in life hang out with people who ARE making it, so there you go. But he wasn't there this morning, so it was off to Laughlin for me.

On my lunch break I went by the Burger King out there and ran into the Lunsford family having lunch and I was telling Mr. Lunsford about my plans and everything and he made a peculiar comment about "approving of my plan, even though I don't care what he thought", and it kinda bothered me, cause I don't know what he meant by it. I disagreed, though, asking who led him to believe that, and he didn't answer, but I'm thinking he mighta just been playing with me. It does kinda bother me, though. I've always looked up to him...

After work I stopped back by Sonic and finally caught Rick and visited with him for an hour-and-a-half or so, and it was a good talk, he's coming to my Photo Viewing and everything, and he was telling me all this stuff about his high school years and his time in the Army... pretty cool. I feel like if I make an effort to maintain a casual relationship with him that he'll be able to better understand my plans and goals and he'll be able to take care of me as an employee... it's working.

And before I got home, I went back by Centrale to see if Rose was there, but she'd just left and all the July photos were gone, so I'm thinking I need to get the rest of my stuff framed and ready cause it's gonna go up pretty soon. I'm really excited... it's all "butterflies in the stomach" kinda.

No work at Sonic tonight, so I'm stoked.

Bad at Poker

So a lot of us went to Krysta's tonight and played some Texas Hold 'Em and B.S... and I'm bad at both. Then they decided to straighten Chris and Rory's hair... so I took a couple pictures while I was there. We only hung out for an hour or so, though, so we didn't get to do much.

Hanging out with everyone kinda gave me flashbacks of high school---and I really hated high school a lot. Bad memories of me making a fool of myself are just flooding in... I feel fine though. In all honesty, I miss the ACHS days like CRAZY... just not the retarded days. I miss 9th grade at the old school too... memories of the rubberband fight when Mrs. Garcia flipped out and we just kept on shooting...

The Rainy Thoughts

Today was neither amazing nor disappointing... so far. But it was quiet, so I definitely DO appreciate at least ONE thing about today. Nothing really negative happened, and I was able to just sit down at work (Laughlin) and do whatever for eight hours. Rain complicated a little bit of the day... but not enough to keep from going to Sonic here in two hours (...dang).

Speaking of Sonic, I only work three days this week and they're all closing shift---which are bad nowadays. I closed last night and the night before and I am pretty close to WORN OUT. It's not that it's been really busy (and it has), it's just having to stay up that late and run around serving people food in the humid-warm, night air while I'm losing precious hours of sleep... or just hours I could use to just "wind down" from the day.

I'm pretty discouraged about my poor schedule up there. I almost want to give it up, or at least SUGGEST the idea. I need money for TBI---PRETTY BAD. I've been looking around and gathering things to sell, and I may end up giving up some pretty nice things... disheartening, but necessary. I WILL go to TBI---I don't care what happens.

I feel pretty short for words today. But I think I've given a pretty good representation of my thoughts since this morning. I really need to work on my frames today, cause I'm not even halfway through. I'm getting really excited about the Viewing on Friday... I've got some cool ideas.

I hope everyone is well.

Framing

Well I got my photo prints in the mail from Wal-Mart.com yesterday and I was/am super excited about framing and displaying at Café Centrale next Friday. I've framed 7 of 32 photographs already... and I spent hours on them yesterday.


I'm still feeling pretty sick, though. I got over the achy-painful "I'm sick" part and now I'm to the itchy eyes, feels-like-you-gotta-sneeze-all-the-time part. I can't decide which one I hate worse now. I just took this Tylenol Cold stuff--I didn't know Tylenol was IN the cold business... sure hope it works.

I had this crazy dream last night that I got married, and the weird thing was that the girl kept changing on me. I was probably married to three or four different girls last night, and it was confusing me cause I couldn't figure out who the hell I was married to! And two or three of the girls are bad enough that I'd probably have killed myself for marrying in real life--so I needed to know who it was.

So this morning I woke up and I've been irritable all day. I think I'm gonna try to spend some time alone so that I don't slip up and say something I don't mean if I get aggravated. I think it's mainly cause this is a pretty annoying cold.

Home: Sick

Well, last week Isaac came down with a cold and he "called in" about being sick for two days at Sonic. I guess I made fun of him a little too much, though. Seems like the guy is always sick and he can't handle anything when he is... so he sat around for a couple days and every time I'd see him he'd be complaining about being sick or he'd sniffling and hacking...

Seems like he was acting accordingly. Today marks the first day I've ever called in to work over a head-cold. You know how sometimes there'll be those viruses going around and sometimes everyone's case'll be worse than normal cause it's a more powerful virus? Well this is a "more powerful" cold, friends. I don't know what's up, but it's been pretty bad already today. When I woke up this morning, it felt like I'd being banging on my head with a hammer for a couple hours the night before. I'm sore all over the place, too.

Wow, I probably sound SUPER whiny right now... I'm just trying to be descriptive, really. I could be at work right now, but I don't feel right putting everyone else in danger just because I want to get some hours, you know.

Anyways, yesterday was a lot of fun. I spent all morning at Laughlin learning Microsoft Access, which is a pretty cool program since it's surprisingly easy (I mean, it's MICROSOFT, what's going on?). And I'm kinda excited cause now I can probably use it to create databases for my websites and everything... but I got off work at noon and came home. Lunch was these amazing hamburgers my dad made with onions cooked into them... oh man.

I wanted to go out and take pictures cause it was sunny and I knew of this cool place that I thought would look great in the sun, so I called Chris Malloy and he headed out to my place. Course my parents made me mow the front lawn first :( but it wasn't hella hot so it was all good.

So when Chris got here, we headed out to Sycamore Creek, which is a creek on Hwy 90 about 5 miles past Laughlin... click the link, it's a map. Anyways, there were all these fences everywhere and neither of us felt like getting in trouble because it was a road construction zone at the time... so somebody would probably see us out there, even though it IS in the middle of nowhere... and it's BEAUTIFUL.

So we turned around and I told Chris that I knew of another cool place that I've been to and wanted to take pictures of, so I took him out to this gi-normous hill out by the San Felipe cemetery and we started climbing up. The cool thing about the hills out there is all the erosion leaves behind TONS of interesting fossils, rocks, and petrified wood. It's a short hike up, but we spent like ten, fifteen, twenty minutes hiking up there cause we were looking for cool stuff. Wonder if there's any arrowheads... Any was there were some storm rolling in from the north, and I was kinda worried about lightning, but Chris was awfully EXCITED about lightning, so we spent a while up there.


We went home around 6 and Joey joined up with us, bringing some pizza over and we looked at our photos... about eighty of my hundred photos were OVEREXPOSED BEYOND BELIEF... yeah they're so ruined I can't do hardly anything with them. See, I haven't done a lot of shooting with my 300mm lens yet, so I'm not used the aperture settings... it's different than my other lenses. But I was so disappointed in my ruined pictures.

Anyways, we decided to go back up to the hill just before sunset so we could get more pictures, and the sun started to go down RIGHT as we drove up, so we were booking it up that hill as fast as we could and when we reached the top, Chris and I both had these asthma attacks and I think he almost died :D... I was pretty messed up, too. Nevertheless, I ended up getting some cool sunset pictures up there.



So yesterday was a really cool day... but today kinda sucks. But it'll be over in eight hours.

Update about the Viewing

Well I've got a couple of weeks left to be picking out my favorite photos to be displayed at the viewing in August, but I'm not sure whether to start printing yet or to wait until I can get as many photos as possible before I start printing.

But I'm excited. I'm gonna be looking for frames today. Believe it or not, ROSS actually has some pretty good specimens.

Hope to see yall there on August 3rd!

I'll keep you guys updated.

ESPIE PHOTO SUMMER

About two months ago I got this great idea to start taking my photography to another level. Right now I can say it's my more serious art. I love playing music and all, but photography has definitely captured me. I saved up and have purchased a new Nikon dSLR (you can see a picture of it on my homepage), and it's AMAZING.

Anyways, I wanted to explain that I will be visiting many locations in Del Rio this summer to take photographs. I want to bring another side out of Del Rio that perhaps is not often appreciated. My good shots will be posted online in two locations... this is where it gets tricky, so I want to explain.

If you want to see my best shots, visit my Flickr Page.
If you want to see my other shots, visit my Picasa Album.

Things for REALS.

Man, God is laying the bricks! Things are beginning to fall into place I never would have expected. There's so much ahead. There's so much that's gonna happen. I'm so excited I don't know how to express the thoughts. Seeing change come about for real for once is the craziest feeling that has ever existed in me.

I can't let it ever stop. I can't turn away. Man O man there's no way I can ditch all this and go looking for my life again. I love being dead! I can just sit here and be OK now. I didn't think I'd ever feel this feeling again, but now I do.

I'm so excited about the light that's starting to creep around people hearts. I'm so stoked about the doors being opened, so the cool can come on in. O man, I'm so pumped up.

Wheels keep rolling

Tonight, I finally can and will say that I have never been more excited about Christ in all my life. In days to come, I hope I can continue to say that, because I know there's no end to his joy! There's no way God's world can get boring! His joy will never end!

We've opened up support group again and tonight was a landmark. I know I left more excited than I was all day, I know Joey got some words and so did Chris. I'm hoping everyone else is pretty stoked, because I know I am.'

Joey's and my spirit are saying the same thing about Del Rio. It's one thing to feel something, but another thing when someone else feels it too, confirming it.

There's a job to do.