Fall In, Fall Out

well, this is it. my last day in california is over, and i had a blast at the coyote tonight after a great church service this morning. there are lots of pictures and videos i'd love to post right now, but i've got to get to sleep because i've got a good eleven hours worth of driving to do tomorrow, the most i will do the whole week. the plan is thus:

monday: san diego, ca -> el paso, tx

tuesday: elpaso, tx -> dallas, tx

wednesday: dallas, tx -> meridian, ms

thursday: meridian, ms -> sevierville, tn

friday: sevierville, tn -> edgewater, md

i should be arriving home in maryland at approximately 7pm on friday night if all goes according to plan and there aren't any major delays. it's going to be a heck of a week, but i will attempt to keep blogging daily to keep you all posted throughout the week here and on facebook/twitter. it's getting late, so it's time to sleep. i can't believe everything fit in the car! no cat scratcher tree, it was too heavy after all, but i got the top piece off so the catty has a place to lay during the ride when she isn't in her cage. i think she'll like it. ;-D goodnight to all and goodbye to some.

So Many Purring

it's done! the question: what is it? 'it's it — what is it?' wow, i'm annoying. well it = the website, as well as the room slash packing. the website took a bit longer than i had hoped, but it came out better than i thought it would as well. it will be live tomorrow, and i can link it here if i so desire to let you all in on exactly what i've been working on. plus all of you nerdy web designer types can make fun of my non-elegant code and lack of external css. yep!

as for the room, that took a lot less time than i thought it would. i could've gotten it done faster still if i had been a little less discriminate, but i had fun finding some neat stuff i thought was completely missing. actually, now that i think about it, i probably spent more time detailing my car than i did in the room organizing and cleaning. here's a picture of the big haul:

total: 3 red crates, 2 plastic bins, 1 cat carrier, 1 suitcase, 1 safety case and a computer case that's completely filled with a ton of random stuff. all that + my clothes and my personal effects [including laptop, monitor, etc.] is everything that's going into the car. hopefully it will all fit, and by fit i don't mean physically fit within the dimensions of the vehicle, because that is a given. it's just not that much. by fit, i mean not cause my car to sink down so low that my tires and wheel wells get to know each other on a first name basis, if you know what i mean.

the collapsing cabinet and potentially collapsing cat-scratcher tree are a different story. not sure how i'll manage to squeeze that in there, if it's even possible.

oh my! so much to say. lots of things happened today. this morning i went to visit grandpa in the hospital, which was good. i didn't get up too early, don't worry. he had an angioplasty yesterday and he was discharged today, so my mom and my aunt kelly drove him and lynn [de facto wife] to ramona and they took themselves the rest of the way out to ocotillo wells. after that, i cleaned a bit and chatted with my friend richy brasher, whose wife's blog can be found here! it was nice, and we talked about reformed theology, which is always great. then i talked to my wife which is always greater than talking to anyone else!

tonight was the first half of my two-day event to celebrate my leaving california, which was held at buca di beppo, a pretty nifty italian restaurant. i had chicken parmesan, which was somewhat lackluster, and some pretty good pasta. their bread was excellent. all but six people who said they were coming actually came, which was cool. got to see the lazzes, the stimsons, the seevers, my sister and bobby fleury. all in all, it was a good night with some good times. tomorrow night we will be at the coyote bar in carlsbad, where my dad will be playing. come hang out!

man, i blog so late. it's 3am now, and i started this a looooong time ago. tomorrow is another busy day, and monday i'm gone. pray that i'll get everything done! i still need to: get a set of alan wrenches and get the 'boom booms' [sub-woofers] installed in the trunk, replace my wiper blades, fix my wiper fluid shooter thingy and secure my duct tape rigged intake boot. yee-haw! oh yeah, i did one other thing today:

yep.

Dancing Alley

i never thought that i could possibly be as proud of having a clean car interior as i am now. it only took me like 5 hours, but i managed to completely detail the whole inside of my car [whom i named 雞炒車 — lit. 'chicken fried car' but actually 'chicken car accident' in spoken cantonese] which, if you ask my brother or wife, was definitely necessary. i don't think i had ever cleaned the center console in the entire time i've owned the car, which would be over 2 years now. anyway, it looks great. i'd post a picture, but by the time i was finished it was too dark. maybe tomorrow.

work was mostly good, but bittersweet, as it's going to be sad not having the mack doodle around anymore. that's okay, it just makes me want kids that much more, the prospect of which is starting to become increasingly exciting! finished almost all of the last page of the website i've been doing, which i slowed down on because it doesn't need to be finished until sunday afternoon. i'm a sucker for taking any reason to procrastinate and running with it.

tonight, as i'd mentioned yesterday, i was supposed to visit my maternal grandfather in the hospital, but he had his procedure today [which went exactly how they wanted it to, so good news] so we're going in the morning instead. i could've gone out, but since i'll be busy tomorrow morning, i wanted to get some cleaning/organizing done tonight. i got some done, but took a bit of time out to go get dinner with my sister. it was good times! we went to denny's, which is not a good restaurant by any stretch of the imagination but its inherent nostalgia makes up for that.

cat, why do you only sit on me when i don't want you to?

did i mention lately that i love my wife? i don't think i mention it here enough. she's been such an encouragement to me in the last few weeks, reading me her sermon notes from sunday morning and telling me about her morning devotionals [piper sermons for now] and all that the Lord has been teaching her. it's really great, and she seems to be growing by leaps and bounds. the one she listened to today was on proverbs 31, which i was nervous about because i've heard so many sermons on this verse that it's almost become trite, but it was really great.

it got me thinking about the concept of 'fearing the Lord' and what exactly that means and why we should fear God and how we should fear God. piper said that if we run from God because we fear Him, we don't fear Him enough. how true is that? if you were truly afraid of the Lord, you'd be running toward Him, because you would know that He is as merciful as He is inescapable. if the expression 'food for thought' were ever appropriate, now would be the time. i'll leave you with that.

p.s. my wife is awesome and she wins forever.

Need To Know

school work done, website almost completely done, room halfway clean, stuff not quite organized. today was a good day, a productive day. i've not got much to say, except that tonight my sister and i filmed and produced what i would humbly regard as one of the greatest video responses i've ever seen on youtube. like all good video responses, they're best viewed in context, so click here to see the original video first. after that, click here to watch our response. enjoy!

tomorrow is my last day at 'work' watching mckenzie, which is really sad. i'm gonna miss that kid. i will have to make a neat mosaic of all the random iphone pics i've taken of her over these past two months, because there really are some pretty great ones. here's an example:

tomorrow night i'm supposed to be going to my buddy nick's house to watch alien 3 [we watched the first two a few weeks ago — thoroughly enjoyed both for very different reasons] but i'll be visiting my grandfather in the hospital. if you're friends with me on facebook, you may be friends with my sister who posted a prayer request yesterday for my grandpa. he suffered something like a miniature heart attack, and he's got to have a procedure done and the outcome is not certain.

please pray that if God wills for him to live, that he would live thankfully and glorify the Father. pray also that if he is to die, that his family [myself included] would be comforted through his loss. i hope that doesn't happen, i love my grandfather a lot. it seems like his wife, my grandmother, died only yesterday. well i don't mean to be depressing, but that's really all i've got to say for now. only 3.5 more days until i leave california. crazy.

Days Drag On

each day i spend apart from my wife is a day i am missing a vital part of who i am. marriage being what it is — a sacred vow between two individuals that have became one flesh together — to be far from one's wife is to be far from a part of oneself. i know there's only a week and a few days left 'til i see my love again, but i thought i would take the time to list the things i miss about her.

• feeling her skin against mine. how obvious? maybe, but this is the first thing i think about when i think about missing her.
• the smell of her hair. so many things here remind me of it. even smelling my own pillow which smells nothing like her reminds me of her hair's scent.
• her pouty faces. pictures through sms and e-mail just aren't the same. i want to see it live and up-close.
• the monster dog. i know, missing the dog isn't the same as missing her. but every time i look at my cat, i remember that the dog is not here. you know?
• intimacy in general. being in close proximity with someone has an effect on how you feel about that person. it's irreplaceable.
• watching videos/t.v. shows together. when we're apart, i'm not allowed to watch 'our shows' [except for lost] until we're together again. i don't really miss the shows at all, i just miss watching them together with her.

this is clearly not an exhaustive list, and i could go on and on about missing her, but i won't. those who are reading this may or may not know how much i love my wife, and how much i long to be in her arms again. but if you didn't before, i hope you have a better idea now. today was a good day, and i got a lot accomplished again. this time it was on the website, which is about 80% done, thanks to the guy finally sending me the pictures i needed. i'll post a longer blog tomorrow, but for now i must sleep and dream of my lovely bride.

Get Off Your High Horse!

the vlog i mentioned is done! the link is not here, because it is currently uploading, but by the time i finish typing this blog entry, it will probably be ready. so i don't know why i'm typing what i just typed. why do i do stuff like that? i'm a dork.

in a word: productive! i got a lot done today, between editing the julieandstacy video and the one i just finished, i'm pretty satisfied with my work. i got a chance to help a friend with his paper that he was stressing out about, which was cool because i do hope to be a teacher someday. really though, if i'm able to help people now and educate them on topics that i know more than them about or help them with some aspect of academia i'm familiar with... doesn't that make me one already? anyway, pray for him. he's got six classes this semester and he's getting married in the fall. his name is zach!

aiya... this brings me back on the topic i was talking about yesterday. is it weird that i'm that new to the whole social media experience [specifically twitter] that i get giddy when some e-lebrity makes the effort to read my blog and send an @reply to me? anyway, dan brown responded by saying that he would argue that information should be free, but he didn't expand on that or make a response to my further questioning. hopefully he'll do so in the future, i'd love to hear that one.

if you haven't notice, my titles tend to have little to do with the content of my posts themselves [yesterday's being a notable exception]. they're usually whatever i'm thinking of at the time. this one comes from the first line of an age sixteen song called 'dear judas'. i use it in 004, my latest vlog, which i mentioned earlier. yep. this has been a short blog. watch the video!

Education For Sale

as many of you may know, i've been attempting to be more active within the youtube community these days, and i subscribe to a lot of different people with a lot of different ideas. just this afternoon, dan brown posted a video concerning institutionalized education. instead of summarizing the video, i'm just going to link it here and let you watch it, then respond afterward.

the interesting thing about this video is that the topic concerns something that i was just talking about with my uncle marc at my grandfather's house earlier today. we were really talking about politics and economics, which led into a discussion of academia in general. this makes sense, as he is a doctorate-level professor at a school that i don't remember right now [may be regent, where he got his ph.d] and he works in academia every day. in the discussion, i was mentioning that the internet has really thrust us into a new age of information where it's become more expedient to conduct our research business in a non-ivory-tower situation.

marc pointed out a few things, such as the concept of research with physical books in a physical library still holding a high value in education [specifically in preparing a paper or dissertation] for reasons of 'serendipitous discovery' of adjacent books on different topics that one may not find in the event that they were doing purely online research. he also mentioned the need for an online search engine which aggregated and parsed through only peer-reviewed journals and publication to verify that the information has a high probability of being valid. he also said something that got me thinking of the whole concept of the 'value of information':

bud: 'yeah, but that sort of information isn't public because they can't let us within their ivory towers to get it. it's too valuable to them.'
marc: 'oh, so all information should be free, then?'
bud: 'ideally.'
marc: 'well then, i hope you don't like making money at your job.'

my first thought was inclined toward accusations of exaggeration, but the more i think about the value of education and the cost of information, the more what he said seems valid. are we doing some far too utopian thinking here? in a world of completely free information, especially in the u.s.a. where the economy is so heavily based on information, how will anyone make a profit over anyone else? how can the mass of information cultured on the internet be organized without any trained leaders that have anything to speak of their credentials in overseeing such a massive undertaking? who will teach? will it end up being the blind leading the blind?

i think those are some questions that have to be answered before i'm fully sold on making a shift toward making information totally free. as it stands, it seems like there has to be a certain level of disconnect between the educator and the educatee in order to produce the educated. what do you think? let's get some discussion going here.

regarding today, let's just say that things went well for me with the dmv. i'll be posting a vlog on my youtube channel tomorrow explaining what happened, and i don't want to ruin the surprise, so i'll build a little suspense instead! i've still got to edit that video, the new julieandstacy video we shot tonight at practice and the julieandstacy f.a.q. video we did as well, though that one won't be going up until next week anyway. i've also got to edit my dad's video of cycad sex. don't ask. it's not as perverted as it sounds.