Great Friends

Ok, so Tuesday at work was the first time in a long time that I got really down because of a problem that I have had with my back since I was a sophomore in high school. I started working at 8 0'clock and by 8:20 my back was already making me very uncomfortable. I sat there just thinking about it for a couple of minutes and then forced myself to ignore the pain for the rest of the day - barring all of the popping and cracking throughout the day.


Most every day, I experience mild to medium discomfort in my back, mainly due to a degenerated disc between my Lumbosacral joint which is where the lumbar spine meets the sacrum. In addition to the degenerated disc, I also have a mild case of spondylolisthesis...

Jumping to a completely different topic, I had an incident occur on Tuesday. The reasons why it happened to me I do not know for sure. It honestly felt like God had taken over - my body, my emotions, everything. I lost control and I tried to take it back but there was something more powerful in control. He wasn't hurting me, even though I was crying and rolling on the floor uncontrollably. I am still in the process of trying to figure out all of the reasons that this happened, but one thing that I do know for certain as a result of that night is that I have been blessed with incredible friends. The two from the night are David Wallisch and David Skelton. Those two stayed with me even though it all started in the middle of the night at around 2am and we didn't get back to bed until around 6am. Either one - or both - could have just told me to get a hold of myself and gone to bed, but they helped me through without any hesitation whatsoever. It's cliche, but those are really the most true; great friends are hard to find. I am so lucky to have these two incredible men as my friends. I wish I could put into words how much I appreciate them.

Some Perspective

Wow! So many awesome things happened this week. To start off the weekend, I got to go see Annie on Friday. We went to a drive-in movie without knowing what movies were playing...we saw Twilight Eclipse - the second movie was Letters to Julia, we left because it was getting really late. Twilight wasn't bad. I didn't really know what was happening because I have never seen the other two. But it was so much fun. Good company makes for a good time no matter where you go.

The next awesome event took place on Tuesday. A Tuesday of all days! It started off, well as all Tuesdays start...suck. Work. What else can I say? But things started looking up when my boss asked me to sharpen the tools in the garage. Well, I bought a machete on my service trip to Belize over spring break and...well it was the perfect opportunity. So I rushed to my townhouse and sharpened it at work. This gets better. When I got home from work, my roommate David Skelton and I found a snake in our living room. How do you get rid of a snake in your living room? Well, if you just sharpened a machete that same day, you take matters into your own hands and cut its head off. I followed these instructions, and I highly recommend them. The results are incredible!

I ended the work week with a task given to me by my boss to cut out a huge bush. He gave me a pair of loppers. All of the branches were intertwined and just a complete mess. I started cutting at the branches and it was taking forever. I wasn't making any progress. Then the thought entered my head..."If only I had a machete that I had sharpened on Monday; that would just make this whole thing so much easier. Oh, wait!" I sped off down to my house to retrieve my machete and, long story short, it took me five minutes to have the entire thing taken out. What a great buy!

This whole week has really put things into perspective for me. My life has been so blessed. I talked to Annie about a mentally handicapped girl she worked with. The girl is 19 and is just learning how to read and write. Annie told me how excited the girl was that she was finally learning how to read. I take for granted every day my ability to read and write; sometimes I even complain about having to read for school. This helped me realize how lucky I am to have grown up in an environment where I was able to get a great education. I could fill hundreds of pages with all of the other blessings which I take for granted every day. I am so thankful for the life that I have been given!

New Experience

Last weekend, I was given the great opportunity of working on a guy's roof. I know him from work and he asked a few other guys that I work with to help him. I knew that I needed the money (after all, I just got the key to my house yesterday which cost me first month's rent of $250). Anyway, he offered a pretty penny for the work - almost twice what I get paid at my regular job - so there was no way that I was going to turn it down.

Friday, I realized after the weekend was out, ended up being the hardest day. The sun was high and hot; the humidity kicking my butt. The work that I did that day was the most physically demanding as well. I helped tear off two layers of shingles. The first layer came off with relative ease, and we had removed it all within a few hours. The second layer, however, was a completely different story. It took us the remainder of the day, plus another 3 hours the following day to remove the second layer from the roof. I'm not going to complain because the hours that I ended up working paid off big time, but if the guys that had laid the second layer of shingles had actually done their job by taking off the first layer before laying the new layer, we may have completely finished the roof during the weekend.

After our second day of work, the guy asked the four of us if we wanted to come back on Sunday. He said there was a lot of work yet to do and he could really use our help, but he understood if we wanted a day off before going back to work on Monday. I was all over it. The other three were more hesitant. I showed up to his house alone Sunday morning and, as it turned out, the other three guys missed the wrong day. A morning storm kept the rest of the day relatively cool; the work was a lot less physically demanding as we basically just nailed down boards of plywood all day; and breaks were numerous. In addition to all of that, he fed me lunch and dinner. Score for the college kid who's paying for his own groceries!

While the money I made from this opportunity was more than I could have asked for, the new experience that I gained was priceless. I learned things this past weekend that I will carry on to when I own my own home (God-willing). I am no expert roofer by any means, but at least now I have some basic knowledge of the steps that need to be taken in order to fix a roof if ever the necessity arises (God forbid).

Blessing in Disguise

About three weeks ago, my boss at my job told me that I was going to be power washing sidewalks for the next month. While I have not spent every day power washing, most days I have found myself cleaning the sidewalks for 8 hours of my day. Upon receiving this as my month-long task for 40 hours/week, I thought to myself, "Really? This is what I'm going to be doing with myself?" Well, after a few days of making sure the sidewalks were spotless, I came to realize that I enjoyed the time to myself. Just pop in the headphones and go to town. This also gave me an opportunity to learn about my faith.

I have recently begun listening to a lecture on the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It is a lecture given by Fr. John Corapi whose five university degrees make it no surprise that his words are very powerful and moving. An embarrassing fact about a lot of Catholics - myself included - is that we do not know a lot about our faith or the Church. Sure we have faith in God, and we love Jesus Christ; but Fr. Corapi explains why that is not enough. The more I get to know my faith, the more I love it; and the more I love it, the more I want to learn more about it. Often times, I do not take enough time to learn about it, and it is during those times that I begin to lose sight of God, and that results in my falling off the path of righteousness.

I know that listening to this lecture is not going to be enough and that I must take it upon myself to delve more into my faith, but it is certainly a great way to start over again after a period of time in the dark.

St. Louis Wedding

I went to a wedding in St. Louis last weekend. A lifelong friend of my girlfriend's. Fortunately, I had met her family a couple of times before (more fortunately, her dad doesn't actually want to shoot me with a shotgun or a rifle...I think he was kidding). My mission for the wedding - embarrass Annie. From making fun of her about how fast she walked down the aisle as a bridesmaid, to my killer dance moves, I would say MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

In order to get to this wedding, I had to make my first trip on the Megabus. Not as awkward and crazy as a lot of people make it out to be. As far as I know anyway. After all, I got the entire back seat of the bus to myself. Five seats against the back wall, my MP3 player and headphones, and lack of sleep from the week of work leading up to the journey makes for a seemingly quick bus ride. Round trip from KC to Columbia for $10.50! Can't get better than that. Although, I did have a little bit of trouble. And it goes to St. Louis and Chicago from KC as well. Not sure how much those round trips cost...yet, but I plan on finding out some weekend!

Family

I talked to my mom for the first time in a little over a week today. Things have been crazy with work, trying to figure things out with the house I'm going to be renting, getting into a routine, so many things going on right now. I haven't had time to think about how much I miss home. It will always be my home, no matter where my house is.

I am really enjoying being out on my own. Things are going great for me out here in Kansas City. I have a full-time job on campus so I don't have to drive to work. On top of that job, I work random shifts that puts a little extra jingle in my pocket...well checks don't really jingle that much, but they're worth more than pocket change so that more than makes up for the lack of jingle. A little off topic there. Anyway, I'm getting into a routine in which after I get off of work at 4, I do some physical activity - this week has been tennis on Monday and a run on Tuesday and today. After my exercise I grab a bite to eat, and either work my desk job, or plop my now worthless behind on the couch at home and watch TV. Rinse, dry, repeat.

As much of a great time as I am having, I do miss home. My family is the most important thing in my life. To explain the picture...Christmas 2008, my brothers, sister, and I took on a project to make family jerseys. The kids' numbers reflect our birth order (I've been told that the 3rd one's a charm. That's not me talking, that's just what they say. And everyone knows that they are experts on a lot of things, so if you want to contest that's up to you). My parents are "19" and "86" for the year they got married. They turned out terrific! That's just an example of how close my family is. One thing that I miss the most is camping and fishing with my dad and brothers - my sister just outperforms all of us; I don't miss that at all. Just kidding Shannon, I taught you well. No sane person would ever think about leaving their mother out of the mix when reminiscing about home. I appreciate everything that both of my parents have done for me. I feel like they have done well by us. Nobody's perfect. They didn't get everything right. But they did everything out of love for us. Couldn't have asked for more. Thank you mom and dad!

So here's to family, mine and every family in the world. I miss you and love you all!

Living on My Own

I had my first experience grocery shopping for myself this past week. After the first couple of days, I realized that I am definitely not a natural. I came out of Price Chopper with a carton of eggs, a gallon of milk, a carton of orange juice, two packs of tortillas, and sixteen polish sausages. No fruit, no vegetables, no snacks. I realized that I'm going to like having a little something on the side to compliment my polish sausage dinners for the next two weeks.

Thankfully I am gradually getting worked into life on my own. Me and two of my friends - Josh Hollis and Nate Olson - are going to be renting a house for next year. The lease officially starts on July 1 but we're trying to find people to sub-let the place because we all have summer housing already. We've met up with the property manager quite a few times and he's done a really great job working with us. It's nice to be in somewhat of a "halfway house" in the townhouses on campus because it's giving me a chance to get a running start, so to say, in learning how to live on my own. Paying for rent, utilities, food, furniture, etc. It's a lot and I'm really glad that I'm not just being thrown into it. I'm sure that I would be able to handle it if I was, but it is nice.

In trying to pay for all of the things that I am going to need to start living on my own, I am working two jobs this summer. The first one is a position through the Office of Residence Life at Rockhurst. I am a Conference Assistant - in a nutshell, I'll be checking in and out camps and conferences that stay on campus throughout the summer. The position pays minimum wage and I don't get a ton of hours, but it gives me a place to stay for free and I get a $100 food stipend so I feel like it's a fair trade-off. My second job is a grounds-keeping job on campus. Unfortunately, it's less pay and less hours than I was working for the past two summers, but it's a job and I thank God that I am blessed so much to have two jobs while there are millions of people across the country that don't even have one. They are on my mind, and they'll be in my prayers tonight.

Overall, life on my own is going pretty well. It has helped me realize that there are so many things that I have yet to learn. So many that I feel the need to reiterate how many things I have left to learn. Sometimes it's a little overwhelming, but I haven't been doing it for long and I'm still getting settled into my place so I know that it will come along just fine. Mainly, I know that I cannot do any of this completely on my own. God will always be in my life, carrying me through each and every challenge that I face. Without Him, I am nothing.