This week

Well, here I am, sitting at a computer at the Electronics Shop (where I work) in Everitt Labs. I just printed a paper to turn in about half an hour, the paper sorta sucked, and it was supposed to be a rewrite, but it turned more into a small revision. I sorta realized I was pretty happy with the content, and the TA had said of the first draft, that I should go into more detail about Socrates arguments, and how he arrived at his conclusions, and that wasn’t the assignement…I was supposed to critically analyze the Symposium, not regurgitate it. So, I had Dirk read my first paper, and told him to tell me every place he couldn’t follow because I hadn’t talked enough about Socrates argument, and he said he followed the statements I made pretty easily, so I decided if a person who hasn’t read the Symposium could follow my arguments then why should I spew more crap into it that will just clog up the flow of the paper, and if a person were to read my paper, and couldn’t follow it…they could get the book and read the dialogue themselves.

Anyway, that is my little paper spiel, but on to more interesting things.
I had a fight with my Dad the other day, he is overworking himself again. Back on the job for two, maybe three weeks and it is already apparent that he forgot everything he learned about how to do nothing while he was recovering from surgery. I’m going home this weekend, and I wanted to take some friends home to have deer steak, and maybe shoot some guns (don’t laugh….shooting guns is a lot more fun then people think, don’t knock it before you’ve tried it….especially pistols…those are really fun) but Dad has to help with the make-up at a school play on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, and he has a leadership meeting Sunday night. So we can only have deer steak if he makes it Saturday afternoon and puts it in the fridge, and then cooks it on Sunday. (this is OK, because he fries the deer steak, and then cooks it in a sauce, so if he makes the whole thing…all we have to do is put the sauce pan in the oven sometime on Sunday and let it cook all day…and it would still taste great) But this upset me, because I don’t want him to have to do another thing this weekend….I don’t want him to have to cram something like this in with everything else. I want him to ask me, “hey, when are you coming home” and then plan around that. But he blamed me for not calling and telling him when I was gonna be home, and for how long…and I did tell Mom, weeks ago, and I swear I told him too, but I bet he just forgot because he was tired and didn’t write it down when I told him. Also, Lauren knew when I would be home when she was staying there while she was sick….he could have asked then when he was making all these plans.

This whole deal just makes me really mad, and I said some mean stuff while I was talking to him because I was mad….not really nice. Especially when he said “why is your small group more important then my church” and I replied “because my small group is growning”….that is a low blow….and he responded with “my church is growing” and it took a lot from me not to say “yeah, almost as fast as my small group”….but you get the point…I was out of line. But I’m really sick of competing with Dad’s job. He went on and on about how he was there for me growing up, and I wasn’t hurting for attention and stuff, and I was like yeah, I got attention, whenever someone’s long lost cousin who might have gone to our church once, and has distant relatives who tithed 10 years ago aren’t in the hospital. It just blows my mind that my parents would buy a video camera to tape David in high school sports after I graduated lettering in two sports for a total of 5 times, and I won a tournament in wrestling my senior year. They did help me go to Germany, which my brothers didn’t get to do, and that was cool. But I really felt like I came after the church. And now I have a mentally and emotionally beaten and bruised father who can’t quit to save his life….literally….and has to keep doing stuff at the high school even though he doesn’t have any children there anymore. He is going to coach track again this season. I’d be OK with that if he would cut down at the church to make up for it. It is bad enough that he goes there and spends anywhere from 50 to 70 hours a week doing just church stuff, but he now has a sewn together heart, and he is still doing stuff like school plays and high school track. I just wish he would retire, and move to the middle of nowhere, so he would have absolutely nothing to do except fish and hunt….but he would probably just get compulsive about that then. And the most annoying part is that when I say “why don’t you quit doing this crap, you don’t have any kids in school anymore” he says something about how getting in the community is a part of his ministry. Now, I wouldn’t have a problem with that if it weren’t really about him feeling accomplished in his JOB at the expense of time with his family. He was happier while he recovered from his surgery because we told people that no one could even come in the house because of the chance of him getting the flu, and he just spent time talking to me, Mom, Aaron, and David. I wish he could really separate ministry from his job, and then his family from all of that. I can’t tell you how many times growing up I had to hear about how I was hurting his ministry by doing negative things at the church….I was doing negative things…..but his ministry wasn’t my responsibility growing up. (to be fair, I was kicked out of confirmation and youth group…so I was causing a lot of problems….but that is not the point.)

I’m just super annoyed with this whole thing….it is so typical. Sometimes my family drives me nuts trying to squeeze the life out of every last minute….like the time they missed my introduction at senior night for wrestling because they were running early and decided to stop and get more film in case then needed more….that was stupid…if they would have just come to the school I wouldn’t have had to be introduced with my coach. But that is a small example of what a poorly managed schedule, with an obsession for doing more then is humanly possible can result in.

In other news…I am having small group…I need a key for Laurens apartment though, then I am going home….because I have a boat-load of doctors appointments….trying to get the stuff done while I’m still on the folks insurance, then I’m going to be here after Monday, working, studying for a test, and screwing around. So if your in town, stop on by this week.

One last thing….my friend Scott came to my place early this week, from Dekalb where he has been trapped in a lease and jobless for the last few months, and he found a job the second day he was here, so he is going to just double up on the rent, move in with us for a while, and see how that goes….pretty funny though…he filled out 80~somthing applications in Dekalb and got nothing…here he filled out five or six..the next day he had arranged for 4 interviews already, then he went to two, and got the job on the second one. He starts Monday at the Auto Mall as a car salesman. So cool for him.

Now I’m done.