Charlie Lehardy

But I REALLY like this video. It’s like a sickness, I just can’t stop watching!

Hope you enjoyed it too!

Ok, I know there’s a lot of amazing animals around the world and all that but… HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE???

By the way, make sure you watch the whole video. It gets more and more amazing as you go along!

I’m not sure what to say other than WOW. I mean, I suspected most of this and much of it may not be true but… the source is amazing enough! What am I talking about? Well, this article: Hezbollah or Israel, “Dooms Day” For Which One?

This really is an amazing article to read. I do wonder how much of it is true, but if even just 1/4 of it is true, then the regular news services need to get their butts in gear and start reporting this kind of stuff. Because this is the kind of thing that will show the world why we’re fighting this fight.

Then again, that’d mean they would be in effect condoning the fighting and maybe even approving of it. Which would be beyond anything I’ve EVER heard most of them speak of (even FOX News). Guess we’ll see where this all leads us!

So I mentioned in my previous post that I’ve been going to this Wednesday Night Bible Study. I’ve tried the group out a number of times before and just never really have found that connection. I guess it’s mostly because I was an outsider trying to get in and that’s not always easy. Especially for me since I really AM mostly an introvert. Plus the fact that this is a Casas group and I don’t go to Casas.

Anyway, so it’s been hard to get that connection going but in the last couple months I’ve REALLY felt like I have it now. Well, no… it’s not 100% there, probably not even quite 70%, but it’s over 60% and that’s a heck of a lot better than the 10% that I’ve felt before. See, the main problem has been that over half the group is girls. Normally, that’s not been a problem for me. But in the last couple years, it’s proven to be an issue.

See, I’m a fairly flirtatious person around the girls (yeah I know, shocker!). Generally all I’m looking for is friendship, but I think that I try hard enough to be friends that it backfires. This is going back to my other comment that I’m a mostly introverted person. Don’t believe me? Well, I’d truly prefer to have a small party with some trusted friends than a big one with a bunch of people that I only know halfway. And if it’s a party that I hardly know anybody at, I generally just sit somewhere on the side and watch people. Basically, feel quite uncomfortable until I finally leave.

Ok, so that’s all very interesting, but how does that affect me now? Well, since most of the people in this Young Professionals group (the Wednesday Night Bible Study) are single girls, I think I’ve managed to convince most of them at some point or another that I’ve been interested in them. So we come to the issue, getting them to trust me. Some do, some don’t. Just a matter of working at it I guess. But it’s all necessary since I need to re-build a good portion of my group of friends (just because life happened, nothing else). This all means that there’s a lot of hard times coming in my life I think, I just hope they don’t last too long!

The truth of the matter is that the entire YP group is awesome. And that’s not just because they’re cool people, but they’re really forcing me to think about the Bible, God and Christianity in general. There’s a VERY wide range of Christian experience represented in the group and so that makes for some very good discussions actually. Because we get the “easy” questions from the newer people that really force us to think about things from the Bible and God that we might not have thought about for many years and then there are the bigger questions that force all of use to look up a lot in the Bible.

To top it all off, nobody in the group is really the “Leader” and nobody has all the answers. It’s ALWAYS a group effort and lots of people speak their minds. Again, makes for good discussions. For instance, on this Wednesday night that just passed, we tried to answer a big question that Christians sometimes get asked. We started by voting on a number of questions that some of us had submitted for a possible topic and then talking about the most popular.

The one on Wednesday night was: “I’m not into organized religion. Can I still be a Christian without going to Church?” This seemed like a pretty easy answer to me (YES!), but some people really insisted the structure of the Church being required. Also, some people had a Catholic background and depending upon the person, that either meant that they were deeply in favor of doing the weekly Church thing, or that they were very much in favor of NOT doing it. Anyway, lots of VERY good discussion about it all (hurts in the Church, reasons to leave, etc, etc).

Again, because of the very wide range of backgrounds and Christian Maturity, this is a group that really challenges my faith and makes me THINK about things and not just take them at face value. Good stuff for sure and certainly a group that I’m hoping to hang out for a long while longer!

Yep, I actually had a good Friday night! Really, it was a lot of fun. Started out with me watching “Good Night, and Good Luck” at 6:30 by myself. I’d been meaning to watch it for quite some time, just had not gotten around to it and man! I liked it a LOT. It’s one of those slower, thinking movies that has a moral to it. Plus there’s quite a bit of political things to it, but not Liberal/Conservative political (in my eyes anyway). More about the power of the press and how much good it can do if it’s used properly. Anyway, highly recommend that movie.

Then David called (I’d called him not long after I watched the movie) and we went to Fox & Hound to play some pool. I had done that a couple weeks ago with this Wednesday night Bible Study I’ve been doing (it was our monthly get-together), but I hadn’t played much pool. Man, I was just NOT doing all that well. But you know what? I didn’t care! I found a table in Yvonne’s section (one of the girls there that I used to talk to a lot) and just had a lot of fun. Chatting with David (and beating him at pool some, him beating me some), messing with Yvonne (we typically have at least once where we pretend like we’re gonna go outside and duke it out, she’s feisty and therefore a lot of fun

Overall, it was great fun. I got to unwind some, relax and not worry about ANYTHING. Just gotta hang out with people that I know and trust (IOW, David) and not worry about what anybody else thought because quite frankly, I didn’t care. It felt like old times at the Fox & Hound, which was great. Well, except that I didn’t drink anything but Coke (and Yvonne of course kept those coming… I must have had 7 or 8. Yikes!).

There WERE some guys that came over to our table during our first or second game and after watching us for a bit, asked to challenge us (I’d figured that was coming). Should have messed with THEM too (like you know, saying yes on the condition that they give me their number , but I just said no and ignored them from there. They did stay around for quite a while wanting to play, but since we were paying for the table by the hour and having our own fun, there was no way I was going to let them ruin that.

Oh yeah, I forgot the part that put me in a great mood as I was driving over to the Fox & Hound. I put a CD into my car that said Christian & Soundtracks on the front. Wasn’t sure what it was, but I thought I’d check it out anyway. Know what the first song was?? Adventures in Paradise by Ace of Base (from their Cruel Summer album). Next song? Always Have, Always Will. And then it went on from there. It was AWESOME!! I’d not listened to Ace of Base for a long time (years?) and have always liked them in moderation. But for some reason, it just made me laugh the whole way there.

And so guess what? It made me laugh the whole way back too! And so here I am now at 1:00 AM listening to Ace of Base again because I am just weird. What can I say? But I’m loving life right now so that’s all that matters

Ok, enough for this post and subject. Next!

My car is NOT going to be totaled and they’ll be repairing it instead. Of course, I’ve got a $1,000 deductable, but that’s just money so it’s ok. I’ll have to talk to the body shop to find out how long it’ll take to get done and what they’ll be replacing (I’m curious about that). But yep, I’ll be having my car back in better shape than ever (maybe) fairly soon. So, not too bad!

Now just have to make sure that the other vehicles and people are taken care of…

So I was driving to work yesterday, looked to the right at some people walking/running, thinking about how I need to do that again, look in front of me and everybody’s stopped. And I’ve got about 2 seconds to stop myself. Well, I did stop, but not until AFTER I hit the car in front of me…

Yeah, not a very happy day. So that guy’s car isn’t happy (he hit the guy in front of him after I hit him) and mine isn’t happy at ALL either (hopefully gonna find out if they’re going to total mine today). The guy in front’s truck’s bumper got a bit bent and stuff, but that’ll be fairly easily fixed. The worst part of this is that the guy in the middle, the car I hit, had to go to the hospital for a few hours to get checked out (was having some serious back problems) and then I THINK was going to the doctor. So his day was pretty much ruined. My morning was ruined of course, but not NEARLY as badly as his (I didn’t sustain any injuries and even as I’m writing this, over 24 hours later, I have no pain at all). So that’s just not very cool at all.

Of course, insurance will cover everything (cars, hospital/doctor bills, etc, etc). But that’s not the point. The point is that I screwed up and as a� result, messed up two other people’s days/weeks/months? Yeah, not happy about that at all. On my part, I own another car that my parents were using (but didn’t need right now because they have two other vehicles), so I’ve got that now and will be driving it until I get my car repaired, or buy another one. So really, this whole thing isn’t so bad… On my side anyway.

So yeah, that’s about it. Just be praying for the other guy (Michael is the guy who went to the hospital) and that everything works out ok… I’ll post more (and about other things) whenever I find out more.

There’s various random things going on, none of which are really all that bad and some of which are quite good. So I guess you’d say I’m doing pretty well these days (you know, the last few months anyway). Lets see…

First off, I FINALLY got everything taken care of in terms of my new car. I got the auto-pay fixed for my loan (they screwed it up when I tried to have it done the first time… *sighs), got them the insurance information (well, they already had it, I just had to make sure they KNEW they had it) and got my permanent plate for my car (had to bug the dealer, who had dropped the ball and so they overnighted me the new one). So that’s all done and happy now, which makes ME happy.

Asked this really cool girl out recently too, but… she said no. That sucked of course but it’s ok because we’re still friends and stuff and there doesn’t seem to be many (if any) bad vibes going on cuz of it. I mean, she was completely honest with me and just was really cool, so it made it easy for me to take it in stride and be cool with it too. I mean, I’d of course have preferred if she had said yes, but that goes without saying

Hmm… I rolled my ankle pretty badly on Sunday night playing vball. NOT a good thing (never done that before, nor have I twisted it before… Always been pretty fortunate that way, until now!). It’s all swollen up now and so I’m going to be taking plenty of Advil (for inflammation) and icing it every night, as well as elevating it. Good times… Seriously though, it’s not painful so as long as I take care of it, I should be fine.

Oh, and my Aunt and Grandma from North Carolina (my Dad’s side of the family) have been here since Tuesday and are leaving on Wednesday. So I’ve seen them a few times which has been nice. Not as many as I’d have wanted to, but I guess that’s the way it goes. Seems like I’ve been really busy since they’ve been here. Ultimate on Thursday night, X3 Friday night, Saturday I went caving (more on that later), Sunday was Church, lunch with them, bbq that night and then vball later that night (which is where I messed up my ankle… *sighs). Then today (Monday) I spent most of the day working on cleaning the carpets here at our place.

So I went to Ace Hardware to rent a carpet cleaning machine and it had water in it still! Plus the wheels had lots of junk on them (almost like horse manure… but you know, don’t ask, don’t tell… . So I had to empty the thing in the parking lot before I put it in my trunk (so it didn’t spill all over my trunk) and clean the tires. Then went to WallyWorld (Wall-mart) to buy cleaning stuff, then went back to my place to start cleaning the carpets (got a good amount done anyway, but there’s more to do) and then left at 4:30 for a planning meeting for a camping trip I’m going on this weekend.

Of course, since I was up and moving all day, my ankle isn’t very happy with me. But I guess that’s life. So yeah, doing a camping trip this weekend. I volunteered to buy most of the stuff, so I’ve got a nice long list. Should be fairly easy to get most of it though, so it’s ok. Whatever I can’t, I’ll divvy up to others. There’s 16 of us going this time (9 guys, 7 girls) which is a LOT more than normal. So there’s of course a lot more than normal to buy too. Should be good times though.

Caving on Saturday (the 27th) was fun. Went to Cave of the Bells and had a grand time. However, it did take us a good-long time to find the place since the map we had wasn’t the best in the world. But now we know how to get there for the next time. We also didn’t get anywhere we wanted to, but that was ok. We STILL had fun (and I almost got stuck down there for ever and ever and are all willing to go again. Most important thing was that nobody got seriously hurt. Pictures of the cave (and some fun afterwords) are here.

Hmm… Jeremy was back for the weekend from San Diego, so it was nice to see him again. He’s re-joined the Navy and so he’s in training right now in San Diego and then will be going off to Kuwait. I’ll probably get to see him a few more times before he leaves, but it’s certainly quieter without him here (he was living on our couch for a bit). And another friend (Nathan) is leaving for the Navy tomorrow, but he’s just joined for the first time so he’s going to boot camp. Great fun!

Sarah (friend of mine from the Young Professionals group) left today for HER trip. They (her team) have a blog at trainingteachers.blogspot.com. So, pray for them and that everything will go well there. Good friends of mine (Wendy and Peter Smith) are heading to Thailand on Wednesday to work there (they’re missionaries with Wycliffe Bible Translators). And then other friends from Casas are coming back tomorrow from their China trip. *phew!* Lots going on for sure on that front.

And that’s about all I can think of. I’m probably missing stuff that I’ll think of later but this is certainly plenty for this blog anyway. Ooh, I’m thinking about doing a funny-a-day thing on here too with videos and pictures and stuff that I find funny. I’ve just gotta write some good code that’ll make it so people can watch it to their heart’s content, download the stuff, etc, etc… They just won’t be able to directly link to the videos from other sites. I think I know a good way to do it, just gotta implement it.

Until next time, have fun!

I have a bunch of friends that are in China right now (they left on the 17th and will be getting back on the 29th (I think)). I should have probably mentioned this earlier so you could pray for them and read about what they’re up to a week ago, but I’m lazy, what can I say?

Anyway, one of the leaders has a blog at http://fromheretochina.blogspot.com/ and he’s updating it fairly frequently. There’s also posts on there for other trips he’s been on to China (they’ve been a few times) since the blog is used ONLY for the China trips.

I rather like the latest post he has… Check it out!

Why is rush hour rush hour? Wait, that probably didn’t make sense, so let me explain it this way… My experience during rush hour is that most people drive UNDER the speed limit (sometimes as much as 10 MPH under in a 40 MPH zone… *grumbles*). But overall, it doesn’t seem like people are in a rush. Quite the opposite actually.

So, why is it rush hour? Where’d the term come from? I’d prefer to call it very annoyingly slow and frustrating hour, but I think that’s slightly too long… Maybe @$!* hour would work… naa, not that either. Do you have any ideas?