Surrounded by Water

I haven’t been able to take many photos lately. My surroundings have been dull and unexciting. I managed to take some random shots that turned out pretty cool. What I didn’t notice was that they all had one thing in common:

Water!

As it turned out, the rain and water that was all around me was a little bit more interesting than I had previously believed. The first one you see below is my favorite. I took this photo from all the way across a room as I was waiting for a class to start. It is a very simple image, but to me, has a very powerful message. In the lower half of the image, there is complete darkness. The water does not come from darkness but is illuminated in light. In order to drink from the fountain, you must expose yourself to the light. This resonated with me as I was sitting there.

I believe that, in some way, this is comparable to the Christian faith. Jesus said to the woman at the well- “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water…Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”  (John 4:10-14)

In order to drink of this Living Water, you must seek the light. Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.” (John 8:12)

In both of these statements, God is speaking to us. He reveals through His son that eternal life comes only through Christ. Follow the Light of the World to the Living Water. Find one, you will certainly find the other, for they are forever found inseparable in our savior.

Bye Bye Bike... Twice

 I have a few moments to spare, so I thought I’d sit and share a while. Today’s post flows from an incident that happened yesterday. It has also happened to me once before, but seemed like a once in a lifetime thing, so I didn’t really expect it to happen again.

See the bike in the photo above? Loved that bike. It took me on some very enjoyable adventures. Know what happened to that bike? It got stolen… off the back of my truck… in a parking lot… while I was at work. This hurt me deeply.

Can we take a moment and have a few seconds of silence for it?

Thank you for your condolences. They are greatly appreciated.

So Anywho! I got another bike for this year at college. Having a broken leg, I figured it would be helpful in that I wouldn’t have to walk as far. I had had this bike for about 2 weeks, and had used it nearly every day. As you read in my last post, it was the rainy season around town two days ago. Because it was raining so hard, I decided to ride my bike. You all know that I came upon the trolly on the way to class and dropped my bike off. What you don’t know is that I had to leave it unlocked. My bike lock fell out of my backpack as I was riding about 4 days ago. :/

“No worries right? Christian campus… secluded location… no reason to think twice about it.”

I came back from class that day and it was doing just fine. I was with a bunch of friends so it would have been awkward for me to just ditch them and ride back to my dorm. I left it there.

“No worries. It will be just fine.”

As morning came yesterday, I hopped in my car and drove to class. I drove right past my bike and it was still there just sitting pretty and shining in the sunlight. I ate lunch, went to my second class, and began to drive back to my dorm. As I came up to where I parked my bike, I saw three kids ride across the street. They were going as fast as they could, so they naturally caught my attention. Having an eye for detail, I just happened to look at the types of bikes they were on. The last kid was riding a bike just like mine! Cool! I guess I picked a good bike after all. That was like the 4th person on campus with the same bike as me…

I keep driving about 10 more feet and looked to see how my bike was doing. To my surprise, it wasn’t there!!!

“You’ve gotta be kidding me! HECK NO… I’m not about to have my bike stolen again!”

I threw my little green minivan into reverse, screeching through the parking lot, I barely missed the kids before they crossed a bridge. I got out of my van and yelled at them.

“Dude! Come on now… Give me my bike back!”

(Like that would actually get them to stop and bring my bike back)

Sure enough, they kept riding. I, once again, threw my vehicle into reverse and rushed out of the lot in an attempt to keep them in my sight. By the time I got onto the main road, I had lost them. I asked one of the guys who heard me yell at them which way they went. He pointed me in the right direction. I sped up and slowed down as I approached each side street, like one of those epic police chases in action movies. Just as I thought I had lost them for good, I caught a glimpse of a tire going around a corner into an appartment complex.

“HAHAHA you little punks are dead!”

Still abiding by road laws, I headed off into their general direction. I almost missed the turn, but was able to skim my van over a section of grass to make it. Ahead in the distance, I saw them! They were quickly running out of road.

‘Muahhahahaha’

They left the road and rode off into the woods. Running out of room to ride, they dumped their bikes and ran for the hills (or houses like 30′ ahead). Still hot to trot, I drove up as close to the trees as I could, hopped out of my van and limped into the tree line like a madman about to cut someones head off with a chainsaw.

“Aha! There it is!”

My bike was dirty from all the mud they rode through trying to escape, but it was still in tact. I snatched it up, walked it back and locked it in my van. Still a tad bit ticked off, I walked back into the woods, grabbed the other kids bike, and tossed it into the river five feet away.

‘That’ll show ‘em! Psh… tryna take my bike. HA! Not this time!’

With that situation now under control, I drove off into the sunset still somewhat stunned by what had just happened. I got out of my van, locked it, and went inside to take a nap. My bike is still (and will remain) locked up in my van until I can get a new lock for it.

That is all.

Downpour

Rain. RAIN RAIN RAIN!

More rain…

Pause

RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN!

Today we had some rain. Well, we had a lot of rain, actually. I have to say, it was quite the experience. At first, I was somewhat upset to wake up to a downpour. Hehe  I walked outside (because I can’t run), hopped on my bike, and began riding off into the distance. I had gotten no further than about 10 feet when my feelings about the rain began to change. My spirits were instantly lifted as I heard the faint noise of a trolley coming my way. I skidded to a stop, hopped off, and hopped on. I would now not be extremely wet for my first class. Booyah!

After my first class was over, I decided to have a little fun. I love people watching, so I just sat under the patio and watched an endless amount of frantic people scurry in and out of the doors. Like a bunch of beaten puppies, they tucked tail and ducked for cover.  I, however, did the exact opposite. I absolutely love rain. I love seeing rain, watching rain, sitting in the rain, walking in rain, jogging in the rain, skipping in the rain, running in the rain, sing… haha nah… but you get the idea: I love rain!

After getting my fill of watching frantic frenzies, I went for a little stroll. As I wandered around, getting soaked, I came upon a little flooded area in the park. It literally looked like a miniature lake. At the epicenter of the lake lay a place to sit and stay. Wading into the water, I found a suitable place to have a seat. Amidst the high waters there was a perfectly empty bench just asking to be joined; and join it I did. Lounging surrounded by mossy oaks, I observed the intricate dances of rippling rain as it sounded its persistent rhythm on surfaces all around. Had it not been raining hard, I could have probably fallen asleep there.

Sadly, I had to go to class, but first I snagged some food form the Caf. Sticking with the wet theme of the day, I had cereal. Great meal  After a filling meal, I slipped into my psychology class dripping wet. The fun part came from hearing all of the people complain about the rain as if they were going to melt away. To add to the excitement, our topic of discussion was on dreams. I love talking about these things, partially just because I’m really interested in psychology. I got to ask my professor a little bit about sleep paralysis, which I have experienced. It was pretty cool to get a psychologist’s point of view on the matter.

After my class, I walked back to my dorm, got a shower, changed into some warm clothes, and took a nap. Pretty chill afternoon if you ask me.

Now I’m up and blogging. Gotta love it.

One Love

God’s Love

Information Overload

Today has been a full day:

got up early. went to church. went to brunch. ate waffles and biscuits. went home. packed. went to ingles. replaced a light bulb. drove home. got some food. got some gas. ate the food while i got my gas. kept driving. wished i had sunflower seeds. didn’t have any sunflower seeds. kept driving. got lost on a winding foggy road. loved it. kept driving. got back to school. unpacked. watched the braves win. played ping pong. left for a baseball game in chattanooga. got a ball for a little kid in front of our group. had to leave early because of rain. still left on a good note. went to b-dubs. got a butt load of food. ate it all. watched tennis. became disappointed when kirilenko lost her match in the last set. super disappointed. drove back to school. jammed to jams. got to school. car alarm went off for no reason. fixed it. went inside. car alarm went off again. annoyed. went outside. fixed it. went inside. calm. car alarm. again. ticked off. went outside again. fixed it again- left the stupid car unlocked. came inside. chilled. had tons of people around me doing everything possible. was driven crazy by everything going on at once. got annoyed. again. and now here i am…. blogging.

I’m rather thirsty. Some dude in front of me just just brought out a really good looking drink. In fact, now that I think about it, everyone around me has a drink… I have no drink  Being thirsty and having nothing to drink is a sad situation.

I miss being young. I miss being a little kid and only having to worry about who was going to be ‘it’ in tag out on the playground. I miss having teachers whose primary goal was to make us happy and secondary goal was to educate us. I miss not having drama. That was nice. Good times.

I have to go now. Tonight’s blog was pretty random. I feel like it was just a simplified mashup of my thoughts for about 5 minutes, if that. Hope it was somewhat interesting. If not, thats ok. My ego won’t deflate or anything. :’( sniff sniff

First Time For Everything

Ello e-world! I haven’t been in contact with you in a long time. It is a sad situation to say the least. Not only have I been too busy to blog, but I have also been too busy to take pictures.

This Monday will begin my 3rd week at college this semester and I can actually say that I am looking forward to it. I have made some pretty good friends so far and all of my classes have been easy. They aren’t all super exciting, but they are simple and straightforward. For this, I am grateful. Basically all I have to do is follow each syllabus directly, and I will do well in the class.

To my dismay, I haven’t had the opportunity to establish any relationships with females. This is very strange and concerning to me at the moment because everywhere I go, the majority of my good friends are females. No, this does not mean that I am a homosexual or fruity. I just like girls. Yay girls!

Because I haven’t had the chance to take new photos with my DSLR, I have had to resort to messing around with my iPhone and playing with photos on Aperture. I was driving home last night and just happened to be driving through the mountains at sunset. The photographer in me simply had to pull over and take a quick pic. Here is what I managed to eek out with the iPhone:

I’d say that photo is halfway decent… I’ve never been a fan of sunspots, but I guess my abilities were limited.

Browsing the internet today, I was reminded of a program that I was once fascinated with. With my interest rekindled, I decided to give it a try-

Today I Rasterbated for the very first time…..

The results were actually very pleasing!  Check out a shot of what it looked like:

I apologize for the poor photo quality. Once again, this was taken with my iPhone.

As you can see, this is an example of Rasterbation. This is a process by which one can upload a photo and then have it blown up, printed off, and assembled in order to produce a poster-like image. The ink in my printer was low, so the strips of color that are visible towards the top would normally not be there. Overall, the image turned out quite well, and I believe that after assembling one or two more of these, the alignment of each sheet would go more smoothly. The process took me about 30 minutes, and it was definitely worth while. I plan on hanging this in the common area of my dorm.

Here is the actual photo compared to the Rasterbation photo.

It was just my first time working through the process. I believe that I could have tons of fun with Rasterbation and plan on doing it more in the future. Have you Rasterbated before? Do you like it? Let me know below!