Exhaustion, Root Canals, and Wine making

Well time to update the issue of my stupid mouth.....the pain continued to get worse, and I was unable to sleep laying down for several days, which in turn made me very tired, very grouchy, and made me miss some appointments, and it was just no good. Finally on Thursday I was fed up and I finally got an appointment with a dentist who could do a root canal. He quickly decided that it was abscessed after he merely touched it and I was filled with excruciating pain. Now I want you to understand something about the experience I was having. My cheek/jaw by the sore tooth was visibly swollen, hurt to touch, and felt like I had stuffed cotton balls in it. It was probably the most painful thing I had ever experienced and even vicodin only dimmed the pain, not took it away.
But then they numbed me up, woot Novocain! and I didn't feel anything anymore and they did a much of stuff to prepare and then did the root canal. It only took like 30mins which the dentist said was amazing. He said I was a pleasure to do dentistry on. I don't know if that is a compliment or what. Guess my mouth is just easy to deal with and fix. So my mouth felt great afterwards, because it was numb, and there was much rejoicing. Later when the numbing died out, there was some pain as the remnants of the root canals pain came back. Took one last vicodin to deal with that, and then the next day and since I have been pain free!
While being pain free, I am still recovering from the side effects. I am exhausted still, and trying to catch up on my grading and other work that got postponed by pain. I feel like I could sleep for a week.

On a different note of cool new things, this weekend I partook in a wine crushing, which meant that I helped to make wine. It was alot of fun, a little bit cold as fall has finally hit Pullman in force, and very staining. Grapes leave your hands a nice shade of purple. I met some new people and got to try alot, aalllooooootttt of grapes, I dont think I will be able to eat grapes for a while. I got a free bottle of wine out of the deal, woot! and the fun experience.

Frustrations and much need for prayer!

So I figured I might as well rant a bit and vent my problems and put out there that they are all basically prayer requests:

- Grad school thus far has been a slow review of undergrad physics, and I am bored. We are going slowly, over material I have known since sophomore year and it is very aggravating. I really want to learn new challenging stuff, not just rehashing of things I already know, and rehashing in less detail. Once again I find that I am over prepared and therefore am left bored and frustrated.

-Being bored and frustrated means I am not putting as much effort as I ought into homework, and therefore am not doing as well as I could be. I don't know why but I always do better on extremely difficult problems then on easy ones.

- I have a tooth infection or some such thing which has put me in terrible pain for a week now, and dentists are beign very slow about fixing the problem. They just are having me manage the problem with drugs(which are very nice) but it doesnt fix the underlying condition. I hate being in pain, and I hate being hopped up on vicodin becuase I'm half asleep the entire time I'm on it.

- Professors at large state schools are no where near as approachable and nice as Valpo...which is a huge culture shock.

-I miss Valpo's faith life dearly. Churches out here don't know how to use an organ, or do liturgy well. Plus there aren't services during the week, and all the bible studies are during when I am teaching.

In summary, things are not going as well as they could. Their is much opposition to my growth as a person both academically and spiritually, there is physical illness, and there is the continual aching for a time and a place that will never be again. I will write a happier note later, since not everything is bad.

Oddities

Life is odd. We are all trapped in this distension of senses which we call time. Time warps and shifts reality around us, and turns the eternal into the momentary. Everything we do, every relationship, every interaction is just dust in the wind. Temporal life is the constant state of death. Every second that time ticks by the past dies and we are left with the grief of lost moments, whether they be beautiful, or awful. There is grief as who we once were is lost into the shadowy darkness of time.
I mourn the loss of loved ones, all those who have died in these years of my life on earth. I morn the loss of lives I knew and will never know again: High School, Valpo, Walcamp, Lutherwood, and now I am in a new life at WSU. I mourn the missed opportunities, the mistakes, the brokeness. How knowledge comes at a great price! As I have grown in my understanding of the universe and therefore my capabilities, I have also fallen from the innocent presumptions and simple thoughts of youth, and I come to realize that a Man's capability for evil is porportional to his ability for good, and that with the great gifts which God has blessed me comes great responsibility.....but maybe these are just the late night ramblings of a man on narcotic pain killers for tooth pain.

first exploration post

Today in Quantum the professor said that rather than think of waves and particles as existing, think of all things as waves. I explicate and say that at the heart of all things is a wavelike nature, a vibrating essence, the reflection of the Divine Harmony. Things in this fallen world do not vibrate in resonance, instead they try and follow their own tones, their own desires, and this wreaks havoc like an out of tune violin in an orchestra.
The universe is meant to be an eternal symphony, a hymn to the Divine mystery, an exclamation of the Lord's Glory. In the Fall the harmonies and melodies were broken and the world became a cacophony of noise. And as any musician or physicist knows, in order to return to resonance there needs to be a very intense source of resonance. And so into this cacophony the ultimate symphony came down and was incarnate, and His notes, his melodies filled the world and shattered the dissonance and slowly all is returning to the symphony, slowly all will either enter into harmony or be lost forever. In the incarnation the fallen universe suffered an incurable change, a good infection spread into all things living and inanimate, all things began to fall into the brilliantly clear and loud music that is the Holy Trinity. And all that will be will fall into harmony with that joyous tune, or else be lost in nothingness. The teleos of our existence is to enter into harmony with Christ.

wow....

So the last two or so weeks have been jam packed and insane. So rather than writing a novel we'll do some bullet points again :-).

-I did regular camp the last week of camp, 7-8th. It was an all right week, I had a problem child again who swore and was inappropriate the entire week. He also complained alot.
-I was frustrated with just doing regular camp again, but finally got through it and enjoyed being done. The summer was a hard one.

-After camp I went diving with Goat in the lake which was tons of fun, even though the lake has terrible visibility. We reset some anchors and brought a lawn chair up from the bottom. I've missed diving, it was so wonderful. And afterwards I got a great deal to purchase the equipment, so now I have dive gear! woot!

-My mom and I went up to Vancouver BC for the weekend afterward and ran into a bunch of problems at the border. The Canadian border guards are absolute jerks! They basically wanted documentation about my entire life. Who takes a lease, college transcripts, and copies of bills with them to canada? argh.

-Vancouver was really big and expensive. I was kind of amazed by how much more things cost there. It was very frustrating.

-After Vancouver I moved into my apartment, which is great minus a few things that need to be fixed, and a ghetto fridge.

-Orientation was crazy busy and full of stuff, but it went well, and I got to go the the National Lentil festival and get free chili and go to a beer garden! Woot!

-I am taking a Math Methods Course, Classical Mechanics, and Quantum 1 this semester, and I am getting the feeling that while this will be a really hard semester, it will be alot of fun also.

Oz, from Lutherwood, and I have been talking for a bit online and the phone and we both realized that we liked each other, and so we decided to start dating, albeit the fact that it will have to be long distance. She is really amazing and makes me really happy, and she <3's orange as much as I do....btw I got an orange couch!!

My life is in a crazy state of change currently and I am not sure where things are going or whats up. I'm like an electron in a time dependent perturbation, never knowing where I really am or where I'll end up, but hopefully God will turn off the perturbation soon and show me whats up.

The group of incoming grad students is all guys, but they all seem to be great, I think I'll find some really wonderful friends here. Well I think I will stop now and write more later.

Zaccheus

So this post is a little bit dated, this actually happened about a month ago, but anyways....I got a new car!! It is an orange 2004 Chevy Cavilier which I have finally decided to name Zaccheus.




I believe it is a good replacement to Nehemiah, although it doesn't have the same storage space, and it is manual everything rather than power, but I am learning to deal and its fun.

It's orange!! Woot!

week seven: Sr High Advernture

So I got to go zip lining this week! See the video!



I also got to go white water rafting, which I unfortunately do not have pics for because my camera does not like water like I do. We went on the Skagit River, which has primarily class 1 and 2 rapids, but we did a few class 3's including the Skagitator, which was amazing. It was a good 8 foot wave that almost threw me out of the boat.

I still cannot believe that I am getting paid for this. I basically get to play all day, do adventure, and do crazy stuff that I would pay to do, and rather than paying, I get paid. Nuts!

Then again dealing with the stress of campers and programing, and other staff members is not necessarily the most fun. Scuba, while being extremely awesome was mentally in Ghana this week and that made it very hard on me, because I had to do a lot of extra work. He will physically be there in a few days and I wish him the best.

The campers were really good this week, but of course that means something else has to go wrong to make up for it. Camp tends to have this rule that something has to be bad and going wrong. It can be different things, but every week has to have problems.

Next week I was supposed to be doing a waterski/wakeboard daycamp, which would mean evenings off, but one of the male counselors broke his ankle, and so the need me to replace him so now I have normal camp with 7-8th graders. I feel bad about his ankle and hope he heals well, but I am also cranky because his injury means I have to once again do work outside of my job description. Camp doesn't like to keeping to job descriptions.

Well I am going to go rock climbing, so I will write more later :-)