Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Updates

-Colette and I were able to go see Phil Wickham when he was up in Redding, Ca. The show was amazing. He trully has a talent for playing worship. As well he has an amazing right hand when it comes to playing guitar, I am sure it is good for other things too, like writing. Thank you Brody for that little trip.

-We finally sold the van. At 1:00 in the morning three guys drove up from the bay area and decided that this was the van they needed. I say they chose wisely, it is a good van. I am also completely relieved to have the van gone. Now the only thing left to do is pay off the bills and cover the remaining balance. As well I am waiting to hear back from everybody else who are going to dispute that they owe any money whatsoever. People who will sacrifice a friendship over a few hundred dollars amaze me.

-Colette started school again. A week from Wednesday will be her second day of school. She is excited to get underway and will graduate in January of 2010. The best part is that we will be able to afford for her to be in school. We were not sure what sort of financial aide we were going to get, but we are going to get enough help to cover what we cannot afford to cover.

-That is about it, Colette and I are both sick so I am going to sit and do nothing for the rest of the day.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Second Saturday

Last weekend Colette and I had some good friends come up from Southern California and spend some time with us. It was a great time. Relaxing but busy enough at the same time. On Saturday night we went to Old Sacramento, which is a good time, and proceeded over to Downtown Sacramento for this thing called Second Saturday. I know this will come as a shock to you but it is on every second saturday of each month. Basically it is just a lot of art galleries that open up and you can walk around for free and they have wine and cheese and people that think they are really cool and important hang out. As well there are lots of various street performers and musicians. There were a few highlights to the night. First would have to be the fire twirling people. Basically they were just scantilly clad girls twirling balls of fire around on the end of chains. Now before you think I am a pervert, they funny part was the group of three men that had planned their evening around these girls. They had lawn chairs, beer, and cameras. They sat there noddding their heads and grooving to the music. Every once in a while, one guy would nudge the other and they would give an agreeing nod to say "yeah, I saw that too."
Second would have to be the band Art Lessing. You can check them out at artlessing.com (i'm too lazy to make the link). they were just two guys playing various homemade instruments that sounded really cool. They are hard to describe. So go check out there music and just so you know, their music is much better live.
The last thing that was more funny than cool was when we ended up in the gay area of downtown Sacramento. I was not aware there was one, but we found it. We were just walking around and we all happened to look inside a club to see a man wearing nothing but leather chaps and tightie wighties dancing on the stage. We then looked around and noticed the plethera or gay people wondering around. One member of our group was hit on by a middle aged man. Minutes later we were flashed by some lady walking by, she was a little bit drunk. and fortunately at least wearing a bra.
So all in all a good night: art, music, friends, perverts, gay people, and boobs.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

The Fight - A combination of what Colette and I saw.

Stopped at a red light, a few cars behind us a black lady, we will call her LN1, hopped out of a white car and ran up to a mini-van that was stopped in front of us. (Sorry I am not politically correct. Though I can't call her an African-American, I don't know where she is from). The black lady from the mini-van, LN2 (again sorry), must have seen her coming as well because as LN1 reached her car she got out of hers to the sound of a pop. There was a few seconds of taunting from LN2, "what you gonna do, what you gonna do" and then the fight started. Now I know I described these women as black, but they were also big women, not scrawny little things like me. The fight consisted mostly of hair pulling and quickly turned to the ground as LN2 got LN1 down and was sitting on her as the hair pulling continued. At this point I was waiting for 911 to answer their phone, and noticed that LN2 was not only pulling hair but was now pointing a small gun at the head of LN1. (Think back to pop). Before the gun was there, there was was no way I was going to try and stop them, and I certainly wasn't going to do anything with a gun in the picture. Slowly, as I would imagine in most gun fights, the gun started pointed in other directions as they wrestled for control of the gun. The direction I remember the most would be the one where it was pointing at the car Colette and I were in. This was not a fun moment in time, thinking this could end really bad for a number of people including Colette or me. 911 finally answered and I explained to them the situation, while on the phone with 911 a new person entered the scene. A muscular white guy, MWG, left his car and walked over to the battle. (Again, if calling a black person black is wrong, then calling a white person white is wrong, but I don't know where he is from either). He being much braver than me wrestled the gun away, thank God, and let them continue to pull each others hair. About 30 seconds later, the cops arrived. Within seconds two female officers that did not look any bigger than me, had LN1 and LN2 separated, in cuffs, and in the back of the squad cars. SWAT happened to be around the corner with nothing to do so they showed up as well. During all of this excitement I noticed MWG run to his car and take off, which I thought was suspicious since he had the gun. I had the wherewithal to get the license plate number from his car, but missed one letter, shame on me. And just as quickly as the battle began, the battle was over. We stayed around for a while since we were "in the front row" and witnessed the whole thing. By this time the white car had pulled up next to us and the driver conveniently mentioned nothing about the lady getting out of her car, and said she was simply on her way to pick up her children from school. We gave our statements and all our information and they let us on our way. I would say the best part of the whole thing was the SWAT guying asking an officer, "So you don't need anybody shot?"

Props to the cops for extremely fast response time, and great work separating the battle.

Monday, October 8, 2007

Bad Attitude

I am sure that you have all had experience with the type of person that questions everything that you tell them to do. This is not always a bad thing. Kids do it and they are cute. Yes, it gets annoying, but you aren't (at least you shouldn't be) getting pissed off. The problem comes when the attitude of this is person one of disrespect. I had a kid in my class like this today. I am used to getting questioned by students. Usually they are trying to get away with something. "Do we really have to do this as homework?" "I know you said no talking, but can we work together?" Questions like that are not that big of a deal. But this students questions were much more disrespectful. After I said no cell phones, he said, "Why not, you're just a sub." When I said no sleeping (it is school after all), he said, "What? We can't sleep either, man what the heck." He just drove me crazy and I thought I would spread the joy.