What Tim Chose

about me

name Tim C Hose
sex male
birthday 03.27.81

friends

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Kendra Coggin
Katie Cooper
Daniel Green
Amanda Burrow
Brandi Jones
Lisa Carter

Down the fat! Spring Break: Hands and Feet End of the Break BREAK POINT End of the Break CONTINUED End of the Break Biloxi Blue My Kryptonite Accidental Perversion Work, it turns out, is hard work. Weekend Gropings

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12/01/2004 - 01/01/2005 01/01/2005 - 02/01/2005 05/01/2005 - 06/01/2005 06/01/2005 - 07/01/2005 08/01/2005 - 09/01/2005 09/01/2005 - 10/01/2005 10/01/2005 - 11/01/2005 12/01/2005 - 01/01/2006 01/01/2006 - 02/01/2006 02/01/2006 - 03/01/2006 03/01/2006 - 04/01/2006 04/01/2006 - 05/01/2006 09/01/2006 - 10/01/2006

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Vlad Studios
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Wednesday, September 27, 2006

It's been a way long time since I've written in this blog, mostly because I went to that silly MySpace doodad. What I really need to do, though, is stick here and stay on my guns. Blogger really is some kind of an awesome site.

Okay.

Blog for today!

In high school, I was a pretty atheletic guy. I did martial arts, mountain biking, soccer, anything not school-related. After college, however, I stopped everything.

Now, I've gained a little more mass that I meant to.

Around Cristmas: weight 295

Now: weight 270

This is good! I'm hitting it harder and harder lately, so the fat is going away, but I want to keep myself more accountable. I've done the big stuff so far.

1. Joined the YMCA
2. Actually started GOING to the YMCA
3. Working out
4. Swimming
5. Cut sodas almost entirely out of my diet. Almost, curse you sodas!
6. Started eating healthier.

Now, there are just a few more things I need to do.

1. Not cheat.
2. Not cheat.
3. Keep myself accountable.
4. Stop eating out entirely.

So! Here's what I'm going to do. I'm pretty sure that nobody checks this blog nowadays. It's been months since I've written in here. I'm going to keep track of what I eat and what exercise I do on here. Like I said, I've been getting in the healthy habit lately, so that's helping me out.

Today's Food:

Breakfast: Lean Pockets Sausage Egg and Cheese. 140 Calories.

Lunch: Healthy and home made! Wheat pasta, chicken breast, broccoli and low fat Italian dressing in a delicious pasta salad.

Snack: Clif Bar. These dudes are awesome. 250 calories

Dinner will consist of... who knows! Probably more pasta salad. I'm cheap like that, and I need to eat the stuff before I leave for the weekend.

Thanks, Internet!

TimChose [ 7:23 AM ]

Friday, April 07, 2006

Right away after lunch, our happily free group of friends set out down the street to start our day off by finishing some work we had to do at a lady's house that we had been to previously. As we walked down the street, we happened to look behind us to see more and more Wesley students following us up the street. Apparently they were just as annoyed with their jobs as we were, so they joined us up the street.
Once we got there, Carl and I took charge directing people to different jobs, which was a lot of fun. Amy and Michael bagged over TWENTY bags of cans from this lady's yard, Chris, Matt and Steven threw out a mountain of debris and limbs, and Roy Carl, Krystle and I filled in everywhere else we could.
After working on her yard until it was properly finished, Carl, Michael and I decided to walk up the street to find our next job while everyone else cleared the site away. After walking through the neighborhood for about ten minutes, we came upon this little black woman named Josie. Carl walked right up and talked to her, because Carl can talk to anybody, and we got a conversation started. She looked a little wary that three white guys just wanted to help her out for free, but we explained that we were missionaries and had some other friends with us and didn't want any money, and she brightened right up.
Leading us around her house, she showed us her property and the damage that Katrina had done to her place. Everything actually looked pretty nice from the outside, but the inside of her home was a wreck.
She told us that water had been inside her house up to seven feet deep, and that she had been inside of it for almost the entire thing. She sat on her freezer with her sister and brother, and was scared out of her mind. Then, from her story, they all prayed together, and the water started to go down right then. Not quickly, I'm sure, but it stopped rising.
Anyways, her main problem was that FEMA (Federal Emergency Managment Agency) had given her a trailer to live in, which was great. What wasn't so great was that they had had to run her water line underneath her house to get it to the trailer, but had used cracked water pipe to do it, so there was water just spewing underneath her house. That meant that she still had no water in her trailer. She was pretty sure that she was going to have to try to call FEMA to repair it, but once I looked under there, I was sure that I could make the repair pretty easily. While Michael and I checked out that, Miss Josie showed Carl what everyone else from the group could help with in the morning. Since the day was almost over, we went back to the church to tell everyone else what we were going to do the next day. It was greeted with general happiness and excitement, because the day had gone so well since lunch.
That night we dealt with some scheduling conflicts that had come up during the day. We were supposed to work the first half of the day and then leave to Pensacola for our one half day of fun, but since everybody had been so stressed, they had decided to switch it so that we could leave in the morning and come back for dinner at the church. A really nice thought, but it put a cramp in the promise we'd made to this woman. We obviously didn't want to keep anyone from having their fun day, so a couple of us volunteered to stay behind and do the work instead of going to Pensacola, which I thought was a pretty good deal, but everyone else had different ideas.
Turns out, nobody wanted to leave. It came down to a vote that was unanimous for us to all stay in Biloxi and to work in the morning. Everybody else had things that they wanted to finish at their job sites, and we decided to work until lunch and then kind of hang out there. Either way, we were out of town, so it wasn't a bad deal.
I was just so... impressed with everyone. I'd been worried that people would be upset, but I should have had more faith in the faith of my friends.
At any rate, the entire mood of the trip changed from one of frustration to one of excitement.
The next day, we almost bounced out of our beds ready to work. With our enormous workgroup, everyone piled into the back of the church truck like true Arkansans, and we tore off down the road to the work site. Dropping everyone else off, Michael and I went to pick up the plumbing supplies and then headed back to the site.
It was awesome having Micheal do this stuff with me. I'd done plumbing before, but I didn't have a doubt in my mind that he would pick it up as easily as breathing, which he did. He's got one of the most amazing brains in the world, for real.
Anyways, we crawl under the house to get to this pipe break, where we set to work while the rest of the group cleans out Miss Josie's garage of all of the moldy stuff that got destroyed in the flooding. It looked like some hard, dirty work and my friend Matt took a good knock on the chin from an iron pot he accidentally fell on. He just kind of kept working, though, so it was cool.

Okay. Under the house. This is the sick part.

The underside of the house was pretty clean, so we had no trouble getting to the break point. After sawing out the messed up section and replacing one side, I started to crawl around to the other side to replace it, when I saw it.

A foot away from me.

Looking at me.

It was a dog's skull.

There we were, under the house, staring at each other. I looked down and saw more bones right under me. Somehow, I hadn't touched any of them yet, which was awesome. I kind of went "Michael?"

He looked over and said "Yeah ma-AAAAH! Dude!"

Without anything else to do, I just kind of crawled over the thing being careful not to touch it or anywhere close to it. Michael said that I got "Dirty Dog Award" for doing that, but I really didn't have a lot of options.
So, after we patched up that side we told people about Francois (The name we gave the dog) and my friend Ryan looked under the house and goes "There's still SKIN on it!"
Sure enough, the side facing me was skull, but the other side?
Oh yes. Mummified doggy.

Anyways. We never did tell Miss Josie about the dog under the house. I figured if it was hers, she was better off thinking that it had escaped the flood.

After that, we invited Miss Josie to dinner, which was authentic Gumbo and Jambalaya. She was worried about driving after dark, so Carl, Michael and I promised to come and pick her up.

As weird as the trip started, it turned out almost magical. We ended up doing some really good meaningful work for a total stranger who was really appreciative. Everyone gave up most of their fun time to do the work that we'd gone down there to do, and a really special lady named Miss Josie came to dinner with us. We all took pictures with her and then drove her home. After checking that her water line was holding (It was. Score!) we walked back to the church in the dark.

Sometimes, it's a very hard thing to feel humble.

Sometimes, though, it's like the whole world is humble with you.

It's an interesting feeling, though, to go through a week just desperate to help somebody and to truly not want anything in return except for them to maybe really start to believe that some people just want to help, and to serve the Lord.
At the end of the trip, I was really content with how it had turned out not because we'd done something amazing for somebody, because we really hadn't. But we had done something for God, and had stepped out with a strong desire to really do the work that we felt He wanted us to do down there in Biloxi.

I love my friends, everyone. They're amazing people, and if you haven't all met each other, then you really should. If you have met already, then take some more time to get to know each other, because you'll find out that the person you only know casually has something incredible inside of them.

Alright, I'm off the soap box. God is amazing, Biloxi is rebuilding, and the sun is going down here in Arkansas. Have a great night.

TimChose [ 7:56 AM ]

Friday, March 31, 2006

Okay, so continuing in the saga of my odd spring break trip to Biloxi, we take the story back up where Gomer the Idiot Carpenter had just revealed that the tender parts of his psyche could not stand spiders apparently even more than a friend of mine. I make this assumption because rather than send one of the other people down there with the spiders, he happily kept us all out of the danger of eight legged freakiness.

My other friend would have happily sent us house diving if it meant not chopping up some poor lady's floor, and that's just fine folks.

Alright. So. After the dreaded spider revelation we loaded the truck back up because that was literally all we were doing at this lady's house. Our slightly grumpy band of still-eager missionaries plowed onward to the next house on the list, making a brief stop at Lowe's for one single small piece of plumbing that we needed. The only reason we needed said piece of plumbing was because Gomer the Idiot Carpenter also added Idiot Plumber to his list of achievements the day before by digging straight through a lady's waterline.

Arriving at the second house, we bail out and start unloading tools while Gomer runs behind the house. Ryan deftly handed me a bag of plumbing fixtures and joints, and we all headed for the source of trouble, only to be met by Gomer coming back around the house.

"What are y'all doin'?" He asked.

We all stared blankly, and a few of us pointed weakly at the water main he had broken.

He shook his head like a big shaggy bear and goes "Naw! I'm done! Only thing ah had to do was around back!"

So we got back in the truck...

and left.

By this time, get this... it was lunchtime. We had done nothing the entire day, and let me tell you, it made for a really unhappy group of men and one woman who just wanted to help somebody. There was destruction everywhere, but we had done nothing the entire day.

As soon as we got back to the church, we all agreed on something.

We weren't going to do this anymore.

They had told us the very first day that we were there that if we did not like what we were doing on a project to just walk up the street and ask somebody if they needed help, so we decided to take them at their word and do just that. We were tired of unfinished projects, tired of not helping people improve the situation they were in. There were some people in my group who I had never seen angry the entire time I'd known them.

Oh, you know who you are!

Anyways, after we made this decision, everyone immeadiately felt better. We were excited, a little nervous about stepping out like this (such rebels!) and really really happy to be doing something that felt more in line with what we thought God had called us to do down there.

During lunch, however, Gomer came up to me and we had a little confrontation. He stopped me in the bathroom of all places, and holds out his hand with a smug look on his face.

"Dude. After lunch, we're really gonna hit it hard!" He says to me.

I looked him straight in the eye and said. "No, no we aren't."

He looks confused for a second, and then says "No, really. I've got us another job! Another older couple who need their lawn done. Just up the street from the last house."

I started trying to talk, but he stopped me again and says "Now, it ain't gonna be nothing too hard, just some easy work."

I say "Gomer! We really want to do something hard!"

He kind of waves that off and goes "Ahh naw! You guys are going to have a fun day tomorrow on the beach! You need an easy day!"

I gaped at him, and say "Yesterday was an easy day! We really want to do something hard!"

He just kind of laughed at the idiot kid, though, and left me standing there awkwardly in the bathroom as an old guy exited the stall and gave me a weird look.

Right at the end of lunch, my friends Ryan and Carl went to tell Gomer that we were not going to be on the other crew. These two guys are some kind of special studs, because Carl told him that we just had another job we were going to do. Apparently he got all flustered and started going on about how we needed to do yardwork for the memebers of the church, and Ryan instantly p0wn3d him with his fury alone. He told Gomer that there were people sleeping under the bridge, and he didn't think that lawn work was important.

I love those guys, and I wish I'd heard it.

I'm going to need one more entry to finish this guy up, but I promise, it's the best part of the entire trip. If you've been following the story, then it really is a storybook ending filled with some of the best characters I know.

It's a lucky man who has friends like these.

TimChose [ 1:18 PM ]

Right. Where was I?

Ahh. We'd just found out that our work project had been cancelled.

Not the most amazing thing to hear and not be told about. We really really wanted to work!
This other guy, though, claimed to have loads of jobs lined up for just such a young eager crew of large guys to handle. We all jumped into the truck, headed over to the tool shed, and he goes.
"Okay, get everything!"

Ah ha! We've heard this one before, sir!

Keeping a close eye on the man, we grabbed every tool and power tool we could find. Mowers, trimmers, chainsaw-on-a-stick, wheelbarrows, crowbars, circular saws! All of it!
Then, we loaded into the truck, packed 7 people in there like sardines and took off to these promised jobs.

The very first house that we went to was the house of the old woman who was in the wheelchair. Same place we'd been to the day before. Leading the way, our guide took us into her actual house for the first time ever, and this is where your host began to get a little concerned and angry.

The house was torn up inside. Literally. The sheetrock was gone, the flooring was gone, no insulation, nothing. So, while we had been happily mowing this woman's lawn the day before, her house had been sitting there just... waiting for somebody to help make it livable for the poor woman. FEMA trailers are not big by any means, folks, and are not quite built for the handicapped, or for people who want comfort.

Anyways. Once we get inside, the dude says "Okay. There is a hole somewhere under this house that her dogs keep falling into. We need to find out where that hold is and fill it in with dirt!"

Some of us exchanged puzzled glances, and I asked "Umm, hey. Wouldn't it be better just to get some trellis and block it off from the outside so that the dogs can't get under there at all?

He looked at me with an incredibly blank stare for a moment, and then then said "But... she wants the HOLE filled in!"

Then, he says "Stand back!" and started to CUT A HOLE IN THE WOMAN'S FLOOR with a circular saw!

"Woah!" We yelled. "What about her floor?"

"Ah," he says, "we're going to replace the whole floor."
That sounded okay to us, so he cuts a hole, right? Cuts a hole right in her floor, then stands up and looks at us and says, "Well, we're not really going to replace the floor. Just cover it with wood. It'll be strong."

I pointed at the hole and say "Well yeah, but not there."

Done is done, though, so we look down the hole and find out that the pit under the house is all the way on the other side of the house, and is actually made of concrete, like a well or cistern.
Gomer Pile the carpenter happily walks across the house and starts in on another hole right above the place.

This is where I realized how little carpentry experience the man had.

Picture this. No, really. It's nuts.

The man cut a hole...... around himself!

Just like in a cartoon! Luckily enough he was standing on a stud and didn't fall on through, but come on! He cut a HOLE around himself! After he was done, my friend Krystle pointed this out to him, and he gave this weird little laugh and stepped off the area and went "Daaaaang, sure did!"

Anyways, we find the pit under the house, and he starts measuring how deep the thing is. I asked him why, and he told me it was so that they could figure out how much fill dirt they would need to buy to get it done, and how much of a hole they would need to cut to dump it in there. I asked him if it wouldn't be easier just to not get all of that fill dirt, and not to tear up this poor woman's floor anymore, and instead just build a wooden cap to go over the pit.

Blinded by my logic, he nods and agrees, then took measurements for his masterpiece box. Feeling wary, I asked him what the measurements were.

"56 by 62!" He happily replied.

I waited.

And waited. He started working on something else.

"Hey," I finally said, "Don't you need to know how tall it needs to be?"

He froze for a moment, then snapped his fingers and yelled "Yup!"

After he got that measurement, he says "Lets go!"
Apparently, that's the only thing we needed to do there. Just take measurements.
So, I asked him why we didn't just crawl under the house to get those measurements.

Seems reasonable, right?

Gomer the Idiot Carpenter looks at me, straight in the face, serious as can be, and says...

"Ah hate spiders!"

TimChose [ 1:16 PM ]

So here is the dramatic end of my spring break week of mission work fun.

Want to know the end before I get to it?

We left the worksite in frustration.

No joke! Ok, here's the skinny, as the homies say. (Yes, I know that was an fase reference. Homies would never say that, or their boys would be checkin' on 'em for a looooong time, son.)

Alright. Well, after my last entry, the workdays went slightly odd. Wednesday we did yardwork. I'm serious, yardwork for church members, which I can tell you is pretty hard to do when you've looked at people who are sleeping under a bridge.
What they did was to take us to these church member's homes and do "beautification projects" where we mowed the lawns and trimmed branches and stuff. At first, it didn't seem like a bad thing, because the woman that we were doing this for was in a wheelchair and couldn't do the work herself. No big deal.
the second house of the day, though, was for people who's lawn had been named Yard of the Year in Biloxi for like, 4 years running.
Now, I don't want to sound ungrateful. The church was putting us up and feeding us, but come on. The whole time we were mowing this lawn or moving branches, or spreading mulch, we were talking to each other. Is this what we were here for? Did God want us cleaning these people's yard? Wasn't there someplace else we could do more good?

Well, in most cases, the moral to the story ends up something about how the group prayed about it and decided that there was some lesson about life to be learned in the simple service of doing the work.

The only thing was... it wasn't like that. We prayed about it, yes, but the message really was that we could be doing much, much more.

So, the next day rolls around on our frustrated little group of missionary adventurers. We had secured a job where we were supposed to demolish the ceiling on some woman's house because it had been damaged in the floods. Sounded pretty cool to us, so in the morning we loaded up into this guys truck and headed off.
We got in the truck.
And drove.
Across the parking lot to the toolshed.
Where the guy goes "Okay, go get all the tools we'll need!"
We're pumped!
We jump out of the truck.
Rush to the toolshed.
Grab all the tools we'll need. Crowbars, hammers, etc.
We run back outside.
And...
He's gone.
Truck and all! The dude TOOK OFF while we were in the shed, and so we waited for him to come back. We waited for an hour and a half. No kidding.
When he finally gets back, he parks the truck and goes into the building without saying a WORD to us. Minutes later, a different guy comes out with papers in his hand yelling "I got us some JOBS! Come on!"
"Wait," I said, "what about the ceiling job?"
"Oh, that got cancelled!" He happily replied.

Dang, kids. I'm tired. My birthday was yesterday, so I'm going to go to sleep and finish this sad sordid tale tomorrow. Have a great night!

TimChose [ 12:47 PM ]

This week.

Pretty bizarre week so far, people. I'm in Biloxi right now helping with hurricane relief this week, and it's pretty interesting. Thus went my week, sirrah.

We all boarded up on the vans Saturday morning, and headed out for an 8 hour trip down here to the rocking land of Biloxi. I had been worried about how this trip was going to go down because let's face it. Eight hours in a van with 15 or so people can get a little tedious.

So, I decided that it wasn't going to happen that way, and I bought toys. My supplies to create a vastly fun trip included:

1. Glass Chalk. With this we decorated the outside of the van with many fun slogans such as "Hey you! You are an awesome person! (And Cute!)" and we also drew bears, bunnies, and people running all willy nilly.

2. Sticky Balls. These little guys are made of suction cups, so they stuck to everything they hit. Awesome for nailing right next to a drowsy friend's head.

3. Snacks. We all loaded up with fruit rollups, granola, and chips.

4. Bubbles. Yes, people. This was the big one that sent our trip into astronomical fun-time. I bought a huge pack of little bubbles, so we spent literally hours creating a 60's wonderland of flying colored fun. Hopefully somebody else will clean out the inside of that van.

Anyways, that's how the ride went. We all arrived just fine, and then got our first taste of what had really happened down here. It was pretty sobering.

Not that we were drunk. Just for the record, we weren't.

No, really.

Ok, the coastline of Biloxi is almost gone. Almost all of the houses new and old, every single reasturant, the ocean casinos, and anything else unlucky enough to be in the way of a 30-foot tall wall of water.

The big thing here, though, is the church that we are staying in. These people are some kind of amazing. We are literally across the street from the beach, so the water got into the church during the hurricane. The pews are all messed up and the church has been overhauled.

Not overhauled like you would think, though.

Every SINGLE Sunday School room has been changed into sleeping places for missionaries. They have gone in and changed a large downstairs room into showers for the missionaries, and these people have been working for, get this, six months straight without time off as voulnteers coordinating different visiting group's labors. They are excited about the fact that sometime around August they might get a week off. No kidding.

Well. Since I've been here, I've worked on a cleanup crew down by the highway. We got rid of a lot of trash and such that had blown in, set a fence back up, and that kind of thing. Today, though, it was a little wierd. We went to this lady's house where she was diabled from repeated surgery, and her father was bedridden. They had cans. THOUSANDS of cans, people. This lady and her dad love Diet Coke with a passion and had decided to recycle before they were injured. Well, those cans have been sitting there since 2003, and the pile just got bigger and bigger. My friends Roy and Carl were given the task of pulling these soda cans out and recycling them. Well, we got to talking about it, and all we could think about were the tabs on those sodas. You see, there are a couple of different things that you can do with those tabs. One of them is donate them to the Ronald McDonald House, and I hear that they will pay for one minute of chemotherapy for children with cancer. It has to do with the fact that the tabs are higher in metal content and worth more for recycling.

So, we went to work and pulled hundreds and hundreds of tabs off of these guys before we re-bagged them and sorted them. Fifteen bags later we called it a day, mowed the lady's yard, and came back to the church. After dinner and devo, a few of us wandered the town and saw the Katrina memorial site where I got to talk to a couple of locals who were actually in the storm. Later, we think that somebody shot at us froma boat, so we came back to the church.

There, we found our looters.

Yes, we have our very own looters! These lovable morons have returned to the apartment beside the church for three nights in a row scavenging what they can from the place, so we decided that we would just... watch them. It worked like a charm, and freaked them out so badly that they started to shout at us and left.

As they left last night, one of them apparently was annoyed at being run off by Arkansans, being of high Mississippi blood, so he yelled at us "Heeey! Ya'll got you tee vee up thar in Arkansas yet?"

Now, I'm not sure what happened in my brain, but I yelled back "No sir! We're due to get that started up next year though! We're real excited!"

This took the poor fellow aback, so he kind of went "Uhh. uhh" for a moment, and then in a brilliant flash of insight yelled another "tee vee" related insult.

"Y'all got you cable? Huh? Haw haw haw!"

So, I yelled back at him, "Heck yeah I got me some cable! I use it to tie down stuff in mah truck, or to rope some steer up to things. Cable's real useful!"

I really don't know if the guy ever realized that I was messing with him or not, but they retreated before my vivious verbal onslaught. We have a lot of fun standing outside watching them every night when they come back.

Anyways, that's been my trip so far. More updates will come later! Other people need to use this computer, have a great night!

TimChose [ 12:46 PM ]

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

I thought, just for a minute, that I might die today. Kick the bucket, croak, push up sone daisies, or (as Bone Thugs say) decease.

A slightly well known fact about me is that I am crazily vulnerable to spicy foods. Jalapenos? No sir! The truth of the matter is that I can barely chew Big Red. It's honestly that bad. A doctor told me once that this means that I'm what's known as a "super taster," so apparently I can taste things better and have a better sense of smell than other people.

The tradeoff, though, is this insane weakness to all things spice. Growing up, our taco sauce was ketchup. Rotel scorches my poor little sensitive tongue, and the only peppers I eat are green bell peppers.

So! Today I decided to eat some healthy food, and I was looking at wraps from Tropical Smoothie when I stumble upon this little gem of a food item called the "Carribbean Jerk" wrap. Boy howdy did it ever sound like it was right up my alley. Being unfamiliar with it, I decided to give it a go.

Of course, what nobody told me was that the devil had personally cooked this little burrito of mouth-death himself, and used the extra "Kill Tim" spice.
I bit into this thing, and instantly felt the tingle.
Oh man. I thought. This thing is spicy! I'll eat it quick!
So I wolfed the poor thing down as quickly as I could because heck, whatever it was going to do to me was going to happen now regardless, right?

Not such a smart move as it turns out.

My mouth caught fire. Seriously, it was some of the worst pain I've ever had in my mouth. It was like somebody maced my tongue, and then tazered it. My lips were burning, my eyes were watering, and my nose started running.
I don't know if you guys know how to get spice out of your mouth or not, but I do from years of fear and scaldings. Bread, my friends. Bread is an amazing little animal that soaks up spice like nobody's business, so I went through my office in search of something bready.

Here's the slightly embarrassing part.

All I found were cookies. By now, my mouth is in so much hurtful pain that I think my face will burn off of me and that I can probably start breathing fire any time I want to.

So, I resorted to what any sane person would at a time like this.

I gobbled cookies like a man posessed. I don't know about you, but I find it hard to explain what I'm doing when someone I work with comes into the kitchen and finds me crying while frantically scrubbing my tongue with a Chip's A-Hoy Soft cookie.

She stopped, wide eyed.

I stopped, as wide eyed as I could.
Then...

scrub.

scrub.

Silence. Staring.

scrub...

Yeah, it was pretty awkward for me. Anyways! My mouth got better thanks to those emergency cookies, so all I have to say now is this:

God bless you, Nabisco.

scrub

TimChose [ 3:49 PM ]

Saturday, February 25, 2006

Today was slightly interesting.

Saturday mornings just haven't lost the magical appeal that they had when I was a kid. I slept until 10:30, which was some kind of awesome. If you've read my last blog, you understand. Anyways, after I got up, my friend Amy and I went to go look at pawn shops and antique malls. I like going to those places because you really never know what you're going to find in them. I'd scoped some out the day before, so we were going to stop by and see what was up.

Well... on the way to the first one, I saw a place on the side of the road that seemed to have a lot of second hand furniture. Quick as a flash, I whipped my car into their drive, hoping that they would have maybe a rocking chair or a prayer stool or something. As soon as we got out, though, this old lady comes out of the store and walks over to us.

"Hi, can I help you?" She asks. "We don't have much, we just had a burnout." (a fire.)

"Oh man, that's awful, I'm sorry." I said. "We were just going to look through some of your stuff out here, but if you've had trouble..."

She stopped me and looks at Amy and I and goes "Well, do you know what you want? Most of our customers are regulars."

That seemed kind of weird to me, but I figured she didn't mind selling stuff, and probably needed to because of the fire. "No, that's okay, we'll just look through if that's okay." I said.

"Ok, well come on, then." She replied, and led us around the corner of the building away from the furniture and stuff. Amy and I exchanged odd glances, and the lady took us over to, and I'm not kidding...

A gigantic pile of porn magazines and sex toys.

Seriously.

She started poking through the pile and says "Well, this is what we got out so far, but here are the toys, and that's the movies, so look through what you'd like-"

"Umm, umm. Ma'am?" I said, "I'm really sorry, but I got the wrong impression, I thought that you guys were selling the furniture out front!"

She stared at me for a second and says "You didn't know this was an adult shop, did you?"

I had to laugh, and said "No, ma'am. I'm a youth minister!" So she joined in laughing while Amy stood there and kind of looked mortified.

Anyways. It was probably the most awkward occurance of misunderstanding that I could imagine, so we kind of shuffled away from the gratuitous mountain of dirty.

Yeah, imagine trying to talk about ANYTHING with a Christian friend of the opposite sex alone in a car after that misunderstanding. I think we talked about parrots.

That's how my morning went. The rest of the trip was great, we found a REAL antique mall and I picked up a Frank Sinatra vinyl album, some tools, and a front licence plate that says "Reduce Smog: Ride a Horse."

Anybody? Eh? Eh?

Have a great night America.

TimChose [ 8:50 PM ]

Friday, February 24, 2006

I think that working two jobs is finally taking it's toll on me.

It turns out that working 70 hours a week takes up a lot of your free time.

I figured that out all on my own. No, really!

I've got the Monday through friday 9 to whenever work gets done, and then the youth job which just kicked up a notch. I've added a youth night to my country church because we finally have enough teens to start one. Now, I also work all day Sunday, almost every single Saturday, and Wednesday and Thursday nights.

I'm so happy to have just a few hours to myself Monday, Tuesday, and Friday nights that I just kind of sit for the most part. It's amazing the things you feel like you're making time for when you are on a very short supply of it. Reading, talking to friends, anything. I have, at least, taught myself some more on the guitar.
The main thing, though, is that mah bills are getting paid. Soon them credit cards will be a distant memory, and student loans will have taken their rightful place as my monetary nemesis of choice. I like to focus on a bill to pay it off and get it out of the way. Finance charges. There's something they never told me about in high school.

I actually had a dream about taking a nap. Seriously, I did. Somehow, I was disappointed to wake up and find out that I hadn't been taking a nap. I don't think that makes sense, somehow. It's my own fault, though. I just can't seem to stop doing things lately.

I should be getting a road bike pretty soon so that I can train up for an upcoming mission trip bike ride. I've missed riding a lot, so I'm going to start riding the bike to work every chance I get. I'll just be chasing the American dream of changing my tummy from one big lump into a series of small, hard lumps.

My first step on that part has been to actually shop for food. I know, I know, it sounds revolutionary and very bizarre, but it turns out that you can choose to buy healthy food at the supermarket!

I know! Wierd, right?

Anyways, I'm going to give the whole diet thing a try along with my new fantastically painful workout routine. It's set up into separate phases which I have yet to name any of except for the first. It's called "Whine Like A Sissy: Lactic Acid and You."

Life is freaking rad. I'm feeling better than ever, putting more of myself into my work (Youth, not design) than I have before, focusing on what needs to be done, and working myself to death. I've got close to twenty kids that I get to hang out with all the time, and who are all completely different. The skater kids want me to skate, which so far, I'm awesome at. I can stand on the board and not fall off. Not while it's moving, mind you. That's a big accomplishment for me. The inner city kids are making my dodgeball skills insane, and now my boys claim that I am "From da hood." Apparently it's as easy as just living there.

No, really. They told one of my friends that the other night. She was talking about how she was insulting someone, and Leroy pipes up "Mr. Tim don' know none of your crazy white girl insults! He straight from tha hood!"

First, she stared at him, laughing.
Then, she stared at me.

I went, "Yeah!"

Haaaah! Just a few years have transformed me somehow into a graphic-designing, almost-skateboarding, net-blogging, youth minister who is straight street, yo.

In two years, I'll probably have dreds, and be calling myself "T-Sketch" or something.

I love my jobs, I love being overworked, I love not sleeping enough, I love my new no longer secret fitness craze, and I love what's happening in my personal life, I love my friends, and I'm pretty much... good.

I gotta tell you, right now I wouldn't have it any other way.

TimChose [ 10:53 AM ]

Monday, February 20, 2006

What a week I had!

Monday and Tuesday were work. Surprise! They're also a couple of my very few days when I don't have to work after work, so they were pretty nice, and I did not in fact, work those nights. I have absolutely no recollection of what I did do, though. Mostly, my brain was in severe power save mode. I'm such a Mac using zombie.

Wednesday, though, was a pretty different story. Wednesday was my third youth meeting ever at my country church. The first meeting, there were two kids. The second meeting, there were three. This week, though, eight kids show up with their skateboards. So, my friend Amy and I let them skate around for a while, because they were having a great time, and then I started the Bible lesson.

Some of these kids, I should mention, have never gone to church ever. That means that some of them really don't know any of the story of Jesus, so I asked if they did or not, and a couple of them raised their hands. Then I asked if any of them wanted to tell the story pretty quickly for everyone, and this kid raises his hand all excitedly, and I point to him and say "Go for it, man."

Oh, he went for it.

Here is the story of Jesus, as it came out of this child's mouth:

"Jesus was born from the Virgin-Angel Mary. Then he got laid in this cart, and when he came out he was all strong and stuff, and he had on this armor, and he started knocking stuff over everywhere, and then he has this little short dude who kept following him around, and he was kind of a goat, and..."

"Woooooah!" I yelled at my confused kid. "That's not the story of Jesus at all!"

"Yes it is!" he argued back, "I saw it on the movie Herculese!"

I guess my point here, is that I've got a long way to go with these kids.

The only other stuff that happened to me was that we had a small ice storm, and I kind of got felt up.

In church.

More on that later! Have a great night kids!

TimChose [ 3:20 PM ]