end of an era

two fridays ago i had exactly a week to get done an ammount of work which i could fill a month completing. i started working in the lab at chatt state and found that all the labs were locked for the weeked at 6. fantastic. my computer cant do these projenks start to finish, so i needed another. where do it turn? i went to covenant. on covenants campus are two MACs- both down in that infamous yearbook room that the wallballers camped out in for a month at the end of last semester. so, i loaded up the truck and i moved to ... er... the cave. ive been here for 9 days now. i got all the work done that was due on thursday and friday and now im finishing up the very last of it for monday night. the supreme irony of this whole situation is that i left the rolling grassy knolls of covenant college for the shabby community school just because i wanted to study design. so, here i am at the end of the semester needing to have access to the great facilities (seriously, they are really good) with which chatt state dragged me off the mountain, and they are quite literally under lock and key.

nine days of hard work and living off of ramen and food smuggled out of the great hall come to an end tomorrow afternoon. its been a blast. its been stressful beyond belief. but, its been good.

back to the real world...

long time coming

its been over a month since my last post. i figure its high time i did something about that. ive been very busy with school and work, but some things have happened. two weeks ago we had a friend from Nigeria come stay with us for a week and a half. that was good. his name is Gideon, and he is very encouraging and good to have around. its a bit strange, though, because i find myself speaking in a very deliberate way towards him, trying to weed out my American slang that he would find difficult to understand... after speaking like this for a few hours i was talking to everyone like that. Gideon was very encouraging to me and kept telling me how God had great plans in my life. im started to believe him.
in other news, i am very busy at Chatt State. i am taking 16 hours, including Production Art, Advertising Concepts, Intro to MAC Design, Illustration I, and Ceramics II. the last is modef my favorite. i spend between 6 and 10 hours a week working in the ceramics studio. i absolutely love it. its such a relief for me to make things with my hands after sitting in front of a computer for hours working on building some business card. its not that i dont enjoy my other classes- i really do. i just need to work with my hands. its the way God made me, i guess.
i started working at a company here in chattanooga as an intern- one of four. the company, named Sulzer, is one of the worlds leading producers of huge water pumps used to supply nuclear power plants with water. they build these pumps and supply plants all over north america and a few in central and south america. why am i there? they have 40+ years of paperwork sitting around in boxes and filing cabinets with varying degrees of organization. it is my job to organize all this paper, get it digitized and archived in multiple places with backups, and set up the finished product to be shredded. its a massive task. there are four of us working total 60+ hours a week (thats all of our hours put together) and we're projecting running into the summer with this. buts, thats good because i get $13/hr, and i get to listen to music and books on tape since it is such mind-numbing work. so, i sit there and download harry potter books (yeah, that right... i finally gave in and now im completely hooked) and shuffle papers for hours at a time. its great. sort of.
finally, Thanksgiving is coming up. i am very pleased with thins for a few reasons. the first is that i have off of school for a little bit. its not much, but every bit helps. the second reason is that ms Kinsey Nicole (thats her-->) has off of school too. its going to be nice to see her. third is food, and fourth is more food. i guess fifth through eighth would be sleeping.
so, theres a post. i hope you're happy, domekia.

heres another pic of the most recent steere family get together. the two non-steeres are (on the left in green) brotherdan's lady Jennifer Daniel. on the right (in green) is my lady, Kinsey Bolinger. well, i tried to put another picture up so it wouldnt look so obvious that i just wanted to post one of kinsey, but i think that it had the opposite effect, since she is now in the same blog post twice. sorry, kin. i couldnt help myself.

sitar

for the last few years i have been mildly interested in indian music, sitar specifically. j.fox got me into christian indian music like aadadhna. its an instrument which is complicated and difficult to get a hold of. sitar players study for the whole lives- its not a hobby... its a lifestyle. less than a week ago, i spoke to a number of people on how much i would like to learn sitar. last night i went over to a friends house who had lived and worked in India as a missionary. we were going to dread some hair. i walk in and the room is packed with different kinds of musical instruments- and sure enough, leaning against the piano, was a sitar.

i just about poo'd my pants. i played it for a while and asked a bunch of questions and she offered to let me borrow it. are you sure? i asked. she said yes. heck yes. so, here i am trying to figure out how to restring it with guitar strings when the neck is 1 1/2 the length of a guitar neck. also, there isnt really a standardized tuning for the instrument- its all relative to who is playing, what they are playing, and what other instruments are being played with. im trying to use the ravi shankar tuning. its simple. its the most lovely and fascinating instrument. im really glad to have it for a little while. i wont get anywhere, but thats ok. its fun to just fool around on.

i feel like im losing my mind

im in athens. i cant find my wallet. i do this often. its frustrating some times.

king of the scavengers

so a few weeks ago i saw a film with some friends from CovCol. when meeting a few new students, a good friend of mine introduced me as the "king of the scavengers." i thought this title was humorous at best, true at the worst. it turns out that is closer to true than even i realized. after lunch today, Brian and i went to the cocacola bottling plant. we have driven past the plant several times a week for the last few months. we had been talking for weeks about going by, beacuse, in our minds, they should have free cokes on hand. the plan was that we would walk up to the front desk, ask for a free coke, and if denied, we would tell them that pepsi gave out free cokes, in the hopes that they would fork over the goods just to keep two customers.
so, we walked in. there was a reception desk with a coke fridge behind filled with coke products. we walked up to the reception window on the side of the room and asked who we could see about getting some coke. "what for?" the lady asked. "research" i said. she gave us a number of a woman to contact. after she handed us the sticky, i asked her about the cokes in the cooler behind us. "what about those? can we have one?" "sure" she said. "really?" we asked in disbelief. "sure" she repeated. so, we walked behind the desk, opened the fridge, and grabbed a few cokes (in glass bottles... they somehow taste better). we walked out as kings. it made an otherwise borning and somewhat frustrating day one that would stand out in my mind as a victorious day. today i was the king of the scavengers.

at the bottom of everything

this song makes me happy. it has consistently for the last few days. the music video means much less than the song- the way Oberst brings life to words and doodles pictures in my head makes me want to scribble dreams down on napkins and lay on my back in a cornfield. anyway, this song never fails to make me, quite literally, laugh for no reason. it makes me happy just because.


death will give us back to God just like the setting sun

out looking for inspiration

i am always out looking for inspiration. here is some of what i found today:




"Images help me find and realise ideas. I look at hundreds of very different, contrasting images and I pinch details from them, rather like people who eat from other people’s plates."
- Francis Bacon