my girlish figure

Now that I have quit drinking at nearly every occasion, I am starting to lose some weight and looking like less of a fatass. Since the end of march I haven't done any heavy drinking and the most I have had at one sitting was about four beers. I have gone several weeks without having a drop though.  My mom is giving me compliments as well is some of the rest of my family. At my heaviest, right before I turned 24, I had to of been very close to 240 pounds. I probably have spent most of the last nearly 3 years around 220. Before I turned 21 and started to drink at will, I was always under 190. I don't know if I will ever get down to that again, but a goal is a good thing to have. Hopefully I can get all the work done that I want in my house and be able to move a treadmill in. I really did enjoy running and hope to get to be able to run more often. 

I thought I might put some perspective to my drinking by describing two of the days I think I drank the most. One football saturday at columbus, I decided I was going to drink some whiskey that day. I knew when the liqour store opened on saturdays, so I went and bought two bottles of jim beam and was getting some whiskey down before 10 am. By the time I left for the noon game I had half of one bottle down and was feeling pretty good. After the game I kept on drinking and finished both the bottles before 11 pm if I remember correctly. I then kept on drinking beers, until we went to a new bar in the gateway called "the ugly toona saloona." I had a buddy that had moved back home and hadn't been to columbus for a while so we went and I kept on drinking. I remember buying a fishbowl sized thing filled with hard liqour and drinking most of that from a straw. On the way home I bought some nachos from la bamba and was eating them on the couch at my house at about 2:30. Some of my friends there started throwing clothes and cushions at me so I flipped my nachos up off of my lap and went to bed. The next day I was up and at'em before 11 to take the GRE so I could see if I was getting into grad school I did okay despite drinking a shitload the day before. Then after the GRE I watched some of the bengals game and went to the schottenstein center to help a club sweep up the place and make some extra money. 

On another instance I drank an estimated 35-40 beers on the day that Ohio State played michigan when the teams were ranked first and second in the nation. I was teaching during that time so I was able to wake up on teacher time for me and start throwing back the beers. Me and my one roommate stayed up late drinking so we could go to a target store to stand in line to buy a nintendo wii. 

On a more positive note, I have been listening to a lot of incubus music lately There is all kinds of good stuff on their greatest hits cd. 

the 40 year old virgin is my favorite comedy.

Lately I have heard some talk about the hangover being a funny movie. I have seen the hangover and after some deliberation, the 40 year old virgin is funnier. Here are my reasons why. 

40YOV has a better cast. Steve Carrell, Paul Rudd, and Seth Rogen are all better than Zach Galifinakis and Ed Helms. They have also starred in other movies on their own accord. 

40YOV has a plot that isn't about people who were drugged and spend the rest of the movie being idiots. 40YOV is about love and personal decisions that are made as adults. We see the guy who spends his entire adult life being to afraid to become intimate or associated with a woman. We see the guy who laments and regrets over his ex-girlfriend to the annoyance of his friends. We see the guy who cheats on his main squeeze and then comes to regret it after he finds out he is going to be a father. We see the guy who is on drugs but has some serious thoughts about about to get women. Then at the end of the movie, they all tell the main character he can't do what they wanted him to do the entire movie, sleep with a random woman to "bust that first nut" because if he loves the woman he has been seeing he should save himself for her. Does the hangover teach any life lessons like that? 

40YOV also teaches us more about how men act around each other. Four good friends who enjoy each others company acting like men want to and enjoying each others company. The hangover has three friends who let another guy tag along. The tag along drugs them willingly and two of the friends leave the third on the roof of a building. 

40YOV has all kinds of one great one liners also some of my favorite are -yeah its 9 dollar beer night - she sounds like a tea kettle - lets get some french toast - only ask questions - can you guy quit with the gay! - your putting the pussy on a pedestal - and several others. I need to watch it again to get some of the others again. 

That is all for my synopsis of the hangover versus the 40 year old virgin. I had some other thoughts during the day for here but have lost track of them now. Later dirtworldian readers. 

webcomics

Webcomics are one of the greatest things ever if you ask me. My favorite webcomic site is qwantz.com, also referred to as dinosaur comics. Every comic has the same drawing, but the text is different. The comic is always entertaining and well thought out jokes are common. One of the best things about this comic is the creator makes about five new comics a week. The t-rex, utahraptor and dromiceiomulus are great characters.  My second favorite webcomic is on xkcd.com. The comics are very often science or math based and I can find them very funny. They also sometimes make some school appropriate comics that I think should be hung up on walls for students to read and understand. This comic has new comics three days a week comparitively. I also read pennyarcade.com and try to get to marriedtothesea.com as often as possible also. 

I also would like to that this blog post to talk about why I like to watch cartoons and read some magnas. Cartoons for me are an escape from reality. I don't know about the readers of blogs, but my life can use an escape from any bills, work, or other responsibility every so often. I can generally sit through some more kiddy cartoons, but prefer to watch cartoons described as anime, which are japanese cartoons based on japanese comics. The themes and ideas and struggles that can be presented are entertaining to me. I have been laughed at before by some people who watch only one episode and can't figure out what is going on. What I get out of them is a half hour or so of an escape from reality. 

perryville missouri

I did not start this blog by accident. I thought that pontificating online would be a good way to see what I am thinking and relieve some stress. So far I like how I have been able to get some really good thoughts and opinions out of this activity. Another reason is I had read another blog infrequently and noticed an oddity about who was visiting their site. One thing led to another and I now know that my satellite internet service must be based not in Ohio, because my own page views for this blog show up as perryville missouri. 

On another note, I never started shaving with a razor until after I had turned 21. Up until that time I was able to get away with using an electric shaver ever couple days or so. My dad had never showed me how to shave with a razor and I was a bit worried about putting something with a sharp edge to my face. I was finally able to watch another guy use a razor to shave when I was in brazil and got over that trepidation then. Even now, I can still get away with not shaving for two or three days before I need to shave again. After a week without shaving, I have something that starts to resemble a goatee but am really irritated by facial hair and shave that off. I guess I am still a bit of a baby-face if I have to shave that irregularity. 

I am watching the movie "Raging Bull" tonight and it is pretty boring so far. Robert deNiro may have won an award for it, but this movie is not doing it for me. 

cyclops

My eyesight is horrible. I have been wearing glasses since 2nd or 3rd grade. At one point before 6th grade, I remember having bifocals. By the time I hit junior high I was able to wear contacts, which I did all throughout high school. Most of college I wore my glasses, but would occasionaly wear my contact lenses. I generally wear my glasses post college also, but sometimes put in my contacts if I am going to be working outside all day, or want to wear sunglasses. 

My right eye is definitely my more dominate eye. Most of my vision is through my right eye, I scarcely use my left eye. 

I also have a bit of a lazy eye in my opinion. Some of my family tells me that my eyes look normal or okay, but I think they are being nice. When I look in the mirror, they don't look lined up like I think they should. When I shift my focus from one eye to the other, I can tell a difference in how they are positioned. I have had some surgeries to try and correct this condition, but my eye maintains or reverts back to some form that looks a bit off to me. I know that I don't have a tumor or anything odd putting any pressure on it, because I have had scans to check that ailment. I try to avoid taking to many pictures so that my eyes aren't photographed or documented that way. 

I wish I could wear my contacts more often, but they don't quite fit comfortably the whole time. My optometrist says that he cannot order any flatter lenses, so I just get along without wearing them all the time. 

radio music

There is all kinds of good music playing on the radio now. Locally, 96.5 plays some really good new stuff that is kind of slow and very thoughtful. The music is not to heavy and these new songs they play are really soulful and are about regret and some other mistakes they wish they hadn't made. Really good stuff in my opinion. 

Country music is also really good lately in my esteemed opinion. There are plenty of fun songs to sing along to as well as some songs that are slower and more relaxed. 

On satellite radio, Howard Stern has been great as usual, but I haven't found a comprable rock station to the terrestrial cincinnati station I listen to. 

baling hay

Baling hay and baling straw is the worst part of farming in my opinion. Every year when we start baling, I feel dumber and dumber because we just do things the slowest dumbest way. Round baling does help ease some of the work, but dad and grandpa can't figure out how to use round bales to feed in place of square bales. So we have to keep square baling. 

Today my dad made the comment that the square baler wasn't working how it should. I told him it is working how it should, since it does keep breaking on a regular schedule. 

online dating

I have ventured into the world of online dating. Currently I am signed up for two such sites. 

The first site is farmersonly.com. While the site has the appeal of meeting other like minded people who are available for companinship, most farmers seemingly don't have time for computers. Or the women on there are all horse crazy. The main disadvantage the site has against it is the lack of information. I can't go on there and see if someone hasn't been on in a day or a year. You also have to pay for a the ability to send messages, and look at other profiles. At the basic membership you can only see other peoples main picture and name. Since I upgraded to a premium paying membership, I can view profiles and send messages. While I have had some success emailing back and forth with some ladies, nothing has really come to or shown any real prospects. Some of the more local girls I find on that site don't respond to messages because they are presumably not online all that often. 

The second site I am on is okcupid.com. While the site has better layout and functionality, it is also more depressing. I get on there and see all these 18 to 20 year old girls signed up who complain about guys treating them bad or how hanging out with their friends is one of their favorite activities. I occasionally find some one a bit interesting that results in some emails back and forth. However, the interest usually trails off. I can't quite decide how someone signs up for a dating site and is as unresponsive as some of the women are on there. I may not have the most appeal, but I can keep up some email banter for some time. I have found one lady friend on there who I am still hoping to get a date with, but she seems disinterested. I found her profile on the site and realized that I had already meet the girl. We were able to send some messages and I was able to briefly talk to her when I was working at the same location as her. I couldn't say much since I wanted to be discreet at this location. That all started at the end of december, and I haven't got her to agree to a date yet. I just have to keep trying, she does seem interesting, but I feel that she is a bit guarded at our mutual location also. 

Honesty, I am ready to quit the online dating sites and just devote myself more to church and church activities. I have heard the saying that you meet decent people at decent places. While this saying may hold true for bars and other crowded dark areas for people up late at night, I do think that online dating may have some good potential there. I have seen several profiles of seemingly good if not great women on those sites. 

nintendo

During the day I seem to think of all kinds of things to type about on here. Then when I sit down and want to get started, the ideas go away. Today I will talk about why I like to play video games and commit more time to that pursuit now. 

There was a time when I was 24, where I had to charge my nintendo ds more often than my cell phone. I would go to bed early every night when I was teaching and spend an hour or two playing puzzlequest or starfox. I was playing so much that the battery was going dead more often than my cell phone battery. Nowadays I like playing as a way to keep doing nothing when I should be occupying my time with something. 

I kind of decided that I liked playing video games more than I did drinking, which is one of the reasons I am doing more of one now than the other. 

I am seemingly a nintendo fanboy, since I have had a wii for almost three years now and a ds even longer and a dsi not too long after it first came out. I think I like playing my dsi the most, but have plenty of games for the wii also. 

I generally play a game enough to beat it once and then lose interest in it. For example, I just beat madworld last weekend, and the game has no more appeal for me now. The same thing happened with okami. 

Well thats enough for now, got a busy day tomorrow of baling hay and plowing tobacco. Gotta get some rest. 

brasil

My junior year of college I got to go on a study abroad to brasil. I was 21 at the time and got to go because I was an honorary fraternity in the ag college. We went for six weeks and there was 11 of us, 3 of us guys and 8 girls. I was the oldest guy, but there was a girl that was in her mid thirties that went also. 

We went during winter quarter, which was a good way to avoid another Ohio winter. I really liked being in brasil because I could understand most of the portugeuse they were speaking, it was very similar to spanish. We had about four weeks worth of classes and the rest of the time we were touring. I got a good tan and by the end of the trip I was being mistaken as a native brazilian. We learned plenty about brazil during the classes and I can't wait to get back. I would have to think the highlight of my trip was going to see the Christ the Redeemer statue that they have in Rio de Janerio. The beaches they were fantastic and the weather was good the whole time. We stayed in Piricicaba most of the trip, at a hotel called antoino's palace. Piricicaba is in the state of Sao Paulo. One weekend everyone stayed with different host families, and I stayed with our portuguese language teacher and her son Thiago. Thiago was about 19 then and the fun thing to do for his cohort was to hang out at the local "posto" which is portuguese for gas station. At the posto you could buy beers one at a time, go out front and drink it, then go back for another beer when you needed another one. It was a pretty fun night for me. Other highlights include discovering chuhascarias where you get served a variety of meats on a skewer at a table, buffet style. I usually got my fill of food from doing that. The worst thing that happened to me involves drinking. We went to some type of research facility one day and our tour guide was some young dude. The guy also meet us all for dinner and drinks that night at some trendy night spot. He wanted to see some one get really drunk that night because in brasil people usually know their limits and don't allow themselves to get drunk. Long story short I drank so much that one of the girls called me a drinking machine and staggered back to my hotel room by myself around 3:30 that night. I slept through the alarm, but one one the fellows woke me up and I made it to the bus to leave for the day by 6:45. When we stopped for lunch a couple of hours later, everyone thought I looked like death, but I went to the bathroom and dropped some dumpage and was fine. 

I can't wait to go back to brazil and if/when I get married I am going to try to honeymoon in rio de janerio. I won't drink as much but the food and weather and sights there should be enough fun with the right person. 

cash on the barrelhead son

The title of this post refers to a old timey country song about someone who has to pay cash for things, and I suppose back when the song was written, barrelheads were in the stores. 

At any rate, I thought I would talk a little bit about a farmers cash flow. Last season/fall 2008, I harvested about 175 acres of soybeans. Since I was farming on the halves with two landlords, I got to keep or sell half of the beans. I sold my share of about 45 acres in 2008 and had the rest put in storage, or delay priced everything else. So far in 2009 I have sold all of my DP crops and have been keeping careful records of my income  and expenses. So far I have grossed over 55,000 dollars, and spent over 15,000 paying fertilizer bills and other ag related expenses. My income has been greatly helped by a 20,800 dollar check from the crop insurance company, which is very out of the normal. I have used most of the insurance check paying off my truck and putting a down payment on my house. 

Being a farmer is quite the risk, as you have no guarantee that your expenses will be less than your income. If the ag markets fall way low, you can be out of all kinds of money. Crops can fail from drought or flooding, or any other act of weather. 

I would also like to talk about some of the events of today. I went and seen The Hangover today with my ex girlfriend. The movie was funny, but I was expecting more. The ex and I are trying to be friends but she still wants to moan around about not having a chance. We dated for a year and she thinks because the breakup was so sudden, she deserves another chance. I disagree, but like having someone who I can talk to everyonce in a while on the phone who is not my family. She is still hoping to get back together and confides in me that she does miss me and thinks about me all the time. I need to tell her that she should have spent more time doing that when we were together. 

Prayer is the voice of faith

There is a church nearby that puts up inspirational slogans about faith and other religious based items. Today's slogan was "Prayer is the voice of faith." 

With that in mind, I thought I would take some time to deliberate on some of my religious views. One time someone asked me what I thought God thought was important. I replied that God wanted us to treat other people well, meaning that our relationships with other people would be how He views and judges us. If you treat those people that you come across well, It should benefit you, and the inverse will happen if you treat people poorly. 

Another tenet I have tried to go by is that God wants us to live our lives and make some mistakes. He created the angels to be His perfect beings and us to live and experience what there is to experience in life. Some people will make mistakes, but God will forgive and let us keep living. I am under the belief that God does not want us to live in fear of him and be to afraid to try anything. He wants us to make mistakes and some less than good decisions. 

When I saw that "Prayer is the voice of faith" billboard today, I was reminded of how I need to pray more often. Which for me would mean starting as often as I can. Currently I only pray when at church, and even then I let my mind wander to much. Praying needs to be more defined for me to get better. I know that praying has been described as talking to God, but I just need to keep at it and will eventually get to that point. 

Coming tomorrow, "Cash on the barrelhead," a post about the finances of a farmer. 

the banjo

today was a busy day. First I planted all of the flowers in my flower beds that I rototilled up. Then dad, grandpa, my two cousins and me walked through about 20 acres of tobacco patches resetting missed and or dead plants. After that I played the banjo for about 30 minutes-smoke on the water is almost recognizable- and then watched the movie "wanted." The movie was okay but I thought the main assassin character was a bit exagerrated. 

I first started attempting to play the banjo when I became exceptionally bored. I was 24 and had a birthday coming up so I told my parents I wanted a banjo so I could learn to play some. Every so often I get the thing out and spend about half an hour or so picking around. I have no real aspirations of being especially good or making any new songs, it is just a hobby I decided on. I chose the banjo because I wanted to play something and the guitar seemed a little to commonplace. 

I should be signing off on the mortage for my house pretty soon. I am looking forward to having it in my name and then spending some more money on improving what is here. 

I also found part of an arrowhead today walking through the tobacco fields, which is pretty cool. Maybe one day I will have a decent collection. 

Tommorrow I plan on putting some mulch on my flower patches. Then I don't know what dad and grandpa are going to want to do. 

exchange program

Ever since my younger sister and I moved out before my sophomore year of college, there have been exchange students at my parents house. I think my mom was going to miss the excitement of having a houseful of people and didn't want to lose two people at once. She grew up in a house with two brothers and five sisters. Her own home had all seven of us when everyone was home. Even though we are all now done with high school and pretty well out of the house, dad and her continue to volunteer to be host parents. Here is a rundown of who we have had. 

Christoph-from germany, same age as my younger brother, now in med school at germany. Was here when my sophomore year of college, 02-03

Mark- from germany, year older than my youngest brother. Is from a small farm in germany, here in 03-04

Taras-was from kazakhstan, only here about a month after some of my sisters friends complained about him 

Christine Abbis-girl from brazil, was here when I was teaching in 06-07. 

Samuel-boy from germany, was here in 07-08, my youngest sister's senior year

Luka-boy from germany, was here in 2009, started at Turpin, moved here after his host family decided to get a divorce. 

As you may have ascertained my parents are pretty good humanitarians for taking so many exchange students in over the years. I still contend that I had no idea that the first student was ever even coming until a day or two before he got here. I was working construction all that summer and didn't get all the family news. I just found out at dinner one day when mom started talking about where he was going to be staying at in the house. 

missing to much church.

I haven't been to church in three weeks. The first two weeks, I was busy doing some farming early those two days and my bosses wouldn't let me off. Last weekend I wanted to leave tennessee early so I could get home in time to go to church. After a beatdown of why I should stay, I did stay and missed another day of church. In the past I wouldn't have minded to much, but now I like to make an effort to be there every week. 

Part of the reason is that I want to have a try out for a new church, is my old church is disbanding sort of. Because of lack of available catholic preachers, some parishes have merged and the schedules have changed. I would have preferred to go to a saturday night mass, but the church I am considering has a 4:30 mass instead of my usual 5:00 saturday evening mass. I think I will start going to hillsboro services, but have not ruled out service in my old parish. 

Time will tell what is going to happen. 

driving with the windows down

Today I drove home from the pigeon forge/gatlinburg area by myself. It was pretty nice because I got to drove with the windows down most of the way and listen to what I wanted to on the radio. 

Here are some highlights or points or interest. 

-I wanted to buy the new incubus greatest hits cd, but wal-mart didn't have it. So instead I bought a silversun pickups cd and the new cKy cd. I think I liked the silversun pickups cd better, but that was mainly because I liked two of their other songs, lazy eye and well thought out twinkles. The new cd had one song that I liked right away in panic room. cKy's cd was good, but their other cd I had was better. My favorite song on that one was track 4, but I can't think of the name right now. 

-Only drank one beer and didn't get to much harassment from my brothers. 

-Saturday night we went and seen the dixie stamped show and I thought it was okay. It was pretty cool to get to see all the horses running around but I didn't really care for all the comedy bits, as they were pretty well predictable. 

-grandparents got everyone a 50th wedding anniversary picture for us to hand up on the wall. 

-I did manage to get some reading done, and got plenty of sleep. 

-I did end up driving friday morning after my dad and brother told me I was going to be riding friday morning. 

-I bought a new pair of cowboy boots, they are just like the pair I already wear to work in, same color and everything. These are just newer and I plan on wearing them as dress boots for as long as possible. 

-I did get aggravated today. I was hoping to leave around noon and get home in time to mow the yard. Didn't happen since I got volunteered to go on a hike that took an hour to drive either way. I wasn't able to leave until after 4:00. 

On a more serious note, I did see a bunch of couples with or without kids. I am looking forward to finding that person to start a family with. I think having kids and getting to live my life for someone else is going to be a change I would look forward to. RIght now I just get up and have no one to look forward to talk to. I come home and sit around and good off on the computer for hours at a time. During the day I think about topics to maybe write on here, or just do what my dad and grandpa ask me to do. 

tennessee

This weekend most of my family is going to tennessee to celebrate my grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary. I am not terribly excited about going, but I think it would mean a lot to my grandparents so I am going and trying to put on a good mood. I was wanting to drive myself there on friday and come back saturday so I could go to church either saturday evening or sunday morning. However, I let my intentions be known and now I am going to have to answer a ton of questions about why I can't just go to church in the tennessee, or why I want to go to church so much. Since my plans got changed for my grandparents stake, I now have to ride with my brother in his tiny GMC canyon and be on someone else's schedule. He is gonna play horrible music and make his jokes about being high. Eventually they are going to find out I haven't been drinking as much anymore and I am going to get the spanish inquisition about that. 

I am planning on spending as much time as I can reading books and playing chrono trigger on my DSi. I was wanting to stop somewhere and buy Incubus's greatest hits cd to listen to, but now I will have to find another excuse to pick that up. 

dogs around

Today was a pretty good day. We moved some of the tractors around, swept up the barn and then watched it rain. I paid my fertilizer bill at CPS and then bought a new set of tires for my truck. This evening Dad, Luka, my sister and me went to quaker steak and lube for my sister's birthday. We also meet my other sister there and her husband there, they had been celebrating their 2nd wedding anniversary. 

This weekend most of us are going to tennessee for my grandparents 5oth wedding anniversary. The cabin is available friday until monday morning, but I will probably leave on saturday so I can be back home to go to church. I haven't been the last two weeks, so I am starting to feel bad about missing and need to get back. 

To the title of the post I thought I would talk about the dogs we have running around here. 

We have three labs, all of which have free range. Jasmine is the oldest, she is a black lab. Jasmine doesn't move around much anymore since she's she is approaching 16 in dog years. 

Mitzie is a golden lab, and she loves fetching things. Whenever Mitzie sees my truck coming down the road, she runs where it is going to come say hi to me. Mitzie may be my favorite dog that I have. 

CJ is a chocolate lab that my brother got from a girl named Casey Jo. CJ has been adopted by my grandparents and is generally hanging around there, waiting to play fetch with Mitzie. 

My married sister has two dogs, Captain Morgan and Brandy. She got the inspiration for the names from liqours I suppose. Both dogs are considered mutts, at least by their owners. Captain Morgan and Brandy are about medium sized, at least in this group of dogs. Brandy is a black and white dog whereas captain is mostly brown with some black fur and white. 

My youngest sister has a pug named Chloe and a maltese poodle named Chrissy. They are generally around since she is a freshman in college and doesn't always have the capacity to monitor them. 

My middle brother recently got a toy yorkie that matches the toy yorkie that his now fionsee has. He named it Cooper, which I think means that it is a boy. Cooper is particulary small able to fit in the palm of my hand. 

All the dogs seem to get along well, with the exception of Jasmine to the smaller dogs. However, Jasmine is old and doesn't need to aggravation of little dogs running around nipping at her heels. 

house wish list

I am in the process of buying a house. In this post I thought I would list out what I need to do or want to do to my house to improve it. 

-sand the floors of the two main rooms

-tear down the wood paneling upstairs and replace with drywall

-carpet all of the upstairs

-finish the unfinished room upstairs

-repaint the plastered walls upstairs

-paint the yellow walls a light grey downstairs

-add on a room to the back of the house

-redo the floor of the bathroom and kitchen

-see if the chimney works and if so, install a working fireplace in the basement. If not, put a wood burning furnace outside that can be rigged to heat the house

-work over the kitchen adding more storage 

-coat the porch with some type of weather guard or other finish

-move a treadmill into the bedroom after the upstairs rooms are finished

-move bedroom upstairs

-install more lighting in the basement

relationships

I have only been in two relationships with girls. By this I mean that only two girls have ever allowed me to become more than friends and date them. No other girls have ever piqued my interest enough and then reciprocrated to any amount. 

The first girl I ever seriously dated was when I was 23. I meet her when I saw her playing pool at a bar and thought she looked familiar. She was a great girl for me, willing to put up with all the fun I was trying to have and was friendly with all the other people I knew. She was a catholic and her family farmed just like mine. Well, they didn't put out any tobacco and didn't have a greenhouse, but they were farmers nonetheless. After 6 months of dating, I evaluated the relationship and decided that we weren't going to be able to make the big leap/commitment to each other that all romantic relationship should strive for and called it off. 

The second girl I dated was very good for me also. She didn't live to far away, had the same occupation and career aspirations as me, and was fun most of the time. We got along great, but something wasn't quite how I thought it should be for a marriage and the rest of my life. She was seemingly losing interest in me and quit making herself available to me. I would wait until after 9 pm and she would have just quit working. When I pressed for how her day went or any bit of information, she would say she didn't want to talk about it. When I did get to see her, she was sleepy and wouldn't have much to say. We had been dating for a year when I broke up with her. The way I seen it, if we couldn't talk to each other or enjoy each others company, there was no particular good reason to continue dating. 

She would take me back if I asked her. I don't think this is a good idea. From my point of view, if our chance with each other doesn't work out, our chance is gone. If it was meant to be, we wouldn't have gotten to that point. We still talk 2 to 3 times a week and are functioning as friends. However, she is close to losing those function if she wants to keep badgering me about why we aren't dating anymore.

farming

Today was a busy day of farming. I have been out of the house since about 7:30, and got in at about 9:00. I would have been out later but an exploded tire on the back of our bean drill  forced me to quit early. 

At any rate, by tomorrow I will have all of my tobacco set and all of my beans drilled. I need to make sure I call my insurance salesman and let him know how many acres I have out. I would hate to miss out on another fat crop insurance check because I didn't report everything correctly. 

I was thinking about doing a photo project where I take a picture out of my back window everyday. By doing so I could watch how a crop develops day after day and eventually post that on this blog or elsewhere. I think it would be neat to see and be able to show some friends who have no idea how things grow that way. 

Overall, I did get along pretty well today with my dad and grandpa. I have learned to do as they ask by promptly agreeing with them, which helps some. Dad wasn't even to mad when I told him about the popped tire that caused me to have an early day. 

education

I choose the ag education field because I thought I could do just a good as job as my high school vo-ag teacher. I had already decided on studying agriculture in college, when I saw that ag education was an option at the ag college. By the time I finished my student teaching my junior year, I realized two things. 

1. I was gonna graduate with about 30 other vo ag majors who were more motivated than me to be especially good at ag education. Well, maybe not 30 but plenty of folks. 

2. Since I got to teach in a school where the ag classes gave science credits, I got to talk about science topics. I found that I liked talking and teaching about science more than I did talking about ag topics. 

I went ahead and graduated with my ag ed degree and kept taking more science classes. I knew that if I was going to get in to graduate school for science education, I would need more science credits. This plan worked since I did get into graduate school. I managed to somehow get in the wrong program for what I wanted to do. I wanted to get into a program that would let me do graduate work for about a year, then be certified to teach science. The program that I started in was for science majors who decided that want to be teachers. I was a teacher who needed the science credits. 

I continued on anyways, knowing that they would eventually tell me that I didn't have the science classes I needed to finish. Luckily for me I was offered a job at the high school that I graduated from. I was going to teach the classes that I was going to graduate school for. I didn't have the science certification, but I did have a passing praxis score and was available. 

I didn't tell my grad school teachers that I had a job offer until it was time for me to quit grad school and start teaching. The job was teaching chemistry and physics and a class called applied physical sciences. I had originally thought that I would teach life sciences because of my background in horticulture production. After I started teaching physical sciences I found that I liked that subject area matter better. 

After I didn't get resigned, I continued graduate work through my online school. I started working as a substitute, which I find kind of fun. I get to play dumb to all the students and have low expectations for what I am expected to do. I get to read all kinds of books and hear some decent gossip everyonce in a while. 

gardening with grandma

Today my grandma and mom came over to help me work on my flower patches around the house. Apparently I needed to spray roundup everywhere and start over in a week. I also had a horrible garden hose and grandma is going to bring me a new one sometime. I also need to bring over a rototiller and turnover most of my soil patches. 

drinkin'

I don't enjoy drinking as much as I used to. I used to drink eight or ten beers a night before even really getting started doing anything fun. However, that was when I was 22 or 23 and now that approach has lost its appeal. Now I get hangovers and have to spend half a day in bed sleeping the hangover off. I also would generally be drinking alone, which is not as enjoyable as I used to find it. Cost is a little bit of a factor, as I am now getting to be a homeowner and would prefer to spend more money on fixing up the house that I am buying. 

In the last two months or so, I have only had about seven beers.  Most of them was at a graduation party, where I didn't have much else to do so I drank until my ride was ready to go. I had two beers that a friend brought over when he didn't know I had been drinking less. All the other beers have been when I have been eating out at a restaurant. 

Part of the reason I did like drinking so much was that it gave me something to do socially. I am not especially outgoing, and I don't have to much interesting about me. Not being especially talkative, I found that usually having a drink in my hand helped ease me into being socially accepted. This hobby did kind of ruin my chances with most women, as I would drink to much and say dumb things or just turn them off or something to that effect. 

I don't plan on being sober for the rest of my adult life, but have slowed down a whole lot from what I used to do. 

city life

I am glad I don't live in columbus anymore. If I lived there still I would be either a broke drunk or extremely bored. Anytime I see some activity on my friends facebook pages, they are drinking. While I used to have a good time drinking, that is not the case now. If I was still there I would have a DUI by now and no real career. 

Looking back now, the reason I enjoyed drinking was the social aspects. Now that I don't do much of anything socially, drinking has lost its appeal. Living in the city I would have to stop drinking and then I would have little reason to be social. This would lead to boredom since I would most likely just stay in all the time. 

I am really glad I live here in the county now. I have enough to do almost everyday, and now have a house of my own to work around with. Farming has long hours sometimes, but compared to the possibility of city life, I prefer ruralness. 

good sermons

I thought todays post would be about some of the sermons I have heard lately. 

The main sermon I wanted to talk about was love. My preacher said that God's love for us is more than that good  or most worthwhile things about us. God loves us for all the imperfections we have and still stays with us. I would like to think that I can find a girl that I can feel that way about. Someone who is great but I can still admire for all their flaws. That sermon taught me that love isn't all about the good things and that it is going to take some work. Our parents still love us despite any inconveniences we cause for them. 

The second sermon was about being on the tree of God.  Am I a living branch in full bloom, or a dead branch that is still clinging on but is dead from the tree? I have picked up on my faith practices, and hope that I can still be in bloom and part of God's tree.