Posts Tagged Jeep

My Beautiful Mental Exhaustion

Messed up 99 Jeep CherokeeCurrent mood:drained

I want to start out thanking God for the energy and perspective he has given me.  Today has been a very busy day, and I have needed every bit of energy I can get.  Yesterday was great, I managed to get a lot done, and spend some time with Kathy in the process.  Later that night, after I got home, I went to finish some things up at my computer.  I heard this strange crash outside, and with the sound having a strange familiar tone to it, I decided to poke around outside to see what was up.  When I got out there, everything seemed in order, there was a person down the road to my right pulling out of his driveway, and no traffic either way besides that.  I didn’t think much of it, but wanted to check my Jeep out to make sure it was alright, I mean it was there and parked, not smashed down the road like last time, but I had to make sure.  As I went around the vehicle, I noticed debris on the road and I knew someone had some sort of an accident, so I was thinking to myself, I wonder who the poor guy is who smashed up their vehicle.  As I walked up along the driver’s side door, I noticed that the wheel was turned, and I didn’t remember leaving it turned that much, and something didn’t look right with the front driver’s side corner of the car.  Well, I took a closer look, and it seemed that I was the poor sap who had his car smashed into.  This is the second time in a few months that my parked car has been ran into, in fact, the reason I am driving around a newer Jeep now is because, by the grace of God, my last Jeep was totaled while parked in front of the house.  As I checked it out, and called the police, a small swarm of neighbors came to see what was up.  I took pictures, and the damage consisted of some bent suspension parts, steering linkage, smashed bumper and some body damage.  It is not drivable, with the wheels turned strait, it looks like it is trying to take a right and a left turn at the same time, that would not get me very far…  Anyway, by the end of the night, the police had apprehended the vehicle and suspect, but I was not given much in the line of details, so I will have to get a completed report from the police department.  I did hear that my vehicle was the second that the guy hit that night, and that was why the office appeared in about a minute of me finishing up my 911 call.

All in all, I still had a sincere smile on my face that entire evening.  The neighbors and officer were kind and helpful, and I thanked the officer for his help.  Though I am not troubled by the incident, or the fact that I will be without a vehicle for a while, I still am going to be pushing extra paperwork, and have to wrangle my insurance as they process this new claim.  It is a bit draining.  I already have a lot going on, so it seems I am now in training to handle more…. thats good.  Now I am wondering if I am getting to a point here…  Nope, don’t think so, no real point, except maybe I feel drained.  You know, 4 accidents in under one year, that just seems like too many to me, maybe a little unusual, and only one of them was possibly my fault, the others were when the car was parked, and I was rear ended on I-5.

There is good that comes from this.  I now get to spend some time with other people as they drive me around.  I am gaining all kinds of experience with the courts, insurance companies, and the overall process of an accident.  Oh, and here is a good one; one by one I am taking bad drivers off the road.  Another really good thing I am seeing is that when an accident happens, people come out, and with sincerity, they care whether or not you are ok.  Even my mother, after borrowing her new car, and having the front end of it removed, she cared how I was above concern for the vehicle.  I think I needed to see that.

I just thank God for his perfect care for me.  He knows what is important, and he takes care of me.  My possessions are not so important, they come and go.

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Bits of stuff, unworthy of their own blog

Here are a few things that did not quite make it to becoming a blog, but I wanted to toss this stuff up here all the same.  Some are conversations, others are just things I jotted down.  None of it seemed special enough to put up into its own blog.

Sometime after July 29th, when I went to the Daft Punk concert:
Yes, the concert was a blessing, that’s right, being able to go to the Daft Punk concert was blessing from God, He knows how to take care of me.  The only thing that comes to mind is that God is the DJ, mixing together all of the sound samples and notes of my life, and I got to say, I love the music!  He is taking everyone and using them in his mix.

Wed Aug 08 08:36:42 2007, just chatting with someone:
[13:08] Jonathan: I don’t get it, why am I attracted to crazy?
[13:09] Jonathan: NM, I got it…
[13:11] Jonathan: I love extremes, blistering heat, dripping humidity, blasting wind, ground-shaking thunder, blinding lightning.  Maybe I now am at the point where I realize, that stuff is cool, but that is not what I need to look for in a woman….
[13:29] Matt: it is the challenge
[13:30] Matt: or possibly, you like to fix things
[13:30] Jonathan: that could be too
[13:31] Jonathan: I like to help people, it has been my resolve since childhood, and maybe I see they need help, and I want to help, I always do
[13:32] Matt: yeah, i did the same thing with girlfriends…. get the crazies and try to help them then realize it was too much
[13:32] Matt: the problem with women is that if you attempt to fix them they wont stay fixed
[13:32] Matt: probably the same with men, but i never dated any
[13:33] Jonathan: yeah, they have to do it themselves, to what ever extent is possible
[13:33] Matt: word
[13:39] Jonathan: God’s teaching me tons of stuff, its cool
[13:40] Matt: how do you know?
[13:41] Jonathan: action and reaction, to the point of no chance of coincidence

This was just me “thinking out loud” in an email today:

My perspective is a little down cast the last day or so, but I know it is just temporary, and it will clear up.

I think God has some more teaching to do, and I have some more lessons to learn.  One of the things I am dealing with is the feeling you get when you are ripped off by a mechanic.  I hardly ever get to the point where I am filled with contempt for someone, but I think that situation really hit a sore spot, that spot where you finally get to the point where you get enough trust together, hold it out only to have it smacked out of your hands and fall to the ground shattering into a million pieces.  Maybe I am over sensitive, maybe I should have known better, or maybe I didn’t handle it right.  At what point do I take the situation into my own hands and get the mechanic to do what I paid them to do.  For all I know, they may not have had any deception in mind, maybe they really thought what they told me was the real cause of the problem.  Maybe I am just seeing it wrong.  But one thing I know, I am not built to hate, I am not meant to hold contempt for someone, and I think that is what is bothering me so much, this foreign feeling that should not be there, it is being rejected.  I think that is it, with God so strong in my life, those feelings are like poison, and my entire being is rejecting it.

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Random Stuff, Too Tired To Be Coherent

Current mood:tired

Well, I made it back to Walla Walla in one piece.  My Jeep ran perfect, not a single problem.  I managed to get some offroading in on the way up to Seattle, I stopped by the Beverly dunes and went jumping around the bushes and sand, seeing what it could do.  I only put like 15-20 minutes in at Beverly because it was getting late.  I got up this morning at 3am, and after getting gas, I was on the road by 3:30am.  The roads were clear for the most part, but there were clumps of slow people along the way, so I made it to work by 7:40am.  I am a bit tired.

Sorry, no rants today, just a normal blog.  I am half asleep, so what can you expect really?  I will rant some other time.  I have put up enough of my feelings, points of view, and other stuff to last a while, ok, maybe not for long.

The wedding was perfect, everything was great.  I managed to visit with almost all of my friends in the area this trip.  I gained a sister-in-law, someone I have already considered to be like a sister to me.  Yesterday, I was able to wish the new married couple a safe and fun cruise up to Alaska.

Oh, yeah, through a fair amount of effort on my mother’s part, I met someone (ever so briefly) at church and lunch after the service.  From the description, she sounded like a nice person, but I had no idea what to expect.  I was impressed, she seemed really nice and as strange as it may seem to at least me, there were many things that we had in common.  I can’t say much more than that, because we did not have much of a chance to talk, but I think I might have another person that would be fun to hang out with when I come up there.  I have been looking for like minded people that would like to go out and do things that are not bar or drinking oriented for a couple months now, and though I have had little luck over here in Walla Walla, I am very pleased to know that there are actually others that are looking for the same thing.  Ahh, there is hope.

I will be moving up to the Seattle area sometime, I have been planning it for many years now.  Perhaps the time is drawing near.  Today I spoke with the Japanese professor at Whitman, and he was fairly insistent that the cost of taking the Japanese class would be more than nominal.  That got me thinking about alternatives.  I have yet to check with the WWCC to see if they teach the Japanese language, so that might be a possibility, but that may be another selling point for me to move up to the Seattle area.  I have so many of my friends up there that I have all but severed ties with by moving down here to Walla Walla.  Every time I go up and visit, I realize that I miss them, and maybe moving down here for so long has hurt me socially.  I do have a much stronger sense of who I am, and what it is like to be on my own, and so many other things, but socially, things have been hard.  I love the few friends that have stayed in Walla Walla, but I feel like a fish out of water here, and I realize it every time I head up to visit.  This is not a “the grass is always greener” type of situation, I am weighing the good and the bad of all aspects of moving up there.  I do have some things I have to finish up down here, and some things to arrange with work, but I will have that taken care of in however much time I feel is appropriate.  From time to time this feeling of being “lost without a way to go” creeps up on me, but I have a direction now (more than just moving), even though I do not know where exactly it leads, I do know who it is that leads me, and that is enough.

I almost felt a rant coming on, but the feeling was lost.  Perhaps later.

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Life Is Good

Current mood:optimistic

I figured I would post another blog.  This time maybe a little less gloomy.  Today was a good day!  This morning I woke up on time, worked out for 30 minutes, took a shower, tossed a salad, I mean made a salad, and ran off to the store to pick some things up.  I got to work a little late, but that’s cool, I didn’t miss anything.  At work I managed to get tons done like, I packed up and shipped 2 servers, nearly finished debugging the installation of a new control panel I am working on, got put in charge of an on site network installation while my boss is away, and I ran a mile during lunch because it was not nearly as hot today as it was yesterday.  After work I started to work on my Jeep to fix some cooling issues.  I replaced the coolant bottle which was slightly cracked, and popped out my thermostat which was getting stuck sometimes and making the Jeep run hotter than it should, I try to keep it running under 230 most of the time.  It was easy, and took hardly any effort or time, and I drove around about 30 miles, most at speeds of 65 so I could make sure it didn’t leak under normal freeway conditions, and everything worked perfectly, no leaks.
All in all, my day was productive, though boring to most people, I am sure.  However, I got this weird feeling while I was driving around.  I think I am missing someone.  That has not happened in a long time.  Maybe this is a good thing that I am missing someone….

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