Bowling for Sleep

It's weird how sometimes even the blessings we receive come at a cost. For example, a lady that used to go to my church called me up earlier this week and asked if I would be willing to do some landscaping for her. Seeing as how I could use a little extra cash, I told her I'd be happy to. It would take two nights after work to complete the landscaping. The only nights I have available are last night and tonight. However, tonight(Thursday) is the night that I usually have set aside to hang out with some friends; this particular night, we're going bowling. So, I know I have to get the landscaping done, but I don't want to skip out on my friends either...so I decide to test my limits. After finally falling asleep at 2am last night, I wake up at 5:30am to be to work at 6 so I can leave two hours early at 3pm and finish up the landscaping. Well, it's 11:15am and the entire pot of coffee that I've ingested is still going strong. And by going strong, I mean hand tremors, occasional dizziness, and frequent zoning out. But hey, it's better than falling asleep at work. The extra money will be nice as long as I don't fall asleep mid-throw tonight and end up using my head as the bowling ball. Thank God I have the weekend off.

Bittersweet aging

Saturday night, while watching my brother and roommate play video games, I started to look up some bass guitar solos on youtube. This reminded me of one in an old live White Heart video that my brother and I used to watch religiously as kids. We would get out our Tinker Toys and make guitars and drum sets out of them and rock out while watching the video. It made me think in reverse for a bit. When we're little kids, we can't wait to grow up and do "grown-up" things. But once we get here, it's not so amazing. We have jobs, commitments, and more responsibilities than we ever expected as an eight year old kid. And to think that I used to complain about having to wash the dishes or fold the laundry...at least that didn't involve hundreds of dollars in bills and expenses every week. But I think we make life too complicated sometimes...well, most of the time. I know there are big issues such as job loss and family issues that will obviously cause stress; but when it comes to the little things we deal with every day...why are they made into such big ordeals? Who cares if that co-worker didn't say 'good morning' to you?...or that you didn't get asked out to lunch?...or that someone made a small mistake that you had to fix?...Just deal with it and move on. We're not really as important to revolution of the world as we make ourselves think. To think that everyone around us has it on their agendas to make our lives as easy as possible is just ludicrous; and the more we make ourselves believe that, the more we're going to be stressed out and disappointed. The only one we should be putting our effort into pleasing is God. Seeing as how he's the one that gives us everything we have in the first place, shouldn't he be the one who gets all the credit and attention? So just chill out, tell your pride to hit the road, and quit caring what everyone thinks of you. Because, in the end, what they think isn't worth squat.

If you want a little light entertainment, watch this video and imagine an eight and a ten year old sitting in front of the tv with sunglasses on and a Tinker Toy stage set out on the living room floor...tell me that doesn't make you laugh.

Sick At Home

It's such a weird feeling sitting at home by myself when I would normally be at work, in my office, counting down the hours and minutes until the day is over. If it weren't for the plethora of distractions, working at home in an easy chair is actually much nicer. But I know I'd never get an efficient amount of work done. It is nice to be able to look out a window tho.

Twitter, TwitPic, and more

I've pretty much given up on this thing...I just don't have the time for the most part. I've started using twitter and such things a bit more, and that's pretty fun. check it out www.twitter.com/schwartztimothy

A New Year

Wow, it's been quite awhile. Last time I wrote, I was in the search of a new vehicle. Well, as of Christmas Eve, I am the owner of a 1990 Ext. Cab 2WD Chevy 1500 pickup. I really love it...I'd forgotten how much I like driving a full-size truck. I'm just praying it doesn't turn out to be a lemon. I don't think I'll have much issue with that though.
So far, it's been a good year. I'm getting a decent budget put together so I won't be pinching pennies at the end of every month; I'm on the verge of getting a gym membership once a couple more paychecks come in; I've totally cleaned up my apartment and am working on keeping it that way; I've become closer with some friends; and I've been downloading a ton of music...22 albums equaling 467 songs since new years. Things at work are going well. At the start of the year, I revamped our whole website so it's more reliable and easier to work on. I'm looking into some new programs and languages that I need to learn for the next phase of our web development. I'm still involved in scouts which is going about the same as usual; and we're working on getting our venturing crew to do more things. Oh yeah, before Christmas, I created a 30 second video that, coming soon, will be shown as a commercial before every movie, every showing at the Holland 7 theater.
I think that's about all that's going on for now. Now for the music bit...maybe I'll just list off all of the albums that I've downloaded this year...maybe I'll add a video in at the end...

Jason Mraz - We Sing, We Dance, We Do Things
Ne-Yo - Year of the Gentleman
John Legend - Evolver
The Killers - Day & Age
T.I. - Paper Trail
Coldplay - Viva La Vida
Gym Class Heroes - The Quilt
Fall Out Boy - Infinity On High
Akon - Freedom
Dr Dre - Chronic 2001
Wu-Tang - Forever
Tupac - Greatest Hits
Notorious BIG - Ready to Die
Lil Jon - Crunk Juice
Kanye West - 808's And Heartbreaks
Eminem - Eminem Is Back
Eminem - The Re-Up
Eminem - Encore
Eminem - The Slim Shady LP
Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP
...and there's a few other single songs that I've downloaded.

Here is one of them:

Ludacris Ft. T-Pain - One More Drink

Issues

Damn, what a past couple of weeks. It has not been a good month for my vehicle situation. My truck wouldn't start and I thought it was my battery, so I replaced that...nope, starter. That took about 6-7 hours to replace...not fun. So, just when I'm thinking that my truck is finally back in great condition and I'm excited about driving in the snow...I drop my transmission. Not good at all. And I can't find a transmission anywhere...scrap yards, anything. The only option is to have it rehauled which, after it's all said and done...to get my truck back on the road, you're talking about $1000. The truck is barely worth more than that. So, I've decided to go car shopping and my vehicle of choice has been narrowed down to early 90's Chevy pickup. They're cheap; they'll run forever; and if/when they break, parts are cheap and easy to replace. I've found a couple nice ones. I've heard that I should look for a older civic or camry, but I agree with my brother...you just have no idea what you're getting when you get a small car that's that old. With a pickup, they're pretty much WYSIWYG. So, altho I'm not excited about spending the money, it is exciting to get a new vehicle...I'm just praying that whatever I get has no issues and will last me a long time...or at least until I can afford something newer.

As always, I'll post a new song or video that I've just discovered, or a song that I've just been listening to a lot lately. So, here's a song my brother told me about:

Ready To Roll by Jet Black Stare

Late hours

Altho it sucks having to work late sometimes, I can't complain about the paychecks. As of last (tuesday) night, I had already banked 21.25 hours. Kind of funny that this kind of week comes about right when my boss is saying that we're going to be getting a little tighter on money until we get some more investors. Haha, oh well. Gotta make deadlines somehow.

Hmmm...favorite song right now...let's see...