Best day of my life!

Ok im going to take a break from the gloom and doom of my usual posts (j/k) and spend a little time (warning long post imminent!) commemorating a pretty freaking awesome day. 6 years ago today Lisa Noel Branson become my wife, I became complete, and my life got dramatically better than I ever imagined it could be. The path that lead to that day was a long and rocky one that started when I was 13. I met lisa just a few weeks after I lost a couple of friends who were very very close to me and incidentally I should have died with them but the Lord in his wisdom saw fit for me to remain. SO when I met Lisa it was more of a "I noticed that she was there" but was not really in a mood to make new friends so that was our first encounter. A few months later she was my girlfriend and the funny thing about this is that later in life, like when we were married, we were going through some of her old notebooks and she actually admits to manipulating me (her words not mine) into becoming her boyfriend which was toooo funny! SO a few months later she broke up with me (a trend was starting) But what can I say I was hooked. Over the next couple of years we dated off and on (the off always initiated by my sweet sweet wife!) until my senior year her junior year when we dated exclusively for about a year. That was a tough year for me b/c thats when I found out I was color blind and not going to be a pilot like I had always dreamed. Lisa was really great and really helped me get through that. However things kinda went south on us and Lisa broke up with me yet again. I went off to college and she ended up taking my #2 Arch nemesis (#1 is gravity in case you were wondering) to her prom. At that point I was like WHATEVER home girl -- if thats the junk you want then I dont want to have anything to do wit ya. SO for a time there was another girl I was interested in but WOW did she really turn on me. Yes if you are noticing a theme its not just co-incidental. So for pretty much my entire freshman year at college lisa and I didnt talk hardly at all. We were barely even friends in my opinion and didnt really have anything to do with each other. SO yeah things were not so good between us. Well after my freshman year (summer 97) I was really torn about what to do with my life. I had no direction and I didnt like where I was and didnt know where I wanted to go. Well over the summer Lisa and I started hanging out again and she actually made the suggestion that we start dating again. I actually had the hootzpa to say no. I was like ok I have been burned like a billion times by you and now a month before you go off to covenant and I am who knows where you want to get together. It just seemed doomed to me so we stayed friends. Well I ended up flipping a coin and going to covenant in the fall. Really thats what happened. You would think after I described the summer were we had gotten close and the intrest lisa had in me that something might have started up again with us since we were at the same school but SUPRISE she was not interested anymore (woo hoo I dodged a bullet) My time at covenant was really really brief (2.5 months brief) and I was gone. In that time I decided I needed to find my own path and go someplace that had something to offer me school wise so I applied and was accepted at Embry Riddle Aero Univ In florida and I would start jan of 98. SO heres where things start to get more interesting. Lisa's family had decided to move to Ohio to take care of Lisa's Grandfather and they were moving in the beggining of january. My family was staying in Lynchburg. Lisa was going to college in GA. I was going to school in Florida. We basically decided that we wanted to go out one last time before we said good by to each other for what could have very well been forever. since we had no reason to be in the same geographic region as the other ever again. We went out for my birthday to a nice restaurant and saw the movie Titanic (in a first run theater mind you) And afterward we talked a bit and then we said good by. I left the next day for Florida to begin what I thought would be a new life. Well it was new but their was this little thing hanging on in the back of my mind and that was my lisa. I just couldnt get her out of my head so I decided to start pursuing her again. I knew that I loved her and that I wanted to be with only her for the rest of my life and I was determined to give it my best shot. Well She was not so receptive and was downright opposed to it for the most part but over the summer we got back together and then right before she went back to school we got engaged!!!!!!! Then on december 28th 1999 we were married. And like I said that day changed my life for the better in more ways than I ever could have imagined. SO here we are 6 years later and we are still uber happy. Like I said before the path leading up to that day was a very long and difficult one but it was totally worth it. And even though the last 6 years have had their ups and downs I really only remember the ups and I really truly feel that each year has been better than the last. Its been wonderfull to see both of us grow in maturity and love for one another and I am super duper jazzed about the next 10,25,50, 75+ years we have together. Yes I am optimistic about how long I am going to be alive. I have good reason to want to be alive!

SO happy Anniversary Baby. I love you so much and I cant wait to see what the rest of our lives have in store for us!

cheers!

WOOOOOO HOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

Real quick post today. Why could I be so excited??? Perhaps its becuase at 8:45am this morning I got my xbox 360!!!!!!!!!! The irony of it is that I did not get it from my pre-order I got it from k-mart. They got 4 in the store last night and I got #4!!!!!!!

Cheers!

Todays entry brought to you in part by the number...

Yup thats right 25. I just called Gamestop and thats where I stand on the xbox 360 pre-order list. 25 its a long ways down and the sales guy said "sorry but I really doubt we will get to you before christmas." Which kinda sucks but hey those are the breaks right. SO ebay seems totally off and me getting one probably still wont happen for quite some time. As of now my store has gotten 12 total units since the 22. 10 for launch and a second shipment of a whopping 2. With the big 300,000 shipment this weekend I think my store might see 10 again but even if they got 20 which is a huge stretch it still wouldnt matter. After this shipment I think its back to 2-4 every other week or so. SO yeah it bites. I think I will still keep looking around at other places to get one since it could be mid to end of january before I would ever see my pre-order filled. Seeing as it has taken almost a month to knock the list down a whopping 12 spaces.

weekend wrap up

Well its monday morning so I thought I would give a wee update on whats been going on as of late.
1st up im still doing the bachelor thing as my wife is not yet back from chattanooga and it could be tuesday or wednesday of this week before she makes it back. SO just a side note if you could pray that she is able to come back sooner rather than later I would appreciate it. I miss my baby : (

2nd my weekend has been crazy busy. I swear I had a honey do list like you wouldnt believe and I am still not done with it. It included last minute x-mas shopping, grocery shopping, cleaning, watering plants, and a score of other things that were very time consuming. All in all I have been working pretty hard this weekend and still feel like I have TONS to do.

3 - I am even more inthe x-mas spirit now in that I spent 3 hours wrapping presents on saturday night (another item on the long list) and yes again I did it all without the aid of one single track of x-mas music. BWUAHAHAHAHA!!! Yes it was another technotrancified night of slammin tracks to get my wrap on.

4 - Now on to me in general. Im in a surprisingly good mood. Its kinda funny how when you are the type of person who does not normally feel pulled to one side or the other on the mood scale to feel particularly drawn to one side. But I am. In a good mood that is. I have been so for a number of days so if you wanna see what im like in a good mood heres your chance! On a related note its very interesting to me to see how much weather affects your body and especially your mental state and its delicate (im)balance. It is truly amazing how God has engineered us to adapt and overcome our environment without us even noticing. However if for whatever reason you have say an imperfection that needs to be supplemented its more easy to see these things. Ok I know im not making sense so here goes. I take a hormone supplement for my thyroid as it is "Hypo" which means underactive. Well in general it works pretty well but unlike the human body it doesnt change and react the way it should since it is a fixed amount. Case in point my mind was a huge washboard of infinity on friday. I swear I could not focus at all on like a single thought. Its kinda frustrating but like I said it just shows me more and more how amazing a design we as humans are and how Amazing God is for what he has done. What really got me thinking about this was a trip to wal mart. OMG I swear I had like 3 things I needed to find at walmart and I walked into the store and I was like. ummm. Why I am here again??? SO I just started wandering around the store in hopes that I would see something that would jog the mind back into sync. Well I noticed a department and was like right I need to go there for x y and z. SO I walked the 20 feet to get there and then was like. CRAP! why did I need to come here again. This happened for each of the three items of which I was searching for and was at times very very frustrating. But like I said im in a good mood! SO go figure

5 - wee game update - Ok I have totally given up on getting a 360 anytime before xmas and it wouldnt really matter at this point if I got one say next week b/c its not like I have any games for it and I hear that block buster isnt renting them yet. SO no biggy in my mind.

xbox - lisa and I started to play fatal frame 2 again and we are digging on it Also DOA rules. I love that game which is weird b/c I have never ever liked fighters. But I really look forward to my 10-15 min fix each day

ps2 - need to get back to god of war and finish that one up.

psone - playing FFIX and loving it. I had gotten a good start on it but then put it down for a number of months during the mistake that was ".hack" but now I am back playing it and really digging on it. More on that later.

Well thats about it for my weekend. Sunday was sad in that it was the last sunday for our pastor to be our full time pastor. He is going to be a missionary in the Ukraine and though I am so jazzed and excited for him he will be greatly missed. It also kinda sucks b/c im on the pulpit committee and we are charged with finding someone as good as Dan. I think the congregation is going to have some pretty lofty expectations.

Well thats it for now.

cheers!

Im getting into the Christmas Spirit!

Well the other day lisa dropped the bomb on me that she wanted to put up our tree this year which we had before agreed to bypass. I know I know were awefull people. WHATEVER! SO in any event she decided she would really like it up and felt that it would be nice. SO I was like oke doke. WELLLLL I decided I would surprise her yesterday and while she was gone I put the tree up myself so it would be done when she got home. IT was a lot of work but it was worth it and it also did manage to help get me in the christmas mood. However my tree trimming was and is probably different from a lot of other peoples in that their was NO christmas music playing at all. None nadda zilch zero. Thats right instead I kicked it up a notch and got my tree rocking to some choice tunes like:

first up was a cd of stuff Jason did a loooong time ago (like 2-3 years) and I have not listened to it in a long time. Or on a system that could thump some decent bass I might add. It was sweet and I still have to say that Jason your version of radio babylon is my absolute favorite. This means a lot since radio babylon is one of my favorite MBM songs and your mix is like I said my fav. Their was also a track on their that was not done by jason but a friend of his and its based around transformers. Now I grew up hooked on those things and I had forgotten a little line from the begining of the show that goes something like this "In the year 2005 the treacherous decepticons have conquered the autobot home world of cybertron." Dang I feel old b/c all the stuff happening in the show was supposed to be happening this year!!! SO watch out people b/c this is the month the Autobots are going to land!

Next up was a cd of JPOP that I have again not listened to in forever. Lots of great songs and was really what got me tuned into Jpop and the likes of Ayumi Hamasaki (ayu) and Boa. Since then I have acquired many Ayu cds and am a big fan.

After that was a really good cd I made of trance tracks that I really like. And thats how I finished out the evening.

SO a tree was assembled and trimmed and not a lick of christmas music was played. I consider that to be a good evening.

On another note the japan trip is now cancelled which means that the prospects for a wild and rowdy dead or alive tournament are now more up in the air as lisa will now be home when I was thinking of doing it. However I will still see what I can do to at least have some people over to kick it.

thats it for now. Oh I ate twice yesterday!!!!! I think im over this thing!!!!!!

Cheers!

Dang that hurt!

Ok so wow as some of you already no I got hit with the insanely cruel stomach virus that has been going around these parts last week. What was really weird was I felt great on monday and had a really good run but nothing could prepare me for how I would feel tuesday when I woke up. I wont go into all the wonderfull details but I felt as if I was being constantly punched in the stomach for about 3 days. Tuesday I didnt eat anything at all and I drank about half a glass of 7-up. Wed I was feeling a little bit better and ate a hot dog and some other stuff. Thursday again felt like crap. Ate next to nothing if anything and tried to drink a lot of fluids b/c I was getting dehydrated. Friday was feeling better didnt eat anything till the evening which was a mistake. I was feeling good and steak and shake really appealed to me. Well it tasted good but It was too soon. Saturday I literally ate 3 wendys chicken nuggets. I couldnt finish a $.99 5 piece on my own! Sunday I ate my other 2 nuggets and another hot dog. sO now we are at monday and im feeling better but I am still really really weak from lack of food so I really need to try and eat something today. SO thanks to everyone who prayed for me to feel better.

Well I still have no xbox 360 so that is something that I dont have to worry about and other than that on the gaming front my recent sickness provided me with gobs and gobs of time to start and almost finish Jade Empire which so far has been pretty cool. will write more later but I have some stuff I need to do for now.

Cheers!