JR, the pastor who founded Kairos Los Angeles has a challenging post on his blog. As someone who doesn’t show near enough love to the people around me, I really resonate with JR’s analysis of how things could have been instead of how things are. On a related note, I think Matthew 5:38-45 fits in with JR’s comments.
President Bush has nominated John Roberts as chief justice of the Supreme Court. Even though I was fine with Roberts’ original nomination, I question the wisdom of making a court outsider chief justice. Many previous court nominations have ended up acting very differently than the presidents who appointed them would have expected. While I think the chances of Roberts making a great justice are high, there’s also the possibility he could end up differently than expected. It’s playing with fire to appoint an unknown as the justice who runs the court.
We’re now officially back in the swing of things. I say that because we won our first game of the season last night. LET’S GO HOKIES!
Classes have been going fine, but keeping me busy. Hopefully I will get back into a more regular posting schedule recently.
Some of you will remember that back in early 2002, my Fujitsu Lifebook computer’s power connector stopped working. I took it to Practical Computer, where an idiot who was a friend of the new owner fried my motherboard and probably the video card in the process of repairing the connector. I never got proper restitution from them–they accused me of bringing it in fried, and I didn’t have the documentation to back my claims up. I always intended to sell the parts on eBay, but now I finally am.
I’m selling the laptop as 11 components, each with its own auction. Three auctions close within two hours, the rest close in a little over two days. The total of the parts (9 will sell at this point) currently comes to $180.49. All auctions started at $0.99! What are these people on? How can old laptop parts from a machine purchased in 2000 go for almost $200 in 2005? The laptop was only $1500 to start with.
Since I haven’t been blogging very regularly, I figured I’d update you all on what I’ve been doing down in Blacksburg. This past week, I’ve biked the Huckleberry Trail, hiked Dragon’s Tooth, and tubed a mile down the New River. Also been helping lots of people move in and binging on classic movies.
I know I’ve been bad about posting recently, but I wanted to put something up here thanking you all for making this summer awesome. The summer has had it’s ups and downs, but God is faithful and I know that He will never toss me anything that I can’t catch. So, to everyone I’ve worked with, my small group, friends, and everyone at The Gathering, thanks!
I just noticed that I had comments waiting for moderation here. Most are really old. I just read and gave them the thumbs up or thumbs down for the first time. So if you’ve commented and never seen your comment appear, the wait is over.
I fully intended to post some more information from later parts of the trip, but after the hotels stopped having internet access, I stopped writing about what was going on. I fully intend to go back and add some posts about what happened on the other days of the trip, however we’ll see how fast that happens.
I’m still partly on pacific time, yet I’ve managed to keep my work schedule mostly regular since starting back on Monday.
In other news, it’s hot here. Really hot. It’s 90 degrees right now, but it’s not as bad as it’s been. The humidity is low now, which is unusual for Washington (it’s a filled in swamp). However, the humidity has been really high even for Washington most of the last week. We’ve had 100+ heat indexes most of the week, and it shows no signs of letting up. Maybe this heat wave is to convince me that I’m ready for fall’s cooler temperatures.
This morning, we headed out of Monterey on the Pacific Coast Highway. When we started in the morning, the coast was mostly covered in fog–very usual in California. As the day went on, the fog lifted and we had panoramic views of the coast and the mountains. We stopped for pictures at many of the turnouts along the road. One of the highlights of this part of the trip was seeing the male elephant seals on the beach molting.
Off of the Pacific Coast Highway, we stopped in Julia Pfeiffer Burns park, which is part of an area known as Big Sur. In this area, we hiked down McWay Waterfall trail. The 80′ waterfall flows into a scenic bay.
In the afternoon, we toured the Hearst Castle. The castle was built by W. R. Hearst starting in 1919 on land that he camped on as a young boy. Mr. Hearst became very wealthy as a newspaper owner around the turn of the century. When he inherited the land, he started construction on a bungalow within weeks. This bungalow grew into a village with three large guest houses, the smallest which is 2500 square feet and a main house of 60,000 square feet by the time of his death in 1951. Today, the house is a state park. We took a guided tour of the middle size guest house and the public areas of the main house (main parlor, dining room, game room, movie theater, and both swimming pools).
This evening, we’re staying in San Simeon, a small town on the pacific. Tomorrow morning, we’re leaving for the five hour drive to LA.
This hotel in Monterey (a 14 room Rodeway Inn) barely has in room web access, but I seem to be able to keep a connection just long enough to write something.
Today, we left Yosemite and drove to Monterey, which is on the coast of California. It’s about 190 miles south of San Francisco. We took the famous 17 mile drive that goes around Pebble Beach. There were many amazing views along the road. We also enjoyed looking at the golf courses and houses that border the sea.
Later, we ventured into Carmel, where we looked at the quaint town and enjoyed sticking our toes into the beach at Carmel by the Sea.
Dinner was at the Thaihawaiian Bistro, a hole in the wall restaurant highly recommended to us by two of my coworkers. All our food was outstanding and the prices were good. It’s probably the best table service food we’ve had so far on the trip.
After dinner, we explored Cannery Row, which is the heart of Monterey. Cannery Row was made famous by John Steinbeck, who lived here for several years and wrote a well known novel about life on cannery row. Sadly, not much remains of the original canneries. The sardine population disappeared in 1946, and the last cannery closed in 1960. Today, few of the cannery buildings survive.
Tomorrow morning, we’re heading south to San Simeon for beautiful scenery and a tour of the Hirst Castle.