Happy Birthday

Some Bullets (long bullets, like rifle bullet size)

*I have a new niece - her mother has not yet updated the baby blog but she is adorable with dark skin and dark hair and long clutching fingers and toes and she squints and I've only ever seen her eyes twice but she is the most beautiful baby ever. Her older brother (14 months older) is absolutely sweet to her and at the same time is learning quite about himself about being obedient - I hope my kids turn out as well!

*I turned 25 and it feels a lot older and more mature than previous milestones - I'm headed on a crash course towards home ownership as well as marriage and I'm starting a third year in a great job - all evidence of God's blessing me and maturing me whether I like it or not. Saw a great Phil Keaggy concert on my birthday and received many wonderful gifts - CDs, a new Bible, a set of golf clubs (left-handed!) a mirror for my new house, a Target gift card, and assorted and sundry monies

*The house: June-July was house hunting - I would receive e-mail alerts when a house came on the market that matched certain specified criteria, and from those I would choose which ones to go and visit in person. My agent would get me in the houses and we would look around and I really wasn't knocked off my feet by any of them. There were many that my girlfriend and I lobbied back and forth on, trying to weigh the pros and cons, until she found one that I had overlooked and when we went to see it it met up to a lot of our expectations. So now I've signed a contract to close on September 12th on a 960 sq. ft. rancher on Sawston Road in Richmond. The carpet needs to be replaced and it needs new appliances, as well as a few small repairs to make it liveable, but my gf has definitely sunk her teeth into decoration and it's rubbed off on me. We registered at Target (under a baby registry, there is no housewarming registry) and we were very excited planning all the color schemes for bedding, linens, bathroom accessories, kitchen utensils, etc. What a fun day!

*The girlfriend: Drew Barrymore and I are doing fine and now that we've had two children together we're going to get married in Tahiti and honeymoon in Des Moines...ok my real girlfriend is going to kill me for saying that but I just had to. Donna and I felt the Lord's strengthening hand on our relationship while we spent the summer very close to one another, a feature our relationship had not enjoyed for the first five months, nor will it again until she graduates college in June. We are back now to the hard work of the long-distance routine but knowing what is waiting for us when we get together makes it so much more worth it. We learned how to fight and grow and love...and let's be honest I just LOVE kissing her. Daily thanks are offered to the Lord for the blessing we both experience - His love poured out to each of us through the other.

*The job: teaching Physics and Engineering Design at L.C. Bird High School in Chesterfield County - a daily opportunity to practice the philosophy that drives this blog and share the workings of God's wondrous world with (hopefully) curious students. Teacher work week is going well and I'm getting a lot done - as long as I can just figure out what to do with that first day...I'm re-vamping a lot of procedures to make each unit more standardized to provide consistency, whereas in the past I've changed the presentation to fit the content, I think my students will retain information better if it's presented to them in regular doses. I'm also upping the ante on disciplinary issues, and the school's new tighter tardy policy is going to help that as well. But I've already got a double-handful of office referrals and detention notices in my top desk drawer, so bring it on!

*Been reading a biography of Albert Einstein along with Douglas Adams entire five-book Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy - all five in a leather-bound gilt-edged volume with one of those ribbon bookmarks - I don't know if he's trying to make it look like a bible, but it does! Musically my tastes continue to expand, though slowly - picked up a few new soundtracks, one orchestral one very eclectic world-music-ish, the Thomas Crown Affair - Sinnerman is undoubtedly my favorite track. Movies have slowed due to cash flow being crunched in favor of buying a house, but I couldn't resist Talladega Nights and I also traveled two hours north to catch A Scanner Darkly, both of which are on my trophy list although for completely different reasons. One is just an unstoppably funny comedy, the other an artistically philosophical look at drug use and loss of identity.

*That's it for now, mom's making homemade pizza for dinner and I've gotta go!