Phone Adventures II and III

Thursday night I was chilling with my friend Christina at her house. We were drinking tea and talking Life.
Then we heard the sound of the Tardis materializing in the room. I checked, and I'd gotten a text from a random number: "Nice c-n u hope u home safe. Nite."

Not knowing who this person was, but willing to have some fun, I texted the person back with a greeting and said "How drunk are you?"

"Jimmy!!" the number replied.  "does it matter?" (all typing left intact)
Then, "4get-it wild 1"

I said something about knowing they were drunk from the lack of English typing skills and Jimmy laughed.

"Lol," he said. "mis-d that class"

I offered that maybe he should stop drinking while he was ahead. This seemed to cheese him off.

"I stop all the other shit that made me money after my son. Aint stop-n anyting.!"

I realized this was getting personal too quickly, so I told him I was proud that he'd stopped that other shit for the sake of his son--that was a really great thing. Also, I was not the person he thought he was texting; "my name is Joe," I said. This name was supplied by Christina, who was in hysterics over the whole affair, and agreed we oughtn't to use real names.

"Haha sorry joe" our new friend, Jimmy, replied.

I then said something about it being no problem--I've gotten random texts from wrong numbers before, and I just think it's amusing.

"FknLOL" Jimmy agreed.

I couldn't let this go and replied in good humour with "ChknYEA" to encourage him.

Jimmy then called and left me a semi-incoherent and very alcohol-laden voicemail explaining that he didn't know what my text response had meant, but I should call him whenever I had the chance (somehow I guess my voicemail answering thingy hadn't alerted him to the fact that I was not in fact the Joe he thought he was talking to).

I then sent him a text, explaining what had happened and that I do not actually know any Jimmies, and then, for good measure, "Jesus saves." Because, as Christina said, "why not?"
Jimmy pondered this for a few moments before responding.

"K," he said. "its all good. Nite."

I thought that was the end of my weird phone adventures, but it was not.

An hour or so later Christina and I went to bed. At 3:15am my phone rang. I usually think that if someone is calling me at 3:15 in the morning, it's either going to be a really weird phone call, or an emergency phone call. Both are worth answering.
I picked up the phone. "'lo?" I said.

"Hey," said the young male voice on the other end of the line. "Do you have Tabasco?"

"No. No, I do not in fact have any Tobasco. I think you've got the wrong number."

A pause. "No. I definitely don't have the wrong number. Who are you?"

"Abby," I said, forgetting that we weren't using real names.

"Abby...?" he pushed for further information.

"Maarsch," I said, regretting it as soon as it came out.

"Don't we go to school together?" he asked.

"I don't think so," I said. He then told me his name was Dunlan or Dolan or Dexter or something like that.

The next morning I couldn't remember the name he'd told me, and all that came to mind was "Dolan." Sad day.

"Nope," I said.

He then somehow pulled me into a two minute conversation about schools in the area and whether I'd been to SRU and when I told him I graduated from Grove City he said "Ooh. Grove City sucks."

I didn't really respond with more than a grunt of acknowledgement that he had said something, and he seemed disappointed.

"Okay," I said at last. "Well, it's late, and I'm really tired, so I'm going back to bed."

"Goodnight!" he said, and hung up.

I'm thinking it was probably a friend of Jimmy's, intent on revenge or a good time. It seemed as if everything he was saying was intended to elicit some sort of reaction from me, and I wasn't giving him any of the reactions he was expecting. Luckily this seemed only to amuse him, not anger him.

And thus ends another tale of me and my cell phone.

Horse pictures plus some ungulates. Nothing to see here.

Gage and Tomme

Tomme with his mane all down.

Ronni and I took Tomme out for a spin during one of the first warm days this spring. 

Gage loves hugs.

He is shameless and sometimes makes a pest of himself and won't leave me alone because of his touchiness. 

It's pretty cute, though.

 
Hayden, Isaac, and Gage/Gauge.


This is Yearling. She is obnoxious and ugly (half friesian and half gypsy). One day she will grow into herself and be lovely. Perhaps. We are still working on her letting me touch her without throwing pretend tantrums.

Molly when still very pregnant. Yearling being obnoxious. 

Momma Molly. <3

I got to be the first person to find Molly's baby. 

Unfortunately, Molly stopped producing milk for some unknown reason, and Ronni had to get a surrogate mare to feed him. But Baby Bubba got pretty skinny before that happened, hence why he's looking a little droopy. He's recovering quickly, though!

Nathan. 

Nathan is some sort of African antelope thing. I forget what he's called.

Nathan was unimpressed with my S.O., but this deer liked him okay. 

Grace

Sometimes we receive things we really don't deserve. Actually, for Christians, we live in a perpetual state of having received something we didn't deserve. That never really seems to hit home, though, because we so often tend to think we're pretty swell. And in a way we are; we have talents and people can do amazing things.

This, for instance. 

Van Gogh: Undergrowth with Two Figures, 1890

But we're also complete failures. We are often self-conscious and feel inadequate, but still our response to receiving something good is usually pleasure but not gratitude and when receiving something bad is dismay and anger and not understanding and acceptance.
That's because we have a pretty high view of ourselves and think we can somehow control our fates by our own actions (think Christian Karma).

I just had a real-life experience that showed me just how wrong this idea is and how works-oriented I actually am.

So I got that speeding ticket I mentioned in my last post. Well, a friend suggested I talk to somebody we know who's knowledgeable about this sort of thing to ask him what (if anything) I ought to do about it.
He was very kind and sympathetic, recognized the fault, but also the guilt I felt. He told me I ought to request a court date, but he'd also try in the meantime to get in touch with the officer who gave me the citation.

I accepted what he said without really realizing what he was implying. We finished our conversation and I left it somewhat encouraged (he thought at the court date I could talk down the fine, which was an obnoxious amount), but also steeled for action: I'd mail that sucker in and WORK that court date. Even if they didn't reduce my fine, I'd still have done everything in my power to make it happen. They'd be the jerks that refused to listen to extenuating circumstances (I was lost!).

I had only about twenty minutes of this tragi-heroic daydream hashed out when our friend called me up.

"Well," he said. "I talked to the officer who pulled you over and explained the situation to him. He was really nice and understanding and he'll take care of the citation: you can throw it away."

"What?" I said. I was not even aware that this was a thing that could happen. Getting a ticket from someone and then that same someone magically making it go away. Our friend explained some more about how Law Enforcement works and what happened, and I thanked him profusely.

"Looks like the Lord knew you needed that money for something else," he said.

"Yeah," I said. "Brake pads."

We laughed, and he hung up. I suddenly felt guilty. Regardless of what followed with the officer who pulled me over, I probably had been speeding (knowing me and the situation), so I did deserve to get a ticket. It didn't seem fair that I hadn't done anything to right my wrong, but it was as if it had never happened, and I will suffer no repercussions from it. Surely I have to do something to fix it. It's not that I WANTED to pay the fine or get points on my record, but I also didn't want to get handed a freebie.

It turns out, of course, that I do need the money--I took my car in to the mechanic today to get looked at (the brakes are in fact squealing) and I don't yet know what the results of that will be, and I randomly got invited by my SO's parents to take a week off to go to Florida (Orlando and the Everglades, I believe) with them. That's not costing me anything for the trip, but it will cost a week's worth of income.

Then, of course, there is the added guilt from that, that I'm getting to do something pleasant and somebody else is paying for it.

Nobody else had to pay for my speeding ticket for it to go away, but I did deserve to pay for it. Because I didn't have to, though, I am able to take advantage of someone else's generosity, give up a week's worth of work, and experience something else pleasant.

So it's a two-fer of me receiving things I don't deserve and didn't pay for, and it's not fair.

Why don't we ever feel the unfairness of our salvation this strongly?

Maybe this sort of pride is why so many people don't like the ideas of irresistible grace and limited atonement: that kind of makes more sense to me now.
We're wrong to think this way about grace, but now I understand how those people feel.

Sunflowers, 1887

Japan, ho!

I might be returning to Japan again this summer for three weeks. To top it off, two of the girls I went with last year would be returning as well, so we could be on a team again.
Also, my significant other won't be around all summer anyways, so there's no guilt for abandoning him for almost a month to go to Japan. Interestingly enough, Anna's (one of the other girls from our team last year) husband was just deployed this past week for a year, so she's functionally single and also able to spend this amount of time in another country without leaving marital responsibilities. Funny how God sometimes works even unpleasant circumstances out so they're not quite as sad.
The main issue would be that I'll be losing three weeks of income to do this, but with some extra saving until that point, I should be fine. I just hope my employer doesn't hate me for taking that much time off.

Hopefully you can prepare yourself for more Japan posts, come July-August.

In other, belated news, I picked up a second job working for a Friesian horse breeder in the area.

Yes, they really look like this.

Yes, they are this epic.

And yes, they are complete lovers.

The owner wants me to help her feed, train, and ride her horses. So basically it's my ideal job--somebody pays me to sort of pretend his or her horses are my horses. 

It's a really lovely establishment, the owner is great, and she has some wonderful horses--I'm excited to learn more about the place and finish training so I can work there more regularly (thus far it's sort of an on and off again, once-a-week thing). 

In other news, I got a $159 speeding ticket yesterday because I was in unfamiliar territory, trying to read a friend's written directions, and gauging my speed by a car in front of me, since I didn't have extra brain energy to devote to reading speed signs (or, apparently, my speedometer). Unfortunately for me, the other car was speeding, but he, of course, did not get noticed by the cop. The thing that enraged me, though, is that I told the cop I had never been to this place before, and he kept acting like I should recognize street names and offices in the area. I asked three separate times for him to tell me where exactly I'd been speeding relative to my current position, and he refused to tell me and just changed the subject. 

So I still have no idea where I was supposedly speeding, which makes me very unwilling to accept the ticket. Also, there's an illegible note he wrote on the bottom of the paper--who even knows what that's about. Something about "ruff" and "white lines." Anybody with experience with this know whether I should try to contest this ticket? I really don't need to be forking over a random $160 for something I'm not even sure I did because I don't know where I supposedly did it. 

Any advice would be appreciated!

The end, for now. 

Hey, presto.

Life is okay.

I'm still working at Iron Bridge Inn (and enjoying it for the most part), and now dogsitting for a church friend on Thursday mornings. I've hit upon an ingenious solution for writing--I carry a small notebook with me to work. Anytime we're slow and I have nothing to do, I pull it out and write a few more sentences in it. There are only 32 pages (I hit page 11 today, and I've only been working on it for about a month), so when it's done I'll probably type it all up, edit it, and post it somewhere for people to read if they so desire. I wrote three pages today, and then a poem, because I was angsty. 

My problem is I never feel the drive to write poetry unless I'm being a particular sort of angsty. Thusly my poetry all tends to be variations on a theme of angst and bores and embarrasses me when I re-read it later. 

The story is fun, though. 

Hint: there is an alien. 

Actually, come to think of it, my story is like E.T., only not as horrifying. I think I accidentally saw that movie when I was very young because my parents weren't paying attention. It scarred me. This is exactly how my fear of volcanoes played out, only the movie in question was Dante's Peak and I recall hiding behind the couch while people dissolved in acid lakes. 

Half of this woman is a puddle of bubbling goo. 

If I think to myself "nightmare" and "alien", the first picture that pops into my head is of E.T., all white and pasty, lying at the bottom of the ravine or in the clear plastic sheeting.

This = Pure Terror

Incidentally, the second picture that comes to mind is this:

I blame this one on the fact I also live in a house in PA, surrounded by cornfields, and we had a German Shepherd.

Unfortunately, we do not also have Joaquin Phoenix living in the barn. 

At any rate, despite the fact I love Signs, I do not like aliens. I suppose those two facts are not mutually exclusive. 

True story--I made one of these hats. 

I also kept a spray bottle of water with me for about a month for 

whenever I had to roam the halls of our house alone. Ask my siblings.

To return to my original point: In my mind, E.T. sucks; my story is my attempt to remedy this, mentally. Caitling helped me come up with characters and their names. The basic story is that there is a family, and then an alien shows up in their backyard and all parties react. I don't know how it ends. I presume it will end well, considering I dislike tears and as of yet don't know if I can write well when the topic includes any sort of sentimentality. Stay tuned, though.

Anyhow, I feel kind of lame sometimes, living at home and working a non-college-degree-appropriate job. My comfort is I had the possibility of a couple college-appropriate jobs that would also have been awesome, but made the decision myself not to pursue them. If my reason for not pursuing them ceases to be a reason, I can always pursue them again later.

But I do feel better, writing.  

Disclaimer: there is a female butt I do not approve of. Awesome music, though. 

Not as complete a post as I would wish

My duck spree continues, though I figured it was high time to update this blog--just to keep in practice.
Since you last heard from me the boyfriend came to visit, my sister and her roommate got back from college, I got a speeding ticket, and finished Christmas shopping.

Everyday, pleasant things... except for the ticket. It was coming back from Pittsburgh after picking my sister and her roommate up at the airport. There's a section of I-79 that goes down to 55mph for no particular reason, and I wasn't paying attention, and passed a cop while going 70 mph. So he nabbed me. I was polite and I've never been pulled over before, but he was cranky and unimpressed and still gave me a ticket for $110 and told me to be grateful he didn't double it because of the work zone I was approaching that was still a half-mile ahead.
Rawr.
I was annoyed, obviously, but dutifully paid my fine. Then last night I realized I had two letters, dated one day apart, warning me about suspending my license for failing to pay fines. Apparently I still owed the state 0.50. The cop, might I point out, had horrible handwriting, and added up the numbers incorrectly, so they were all a scratched-out black spot on the paper. I wrote my check by remembering the total he'd given me when he snagged me.
So given that the price of an average piece of paper, printed, is 0.15, an envelope, printed, is about 0.13. Now, granted, they probably didn't have to pay postage because it's a government thing, but it's still costing money somewhere. We'll pretend it's not though.
They sent me:
3 papers (two white, one orange)--0.45
2 legal envelopes----0.26
Total: 0.71

So basically, I'm fifty cents poorer, and they're twenty-one cents in the hole because they insisted on taking my fifty cents.

I did, however, include this note with my check for 0.50:

I feel some small sense of victory because of this note. Dad got all angsty, though, about the Feds coming for me. I don't think telling somebody to buy two gumballs constitutes anything like a real threat, though. I mean, what could I have followed it up with? "I hope you chew them until your jaw hurts"?

I had more to write about that wasn't as full of complaints, but it's late and I have work tomorrow, so you will have to wait. You could also read my most recent Duckling Saga update to pass time if you wish: Pascal's Duckling Bildungsroman

I will end with a song to cheer you up. Kate Rusby is one of my all-time favourite artists, and Priscilla, my friend who introduced me to the joys of Ms. Rusby, sent me this today. Make sure to read the lyrics.

Winter comes around,
And he knows he is homeward bound,
His heartbeat is the only sound he's known,

He once lost his way,
He knows now that was yesterday,
He fell down on his knees to pray for home.

We'll sing to the morning,
We'll sing till the bells they sound,
We'll sing till the wandering soul is found.

We'll sing to the morning,
We'll sing till the bells they sound,
We'll sing till the wandering soul is found.

He's found his way at last,
With each turn a new bond was cast,
His friends now hold him steady fast and true.

With peace in his eyes,
The fear now is a pain in the skies,
With friends near he sees only skies of blue

We'll sing to the morning,
We'll sing till the bells they sound,
We'll sing till the wandering soul is found.

We'll sing to the morning,
We'll sing till the bells they sound,
We'll sing till the wandering soul is found.

It's clearer every day,
He knows now he is here to stay,
He cares not why he went away so long.

He's found where he belongs,
He know he's been here all along,
He is smiling as he joins his friends in song.

We'll sing to the morning,
We'll sing till the bells they sound,
We'll sing till the wandering soul is found.

We'll sing to the morning,
We'll sing till the bells they sound,
We'll sing now the wandering soul is found.

On a Duck Spree, Will Return Shortly.

"Hey, you guys; I have a lot of opinions about things!"