Here in White Center

Listening to Damien Jurado this morning. I love that guy. If you get a chance, download the song "White Center" or pick up the new album it's on, "On my way to absence."

Things have been pretty steady for Sarah and I lately. We've had setbacks and blessings evenly spaced. Ahhh... now I'm listening to Wilco. "Bob Dylan's 49th beard." What a great song. Thank you George. Tomorrow is church. I can't wait. It's such a place to be recharged for us. A place where people love us, and care about us. It really hurts to be so far away from family. We've been talking about that lately. It's likely that after our lease is up, we'll consider moving back to the midwest. Of course, the friends we've made here, and the life we've been forming will be astranged at that point, so that makes it hard too. It's all weird. But as Charles Dickens put it in the Christmas Carol, "Life is made up of meetings and partings. That is the way of it." I'm listening to the fantastic song "Good Woman" by the band Cat Power. It always catches my heartstrings. It's not that the situation in the song is near to my experience, but it just puts you in her mind.

Sarah made blueberry muffins with artificial blueberries last night while I was at work, and man, are these things good! We watched the original 1933 version of King Kong the other day. Very good. I can't wait to see the new one. I can see why Peter Jackson was so impressed. It tries so much harder, as far as effects are concerned, than the other movies of its era. The acting was great, and the plot was well carried by the action. It's strange to see such politically incorrect cinema from time to time. It has a certain innocence, and a buried animosity toward the different, the unusual.

I work tonight. I hope tips are good. Things have been going great at work. For the second day in a row, I've eaten my lunch with the Hotel Manager. He's a tough cookie. Never smiles. It made it funny the other day during orientation when he made an appearance to give us a speech on what really matters at the hotel. When he said "The most important thing that you can do is smile. We want smiles." with a completely stern look on his face. We all had to stifle our smiles at that point. But when you get him by himself he's pretty cool. We talked computers. He started his hotel career in Chicago at a hotel near Ohio and Michigan Aves. One of his jobs was to load the punchcards and reels into their computer. Yeah. That beats my commador stories. Last night, things were hectic, and I sort of slipped into the management position. The bus captain, who's experienced, but not a great leader, kept sliding into a subordinate role and looking to me for direction. So I directed. Things started going better. The hotel manager happened to be the active manager at the time, so he got to see what was going on. He congratulated me at the end of the night. I can feel things slipping into place. If things keep going right, I'll see that management position soon enough.

Well, that's it for now.
Peace.

iPoddy goodness.

Well, yesterday, Sarah and I ran up to Denver (A first for Sarah) and paid a visit to the Cherry Creek Apple store. The reason being, DemonPod, my iPod, was acting up. In fact, it died. After a short visit to the "genius bar" I was given a straight from the factory 4th generation iPod. The same as what I had before, and not a new, video, 5th generation iPod, but oh well. I have christened the new iPod "David" after several people in my life named David who have influenced my musical life. Hopefully David will be a better iPod than the last. But seriously, if I were my iPod, I'd lose my mind too.

In music news, I have been listening to "The Doves" lately. Worth all of the hype I'd been hearing. Other bands of note, The Caesars' "39 minutes of bliss" and Sun Kil Moon's latest album "Tiny Cities."

Tips

Well, the job is going very well. Tips have been great. The first and second days on the job, I made about $5 an hour in tips, popping me up over $10 an hour. Yesterday, I came away with $110 in 8 hours, which for the math inclined is $13.75 an hour, pushing me close to $20 an hour. Nice. We have been recording my tips, and doing cash deposits every day. Hopefully, we'll soon be able to get out of all the debt we've been in.

Thanks for all your prayers, as my mom quoted the other day... "Just keep swimming..."

Peace.

My new boss has Farrah hair.

Here's a link to the Hotel I work at. If you're in the Springs, it's THE place to be.

Yeah.... so I got off work today and...

I just love starting sentences like that again!!!

Today went great. I met my goal for tips at $5 an hour. I worked from 6-3:45 with a half hour lunch, and walked away with $45 in tips. 9 hours... Exactly $5 an hour. I work tomorrow night, and will see what that is like. Less car driving, and more carrying bags up to rooms. In the end, I'm going to stick to mornings, but for training purposes, it makes sense to work with the night crew.

My biggest tip was $10, from the snooty driver of a BMW SUV. I complimented the performance of his car, which made him pretty happy. Apparently, he has no idea that my opinion of cars holds little to no weight. On that note, my favorite vehicle of the day was the Subaru Tribeca. It was incredible. I looked it up online, and it's fairly pricey, but a really classy and powerful ride. Better response than the BMWs I drove around... Anyway.

When I got home, Sarah and I had received a gift in the mail from some friends of ours who felt that God wanted them to send us some support. It was a huge boost to our day, and reminded us that God doesn't have a giving quota that we can max out. He just keeps using the people and circumstances in our lives to amaze us. The loans and gifts from friends we love, trust and support from our wonderful parents... the State Farm agents reversing the insurance catastrophe from last month... to quote the Beatles, "it's all too much."

In other news, Sarah is doing great as far as her pregnancy is concerned. Her weight is where it should be, and she's been eating well. No getting sick lately, and we've been able to get out with some of our new friends too. I'll try to post some more pics soon.

That's it for today. Oh, Jim... I didn't lose anything from the iPod crash that wasn't on the iMac. The mac has about 33 gigs of music, and the iPod only holds 20, so I manually control the content of the little guy, instead of having it sync. And the leather case is cooler than the place I bought it from. Ryan, support me on this. Black leather is the only manly way to protect any technology, am I right? Except, of course, titanium.

My iPod hates me.

Maybe because it's the most used iPod on the face of the planet...

Maybe it's because I was listening to the Danielson Famile too much...

Maybe it's because I've been listening to the Ramones, while using an American Eagle leather iPod holder, and the sheer wrongness of it all got to the little guy...

Whatever it was, my iPod crashed yesterday. I have done all of the things that one should do to revive one's iPod, but to no avail. I had a minor success this morning, but it crashed minutes later.

Here's essentially what's happening.


The good news is that this didn't happen next month. I'm still under my one year warranty, and if I take the little dork into the Apple Store up in Denver, they'll send it in to be fixed, and we won't have to pay anything. Which is good.

In some ways, I'm hoping the thing is broken for good, and they'll send me a new model. That'd be cool.

Anyway. For now I'll have to find something on the radio to listen to... (Shudder.)

Pause

So it's been a few days since I last wrote. I just haven't known what to say.

It looks as though I have a job. It doesn't pay much hourly, but the tips should be good. I've decided to take a morning valet/doorman job at the Antlers Hilton downtown Colorado Springs. It's a great hotel. Pushing for four diamond right now. It's in its third building. The first was as old as the city itself. It's right at the intersection of Pikes Peak Av. and Cascade. In the oldest part of town.

If things go well, there's the very good possibility that I'll be offered the supervisor position after a month or so. That will mean a $3 raise, and the job is from 5am to 1pm, so I'd still have the time to interview for other jobs, or work a second job in the evenings.

It's not what I'd hoped for, but what do we know? Seriously. So many things in life that I've longed for have worked out badly, and some of the best things in life come along unexpected.

So we'll see. I've turned in my driving record, and am waiting for my drug test to come back. Otherwise, I'll start before the week is out. About time. Yesterday marked the one month mark of being unemployed.

That's it for now.
Peace.

More good news

A ways back I mentioned that our insurance with State Farm increased exponentially, while our coverage dropped to a minimum. It was all because of a misunderstanding, and of all things, this has bothered me more than pretty much anything else that's happened to us. Sure, being fired sucked, but that was my fault to a certain degree. Even as I did what I did, there was a tiny thought in the back of my head that it might come back to bite me. Now, I never suspected as big a bite as I got, but whatever.

With this insurance fiasco, I never expected what happened to happen. Well, today, I got a call from our local office, and the whole thing has been adjusted as though it never happened. The main office apparently felt different than the local branch, and adjusted our payments and coverage back to what they were in Illinois, and everything back to normal. This will restore our coverage to excellent once again, and drop our payments for every 6 months down about $450!

Of all the things I'd been praying about, this was one of the things I never expected to change. I had just accepted it as one of the many things that hasn't been going our way, but I was still incredibly frustrated by it. This is one of the many proofs that God blesses us in ways that are above and beyond what we could or would ask for. I pray that my future job is just as unexpectedly wonderful.

Man, I love sharing good news with you guys! Thanks for sticking with us during this difficult chapter in our lives! We love you.

Cyclone Jim!

As reported by ABC news online:

Cyclone Jim picks up speed

Queensland's first cyclone of the season has moved out to the Coral Sea and is starting to threaten New Caledonia.

The weather bureau's Geoff Callaghan says Tropical Cyclone Jim has picked up speed.

"It's about 900 kilometres east of Innsifail, moving fairly quickly," he said.

"We expect it could reach a category 3 overnight.

"It's a category 2 now and then it'll pose a rather large threat for New Caledonia."



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I never did like New Caledonia.

Fun with Jim & Sarah

Well, tonight some friends of ours took us out to dinner and a movie! Wow. It's been awhile.

We ate at a Chinese buffet. I had enough sushi and crablegs to feed a small army. Awesome.

On a less frightening note than Chinese sushi, we watched "Fun with Dick and Jane" which was great and really funny. Highly recommended. It hit pretty close to home, and Sarah and I have decided to start robbing banks.

In other news, we had a family interested in the Buick today. They moved here from Country Club Hills out in Chicago just recently, and they need a car. The price didn't phase them, and we told them we were getting the one thing wrong with it fixed. They liked the look and are very interested. Please pray that everything works out with the sale. We're very excited.

There are a few job prospects this week as well. One is a position for a graphic designer. 40 hour weeks. 8 weeks. It's not permanent, but it's a job. I got a callback and sent my resume in on Friday. I follow up on Monday.

What a great weekend! It's been so nice to feel upbeat. Let's keep this thing rolling!!!

Good News!

Reporter: "Jim. How does it feel to announce some good news for a change?"
Jim: "Well Terry, it feels strange. I mean, Sarah and I have had a rough month."
Reporter: "Ain't that the truth."
Jim: "But I can't say that it's unexpected. We trusted God to take care of us, and He sure did."
Reporter: "Word up! True dat! You can say that again homey g-funk!"

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So the good news. Sarah and I made rent. Without a job, or a penny in the bank, we made rent.
I've been sparing you all the details of the government help we've been applying for during this recent crisis, simply because it makes for depressing writing. But I've eliminated the boring stuff, and here's the good. We're on our way to getting Medicaid which will move through the system fast because of Sarah's pregnancy, and will pay for the whole thing. Everything. We've also filed unemployment with Illinois, and for financial assistance here. All of those things will eventually come through, but until then it's gonna be tight. The people at the federal aid building referred me to the United Way, who in turn referred me to a group called the Northern Churches Care here on the north side. The first 2-4 people who show up in the morning on certain days can get assistance paying their rent. The doors opened at 9, and today was one of the days, so I showed up at 6:30. It was freezing, but worth it. A local girl named Nikki waited with me. Some slackers waited in their car, but we weren't losing our shot at help and spots in line by being wussies like them. Nikki's really struggling, and is pregnant now. She has a blood clot in her lung, and she found out her boyfriend is cheating on her last night. You find out alot about people when you freeze your butt off with them outside a church at 7 in the morning. I prayed with her, and we talked about our respective hardships. It was fun at times, as the crowd grew, so did the volume of the conversations, and the humor of the group. When we were by ourselves, Nikki offered something really nice after my sob story. She said that if I'd give her a ride back to her apartment (she'd been dropped off by her mom) she'd "bless" Sarah and I with $40 in groceries that she had left over in food stamp money. (Our food stamp money is pending approval.) That sounded awesome, so I said yes. The church ladies let us all in at 8:45, and we filled out paperwork and waited. By this time, I had apparently picked up the nickname "J" and was everybody's favorite person. As I was probably the most out of place person in the line. My number being 1, got called soon, and I went in for the interview for assistance. After reviewing our situation, the lady that took care of me (who happened to be the chairman of the organization filling in for someone who was sick) said that they could give us $150, and then she called Focus on the Family and they offered to give us $150 as well to pay for February rent! This was perfect, as a few days ago a couple from church offered us a loan of $300 to be paid back "whenever." $600! Just enough to cover our rent and utilities! I was sooooooo happy! After I got out of the meeting, one of the little old church ladies took me back to the food pantry, and they hooked us up with two bags of food! So I took that out to the car, and hung out with the rest of the motley crew until Nikki came out. We went over to the grocery store next door, and bought meat and vegetables and all the things that we can't get from assistance or on our own. It was so AWESOME! I felt like a kid in a candy store. I was like "Sarah likes those! And those!" It was really cool. I drove Nikki home, and went home to tell Sarah. We took the checks over to the office, and we're in the clear! What an amazing day!

There's more good news too. The chairman of the northern churches care told Sarah and I later today, that a woman from the city called, and apparently, her agency has a recent boost in money provided by the lawsuit against the smoking industry that is to be used for public programs, and they are using it for first time mothers with low income. Would she have anyone in mind for aid? Why yes... yes she would. So she's given Sarah the number of this lady, and after Sarah calls, apparently they come to your home and help you with the baby, provide diapers and other items, and help with anything you need during the first two years. What an amazing help. There may be a time when we don't need that, but for now, it's a God-send.

So that's today! What a day. I'm so glad that noone got there earlier than me, and really happy with the way the day turned out. Thank you so much everybody for your prayers, and thoughts, and comments on the blog. We are so grateful to have friends like you!