Theatre, Sheep, School

Not too much out of the ordinary. I'm still plugging away at college and work, taking opportunities to get ahead when I can.

Which brings me to my next topic; theatre and sheep.

I worked as an usher at a performance for extra credit for my theatre class. Not bad. I knew one of the girls who was acting.

I also went out and helped a friend feed some sheep on Saturday. Maybe I'll get pictures uploaded sometime

Getting There...

Let's see, since I last posted, here are a few of my highlights:

I'm starting on my 10th week of school, which means I'm about 2/3 through with the school year.

I bought a guitar and have been learning how to play with an online program.

I experienced some chest pains and had the college clinic check it out. Turns out I started a workout too fast, which sounded good when I was thinking about the possibility of an impending heart attack or something.

I walked into an office to apply for an assistant marketing position (hearing from someone who applied for the job, it's a bunch of writing so I figured I could handle it). I new the position had been filled, but I wanted the lady to remember me for the next time it opens up...so I ended up talking to the lady right in front of the guy who's job I was talking about! Talk about feeling a spot getting burned in the back of my head! lol

Making some break throughs with kids at House of Faith. One kid actually listened to me the other day when I gave him advice.

I bought a gun (10-.22 Ruger)

I went spot lighting the other night and shot a cotton tail rabbit (does that make me a meany? haha) That was a lot of fun. Spot lighting is where you drive around with a truck and a stand in the bed of the truck and some of the people you're wit have spot lights they shine everywhere.

When you see a pair of animal eyes staring back at you, you shoot between them.

Here are some pics of the week.














Been doing some thinking about the trip to Africa this summer. I believe God is calling me to be a missionary, but I want to make sure this missions trip is what he has in mind for me. I have a couple friends who might go along with me, but I'm fine going alone as well.

Whatever I decide, as usual, I want my motivations to be right and to be able to walk straight into it without an ounce of doubt so I can put energy behind it.

That's about all that's been happening to me, on top of work, writing for the newspaper (been doing a bunch of assignments from them) and getting to know people.

Normal...Kinda (I'll come up with better titles some day)

Alright, the week went pretty well. I'm just about half way through this semester, and I still have energy. Wait till Rodeo hits, I keep telling myself.

Speaking of rodeo, there's a small rodeo coming into town and I'm going to see if I can cover it for the newspaper. I might get to go interview a bunch of bull riders or something.

I put in about 38-39 hours at work.

I bought a camera, so pictures will be coming in future updates :)

First real picture



I also went to a church to cover that for the newspaper....that's the first time I ever dropped an article volentarily.

The reason I write articles about churches in my area is because I felt God tell me one day in church, "be a voice for my people."

I already put a significant amount of time and energy into putting it together, but once I went to the church to interview the people in the church that had split, I just didn't feel right about it. There are too many hurt people there right now. I would be causing a lot more damage if I did write it. So, that's over.

On to cherier news, I had a funny thing happen to me today. I've been meaning to talk to a man at my church named Jim Farmer at my church (CCSA) about going on a missions trip to Africa next summer.

I went to the paintball course today to interview people there about another article (seeing a trend in my updates? lol) and did my work, was about to leave, when I felt God telling me to stick around a bit. I did.

When I turned around after a few minutes, I saw Jim Farmer, of all people, sitting at a table and getting ready to play soft air! I talked to him about the trip, and learned a few things.

I went to a friend's house in the afternoon to target practise. I also did some welding (or cutting, was exactly what I was doing)

This is him when I walked up.


I wanted to know how it worked



Me shooting (notice the scope FAR from my face. Also, Jared, I got an Alaskan belt buckle just to upset the natives in Texas ;)



Both of us shooting (don't worry. there's not a single bullet between all 4 guns :)


Some sunset/moon shots I took on the way back from Ballinger.

Week of...I'm not sure. Normal life I guess

Let me give you a few highlights of my week.

I started it off right by going paintballing with a bunch of friends. Went pretty good, though I found out later that I had 4 guys gunning for me the whole time on the other team! And I stuck my hand in a pile of ants and didn't notice till I had them all over my hand. lol

I did classes on Tuesday and Thursday. I am REALLY lucky my math teacher decided to give a group quiz (everyone gets the same grade) instead of a normal quiz. I would have gotten like 10% because I worked extra time on Wednsday and didn't have the drive to study passed 11 pm that night.

I went to House of Faith (a ministry I volunteer for) and had a blast as the only guy at the school I help out at. I got the privilege of keeping 10-20 boys entertained in a game of street football. That's actually a blast!

I feel like I'm getting to know a lot of these kids faster than I ever have in past years....maybe that has something to do with my fam moving away and I'm more interested in getting to know them now? Don't know. :)

Celebrated a friend's 18th birthday!

Worked all day Friday...worked all day Saturday.

I got into a boxing round on Saturday night. My brother told this other guy at work that I had been sparing with one of my friends and had taken him out, so my coworker wanted to give it a shot.

He and I had fun, but then this other guy wanted to go a round. Good grieve! In retrospect it might have been a good idea to explain the difference between sparing and hitting the other dude as hard as you can. haha had fun anyway.

That's about my life for the week. At this point, I can say I am working full time at college, overtime at work, volunteering at some ministry stuff, and writing the newspaper. The time it took to write this post might be the most time I get to goof around all week! lol jk

Anyhow, good night!

What's New

I know, I know. It's been a while since I've posted. I'll give you a few of the highlights of what's been happening to me.

I went on a hike in CO with a group of friends. I really enjoyed getting out and hiking around the mountains for a whole week! We couldn't get a cell phone reception, which made it better in my opinion. We usually hiked about 5 miles a day or so with large packs and then we went for smaller hikes after setting up camp.

Myself and some other guys jumped into a lake up in the mountains....Glad we had a fire going when we got out! Most refreshing though, if I do say so myself.

On the last night I put some yellow dye in one of my fellow camper's canteen, and he actually believed I'd used his water bottle instead of a tree!

Here are a few pictures of the trip.












After I got home, I only had a couple weeks till college started, but I started and am doing pretty well. That's my competely unbiased opinion. :)

I'm going to try to update every Sunday or so, just to make sure I'm staying fairly current. BTW, I have skype now. I am Jamin.Goecker on skype! People tried getting me to do it before, but having family in Japan has really motivated me to get now. LOL

The Media, Trip Home, Plasma

I'm not sure if I said this in my last post, but we got the van back. And among the things the thieves took was a camera with a picture of me riding a pig in Seattle with my cowboy hat and everything. That guy who took the van just made it personal :)

Cy and I made it back to Texas alright after we said bye to the family...wait. Let me talk about the media in Seattle real quick.

As a reporter, I'm not used to being the one interviewed. THAT was kinda different. It annoyed me to no end when I heard one of the reporters walked into a room where Jared and the younger ones were and said the equivalent of, "Alright, now that your parents aren't here, what would you like to say?"

BIG red flag on the play! A reporter never sidesteps the parents of minors, or jokes about doing it. Some kids don't talk as well when parents are around, true, but it's better to avoid that whole issue and a bad reputation than...oh well. I didn't really like that TV station anyway. lol

Also, and this is just funny, a lady from a radio station interviewed us. I could tell she was from the school of thought that says when you're interviewing someone, you make eye contact and NEVER break it. THAT was scary! Her eyes grew, her cheeks sucked in, and she jabbed the microphone into my face whenever I said a word. Has a salmon interviewed you before? Because she looked like one a few times.

The trip home was pretty cool. For the sake of brevity, I'll say cops are aggresive about establishing their turf when they've been gone, and sticking your head out the window for a picture isn't the best way to put the driver at ease.

More recently, I gave plasma yesterday. It wasn't real scary or anything, and the process was relatively painless. Albeit, it was kinda weird having a needle in my arm for an hour and a half.

Let me tell you a quick story of when I was getting my physical, and then I'd better run. Let me state here and now that I have pretty good reflexes...

You know how doctors check your reflexes by hitting your knee with a mallet? She hit me in the left knee. My leg kicked without my permission (am I the only one who tries to be a rebel in the doc's office by trying to stay awake under drugs or refusing to kick when they test your reflexes?)

She moved over to the right knee. She drew back and tapped the right knee and...my left knee kicked again while the right one stayed home! I just try to give the docs something they don't expect every now and then to liven up their routine, honest. :)

Congratulations if you've read all the way to this point. You made it! lol

Vanishing Van!

Right now my family should be in Japan. After all, that's why my brother and I drove 1900 miles in 2 days. We wanted to see them before they boarded a plane and flew away.

They haven't left yet.

Reason why:

Someone stole the van. SERIOUSLY, who thinks it's a good idea to steal a red, 15-passenger van with Alaskan licence plates? But I guess we're in the northwest.

Here are some things we lost:

My older sister lost her credit card and the person has charged several things already.

Stacia's (youngest sister) little teddy bear :(

Jared's and I's portfolios for school, proofing we'd done a year the past year of work. We're working that out pretty well with the charter school.

And last and most important, the passports and birth certificates for those of us leaving for Japan.

Those last items are the most crippling. Without mentioning identity theft, it will give the family a lot of headaches because it takes about 3-12 weeks to get new birth certificates, which are required for passports.

It's looking like my dad will leave for Japan (he is required to report at his new station by a certain date) and my mom and younger siblings will be stuck state-side waiting for certificates and passports.

MEAN WHILE, my older brother and I will have to go back to Texas. There's no way in the world we can stay with them, nor could we do anything if we did...except form a posse and go after the dude who stole the van.

So right now we're pretty much Sleepless in Seattle.

We've gotten a lot of attention from the media in Seattle, but I'll talk about that in my next post.

Traveling Part II

A bit later in the day I was driving throw an Indian reservation...and padding the speed limit a bit. Like any law-abiding Texan, I slowed down as soon as I saw a cop on the side of the road.

I groaned inwardly as the guy started following me, wondering if my older brother and I were going to pay half for speeding tickets since we split the cost of gas money.

Finally, after a few tense miles, the guy passed me and I saw the side of his car: Police of the Nation of Navajo.

Yikes! So a Navajo had been trailing me for a couple miles? Glad he didn't give me a ticket...he would probably step out of the car completely painted with war paint and a feather. Then he'd dance around my vehicle and dent up the exterior with a tomahawk.

We arrived in Eugene, OR, the next day after driving over 1000 miles (talk about being delusional. we nearly fit in among northerners). By the way, the speed limit in Oregon is 55 mph. And if anyone asks, no, I did not go 30 over the limit down a circuitous road...29, 29.5, 29.51, etc., but NEVER 30.

I'll load pictures later.

Those aren't the highlights of this trip, though. TBC!

Quick Update

This summer's been pretty fun so far and I haven't even gone on vacation yet!

I turned in a scholarship essay the other day about The Wizard of Oz, Toto, and money management, I registered for college classes, played paintball on some friends' property, and experienced my first day of something called Sports camp at a ministry I volunteer at.

How it works is we bring van-loads of kids to certain locations and we have coaches who instruct them in the sport they're interested in. The people in charge picked me to play basketball...which means I'm pretty much learning right along with the kids :)

One thing that got my attention this morning was listening to two boys talking this morning about butting heads. I didn't think anything of it, till one actually head-butted the other. The injured party didn't like that and punched the other kid.

Only in a group of pre-Jr. high guys....

I discovered the kids are a lot easier to control when you learn their names, btw. fyi, if you ever do anything with a lot of kids!

How to Work out and Lose $500

There's a station I listen to that's been having something of a scavenger hunt around San Angelo, where if you find a slip of paper you get $500.

I've been wanting to go and get involved in it a bit, but haven't really been serious about it. THEN I found out the hidden slip of paper was at a spot I'd walked past just that morning on my way to a spot where I do a bunch of calistenics!

Ouch. Who wants $500 anyway?

Locked Cars, Tired Runners, and Slim Jims

I rolled out of bed this morning and thought I'd treat myself to something I hadn't tried before; a run on the trails out at a lake nearby.

After I arrived, I locked my door and went for a good 4.5-5 mile run around trails I'll never be able knewledgably navigate.

THEN I got back to the car, stretched, and reached for the car door handle. It was locked, and I'd thrown the keys inside the car without thinking about it because my running shorts didn't have pockets.

So there I was...out by a Texan lake (at least 5 miles to get into town), with a locked door and my legs already tired out.

Let me say here I REALLY considered busting my windshield. I'm getting it replaced anyway, right? Crazy things like that come into your head when you're in the middle of nowhere.

I stopped a guy and asked if he had a cell phone.

"You want to use my Slim Jim?" he said.

I laughed as well as I could while thinking, Do I look so stressed that he thinks I want food?

Turns out a Slim Jim isn't also a stick of jerkey, which is good because I didn't want anyone to see me trying to pick a lock with jerkey. It's a kit to unlock doors. I didn't ask why the guy thought he needed a kit like that, but we popped the door open without me breaking anything!

Push the Graduates out of the Plane!

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to free-fall for an entire minute, dropping at about 120 mph?

Let me tell you, it's an experience! For graduation, my family and the Zesch's went skydiving. Actually, it was my older brother, me, my sister, Annie, and Mr. Zesch who jumped. We started driving to the jump site, San Marcos, early in the morning and got home at about midnight. Every minute was a blast!

Here are some pictures.

The jumpers. Kinda looks like a movie poster for Matrix...though the middle guy looks like Kermit the Frog. I can see Kermit as a Matrix character, can't you? :)


That's about how high we jumped


Great poker face







Passing through a cloud


Touch Down!

Across the Aisle

I done "gaduated"! In other words, I've graduated!

I'm glad that's finally done. It wasn't too stressful (mom and sisters are great people to have when it comes to decorating and invitations) but it's still one more thing off the list of things I need to complete. I did the opening prayer and set a new record for myself on how many people I've spoken in front of (there being about 350 people in the sanctuary I think).

The graduation ceremony would likely have blown you away if you've never attended a homeschool graduation. For instance, Logan walked down the aisle with his diploma with a saber to the music of The Pirates of the Caribbean.

As a homeschooler, my parents gave me my diploma and at that point they get to say something about me. I nearly cracked up on stage!

I'll post some photos when I get them. Here are some pictures of me moving out of the house last week for now (I know, I'm bad about keeping things updated :))





(Combining my Alaskan and Texan backgrounds)

Photobucket src="http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd182/not2many/02009%20family%20photos/05%20May/movingstuff002.jpg" border=0>

Paint Ball!

I took some time on Sunday to go and roll in the dirt with paint splattering around me. This activity is better known as paintball, and I had a blast!

The place where we played, some friends and my two brothers, has a bunch of courses you can decide to play on.

My favorite has got to be the one called "The Alamo." This course lives up to the name.

It's located in a heavily wooded area, which makes for a lot of cat and mouse games through the brush. I was the last one standing for a few of the rounds in the woods, which I enjoyed because you get to sprint around a lot.

A thing I really put to good use in those games is sprinting, which makes it hard for the balls to burst on me.

As a sidenote, the guys working at the course missed a lawsuit by an inch. Literally. Those who were under 18 had to sign a paper supposedly from their parents, and they kind of forged a few signatures.

Nothing wrong, unless someone gets hurt. That's where I come into play.

I always check the safety on the rental guns when they give them to me. This time I got a gun, checked it, and then they gave me another one and for some reason I thought I'd checked that one already. I was doing a bit of work to get it ready for the round when "POP!"

One of the rounds from my gun splattered right by my friend's head.

WHOOPS....

Whew!

One big event just hit me one after yesterday! Let me start with the morning and I'll give a rating to how much each event had an effect on me on a scale from 1 to.

I worked the earliest I ever have at my job. 2

I saw a homeless guy with a sign from my work! 3

I watched a play performed that I wrote. Actually, that was pretty morbid once I saw it. 4

I moved out of my house. WHAT you're probably thinking. Yeah. I moved out of my parents' house. I have mixed emotions about that, but it's definitely something new. 8

Attended a meeting where I volunteered to pray in front of 350+ people. 4

I'll probably post some more in-depth stuff on these events, but that's the best I can do for now! Movers go to my family's house tommorow, so I'll be busy again and trying to get details and such ironed out on everything. I'm a little scattered right now, but I'm looking forward mostly to what's in the future!

Taming the mouth

I've realized lately that I have a tendency to bash people in my conversations when I have no intentions of doing so. It's easy for me to get caught up in a conversation and just say the first thing that comes to mind, but the first thing isn't always real edifying for anyone.

I felt a little convicted about things I said lately, so I've decided to get aggressive about keeping my mouth shut if I can't say something that will build someone else up.

So, for those of you who hear me in conversations, I'm asking you to hold me accountable. :)

Do any of you guys struggle with controlling what comes out of your mouth?

Insurance for the Missionary?

I've been working through a course by Dave Ramsey lately about financial issues. It's been a lot of great information that I'm glad I'm learning now instead of discovering later when I'm broke.

The topic of insurance came up in the lessons, and the one that particularly caught my eye was dissability insurance. Dissability is where the company will support you a little while you're injured doing your job and you can't return to your work.

The companies decide how much you pay not based on your age or health, but on your occupation. The riskier the job, the more it will cost.



So, how much do you think it would cost a missionary going to a country that is 99% Muslim? I'm thinking life insurance is what I should be checking out!

The Lumber Jack

I can say with complete confidence now that you can use a sawsull to cut through just about anything.

Today my younger brother and I undertook the job of trimming back a tree that's been growing over the neighbor's fense. That was kinda fun, actually!

There's just something about the camadredarie involved with dropping pieces of a tree onto your brother's head. To read a different angle of the story, read my brother's blog http://jared.schichowr.blogspot.com

"I wish you didn't have a home!"

I tried returning a mircowave at Wal-Mart yesterday. That's not a big deal. The part that got me was when a guy walked up to me who was about my height, shaved head, looked like he hadn't taken a bath in forever, and who's stomach hung out of his shirt.

He walked straight up to me as I waited in line and said something like, "I wish you didn't have a home! I wish you didn't live in a home!"

At first I laughed because I thought I might know him, but I looked into those dark eyes and nope, he was serious. I think he brought up guns or something of that nature in his rant. I stopped listening.

I turned around, but turned again after a few seconds.

"So, how's your day going?" I asked.

"It was going fine till you started talking."

I laughed a little. "Guess I'll stop talking."

"Hahahaha." I've never heard a laugh that sounded so much like a sneer.

This little episode showed me just how hate-filled some people are (or drunk, I'll give the benefit of a doubt). All I did was stand in line and this guy came out of nowhere and wished I was living on the streets?

Some people. Oh well.

I'm Not Going Anywhere!

As you all know, I've planned to move to Eugene Oregon for a while so I could attend college.

The move would have been tough. I like the people here in West Texas, and I have to admit they've been converting me a little to the Texan side.

The possibility of me staying at first didn't seem plausible, till I started looking at the logistics:

The college here in town is X3 cheaper than the one in Oregon
I can take general classes and transfer them
I have a steady job here...a nice change in outlook since Oregon has the second highest unemployment rate in the nation
I get to "bacht" it with my older brother for about 2 years!

Another benefit is I didn't know if I could say bye to the people here! My family will still be moving, being military, but I'm not going anywhere...except an apartment somewhere. I guess I still get to visit them once a year.

The future's looking up! Glad that decision is out of the way. I'd better tell my boss before he hires someone to replace me.