Mar 2007
"arrrggghh!"
Monday, March 19, 2007 Filed in: public
service announcements
check it out...
http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/piratesofthecaribbeanatworldsend.html
peace, love and Jell-O chocolate pudding...
matt
|
"the unforgettable fire... or ring of fire... or world on fire..."
Sunday, March 11, 2007 Filed in: my life
i couldn't decide which
fire related song title to use as the title to this
blog, but they all fit as do so many others. (runners
up included "great balls of fire," "through the
fire," "after the fire," and of course, "we didn't
start the fire.") all fine choices, though the ones
that made the cut seemed most fitting.
in case you couldn't figure out, there was a HUGE fire today in Anaheim Hills. if you turned on the news at all, you would have seen my parent's house very prominently featured. and since so many of you have been calling or leaving messages on my myspace or whatever, i thought i'd give a quick rundown of my day and what happened.
8:20 am - leave for church. notice lots of smoke coming from up by my parent's house. i call, but they don't seem too worried.
9:00 am - Megan shows up at church to let me know that i'm wanted back at the house to help start packing things.
9:05 am - Ella Cork pushes herself up onto the counter in the coffee shop. i walk up behind her to say hi. she doesn't know i'm there and pushed herself back off the counter to get down. again, not knowing i'm there she pushes herself into me, bounces her head off of my chest and into the counter where she receives a nice shiner right under her right eye.
9:05:30 - i feel really bad about this.
9:30 am - arrive at my parent's house. they're supposed to have a baby shower for Lisa Chandler today at noon or noon-thirty or something. they're trying to figure out if they're going to be required to evacuate. we load up the cars just in case and wait. (i also find that the side mirror on the Denali is busted. apparently, my dad was so entranced by the fire that when he was backing up, he failed to notice our house.)
11:00 am - the fire guys tell us we have nothing to worry about but that we won't be able to have the party there because they need the streets to be cleared for the trucks, etc... so, we decide to move the party to the Chandler's.
11:15 am - Nikki and i drive everything down to the Chandler's.
11:20 am - Nikki and i head back to my parent's house. by the time we get there, the streets are closed and everyone is evacuating. as we pulled up to our street, we were greeted by very large flames. (remember... just 20 minutes ago we were told that it was okay and they had it under control. freakin' liars.) they wouldn't let me go up our street, so i drop Nikki of at her car and go to help the Williams' move stuff out of there house. as we're standing in their house, flames approach their backyard.
12:00 pm - i arrive at the Chandler's having gone and got the cake for my mom. i find that my mom's car is having some issues. it seems that so many people were coming up to see the fire and driving like idiots, that one of them decided to illegally u-turn in front of my mom when she was on her way down and she hit them. awesome. even more awesome is that in order to get out of our house, my dad had to drive the Denali through the flames. (he said it was just like in the movies and that it was pretty cool.)
1:00 pm - 3:00 pm - we all watch helplessly from the resevoir above my house (and below my parents') with about 100 other people as helecopters keep refilling and dropping water on the hills around our house. several times during these hours, our house becomes completely surrounded by fire.
3:00 pm - 5:00 pm - during this time we noticed (through the binoculars wonderfully provided by the Jones' who also let us watch much of this from their balcony) that there were in fact trees and bushes on fire in our yard. a while later, a fire truck showed up on our driveway. at some point, my dad decided he was going up there. knowing that he couldn't get up there with a car, he borrowed my Vespa. however, he was stopped at the corner of Serrano and Canyon Rim where he ditched my Vespa and proceeded on foot. knowing that he wouldn't be let up the streets, he climed the hill below the house to get up there. we watched as he tried to fight the fires with a garden hose. this made me laugh a little bit.
5:00 pm - by this point, most of the firest around our house were out. Brett and Doug and i decided to go up and join my dad. we walked up and found the abandoned Vespa on the corner. (thank God she was still there!) and then we followed his lead and climbed up the hill.
5:20 pm - i realize how incredibly out of shape i actually am and almost die climbing the incredibly steep hill.
5:30 pm - 7:00 pm - we spend the next hour and a half putting out hotspots with the garden hose and washing fire retardant off of the walls of the house. several fences are fire damaged. all of the plants and trees along the retaining wall are gone. several of the trees and plants in the yard are burnt badly. and thanks to the fire retardant, our house looks like someone poured pepto all over it. (also, the hills around the house look like a barren wasteland. they're still kinda smoking and all black... it's kinda eery.)
so, that's pretty much it! crazy, crazy day. i think that only two houses were actually lost. (not cool, but better than we'd thought it would be.) nobody was killed. at least we're all alive. we're still not allowed back in the house. (dad has, once again, climbed the hill and snuck back in.) mom and Nikki and Martha are staying with the Chandler's and i have four dogs downstairs. (two of them are most likely peeing or pooping on my kitchen floor as i type this.)
oh yeah... and i saw Ella again this afternoon. she came up to me and i asked her how her eye was and she gave me a big hug, pulled back, pointed at her eye, smiled real big and in the cutest voice ever said... "you did that!" perfect.
let's hope that tomorrow is less memorable.
ps... to everyone who called or texted or posted on here... thank you so much for your concern and offers to help. it really means a lot.
in case you couldn't figure out, there was a HUGE fire today in Anaheim Hills. if you turned on the news at all, you would have seen my parent's house very prominently featured. and since so many of you have been calling or leaving messages on my myspace or whatever, i thought i'd give a quick rundown of my day and what happened.
8:20 am - leave for church. notice lots of smoke coming from up by my parent's house. i call, but they don't seem too worried.
9:00 am - Megan shows up at church to let me know that i'm wanted back at the house to help start packing things.
9:05 am - Ella Cork pushes herself up onto the counter in the coffee shop. i walk up behind her to say hi. she doesn't know i'm there and pushed herself back off the counter to get down. again, not knowing i'm there she pushes herself into me, bounces her head off of my chest and into the counter where she receives a nice shiner right under her right eye.
9:05:30 - i feel really bad about this.
9:30 am - arrive at my parent's house. they're supposed to have a baby shower for Lisa Chandler today at noon or noon-thirty or something. they're trying to figure out if they're going to be required to evacuate. we load up the cars just in case and wait. (i also find that the side mirror on the Denali is busted. apparently, my dad was so entranced by the fire that when he was backing up, he failed to notice our house.)
11:00 am - the fire guys tell us we have nothing to worry about but that we won't be able to have the party there because they need the streets to be cleared for the trucks, etc... so, we decide to move the party to the Chandler's.
11:15 am - Nikki and i drive everything down to the Chandler's.
11:20 am - Nikki and i head back to my parent's house. by the time we get there, the streets are closed and everyone is evacuating. as we pulled up to our street, we were greeted by very large flames. (remember... just 20 minutes ago we were told that it was okay and they had it under control. freakin' liars.) they wouldn't let me go up our street, so i drop Nikki of at her car and go to help the Williams' move stuff out of there house. as we're standing in their house, flames approach their backyard.
12:00 pm - i arrive at the Chandler's having gone and got the cake for my mom. i find that my mom's car is having some issues. it seems that so many people were coming up to see the fire and driving like idiots, that one of them decided to illegally u-turn in front of my mom when she was on her way down and she hit them. awesome. even more awesome is that in order to get out of our house, my dad had to drive the Denali through the flames. (he said it was just like in the movies and that it was pretty cool.)
1:00 pm - 3:00 pm - we all watch helplessly from the resevoir above my house (and below my parents') with about 100 other people as helecopters keep refilling and dropping water on the hills around our house. several times during these hours, our house becomes completely surrounded by fire.
3:00 pm - 5:00 pm - during this time we noticed (through the binoculars wonderfully provided by the Jones' who also let us watch much of this from their balcony) that there were in fact trees and bushes on fire in our yard. a while later, a fire truck showed up on our driveway. at some point, my dad decided he was going up there. knowing that he couldn't get up there with a car, he borrowed my Vespa. however, he was stopped at the corner of Serrano and Canyon Rim where he ditched my Vespa and proceeded on foot. knowing that he wouldn't be let up the streets, he climed the hill below the house to get up there. we watched as he tried to fight the fires with a garden hose. this made me laugh a little bit.
5:00 pm - by this point, most of the firest around our house were out. Brett and Doug and i decided to go up and join my dad. we walked up and found the abandoned Vespa on the corner. (thank God she was still there!) and then we followed his lead and climbed up the hill.
5:20 pm - i realize how incredibly out of shape i actually am and almost die climbing the incredibly steep hill.
5:30 pm - 7:00 pm - we spend the next hour and a half putting out hotspots with the garden hose and washing fire retardant off of the walls of the house. several fences are fire damaged. all of the plants and trees along the retaining wall are gone. several of the trees and plants in the yard are burnt badly. and thanks to the fire retardant, our house looks like someone poured pepto all over it. (also, the hills around the house look like a barren wasteland. they're still kinda smoking and all black... it's kinda eery.)
so, that's pretty much it! crazy, crazy day. i think that only two houses were actually lost. (not cool, but better than we'd thought it would be.) nobody was killed. at least we're all alive. we're still not allowed back in the house. (dad has, once again, climbed the hill and snuck back in.) mom and Nikki and Martha are staying with the Chandler's and i have four dogs downstairs. (two of them are most likely peeing or pooping on my kitchen floor as i type this.)
oh yeah... and i saw Ella again this afternoon. she came up to me and i asked her how her eye was and she gave me a big hug, pulled back, pointed at her eye, smiled real big and in the cutest voice ever said... "you did that!" perfect.
let's hope that tomorrow is less memorable.
ps... to everyone who called or texted or posted on here... thank you so much for your concern and offers to help. it really means a lot.
"waking up is hard to do"
Thursday, March 08, 2007 Filed in: my life
| random
musings
waking up is, for me,
not the best part of the day already. i'm a night
person. i'm not a morning person. i LOVE my sleep
time. since waking up is what marks the end of sleep
time, i don't always like it so much. but when things
aren't going well, it's even worse.
when i'm upset or depressed or whatever, sleep is my great escape. you know how people always talk about losing sleep over things they're worried or upset about? not me. i usually sleep better when i'm upset about something. it's my chance to get away from it all without going anywhere. which brings me back to waking up.
have you ever had something bad happen or been worried about something or upset about something and then you go to sleep and when you wake up, for a split second you feel fine? you feel like everything is okay, but this is just setting you up for the overwhelming letdown of the next second when you remember how crappy everything actually is right now. and it's just that much more impactful because you had this sorta blissful ignorance that you can have during sleep and that one second after you wake up before you realize it's all not real.
sorta a crappy way to start your day. but, every day gets a little better than the last as you get some distance from whatever event set this whole system into motion. i'm on day three now. life doesn't suck or anything. i know that. i just had a really, really crappy beginning to this week.
when i'm upset or depressed or whatever, sleep is my great escape. you know how people always talk about losing sleep over things they're worried or upset about? not me. i usually sleep better when i'm upset about something. it's my chance to get away from it all without going anywhere. which brings me back to waking up.
have you ever had something bad happen or been worried about something or upset about something and then you go to sleep and when you wake up, for a split second you feel fine? you feel like everything is okay, but this is just setting you up for the overwhelming letdown of the next second when you remember how crappy everything actually is right now. and it's just that much more impactful because you had this sorta blissful ignorance that you can have during sleep and that one second after you wake up before you realize it's all not real.
sorta a crappy way to start your day. but, every day gets a little better than the last as you get some distance from whatever event set this whole system into motion. i'm on day three now. life doesn't suck or anything. i know that. i just had a really, really crappy beginning to this week.
"the old songs"
Saturday, March 03, 2007 Filed in: my life
| deep thoughts
i love it when i hear
an old song that meant something to me at some point
and it all comes rushing back. especially if i
haven't heard it in a long time and had forgotten
about it.
that happened today. this was a song i heard over and over growing up. my mom used to play this cassette tape over and over in the car everywhere we went. it was Amy Grant's "The Collection" album. if i hear any song off that album, it totally takes me back to when i was like six.
this particular song, however, reminds me more of college. i sorta rediscovered it my freshman year. when you hear a song as a young child, the meaning can be lost. so, when i heard it in college, it was a combination of nostalgia and discovery. now the song has many things associated with it.
anyway, it's a very simple song that serves as a great reminder for me when i get down on myself and feel like i have to be more or do more or whatever.
"All I Ever Have to Be"
when the weight of all my dreams
is resting heavy on my head
and the thoughtful words of help and hope
have all been nicely said
but i'm still hurting
wondering if i'll ever be the one
i think i am...
i think i am
then You gently re-remind me
that You made me from the first
and the more i try to be the best
the more i get the worst
and i realize the good in me
is only there because of who You are
who You are
and all i ever have to be is what You made me
any more or less would be a step out of Your plan
as You daily recreate me help me always keep in mind
that i only have to do what i can find
and all i ever have to be
all i have to be
all i ever have to be
is what You made in me
that happened today. this was a song i heard over and over growing up. my mom used to play this cassette tape over and over in the car everywhere we went. it was Amy Grant's "The Collection" album. if i hear any song off that album, it totally takes me back to when i was like six.
this particular song, however, reminds me more of college. i sorta rediscovered it my freshman year. when you hear a song as a young child, the meaning can be lost. so, when i heard it in college, it was a combination of nostalgia and discovery. now the song has many things associated with it.
anyway, it's a very simple song that serves as a great reminder for me when i get down on myself and feel like i have to be more or do more or whatever.
"All I Ever Have to Be"
when the weight of all my dreams
is resting heavy on my head
and the thoughtful words of help and hope
have all been nicely said
but i'm still hurting
wondering if i'll ever be the one
i think i am...
i think i am
then You gently re-remind me
that You made me from the first
and the more i try to be the best
the more i get the worst
and i realize the good in me
is only there because of who You are
who You are
and all i ever have to be is what You made me
any more or less would be a step out of Your plan
as You daily recreate me help me always keep in mind
that i only have to do what i can find
and all i ever have to be
all i have to be
all i ever have to be
is what You made in me