Be sure to check out the Story of the Week

Well, for those of you that can read this, here's an update. I realize many of you are somehow experiencing problems with my site again.. who knows why.. I'm transferring it to the Purdue server as soon as i can!

Not much has been happening here. Today was the last day of tennis lessons for the June session. Next session starts next week, so i can all new kids. I have to say that today was one of the best days I've had in a long time. The tradition of the Parks Department is to have a water fight on the last day of classes.. and boy.. did we have a water fight!

I borrowed my neighbors Super Soaker, but it was no match for 10 kids running after me with their own super soakers. They all knew of it in advanced, so they brought water guns with them. I got the first shot though.. I was mean. I told the kids I was giving them popsicles (which we did have), but instead, I poured a big cooler of water on all of them. Caleb (the other teacher) and I got better and better at it. By the last time, we had the kids put their water guns down, leaning in close, and closing their eyes b/c they were expecting food and not a blast of cold water from my cooler. It was so much fun though.

Kyle and I went out to Don Pablos tonight to celebrate his birthday, which was, oh, a good two months ago.. but neither of us have had the chance. It was a good time, except for our exceptionally slow waiter. Took us 25 minutes to pay for our bill...

One weird note.. I showered three times today lol. Once this morning, once after my waterfight, and once after my afternoon lesson. I was so tired today though. I was watching tennis with my dad, and I decided to go take out my contacts around 8 tonight. Went up, and layed in bed, and fell asleep. Woke up about 11. I think I was pretty tired.

Okay, I don't want to get into this much b/c I know people have strong beliefs, but was anyone else surprised with the Supreme Court's ruling on displaying the 10 Commandments on government property so long as the display isn't "too religious?" Well, I was. Why is it so important that the 10 Commandments be displayed anyway? Our own US Constitution / Declaration of Independence don't have their own monuments in our Statehouse, so why would a religious document need to be there? When has the 10 commandments ever NOT been religious? I mean, if the commandments must be displayed, then we should follow them right? If thou shalt not kill, why do we have a death penalty in place? If we must obey the Sabbath in its true form, everything must be closed on Sundays except for churches, right? I mean, seriously, we wouldn't want our governmental people to be hypocrites... (haha..) One last thing, if our nation was truly founded on Christianity.. answer these questions.. why is God never mentioned in our Constitution? There is only one mention of religion in this historical document (read it for yourself), and that deals with no one not having to pass a religious test for a government position. Second, why did our forefathers deny Ben Franklin's request for prayers before the Constitutional Convention meetings? Our forefathers knew this - religion is too contraversial a topic (and still is today) for a government to handle. That is why our forefathers purposely separated the church from the state.

Alright.. i'm done lol. I know many of you don't agree with me about religious beliefs, which is fine. But, I don't think we need religious icons on governmental property. And if we do, then post religious icons from all religions, not just one. If you wish to leave a comment, I don't believe the link below is working, but send an email to me... ThEdge304@hotmail.com (or my Purdue email account - i don't want to give that one away online)

Well, this is eric, signing off, good night, see you next week.

COMMENTS...

anonymous--> i totally agree with you about displaying religious icons. it's pointless. it simply forces religion...which is obviously wrong. religion and the government are too different to be combined. people should be left alone..let them believe what they want. it's their choice. props to you for actually making a statment on it! a lot of people are too intimidated to do that! peace out!

So, ya.. xanga's commenting system was all out of whack.. and I just found out that my system to comment isn't working either. Gr... oh well. If you really wanna leave a comment, email me or something

Anyway, last week totally sucked, and this week, well, doesn't so much. It's getting better. Little kids were much better today. I had only 4 people that cried! That's a record low! I hope I wasn't that much of a cry-baby when I was a kid.. how annoying!

I actually got to hang out with someone tonight. Jacob called me up and we hung out over a pizza. It was great catching up with him.

Geez, I'm dead-tired and it's only 11:00.. is that bad? I've got more people to sign up for private lessons, so that makes me happy. And today alone, I got really good compliments. One mom told me that her daughter that I teach couldn't stop talking about my tennis lesson and another boy told his mom he really enjoyed my lesson. So, maybe I'm not such a bad teacher after all. I just think I get bad kids at the Parks Department. And just think, I get paid less to work with those kids... Ironic...

I really don't have much to say. I've decided to put off transferring the site over to the Purdue server until school starts. It's hard to access it remotely over a dail-up connection. Oh, and I got a digital camera! woo hoo! I really like it a lot.

That's about all in my life. Work, work, work. Oh well.. I'm really tired lol, so it's off to bed we go...

Sigh... it's definitely one of those weeks. Nothing's going right. And it's sad when the only escape I have to vent to is a website.

I don't even really wanna update right now. I just feel so.. tired? depressed? just wanting to sleep all day? heck, I'd go back to school now.. it's sad I want summer to end already.

Work this week was horrendous.. i got so mad at my last class.. i wasn't nice to them at all. I wonder how many of them will complain to their parents about me. wasn't my fault though.. they did it to themselves and they know it. I hate giving lectures to them.. but when 15 year olds act worse than my 5 year olds, there's a problem.. and it just wasn't one person. All eight of them against me.. sigh. I'm not looking forward to teaching next week

I feel so out of touch with everyone else. I feel.. out of the loop? I haven't talked to most people in over two weeks and I feel like I'm drifting apart from everything, everyone. Seems as if they don't even care. I just need a summer.. away from the summer i have now. i need a vacation.

Complain.. complain.. complain.. I know.. that's what I'm doin. I just need this out of my system though. I feel better.. but that really doesn't fix anything. oh well.. tomorrow's another day..

Hm.. Well, I'm not really in a good mood right now. Dunno particularly why. But I thought I'd update for a bit.

As mentioned in the previous post, I've finally started working. I've got a half a dozen private lessons set up, too, so I'm keeping busy.

Drove up to Indy this morning to go watch Rachel play in a tennis tournament. They moved indoors b/c of the rain, so I had to find my way to the indoor club. I didn't get lost, so I was proud of myself for that. She ended up losing to the #4 seed, but she played well. Her doubles match wasn't for another three hours, so I decided to drive back b/c I didn't want to wait that long. The weather was so crappy. It's scary driving 70 or so mph in downpouring rain. I actually had to drive the speed limit in some parts b/c it was so hard to see.

As you can tell, I made it back safely though. I came back and there was a message on the machine from a lady who had seen one of my tennis flyers I left at Brookfield Heights subdivision. Well, I thought she wanted to take lessons from me, but I was wrong. I called her up and the first thing she said to me was "who gave you permission to put of flyers on our courts?" I was like.. well, no one.. there are other flyers there, so I thought it was okay. Wrong. She started chewing me out b/c I wasn't a resident of the neighborhood, so I couldn't use their "private" courts that NO ONE plays on. I was mad. I made some smart comments to her b/c she was being kinda dumb. She said I could teach there, but I'd have to get approval from the neighborhood board members at their July 20 something meeting. I was like.. uh.. sure.. I'll be there. She wanted to add me to their "agenda". I found that humorous. Oh well. So, needless to say, I'm not teaching there anymore.

My other lessons are going fine. I've got a few "regulars", so it's goin well. So, ya, that's all I've done all weekend. How boring...

I'm goin to go buy a camera tomorrow morning though. I'm excited. I picked one out a while ago, but I've waited about three weeks to get it. And in three weeks, it's now $40 cheaper. I'm glad I waited. I think I'm goin to bed.. it's early, but I'm kinda grumpy.. guess I'm just tired. G'nite ya all.

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the update of this page. Please refrain from using flash photography and talking until you are finished reading this and have left a comment. thank you.. enjoy the following.

I started really working this week for the West Lafayette Parks Department. Now, teaching little kids may not be your idea of fun, but I actually had a lot of fun this week. Don't get me wrong.. it's a lot of hard work. You guys know me.. I have to set out exact lesson plans and activities for the kids to keep everything flowing. Most instructors teach "impromptu," but I don't like that. You'll end up doin the same activities making it boring.

So, anyway, I've been occupying 4 hours in the mornings to the kids, and I spend a couple of evenings with the adult class. Today was "game day" for my kiddies. We played games and had contests all day today, which meant I had to go out and buy prizes (or AKA candy...). It was fun though.. I saved a bunch of tennis ball cans and filled them with candy and gave some of them away. All of my classes (and parents) like me, so that's always a good thing. Well, I don't know if the parents of the kids who I gave all of that sugar to like me anymore...

The head of the Parks Department dropped off our uniform shirts today. It always makes me nervous teaching when she's there. She doesn't know me very well, so one small mistake and she'll make some judgement of me. But everything went alright. I was glad she dropped off shirts though. I teach 4 days a week and I had only three shirts, meaning I'd either have to wash them during the middle of the week (haha) or weat them again (which I was planning on doing.. how gross I know). Believe it or not, I'm so tired after four hours and I was sweating so much today. So, needless to say, more shirts means less laundry for me. woo hoo.

I'm officially addicted to another JJ Abrahms (creator, director of ALIAS) called LOST. I'm sure you've all heard about the show. They're showing every episode in sequence over the summer, so I'm goin to try to catch up.

In closing, many of the broken links onthe site are fixed. No more dead-ends. So, ya for me for spending so much time fixing it and not many people really notice lol. Oh well.. everyone have a great week b/c I said so.

Good morning. This was Eric's last day of sleeping in. How depressing. Now I have to be on the West Side of town around 8:45 most weekdays. Yipee.

Friday night went out to Cory's house to hang out. I told myself I had to get home early... Rachel had a tennis match in the morning at Indy, and I didn't want to be tired driving on the road. Ya... so 12:30 rolls around.. and I'm like.. hey.. I'm goin to go and actually get in bed before 1:00. That was until I went to say bye to Mr. Speakman and we started talking.. Cory came out, thinking we were goin to Tp his car or something (paranoid, isn't he?) and joined us. Talked for about three hours. I got back home knowing I had to wake up in 4 hours and then having to drive through morning traffic in Indy. Let's just say that wasn't fun. But I'm glad I got to catch up with my boys.

Rachel played well at the regionals. She won her first match, then lost her second one. She had a bigger crowd watching her than I ever did. I was jealous lol. But she did well. I drove back home separately b/c I had a private lesson to teach. It went really well, and she wants to take more lessons - I was excited about that.

Yesterday I attended my last open house for the graduation (well.. besides that weird one that's on June 18th...). My neighbor, Chad, graduated and we went over there to hang out. He had a scrapbook of things, and one of them was a paper he wrote in third grade about his best friend - me. It was really kinda cute lol. I miss those days of just coming home from school and the only thing to worry about was whether we'd play baseball, basketball, or kickball that evening.

I called up some of my buds from Purdue. Eric is officially goin to his first "real" concert. I guess we're all goin to see Kelly Clarkson when she comes to Elliot. It's goin to be pretty cool, so I'm excited. I wasn't excited to shell out $40 for it, but hopefully it'll be worth it.

Well, work starts this week, so I'm sure I'll have something to say about that later. Working with kids is always interesting... much unlike my life right now lol.

COMMENTS...

kyle--> that was fun talking with you and cory, but I can't believe it was so late... Oops! That's awesome you're going to a concert! They're expensive... gosh... but oh so much fun! Woot woot

Tracie--> Aww... how sweet... However, once again I was failed to be mentioned... whatever. You are a teacher like me... only I'm going to be a much cooler one... just kidding... Kelly Clarkston? Interesting... I didn't picture you going to her concert. Kind of strange... but oh well... have fun teaching!

We have Internet access again! We had some carpet being replaced, so we had to move our computer away from the phone jack. It’s been almost 48 hours without it.. how did I ever survive?

Friday night, Johnny and I went to Tar-zjay to pick out a gift for Andrea. I thought we did very well, Johnny-boy. Saturday was so busy, busy. I had to actually wake up early and go teach a tennis class with a friend. I’ll talk more about that class a little bit later… After that, I quickly changed and went to the Mc graduation in Elliot. Rachel had to be there and didn’t want to get lost around campus, so my mom and I stayed and watched the graduation, and then took her home afterwards. We found our neighbors there, and we sat by them. Pretty disappointed with the speeches… Karen Atkins and Tony Starks had original, interesting speeches. Those were the really only good ones that stood out. Others were too cliché-ish… kinda what I made fun of last year in mine lol… Most just read poems and that was it... Went and played tennis with the fam. And realized I was running really late to Andrea’s, so I hurriedly showered.

That night was Andrea’s B-day party. I had a good time. It was nice seeing everyone there, plus some new faces. Sunday was filled with open houses. There was a big joined one at Audra Rubendall’s that night – they had a DJ and everything. That was pretty fun. I even got to dance the Cha-Cha Slide lol, but then I didn’t feel like dancing and making a fool out of myself to dance anymore. Especially since I was almost the only college guy there. Dances are sooo high school. I saw just about everyone and their mothers there… which is true b/c a lot of mom’s were there!

Memorial Day was nice and relaxing, but then I had to teach again. There are three families, with three kids each (9 total kids) that wanted lessons. So, we divided them into three groups. There are three of us teaching, and I got stuck with three, three-year-olds. Is that confusing enough? Well, if you know the attention span of a 3-year-old, it’s close to none, so to try to make them take a lesson for an hour, is just not going to work. They were really good for like 25 minutes, but then, the brats came out of them all. They started to hit me with their rackets, throw their rackets, knock down my basket of balls, hide my keys, steal my sunglasses… and the list goes on. Of course, I have all three moms watching all of this, which makes me look like a horrible instructor and I’m sure they were talking about me. After all of this happens for another 15 minutes of me getting frustrated, their moms threaten them with time outs. Didn’t work. Then they threatened to leave, which actually worked for a bit. For some reason, pissing me off was making them happy. Grr… Overall, I don’t think I taught them anything that day. I feel like they, and I, had wasted an entire hour. So, ya, I teach them again next Monday and I don’t know what to do. Oh well.

HIGHLIGHTS IN THE DAYS/WEEKS AHEAD...I start working with the Parks Department Tuesday. Rachel plays for tennis regionals this Saturday morning. Jordan mentioned to me that he was trying to organize a canoe trip for our Wiley Hall friends. I’m so excited about that already, and I don’t even know if it’s going to happen. Well, I feel like I’m starting to really ramble more than I should. I’m transferring this site to the Purdue server, so say good-bye to banner ads soon! Have a great week.

COMMENTS...

kyle-->i read this earlier and wondered what happened to the comment thing... glad it's back! that sucks about teaching the young ones... It'll get better! Memorial Day weekend was fun... you know what's depressing though? That weekend was the longest break I've had from school since like Spring Break in March, lol... pretty sad, huh? Gosh... all be over soon...

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