Tales From the Milk Drinker

Just four more school days (not even full eight hour days to be truthful) until I have my march break week. I'm planning a trip to Hafilax (oops I mean Halifax. No, wait, I was right the first time) for the weekend and the on Sunday I shall return to my beloved Island. No really huge plans for the break. Don't plan on running around like a chicken with my head cut off looking for a job like I did last year, I'll probably just take it easy.

So in terms of a summer job I'm waiting to hear about the NSERC grant I applied for. If I recieve one of these grants it will mean I work with a professor (Gordon Holloway) at the UNB mechancal engineering department where I study on a research project as my summer job. Dr. Holloway has already said that if I worked for him for the summer we could count the work I do as work towards my Masters degree, even though I won't be finishing my Bachelor's until the end of next year (April 2006). Truth be told I don't know what I'ld do with a masters degree if I got one, but I suppose it couldn't hurt. Maybe my life holds work for me which I will require one for, perhaps?

Well tonight is scheduled for relaxation. Gonna watch a movie I rented (The Day After Tomorrow) and maybe read some more in this great new book I bought this weekend. I hope all you people are enjoying your weeks!

Okay, now if you're a regular reader here and a personal friend of mine you already know I'm a very different at best and downright nutty as a fruitcake on a bad day. This Blog entry is gonna top it all - if you ever thought I was weird before then hold onto you hats ladies and gentleman because you're headed into the eye of the weirdicane. I appologize for any offence this blog may cause, but refuse to take back anything I say.

Do you Know Jesus? Or at least know about Jesus?

As many of you would know, I found my way to Christ, so to speak, some time a couple years ago, I don't remember an exact date or place but it was sometime during the amazing UPEI engineering days and I've been Saved as a Christian since then.

What this means is that I have faith (that is, a conscious decision that I personally made for myself to believe) that Jesus Christ, the son of the God written about in the bible, has wiped my personal slate clean of all sins I've committed in the past and will commit in the future. Because of this clean wipe I believe I am going to heaven when I die, as is anyone else who recieves this gift of faith. I believe going to heaven is NOT based on a score card of good and bad deeds committed in one's lifetime. It's a gift given for the price of belief.

The past years have been, well to be honest, pretty darn weird. I've started doing things I used to think were super weird - praying, going to church (voluntarily, mind you), even being so weird as to listen to Christian music and write some thoughts down about God in a journal and reading the Bible and talk to other Christian weirdos about God. But the weirdest thing of all is that I actually like it, it feels great, and the more I do it the more I like it and keep on doing it.

I want to encourage anyone who is wondering about this weird Christian life to get ahold of me at sam.arsenault@unb.ca and ask me anything you want to know or if there's anything you think I can help you with or if you want me to pray for you about something I'll try. (Please don't anyone get the notion that i wrote this with you in mind because I thought you desperately needed it and I'm ahead of you so I can help you or something stupid like that - this would be totally false.) I'm not naive and I know I'm in many ways a crappy Christian - but trust me, it feels way better than being a really great non-Christian.

Well there you go, that's ten pounds of my beliefs in a five pound bag. Thanks for letting me speak my mind, sometimes I think this blog is more about me writing than you listening.

Hey hey. It's after the weekend now! I went home to PEI and had a great relaxing weekend. I don't think I ate enough but I guess I can't go relive the past now.

The large dent in my car is still there, but if I look at it with one eye closed in the dark with my back turned to it I hardly notice it anymore. I filed a police report but they basically said I'm Straight Out of Luck. Darn. Oh well, I'll just choose to ignore reality and walk around in a daze some more thinking about how cool I am.

I cooked a nice roast beef dinner with carrots and potatoes for lunch today - that's right lunch, I had no class this morning (as with all Tuesdays this semester) so I stayed home and made a big lunch and it was scrump diddly ishous. In fact I'ld say the roast was down right suculent.

Last night Brandon and I stopped by the mall to shop for a few items. Did you know if you buy your glasses at Shopper's Optical they'll clean them for you for free every time your in the mall? I'm never cleaning my own glasses again!

Tonight I'm gonna study for my Heat Transfer and Optimization midterms. I really want to cream these two. Should be possible. We only have three two week stints of school left now - two weeks now until March break, then two weeks to the four day Easter weekend, then two weeks to the end of class.

Well I feel an urge to end this, so I'll talk to some of you later

Last night somebody dented my car and scratched the paint.

I was over at my friend Gary's house and I parked on his road (in a sensible and legal fashion I might add). When I went to leave I realized there was a dent about three times the size of my head in my driver's side door, and there are many scratches in the paint around this general area. The weird thing is that I was sitting in the living room the whole time I was at Gary's house and he lives on a particularly quiet street and I'm almost sure no cars drove by while I was there.

I feel crappy about this because I always take care to be nice to my car. I wash it at least once a week when the weather cooperates and I wax it a few times a year and now my car looks like crap! I almost feel guilty, like I did something irresponsible and I'm feeling the consequences.

I don't blame whoever did this, I think it's entirely possible that it was an honest mistake and they might not even know that it happened. I mean if someone was out to get me they would have done more than this (the door isn't really that bad, I mean people who aren't car people at all might not even notice if the car was a little bit dirty). At least it's isolated to the door, it's not like three different panels all got hit.

It's really a tough situation, but I'll be the first one to admit you have to expect these things to happen. I might end up getting my door fixed by a bodyman, I mean I'll look into it an see how much it would cost. Money's a small price to pay for being content.

The Notorious D.O.G. 

Wow! I just fired off an Optimization Assignment, a Biomechanics assignment and the Electrical take home quiz. Also I got answered my question about our electrical lab write up and dropped off my registration form for the Quality Management online course. Productive afternoon! Tonight I might hit the old Heat Transfer assigment and see what I can do there. Also I could finish up the electrical lab and then my plate will be clean for the week.

I made a firm decision to go home this weekend. It's about time to see the Fam again according to my calculations. I shall leave Freddy Beach for PEI sometime around 3:30 I declare, and I should be home late evening just in time for a meal. I miss my dog probably as much as anything to tell you the truth. They're such loyal creatures. Dumb as a post and smells worse than anything, but undenyably loyal.

This morning I made some homemade whole weat oatmeal waffles but I accidentally put one half teaspoon of salt in the batter and there's not supposed to be any (hey - it was still dark out and I was still foggy headed so I thought the recipie said salt but it didn't). Worst home made waffles I ever tasted. Still better than Kellogs. Actually I think I read somewhere that that Mr. Kellogs guy used to molest kids. See, Michael Jackson's not all that original......

Hi! It's Sunday. I'm taking a "day off". Yesterday I did as much school work as I'ld done all week I think and today I devoted to going to church (yes, I'm "one of those"), getting a workout in, reading some outside interest books, and just a whole lot of relaxing. There's something great about waking up in the morning and saying "today I'm going to spend relaxing" - it renews you so you can carry on with new stamina.

Yesterday I got a really nice, big, expensive looking fruit basket from two of my aunts for valentine's day. I love fruit. It's vegetable's good tasting cousin.

Do any of you know that song Maybe She's an Angel by Tommy Shane Steiner? Friday night I had supper with a bum. I was downtown when this decrepit looking fellow asked me (after knocking on my car window) for "about half a quarter so he could get something to eat". I haven't really lived in a big city enough to have a formal policy about bums, but let's just say I have a pretty soft heart. Unfortunately for this guy I decided to lie to him and tell him I had no money, then I drove off and left him standing in the intersection. Less than one block down Regent street I decided I'ld been too harsh with my new transient friend. Perhaps he hadn't actually eaten yet that day. Perhaps he was too hammered to know if he had eaten or not. Perhaps this was my chance to meet a new person and learn something about life on the street.

I turned around and parked the car in a discrete location so he wouldn't see me sneaking up on him and then I found him bumming change from a bunch of college students at the bustop waiting for their ride home. I got him to come to Quizno's with me for a sub (because after all, toasted sandwiches really do taste great) and a coffee. He wouldn't tell me his name, and actually offered to forego the free sandwich in exchange for not telling me it, so I call him Bum Larry. Larry told me he was 52 years old and he had grown up in foster homes and that nobody ever really took a good liking to him and when he turned 18 it was pretty much like see you later sucker. He referred to his residence as "outside" and insisted that it wasn't a bad place and that he liked it. I got feeling like a big brave man so I demanded that he show me the contents of his backpack. My friend Bum Larry turned out to be the proud owner of:
1 Can of Beer
1 Miniature bottle of Rum
1 Book of Matches
1 Flashlight
1 Bottle of Coca-Cola
1 Jar of sauerkraut, referred to as his "grub" which he was proud enough of to open up and eat two finger fulls of in front of me.

After smelling Larry's sauerkraut I decided to try to give something to this person. I made a deal with him that if he stayed put for ten minutes and finished his sub I'ld go to the store and get him some more "grub" to put in his backpack. He agreed so I ran as fast as I could to Sobey's and got some subs from the Deli and a couple boxes of granola bars. When I returned Larry had vanished, and hadn't even finished his sub or wrapped it up for later.

I don't know if my hard questions like "So why are you downtown asking for money man?" and "Do you drink a lot?" offended Larry, or if he was embarrassed to need food from a snot nosed punk kid (after all, if you don't know me I am reasonably annoying to look at) or if he was too drunk or stoned or mentally handicapped (most likely a combination of numbers one and three, I would say) to remember that food was on it's way. I walked around down town for a half hour looking for him but I never found him.

Meeting Larry was an eye opener for me. There really are people living out there who don't own much more than what fits in a backpack. They probably suffer in deep ways that most of us will never know (When I asked Larry what he had done all day he said "Just being me. And sometimes I hate being me" and he meant it. I could tell.). I have no clue how to stop homelessness. I believe we will always have "haves" and "have nots". I'm not sure what makes you either, but I guess if I knew the list of instructions for changing a "have not" into a "have" I'ld be doing something to help other people find out.

I hope this is not the last time I get to meet a homeless person, it was an eyeopener.

Well well it's a beautiful snow day in Freddy Beach and we have no school until 2:30, courtesy of Mr. Snowstorm. Booya! I got up and made myself a batch of whole weat oatmeal waffles. I thought I mixed up enough batter for 2 good sized waffles but it ended up being 4 huge ones. Man am I full right now.

Yesterday I had the good fortune to be invited for a free lunch at UNB's cafeteria (thanks again George. For you that don't know I sometimes call my friend Brandon Mol George. There's no real reason but he seems to not mind so I'll continue) While there I was enjoying observing a simple fact about girls in first year university (and some in later years). Before I go on, I must say this is not meant to offend anyone out there ladies, and I realize I can't paint everyone with one brush but please allow me to make a gross generalization for illistrative purposes.

Girls in First year university eat two things (well, some of them eat three things but this is meant to be a general audience blog). They eat fries and they eat cupcakes. That's right. As you can imagine at this time of year five good months of this type of nutrition plan is starting to take it's toll. At first it actually makes them prettier - faces get rounder and more "cute" and hips and bottoms, well same goes for them. But alas, the better lookingness verse time of consuming only fries and cupcakes function starts to hit it's global maximum just about this time of year. The number of first year girl's chins is starting to outnumber the number of first year girls, and it's not hard to tell who's trying to wear the same pants they owned last year and who had to break down and ask for new jeans from Santa. Don't get me wrong, I'm not proposing that this ritual of moving away from home for the first time and eating nothing but fries and cupcakes is something we as a society need to stop doing, I think this is an integral part of "Growing up North American."

Well it's 8:26 in the am right now. My daily plans are to pick away at my Heat Transfer lab some more, maybe finish watching A View to a Kill with James Bond (ya, I fell asleep last night), bust out a max effort Squat day at Back to Basics and then limp my way into my Optimization and CAD lab this afternoon at 2:30 reeking of Adidas body spray and Strawberry protien powder. Working out seems to control me the way booze controls a wineow. But I could quit if I wanted to, I swear.

Who knows! Sometimes it's good to write down what you think, it can help you sort things out.

Well all I can say is that things have been "Ninja Sweet" for me lately. School's going well - meaning I don't have any work to do - and I just started training two weeks ago for my first Powerlifting meet. I know it's sort of a meathead thing to do but I've wanted to do it for a while now and the opportunity sort of came along and fell in my lap so I guess I'll give it a try. If things go well it will be the first competition of many.

I was planning on going home this weekend but now I think I shall stay in my now Beloved Fredericton and get some work done or just laze around. You know, I really hated this @*%)#$% place last year but now for some reason it's starting to feel like home.

Well I'm gonna give 'er with the Heat Transfer lab. Hopefully some people might post comments so I know I'm not shouting into the dark