Howdy all! (Howdy? I don't know...I must be tired...) Ok so i got up again today at 6:15 to do the boiler, and ended up raking nearly all the coals out (You're not supposed to do that) and having to re-light it. In the boiler, an iron box about the size of a.........boiler. It's probably 4-5 ft. tall, about 3 ft. wide and about 6-7 ft. deep. Anyway. Up on top, there are tubes (i guess that's what you'd call them) where the water comes through and warms up before going to the two holding tanks. Then under that is where the actual furnace is. In the middle of the furnace, there is a hole with a ring around it. That's where the coal comes up from the hopper in the next room and i believe that's also where the fan feeds to. Anyway, you have to leave some hot coals in the ring so that they heat the coal that is fed in from the hopper so that the boiler keeps going and you don't end up the bad guy. What i did, accidentally, was rake nearly all the hot coals out of that ring. There were enough that if i'd left it alone it would have kept going after i turned the fan back on, but i tried to light them by putting some paint thinner on it. We use the paint thinner to light it if it goes out. Unfortunately, this just put out the coals because they weren't hot enough to light the paint thinner. So i had to get some wood and some more paint thinner and nearly blow the place up and fill it full of smoke so when i came out i smelled like a wood stove, but i ended up getting it lit, taking the burnt coal outside and dumping it, finishing cleaning up, and going back to bed to get about another hour of sleep before the morning stuff. Friday though, i'm off boiler. I actually am only on boiler this week because i forgot to do it last friday saturday and sunday so i have to take it for Steven monday through thursday as punishment. So yah, i'm getting about three days off it before i have to start doing it again. By the way, i get to go to Colorado Springs this weekend! Megan and Sara are going and Megan asked if i wanted to come along. Tonight was youth group at Grace Community for Mel, Megan and i, and Cedar Creek for Steven, Sara and Dougie. That's what i've started calling him. He calls me Lucas. It seems like i come up with nicknames for everyone. Anyway, youth group was a blast again. We had a short lesson from Jason, and then we broke into our small groups. In small group, everyone in the group had a piece of paper. On one side, we wrote something that we want our life to reflect. Like....."I always tell the truth." And on the other side we wrote what it actually looks like right now. Like in the previous example, on the other side you'd have "When it's easy." On mine, i wrote "I try to be a nice guy." and on the flip-side "When it benefits me." I really do try my best to be a nice guy. And most of the time i do it when i won't get anything out of it, but i find myself wishing that i was getting something out of it. I don't even want my benefit for doing something nice for someone to pop into my head. I want to do it for them because it will help them, not because i'm going to get something out of it. I also got a first real look at the sound system at the Grove. Yes i said the Grove. It's their youth building. They have a decent sound board, and some nice speakers and equipment, it is just kinda confusing. They recently had a "Battle of the Bands" there, and somehow or other they got their cables and connections from the booth to the stage messed up, and so they're going to have to rewire everything. Jason said that i might get to do that because i've got some experience in that kind of thing. Don't worry dad. I'm not going to call you saying "Ummmmm......Dude can you get me out?" (For those of you who don't know, that's something Dave Ramsey said about people who come into his offices for counseling and are all chained up by car payments and credit cards and mortgages that are 80% of their take-home pay and they're nearly bankrupt. I've re-routed the wires on the sound system from the Cathedral Room dozens of times. This time it's just on a slightly larger scale. It doesn't really involved a whole lot. They've got a 24-channel board. I just want to know like what aux channels the monitors are plugged in to and stuff like that. They've actually got a lot more in the way of equipment than i've seen for a youth group as small as theirs. They had around 60 kids tonight including sponsors (Of which i am now technically one). But they've got a pretty good light controlling board, reverb, stuff like that that i never had at Trinity. The one thing that i wish i could do something to upgrade is their computer. They're running a really old projection program. But that's not really the frustrating thing. They've got a computer that has a 2.66 Ghz Pentium 4 processor, but only 256 Mb of RAM. So the computer should be really fast, but it's not because of the lack of RAM. I'm also going to try to find them a decent open-source projection program somewhere online. By the way everyone, because i'm going home this weekend, i'll be able to upload some pictures. I'll be back on a fast internet connection and will be able to download anytime without dropping everyone to Dial-Up speed. So yah, i'll be posting some pictures soon. Today when we were digging in the trench to put in a new pipeline for the water for the base, we were using a bar because we had to get rid of some rocks. Well, Steven was holding the bar and talking to someone. I reached up and touched the bar and then pointed for where i wanted him to pry, and he must have thought that i grabbed it because he just let go of it. Well, ummmm.....apparently the bar had a mind of it's own and something against me because it fell and hit me right on top of the head. Yah, ouch. Then later on when i was digging in some clay i about broke my left hand. I was down on my knees with my hand right near the head of the shovel. I put my hand on the handle, but with the pinky side of it against the back where someone would put their foot to step on it. Then i reared back and jammed it down to dig out some more of this clay, and when the shovel stopped, my hand didn't and it just smashed into the shovel head. I don't know what i was thinking. Someone needs to hand me a sign (If you haven't heard of Bill Engvall you won't know what that means). Some now i have a nice knot on my hand. And it wasn't just soft tissue. It hit and bruised the bone. For a few minutes i thought i'd broken it because i couldn't move it. It was really numb and then i got to feeling along the bone and didn't find anything wrong except that there was a big knot near where the wrist meets the forearm. So yah, i got hurt a couple times during work duties today. Major ouch. Right now i'm in the student center. I don't know why i don't just go to bed. I'm tired. When i get tired like this, i walk around like i'm in a coma and my fuse gets so short that very small things will set me off. Hopefully i can sleep a little on the drive to the Springs on Friday. We're leaving right after work duties so we should get there between 7 and 8 PM. I'm listening to a David Phelps song right now from his new CD The Voice. There's a song called "Higher" on it that is totally amazing. And some people think that Josh Groban has something on David Phelps. Ha! I'm going to go get a little sleep now. It's hot breakfast tomorrow and i don't want to miss it. Pancakes.....mmmmmm.....Good night and good luck.....Love you all! God bless!