The Rabenstranger

I got the job! Hurray!

Today I have my first, second, third interviews and factory tour for my new job. I’m hoping the rushed interview process means that they’re already planning to hire me. Prayers would be appreciated.

This afternoon Josh, Justin, Nat and I arrived back from our spur of the moment camping trip on Blewett Pass. On Friday, Justin and I (by Justin and I, I mean mostly Justin) planned a camping trip to take advantage of the rare occurrence of his having two consecutive days off from work.

We took State Route 97 up to the Pass. It took us a couple tries to find a good logging road with a nice camping site on it but our perseverance was rewarded with a superb, mostly flat and shaded campsite.

The first thing we did was to get out our chairs and a big bag of potato chips and walk a short ways up the side of the mountain. We sat, enjoying the spectacular view for more than an hour while munching on grease saturated, salty spud slices. It was awesome!

Our next activity was a long game of Lord of the Rings Risk. We fought our way back and forth across the map, conquering continents only to be displaced for hours before ending the game in a three way tie.

In between turns at the Risk board, we set up camp and cooked lunch. My dad generously allowed us to borrow his big REI tent. Josh and Nat’s dad bought us Hebrew National hot dogs (Those things are tasty!). We roasted them over a fire. While roasting them, a new camping delicacy was discovered: the S’more dog.

Next, we climbed all the way up to the top of the mountain. It was a pretty good hike up extremely steep terrain with no trail. The view from the top took my breath away (or maybe that was the climb).

In the evening we made more S’more dogs for dinner and played pinochle. The score when we went to bed: -24 to -54. Not the best game ever.

In the morning we slept in too late so we had to rush to pack up and get back to civilization. Josh and Nat have class this evening. Still we made time to stop at Scott’s Dairy Freeze on the way back for chocolate malts and burgers.

Gone Camping: After church this evening a few friends and I will be getting together to go on a short camping trip. We’ll be back Tuesday evening.

One of my readers has asked a couple of questions that said I’d answer but haven’t gotten around to yet. Sorry about the delay but here goes:

1. I want a full update on your trip, visit and, well, everything!

The trip went tremendously well. I walked through tunnels, geocached, tubed down the Arkansas river, went to a concert, swam, barbecued, watched a couple movies at a drive-in, hiked and jumped off a cliff a couple times, not necessarily in that order. It was particularly enjoyable because I had such delightful company. I met some of the nicest people I’ve had the good fortune to encounter in a long while.

The second question was actually posed to Trebonte but it definitely deserves my taking a swing at it:

2. Have you always had a heart for the Lord or has that been a more recent part of your maturing and adulthood? … I was just wondering how you, Rabenstrange and whomever you know who lives and believes as you do regarding the Lord.

When I came into the world, God blessed me with parents just a few years out of Bible school. From the cradle, I have been guided by solid Christians who want nothing more than my my spiritual growth. There has never been a time when I have had any difficulty accepting the existence of God or His right to rule the world. I accepted His gift of salvation as a small child.

From this foundation, I grew up believing the right things. I did the “good” things a Christian boy should and avoided the “bad’ things that he shouldn’t. I acknowledged God’s lordship and tried to live accordingly.

Despite all this, I can’t really say that I had much of a heart for God through my teenaged years. I did as I ought because out of duty and gratitude, not because of a particular love for God. My relationship with my Creator had much more the character of master and servant than Father and son. I wasn’t a good servant. I generally thought I was doing well because I showed the outward signs and I knew my Bible better than my peers but my relationship was too intellectual, too theoretical. It wasn’t very personal.

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Today, I finally took Zach to Wall-E. I promised to take him months ago when we saw a preview for it the last time we were at the theatre. He has been eagerly anticipating seeing it and has perfected an impersonation of Wall-E’s voice. I feel kind of bad for making him wait but my schedule has been chaos.

Wall-E was a really cute movie. I enjoyed the way the animators allowed the characters to communicate without speaking. I loved pretty much everything about Wall-E’s personality, from his packrat habits, to his cute shyness around Eve. Nevertheless, the little robot hasn’t managed to bump the Incredibles from the spot of Best Pixar Movie (at least in my opinion). I found the environmentalist preachiness a bit annoying.

This afternoon, the whole family went to the Bellevue Art Museum. The Seattle Times sponsored a special kids day so there were all sorts of crafts and activities for Zach and Madeline. The rest of us wandered the galleries looking at artwork that was with a few exceptions strange and incomprehensible (at least to my unsophisticated eyes). My favorite was some exquisite, fragile glass sculptures.

Like most excursions with my sisters, this one ended up at the mall. This time the one at Bellevue Square. There was a really sweet calypso band playing out front and Emily and I stopped for a few minutes to watch. I exchanged one of the pairs of jeans I bought yesterday at Southcenter. Arita bought a lollipop at Victoria’s Secret because she had a coupon for a free makeup case with the purchase of any pink item (Who comes up with these gimmicks?). We also stopped in at the Godiva’s where Emily works so that she could get her new work schedule and be embarrassed by her large family in front of all her co-workers.

I must say I am all malled out for a while. I will be glad to avoid another shopping trip for at least a few weeks.

Today I went to the Southcenter Mall’s grand re-opening with Emily and Mason. Emily really wanted to go but since Arita was unavailable decided that I should come along with her. When Mason heard that we were going and leaving home by himself he decided to tag along as well.

After spending half an hour trying to find a parking space, we finally made it inside to gawk at all the new stores. The mall has been greatly expand, adding 75 new stores, about a dozen restaurants and a sixteen screen theatre. Two extra parking garages had already been opened earlier in the summer (they were too full for us today though). At first we mostly wandered around just to see what had been added. It was kind of weird since we’ve been going to this mall for years and it now looks totally different. Even the old parts of the mall have new skylights, different lighting and restyled kiosks.

Perhaps the most memorable event of the day was waiting in a line with about twenty girls for the ladies fitting rooms, holding a clothes for Emily while she continued shopping. I got strange looks. Right before it was “my” turn she switched places with me relieving me of the awkward task of trying to put on small, skinny-leg girls jeans. Of course, Emily didn’t buy clothes.

The trip to the mall was not a completely unproductive. Emily bought a card game and I managed to find some new jeans. I’ve been needing a couple new pairs for months but my general distaste for shopping has prevented me from acquiring any. While I was checking out I got a phone call from one of my bosses.

My boss wanted me to come in to do an evening shift. He had me come down to run a folding job that had been giving everyone and the shop troubles all day long. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get it up and running properly so I only managed to get a few hours on the clock. I worked long enough to eliminate my evening swim but not enough to make any real money. Before I sound like I’m whining too hard, I did get scheduled for a huge padding job that will take probably take many weeks to finish. This is excellent because this print shop is just down the road from the plant where I hope to be starting in a couple weeks. Since my boss doesn’t care what time of day I work on this job (and he gave me a key today), I’ll be able to use it to supplement my new job. Basically, I’ll be able to work unlimited, flexible hours (probably 80 per week if I want them) between two jobs located right next to each other. It’ll be great! It might sound crazy but I’m looking forward to working hard again. The shiftlessness of my recent unstable employment is finally coming to an end.

This evening after work, the family (minus Dad) played Killer Bunnies, the new game Emily bought. It is awesome. It combines off-the-wall humor, compelling strategy and a hefty dollop of luck to make a surprisingly fun game. We played three games all of which were won at long odds by Mason.

A man named Erik Kowalker just made my evening by posting the following comment on an old post:

I googled ‘Leatherman vs Swiss Army Knife’ and your post is what I clicked. Thanks for the comparison. It really helped as I am trying to choose which one to purchase.

I’m delighted to know that I am the premier search return for multitool comparisons.

Today was much more pleasant than yesterday. It started off leisurely, meandered through some fun activities and is coming to a comfortable close.

Rather than getting up at the usual 5:20, I set my alarm clock for 8:00. I then laid in bed for an hour thinking for an hour before I got up. I haven’t spent that much time in quiet thought in recent memory.

Right after I got out of bed, I received a phone call from a potential employer. They scheduled me for my first, second, third interviews and plant tour back to back. I’m confident that I aced the competency testing they had me do and I have experience performing similar tasks in a different industry. I’m hoping that this speedy interview process means that they like my application so far and are planning on hiring me. I’m excited about this because this company offers good pay, really nice benefits, a night time schedule and if all goes well, it will allow me to move out and still have enough money to pay for school.

I spent a leisurely morning doing a little reading and chatting with friends online. While chatting with Trebonte, he suggested that we do something since we both had the day off from work. After some discussion, we decided to go hiking.

We roped another friend into driving, hit Subway on the way out for $5-footlongs and headed up to Tiger Mountain. Meandering through a nice 4 mile loop, we enjoyed beautiful green woods and fields of wildflowers. The weather was sunny and warm but not too hot. It was lovely.

After a hiking, we bought candy for and visited a couple buddies who were holed up studying for chemistry exam. Since they weren’t able to come out and enjoy the beautiful weather, a little summer cheer was brought to them.

This evening, I went swimming. The girls were busy so they weren’t able to come but Mason and I were able to put in our quickest mile yet. We did it in 36 minutes. While that’s not much by the standards of people who swim, it’s significantly better than usual. I hadn’t been to the pool in more than a week and it was gratifying to see that I hadn’t lost anything to atrophy.

Now I’m about to watch Sunday’s sermon. I missed it due to my trip and the folks at community group told me it was a really good one.

I had a lovely vacation in Colorado this week but today it was back to the grindstone. I worked from 6 until 4. In that time, I managed, with the help of my industrious mother, to finish off the big project that has been occupying most of my time for the last few weeks. I also managed to cover my fingers in paper cuts. The tendency of sheets to slice me is definitely one of the downsides to the printing industry. After work, I went to my home group from Mars Hill. We had a great discussion about prayer.

Now, I am very tired.