Category Archives: Daily Grind

End of the Semester

The stress and craziness and hecticness of finals is deafening. It’s starting to weigh me down, and it makes you want to crawl back into bed. It makes me want to bury my head in someone’s lap and ignore it all. But the end is almost here. Almost.

I put out my last Table Tent of the year today. It feels good to be done, one less thing I have to do in this crazy week. I have had a blast doing it though. Today I was quite surprised to find two boxes of cookies in my P.O. People actually listened to my plea for “comments, suggestions, or cookies.” I suppose I did beg a little bit. I’ve received a lot of encouraging comments about the Table Tent in the past week, and it really helps. It’s so nice to have a place to ‘show off’ your writing. Which I suppose is what this is.

Sorry it’s not too deep today. It’s the end of the semester, you’re lucky I’m still here.

Water Balloon Attack

Okay, so there, I was, just coming back from a late night Perkins run, standing there for half a second saying goodbye to my girlfriend, and wham! A water balloon slams into my feet. Nobody’s around. Nobody’s screaming and laughing. Nothing. Just a random water balloon that rocketed out of nowhere and soaked my shoes. So we stand there for a minute, trying to figure out what’s going on. The moment we turn our backs–wham! Another one! Needless to say, when I returned to my townhouse, I ran.

“I climbed the door and shut the stairs / I said my shoes and took off my prayers / I brushed my clothes and took off my teeth / I pulled down my alarm and set my sheets / I shut off my bed and I climbed into my light / And all because she kissed me goodnight.” (Kiss Goodnight by Ace Troubleshooter)

(you all have Ben to thank for that. I wasn’t going to include it here, but he just pushed me too far. ;) )

Noticing the Day

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” (Psalm 19:1-4)

Ah, what a beautiful day. What a beautiful evening. What a beautiful night.

Kindergarten Hero & Tuxedos on Mission Control

And now, more adventures from your favorite kindergarten hero, Kevin D. Hendricks. Today he read the thrilling account of one Miss Ridinghood and her encounter with a flesh eating wolf to groups of squirming children. And he read the story not once, but four straight times! He also comforted crying kids, banished a misbehaver to the corner, and amazed many a five-year-old with his rubber ball-kicking ability. (cue superhero music)

Today also brought a record breaking night for Mission Control. With only six hours of lead time Mission Control produced an extremely successful poster and e-mail campaign. The radio station is having a free stuff week (which is the norm for Mission Control), and my show was given the honor of giving away a free tuxedo rental. That’s a prize you just have to plug. Who wouldn’t want a tuxedo? Heck, even if you don’t have a date, it’ll extend your laundry window, or be a nice pick-me-up in the middle of the week (everyone smiles at people who dress up, trust me, we did it tonight for the show). Anyway, the last minute campaign worked extremely well. I was especially proud of the simple yet effective flyer I designed in under twenty minutes.

While I’m plugging my own radio show, we also added sound clips of the infamous Hostage Takeover to our web page. It’s a multimedia event! You can listen to the abduction and read the ransom note at the same time. What a deal. Check it out at: http://listen.to/missioncontrol (follow the link to the hostage clips).

Still Alive

You know, some days I just lose all motivation and I don’t want to do anything. After working on a paper all day long, the steam wore off by about 8:00 PM. Now I’m hardly motivated to go to sleep. I spent the last two hours sitting on a pool table talking. Not that there’s anything wrong with hanging out, I just hate being this unmotivated. It’s almost as if someone slipped something in that Domino’s Pizza. Oh well, I guess we can’t be highly motivated everyday. I’m just impressed that I have enough motivation to write this pondering. Not that it’s high quality, but at least it’s here–you know I’m still alive.

End of Spring Break

A most “interesting” of Spring Breaks has come to an end. It’s time to hit the books again tomorrow. It’s good to be back in the Twin Cities, although I’m certainly not ready for classes to start up again.

The 12 plus hour ride home was rather uneventful, although I did notice a few things. I saw another one of those “God” billboards, the ones I talked about on March 26th. This one said, “C’mon over and bring the kids. – God.” I’m not too sure what it was supposed to mean. I also saw a rather disturbing billboard. This one featured two women in underwear and said, “Inner beauty only goes so far.” It was for Maidenform, which I guess is the brand name. I know advertising is full of lies, but now they’re just blatantly lying. What a crock. I did notice things aside from the scenery-marring billboards, the wild life count totaled five deer, all road-kill victims.

Life Fly By

Hey, April Fool’s Day was yesterday. Dang it. I missed a chance to do some goofy writing. Oh well. A small town newspaper around here took the chance to print some fake stories about GM and Dream Works merging and building flying bicycles, and a teacher winning $27 million and donating it all to a school. It was pretty funny.

“I don’t want to let my life fly by / Did you ever stop to wonder why–ever stop to wonder, wonder why? / And time stands still when no one understands you / When you don’t quite understand yourself / But just know this that God is faithful / Even if you don’t have faith yourself / There’s nothing quite like being sure of / What’s inside your heart.” (Tomorrow’s Another Day” by MxPx)

Doing Nothing for Spring Break

Everybody’s been asking me what I’m planning to do during my spring break. My answer? Nothing. At least that’s what I say. But as the first real day of nothing began, I found that I was kind of busy. Not that I didn’t enjoy it, but I did a lot of stuff. I think I’m just kind of impressed with myself.

What kind of a person goes rollerblading at 10:00 at night with a flashlight? A college student, that’s who.

Dr. Seuss once pulled a prank on a friend who was out of town. He filled the bathtub with Jell-O, fruit, and fish, and then left the window wide open (in the middle of the winter)–leaving his friend with one heck of a Jell-O Salad when he returned.

Hey, it’s my spring break, I don’t have to be serious. But in case you are searching for some intellectual stimulation, you can check out a few things I updated on my page. My Art Gallery (that sounds so high and mighty, MY Art Gallery) has a new “piece,” and I added another page to the Down the Toilet section. It’s my one of my Anti-Valentine’s that you’ve heard so much about. So go back to the Unnamed Web Page and check those things out (yeah, I’m too lazy to put a direct link there).

Observations from the Drive Home

Okay, so I lied. I will ponder after driving for twelve hours. Twelve long hours through five states, featuring sleepy Wisconsin, rush hour Chicago, and 70 mph through blessed Michigan. And now I’m finally home, where the cookies are fresh (go Mom!) and the toilet bowls are round. Has anyone else ever noticed the round toilet bowls? I only notice them after coming back from school, because at school they’re more of an oval shape. But at home they’re perfect circles. Maybe it’s a late 70’s thing, I don’t know. At any rate, I’m finally home.

Continue reading Observations from the Drive Home

Busy Day & Service Learning

Today’s been a very busy day. I don’t think I’ve really had much of a chance to stop all day. And now my pillow is calling my name loud and clear. I must answer the call. But first, a few thoughts.

Today I began work on a service learning project for a class. This is where some smart professor type in an office decides that students would learn more if they went out in the real world and did some volunteer work. So after making some phone calls from their office, they find work for us to do and make it a class requirement. So we went out today, and after finding the correct address (the smart professor gave us the wrong one) we stood around for two hours and didn’t really do much. I did notice something though. Small children chattering in English is hard enough to understand, but once they start talking away in a foreign language, now that’s just wild.