Bike Wreck

Today (technically yesterday because I'm posting after midnight) was my last day as a college student.

I'm not going to trip.  It feels good.  Really good.

I will wake up tomorrow with NOTHING hanging over my head that I have to get done for a deadline.  With that in mind, journey with me as I flashback to something that happened today that caused something to physically hang over my head.  Nothing epic, just an occurrence.

So I finished my last final (Parenting class) today at 1:30.  I felt confident going into taking the exam.  Partly because I actually studied a tad the night before rather than waiting until that morning to start studying, but mostly because I had a greasy good lunch at Popeye's (I ordered and paid for that 3 strip combo w red beans and rice, but I got that 5 strip combo with red beans).

Ate it all without even using a napkin. That takes skill people.

Ok. Lunch had nothing to do with me feeling confident, and to be honest I didn't even feel any more confident than I would any other time.  I kinda just wanted to add Popeye's in to this blog.

After my test I was walking tall tho.  I mounted my trusty stallion (Felt X-City hollerrrrr) outside the doors of Carson Taylor Hall (CTH on your printable class schedule) and rode out like a boss.

Now here's where it all starts to go wrong.  I took an abnormal route to get home because I wanted to go around a hill and some construction.  On my way into the quad, I tried to yank my front tire up on a curb so I could make the transition from road sharer to pedestrian.  Well I didn't quite get my front tire up high enough so it completely stops against the curb.  I normally don't ride slow, and today was no exception.  So my momentum was carrying me forward at let's say 10mph. 

Ok so my body is still going 10mph, but my bike is going 0mph. So naturally my body lunges forward over the handelbars, and my feet are in toe clip pedals so the back of the bike follows me.

FREEZE

See this frozen state of Andrew Mark Pendergrass.  Louisiana Tech Alum with the world ahead of him. With hands stretched out in front of his body, only the front bike tire on the ground, facing the ground, sunglasses sliding off of his face, top of his backpack looking like it's stuck to the back of his head.

And just in that moment.  My feet come out of the pedals and secure on the pavement, and my left hand catches my Oakleys that have flown from my face.

Saved by instincts.  All the decisions that my body made to save myself from face planting on pavement at 10mph were made in fractions of a second.

So with my backpack on my head and my rear bike wheel still spinning in the air behind me.  I act like nothing crazy happened, and just mount back up and ride on home.

These bodies that we have are crazy complex.  We've been blessed to have highly functioning vessels to control.  It's like God knew that we would unknowingly put our lives at risk, and He gave our bodies built in emergency response systems to save us from harm. Shoot, my body even reacted to catch my sunglasses. Take care of your body.  Because you never know when you'll need it to take care of you.

Cars are now coming equipped with instinctive emergency response technology.  Good job human race.  It only took you thousands of years to create something that God created by breathing air into some arranged sand particles. 

Mad props to you automobile engineers tho.  Best creation mimicking God since Hair Club.

I Can't Take Back the

3.5 pages and 2 tests...

then a vast expanse of no-homeworkness will sprawl out before me.

and I will give a head nod to that expanse

and it will wave back at me and say, "Hello. welcome to your life. I've been waiting to meet you since the first day you stepped into that Kindergarten classroom at Mt. Olive Christian School in Athens."

I'll smile and offer up a snort of a laugh and say, "Sweet liberation." While I remember (with a grimace) that there was a chicken house next to Mt. Olive Christian School in Athens, and it smelled like chicken death and chicken booboo every day (which made going out to the playground for recess bittersweet to say the least).


These last 4.5 years of life that I've spent at Louisiana Tech have been very shaping for the play-dough that is my life.  I say "play-dough" instead of "clay" because clay is formed in shapes that are meant to harden, while play-dough is molded and then remolded throughout its lifetime.  Also, play-dough is salty.  Yes, I'm going to the Bible with this one.

This is an excerpt from an instance when Jesus was surrounded by a crowd, and in an attempt to spit some wisdom to his close disciples.  He retreats up a mountainside with his boys, and He just starts teaching them.  These particular nuggets of knowledge are called "The Beatitudes."  After, he finishes the Beatitudes is when I picture him maybe standing up with a really serious look, and like a coach giving a half-time speech. He looks his disciples in their eyes and says with a sense of urgency:  


"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot."      Matthew 5:13

You might be reading this, and you grew up going to church with your parents.  Maybe you didn't go to church much, but you know what all this Bible stuff is generally about.  Maybe, you enjoyed going to church for awhile, and then it just became dull compared to other things that you could spend your time doing.  You might think that since you haven't been to church in awhile, you'd rather ignore spirituality because you'd rather do that than have to make changes and put in work to get your life right.  You don't want to be salty because being salty is a responsibility.  You don't want to put forth the effort to be salty.

To you I say this: I've been thrown out and trampled underfoot before.  I had lost my saltiness.  I didn't take seriously the responsibility I had to be salt and light to the world.

oh what? you think that sounds cheesy?  Ok, I'll deal with you and your cynicism in a moment.

So I was completely irrelevant as a disciple of Christ for a long while.  To be honest, being a disciple of Christ was not even a thought for me.  Why? Because I cared way more about me and what I was doing/saying/wearing/listening to/driving than I cared about other people and what God could have used me to do if I was paying attention to him.

So why was that so bad?

Because I treated some people really poorly, and I was a bad influence on several people.  Also, I came to realize that that long period of my life that I spent as a selfish punk, is time that I will never get back to do things for the Kingdom.

Once you begin to make a positive impact on the world, you get addicted to it.  At least, I have.  Please don't think that I'm being self-righteous here.  I have no grounds to be self-righteous because I didn't willingly become salty.  God shook the saltiness into me (like a salt shaker).  At least, he shook a bunch of the unsalty things out of my life.

It is such a picture of the grace that he came to give when he takes a person who is being selfish and uses them for the Kingdom.  I really didn't have a say in the matter when it happened to me.  He took me from death to life.

It's like He watched me be thrown out and trampled on, and finally He couldn't take it anymore so He snatched me up and used me to get some things done for Him.  That experience was so unbelievably fulfilling that I want more responsibility.  I am begging to have more responsibilities to further the Kingdom.


It's safe to say that I'm passionate about my God.  I think you would be too.

So now for you cynics of Christianity, and you people who read this and think condescending thoughts.

I don't give a rip about your cynicism and snarkiness.

I WILL NEVER APOLOGIZE OR TEMPER MY COMMENTS ABOUT MY FAITH IN ORDER TO KEEP YOU INTERESTED.


I encourage you to get up off the ground and stop being trampled on.

I Talk to Myself. Wouldn't You?

Those of you who know me well enough to know my music preferences know that I'm not a Lil Wayne fan, but I have to give Weezy some credit because some of his tracks have gone hard for me lately.  However, I have sampled some tracks that he's done recently that are atrocious.

On the subject of atrocious hip-hip, have y'all ever heard a Kanye West song.  It's bad when a person is ignorant, but it's an utter tragedy when an ignorant person convinces others that he is intelligent.  Don't allow Kanye to front on you like that people.

I'm listening to Britney's new single right now. Not my fav but it's still Britney, and the break down at the end is decent enough.

I have this friend, his name is Jared.  Jared is good at everything.  This friend of mine has a special place in my heart because he was my closest friend all throughout elementary and high school.  He and I had immeasurable amounts of fun winning World Series, NBA Championships, and Super Bowls when we were on the playground, backyard, driveway, nintendo as kids.  In high school we had a great time playing sports against and beating other white private school ninnies. Right now, Jared is a Shreveport Fireman.  I cannot tell you with words how proud I am that my boy is doing what he does.  He's wanted to be a fireman for forever.  People in Shreveport probably don't understand how safe they are from fires.  Jared, if you ever read this I want you to know that I admire and look up to you more than you'll ever know.

Tomorrow I'm going to straight punk people on the paintball course for my bachelor party.  Protect yourself at all costs, because I'm coming through slinging paint death on you, and everyone you love.

Noodle Kidoodle

Where do mosquitoes hide when it is cold? Do they migrate? Do they just hole up in colonies somewhere? What if I was exploring in this cave that I found underneath the south east corner of my house,  and while I was in there looking for a dragon, gremlins, white bats (not Louisville Sluggers), stalactites and stalagmites, I ran into colonies of mosquitoes? 

The reason I ask is because as soon as the weather is nice, and I decide to blog in my house with windows and doors and cabinets and drawers open, I am being stalked by mosquitoes.  I know these busters didn't fly to Mexico and back while it was cold.  However, I would be impressed if they did. Nevertheless, get OFF me skweetoes!!!!

I gave my fiance` her wedding gift today.  I got her an Amazon Kindle. I figured, why get her something that would last for decades and increase in value like nice jewelry when I could get her something technological that is likely to be obsolete next year/month/week. 

Good investment on my part.

Callie Wisenhunt calls me "Noodle Kidoodle" because I have a shirt that has a technicolor picture of Waldo on the front and "Noodle Kidoodle" on the back.  You might say, "dang that sounds like a freshhh shirt!"

It is.

I'm a competitive person. 

Someone challenge me to a blog war so I can win, but more importantly than me winning, is you losing.

Never Say Never

Okay yall. This is my first blog entry to ever post.

I should probably tell you why my blog title is called Hustle and Glow. 

Italics are a nice change of pace! Especially in Helvetica.

I'm not going to tell you what my blog title means. 

As I sit here in Tolliver doing homework, listening to music, reading  people watching.  I'm noticing that on this particular day, jorts and carpenter jeans are a staple on campus. So I says to myself, "maybe the economy is failing because a ton of people haven't bought new jeans since fifth grade.  How do they still fit these jeans 10 years later?" 

I have a lot of questions to ask God when I get to Heaven.  

I am a hater and a judger. I'm sorry ya'll.  I really do try not to.  I think I'm going to try to be a person who praises the things that I like to see people do/wear.  Rather than mentally punish people who do/wear things that are socially/stylishly criminal.

BUT

Since I haven't arrived at this goal yet, can I go ahead and put some folks on blast (no name dropping I promise)?

Thanks

Fellas. please PLEASE stop coming at the ladies with these painfully obvious tactics of getting a date.  You try to do things that you think, "the chicks dig."  You seem to think that your extreme efforts to be athletic, musical, muscles R us, hilarious, and sometimes even uber spiritual will capture the attention of any and every lovely lady out there.  And you may get the attention of a few, but I've been in your shoes before (not your actual shoes because I would never have purchased those).  So I want to share this little morsel of wisdom with you.  I know it may sound cliche` but JUST BE YOU.  Want to know why?  Ok, there will always be someone better than you at whatever it is that you're trying to be awesome at. Then you're going to get jealous (don't act like "your not a jealous person." because you are).  Be yourself because you're better than everyone else at doing that.        I guess this whole paragraph is just to say, STOP TRYING SO HARD BECAUSE YOU'RE MAKING ME SICK. 

I'm going to class. Less than a week until I'm finished with college. And yes, I'm trying to celebrate.