End of the Year Grades

Well I'll call 2008 all but over. Its been an interesting year. There's been some really cruddy things go down in 2008 and some really cool stuff too. There have also been a lot of 1st for Paul Murphy in 2008.

1st
- International vacation by myself
- Time to replace a wheel bearing on a truck- twice
- Spearfishing adventure
- Time to pick up a dead dog out from under my bed
- Time to fast and pray
- Caught my first live rat
- Time to reset the date counter ever
- Time to hold hands with Aimee Nicholson
- Bad date ever
- Rejection for a job after an inteview
- Trip to Carowinds
- Win in a Columbia Volleyball Tournament
- Dumb comment to Aimee's Dad
- To step out and expect God to catch me
- Apartment
- Place to live with nobody else :(
- Job in retail (and hopefully the last)

There have been some really good things that happened this year. There has also been a lot of stuff I could have done without.

Bad
Going completely broke in February
Peaches the dog and all of her ticks
Being unemployed for 4 months and getting pretty depressed about the whole thing
Gus the Truck
Working during the entire Christmas season
Not getting to see most of my friends and family

Good
Learning to trust God more
Getting to spend time with Aimee
Selling Gus the Truck
Renewing my relationship with my Jeep Wrangler
Getting to play in a frisbee tournament with the old team
Hanging out with Josh again
PBC
Working
Free furniture
Working with the CSF in Clemson
Frog gigging
Spear fishing
Getting to know Josh Carrillon better
Xbox night that I missed so much
And so so so much more

2008 hasn't been easy, but it's definitely been a good year.
I'll give '08 a big A+ and it may get a lot better.

Easley HS is looking for a Social Studies teacher to finish out the year.
I'm going to see the Gamecocks play on New Years Day.

Paul "Outback Bowl Bound" Murphy

Engineering, Rejection, and David Spade

Christmas was good. Although my family abandoned me and left to go see other family I persevered. This makes two Christmases in a row that I haven't been able to spend with my family. It was cool though because Aimee's family invited me over for lunch and a movie or two. Good stuff.

A lot of people think about gifts this time of year. Whether its that cool Wall E robot toy or Emanuel I think everybody has stopped to think about gifts at some point or another.

Today I was thinking about some of the best gifts my parents ever gave me. Photon was good but not the best. I think some of the best gifts mom and dad gave me were the brilliant life lessons they would share from time to time.

Dad on engineering and relationships
Dad works as an engineer. While he's not the greatest people person ever he has some phenomenal insight on what makes people work. Now dad never has given the best advice on dating or romance, but every now and then he'll surprise you. He often skips valentine's day and rarely takes mom out. I still like his ideas on relationships.

Every relationship has issues. Dad says that a relationship is like a rubber band attaching two objects. Generally any stress (conflict) put on the rubber band (relationship) will eventually bring the two objects (people) closer together. But that's not always the case. Sometimes the people move so far away that the band breaks. Sometimes there is just stress (conflict) and there is just tension sitting on the relationship. At that point you have a choice: Leave the tension in the relationship, Take the relationship off, or shift.

Dad says conflict is an inequality between expectation and action. So when conflict arrives its either because of a change in expectation or action. The engineer solution is simple: Either change the expectation, or change the action.

Rejection
I get rejected by Aimee a lot. At least it feels like a lot. And don't understand why either because I've had some really good ideas.
1. Lets go to Vegas
2. You quit school and I'll quit my job so we can hang out more
3. Lets go to Charleston (Every time we get on I-26 East, its only 2 hrs)
She could have easily replaced David Spade in those annoying Capital One commercials with her incessant rejections. Most of the time I'm getting rejected for my ideas of ways to spend more time together.

I've been working a lot of weird hours, Aimee works and goes to school, and most of the time we're 6 hours away from each other. We don't get to hang out that often. Sometimes it causes conflict. But I've got a choice- win the lottery so I don't have to work, get out of the relationship, or change my expectations. Since I don't play the lottery and there's no way I'm getting out unless she kicks me out, that leaves me with changing my expectations. Easy out. This next semester Aimee will be both working more and taking on a greater course load. I don't expect I'll get to see her much. But it won't last forever, and I'll wait for her on the other end of August.

Paul "I love Aimee" Murphy

Games I Play

Working at a sporting goods store has some perks. I've come up with a few games I play at work.

Puzzle
ESPN is on all the time. By about 2:30 I usually can piece the entire 30 min program together.

Work-out (not really a game but still fun)
When there is nobody in the store and I've done everything that needs to be done, I work out. Yup, I have a plethora of weight lifting equipment in my section so I make sure it's all in display form by working out. Some days I'll get 100 crunches in.

Mockery
I mock teenagers who try to use Bikes and Fitness as a date or friday night activity. Every Friday and Saturday I've got tons of adolescents coming in my territory and punching the heavy bags, removing boxing gloves from the packaging without putting them back, trying to kick-flip on my skate boards, and playing on my fitness equipment. So I make fun of them for it. "Hey, get your mom to drop you off somewhere else next friday." "Does your girlfriend always bench press more than you?" "My grandmother moves a heavy bag better than that" "Its called a 'Speed Bag' not a 'Slow Bag'"

Bonus
I have an inversion table in fitness. Most people don't know what it is so they just hop on it and pretend to do sit-ups on it. An inversion table is made to invert people. It also has to be set pretty close to the right height and weight to be counter-balanced correctly. So for fun I go and set it to a way low weight. That way when some unsuspecting teenager hops on it and leans back they go tumbling over backwards and get stuck up-side-down. Its really funny. I laugh at them a lot. Then when they leave in embarrassment I go and pick up all their pocket change.

Paul "Scrooging it out for Christmas" Murphy

It's Bad, but it Could Be Worse

Sometimes things have a way of stacking up to get you down. It's been a rough week. Frankly its been a rough year. I suspect by the end of the year I will have made something like $12K. Which if great if this were 1972. I still can't find a decent job and working at Dick's is slowly getting worse.

I went to the Greenville Co School District mid-term teacher recruitment event. It sounded promising. 12 openings (mostly for math and speech path) 137 potential teachers. One social science opening. It was in a magnet school no less. I knew the opening was there and to prepare for it I signed up for my Praxis tests so I can start my PACE application. $210 of Praxis tests. That's over half a weeks work. Uggf.

At work we've been understaffed since the day we opened the doors. We've just been doing more business then projected. About 25% more. They kept telling us the more business we did the more hours we'd get.

Today I was starting to really get down about the whole situation. In fact I was toying with the idea of moving somewhere that maybe had a better job situation. I guess in some way working at Dick's translates in my brain to my worth being $10/hour. I think I'm worth more than that, but if somebody else thought so too, then maybe I'd have a job that didn't involve picking silica packets off the floor constantly.

I got to work today and the schedules had all been taken down with a sign "Schedule changes. If you have any questions call Adam." That's generally bad. Sure enough they cut hours at work b/c of the crappy economy, even though our store is doing fine. I looked at the new schedule and they hadn't changed my hours at all. I'll still be cranking in about 40/ week.

Things are bad, but they could be a lot worse.

Paul "Dr. Burks doesn't usually send me emails" Murphy

http://www.harding.edu/Advancement/video.html