Only a Little Dysfunctional

Hello All!

This week has been a particularly good one, but also unbelievably full and stressful =P
I don't know who is the one who first told me this (probably my own dear mother) but I am very good at not being bored because I can consistently come up with something new and time-consuming to do. However, I'm also very good at being in that position where I am doing about three or four things that require 100% of my attention and energy...at the same time.

Us working together on boxes!

The first and best of this week is Operation Christmas Child. For those of you who don't know, OCC is something that Samaritan's Purse does every year right around this time. What they do is encourage people to make 'shoe box' gifts of shoe boxes filled with toys, school supplies, clothes, hygiene items, et cetera for a boy or girl between the ages of 1 and 14 (actual age is specified on box) and they deliver them en masse to children in third world and needy countries all over the world. I am in a student group called Project Hope on campus and I encouraged them to help me put together the effort to do the project on campus as well.
This past Wednesday, I talked my Blount family into going out with me and about $200 I have saved up over the past several months to shop for things and make boxes ourselves. Stretching that money, we made seven boxes together and are including pictures and a letter signed by everyone in each. Through PH with only about a week of PR, we collected some $100 in donations and five more boxes just from individual people.

Next year, we're starting much earlier. A lot of people got really excited when they heard about it. I love Operation Christmas Child.

I have another art project on its way to being due. It will be my fourth and final for this semester, and I have a pretty good idea of what to do in mind. I just have to get my hands on the materials. I know that as much as I have loved the class and as inspiring as it has been, my budget will be a lot happier to see me put it behind me. I've had to put off building my bed loft indefinitely, start eating dining hall food exclusively, and don't think I've bought anything that I simply just wanted to in months. I'm not complaining though, because it's certainly good for you, understanding value and sacrificing what you need to.

And please, every need I've ever had is being cared for, so everything is good.

The show choir performance is only a week and a half away, and I am practicing when I can. There are still three dances that I really know almost not at all, and we just started learning the last song. I still have to go over all my music on the piano before fall break and then probably spend all break working on the dances on top of studying for chemistry and calculus. I'll be partially very glad to see the show over with, but I think I'll really enjoy show night.

And finally, the Blount Winter Formal is coming up soon. Blount is the name of the liberal arts program that I am in, and also the living-learning community dorm on campus. A lot of the dorm has been abuzz with the approaching date and all the great dramatous saga of who is asking who is unfolding. I've had it in mind to ask a friend of mine for the past while, but I have been spending the last week or two working on a 'treasure hunt' style adventure all over campus for her down memory lane. So today I gave her the first message and sent her off, letting her find the other clues and chase the whole thing all over her favorite memories and spots while I got ready. I've been sick for the past week with a cold or something and getting progressively less sleep, which wasn't helping the fact that I had a full-scale four hour course to plan out and execute perfectly across the entire university, but for all its dysfunctionalities on my part, it went perfect and she doesn't even know that it went wrong at all.
Last part, I was waiting outside her window for her to get all the way done and asked her balcony-scene style if she would go to the dance with me. She gladly said yes. Only regret? I've now made every other boy who has already asked look bad. I was very late in asking - which made me worry someone else might ask her - but at I put a lot into it.

I've slept from about four this afternoon till 10, and am only up because I had to eat something and thought to post. Heading to bed again now and off to church in the morning. Been a blessing of a week, if a really long one. Hey, God is good.

I'm Jonathon, and this is my life.