Trevor

russia invades georgia.

russia invades georgia.

does this make anyone else lose sleep? it should.

lets think about the history of russian aggression. lets consider what kind of position the united states is in to respond. lets consider how much western europe is ready to respond. russia is sort of looking at a veritable buffet of options. can anyone else smell the USSR raising its ugly head again?

i'm a little freaked out at the possibilities here. i really hope that the russians call it quits soon, but what happens if they dont? what happens if we're forced to respond?

anyway, i don't want to be debbie downer, but i'm kind of concerned about all of this. i haven't stopped thinking about it for days.

i'm back.

andy, sarah, robyn, myrle, caitlin, mark....latvia missed you, as did i.

steve was there.

that being said, i am completely in love with that country. what a fantastic place. words don't do it justice.

ireland was a learning experience. wonderful country. wonderfully expensive. wonderfully full of people my age that embarrass me more than the people my age in the states do. wonderfully full of the kindest people over 30 i've ever encountered.

traveling alone is a humbling and enlightening experience. after all is said and done, i vote for traveling with company. however, i would and probably will travel alone again and that's ok because i know i can do it now. but company is a luxury and a blessing we take for granted.

i don't want to be back, but i know i need to be back. i can feel it.

lets do highs/lows....

         high: the latvian youth, my new friends, and romans budniks. oh, and king mao.

         being: so far away from everyone and living with an inherent inability to keep in touch well.


so next time, let's go to latvia. i doubt you will regret it.

we can go to ireland, too. it's really pretty, but my heart is in the baltics.

in 18 hours i will be leaving. i will not be returning for one month. there will be two weeks in ireland and two weeks in latvia.

i am very excited about this. as a good friend and mentor put it today, i believe i am in a time of discernment and my hope is that this trip will bring a little more clarity to my life, if only a little. not that i'm naive enough to assume that it will be my cure-all, but this will be a trip of stretching and strangely comfortable discomfort.

i have one 55 liter pack and one 15 liter carry on/day pack. the contents include:

two pair of pants, one pair of shorts, swimmers, five pair of socks, six t-shirts, one button down convertable shirt, two longsleeved tech (running or active style) shirts, a fleece, a rain coat, a pair of shoes, and my toiletries and electronics.

oh, and two pair of underwear. don't knock it till you try it.

point being, i have very little stuff, a lot of time, and no one to hold my hand when things get hairy (which they eventually will; i still have three nights without lodging).

i'm asking you for prayer, thoughts, general good vibes in my direction or all of the above. whichever suits your particular mood. financially, my trip is taken care of, partly by my efforts in the past few years, but mostly by the amazing generosity of some of my closest relatives and some spectacular friends in my community. if not for those people, this may not have happened.

at any rate, i will update here and on facebook as often as i can. i have no computer, but i have an iphone. however, i only have 20mb of free data for the month, so i will likely wait till i have access to an internet cafe or wi-fi to update.

thanks for the prayers/thoughts/good vibes in advance.

bye.

so i didn't go to camp this week. i had considered it. i even really wanted to. but i leave for ireland/latvia on monday and i just needed the time here more than i thought i would.

so far i think i have everything i need. tonight is a pack-the-bag-and-see-what-i'm-missing night as well as a flip-my-shit-because-i-am-missing-something night.

i smell like coffee and sweat. coffee and sweat. sweat and coffee. i made espresso all morning (always a GREAT morning) and then decided that instead of wasting gasoline, i would ride my bike to do errands (also good, but sweaty). i enjoy the fact that i smell.

i still have three nights without places to sleep nailed down. that'll probably bite me in the ass in a week or two.

i love that the homewood library has c/d's to check out.

i do not love that homewood library charges .25 per copy to print. there went $10.

leaving soon.

is anyone in the birmingham area interested in talking about a new way of tithing?

i've been tithing lately, i think i've informed my livejournal community of this, and i'm doing good, but there's still a wad of cash sitting on my desk. don't know what to do with it.

until now. i've got an idea and i need the help of like-minded individuals who want to see an alternative way of making the first fruits go as far and make as much an impact as possible.

let me know.

i would like to update everyone on the "me" of late.

i work a lot. i am content with it for now. i am trying really hard not to get too caught up in making a ton of money. i want to be satisfied with having my needs met. not that i'm NOT trying to make money. i just don't want to freak out when the slow weeks and days happen.

speaking of money, i decided to start tithing this week. i am forcefully making myself become more faithful, less materialistic, and more content with my lot. i made this decision in the face of some big expenses coming up. that was on purpose too. i need more faith in my life. and i need more time for loving. i figure the time i would spend working/worrying about money i can spend loving.

i am going to europe and i'm excited. i buy my plane ticket this week.

i make coffee now. it's splendid to be a part of something so....great.

i can make a mean white peach sangria martini. come order one and see.

homewood is splendid.

my room is a mess and i don't do the dishes nearly as often as i should. and we have spiders. damn spiders.

that's about it for me guys. sorry i don't post as often. i just don't have much to say as often.

i guess that makes my post more refreshing...? maybe not.

so i officially ended my candidacy for the fourth grade teacher position at the redmont school about 20 seconds ago. it was hard to do because i really like the school and the kids there are great, but it's not right, you know? it was a combination of things that just didn't line up and i knew it wasn't for me regardless of how much i liked the school.

but still, my only job snag in the past couple of months is gone now. shit.

if this is what it feels like to grow up (i.e. having no clue what you're doing with your life and wasting time doing something you know you don't love or want to do while you grasp desperately at straws for something else) then i don't really want to do it anymore. it's a real drag.

This makes me laugh.

really, kathleen? i'm surprised that the birmingham news carried your opinion. there is a big difference between a well articulated thought and reaching for something to write.

i was very impressed by obama's response to rev. jeremiah's comments. it was an appeal to discourse, something we have a regretful aversion to in america. it hasn't always been that way, but unfortunately it's gotten worse the more polarized we've become. obama didn't demonize rev. jeremiah or white americans or black americans. it was an even handed approach and response to an issue.

people like kathleen get paid to write stuff like this. it makes me not want to go to work.

IRELAND

JUNE 2008 (like, the entire month)

who wants to come?

i got to have a conversation with the o'henry's owner. i retract my position in my last post. o'henry's is good. in fact they go further and do more to support farmers and sustainable growing than most people who get fair trade certified do. you just don't hear about it at o'henry's because they don't bother with the certification. "in no way does it guarantee the quality of the product", is the way he put it. they travel to most of the places in latin america where they import beans, test the product, meet the farmers and buy the product for something like 50-100% over the market value. good people. i stand corrected.

my spring break started today. i began by sleeping till 9:30am. for those of you who know me, this was sleeping in. i'm about to get a shower, get dressed and go gather the last of my needed supplies for camping/climbing with nick through saturday. then im back and it's back to the grindstone.

i got sent home from work yesterday because i hit overtime hours. talk about industrious. apparently they REALLY don't want me to ever get a paycheck. at any rate, i will be waiting tables through the summer. at that time i am moving on to something different. i can't tell you what yet, because i haven't decided, but it could be exciting.

ok, it's go time.

some recent things i enjoy:

  *Levi's Eco Jeans: All organic cotton and dyes. Fair wages for the indonesian workers that produce them. On sale for 35.00.
  *My iPhone: Enough said.
  *Costco: Best products for the best prices around. I love this place.
  *Caedmon's Call "Overdressed": Been out for a while, but I'm new to it. Derek Webb is back on the album. I'm a fan.

some recent things i do not enjoy:

  *O'Henry's Coffee: I really do like this place, but they are the worst at conscious consumerism. Out of all their coffees, only one is organic, fair   
    trade certified. In a day when coffee shops are switching entirely to this eco friendly and humane option, I find it hard to believe that the  
    selection for more conscious consumers is as limited as it is. I'm thinking all this as I'm watching them pour a few grand into renovations to
    make the outside of the shop even prettier.
  *Young Married Professionals: They're all cheating on each other. Trust me on this one.
  *Hillary Clinton
  *John McCain
  *On Occasion, Barak Obama: Quit being a putz. Keep your integrity.

Two new poems on Word Virus.

Have a lovely Monday.

new things on Word Virus.

a three-part and a single. the three-part is called "mouth". the single is called "question."

i will add the titles later, but i'm late for work.

i don't really know much about ben ferguson.

i've seen him on television about 3 times for a total of maybe 3-4 minutes each time and i already don't like him. what a putz.

he reminds me of the stuffy, red-faced little politics geeks i had class with the last three years. they would always get all pissed off if anyone stepped on the toes  of any good traditional conservative politician or ideal. i always felt sorry for these people. very sorry. and i didn't like them either.

harpoon IPA, to be exact. the past three nights, this has been my dinner. my dinner of champions.

i've been working a lot. waiting tables is working out, but hopefully not for too long. in fact, yours truly is beginning the interviewing process at The Redmont School in the Waldorf Tradition in birmingham this friday. it's a private school so i wont have to get an alabama teaching certification (though i'll likely end up with one anyway). the job is either 1st or 4th grade teacher. i'm very excited about the possibility moving on to something a bit bigger than waiting tables and getting my feet wet in education.

birmingham has been good to me. i'm close to good friends and goo places. this is much better than fort payne.

speaking of fort payne, i'm driving home tomorrow to vote. go obama.

ron paul was a close second, but in the end i'm with obama on this one. hillary is a snake in the grass and she will bite if elected. the others, well, nice try.

i would tell you what has been happening in painfully decriptive and elongated paragraphs, but i just don't think you're interested in that. so i'll tell you that there are two new poems on Word Virus. not that you're terribly interested in that either, but i think it will be more entertaining than the former.

i'm here, i'm here!

the exclamation point. what an overused, under-appreciated part of the english syntax. i'm not even saying it's a good one, but an overused and under-appreciated one. have you ever read an e-mail, a poem, a text message, or any other mode of communication with one or more exclamation points in it? have you then had the fortune of hearing said mode of textual communication read aloud only to find that the exclamation point is not an exclamation at all?! lies! indeed, the offending portions of english writ are merely common sentences read commonly with no feeling or emotion attached at all. what has happened to our emotions?

i expect barack to handle this one in his first one hundred days.

*all exclamation points used in this post were, in fact, used appropriately and conscientiously.

6, count 'em, 6 new things on Word Virus.

well, not really heartbreaking. or staggeringly genius, for that matter.

no, the title comes from my current reading, "a heartbreaking work of staggering genius". i'm about 60 pages in and i already love it. dave eggers is...fluent. if you haven't read it, read it.

i have begun work at the fine dining establishment of romano's macaroni grill and, for all the hell i've given myself about waiting tables, the job isn't that bad. from what i can tell, the people are cool and the tips are good. i'm training right now, so i just get to watch people get tipped for having me bust my ass around the restaurant.

the new apartment is swell. i now have FOUR pieces of furniture. a bed, a bedside table, a chest of drawers, and a really ugly chair that now, along with an unopened box of books, serves as a TV stand. my roommate is friendly and cool, as are his friends. HIS friends have been over for dinner and all several times. i expect a few of you to do the same. i love to cook.

things may change soon, however. my applications are about to make their way across birmingham via cyberspace and the neighborhood friendly united states postal service. with any luck i will procure a job that will pay between 30-40k and is a moderately socially responsible line of work. those are my two criteria. i realize the difficulty i may have in fulfilling those criteria and realize that i may be looking and applying for quite some time. either way, thats what i'm looking for.

for every two people i see at the restaurant, one of them, after discovering that i was a political science major, inevitably asks me who i'm voting for. i respond politely, "in my opinion, it is FAR too early to decide upon a candidate." and it really is. with every primary and every glorious smear campaign, things change. hell, the difference between iowa and new hampshire was drastic. so people should stop asking me because i'm not answering until the end of th primaries and/or the national conventions.

my roommate works for ernst and young. i envy his paycheck. my roommate envies the laid back style of waiting tables. i clinch the discussion with, "tell me how much you like waiting tables if i miss rent one month."

i should get myself pretty. no shower tuesday! woo hoo!

i don't really abstain from showers on tuesday, i just don't have time today. because i've been talking to you. jerk.

"hey my name is trevor and i'll be taking care of you today. can i start you off with something to drink?"

rinse and repeat.

i am wearing shorts today. my dad asked me if i was crazy. it's january, he said. i know, i replied.

january in the southeastern united states can bite my ass.