Day 61: Frostbite

So everyone obviously knows that the USA got smatter-hatted with snow last week, and it just about drove everyone nuts. I'm not sure what got more coverage, the Super Bowl or the Snowpocalypse 2011 (as someone came up with and therein created a Facebook rage). Snow in Texas! We don't really know what to do with ourselves when we get snow. Some of us build snowmen, others build snowforts, others have snowball fights, and still others decide to go outside in a bikini and live out a lifelong dream. (Shudder. I'm cold now) If you notice all the "smart" ones have snow in them (snowfort, snowball, snowmen), and one does not. I wonder what that says about it. (I say this in good spirits. I mean no disrespect if you actually did do that.)

I really do type a lot in parentheses, don't I? And the irony with that statement is that I almost put that one, and this one, in parentheses. Dearness Gracious.

So basically all week I was stuck in my house because I had no school, no work, no church, and no truck. School was canceled, Church was canceled, and I was off work all week thanks to the fact that I took all week for church because it was supposed to be our huge annual conference. The truck was in the shop because my mom was driving my truck before the snowstorm hit and she got rear-ended by an illegal immigrant, which marks the third time that my parents have wrecked in my truck. I've only wrecked it once. As my mom put it, I'm probably one of the few kids that can say my parents have no business driving my vehicle due to their propensity to wreck/be wrecked in it.

So with no school/work/church/truck/girlfriend (hard to forget that one when you have a lot of time off school) or really ANYTHING to do at the house, I wasted away last week. I could've worked more on the Publishing House, my first book, wrote a love letter or two, done some reconciliation with my parents about Day 60, or done any number of things. I could've done all of this. What did I do instead? I played XBOX, surfed the web, read up on the SuperBowl, played Angry Birds (dang you Mac App Store, I had a chance for productivity! Oh wait, I have Spore. Oh well), and other random time wasting junk. All week. I could've blogged too, but I wasn't in the mood because let's face it, Day 60 (Sunday) on kinda stunk once I got home. There was a lot to go through, with talking to my parents about what would happen moving forward, talking with the girlfriend to work things out there and make sure that we could work with my parents (which really wasn't hard. Relationships with actual mature communication are easier than most people make it out to be. Kudos to my parents for dealing with everything rather well), but with everything I had to go through, I really feel like I did a whole lot of nothing all week while accomplishing what needed to be accomplished in my spare time from that.

The week ended well. I made a Superbowl prediction that was off for the first 3 quarters only because I had the teams wrong. I thought the Steelers would get out ahead early and then lose the lead in the 3rd, but instead the Packers got out ahead early and nearly lost the lead. I predicted the Packers winning by 10, but they won by 6. Close enough for me. Kate came over for the game and to join with me in talking to my parents about the whole deal. It was somewhere between needing to talk and really getting to see her for the first time in a few months which is my fault more than anything else. But they got to see her, we spent quality time playing cards and watching football and chit-chatting. Overall, a very good night.

The one thing my parents kept reiterating was looks and rumors over substance. Although Kate and I have been keeping to ourselves and avoiding anything that my parents or her parents or the Bible (a. k. a. God) wouldn't approve of. However, sitting in a garage on a couch unsupervised until 2 am sounds suspicious, so my parents counsel was this: Stay above the rumors, and you will be above reproach. Not, stay above wrongdoing and be above reproach, but stay above rumors; be in such a place where no one can accuse you of wrongdoing.

I'm not sure what to think about it honestly.