Catch-Up

The next week was the Southeast Severe Storms Symposium!  Okay, that sounds nerdy, I know.  Basically, the weather people here at State invite awesome meteorologists from across the nation to come and talk to us and give presentations that will increase our weather knowledge and allow us to get our foot in the door.  There are two main days for the symposium: broadcast and operational.  Broadcast day was my favorite.  James Spann from ABC 33/40 in Birmingham was one of the keynote speakers.  Very cool, intelligent, busy man.  Dave Freeman out of Wichita, Kansas was also there as well as Reynolds Wolf, a meteorologist at CNN Atlanta.  Operational day is host to speakers that work “behindthe scenes.”  Most were from National Weather Service offices.  They are smart people, but it wasn’t nearly as exciting to me as hearing about the TV aspect of weather.  Last thing:  I practiced my networking skills and spoke withReynolds Wolf the second day.  Well, don’t be surprised if I am in Atlanta next summer interning under him!   Get that foot in the door!!!

Sometime around here I went to Graceland Too in Holly Springs.  Some guy in Holly Springs is obsessed (to say the least) with Elivs.  His walls, ceiling, floor, everything, is covered in Elvis stuff.  You can go at ANY hour and he will give you a tour.  His collection is valued at millions of dollars.  I left Starkville on a Friday night with a few friends about midnight.  We made a pit stop in Oxford and surprised Amy- and boy was she surprised!  That was around two something.  Around four? in the morning we made it to the guy’s house and took the tour.  He’s sketchy!  Everyone needs to go at least once, though.  We finally made it back to Pontotoc a little after six in the morning and slept a few hours before heading back to Starkville.  I was the driver the whole time.  It was an unforgettable experience!

I also managed to go to an Ole Miss football game in September.  Don’t worry.  It won’t happen again.  The atmosphere there just isn’t me.  We left at half-time.  Mom’s birthday was also the 22nd. (Oh yeah, and she and Dad celebrated 31 years together in August!  I am SO glad that I have parents who are still together.  I am so blessed and fortunate compared to a lot of people.  I love my family.)  I suppose the last big thing in September was going to Clinton for the College Student Conference at Morrison Heights Baptist Church.  (We ate at a place called Froghead’s.  Delicious sweet-potato fries!)  There they talked about going on missions.  I’ll talk about that further down the page!  OOOH yeah!  The LSU game…. I won’t talk much about it because I will get hot over the subject…  We were about to pull off a HUGE upset.  We had the ball on the 4 inch line about to score with less than a minute left against then #7? LSU.  However, we couldn’t getit four more inches on MULTIPLE tries.  Sad, sad day.  It would have been the story of the weekend.  But I don’t dwell….  A lot of my friends and I also had a tent in the Junction for the first time.  It was really fun being in the midst of the game-day atmosphere and having great food and friends around.  I look forward to us doing that again.  Oh, and you’re invited. 

And now October.  The second day of the month I played with Drawn Together Band at a lock-in at Auburn Baptist Church in Lee County.  We had an hour to play and it was so much fun!  Most of the crowd consisted of junior high and high school youth.  It was great leading them in worship and just letting the Lord speak to them through us.  (I love being an instrument for God to use!)  Let’s see, we played Georgia Tech in Starkville and lost a hard-fought game and Houston the next week and lost.  They are both top 25 teams, too.  (We really do have a hard schedule.) 

Ooh, the weather has been really nasty the past few weeks.  This was the cause of us cancelling BSU Barn Party.  It is rescheduled for the 23rd, so I’ll explain later and have fun pictures!  And this past Sunday I played the violin in church with a piano, flute, sax, drums, keyboard, and bass.  We accompanied Brother James.  It was a lot of fun.  Again, it’s great using that avenue to bring glory to God’s name.  And that Sunday afternoon I came back to hear one of my friends give a senior recital.  She is a voice major.  Fun time! 

Well, that brings me to now.  I have caught you up on the main events, now to just a few more things:

Broadcast meteorology majors here are in labs where we basically practice being a weatherman.  I started those this semester, and I am having a BLAST!  I really love doing this.  And we just got a BRAND NEW studio with AMAZING equipment.  Hopefully, I’ll get some videos of me on here doing the weather.  It will probably be a while, though.  I have such a great group of friends in the weather program.  It’s kind of sad to think that in less than two years we will be ALL over the country at different TV stations.  I suppose it is extremely exciting, too! 

So while I am talking about friends, MY FRIENDS HERE ARE AMAZING.  I know a ton of people here, and my easy-class semester is allowing me to hang-out a lot this semester.  Most of the friends that I do stuff with on a regular basis are transfers from ICC and were Amy’s friend there.  She made me some nice friends!  Haha.  They’re all such good influences.  It also seems to be that I am the only guy in a huge group of girls when I am out doing stuff.  But hey, can’t complain about that.  Haha.   

My friends are also heavily involved in the BSU here.  I am SO grateful for that.  I don’t miss Tuesday night worship or Wednesday lunch.  It’s amazing having such an army of believers around me to motivate me and encourage me.  I am truly blessed.

I am again working for the TV Center here at MSU.  I have to be at the football games a few hours early and leave a couple late.  During the games, I am in the control room running a graphic system for MSU’s new, gi-normous JumboTron.  I really have a lot of power at the click of a mouse.  Want your name to go up on the screen?  I’m the guy you need to see!   Haha.  This is great experience and I am making great contacts.  And hey, I get paid to watch college football!

Soooo……. like I said, I have been really involved in BSU since school has started and my relationship with the Lord has just really strengthened.  Well, instead of going to Peru over Christmas Break with college Sunday School people back home (including Amy), I feel like I am being called to Asia. If you want more details, let me know. I can’t really post a lot about it on the internet. I’ll be gone for a while.  

I’ll take time out now to say that I love my twin sister, Amy, very much and sincerely wish she was down here.  I do understand why she is at that school north of me.  Hopefully one day we’ll get to live in the same town again.  I miss her.  (And the rest of my family!) 

If you’ve made it thus far, kudos.  I’m probably going to stop reading myself when I am proofing this.  Hah.  Hopefully I’ll update monthly now so these posts won’t be novels!  Oh yeah, I have plans to open up a weather section on here complete with my forecasts, radars, satellite imagery, et cetera, that you can access and easily tell what’s going on in your neck of the woods.  Stay tuned.  God bless and let me know if I can do anything for you.