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My attorney called me today. The appelate court denied our request for an appeal. I don’t know why, and I doubt that it really matters. Here’s what happens now. In the middle of December, I can’t remember the day he told me, I go to a hearing to sever some charges. What that means is I’ll face trial on those charges seperate from the other ones. My attorney doesn’t feel that I can get a fair trial with all of the charges lumped together. I think he is right. I go to trial in the middle of January, I can’t remember the day he told me, and I lose. At some point after that I go to a sentencing hearing, and they tell me when to report to jail. I should have some time to get my affairs in order, but I intend to start that process now.

All my attorney told me today was the appeal was denied and when the court dates are. The rest I put together myself. I know what they have against me. I know my chances to beat it are next to zero. I’m having a bad day.

Just about everybody is familiar with the acronym KISS, (Keep It Simple Stupid) and if you’re not it’s fairly self explanatory. I listened to a story today on the radio about a gentleman named Jim Bakker who visited with the Graham family after being released from prison. All Mr. Bakker had to use as a wallet was an envelope with some papers he needed to keep track of stuffed inside. The story is told because Ruth Graham gave Mr. Bakker one of Billy Grahams wallets they had laying in a drawer. At this point he had only been out of prison for a couple of days, so he had no money to purchase a wallet with or put in the wallet if he got one.

The discussion on the radio was about how complex our lives have become. There is so little that we truely need. Most everything in our lives here in the United Stated is just a want. For the most part I think I have a fairly simple life. I go to work, come home, go to work, come home. Mix in some church and an occasional activity like paintball and that’s about it.

The list of what I need is very short. I need clothing to wear, a bed to sleep in, and transportation to work and the grocery store. Everything else is extra.

I’m going to spend the next few weeks trimming down on certain areas of my life. I don’t really need all that Dr. Pepper I’ve been drinking. I don’t really need most of the junk I keep stored in my bedroom. I’ve lost track of what is truely important and I need to adjust my priorities.

I apologize for the long dry spell. I haven’t posted in a while, and I have no excuse other than not taking the time to make it happen. I’ve had plenty to post about.

We had a great paintball event with the church a couple weeks ago. There was a good turn out and everyone had a great time. We have some new players that fell in love with the sport and vowed to come back next time we play. I look forward to shooting them again.

This past weekend the Men’s Ministry from the church had a retreat at Lakeside Resort on the beautiful Center Hill Lake. We had a couple of Jet Ski’s, and pontoon boat, and a lot of guys having a great time. We had a tube to drag behind one of the Jet Ski’s, and a nice little cove with a cliff to jump or dive off of. Some of the men did some repelling. We all had a great time. For some reason I still don’t understand I actually jumped off the cliff. There is some debate over how high it was, but I’m guessing in the fifty to sixty foot range. It didn’t look like much from the boat, but looking down from the top the water was a LONG way down. I had a long time on the way down to question why I jumped. As I feel I heard Kenny say, “That was a bad decision.”

Of course every time I get on the lake with any kind of water craft it renews my desire to build a hovercraft. It looks pretty easy, and I think I can build a first revision pretty cheap. I would like to make a nice one, but I’ll start small and easy.

I’m about to start a project for the church building a throne for The Judgment. This is a huge production, and I am excited to see how it turns out. The next few weeks are going to be hectic, but it’ll be worth it. I’m building the throne for Jesus, and I want it to be perfect. It’s a big project, and I’m nervous. I hope I can pull it off.

Like I said I’m busy. I’ll try not to take so long before the next update.

EDIT: I need to make a correction to the above post. It’s been up long enough I can’t just change it and go on because too many people have read it. We were not on Percy Priest Lake. We were on Center Hill. There is a huge difference. I got to wondering if I had confused the two after Coops comment about it not being that great. I looked into it and yes, I am dumb, I said the wrong lake. I’m sorry for the error. I did edit the post, but I’ll leave all the comments as they are.