Scavenger hunts are always a pretty good time. It can either lead to complete awesomeness, or just mediocre cool. Either way, fun times happen. I was recently involved in one and I have to say, it was full of complete awesomeness.

The list was pretty extravagant in some spots and semi-basic in others. Some things were absolutely impossible, while others were not so far out of reach. We had to take pictures of each of the events that we checked off our list as proof that we did them. There was a section of the list, however, that included bringing back certain things. One of those was a LIVE duck. We could have just taken a picture with one, but NO, we had to CATCH one. No task is too large for Tyson and I.

We went to a local park that is known to have massive amounts of ducks at it. We decided that no matter what, we were leaving with a live duck. We didn't know how we were going to catch it, we just knew that it would happen.

So we arrive at the park and begin picking out our victim. One duck seemed as though he wanted to try and show off (for the ladies) so he tried taunting us. He stayed on land as the rest of the ducks fled into the protective waters of the pond in the middle. He got our attention diverted away from the other ducks, which was not a good thing. Me, Tyson, and another random hero "triangled" him and threw a shirt around him. Random hero held his wings and then Tyson helped him pick the duck up. We were so astounded at the fact that we had just captured a live duck that we could not stop laughing. We took our picture and then tried to figure out how to get him back to the house. Tyson's trunk looked like a perfect holding cell. It was only about a 5 minute drive, so we didn't feel THAT bad about it.

We didn't win the scavenger hunt, but it was a glorious day anyways.



Here's Fred:

Summer has since passed and college life here at UT-Chattanooga is back in full swing. I'm older, my friends are older, and we have a year of experience under our belt. But don't think that means that we're getting more mature by leaps and bounds :P Yes, we have matured in some aspects, but at the same time, we are still kids.

Having said that, the new year brings a few new questions into play. Will I stay here for the remainder of my college career or will I look farther (California). For those that don't know, I grew up in a coastal community in Southern California called Carpinteria.

I could tell you that I LOVE SoCal...but that would not even begin to describe my feelings for it. I'm very proud of where I come from and I'll always stand by that, which makes me start to consider finishing my education out there. Then again, the friends that I have made out here and the things I've learned about the culture are invaluable. I can't just leave all this behind. Not yet.

Take, for example, my two new room mates this year. Rick Van De Bovenkamp, from the Netherlands, has become a good friend of mine. Badr Bouhabdella (sp?), from Barcelona, has given me quite a few good life lessons already. They're both awesome and I love hanging out with them. Yes, Tyson is still one of my room mates!

So, I don't know yet!

Okay...more funny stories! I promise they're coming.

So as many of you may know, I went to the E.R. on Sunday afternoon. I'm okay and the story that is to follow is by no means meant to be serious. Laugh at it and don't feel bad for doing it :)

Here's what happened:

It was a cool Saturday evening and the boys and I were finishing up leading kids in an event called Reality Check with Red Bank Baptist Church. The weekend was geared towards leading some small groups with younger kids but the evening activities were notorious for shenanigans happening. Of course, we love to keep traditions going.

We loaded up with water balloons at around 11:50pm on Saturday night. It was Josh Parrish, Tyson Ward, Reilly Liner, Kevin Brown, and myself. Reilly and I were completely decked out in camouflage with mud smeared on our face; you know...that Rambo effect. The plan was to freak the house of girls out and hopefully do as little damage as possible at the same time

With water balloons in hand, Reilly and I crept up to the house to get more accurate shots while Kevin, Tyson, and Josh sat back about 50 yards and shot balloons with a water balloon launcher.

As I made my move to flank the house from the back I started running, and that turned into a full out sprint. I threw my balloons and made a straight line to where the rest of the crew was. I spotted what appeared to be a hard covered top of some sort. Being that it was dark and I was running at full speed, I didn't have much time to process that this might not be what it appears.

*Right here is where I should have taken that time to asses the situation a little more, but being me, I chose not to*

I was going to cut the corner of this supposed hard top and make my way to the black abyss where the rest of the guys were hidden. I took one step on it and quickly realized that this was nothing other than a soft top covering for a pool. Great, I'm at a dead sprint and now having nothing to run on but water. Crap. At this point I slip and start a rapid downward fall towards the concrete siding. I then landed on the siding of the pool with my lower chest/upper abdomen....hard. I quickly got up and started uncontrollably gasping for air. Reilly saw my struggle and said "Dude, are you okay?" I wanted to come back with a cute reply like "No, I'm just holding my chest breathing really hard because I feel like I need to" but all I could do was point at my rib cage.

All of the above happened within about 3 seconds.

I then began taking deeper, controlled breaths and was able to slow it down to normal breathing soon enough. I figured I hadn't broken anything because of the lack of extreme pain, although it did hurt quite a bit.

The next morning sucked. I woke up with excruciating pain in my chest. I won't go into details, but there were certain signs that my insides might be messed up so I decided that after church I needed to go to the E.R. I checked myself in and waited around for a little until my name was called.

They checked me out, gave me a CAT Scan, and I waited. About an hour and a half went by where I was just chilling by myself in the room with an IV sticking out of my arm. The trauma team then came in and told me that 3 different doctors had looked at my CAT scan results and said that everything looked fine and that it was just bruised badly. They were still debating on keeping me overnight though, but after giving me his own check he decided it wasn't necessary.

Since I had been there for about 2 hours, and Tyson, being the bro that he is, was waiting for me in the Waiting Room, I asked the lady at the desk if someone could let him know that I was okay. She said that someone would bring him back here shortly. He came back and we chilled there for about another 30 minutes and still no one had come. ( I couldn't leave because I had an IV sticking out of my arm). So we started messing around with the bed and doing a little exploring.

After 4 hours of hanging out in the ER I was finally released and am going to be perfectly fine once the bruise heals on the inside.

Thank you to everyone who let me know they were thinking of me! It really is appreciated a ton!

Go ahead...laugh.

Well, as the semester is dying down, the time to sign up for next semesters classes is here.

Everyone looks forward to waking up at 5:50AM on the morning of their assigned sign up date. "Why would anyone want to wake up at that time?" You might ask. Well, they start at 6AM so your best chance is to wake up just before, enter all your class information and then go back to sleep in hopes of getting at least a little bit more sleep before having to wake up again to attend your morning class. It's great!

Mine went semi-smooth but as my luck has it, I ran into some problems.

In my preparation the day before I was figuring out what classes I needed to take and when I needed to take them in order to have an easy breezy schedule. I had pretty much run out of Gen. Ed. Classes to take and it was time to begin working on my classes for my major. My advisor suggested two 300 level classes and I gladly chose to take those as they sounded very interesting. So, 5:50AM rolls around and my alarm is going off, awesome. Nothing better than waking up to two of my alarms and two of Tyson's going off. I managed to get myself out of bed, start my computer, and log into the registration page. 6AM soon came and I began entering in all my information for the classes. Half asleep, I read a message that the system kicked back to me. It said " You do not have the required number of hours to take 300-400 level classes." Yeah! Awesome! Now, instead of having everything flow smoothly, I have to figure out what the heck is going on. It turns out that because I'm a Freshman, I can't take 300-400 level classes until I have at least 23 hours. I only have 15 until the end of the semester and my current classes are logged. Sweeeet.

The thing about it is, is that I need to have at least 12 hours per semester to be considered a full time student. Right now I'm only at 10.

Being that there was nothing I could do at the moment, I signed up for the rest of my classes and went back to sleep. I woke up a few hours later and checked out what else I could do. I find that I can also go get some forms, fill them out, and get them signed by both the instructor AND the department head to show that I are smart enough to take them thar smart kid classes. Pah.

Today I went and showed the forms to the intructors and department heads. I got into one with no problems. The second one, I didn't have such luck. The intstructor refused to sign it saying that she "wants to make sure that the seniors can get into it first" and to "come back next week if it's not full." Soooo, even though the Seniors have had more than ample time to sign up for this class, and I'm doing mine on time, I can't get into it? "Correct." Sweet, I'm just a Freshman and don't know what I'm talking about anyways. Lame.

Oh well, at least I'm now considered "full time" with a whopping 13 hours.

Waffle House, known to a select few as "Wh", can be a totally new experience for someone who has never been. It is my belief that Waffle House should not open until around midnight or so, being that that's when they receive most of their revenue from poor college students like me. Going anytime before about 1am is just boring. There's no one that is drunk, the best employees are still getting their Waffle House gear on at home, and most of all, the atmosphere just isn't the same.

We (Tyson, Kevin (another room mate of ours) and I) try to go to Waffle House at least every Friday or Saturday night between 12am and 1am. We do this simply for the reasons stated above. It's interesting. We also have our favorite servers...or better put as people that wear Waffle House stuff and just talk to you the whole time. We've been so many times that they know us almost by name and our hope is to one day be able to server ourselves our own drinks by walking behind the counter and doing it.

I won't name the employees specifically, but we'll just title them "The Greatest Restaurant Employees Ever To Walk The Planet." I think that's a pretty good title.

There are many good laughs to have at Waffle House, and I think everyone should take a trip out to their local one at around 1am and see if they don't have a good time. You'll find it's impossible not to end up crying from the laughter...do it.

Labels: Bobby, Chattanooga, Travis, Tyson, UTC, Waffle House

The following isn't necessarily a legendary story by any means but I'm sure that since the bar has been set, only more humorous and more interesting stories will follow it.

Mid winter in middle Tennessee isn't necessarily the most exciting thing...however, there are a few things that can happen which make it very much the opposite.

It was a cold December night, and Tyson and I were out at the local shopping mall with nothing to do. We stopped by at Chik Fil-A to see Tyson's girlfriend and hopefully get a free/discounted milkshake...or something. Once Tyson had got his fill, we were left with nothing to do. As we were pulling out, I thought "Hey! Lets drive through the drive thru....backwards!" Brilliant.

We maneuver the car around so that it doesn't get stuck while entering. Meanwhile, two other vehicles go in the right way, like most boring people do. So once we get into the drive thru, another car pulls in, unsure about what to do. They sit at the entrance, obviously struggling with the concept that someone wants to go through the drive thru backwards...how typical. Once the driver (female, by the way) realizes what's going on, she finds it quite humorous and starts laughing. I make our order and we get the instruction to pull around. Obviously the person working the order station realizes how creative Tyson and I are for changing things up a little bit. We like to make other people's jobs interesting.

Once we get to the window to pay, we are greeted with a very uninteresting employee of Chik Fil-a. I figured we would get some kind of...."haha" but no, nothing of the sort. Oh well, we got our kicks out of it, and enjoyed the small waffle fries and two FREE waters that we ordered.

Hopefully things will only progress upwards from here...look for more stories about it once we get back to Chattanooga, where there's more interesting people.

Labels: Bobby DeBarge, Chik Fil-A, Drive Thru, Mt. Juliet, Tyson Ward

So as my first semester of college life has come to an end, I have to look back at it and consider what I have actually learned. I know I've learned more than just book knowledge, that's for sure. Here's some insight from my perspective as to what college seems to be really about.

For some people, college is a whole new experience and can be either very stressful, or it can be a very enjoyable event in one's life. I, for one, have enjoyed my first semester thus far.

First off, I have learned that grocery shopping sucks. It really does. Knowing how much I need and what I really need was a hard concept to learn. When I first arrived at college, I was going crazy on groceries and buying whatever "looked good" to me. Looks like Wal-Mart does a good job at advertising....oh well.

Secondly, I've learned how to manage my time better. Classes are tough to keep up with if you don't write down everything, and I do mean everything. Papers have this funny way of creeping up on you. Even though the professors, being the intelligent people they are, give me 2 months to complete a paper, I somehow think that I'm smarter and only need one day, or even one night, to complete it. I found out real quick that that's not the way things fly in college.

Lastly, is the topic of relationships. Don't bank on finding that "special" person within the first few months of being at college, it just doesn't happen. Patience is the greatest key to finding that person. Well, it's actually more of them finding you it seems. No matter how hard you try, you aren't going to find the companionship by hitting on everyone you think is "compatible" with you. It gets you nowhere as I've learned from personal experience.

So, I have quite a few semesters ahead of me in college, but hopefully they'll only get more enjoyable from here.

Tree ya.

Labels: Chattanooga, college life, UTC, Wal-Mart