In my ever growing brilliance, I decided to do the following during my last week before Kenya: wrap up my 12 weeks of hospital chaplaincy (CPE), exactly one week after CPE is finished, take Presbyterian Ordination exams (ords are the bar exam for Presbyterian ministers) 3 Friday and Saturday; plus 1 more which I receive the paper topic at noon Saturday and have until Thursday to complete, but I am leaving Tuesday morning at 6 AM for orientation for my Kenya trip. After I told my mom this grand scheme, she said "that's not the brightest idea." I hadn't really thought of it that way until she put it so kindly, moms... Any who, while doing all of this I also had to officially move out of my apartment which brings me to my entertaining story of the day.

I have been working on my time management skills since college because they were "lacking" then, but I have gotten much better in seminary. Therefore, I had been moving out of my apartment in increments. Each day I would move some bo-jazz and then on Thursday I would check out of my apartment right before ords. Seemed simple enough. So, I saved moving my waterbed for the last day, Thursday (yesterday) because I like to sleep. Yes, my immediately family all have waterbeds, representing. I called around Austin Wednesday and found a Home Depot that had a waterbed pump. Everything was in place which is a sign disaster would ensue.

I awoke at the wee hour of 9 AM and ran over to the Home Depot to rent the waterbed pump. I returned home and headed downstairs to find a water hose, it was muddy. I ran back up to the third floor and plugged everything in and turned on the pump and nothing happened. The pump was making the "pump noises," but would NOT take the form of a verb and pump. I noticed the hose had a hole in it so I decided to go back down and find another muddy hose. Rinse, lather, repeat. Same problem. I ran downstairs and found the bestest hose in all the land, muddy of course and returned once again to no avail. At this point, I determined that even though the pump is making noise, it is not pumping. It took me 3 hoses... So I ran back to Home Depot and told them their pump's broken. They told me it was not. I asked them to test it and they then returned to tell me it's broken, to which I replied "I know." They called the "north" home depot and asked if they had a pump, they said they did so I was off on another quest at now 12:30 PM. I arrived at Home Depot #2 and asked for the waterbed pump. They told me that they didn't have a waterbed pump. I told them, well they called here about 20 minutes ago and you said you had one then. A younger gentleman walked out of the back office scratching his head and looked at me and said, "yeah that was me. Sorry I misunderstood them. We don't have a waterbed pump." This was when I had to count to 3. Then an older employee who had been listening to the conversation came over and asked, "how high is your waterbed?" I held my hand 3 ft off the ground. He said "no, what floor are you on?" I'm on the third. The old man said, "Well, all you have to do then is put one end of the hose in your bed and the other out the window and then go downstairs and suck on the hose." I replied with a half-hearted, "alright." I returned home slightly frustrated and fatigued by trying to figure out my current quandary in life. After entertaining some brilliant ideas of changing the time-space continuum, I succumbed to sticking one end of the hose in the bed and the other out the window, I ran downstairs, lied on the ground and starting sucking and 20 seconds later I was choking on glorious water. It was the happiest I have ever been while choking! The waterbed was completely drained in 20 minutes, thank you old man.

Back to studying for ords.
RTQ