My free time lately has been taken up with two things: apartment hunting and Guild Wars. The lease at my current apartment is up at the end of this month and since my roommate is getting married in October, I’m now searching for a cheap 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom apartment near the church in Carrollton. Last year I used an apartment hunter to find the place I’m in now, which is so much easier than searching around and making all the phone calls yourself. He’s referred me to a couple places by the church I’ve been checking out the past two weeks. The place I’d prefer to live in is pretty nice and is right next door to the church. I could ride my bike back and forth and only use the car for grocery shopping, driving to Dean’s on Mon, Wed, and Fri, and stuff like that. It would be the perfect choice except the monthly rent is at my maximum budget limit. There’s another place a little further away that’s about $50 cheaper each month, but it’s smaller, not as nice, and would require that I still drive to the church (although only a couple minutes each direction). The washer and dryer connections are in a closet out on the patio, which is kinda weird. I’m not sure what I think about that. They also can’t accommodate my refrigerator, so I’d either have to get rid of it for find someplace to store it. Being a bachelor means I could stick it in a corner of the apartment, but it’s not that big to begin with. ;-) I have to make a decision on a place no later than next week, though, so I have to decide if the extra money each month is worth the convenience of living next door to the church. $40 isn’t a huge amount, but over the course of a 12 month lease, that’s $600. If you have any input on my decision, feel free to post a comment to this post!

Of course there’s always Guild Wars. I’ve decked out two characters so far: a protection monk and an elementalist/necromancer. My guild has been becoming more active lately, which is a lot of fun. Tuesday night we battled another guild twice and whooped on ’em both times. One profession, Mesmers, are very frustrating for my monk character to play against. They suck up all your energy, drain your health, and interrupt your skills, sometimes even disabling them, rendering me pretty useless to the rest of the team. So last night I decided to create a mesmer and tried being the character all opponents hate: it was a lot of fun!! It’s a completely different strategy than my other character’s professions. I can see how it takes a good mesmer lots of time and strategizing to develop a devistating build. I’m gonna give it a shot myself and see how it works out.

On Tuesday I crunched the budget numbers for the Youth Specialities National Youth Workers Convention in November down in Nashville. I also skimmed through the schedule of all the speakers and workshops. Oh man, it’s gonna be so awesome! I can’t wait to go!! It’s gonna be such a great time of not only specialized youth ministry training, but of spiritual renewal and rejuvenation. I’m planning on taking about 4 other adult youth leaders from church with me, so it’ll be a great time for all of us together. More information on the convention is here.

Earlier today I posted on www.schmoyerfamily.com about becoming a contributor at www.everysquareinch.com, a site dedicated to articles relating to Christians’ involvement with the world and culture. I’ll refer you to my family’s site to read more about it, so I’ll suffice it to say that my first article is posted today if anyone wants to read it. ;-)

Youth group is going well. I was hoping to have more breathing room than I did between the end of the missions trip and the start of the school year, but oh well. The youth leaders and I met last evening to finalize dates for trainings, small groups start-up, and other stuff. Everything is underway and going well, I just need to enforce my principle of leaving work at the church. There’s always more to do. I haven’t brought any home with me yet, which is good, but it’s tempting sometimes, especially since I enjoy doing it, ya know? But I know I need to pace myself and not burn out with too much work in the beginning.

Oh, I’m getting a raise at Dean International, too. I start paying back seminary loans this month and will no longer have a roommate to split bills with, so I approached the guy who contracts me about a raise and it looks like it’s gonna go through. I already have the raise for whenever I work on their struggling websites and the overall raise is pending the company CEO/owner’s approval.

Last weekend I went up to Texarkana to give Dana back her stuff and to get mine back. I ended up hanging out for a while, which was cool. We were able to talk and be normal again. It’s good to be able to be friends now and comfortable around each other.

This coming weekend I’m going down to Houston to spend Friday evening and Saturday with David and Adrienne. Apparently they’re both pretty bored already, so my entertainment is on the way… whatever that is. It should be fun regardless.

That’s enough of a book for today. I may not post often, Adrienne, but I think I make up for it when I finally do. :-P

Posted on August 4, 2005