Month: January 2005

I have to admit I have been quietly praying for more and more snow. (It seems to be working!)

Here’s why. There is a man in our church family who plows the lot. Each time he does it he makes about $60. I like this guy a lot and I know he is having a hard time providing for his family right now… So I figure, the more it snows the better for his family.

I hope it snows every day this week! I hope it snows until May. I know some consider it an inconvenience, but I want to see this man’s faithfulness rewarded. Call me selfish, but again I am calling for snow and a lot of it!

In my normal online routine of checking e-mail, the YS boards, the LF site, etc. So imagine how much I was thrown off by the YS forums being down today?

I wonder if all the trouble YS seems to be having will one day result in them ditching the forums all together? It’s got to be a hassle to offer these things, monitor these things, and troubleshoot these things? At the same time they probably say “Why not do it since these are the people we are trying to reach with our products?”

Each time that they go down I wonder if I should go back. It’s not like I don’t enjoy it, but I often wrestle with it being an unwise use of my time. Na… I like it a lot so I’ll be back. I do see my time there in massive fluctuations though. Right now I’m at a low point. Maybe 15 minutes a day? I spend at least that in browsing others blogs.

I had a very bad experience last night. One which I hope to never repeat.

All was well physically until about 10:30 PM. I was just finishing a video game and a little popcorn snack when I got hit a with a sudden case of the shivers.

This first happened to me about 3 weeks ago as I got a chill that I couldn’t shake off. It wasn’t a big deal and I just thought I had gotten cold in the basement working on the PC. But this time I hadn’t done anything weird at all. I just started shivering like mad.

I laid in bed with the duvet on for quite a while hoping to warm up. I could feel that my body was warm but I literally couldn’t stop shivering. Almost an hour later I finally fell asleep, only to wake up at 12:45 AM. I woke up shivering. I got up, went to the bathroom, instantly felt a little better, and laid back down. About 1:30 I woke up again on fire! I had the covers over my head and I was wearing my socks. So once I shedded them I was able to cool off enough to fall back asleep.

Today, I feel unrested but otherwise OK. I have some muscle soreness in my back and neck. But I think that is mostly from the shivers.

I will readily admit that it really scared me to have this happen. It’s unexplained torture. It’s randomness makes me wonder, “do I have mad cow or something?”

I can’t wait to play golf again. I think that all of this has to do with my lack of physical activity during the off-season. As I stare out the window at the piles of snow I am longing for, for the first time in months, the wonderment of creaming a golf ball. At least if I get the shivers then I can blame it on my bad golf game.

One thing I don’t plan on putting off for 2005 is doing my taxes. Over the last few years I’ve been in the habit of waiting for al ong time to gather everything together and ship off my federal and state forms. More specifically, I habitually turn my state forms in late.

Not this year. I am determined to do my taxes ASAP and (gulp) hopefully get a little return. It seems like each year I get a little back on my federal return and pay a little on my state taxes.

Funny sidenote. We left California in 2003. But I still got another form from CA. It seems they will never get it that we don’t live there anymore. Tax forms. License plate renewal notices. On and on. I even got a Christmas note from the retirement guy at the Horrorville church. I’m pretty sure that they never fulfilled that part of their obligation to me. But I’m not crying about it and I don’t want to trace down those $2000. Forget it!

So far i have contributed $71.64 to the youth missions fund based upon book sales alone. That’s a mere .05% of the total amount needed. My goal for this “little” fundraiser is $400. I’m 17.9% there in less than 1 month.

As all of my work is done for the week, I don’t have much to do. I am grateful for this and look forward to escaping to Kristen’s parents house tonight for a little R&R. My “evil plan” is to take Kristen out to a movie after the kids go to bed!

Other things on the horizon for the family.

Vacation plans: We’ve been talking about this a lot… Probably because I want to go now! For now we have settled that we will be going to the family cottage for 7-10 days this summer instead of renting a house. This will save us boatloads of money… Which is good considering that we don’t have a lot of money. There is some talk about Kristen and the kids going to Las Vegas while I am in Northern Ireland. I like this plan since it means that my beloved will both have something fun to do and someone to help her with the children. But Kristen’s little cheap bird is stopping her by saying, “It’s a lot of money!” nonsense! Our kids need to see their Grammy Doggie!

Mission trips: I am happy that Kristen is able to go to Chicago with us. It will mean oodles to the girls to have “Mrs. Adam” along for the ride. It’s super cool that Kristen’s family is willing to watch our kids for that long. Wow.

Grad school: I had hoped to bring Kristen with me to Huntington this term at least once. I thought it would be both a nice break for her and a chance for me to show off the cool campus. It’s not working out that way. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get this done for the Spring term.

Money crunch: Careful observers will note that I whined A LOT about money last summer. Part of that rant was that I didn’t mind it so much because I knew during the winter months we would be able to catch up. Well, that didn’t happen this year… Yet. So I am a little worried about cash flow this summer. Scary, but true. Perhaps by that time I’ll be playing golf for money on the weekends so money won’t be an issue. It’s not a worry that overwhelms me but more a mental note for myself to be careful!

This is the northern ireland mission team. What a fun bunch! “They’re magically delicious!” 

Here’s is a great moment in American history as GW bush reups for another 4 years. It was also fantastic to see Supreme Court Justice William Renquist do the honors. It’s inevitable that Bush will replace him soon. 

This is the text from my blog entry on the lightforceministries.com website.

Not everyone knows this yes, but I have been selling books online to raise money for the Northern Ireland team.

How does it work? I take a book from my bookshelf or one that someone gave me, and I simply input that I have the book as part of my sellers account with Amazon.com. When a person is looking to by that book new, and icon will pop up below the new price that says, “buy it used” for $x.

If I have the lowest price for the item, then someone will buy it. The money goes into my account immediately, I get an e-mail from Amazon and I take the book to the post office and mail. (The buyer pays for shipping too!)

When I get 2-3 items income deposited to my checking account I write a check and turn it in just like any other donation for the trip. Pretty cool, eh?

So, if you want to help us get to Northern Ireland this summer but you don’t have any cash-o-la but have a pile of unwanted books… put them in my office and I’ll list them! I promise that 100% of the $$$ I get from the booksale go directly to the fund. So far, I’ve deposited $33.33 and this weekend I’ll deposit about $25 more! It’s not much but every little bit helps.

Last night was a rockin’ Light Force. Every once in a while we manage to get it all together and have a solid night. We had at least 34 people…. It’s nice to be in the 30’s again. When the last SP left we sank as far as 18 but have steadily hovered in the 20’s. I don’t want this to be misread that I am a numbers guy and that my whole life depends on “how many” as opposed to “how good.” That’s not me at all, but having a solid number was icing on the cake.

I felt pretty good about my talk for the first time in forever. I just kept it real simple and talked took a spin off on Bruce Wilkinson’s “The 3 Chairs.” I know Kristen wasn’t 100% happy about my positive “different” twist on the cold chair but I imagine that her angst is caused more by her memories of Wilkinson’s sermon than the passage. The passage clearly does not imply negativity to “cold” in Revelation 3.

Jesus said, “I would rather your were hot or cold.” When thinking about a drink a cold drink is awful good on a hot day, but just in start contrast to a hot drink.

Whether or not my wife approved on every nuance, I could tell that students were tuned in. Several prayed with me at the end.

Nonetheless, while I arrived home last night with a lot of enthusiasm it was all sucked out by what Kristen was watching on TV when I came home. It’s sucks to have a great night and want to talk and your beloved is in the middle of watching a documentary on the holocaust. I mean, get real! (Don’t take that to mean we are insensitive about the holocaust… Both of us have studied it tons, I’m merely lamenting about the timing.) I just wanted someone to talk to and she was watching interview with German soldiers. Another case of “he wants vs. She wants.”

All in all, I think this was a good “bounce” Wednesday night as we head down deeper into Revelation.