Life on Snow Hill

Wow, it’s been nearly 3 weeks since I’ve posted anything! I’ve severely neglected my blog. It’s not like I don’t want to keep it up to date – I’ve actually been pretty busy.

One thing I’ve been working on is a social website for Christians. It is still in its infancy right now. I’m getting some help from a group, mostly from my church, to get things set up for it, select a name as well as the initial features the site should have. My goal is to have all of that finished before it goes live and is opened up to the rest of the ‘world’. Hopefully it will be ready within another couple of weeks. Stay tuned for an update.

This month has been Youth Month at our church. So far, I’ve had the privilege to preach twice. We’ve had two Youth Sundays, and I’ve preached both Sunday mornings. We also had Benjamin Cooley for the first one, and Jeremiah Cooley for the second. For those of you who don’t know them, they are twin brothers who are great young men that serve God. We also had Seth Stewart from Redemption Baptist Church. He is 13 years old and has announced his call to preach. They all 3 did a great job and preached messages that encouraged, strengthened and charged me.

I look forward to this Sunday, when Breaking Ground will be with us. They are a group of young men (The oldest is 26 I believe) who sing bluegrass Gospel music and preach. One of their wives also sings with the group. All of the guys preach, and preach well. I’m looking forward to all of it.

We’re also having a youth revival the week of March 1st through the 5th. Nick Sorrell and myself will be preaching that revival. We’re looking for the Lord to do some great things in all our hearts and lives.

So again, this has been a busy month, and it isn’t quite over yet. I’ll do my best to keep this blog updated a little better so that you, my loyal readers, will have something to read.

A week ago today, Becky and I were on our way home from church. The truck had been doing some weird stuff leading up to the day, and I was leaning more and more towards getting somewhere to trade it in ‘really soon’. Well, on the way home, it finally broke down on us. Turns out it was the differential gear – it just would just sit there and grind away when I put the truck in any forward gear.

So the decision was made for us. The next day, I had to take a day off work and we headed to Carmax in Knoxville. I’ve heard lots of good reports from people that have bought from there, and I knew I wasn’t getting a new vehicle, so that was my first choice.

We had the truck towed to the lot, and they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse (sarcasm). I didn’t get much out of the truck, and I still owed some on it. So I had to roll that over into the new loan for the new (to us) car.

We had looked around on the Carmax website for cars we’d be interested in. We had picked out an Altima and a Rendezvous to test drive. We both liked the Altima, but not so much the Rendezvous. We went inside to do some paperwork to see if we could get approved for a loan for that car. While we were talking, the dealer overheard Becky and I discussing gas mileage. He suggested the Prius.

I’ve never liked the way a Prius looked. I still don’t, honestly. But he convinced us to take a look at it. Becky got in and sat in the driver’s seat. She immediately fell in love. I got in and noticed right away that it wasn’t as small inside as it looks from the outside. So we decided to test drive it.

We both liked it. The price tag was a little bit higher than the Altima, but the gas saved would more than make up for the difference in cost. So we got approved for the loan and we drove it off the lot.

Since bringing it home, we’ve put about 500 miles on it, and so far, it’s averaging at right around 3 times as much gas mileage as I was getting in the truck! It’s not nearly as handy as a truck for moving things around, but it’s perfect to get me to and from work, and for any trips we might take.

Wow, where did the Summer go? It seems like just last week June bugs were flying all over my yard and I was trying to keep weeds out of the garden. I gave up on the weeds, by the way – they finally took over.

It’s nearing the end of September, and the weather is hinting at turning a little more cool. I’m finding myself surprisingly ready for cold weather. I usually dread it. But I’m looking forward to the fireplace being put to use again, and eating a nice hot bowl of chili while watching the Colts beat up on whoever their next victim happens to be.

I’m looking forward to working with the youth on the next Christmas program at church (We need to get rolling with that by the way!) and bringing in yet another new year. 2009 hasn’t quite gotten out of our grasp yet, but it’s quickly rolling on by. What will we do with the rest of this year?

It’s been a beautiful (but hot) last several days, and that has allowed Becky to get outside and work in her flower beds. I’ve done a little bit in the evenings after I’ve gotten home from work, but this week has worn me out. We’re short one at work, and it’s been one of the most busy weeks we’ve had in a long time.

Hopefully today when I get home from work I’ll get outside and cut down another tree to use for firewood. I’ve been needing to do that all Spring, and Spring has gotten away from me. I really want to try to have enough this coming Winter to last us all Winter long so we don’t have to run our electric heat any more than we have to.

There’s always work to be done in the garden. I’m actually kind of proud of it this year. Becky and I have been able to get out and keep it pretty clean from weeds and everything this year, so it looks much nicer than it did last year. We’re already getting some squash and zucchini out of it, and Becky has eaten a few cucumbers that have come in. Soon we’re going to be covered up by a lot of this stuff and we’ll be scrambling to get it canned and/or frozen.

Yard work never ends either. It seems like the yard was just mowed yesterday, and it needs it again. Hopefully I’ll get some time to take care of that this weekend sometime as well.

Yep, we’re staying busy. I mostly enjoy it though. I don’t enjoy being worn out from it, but I do enjoy the good sleep I get as a result.

Can you believe it’s already May, 2009?  It seems like just last week it was New Year’s, and we were thinking about what all we wanted to get accomplished this year. My WAIT program failed miserably because I wouldn’t stick with it. I haven’t stayed all that organized, either. I haven’t gotten any new firewood in a good while, either. It won’t have time to dry out by next Winter if I don’t get on the ball.

The faster time flies, the more things need to get done, and the less time you have to do it. Do you see a pattern here?

I suppose that the biggest reason I haven’t been able to get a lot accomplished lately is because it seems like it has rained non-stop. My garden is loving it, but I can’t give it any attention because if I try to walk through it, I’m up to my knees in mud.

My yard desperately needs to be mowed. I can’t, however, because, you guessed it – it’s raining! And the more rain it gets, the more (and faster) it grows.

Overall, I’m thankful for the rain. The last couple years were a little dry and the garden needed to be watered by hand. So far, there’s no need at all for that!

I’m looking forward to things drying out, though, so I can get back outside and take care of some work that really needs to be done.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been overwhelmed. Not in an “I’m so stressed out I can’t take it any more!” kind of way at all. Maybe it’s more of an “I’m so busy lately that I sleep much better at night!” situation. It’s true, actually – I’ve been getting such good, sound sleep lately. I just wish I could get more of it.

Things have been picking up at work, first of all. We have 9 servers that need to be rebuilt and reconfigured. These servers are what our virtual infrastructure runs on. “What’s that?” you may ask. I’m so glad you asked! In a nutshell, a virtual infrastructure is a set of servers and network configurations that run on other servers. This is a good thing, because on these 9 servers, we have over 100 virtual servers running. So rather than having over 100 physical, real servers sitting in our datacenter, we only have 9. But we still get the benefit of the power these 100 servers offer us.

At home, well, the weather is changing. Spring is here and grass is growing. Along with weeds. Flowers too. This means mowing, weed-eating (Gotta get that weed eater fixed!) and gardening. I’m honestly excited to start the garden again this year. It just needs to dry out long enough to be plowed and tilled really well so that I can get some seeds in the ground. Spring means it’s also time to start working on getting firewood for next Winter. I’ve blogged about that in the recent past, so I won’t say much other than that I’ve gotten a pretty good start, but there’s a lot more to do.

Lastly, but certainly not least, we’ve been busy at church. Becky and I are, as most of you already know, teaching the teenage Sunday School class. I’m also in charge of the youth choir. We’re also working towards getting a teen visitation program going, as well as other youth ministries. I’m not sure I knew exactly what I was in for when I became the Youth Director, but the Lord had it in His plan, and Becky and I have been reaping blessings from it already. We’re thankful the Lord is using us, and praying that He will continue to do so, doing our best to stay in His will. These youth are a great bunch to work with. Our prayer is that they’ll have such a desire for God that we’ll be the ones trying to keep up with them!

In the same spirit of my last post, Becky and I have been getting some things done around the house to prepare for Spring, and even next Winter! Becky has been doing quite a bit in the house getting things more organized and all that kind of thing, while I’ve been outside getting ready for next Winter.

In my last post I talked about how hard I worked for about 3 hours cutting and splitting firewood. Well, yesterday I did some more work with firewood. How exciting.

First of all, I woke up feeling like garbage. I really felt worthless, no joke. I was sick at my stomach, my head was all clogged up and I was still sore from the work I’d done on Saturday. Ashamedly I stayed in bed until 12:30 yesterday afternoon.

So once I woke up and got a little something to eat, I got a little strength and decided to do something useful. Last year I built a little shed on the end of the house to keep a decent amount of firewood closer to the house so we wouldn’t have to go halfway through the back yard to bring another load of it inside in freezing temperatures. I finally got the shingles put on it yesterday. I still need to trim the edges, but at least the rain won’t leak through the roof on it now.

I did a few other small things around the house after that, but nothing major until the evening. I used my dull chainsaw to cut down a very big oak tree to be cut up for firewood. It fell across the road, which was the plan, but it also tore up my yard in the process. It shouldn’t be too bad to fix up.

We (my dad and I) had to cut the tree in half for his tractor to be able to pull it on up into my yard. My goal this evening is to get my chainsaw sharpened and at least get started on cutting the tree up – I’ll probably focus on the top half for now so that I can avoid splitting more for now. Maybe this weekend I can do some more of that if it stays dry enough outside.

So yes, I’ve been taking advantage of this warm weather. It’s supposed to turn cool again this week, but at least it won’t be freezing outside the whole time. I’m ready for Spring to announce itself boldly and get things rolling.

Today was the first day I’ve really had in a while to get things done around the house that I’ve been needing to do.  Our church has been in revival for the past 2 weeks, which has been great.  The Lord has been working in my heart, as well as many others in the church.  Things around the house, though, have suffered.  I’m fine with that, I’m just saying why things have piled up.

The task I focused on today, for as long as I could, was to work on getting some firewood cut up and split.  There was a log in my yard that had been cut down at the beginning of Winter sometime, but I had never done anything with it until today.

So I broke out the dull chainsaw and whittled away at the log with it.  I finally got it cut up into several pieces and went to work splitting it.  I probably worked for about 3 hours on the whole thing.  My body isn’t used to hard manual labor, so that’s about all I could handle for today.

Oh!  I can’t forget to add this.  Someone told me recently that I needed more pictures here on my blog (you know who you are).  So I thought I’d add a boring picture to represent my boring day.  What is stacked is what I worked on today. What you can see in the background is what I still need to do something with.  I’ll split what I can, but the huge knots in some of them are more than I usually feel like dealing with.

It’s been nearly two weeks since I’ve blogged about anything. After thinking about it for nearly two weeks, I’m still not sure if it’s because I’ve been lazy, or if it’s because I haven’t had anything to write about. Honestly it’s probably a little of both.

Christmas is coming up really soon, so Becky and I (mostly Becky) have been doing as much Christmas shopping as we can. I’ve noticed that as I get older, Christmas gets here faster and faster. When I was a kid, it took forever to get here! Becky and I are also heading up the Christmas play at church this year, so that has been an added, but welcome challenge as well. We’ve really enjoyed working with the youth and hope to be able to do more with them in the future.

I guess all of the Christmas preparations are what has been keeping us busy, but we’re also having to take care of all of the normal day-to-day stuff at the same time. Last year I think I let all of that turn me into sort of a Scrooge – just ask Becky..she’ll be honest with you. I’m determined not to let that happen this year though. I’m trying to stay full of Christmas cheer. See?!

Something else that’s cool is that this entire post has been written on my iPhone. This is the best gadget I’ve ever owned, and probably the most useful as well.

This is the time that everyone carves up a turkey and visits with family.  It’s a great time of year.  We all usually eat way too much, and sit in front of the TV way too much watching football.  We enjoy our day, and enjoy being with our family, but we forget what the day itself is all about.

It’s not about family, football or turkey.  (I have a peeve about people calling Thanksgiving ‘turkey day’, by the way – we can have turkey any day of the year.)  It’s about being thankful.  But not just about being thankful – being thankful to God.  That’s why the day was set aside as a holiday in the first place – to give thanks to God.

• I thank God for my family, and I will be spending time with them during this holiday.
• I thank God for my church – He has richly blessed my life I believe as a direct result of following His leadership.
• I thank God for my health.  I don’t always feel that great, and I’ve been getting headaches lately (I need to get off caffeine), but there are people all throughout the world in much, much worse shape than I’m in.  Actually, I don’t have to look far at all to find someone in worse shape than me.
• Last, but definitely not least, I thank God for my wife.  We’ve only been married for 3 1/2 years, but she’s stuck with me during times I’ve been a real grouch, and any woman that can do that is truly great.

I could go on all day, but these are the things that are the most important to me.  God has richly blessed me, and I fail to thank Him as I should.