Enough with the corny jokes… In a lot of ways, I am glad to see 2011 become history. There were a lot of hard times in 2011, and I’m not just talking in generalities. Several of our church members have had a really, really rough year. I know that new year’s day is just like any other day in the grand scheme of things, but we humans like to think of it as a fresh start. A time to reflect on the past for a bit, then to make it into a new start.

I do pray, for all of you, as Moses did:

The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:

The Lord make His face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:

The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.

Dad helped get it up into my yard – he pulled it with the tractor. He was able to pull the whole thing into the yard, but once it got on the softer ground it needed to be cut in 3 pieces before he could get it to where I needed it so I could cut it up, split and stack it.

Becky and I worked on that for a little while last night after I got home. I haven’t done much manual labor over the Winter – I’m not used to it at all! Maybe after I work on firewood for a few weeks I’ll get into a little bit better shape.

I’m about to make an admission now about something stupid I’ve done, and have learned a lesson the hard (and expensive!) way. Last year, I neglected to check/change the oil in my riding mower. Some of you already see where this is going. Yep, it finally caught up with me and the motor seized on me. I added some oil back in and had to force the motor by hand to turn some so I could work the oil back in and get it started again.

I mowed the yard a couple of times without incident after that. But that 3rd time it really caught up with me. I’m not a motor-head, so I don’t know technically what happened, but I can say all the insides started making a racket and something let go. There’s a hole in the side of the motor about the size of a golf ball.

We only needed to mow one more time after that, so we borrowed Mom & Dad’s riding mower. Wouldn’t you know, one of the belts broke. So we gave up on mowing the rest of the yard and decided to make another go of it this Spring.

When I ruined the motor in my mower, I looked online to see how much it was going to hurt my wallet to replace it. All of the prices I found were pushing $1,000 by the time I paid shipping & taxes. Once I noticed the weather was warming up, I remembered I needed to do something about our yard. I looked online again and found a motor for roughly $630 shipped. It’s on its way to my house now. Hopefully I can get it changed this weekend and actually get my yard mowed.

So yes, I’ve learned a lesson. I’m learning overall to be more disciplined about different things, whether it be finances, maintenance or whatever. I’m finding it to be less stressful and less expensive.

I’ve had last Friday through Monday off from work. I worked yesterday, and I’m off again today. I only have to work a half day tomorrow, then I’m off again until Monday. Becky and I are thinking of making a trip to Dollywood before our season passes expire. We’ve been wanting to go for the Christmas season there, but have been waaay too busy.

After these last few things to do with my time off, things should begin to get back to normal for us. Working every day, taking care of things around the house that have been neglected for the entire month of December, and everything else that goes along with normal life.

Now is the time of year that people are thinking about New Year’s resolutions. I’m not much for those really, but I do try to set some goals. This year I had a goal I failed miserably at – posting a daily verse either on this blog or as my twitter status. I’m rededicating myself to that goal. I’m also going to do my best to slow things down a little. Every time somebody asks how I’m doing, my response usually has something to do with being too busy. I need for that to change. I’ll probably expand on these thoughts on my other blog in the next few days, so stay tuned for that.

For now, Becky and I are going to enjoy the last few days I have off. Maybe I can sneak a football game or two in while I’m at it.

Saturday evening was nothing but rain, but that’s significant because it washed off all the treatment that had been put on the roads before hand. When it turned to snow early Sunday morning, it began sticking to the road. At first it wasn’t bad, as it was just a dry, powdery layer that blew off the road as soon as you drove over it. Later Sunday afternoon, though, it started snowing harder and sticking (and staying) on the roads.

On the way home from church, one family wrecked in their driveway, nearly crashing into a pond. Another family began sliding on the road and pulled over to call for help from a family member with a 4WD vehicle. Another young man was heading home and went into the ditch avoiding a pile-up. I haven’t heard how bad the actual damage to the vehicles was, but thankfully no one was hurt.

Becky and I made it home safely Sunday night, sliding only a little while we drove up the steep part of Snow Hill. Since then, we’ve been kinda stuck here. Our little road has only gotten worse. It did melt off some while the sun was out yesterday, but it refroze when the sun went down. With a low of around 10 overnight, there was no chance of it clearing off.

Hopefully today the sun will shine some more and melt some more snow as well as dry it off so we can get out tomorrow.

My ‘working’ includes things outside of my normal job. I recently revamped the church website. I personally think it looks a lot better (But I’m a bit biased.. I did the last one, too, however). I’d love any feedback any of you would be willing to give. I am planning on adding a guestbook back to the site, as well as adding all of the audio sermons back to it, plus some special singing at the church.

Another thing I spent quite a bit of time on was moving all my websites to a ‘real’ host. Up until yesterday, all of my sites were being hosted on a server I have in my house, all running on a DSL internet connection. Needless to say, it was a little slow, especially if more than one person was on at a time. I have this blog, a more ‘serious’ blog, a tech blog, a Facebook-type site for Christians, and a couple of test sites I’m working on for others. They don’t generate all that much traffic, but I was ready to free my home DSL from the extra traffic. I also wanted to save some money. Yes, I’m paying for the web hosting, but I can shut off that server at home now which should save me at least as much (likely more) on my power bill. I’m looking forward to that.

A little while back, I also procured an out-of-warranty Google mini appliance with a bad hard drive. I have a few drives lying around at home, so I slapped one in there and built it to be used as my phone soft-switch. Yes, I’m so geeky that my phones run through a computer. The little appliance is about the size of a medium pizza box from Pizza Hut, replacing a more standard-sized computer that happened to die during a power outage at home recently.

So that’s a lot of what’s been taking up my time recently. We’re also gearing up for the Christmas play at church, so that’ll be taking even more time. I’ll come back up for more air in January.

The first thing I did was get the tiller and run it through the whole garden. It was beginning to look like part of the yard with all the grass..er..weeds growing in it. That by itself cleaned things up nicely.

I had 14 healthy tomato plants, plus one more that was really thirsty. I got those in the ground. We’re not planting quite as many things this year, so I had some extra room for tomatoes. I left extra space between the plants so it would be easier to get around them all once they start bearing.

I also got 4 each of some bell pepper and jalapeño pepper plants. Those all looked good except for one..it was a little thirsty as well.

I had wanted to plant some gourds, but never got any seeds from them last year. Well, where they were growing last year, some more started to come up. So I moved some of those plants to another part of the garden.

The same thing happened with cucumbers. We bought some seeds this year, but some of them didn’t come up very well. Some of the old cucumbers from last year started growing again, so I moved those plants to the cucumber row.

I planted some beans that a family in our church gave us – Turkey Craw. Everybody seems to like them pretty well, so we thought we’d give them a try.

I also had to replant the okra. I saved some seeds from a few pods last year, but those never came up.

It was a nice evening to work, and a great time to get it finished. We got some good rain last night, and the thirsty tomato and pepper plants revived and looked strong.

You can’t see much yet, but here is the garden as of this morning. (Click to enlarge)

Monday evening when I came home from work, Becky and I set to work in the garden. First, one little bit of something funny. We let the garden go last year. We didn’t get near as much out of it as we should have. It got all grown up with weeds so that we couldn’t do anything at all toward the end of the growing season. Onions are hearty little plants. Before anything else started doing anything, whether it was grass, flowers, trees – you name it – we had onions in our garden from last year. We have two perfect rows already. Sweet! One less thing to have to worry about planting this year!

So I got the tiller out on Monday and worked up the ground a little more where we’d be planting. We put out okra, corn, cucumbers, carrots, squash and watermelon. We still need to put out some green beans, peppers and tomatoes.

Now I’ll be outside every day checking to see which seeds have sprouted first. Then we get to work hard to keep weeds out of it this year. I’m determined not to lose it this time!

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.

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.