Well, Christmas is over and the New Year is just around the corner. Time this year has flown. They say as you get older it gets faster. So far I’ve found that to be true. I hate to think what it’ll be like when I turn 40 or 50!
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.
It’s kinda funny how any time the weather man mentions a possible snow shower, everybody runs to the grocery store to get some bread and milk. Last weekend was no exception.
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.
So it’s been forever since I’ve written anything. I’ve been spending my time working (Had a huge outage at work the week before Thanksgiving), at church, studying, and sleeping. I feel like I’m finally able to breathe for a little bit.
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.
Becky and I went camping with Kristan, Scott and all the boys a couple of weeks ago. It was a lot of fun! Here’s a short video compilation that summarizes pretty well how things went.
We’ve all seen them, or at least heard about them. Some scammer sends out spam emails to every imaginable address saying he has inherited millions of dollars, but it is only accessible if it goes through a bank in the US. For your willingness to help, you’ll be given a large percentage of said inheritance. All they need is your bank account number and personal information to complete the transaction.
I always promised myself that if I was ever presented with the opportunity to have some fun with one of these scammers I would. Replying to one of those emails, though, would raise red flags with them and they’d just move on.
But yesterday, I had my chance. I’m publicly listed on Skype, and I get spam messages once in a while. Yesterday was one of those times I got a scammer sending me spam on Skype’s instant messaging service. I was promised a large sum of money if I would provide the means to transfer the inheritance.
I replied to the message asking the sender if he would call me to discuss the details and provided the phone number. He asked me if it was my mobile number, to which I replied it was a land line. He asked again would I help, and my reply was to just give me a call.
Of course, the number I provided was to the FBI headquarters in Washington, DC. Maybe next time I’ll be brave enough to have them call me directly and I can get some information to send to the FBI myself…who knows. That was enough fun for my day though.
For a youth revival we just concluded last night, we had a contest among the youth to see who could bring the most visitors. The reward? Yes, you guessed it – the winner gets to throw a pie in my face. Bro. Jonathan Davis got in on it too.
I just ran across this video of a Democratic county supervisor in Milwaukee wanting to boycott Arizona for their measures against illegal aliens crossing the US border into their state. I have to say, the guy that interrupted her handled things quite well. I’d have brought out a map and sat it in front of her to quiet her.
My nephew, Braden, had his birthday party at Mom & Dad’s this evening. It was a fun family get-together. My dad somehow wound up on one of those razor scooters racing against Daniel…
We bought Braden an RC boat, and he was dying to take it out to the pond to try it out. He was pretty excited.
It’s always fun to get to spend some time together with family. It made for a relaxing evening, even though the bugs were out like crazy. Oh, and it was hot and humid.
This week we’ve been having Vacation Bible School at Fellowship Baptist Church. VBS is always a fun time – I always loved it growing up. It always seemed to be the most fun way to learn about the Word of God.
Now that I’m grown (mostly!) I enjoy it as a teacher. Let me back up just a bit. I teach the teens in Sunday School at church. I always try to make it as fun as I can, but there’s just a different atmosphere at VBS. We enjoy other activities like crafts and games during VBS, but even during lesson times it seems more fun. As a teacher, it’s great to see the interest the students show in learning about God.
Probably my favorite thing about it all is that there is a big crowd of young people excited about what they’re doing, and it’s all centered around the church. There’s no better place to be!
