The Monkey Exhibit

I haven’t seen any loot lists this year. People either have better things to post about, or they are slacking off from their blogs as I have been for a while now. However, I will now regale you with my amazing memory of what I got for Christmas.

Ted Dekker’s Green
Ted Dekker and Erin Healy’s Burn
Mark Schultz’s Come Alive
Jeremy Camp’s Speaking Louder Than Before
Warren Barfield’s Worth Fighting For
Big Daddy Weave’s Christ is Come
Sport Coat
T-shirt
Bacon Salt
Tiger calendar
Munchkin card game
Socks
Starburst

I was on vacation from the time I left work on Christmas Eve until the morning of January 4th. In an effort to help me remember what went on during vacation, I thought I’d document daily highlights here. Apparently this is becoming somewhat like a diary.

12/24/09 – Went to my mother’s for her birthday and to swap Christmas gifts.

12/25/09 – Christmas at home. Then the wife’s dad and sister came over for gifts and lunch. Then to her mom’s house for gifts, and then to her aunt’s house with my wife’s entire family.

12/26/09 – We stayed inside all day. What a happy Saturday!

12/27/09 – Church in the morning, and then the Doughtys came a day early to stay with us! We went to Asian Palace II. It’s not all that.

12/28/09 – Got together with friends to have a prime rib dinner (delicious!), exchange gifts, and play a board game.

12/29/09 – I’m not sure we left the house for anything…the Doughtys were still here, though!

12/30/09 – The Doughtys left. We went to church that night. Then we drove to my wife’s work to look at the Christmas picture she painted on the window there.

12/31/09 – Lunch with my father and half-brother (on his side). It was great to catch up and get to know them a bit better. We stayed up until midnight, logging on to the computer just in time to watch the ball drop in New York.

1/1/10 – We didn’t leave the house. A great New Year’s Day. There was much computer time and much reading time. That’s my idea of a great day.

1/2/10 – We went to lunch with my mother and went grocery shopping, despite the snow storm that has been raging for two days, because we needed to get out of the house. Apparently the wife goes a little stir crazy sometimes.

1/3/10 – Another day without leaving the house. I think life is grand.

See, here’s the beauty of plans instead of resolutions. Nobody bats an eye when you change your plans. If you change your resolutions, though, you essentially break your original ones. Here are some ideas I’ve come up with:

What if I was more observably affectionate toward everyone, instead of just my wife and my God? Obviously not everyone in the same way, but what if I just planned on being more kind as a whole? I was looking through my paltry amounts of posts from last year and I saw that I was becoming a softy, at least toward my family. Maybe I could work on that in all of my relationships. We’ll see.

Maybe I could set a goal on the number of books I want to read a month, and then allow myself to read my comics once I’ve reached that goal? Four books a month is achievable. It would let me achieve my plan of reading more books than the last two years, and it would often give me some time at the end of the month to immerse myself in the comics I’m craving to re-read.

There. We’ll see how these work.

Later.

Now is the time of year when people are posting their resolutions. I do not use the term ‘resolution’ unless it is something I truly resolve to do, something I will not fail at, something at the foremost of my thoughts at all times.

No, instead of resolutions, I will share my plans for the new year. These are goals, sure, but they are less stringently enforced or sought after than resolutions. I will not make 90 day action plans to meet these goals, nor will I obsess about them. These are things I plan to do in the new year:

I plan to display more observable and outward affection to my wife. The original thought was to love my wife more this year, but that hardly seems an observable goal. I want to move beyond any inward build up of love and onto an outward manifestation.

I plan to display more observable and outward affection to my God. Again, to say I will love God more this year is great, and should be a goal of everyone for every year, however I want this to be noticeable to an observer. Not for my sake, naturally, but to display that there are people in this world who still care about him, to be a light, using terminology Christendom is familiar with.

I plan to read more books. This is somewhat of an arbitrary plan, as one could actually read fewer books containing more pages and end up having read more than previous years. However, all things averaging out in the end, I would like to get back into the book reading habit. I have spent much time over the past few months re-reading some of my comic books. It was (and is) a yearning inside me to re-read them until I’m caught up again with the monthly storyline. However, I plan to put this aside to get back into a regular book reading routine.

I plan to lose weight. Seriously, I got on the scales a few days ago and it went up higher than ever before in my life. I didn’t stop at my arbitrary, self-imposed maximum. No, it kept going almost 10 lbs higher. It was horrible. I have been pigging out for over a week now. Luckily most of the junk food is gone, and my wife has the same plan. We’ll lose weight, and we’ll do it with diet and exercise. That means getting back to a regular gym schedule as well.

I plan to post to my website more often. If I don’t, then I’ll start to wonder why I keep it, which would be completely understandable. I spend so much time as a taker, reading other people’s blogs and following people on Facebook and Twitter. I want to be a giver. At one point I fancied myself as somewhat of a writer. I’d like to get back to that. We’ll see what happens.

Those are my largest plans for the year. I have other minor goals, like being more fiscally responsible, catching up on painting some miniatures (for a board game I haven’t played in months, unfortunately), catching up on digitalizing my pictures, and some other catching up I can’t think of now. I don’t want to play catch-up any more. So, let’s see how this all goes.

Later.

It even took longer to descend through the cloud cover.

Once we had made it underneath the overcast sky, Dallas spread out before us as far as the eye could see. It was dark out, so what I actually saw was lights. The ground was flat, and out my window lights spread all the way to the horizon. Looking across the aisle and out the other window, I saw the same sight. Dallas was huge.

From the airport we rode a bus to the rental car station. I am used to rental car stations being located inside the airport. This trip was 10 – 15 min of nonstop travel away from the airport. The rental station alone was a large building full of unused space.

I could get used to the great wide open.

I’m trying to tell everyone in pretty much every online venue I have.

I have a cousin getting married in Dallas. I’ve been to Austin, TX for a week…in years gone by…and I loved it. When my mother asked if I wanted to join in the party heading down, I sure did! The bad part is that it is relatively expensive (I thought I had money to blow at the time she asked) and I have to leave my wife behind. She’s in the middle of a school semester and has to work clinical hours while we’re gone.

Other than that, I expect to love it. I think I’d make a good Texan. Let me head south and mess with Texas and we’ll all find out.

I’m helping a friend run the Teen Chess Club at the Bangor Public Library. The club will meet every Thursday. The first session is this week, 10/1/09, from 5:30 – 7:30.

I hope it’s not just me and him playing chess against each other…

Josiah stood outside the convenience store, sucking on a Tootsie Pop while his trenchant flapped in the breeze. A desperate looking man headed toward the establishment door, eyes darting. Josiah deliberately kept his face forward and his eyes looking in a different direction. He watched the man from his peripheral vision. The crazed man entered the store. Josiah waited a few heartbeats and followed.

The store was empty, and the desperate man had wasted no time pulling a gun on the clerk. Josiah caused the robber to turn toward the door. “Don’t move, pal.”
“Hey, tough guy, don’t point that thing at me unless you intend to use it.” Josiah flicked his right wrist and a knife appeared. The robber fired the gun.

Josiah threw the knife with his right hand, while bringing his left arm in front of his chest where the gunman had been pointing. It stung like mad, but the metal plate in Josiah’s forearm deflected the gunman’s bullet. On the other hand, Josiah’s throwing knife had knocked the gun out of the man’s hand before he could get off a second shot. The robber gaped at Josiah, and then he looked for the gun. The weapon had fallen behind the counter.

The robber looked at the gun and looked at the clerk. The clerk was scared, not moving. The robber looked back toward Josiah, but he was gone.

Josiah shoved a display of two liter bottles over upon the robber. The man fell, hitting his head on the counter. Josiah plucked his throwing knife out from under the bottles. “Sorry about the soda. Maybe you can return it for credit.” Sirens began a couple of blocks away. “He’ll be out until the police you called get here. I wouldn’t touch that gun if I was you.” Josiah walked to the back of the store and out the delivery exit.

File Under: Christian – Fiction – Law

I found Deeper Water to be an unexpectedly interesting book about a young woman from a dedicated Christian home. She is a law student going to the big city for an internship. Since she’s a conservative Christian from a small town, life gets very different for her.

This book captured my interest in its conservative Christian focus. The stands that the family takes are some of the same ones that I have been raised on. Also, I’m occasionally interested in law-based books, but some get too technical for me to care to follow. (I’m a bit challenged, what can I say?) This book was easy to follow, as the technical aspects took a back seat to the story.

Some things that surprised me about the main character, though, were personality quirks. For the beliefs/personality setup we were given on the main character, I found her to be a bit snippy at times. Also, she can be rather evasive with the truth. These are qualities I would not expect, but ones we were shown right from the beginning, so I can’t really say they didn’t fit the character.

I can identify with her struggles both with her everyday faith and with her interaction with the big city. The best thing I can say about the book is not that it is great fiction but that it exceeded my expectations. (I guess Bryan would call that a cannarf.)

Yeah, so I’m doing more things with my family. Can I tell you that it’s mostly eating out? This is getting expensive! My dining out monthly expenses have increased since June.

May: $138.55
June: $211.21
July: $240.49
Aug: $265.03 (so far!)

I’m going to need a grant soon to be able to keep up my family friendly ways. Either that or go back to being a hermit.

I completed my project of the week on Wednesday last week. Midweek church service was unexpectedly canceled due to a death. I had the night free, and I went for it. I’m still sorting through little slips of paper and notes I have written myself, but the organizing and the polishing of the desk is a success. Now to keep plugging at the rest…

It’s sad to officially term this a project, but I really need to get the other 2/3 of my desk clean. It hasn’t happened just saying I need to do it, so now it’s a project. I have until Saturday night. I’d better stop typing and go…

I left the test feeling pretty good with the grades that immediately popped up. Once I received my official grades in the mail yesterday, though, I was little disappointed. I had more fun on the writing section, so I would have thought I’d done better.

Verbal Score: 670, % Below: 95

Quantitative Score: 700, % Below: 71

Analytical Writing Score: 4.5, % Below: 63

I guess I shouldn’t complain since the test went over a lot of information I knew back in high school but had long since forgotten. And I only spend a couple weeks before hand, here and there, refreshing myself. It’s the story of my life. I did OK, but could have done better if I’d practiced more.

We’ll see where this all leads me, if anywhere.

I have actually been spending a lot of time with my family for the past few months. This is a change for me.

Normally I’m pretty covetous of my free time. I also don’t want to seem pretentious to spend time with people that I haven’t kept up with very well thus far in life. Things can change, though.

I’ve seen my cousin Dave a lot more lately than before, a trend that was long overdue. I’ve seen his son, and boy didn’t the cameras appear out of nowhere the time I held him! For someone pretty darn indifferent to, if not disliking of, babies, that is a big step.

I have the text announcing the arrival of another cousin’s child on the first of this month, plus I called my mother to talk about it.

I asked my mother and sister out to dinner for absolutely no reason at all except just to have dinner with them.

I still like my free time, and I find that I have far too little of it these days. However, I don’t find the time spent with my family to be wasted time. Who knows…it’s probably time for me to grow.

This morning’s victuals are indeed quite more robust than to what I am used. A cold, hard-boiled egg begins the hearty romp through my palate, taken from it’s refuge where it previously awaited becoming salad fixings. There is no forgiveness as I steal it from it’s temporary home and other hard-boiled companion to digest it whole, without drink, as only a man can do.

The bacon is left over from another time and place, but there is enough hiding in the back of the fridge for me to heat up and devour, noisily lapping splattered grease from my face and fingers.

Lastly we have toast rounding out the hearty triumvirate. One masculine piece delicately covered in a seducing layer of the Queen’s own strawberry jam, while the other piece proudly bears Skippy peanut butter aloft to it gastric doom.

There are some songs in my church experiences that I will have nothing to do with. Some of these songs you would want to stay away from, too, if you actually stopped to consider the merit of the lyrics compared with Biblical truth. I want to look at one of these songs now and break down the reasons I don’t think it has any merit.

“I went to the enemy’s camp/And I took back what he stole from me…” –Richard Black

First of all, is there an enemy’s camp? Is there a place where you could walk up to that has fallen angels sitting around campfires cooking hotdogs and marshmallows while telling stories of the humans they stole stuff from? Or, maybe the camp has a large pavilion in the middle where Lucifer has a map of the world laid out on a table, with arrows and Xs signifying his next big attack.

I don’t see any support for a fallen angel “camp” in the Bible.

Secondly (and I did rearrange some points so they don’t follow the same order as the song), the enemy didn’t steal anything from you; you let it slip. Be a mature adult and admit the responsibility that belongs to you. Your walk with God is not something that can be stolen. You are the one, and the only one, who has control of it.

Think about your Bible. Was it stolen? No, it’s right there on your nightstand or on your bookshelf collecting dust. Maybe you think your Bible reading time was stolen. Who has control of what you do with your time?

The same point goes for prayer. Prayer is not even a physical item which can be stolen, like your Bible is. As long as you have lips, as long as you have a tongue, and, barring those, as long as you have a mind capable of thought, you can pray to your God. Take the time to do it. It’s more important than a show you might watch, or another book you might read, or a website you might visit, even if the show and the book and the website are all about God.

Lastly, and most importantly, even if there was a camp, you wouldn’t have to go there to get your spirituality back. If you lost your Bible reading discipline, you start where you are, right now, instead of reading this, you pick up your Bible and you start reading. If you’ve let your life of prayer slip, you can start back up right now. These are just a couple examples of things that parishioners will think about when they sing this song. As I said, though, these are things you do not have to storm a theoretical enemy camp for.

This is an important point. Maybe some people haven’t gotten these disciplines back in their life because they don’t dare to go “to the enemy’s camp.” Usually people that storm enemy camps are brave, or specially trained, or have a secret up their sleeve. Maybe you don’t feel like you have what it takes to face the enemy and retrieve the spiritual things you have lost from your life. You don’t have go anywhere. Retrieving your spiritual life starts right where you are right now. You will find this out when you pick up your Bible and start reading it again.

The world has enough fantasy and fiction to sustain it until the end of days. Don’t bring fiction into your spiritual life. Let your songs, your conversation, and, above all, your relationship with God be based in reality and truth.

My sister’s dog got into my mother’s Super PoliGrip the other day. (It’s for her crown…really)

Before I get into that, did you know that PoliGrip has “the unique patented Ooze-Control Tip®?” Why does that not sound inviting? I know I should be sold on that fact alone, but I find myself oddly repulsed instead.

Ooze.

Anyway, the dog getting into the PoliGrip got my thinking: What if the dog’s jaw had hardened together? Would you have to take the dog to the vet to chisel the teeth apart? Or, would the vet have to yank the teeth? Would the dog then get doggie dentures?

I can see a dog trying to bark at the mailman when suddenly its teeth pop out. “Woof, woof!” *whump* “Whimper, whimper…”

At least it might control the dog’s ooze…

I’m noticing a trend recently with reading books and hearing stories about good people turning bad one innocent-seeming choice at a time. It makes me think that I should stop and look back at myself.

I wouldn’t say I’ve made any deliberately bad choices lately. But where have I ended up, if I look at the result of all my innocent choices over the past months or years? Can I see a trend? If I look at my path objectively, do I say “holy cow, how did I get here?” Or am I OK?

Choices aren’t always as innocuous as they seem. It pays to sit down before making a decision and ask where this choice will lead you. As for me, I don’t think I have to worry about ending up like the characters in these recent stories. But, I do need to concentrate more on the decisions I make. I need to keep the bigger picture in mind.

It’s that time of the year again. Time to drive off to another state and enjoy a week of shopping, exploring, and relaxation. This time we’re going to Rhode Island. My family went there recently and talked it up pretty good. We are at a resort with an indoor/outdoor pool, hot tubs, oceanview, and all the stuff that makes a week off relaxing.

I don’t know if I’ll exactly have a daily update like last year. Depends on how much the weather keeps us inside, I suppose. There are beaches and mansion tours. Hopefully enough to keep us busy for the 5 nights we’re gone.

I’m looking forward to it like I do every year. We’ve got to cram our usual 7 night experience into 5, though. So hold on to your hats, we could be in for a wild ride!

Later!

(As a side note, I’ve had some major writer’s block for…probably well over a month now. Hopefully a little vacation and a little more free time, plus a new internet-capable cell phone can bring me out of my funk. I hope so, even if you’re apathetic!)

I’m not very productive here at home.

I spend a lot of time online. Even the time I spend online isn’t exactly productive. Sure, keeping up with friends and relatives is nice, and reading blogs can be relaxing, but I’m not producing much. Consider this website right here. Not much gets posted here anymore. I’m spread out so thin that I do mostly reading these days instead of writing. I’m not all that happy about this fact.

Not only has my writing suffered, but my productivity around the house has gone down. I don’t keep up with tidying, cleaning, or any kind of outdoor activities as I would like. I feel positively lazy these days.

In light of all this, I’m signing off now to go put the dishes away. Here’s to hoping I change things around a bit.