It's Snowing!

It is bitterly cold this week with the highs only getting up to about 20 degrees. Factor in the wind chill and it's feels like well below that. About 1:45pm today, we had a fire alarm here in the building and we all had to go outside. It was snowing! I guess there was somewhat of a real threat as firetrucks came and we were stuck outside for almost 30 minutes... in the cold... in the snow... ugh! I fixed myself some hot chocolate when we finally got to come back in. :-)

Last Friday night (26th), my parents came down to help celebrate my birthday. We all had pizza I got to open a few more gifts. One was the Cars movie based video game (which I think my kids enjoy more than me - ha!). They also tried to get me the Star Trek - The Animated Series DVD set, but couldn't find it anywhere, so they just gave me some cash to go find it myself..... Which I did online. :-)

Yesterday (30th), I went and picked up the newly released movie, "Facing the Giants." It was produced by a church down in Albany, GA and they did a fantastic job. I've also been trying to find a new cordless phone battery to no avail. None of the stores here in town have it and when I checked out Radio Shack's website, they have it where you can get it online only, but it was out of stock! AHH! I did find it on Amazon.com, but just haven't got around to ordering it yet.

Oh yeah! Today is pay-day too! Oh yeah! :-)

Blessings!

Happy Birthday to Me

Another birthday has come around. Wow! I'm 42 today... It's very hard for me to believe I'm this old. At least I don't feel old. Ha! It's basically just a normal day for me so far. I had to get up at my normal time, eat breakfast, come to work and sit here at my desk all day. But my wife is cooking up a special dinner for tonight, bless her heart! I have received birthday wishes from family and friends which is very nice too. My parents are coming to visit tomorrow night for dinner to celebrate, so that will be fun too.

On a sad note, the receptionist at our church, JoAn, passed away Monday (22nd) morning. She was 76 years young and had been working at the church for 18 years. She always had a smile on her face and was full of joy. She will be sadly missed, but we're comforted to know she is in the arms of Jesus now.

Hey, my college basketball team FINALLY won a conference game last night after losing four straight games.... Maybe there is hope! :-)

Blessings!

Welcome to the New Ice Age

Starting Last Friday evening (12th) a weather front passed through dumping an ice storm all over the area stretching over multiple states. Wave two was suppose to hit Saturday night, but all we got was a bunch of rain. Sunday it snowed (just flurries). Now we have frigid temps. Some areas are still without power, but we were blessed and never lost power. The fireplace was nice to help warm the house too. Thankfully my wife had gone grocery shopping last Thursday to stock up before the storm hit.

Here at work, we were to install a new mainframe CPU on Sunday morning. The data center boss was watching the weather closely and would call it off by Saturday night if he had to. The call never came, so I had to venture out Sunday morning into work to do my part. The main roads weren't too bad, but in my neighborhood, I had to take it very slow.

I had Monday off due to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, so at least the CPU install didn't ruin my whole weekend. I'm taking off this Friday to use up my comp time from the weekend. We were able to get out Monday and do a little shopping, but the temps started dropping fast by noontime, so we headed back home.

I've been reading the Martyr's Song trilogy by Ted Dekker. I just finished the second book, When Heaven Weeps. Dekker's books are very engaging and hard to put down. I strongly suggest getting one of his books to read.

I had a church board meeting last night and then we have regular church services tonight. Services were cancelled last Sunday (14th) due mainly to the church parking lot being a solid sheet of ice. I guess we could have all gone ice skating!

My birthday is next week! AAHH! :-)

Blessings!

Back to Work

I took off from work the days between Christmas and New Year's, so getting back to work on Tuesday, January 2nd was pretty hard. You get used to staying up late, sleeping in a little and stuff like that makes it really hard when you have to get up early again. My son didn't have to go back to school until Wed., Jan. 3rd, so I didn't have to get up quite as early on Tuesday, but it wasn't the most favorite thing to do at the moment. :-)

I got back to work where tons of email (mostly spam) was awaiting me. Took me most of the day to just catch up with everything.

Ex-President Gerald R. Ford passed away last week and so there has been a lot of stuff going on with the funerals, etc. We thought we might get Tuesday (2nd) off, but no such luck. We did get the day off for Ronald Regan's funeral, but I guess since we just had a day off for New Year's, the Governor decided against it. Also, ex-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was hanged last week as well. I know for sure we wouldn't get the day off for that one. :-)

Everything is about back to normal again I guess. All the Christmas decorations are down and put away for another year. My son's Christmas break from school is over and we're all back at the grind.

My birthday is coming up later this month though... :-)

Blessings!

2006 Year End Wrapup

2006 is all but gone. It has been a pretty good year overall. We had a nice Christmas Eve service at church and afterwards our little family went out to eat at Country Kitchen which was one of only a few places open that night. They were pretty busy, and understaffed, and it took forever to get our food. We found out later from the waitress that the cooks lost our ticket. We were going to drive around and look at some Christmas lights, but by then, we were getting tired, the kids were getting cranky, so we just went home. We read the Christmas story in the Bible, then my son read "The Night Before Christmas." Then the kids got the milk and cookies ready for Santa and we got them to bed.

Christmas morning is always a lot of fun as we all open our presents. I got some clothes (as usual) and a couple of music CDs along with a Best Buy gift card (yes!!). My kids got me the best gifts though... My wife took them to this craft place and they created some ceramic masterpieces for me. My daughter painted up a little hippo. She painted it to match the stuffed hippo she's had since she was a baby. My son painted up a Kansas City Chiefs football helmet which is also a coin bank. After you paint the objects, this place will fire them up for you. They are pretty cool. After we did our little family Christmas thing and ate breakfast, we headed up to my sister's house for the big family gathering.

We ate lots of food, played some video games and opened presents. One of my nephews got a Nintendo Wii and so I got to try out the bowling game which was pretty cool. I also got to "premiere" my son and I's latest Lego Star Wars "movie." It was Episode II of our "trilogy" called "Midnight." The kids seemed to like it anyway. :-) It's out on all the Internet video sites (well, the major ones anyway) so be sure to look for it. You know you want to. LOL!

The day after Christmas we took a little trip down to the third largest city in our state for a little get-a-way. We got a hotel with an indoor pool which was nice as we were the only ones using it at the time. So basically we had a "private pool" which was really cool. We did a little shopping the next day at the big mall there in town. I took the kids around to let my wife do some shopping by herself. We went into a video game store and lo and behold, they had a few Playstation 3 systems in stock. My son wanted me to get one, but I didn't want to haul the thing back home and if something was wrong with it, it would be a pain to take back. So we didn't get one. I did by a PS2 video game though even thought I don't own a PS2, but did so in anticipation of getting a PS3. :-)

Thurs., Dec. 28th we cleaned up the house as one of my sister-in-laws and her husband were going to be spending the weekend with us. That morning though, I dropped off the car to get some body work done on it. A trim piece was coming loose and causing some scraping problems on the front panel. It was some warranty work, so no cost to us! After lunch my son and I went out to do a little more shopping. We had some gift cards and Christmas cash to spend. :-) We first went to Target, but no PS3... So, I bought an iPod Nano (4Gig) instead. Our CD player in the car isn't working so well, so we've decided to get an iPod and FM transmitter to take the place of it. After Target, we headed to Best Buy (gotta use that gift card!). No PS3's there either, but I did pick up the iPod FM transmitter and a case for the iPod. In one last ditch effort, we went to the EB Games store in the mall. On the way there, my son was depressed and said, "They aren't going to have any... they still haven't fulfilled all the pre-orders yet." I said, "Don't be so defeated before you even get in there..." Well, what do you know... They had FIVE (5) PS3 systems in stock. Wow! My son about went crazy and was jumping all over me to get one (well, almost jumping). He was very spastic about it anyway... So we walked up to the counter and asked for one. I was afraid for my life walking through the mall and out in the parking lot to my car carrying that thing. They didn't put it in a bag or anything, so I was hoping and praying that no one would mug me for it. :-) We got home safely! We got it all hooked up and was able to play some of the PS2 games we had already bought. I don't have a HDTV (yet!), so we've having to play the games in standard def, but I'm ready for when we do get one. :-)

We had a nice visit with my sister and brother in law and New Year's Eve we had lots of munches and stayed up as late as we could. Some fireworks went off at midnight in our neighborhood which was pretty cool.

Happy New Year and God Bless!