Happy Belated Thanksgiving, and Happy Advent

Since I don’t blog for a living, I will from time to time take extended breaks, since this isn’t my top priority.

That was the case over the last couple of weeks.    I started an extended vacation from work beginning November 17, and because I was trying to get everything in a place where it needed to be before I left, I haven’t submitted a blog post since a few days before that.

Today is just a check-in as I now begin the task of catching up from my time off!

A quick recap of my time off:

November 17 – My wife and I and a couple friends drove to Green Bay, Wisconsin and listened to Charlie Johnston speak.   I introduced myself as “The Diatribe Guy” after his talk and he was genuinely happy to see me.   It was nice to meet him in person.    He appreciated that I have a bit of a skeptical nature about the whole thing, while also keeping an open mind about it all.    I am respectful and try to provide a different view or insight when I comment on his blog and I think he recognizes that I am not a troll who is trying to play some game of “gotcha” but instead someone who is trying to understand, take it all in, keeping my wits about me, and maintaining prudence.    He didn’t say a whole lot I hadn’t heard him say or write before, but it’s always good to be in a small community with others.

November 18 – my birthday!   Yay me.    And as my birthday present I went to our garden an hour away to spread a mineral mix on it only for 50 mph winds to spring up out of nowhere and make spreading it impossible.   So I unloaded it and came back home.   While I was gone, our oven broke.   Since I have already paid for this oven twice because it keeps breaking down, we decide to get a new one.    My wife and I do a birthday dinner, shop for appliances, and go see a movie.   Jack Reacher.    It was OK – nothing special but a couple hours of mindless entertainment.   Lowe’s is on a two-week delivery schedule, and Thanksgiving is only 5 days away.   We pass.

November 19 – November 27:   Rifle deer hunting season in Wisconsin.    A time where the kids, the father-in-law, and me spend countless hours in the woods and see NOTHING.    Four year drought.   The only thing I got was a cold.

November 19: Appliance shopping – decide to go to a gas stove with a local dealer who can guarantee delivery by Thanksgiving.   but we are not set up for gas, so first need to find a plumber who can get to our house before Thanksgiving.     Vacation is stressful.   Wisconsin Badgers win in football, moving up to 6th in the national playoff rankings!

November 20 – Packers lost again.   Defense is horrible.

November 21:  While we are hunting in spurts throughout this whole week, this was the special day of triumph.   Spend all day at the father-in-law’s land a couple hours away, picking off huge Bucks!    Well, we spent all day there, froze our butts off and finally saw a doe about 200 yards away facing away from us with about 15 minutes left in the hunting day.    Too far to take the shot for my son, who was the only one allowed to shoot a doe in this county.   That’s as close as we got all season to shooting a deer.    My wife actually found a plumber who could come over the next day.

November 22: We have gas in the kitchen!   Well, I always have gas in the kitchen, but I mean the natural kind that runs appliances.

November 23 – Spent half the day in a dentist’s chair.    A crown in my mouth cracked.   That has been drilled out, my nub is now even a smaller nub, and a temporary crown is on. I texted my sister and said that I think my Purgatory will be continued dental work in a confined space with spiders crawling on me.   Her response was “If that is Purgatory, then Hell sounds better.”    I couldn’t even argue.   Our gas stove is delivered!   We can now make a Thanksgiving meal.

November 24:   Happy Thanksgiving!    Great meal with the whole family.   Very nice day, despite my mouth hurting from the dental work.   Despite my wife’s nervousness about getting used to gas and convection oven cooking, everything was awesome.

November 25 – 27: Lots of hunting.    My father-in-law has a habit of picking a spot to park on public land and then walking to the furthest possible point on that land from where we parked.

November 26: Badgers won again – Big Ten East Champions – will play in the Big Ten title game next week against Penn State.   Will likely remain 6th in the rankings, possibly moving to 5th.   Need to finish top four to make the playoff.

 

Looking at that recap is a synopsis of life.    A couple hurdles and unexpected irritations that need to be dealt with – so you deal with them.   You can let it get you down or you can just move forward.   Some things of highest value that bring you joy (God, family, thankfulness, time together), things you try to do but don’t succeed at and you learn from it and move on, some frivolous pursuits that bring some added color and entertainment to life…    If I recapped every week of my life it would probably look something like that.

 

So let’s move on.   It’s Advent.   Life will be busy, but when you look back at each week will you see a lot of pointless busyness at the expense of things that would have been more important, or do you see a good balance.     I look above and I like the balance overall.    In the woods, I even spent some of that time in prayer and contemplating God.

But I was on vacation – toss in my work schedule and suddenly the balance becomes harder to achieve.    I’m going to try my best to maintain a proper balance during Advent – and beyond.

Vacation!

I know, I know…    I don’t run a blog the way I’m supposed to.    Well, if I made any money off the gig I’d be more inclined to follow the rules.   But I don’t – it’s a hobby.

So, where have I been?   Well, first off, I took a much needed vacation and completely unplugged from work as well as the internet in general.    Second, I then needed to catch up at my real job where I crunch numbers for a living and spend way too much time in meetings talking about the future numbers I need to crunch.

Then, I had to travel to NY for work, and quite honestly I’m not built for travel.   I am not energized by it, so even though I probably could use my time more wisely catching up on stuff in the hotel in my off time, I’m much more inclined to end up in a zombie-like state watching the news on the bed until I fall asleep.

That doesn’t mean the world around me has stopped, nor does it mean my opinions have dissipated.   So, here’s a random list of things I have been thinking about.   Some of these are blog-worthy and some are not.

1. I still have no idea why someone chooses to ever life and work in New York City.   Sipping a beer by the campfire at home last evening at my rural home, surrounded by flowers, trees, and green grass and a couple friends is like a small piece of heaven to me.    To each their own, but I’m just not wired that way.
2. Observing the thousands and thousands of people walking around Manhattan, whenever I take a moment to think about people in general I have a feeling of amazement.   Every single person is seeing the world through their own unique eyes.   They are all living a life unique and distinct from the rest of us.    Just seeing people walk around is a wonderment to me.    I don’t know what they are thinking and they don’t know what I’m thinking.   Their experiences are not my own.  And yet, God knows us all intimately.   It’s somewhat overwhelming to think about.
3. There is a big blow-up rat that sticks out of the trunk of a car that can be found around NYC.   That’s my sight-seeing update.
4. I love my kids – all nine of them.   But what a blessing that my wife and I were able to get away for three days and stay at our camper in Northern Wisconsin.    Rest, hiking, swimming, kayaking, and fishing – with a little bit of shopping and an anniversary dinner out.   What a relaxing time!
5. Why does Def Leppard refuse to get on Spotify?    It’s annoying.
6. I’ve been doing some reading, and I need to boost my Metabolism so I can be healthier.
7. My wife and I have both set up accounts through a company called Karatbars so we can more readily buy gold in smaller increments.   My wife has decided to buy into the business package to help other people set up accounts to do the same.   I didn’t do that, because I have enough to do.  I just want the gold, but I do feel strongly that this is an important asset for everyone to try obtain, so I’ll help her out as I can.    So if anyone is curious about it at all just e-mail me.
8. Moses is in our garden.
9. There is always a lot to blog about:
   1. how I perceive the struggle in Catholicism balancing the tendencies of “liberals” and “conservatives” to try and actually attain the faith we are supposed to have
   2. My interest in a few specific prophecies:   Sister Lucia and how marriage is one of the final struggles against Satan; a guy named Charlie Johnston who has some interesting things to say, but requires a lot of discernment; this whole idea of the Shemitah (Jonathan Cahn) and the interesting observations and timing of that whole thing.
   3. Prayer strategy
   4. The Hitler rule in internet argument – pros and cons
   5. The 3% fallacy
10. I really need to get more of my music up on Youtube and find time to record all the stuff in my head.

I hope you have all been well over the last couple weeks.    I’ll try to coordinate my thoughts and throw some stuff out here.

When I feel like it.

Random and brief Diatribes

I have been out of commission lately due to the fact that my blog ranks in priority behind my wife, eight kids, work, figuring out my bills, working in my garden, and camping on the weekends. Throw in a wedding attendance and an anniversary and you can see where the posting frequency has faltered.

My family and I are planning a vacation to South Dakota later in August, so there will be yet another break in the action.

In the meantime, I have had some random thoughts along the way:

• I really love really hot weather, but the drought conditions here are staggering.   Those of us with gardens to water can manage, but the farmers and their fields that do not have irrigation systems are scorched.   At this point, many of the fields are past help, but there is still a great prayer need for rain.   We need to replensih the water table, and not every crop is lost.   It’s the worst conditions in my lifetime in my imediate area.
• Garden corn-on-the-cob is awesome.
• I do like not having to mow the lawn.   Going on six mowless weeks now.   But I don’t like that it is crunchy.
• Fish apparently aren’t as hungry when it’s really warm.
• I’m trying to sell my boat, and by the time I get it fixed up it’s going to cost me what I can get for it.   I should have just given it away, and I’m not the least bit happy about this development.
• “For Greater Glory” was a fantastic movie.
• “The Dark Knight Rises” is, in my opinion, the worst of the three “Dark Knight” movies, though I can understand that some people were more troubled with the ruthless violence of the second movie.
• People shooting multiple other people is clearly shocking and disturbing, but I never understand why we seem to pay little or no attention to the countless other murders across the country just because they happen one at a time.   And this isn’t a political blog, so I’ll leave it at requests for continued prayer for our country and a lamentation about how this is what we can expect from a continuing devaluation of human life in all but the most “perfect” of forms.
• I can’t hardly believe it’s almost football season.   Go Pack!
• May God bless all twelve of my readers.
• I have no problem rooting for the USA in the Olympics.  And yes, I love the Olympics.   USA!  USA!

Blogging Lulls

For anyone looking for what have become daily entries on my “Prophecy” series, I am in one of those periods of reprioritization where craziness at work, family priorities, and a planned weekend trip to open up and enjoy our camper take precedence.   There will be a gap here for a few days.

I’ll be back next week.  In the meantime, God bless and I hope everyone has weather to enjoy that is as nice as ours!

The Coming of the Obamessiah – Link to Blog

Originally posted on http://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com on June 11, 2008.

Just for kicks, I’m linking to Mark Shea’s blog on the coming Obamessiah.

To give a quick taste of this clearly tongue-in-cheek post:

And it came to pass that Obama called his delegates to himself. And going up on an exceeding high mountain, he opened his mouth and spake, saying:

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.

Now, what I find funny about this is that I heard Obama say that last week and thought “You gotta be kidding me. How full of himself is he?” Looks like I’m not the only one to pick up on it.

Vote for Obama, and the oceans shall heal thyselves.

Um… sure.

A while ago, I alluded to this whole phenomenon of the Obamessiah. Pretty weird stuff, if you ask me. But, whatever your stripes, if nothing else, I thought Shea’s piece was funny. I guess if you like Obama, you may not think so.