Blogs

Timothy is working for me.  I have him moving rocks out of my yard.  He carries them across the driveway, through the mud, over the creek, and throws them in a big rock pile in the woods.  Today he built a bridge over the creek so the wheelbarrow could make it to the other side.

I have a room of half-way finished drywall waiting for me, but when I came home this evening I headed outside with my new pick/mattock and shovel.  Some of the rocks were just too big for Timothy to move alone.

The funny part is how small the rocks look.  It looks like a rock the size of a football sticking up just enough to catch with a lawn mower. Feeling it out with the pick, it becomes clear that the rock is bigger.

Lately, I have been in an intellectual drought. Without the motivation of college deadlines, my pursuit of knowledge has dwindled to a monthly reading of National Geographic. My lack of growth has been bothering me. Am I going to become dumb and uninformed? Just this morning my worries took a new twist as I read the chapter entitled, “Talents,” in E.G. White’s book Christ’s Object Lessons. Here she proclaims the mental faculties as a gift from God that needs to be continuously improved upon. My new question is “Am I dishonoring God by not educating myself?” In light of this, I have developed this tentative action plan. The one nagging worry left is whether I will pursue knowledge for God or my own ego. I want to be enlightened for Him not me. How can I mitigate against this potential?

Today, NoLessDays.org is four weeks old -- just an infant. To date, we have 19 users and 83 contributions. This may not seem like much, but consider: more users means more content, more content means more attraction, more attraction means more users... It is a snowball affect that we can expect to see because our community is growing exponentially.

Initial growth rates may be greater than long term growth rates, so let's assume a linear increase in our user base; eventually, even a slow exponential growth will reach the linear projection. So where will we be at the end of one year? The numbers say we'll have 247 users and 6474 posts!

Tuesday May 2nd at 4 a.m. my wife woke me up to tell me the exciting news that she was going into labor. We were both excited by the prospect that it wouldn't be long to see our new son. We didn't expect that it would take as long as it did.

At your social meeting last week, the saying, "No pain, no gian" was repeated frequently. The troubling thing to me was that I wasn't suffering any pain -- thus there must be no gain in my life. Friends, I am pleased to announc that this has changed! It seems that frustration, disatisfaction, and perhaps even anger have been brewing among colleagues. I didn't notice it because I was too busy working to keep them happy. What a way to shoot myself in the foot.

Yesterday my boss kindly shared with me some of the frustration that he has been hearing about -- it seems that most people here are unfamiliar with the concept of addressing persons they have problems with directly. I decided to take some action to try and remedy my decline in popularity, but now I'm thinking it may all be too late.

I've been struggling lately it seems about everything.  I feel like no matter what i   do it's always wrong and never good enough.  I beat myself up over every little thing.  It had become addicting over time.  just a normal part of life I guess.  I feel like God isn't with me anymore.  Even though I know He is.  I ask Him for help but it never seems like my   prayers are answered.

    Every time I talk to my family some thing else bad happens.  My dad is now dating a girlfriend who is an alcoholic.  and unfortunatly this is a serious thing,  he's already brought her to meet the familyu twice.  My brother is a druggy and is engaged at 17 1/2 to a girl he's cheating on.  My little brother is doing bad in school, as of this year.  My 10 year  old sister started cusing.  My aunt who lives with us scrams at everything that moves and goes into a big rampage.  I get more depressed every time I go home.   I feel bad that I never want to see my family.  I beat myself up over it all the time.

Here is something I found that I thought was worth sharing.

"When my wife and I mention we are strongly considering homeschooling our
children, we are without fail asked, 'But what about socialization?'
Fortunately, we found a way our kids can receive the same socialization that
government schools provide.

"On Mondays and Wednesdays, I will personally corner my son in the bathroom,

Today I was trying to dig myself out if the backlog of podcasts I have to produce for Pastor Shane. The last one i uploaded was about small groups. Over the last several weeks I have been struck by how we have been doing it wrong for so long.

We have a small group that has been meeting for several weeks now. I am amazed at how i can see God working through each of the different members of that group. Even more amazing is how much more efficiently we can care for each other and each others needs. I am also see how quickly we can move to get things done. Its not a big production, it dosent take a committee meeting to form a recomendation to pass to another committee who can then bring it to a vote. We see something that needs to be done, we can make a plan, then we can do it. A small team of carefully trained members can be far more efficient than an unwieldy buarcracy. Look at the SEALs and other eleit military groups, Small highly trained groups.

My mind is busy.  Things have been crazy at work.  Been working on a project to provide Internet access to VMRC residents via cable (i.e. cable TV).  The deadline for service is the end of the month and today was the first day I actually got a computer to browse the Internet via the cable system...  a lot left to do there.

Last Sunday we had some folks over -- the Ivins -- to record some music in the studio.  It was fairly simple, mostly vocals and guitar.  They wanted to record twelve songs; we recorded only six songs.  Still, impressive progress.

This morning I spent several hours editing, mixing, and "mastering" one of the six songs.  It was probably the most complex of all the songs; it has a harmonica track.  The Ivins would like the songs on a demo CD by next Wednesday.  I don't know how that is going to happen...  The music is all very similar so if I can get back over to the studio, perhaps I can finish the rest fairly quickly.

Just finished off the green beans and corn we put up last year.  It’s about time to start planting again. As soon as the garden dries out enough I will try to get started.

So far it has been a good spring. Asparagus and onions are coming up. Rhubarb is waiting for a pie shell. Blueberries are blooming. My plan was to plant more blueberry bushes but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Probably won’t get a strawberry patch going until next year. (Sorry Somer)