It’s hard to believe that we are almost done with the first decade of our century. Even more strange to me is that we are within a month or so of 2009 coming to an end as a year. If I didn’t know better I’d say someone pushed the fast forward button on life toward the beginning of February and left it there until yesterday. And as I take a moment to look back on the year, and especially the day we are celebrating today, I can’t help but begin to think about some of the things I am thankful for.
Being thankful is not something that is reserved for one day a year in my house. In fact, it is something that I have tried to instill in my family through nightly “thankfuls” and through regular giving of thanks. It is a lifestyle that I think everyone should live lest we become bitter, cynical and “victimized” by circumstance. So for me and my house it is rather easy to recognize those things that I can be thankful for.
For example, I woke up early this morning and got out of bed to make a pot of coffee for my wife and I, and took a moment for myself to read my email, write a little in my blog and warm my legs with a little red fleece blanket. I was watching my dog sleep for a little while until my daughter Adriannah woke up, joined me in the living room, greeted me with a hug and kiss and began to watch TV.
In just the first few minutes of the day today I am thankful for:
- A beautiful, smart, funny, warm, loving wife
- An awesome tribe of beautiful, smart, talented children
- Having a home for my family
- Everyone in my family having a bed to sleep in
- Running water
- Coffee
- Cups to drink our coffee from
- Having a working computer
- The internet
- Email
- Warm blankets
- Wonderful, smart, loving, caring, beautiful children that love me
- Hugs and kisses
- A great dog
- A TV
- Electicity
Now of course these are more of the tangible variety of thankfuls. Still, these are all things I am thankful for just within the first few minutes of my day. There are so many other things to be thankful that extend beyond the tangible, like:
- Not having to go to work today
- Sharing today with family and friends
- Having the freedom and liberty that comes from living in the United States of America
- Being protected both at home and abroad by the most awesome of protectors ever, the US military
- Worshiping how I want, when I want and with whom I want
- The freedom and ability to have an opinion, and voice that opinion
The abundance of thankfuls in my life always seem to extend beyond the limits of one day a year. And while I am thankful for today and what it represents, I would offer this challenge to you: For the next 365 days, until next Thanksgiving day, see if you can find one thing every day to be thankful for and share that thankfulness with someone.
If you are anything like me, no matter how heavy life gets on you, you will always have something to be thankful for. May God bless you abundantly this day and all the days of your life.
Yesterday my daughter went to the doctor because she was running a rather high fever and was feeling generally unwell. Wrapped in a blanket most the day, she even got so far as to just lay down and cry from the pain in her throat so she had to be seen, in my opinion.
My wife set the appointment for the afternoon and took her in. A little while after the appointment I got the message that my daughter had been diagnosed with H1N1.
I was a little taken aback by this news at first. The thought that “swine flu” had made it into my family was a little unnerving to say the least. But as I thought about it a little more I realized that H1N1, as nasty as it has been portrayed in the media, is indeed just a flu. Yes, I said that. Just a flu.
Every year people get the flu. Lots and lots of people die every year from it. Yet for some reason our nation, in fact the world, has been duped into thinking that the swine flu is some megakiller virus that will consume you, your animals and everything you love in mere seconds if you don’t crawl under a rug and hide from it. I refuse to believe that.
And I refuse to believe that my daughter has that flu. In reading through the symptoms of swine flu, she does exhibit some of them. But for a doctor to look at my daughter for a few minutes and say she has H1N1 without so much as a throat culture or blood test is just silly.
Still, I will make sure my daughter takes her medication. But I am not buying into the hysteria surrounding swine flu. It is, after all, just a flu. It’s not like some cloaked pig adorned in a black grim reaper outfit will be knocking on our door anytime soon. And if he does, he better be prepared. This family loves bacon, blackened or otherwise.
Earlier today I ran across a tweet from Jon Brodkin (@JBrodkin) on Twitter that I thought was unusual, odd and somewhat counter to what Christianity teaches Christians:
are you Christian? Do you think Twitter has too many heathens? It’s time to start posting on Christian Chirp! http://www.christianchirp.com/
11:15 AM Nov 3rd from TweetDeck
Now I have no idea if Jon is a Christian, if he has something to do with the site or anything at all about him. I just want to make sure that I am clear about that in this post. Whatever I say here has nothing to do with him, his beliefs or anything at all related to him.
In looking at that site my first thought was “why would Christians want to further alienate and segregate themselves in a society in which few people see them in a positive light?”. Seriously, Christians have taken a bad rap for a lot of stuff over time and have given many people a lot of reasons for thinking the way they do about them. As a Christian I struggle sometimes with the call on me and the way that those that I look to for leadership represent that call. I wrote about that a few days ago and the struggle that I feel with how complacent Christians have become – in my opinion – and how far off the mark it seems that we have become in doing what we have been commanded to do.
In looking at ChristianChirp.com I can’t help but see that all over again. I can understand why Christians would want an environment for themselves. I mean, after all, churches have been doing that for ages. But why would Christians choose to run from “heathens” when there is a huge potential for ministry in social media? Hanging around a social site filled with other Christians seems totally counter to “going out into all the world and preaching the gospel”. I mean, Christians should be going into the dark places and pulling down strongholds, reaching out to those in need regardless of whether there might be heathens there, stepping into those areas where those that need the gospel the most are lurking.
The more I see things like this crop up the more I think that Christians are losing their collective minds as it relates to the great commission. I can’t save a single soul if I am trapped in a room full of saved Christians. And while I appreciate the need for Christians to have a place to mingle amongst themselves for a time, I still think that church should be that time and the rest of the time we have should be spent ministering first to our families then to those immediately around us.
And I can’t see at all how we can do that when we are only mingling with and interacting with Christians.
A point of view is a dastardly thing. It can be useful in some situations, but in a case where your point of view allows you to turn an excuse into a reason it can be devastating.
Excuses, in and of themselves, are nasty little buggers. They are purposed reasonings that one establishes to allow latitude and leniency to pervade their own inability to satisfy a need or a condition in which another person, organization or establishment is dependent upon the satisfaction of that need. In essence, they are a rationalized way out of a responsibility that should not be shirked.
Worse, excuses that are believed to be reasons are all the more dangerous because they are no longer just a way out of responsibility, they are now the driving force behind it. And along with that they become a convenient means to allow oneself to really never do the responsible thing.
The reason I bring this up is because it is so easy to do. Excuses, or in most cases, reasons, are so easy to come up with and even easier for others to believe. Children seem to know this inherently. So do spouses (yes, men and women). In fact, I tend to think it is human nature to be able to drum up an excuse, er, reason, at the drop of a hat in most cases.
I am just as guilty of this as the next guy. Which is why I chose to write about it. I find myself doing this more and more and, the truth is, it needs to stop. A wife, children, a boss… they all need reliability out of a man. And reliability is impossible if there is a way out of responsibility through excuses.
So the next time you feel yourself in a place to excuse your way out of something, think twice and see if you can reason with yourself to the point of not allowing the excuse. People are counting on you.
The other day, while doing some routine cleanup on my machine at work, I ran into a bit of a snag when trying to uninstall Windows Live Messenger. Unlike most common software packages that include an uninstall utility, Windows Live Messenger, in a move typical of the Redmond Beast known commonly as Microsoft, does not.
After searching for a tutorial on how to remove this piece of crap software from my machine I decided to just try something.
Quick sidebar: If you are ever at the point of not trying something yourself in favor of asking someone how to do what you need to do, slap yourself three times, repeat “I am not a n00b” to yourself three times, send me $10 then try something. Seriously, just try something.
What I did was launch my Add/Remove Programs utility from the control panel (Start -> Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs) then, after much searching, cursing and an increased disposition to hate Microsoft, finding, I decided to click on the Windows Live Essentials package and click the Change/Remove button.
From there I was presented a dialog box that gave me two options: Uninstall and Repair. I selected Uninstall and was then taken to a menu of currently installed Windows Live software. That list, for me, included one application: Messenger. I checked the box next to messenger and started the uninstall process (which I cannot show you because I was so excited to actually get this off my computer that I forgot to take screenshots… and no, I am not reinstalling it just so I can uninstall it again to get screenshots).
Anyway, after a few minutes of working and thinking and more working, Windows reported to me that the application had been successfully uninstalled. Which is way better than I can say for the instructions I found at these two links:
So if you are tired of having Messenger on your system this is the fastest and most efficient way of getting it off of there. Enjoy!
Wow, what a day today was. There was drama, haircuts, cleaning, traveling, assembling, masquerading, trick-or-treating and lots of exhausting.
The day started out with my neighbor returning my dog. Why did my neighbor have my dog? Because my dog decided to dig a hole under our fence and invite himself into our neighbor’s yard. So in the midst of a cold fog, I was out shoveling dirt, reinforcing fences and making barricades to keep my dog out of my neighbor’s yard.
Did it work? Nope. By the end of the night he had managed to get past my barricade and dig another hole.
After that I took my son with me to get my haircut. Then we hit up Office Max to get a printer cartridge refilled. If you have an inkjet printer and would rather save money than spend money on the cartridges, go to Office Max. For $10 they will refill your black ink cartridge ($15 for color) and it only takes a few minutes. Not to mention that it saves you from spending $60 on a new one. Sweet.
When we got home we had to get to work cleaning out our truck. That is because today we went to Morgan Hill and picked up a new bunk bed set my wife found on Craigslist for Alaynah and Adriannah, who broke her bed a few weeks. The new one we got is a “T” style bunk that sits on top of a desk at one end and a bookcase and dresser at the other. It is a beast of a bed, but strong enough for out two daughters. I know this because it literally took me a total of six hours to put it together. 
Of course in the middle of that assembly marathon, I had to get the kids ready to hit the streets in full costume. I took them this year because Sandi had to drive to Hayward to pick up Alaynah from a Halloween party she was at. So at about 7:00 or so I left the house with Lucy Ricardo, Captain Hook, a leopard and Buzz Lightyear in search of huge sacks of goodness and sweets. And boy did we find it.
It was a great night with a great take. The kids got loaded up on candy, we got our exercise, I got a break from building the bed… it was a great hour. And it was a great day, if not way more exhausting than I would have liked. Still, it was totally worth it.
I hope your Halloween was as cool as ours.
As you might recall from a few days ago, my wife recently started blogging. We have set her up with a Wordpress blog because honestly, it is the easiest software to set up and the easiest to use, in my opinion. Of course, I had no idea that I didn’t even know how to use it. FAIL!
While sitting on the couch with my wife the other night, she was looking for themes to add to her blog. From inside of her Wordpress dashboard. Wait, what? How do you do that?
Learning a little bit from my wife
I have been using Wordpress since before the 2.0 release. And as odd as it sounds, I have not really ever played around with the newest features of the software for each new release. Oh yeah, I have looked at the changes to the admin interface and thought “Ooo, shiny”, but really, I have not clicked around a whole lot, not played with the new stuff, not really ever gotten to know my Wordpress. My wife, however, has been playing with hers. And she discovered something that has set me ablaze with awe and a renewed sense of exploration on my blogs.
My wife discovered that if you click on the Appearance tab you can add a new theme to your blog by clicking the Add New Themes link. But what I found to be very cool is that this feature actually hooks into the Wordpress Themes base and lets you browse Wordpress approved themes from their server then install them on your server through the same simple FTP interface used to update plugins (and the core Wordpress installation as well). And wouldn’t you know it, this same thing works for plugins, too, just by clicking on the Plugins tab and selecting Add New.
If I have not mentioned it today, I love my wife’s brilliance. I would never have thought to click those links. I am a happy, old time user of the software and have really never thought to play around. My wife, being new to the software, has found something that I think I would never have found. Really, she is brilliant. And I so lover her.
Yesterday was opening day for the Golden State Warriors basketball team. The NBA season officially opened Tuesday, October 27, 2009 and for the first time ever, it became clear to me that there is a relatively short period of time in which all four major sports are in season.
Football starts the first weekend in September. Basketball, as I just stated, starts at the end of October. The Baseball regular season ended the first week of October and the Hockey season started at the very beginning of October. That means that for the month of October and November you have the ability to catch a game in each of the four major sports within days of each other. When did this happen?
I swear I remember a time when sports had their own part of the year that they played in. I always remember Football being a fall sport, basketball (and hockey) being a winter sport and baseball being a spring/summer sport. Four seasons, four sports, one in each season.
But now it seems that all four sports seasons have to coincide right here, right now, during the month of October. Dude, I think this is a conspiracy.
Last night, while the family and I settled in to watch It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, I decided to try to redeem some much needed work time and code while we watched it. So I took my position on the couch, opened my laptop and began to work. A few seconds later I heard “If you’re going to work, can you sit in the chair instead of on the couch?”.
The chair is not at all in front of the TV. In fact, it is to the side of the TV, so watching TV from the chair is not ever going to happen without serious neck pain afterward. So I asked “Is that my punishment for working during the movie?”. To which I was responded to with “No, I just don’t want you to take up space on the couch that the kids who are actually watching the movie could use.”. That made senses to me, since our couches are kinda small and in order for all seven us to sit on them we almost invariably have to have a child or two on either my lap or my wife’s lap. So I switched seats.
As I worked from my chair of solitude I was able to see my family sitting on our couches, all comfy and not squished, laughing at the movie and generally enjoying themselves. It was a scene to behold, momma with all her kids at her side, the glow of the TV reflecting off their faces, the small smiles every now and again creeping from their faces. There was one scene in particular, which I cannot recall since I could not see the TV, that really touched me in which all five of the kids and my wife chuckled and let out a corporate “Awwwww”. It was at that moment that I realized how blessed I am to have such a wonderful family to work as hard as I do for.
Yes, I would have loved to have been able to sit with them and enjoy the movie. Times being what they are, I had to work last night. For them. Because they are worth it, they deserve it and I love them enough to work for them. So my time on my little punishment of a chair was well spent, in my opinion, if even for a short time. And I’d do it again if necessary, though I hope the necessity of that will not show itself. Still, I work because I love them and want the best for them.
Perhaps next time I will be able to spend that time on the couches with my family.
She finally took the plunge. She is official. My wife, Sandi Gonzalez, is blogging.
Her and I have had many a discussion about her blogging, and given some of the recent challenges we have been through in our marriage, it seemed like it might not happen. Which saddened me greatly, because she is an awesome writer, she is funny and she has tons of real life experience raising children, being married (albeit in a sometimes rocky but longstanding marriage to yours truly), battling chronic fatigue, homeschooling our kids and generally being a woman. And when I say she is funny I mean she is like really funny.
Needless to say that over the years, however, I have not encouraged her in these areas. In fact, it would not be an understatement to say that I have broken her down in many areas in which she excels. So naturally her confidence was was lacking. Not for anything she has done. Really I think it has more to do with me not being her biggest fan and supporter like I should have been all along. More recently, however, I have felt the need and responsibility to make sure she knows just how awesome she is. And I am making it more of a point to identify the areas of her awesomeness directly to her, when they happen and as they happen, so she can be sure of just what makes her so freaking awesome.
Side bar, for the men: If you are not already doing this, make sure that your wife hears accolades from you, at least once a day, if not more often, for something she is really good at. She needs that, and you really should be the greatest source of that for her.
So she did it. She stepped out and started writing about her life, her experiences and her challenges. And I gotta tell you, if you are a woman, a mother, a Christian, a daughter, a homeschooler or in need of some comic relief centered around heartfelt, passionate and honest experience, you gotta read her blog. It will more than likely make you say to yourself “I know, honey, and I can’t believe …” or maybe even “No way! I went through that exact same thing!”. Regardless, you should read her blog. It will be worth it to anyone.
And baby, if you are reading this, I am so very proud of you for having the courage to step out like this and the compassion to want to help others by your own experience. You are an amazing woman.