I have more thoughts on the yearbook ads…
They don’t quite fit here so I moved them to my blog on our culture.
This is it???
My son brought home his yearbook. I am glad that we just bought the regular book and didn’t get sucked in to all of the extras because I think we overpaid!
Little to nothing about the football team that came with :04 seconds of advancing to the State tournament…
Nothing about the girl who broke school records in swimming and might be an Olympic contender…
Little to nothing about the school’s best wrestling team in a decade. No pictures of the 4 guys who placed at state.
But there are a whole bunch of “cute” little personal stories about what it “felt” like to go to school!
No pages for the “Best…”, “Worst…” and “Most Likely to …”
In fact, I discovered that our son won a very prestigious “Most…” award only because a young lady congratulated him for it when she signed his yearbook…
Most Innocent!
And then there are the ads…
There are 379 members in my son’s Senior class. 239 parents bought 136 pages of personal ads for their kids at $300 per page! (1/4 page for $75, 1/2 page for $150 and a full page for $300.) If my math is anywhere close to correct, that is around $40,000 to put baby pictures and write a little blurb to your children!
Needless to say, we weren’t one of them.
Just tackle the next thing
I am having to practice what I preach to my children.
It happens to all of us at some time. Whe have a special social event, an important class or function at church, have to work more hours than we planned at our jobs and all of their teachers at school decide to give them extra homework right before the semester’s major project is due…all at the same time!
You get the idea.
My oldest daughter went through an impossible difficult gauntlet in her next to last semester in college. My son is going through something similar now.
Both times, I could see them getting overwhelmed. The fear of failing was making inroads into their minds.
In both cases, I actually gave them some great advice.
“I know it seems impossible to do everything that you have to do and if you look at all of it, it is. You will be tempted to crawl into an emotional cave.
However, you don’t have to figure out how you are going to do all of it. All you have to do is to do the next thing to the best of your ability. You can do that. You can handle that.
When you finish that, you go on to the next thing. You can do that, right?
You don’t have to worry or fret. You can’t do anything about all of the other things at that moment. The time for those things will come. And if you keep doing the next thing as soon as it rises up, before you know it, you will have made it through and done the “impossible”!
Now it is my turn. Mine situation is not in the “impossible” realm…but it is in the “I hope I don’t forget something critical and screw this up” realm.
We are moving into a 2BR apartment in two weeks. I have already started packing up all of the books that I will have to be put back into storage. I am looking for a church to join. I am trying to help my son successfully jump through all of his hoops, prepare for his graduation, trying to get him into Drexel University, figure out how to pay for it, learn enough PHP/MySQL/HTML to get my commentary running, stay faithful in writing this blog, etc., etc., etc.
Today, I reached the point where I had to have a talk with myself. I heard myself counseling my children. I decided to follow my own advice.
I just did the next thing.
I called the Drexel Financial Aid office. They had missed a $3,000/year scholarship that my son is eligible for. While on the phone, I sent them an e-mail with the validating information and they agreed to recompute his financial award letter.
$3,000 down! Only $19,000 more to go!
Posted in Goals Comments Off on Just tackle the next thing
That’s never happened before
We crossed a new threshold at the dinner table last night.
My wife is one of those creative cooks who can make something out of nothing. On more than one occasion, I and my children have resigned ourselves to a just snacking because there was “nothing to eat” only to have my wife come home and make a fabulous meal out of thin air.
The downside of being a creative cook is that you don’t know what you are getting, often until it arrives on the table.
I have come home from work and asked my wife, “How long until dinner is ready?” I did this so I could judge if I should start working on a project immediately or wait until after dinner.
“10 minutes.”
Guess I should wait…”What are we having?”
“I don’t know…”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“All that I know is that it’s got chicken in it.”
The first few times it bothered me. How could you be cooking and not know what you are making. I soon learned that she was making it up as she goes! And she is dang good at it too!!!
Last night, there was some “chicken thing” on my plate. I took the first bite…
I thought, “This is incredible!” So I said, “Wow! What is this?”
“I don’t know.”
Ladies and gentlemen, it was on my plate, no, in fact some of it was already down the hatch and my wife still didn’t quite know what she made!!!
As good as that was, I will eat a no name dinner every night and die a happy man!
Happy Mother’s Day
I gave my wife an unusual Mother’s Day present this morning.
It was very inexpensive…
Actually it didn’t cost me anything…
But it is something she has been wanting for a long, long time.
I am one of those annoying “morning persons.” In fact, I am a VERY early morning person. I don’t even like talking about it actually.
My wife, on the other hand, is a night owl. As I am getting ready for bed, she is just getting her second wind. She rarely comes to bed before midnight.
She just cannot understand why I get up so early. Some of it intentional. However, most of it is involuntary. My internal alarm clock is set and I can’t change it.
I cannot understand how she cannot be tired by 9:00 at night.
Through the course of our marriage, it has not been uncommon for my wife to come to bed later than normal and be just in time to wake me up a little earlier than normal. I have even thought that a thief would have a very hard time figuring out what time to rob us. It seems like one of us is always awake.
We have had more than a few fun discussions when that happens.
“Why are you waking up?”
“It’s time to get up.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“It’s not the middle of the night. It’s early in the morning.”
It is all a matter of perspective.
Well, after Friday nights extremely short and fitful sleep, I was past being tired. I was tired when I woke up! And it didn’t get any better as the day wore on!
Much to her joy, I slept in.
You might say, “What’s the big deal about that?”
I slept in until 8:00!
On a Sunday morning!
I have slept in until 6:30, maybe even 7:00, but eight o’clock??? I slept in so late that we missed church! I think the last time that I slept in that late was after I had suffered sleep deprivation for five days during Hell Week of my college fraternity initiation. Maybe I slept in that late on our honeymoon but that can hardly count. In the first place, we had not schedule to keep. Secondly, the whole time we were awake, we were working on getting tired. (if you know what I mean!)
Anyway, it may seem stupid but she was really blessed.
Oh, by the way, we all ate breakfast together late in the morning and I took her out for dinner at night.
Posted in Marriage Comments Off on Happy Mother’s Day
I’m not sure I’m happy with me
My son finished his 1-2 page essay for Drexel University.
Well, I should probably rephrase that…
“We” finished his essay for Drexel University. I use “we” in the “royal” sense.
I don’t know how other parents handle such situations. As a rule, I will help my children with their papers by correcting or editing them. However, I have steadfastly refused to write them. My reasoning is that if I write them, how can they be graded on it?
I started out that way on this essay.
His first draft was a nice personal story about his admiration for his parents and how much we have affected him and a paragraph with some of his creative ideas for building houses. However, it had little to do with why he wanted to major in Business and Engineering at Drexel University…and I told him so.
Before I sent him back to the drawing board, I went through and picked out ideas from what he had written.
This guy has got some really creative ideas! I found myself getting more excited about his future than I have ever been! Wow!…And I told him so!
I came up with a working outline that I thought could really be a great essay, handed it back to him and told him to get to work.
To his credit, he worked hard over several nights and wrote three pages.
Now, I thought I was bad at getting into too much detail…
Unfortunately, he is a chip off the old block…the new and improved version!
The essay had to be turned in this weekend…
So…
I did not write his paper!
I just did a whole bunch of cutting…and pasting…and combining…and deleting
…about five hours worth!
If I made him do it, it would have taken him about 20 hours. And final exams start on Monday…
I can’t decide if I am happy with myself or not…I am not an “end justifies the means” kind of guy.
Anyway, the essay is done and his future is bright. Now, we just need them to give him a bunch of money and everything will be perfect!
One giant step forward to a chasm
I took a giant step toward accomplishing a huge, long term goal!
And I feel further away from accomplishing it than I did before I started.
To my more technically inclined readers, this post will seem ridiculous. However…
One of my l-o-o-o-o-n-g term goals is to write a commentary on the Bible. I have been working on it for 15 years so far. I will be finished when I die and can no longer make new entries in it.
That is a big enough task. However, I also want to publish it on the Web.
Over the years, I have described my dream to several programmers. The response is fairly consistent…
“That is a b-i-i-i-g project…It can be done…but…”And they are just talking about putting it on the Internet!
I might have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night! I can translate what they are saying…”It gonna cost a whole bunch a mu-nay!”
I have heard “ballpark”estimates of $5,000 or more!
It just so happens that I don’t have that right now. Come to think of it, I have never really had a stack of cash sitting around the house that I just couldn’t figure out what to do with!
So, last night, I reverted to my default setting…
D-I-Y
I actually started down the path of doing it myself!!!
Am I nuts???
I went to bed after midnight and then woke up before 4:00 A.M. My mind was working double time trying to figure out how to solve the problems I encountered.
Well, about 11:00 A.M. this morning, I actually succeeded in setting up a test database on the site that carries this blog! I actually saw it! Did you know that there are 31,102 verses in the Bible?
Yahoo!!! It is only a test…but it is actually there!!!
Now, about the chasm…
I have not got a clue how to get that database to actually be visible on the Internet. After much research and reading today, I just don’t get it.
It’s probably simple, but…
Now that I think about it, that is exactly how I felt about setting up a database online not too long ago!
Shoot, 8 years ago, I had no clue how I could ever become a blogger…
Stay tuned…
Posted in Goals, Technology Comments Off on One giant step forward to a chasm
Haven’t found anything that quite fits
Moving is a big deal.
I have written about the upheaval that resulted from moving from CA to KS.
I have written about the adjustments we have had to make in moving from our own house into an apartment.
I have written about the challenges that my two youngest children have faced in entering public school for the first time after being taught at home their entire life.
However, I haven’t written about the difficulties of changing churches.
Prior to moving to Kansas City, I attended one church since I was radically converted to Christianity as a young college student. As you probably know, one of the primary reasons for moving to was to soak in the environment at IHOP. However, when it came to settling down and committing to a church that we can build with, I started having reservations.
We began visiting other churches. We are now regularly visitors at an Evangelical Presbyterian Church. They are Reformed (Calvinist) in the essentials and in the non-essentials (spiritual gifts, charismatic worship, etc.) they give liberty.
We went through their membership class about one month ago. We are now in the midst of a 13 week class to learn what they believe.
Now we have two churches that don’t quite fit. On the one hand, the worship and lifestyle fit us great but some of the theology gives me pause. On the other hand, the theology is better but…
Thankfully, I don’t have to decide by tomorrow…so we will keep taking the next step and see where we end up being planted.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged church, moving Comments Off on Haven’t found anything that quite fits
Was it a conspiracy?
We got home from the banquet last night at 9:00. I was tired!!!
I had no sooner got in the door and my son asked me if I could help him with his college essay.
I’m telling you, I did not want to. Man I did not want to.
But, I’m supposed to the the mature adult…
So, I did…
I’m not proud to say this but I grumbled and let him know that I was not happy about doing so. I ended helping him for an hour.
Just as I was finishing up, who should show up…
All the way from Tennessee…
my wife! I guess she must have heard that the toxic cloud had lifted.
Anyway, the timing was just too perfect. I started wondering if this whole thing was a conspiracy. The unannounced banquet moved the essay (which we HAD to work on!) back several hours which kept me up until my wife got home.
Well, now I HAVE to stay up and talk to her. I haven’t seen her in four days.
What am I going to say…”Sorry, honey. Not tonight. I’m tired. Let’s talk tomorrow.”???
I have no idea what time I finally got to sleep.
All I know is that I was not the happiest camper this morning. I even had to apologize for biting my youngest daughter’s head off over some silly thing this morning.
That teenage brain thing again
I was hot…
I shouldn’t have been, but I was…
He’s got a lot on his plate right now. SAT’s, AP Calculus test, essays for college applications, graduation in 1 1/2 weeks…
But still…
The last time that I spoke with the Drexel coach, we agreed to figure out the best time for my son to make “official” visit to the campus. I called him today to make my suggestion.
It turns out that they cannot legally fly him out for an “official” campus visit because they are technically not recruiting him. They signed three kids last November and used up all of their recruiting money for this next school year.
That was news to me. But, I have a voucher for a free flight with United Airlines that expires on May 25th. I just don’t know where it is.
So, I went home with that task before me…find the voucher and start looking at airline flights.
I had been home for about 15 minutes when my son came in and said, “Dad, they are having this Senior Awards ceremony.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
“TONIGHT?
“Yes. I’m supposed to be there at 7:10.”
Keep in mind that he is giving me this information at 6:30…
Then my daughter piped in, “Yeah. There a bunch of parents dressed up really nice at a banquet in the commons area right now.”
“WHAT!? When did you know about this?”
“Today. I didn’t know that I was getting any awards…but I am getting three of them.”
You get the idea.
We got dressed and arrived at 7:10.
I still had smoke coming off of my ears when the parents of another wrestler came up and started chatting. Their son informed them at 5:45!
So, I am not alone. I guess it must be another “brain development” moment.
