Category: reflections

Catchup

Wow! It’s mid-December?! Holy Cow!
It’s been a fast and crazy two weeks. Let’s see if I can play catch-up in one post.

1. I have a new job. I started a new position with the Dallas County Community College District on Dec. 5th. I’m not completely sold that this is the career for me, but I think it’s a lot closer in the right direction. My official title is: Curriculum Management Content Specialist. And guess what — that’s actually what I’m doing so far!

I enjoyed my time with the county but the further along I went, the further I realized it wasn’t quite for me. My boss was great, my co-workers were great, the hours and benefits were great, but in the end I felt like the money could be better spent on paving roads than on paying my salary. Also this opportunity came available when I wasn’t even seriously looking and I felt like it was where God was leading me next.

The job itself is working with the district’s catalogs and maintaining, posting and revising them online, as well as putting together a “print” version that will be stored as a PDF on CD for various groups. I’m also getting to do some graphic work along with the web and database work so it should be a great experience either way.

2. Well that’s about it. Just kidding.

3. Things around the house have been busy as well. We had our community group Christmas party on Dec. 7th, followed by a men’s gathering/challenge at 10 p.m. that night. It’s part of a 9 month series we’re doing on challenging men to be stronger men of God. I put together a website for the challenge and just now finished editing the video from our first gathering.

The basic idea behind the challenge is that once a month we’ll pass out GPS coordinates on Sunday morning and post them on the website. The following Friday night – at 10 p.m. – the men in the church will meet at that location for discussion and a challenge from Brian. He’s also following up with a challenge that is e-mailed/txt’d/ or printed out for those interested.

The idea is that there is a bit of a challenge in finding the location as well as coming at the scheduled time. You have to make some sacrifices to be a part of the event – just like we have to do to be men of God.

I’m looking forward to the other meetings. Our first meeting was on an island in the middle of Lake Waxahachie. The coordinates simply took us to a boat ramp where we gathered and 3 john boats carried us in pairs to the island where a bonfire and Brian were waiting. Very cool.

Brian mentioned yesterday that he’s amused at the difference between our church and others. He told another pastor about the idea and the man responded, “Yeah that sounds like a great way to get deacons and elders for your church. That’s when you find out who you want to lead your church in official capacities.” Too bad we don’t have deacons or elders. Ha.

4. We had four parties to go to last weekend. Our community group Christmas party, a birthday party for Gracelyn, a Christmas party at Daniel and Allison’s and the CWF Christmas party. Whew! What a weekend. And our friend Andrew was “bab-a-tized” Sunday morning (I’m working on that video too).

5. Monday, Dec 10 brought work again and then we went to Mesquite that night to enjoy an After Hours Improv show at our parent’s church. Always good entertainment.

6. Wednesday, Laurie stayed home from work to rest and catch up on her sleep. All the going, going and going along with her heart working overtime wiped her out.

I was somehow able to convince her to hold off with painting our bedroom during the day, but after I got home she went to work. She painted one wall a cool rich dark purple to match the comforter on our bed. I’m just surprised she hasn’t posted pictures of it yet. That took up most of the evening, while I worked on “tweaking” a (Unit 4) photoshop project.

Thursday evening she finished touch-ups in the room.

7. Friday was another Christmas party at work. I think that was the 4th one I’ve been to since I started at DCCCD. Let me think back… We had a chili cook-off the 2nd day I was there, a pizza party the 3rd, the Chancellor’s Christmas brunch earlier in the week and then the lunch/party at a Mexican restaurant in Mesquite for another team I’ll be a part of. And there’s one last party on Wednesday of this week.

8. Once the party was over, I tried to do a little Christmas shopping but gave up after visiting three stores. Just couldn’t get myself in the mood to fight the afternoon crowds.

After Laurie made it home we went to Bob and Vickie’s for some dinner with the rest of Laurie’s family and then headed over to Jed’s house for a Christmas party there. Jed will be marrying Jen, Laurie’s maid-of-honor in June. I think Jen’s enjoying taking the “bachelor” out of Jed and his house. I’m not sure who’s worse – me or him. I guess we’ll have to quiz Laurie and Jen after the wedding.

9. Saturday we slept in finally and then got up and cleaned, ran errands and cooked dinner for friends to come over for dinner. Matt, Kathryn, Daniel, Allison, Richard, Amber and Gracelyn all came for dinner. We had a great time – and took no pictures :-(. We usually end up playing games after dinner but it was nice to just sit and talk around the table afterwards.

Laurie fixed her infamous potato casserole and I cooked up a green been casserole and a pot roast. We decided afterwards that we’d stick with the cheaper roast meat when doing pot roast – chuck roast doesn’t seem to be as tender and also seemed to be a lot fattier (there’s more on that story but I’ll save you the details for now).

10. Are you still reading? Geeze. Bored at work I presume.

11. Sunday we had church as usual and then Brad and Jen came over with their kids and Laurie took some family Christmas photos of them. Lots of pictures – hopefully some of them turned out good. Getting two kids to sit still for too long is pretty hard so luckily we had lots of room for pictures on our camera disk and lots of time ;-). It was great to spend some more time with Brad and Jen and the kids as well. Brooklyn even volunteered to help me clean the back door where Presley has left her muddy paw prints.

And sadly, in the midst of it all, the Cowboys lost… dang that Jessica Simpson.

Well that’s about all I have on December for now. I’m sure I’ve left something or someone out and hopefully Laurie will get a chance to stop and fill in any gaps. But of course if you’ve been following my Twitter feed you already knew a lot of this anyways ;-).

Hopefully I’ll give my tips for riding DART before too long. It’s been cooking in my head since the 5th.

Verse(s) for the day

1 And that’s about it, friends. Be glad in God! I don’t mind repeating what I have written in earlier letters, and I hope you don’t mind hearing it again. Better safe than sorry—so here goes.

2-6 Steer clear of the barking dogs, those religious busybodies, all bark and no bite. All they’re interested in is appearances—knife-happy circumcisers, I call them. The real believers are the ones the Spirit of God leads to work away at this ministry, filling the air with Christ’s praise as we do it. We couldn’t carry this off by our own efforts, and we know it—even though we can list what many might think are impressive credentials. You know my pedigree: a legitimate birth, circumcised on the eighth day; an Israelite from the elite tribe of Benjamin; a strict and devout adherent to God’s law; a fiery defender of the purity of my religion, even to the point of persecuting the church; a meticulous observer of everything set down in God’s law Book.

7-9 The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness.

10-11 I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and go all the way with him to death itself. If there was any way to get in on the resurrection from the dead, I wanted to do it. – Phil 3:1-11

This passage always stands out to me. It’s one that really helped me put things in focus when I was 18 and made me realize the things of this world that I was striving for – didn’t really matter.
Even today, as I read it for the umpteenth time the words rang just as true as they always have.
It is definitely a Monday morning. I woke up earlier than normal, sometime before 5 a.m. because I apparently rolled on my back and started snoring. Laurie did exactly what I’ve been telling her to do – wake me up if I’m keeping her awake. But I was frustrated at myself because I simply don’t know how or why I tend to roll onto my back when I sleep. After that trying to go back to sleep was useless. I finally got up, made some coffee, ate some breakfast and went to let Presley out.

And despite the warning stuck to our back door – “Turn the alarm off” – I didn’t. So the alarm went off as soon as I opened the door.

I finished getting ready and sat down to check my e-mail. Laurie headed off for work and I waited my time to leave. At 6:45 I started the “process” of getting Presley back into her crate. She was perched on her favorite chair with a warm blanket and wanted no part in moving. I got her to her crate and noticed she was avoiding one side of it. Upon further examination I discovered she had an accident during the night and of course wanted to avoid laying in it. Apparently the pot roast left overs I gave her yesterday didn’t sit well with her and she couldn’t wait till morning.

So despite the time on the clock, I had to clean up the mess. She obviously knew she had an accident but unfortunately that doesn’t mean she’s going to help clean up. ;-). I finally got things cleaned as best as I could in a brief time, threw her blanket in the wash and put her back in her crate – smelling like an accident myself.

I headed out the front door at 7 a.m. only to realize my windows were frosted over again. Arrgh! I grabbed a glass of luke-warm water to clean them off, which did a great job getting rid of the frost, but apparently wasn’t warm enough to keep the water from re-freezing before I could get the truck warmed up – so I was back to scraping the ice off by hand.

I finally made it to the bus stop around 7:20 – just in time to catch the bus to work.

As I read the above passage, with the smell still in my nose of Presley’s accident it was an screaming example of how Paul felt about the things not of Christ – “dog dung.” I prayed and pray that I will feel the same way. The same sickening smell I’m smelling today should be the same smell we experience when we stray from Christ and His call on our life.

How do your sins/distractions from Christ smell?

gift cards

Call it crazy, call it lazy, call it what you will, but this Christmas for the Blundell/Knotts/Oyler Family Christmas we’re doing our annual Chinese gift exchange (why it’s a Chinese one – who knows) again. Basically it’s similar to a White Elephant gift exchange but it’s hopefully gifts people want – rather than don’t want.

So because we have so many different interests now in our family we decided to go with gift cards as the theme. We also hope it will make things easier for my grandparents so they won’t have to do as much shopping.

I’m thinking it should be interesting to see what gift cards folks bring and which ones they walk home with. It will be interesting to see how many people take their own gift card home.

And yes, I know Christmas is about giving but for those of you who keep asking where I’d want a gift card too, here are some of my tops…

Amazon.com (see above)
Lowes
Home Depot
Target
Best Buy

There you go. I hope you and yours are enjoying the season and you are truly blessed with all God has done this year – I know I am.

18 hours of Christmas music

What does an NPR music critic do when he’s flooded with Christmas music every year? He traps his family in the car and plays each of the 21 CDs – 18 hours worth.

I’ve always enjoyed hearing new Christmas music, but there’s just so much of it. Every fall, I receive dozens of new holiday CDs — countless hours of music to sift through in the long, agonizing buildup to Christmas.
This year, shortly before Thanksgiving, I decided to save them all for one epic binge during a 1,000-mile road trip to see family — to be captivated by the holiday spirit while held literally captive.
Pulling out of the driveway, I started — as one does — with A Swingin’ Christmas, by Michael Bolton. And thus began 18 of the longest hours of my life. Bolton’s “swingin’ Christmas” was my “ploddin’ Christmas,” a tensely endured soundtrack for a holiday hellride through D.C. traffic.

Stephen Thompson reviews all 21 albums for your enjoyment online.

Or if you’re interested here are some of my Christmas favs…

  1. Kenny G: Miracles: The Holiday Album – I might get punched in the face for this one, but nothing says Christmas like Kenny G! The first Christmas wishes/bumpers I ever recorded for radio used this album for my music bed. “Merry Christmas KEOM listeners. I’m Jonathan Blundell, taking this moment to wish you and your’s a very Merry Christmas. One of my favorite memories of Christmas….”
  2. Arbuckle Indians: It’s an Arbuckle Indian Christmas – not a well known group or album, although they did have a run up the Christmas charts at Mp3.com a few years back. You might be able to track down a CD copy of the album if you know the right folks.
  3. Various: Happy Christmas – Tooth and Nail artists share their own rendition of new and old Christmas songs. The entire collection is great and only one step behind A Very Special Christmas
  4. Various: A Very Special Christmas – it’s Christmas time in Hollis Queens. Doesn’t get much better than that other than U2 singing a cover of Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).
  5. Bebo Norman, Allen Levi, Ed Cash: Joy – I can’t tell you where my original copy of this CD is, but the tracks I still have as Mp3 are worth a listen year round.
  6. Trans Siberian Orchestra: Christmas Eve and Other Stories – one of my favorites since it’s release in 1996. It doesn’t get much better than Christmas Eve Sarajevo. And who would have thought Laurie would have already started an annual tradition of seeing the band live every Christmas when they come to Dallas. Awesome.

What’s on your top list?

The beat goes on

Is it only Tuesday? Wow!

I feel like we’ve been going non-stop since last Wednesday, if not before.
We had a super busy weekend with four parties (three Christmas parties and one birthday party), we enjoyed each one and everyone we got to spend time with but we both feel like we need a weekend to catch up from the weekend. Laurie’s got more thoughts on the weekend over on Vertigo.

Last night Laurie picked me up from work after a check up at the doctors for her inflammation in her shoulder. We drove to Mesquite to do a little shopping and then enjoyed dinner and entertainment at our parent’s church with Smiley, Shari and the After Hours Improv gang. Another great show guys. We’re sorry we’ll miss the final show of the year this Saturday in Waxahachie, thanks to another dinner party.

To top it all off, Laurie’s had trouble sleeping the last few nights. Don’t know if it’s a noisy snoring husband, a restless mind or a restless heart but it’s adding to her already drained condition. I’m hoping and praying she can get some good rest tonight to help get her through the rest of the week.

You can bet we’ll be sleeping in Saturday morning.

So that’s it for now – the beat goes on.