The 11th Commandment

I had my weekly visit to the Dhuse’s last night, which the kids have dubbed Uncle Night. Uncle Night was quite fun, though Perry and I lost the game we were playing. Anyways, before we had dinner and did any gaming I played dolls with Zoe (Let em fly Joshua). She wanted to hang out with me and her two options were dolls, or ponies. I really didn’t get to choose as Zoe immediately ran for the doll house.

Anyways, we were having a lot of fun. I really need to get a doll set. :) So we’re playing and I’m giving her a hard time about which character I get to play in the doll house and we’re just joking around. She turned around to do something and so I poked her in her side since she’s ticklish. I’m thinking this will get a fun reaction. Boy was I wrong. She turns to me, and says with a straight face “God says don’t poke people!” After about a 4 second pause she added…”Because he’s our God.” I had to try so hard not to bust out laughing.

She’s like the cutest kid ever. Seriously.

The Last 2 Weeks

The last two weeks have been plagued with comments from Joshua about how I suck at writing on my blog in a reasonable time frame. I feel sorry that he feels the need to live life vicariously though me, but if I had to pick someone I’d pick me too. :)

So, anyways, I owe Joshua and all my avid readers (if there are any of you left) a brief synopsis of what happened over the last 2 weeks. It’s been a busy time, which is mainly why I haven’t written on my blog. It’s been pretty low on the priority scale. A lot of it has been work, but I’ve also had all my other various commitments. Things seem to be slowing down a bit though. I still have lots to do, but I’m working on some various way to organize stuff so I can better prioritize stuff (like writing on my blog).

So in the last two weeks I went through the hiring process for a new position at our company. We’re hiring a new tech support/help desk person, and since I’m the unofficial head of HR, I got to do all of the interviews. We got about 29 resumes, called 15 for interviews, had 11 accept, and only 9 actually show up. Needless to say, even with 9 I was pretty busy giving each of them interviews. I was the only interviewer for the first stage, but that allowed other people to not waste their time with people I could rule out by myself. I ruled out 5 of the 9, and then brought those 4 in for 2nd interviews last week. The interviewed with 3 other guys at my office along with me, to give them the opportunity to ask questions, and pick a candidate. We finally chose one guy. I offered him a position this past Friday and he took it. He’ll be starting on May 1st, and I get to be his boss, so maybe things won’t be slowing down. DANG. Other than hiring I’ve had a ton of meetings in relation to projects, or sales calls, or internal meetings. We’re pretty much overloaded, which is why we’re hiring another person. It’s a good problem to have, but one which can be a bit stressful.

Aside from work I had quizzing finals last weekend. That was a lot of fun, but it was a long day and a half. I’m the #2 quizmaster on our district, so I had the opportunity to do a lot of quiz mastering for the round robin portion, the tournament, and the top 16 tournament. By the end of it I was quizzed out, but it also meant the quizzing year was over. That’s a little sad to me, since I was really involved this year. I really got to know a lot of the kids, and I was really able to pour into their lives. It also helped me to get into my Bible a lot more, which is always a good thing. I’m really looking forward to next year. Only 4 months until quizmania!

I’ve also been attending German class, though I skipped last week because I had a lot of stuff to do and I hadn’t done any of my homework because I’m a slacker. I need to spend some more time on my German, but I’ve just been so busy. However, I did find out one of the girls who does powerpoint at my church speaks German, so I’ve been able to converse with her a little bit. She’s way better than I am though, so it’s a little rough.

We also officially put the Journey (my friday night bible study) on hiatus for the summer. We lost a lot of leaders in the past few months to various other things, plus our attendance has been really low. It was kind of time for it to end, but it’s sad because it’s been around since 2001. It’ll be good though in the sense that my plan now is to get involved with a small group from my church. I really couldn’t do that before because that would have made 3 bible studies, and I just couldn’t have handled it with my busy schedule. It’ll be nice to connect with people I actually goto church with. Unfortunately at the moment the only small groups they have are on Wednesdays, and that’s when I have German, so I can’t attend. Hopefully something will open up over the summer.

There’s probably other stuff I’m forgetting, but it was quite the whirlwind 2 weeks. I remember going through it, but a lot of it is a blur. Hopefully it’s enough to give Joshua a few days of happiness. :)

I DIDN’T Wimp Out

That’s right. I didn’t wimp out. In an effort to make up for my post in which I wimped out (which can be found here) I opted to go running earlier tonight. By the time I got home tonight I was pretty tired. It’s been a long few days with little sleep, but it’s been a lot of fun. So anyways, I got home and decided even though I was tired I was going to go running. It was pretty cold outside (36 degrees when I looked), but for some reason I went anyways. I was shocked. :)

I made it about a mile and a 3 quarters before I quit. I still had some issues with the tendons on the side of my knees, which is the real reason I stopped. I think I probably could have gone 2 or 3 miles with no problems. The first half mile was brutal but after that I got into a rhythm and it wasn’t too bad. After about a mile my tendons started to feel tight, but I pushed through and it seemed to subside. When they started to feel tight again I quit, not wanting to push myself. The walk home I didn’t feel any pain at all (which I did about a year ago when I gave up running), however after I rested awhile going up and down the stairs caused my tendons to hurt. I’m hoping it’s just from the fact I haven’t been running in awhile and not because I’ve got some issue. I let them rest for a whole year, so I’m hoping they’re better. If they aren’t I might have to go see a specialist.’

A friend showed me how to stretch them out awhile back, but I can never seem to actually stretch the tendons. Maybe one of these days I’ll figure it out. I think I’m going to go running on Wednesday after I give my legs a chance to rest. Hopefully I can get back into more of a rhythm and do it more regularly. I felt slightly tired after running, but after about an hour I felt really good, even though I was tired all day. I think if I could really start running all the time I’d have more energy because my body would just be in better shape.

Anyways, just wanted you guys to know that I DIDN’T wimp out this time. :)

Giving Into Culture

So I find myself in a Starbucks in downtown Chicago, eating a bagel, drinking a white chocolate mocha, and working on my apple macbook pro. Who am I?

I had to be downtown for a meeting at 9:30, and instead of trying to drive in I came in with my mom. Since I had about an hour to spare, I figured Starbucks would have some form of wifi, plus I could get some form of coffee to wake myself up. It’s kind of a nice experience. I’m up early, I’m working…getting stuff done.

What has the culture turned me into?

New Bibles

I bought a new Bible earlier tonight. Actually I bought two. I purchased a new NIV (the translation I grew up with) and a copy of The Message. I had been meaning to do this for awhile, but just hadn’t gotten around to it. I have several Bible in my room, and even more strewn around my house. My dad had serveral back in the day so I’m sure there are several in boxes I don’t know about. But I just wanted a new one, something that was mine and that I could really use as my Bible.

I’ve been using my dad’s old Bible since he passed away. It was one of those ways to remember him. He made some notes and highlighted pieces of scripture, and it was cool to see what he felt was important. However, it’s beginning to fall apart and I can’t really write in it because I don’t want to add to what my dad already put in there, so I opted to get a new Bible. Now I can highlight and write to my heart’s content, and actually come back to stuff I’ve learned in previous study. It’s gonna be awesome.

I also purchased a copy of The Message because I’ve heard lots of good things about it. Several of my friends use it in supplemental Bible Study, and I really like how it phrases a lot of things. It makes stuff really easy to understand sometimes, putting it in such plain English that I can’t ignore it. I won’t use it as a primary Bible, but I will use it as another source to look at. I’m pondering getting an NASB translation and maybe an ESV too. It’s always good to have different perspectives, and recently I’ve found myself really getting into God’s word, getting a lot out of it, and really enjoying it. God can do some amazing things if you just pick up His Word. So we’ll see where this takes me. :)

A Little Courtesy Please

I found something else that annoys me this morning. I’m sure it’s always annoyed me, but I just found a good example of it this morning, so I thought I’d share.

I was at the Dunkin Donuts which is on my way to work and I had stopped to get a Bacon, Egg, and Cheese on a bagel (3 cheers from the Jeremy must eat Breakfast crowd). I had ordered my sandwich and I was merely waiting for it. The guy behind the counter was really nice. He asked me how I was, and I told him I was good, how are you? He replied that he was doing well. Small talk indeed, and even if I had been having the crappiest day ever I still probably would have said doing well. No need to put my troubles on him. But anyways I was standing there waiting and this lady comes in to order something. The guy behind the counter says “Hi, how are you doing?” The woman just ignores the question and steamrolls into “Small Coffee Cream and Sugar,” or some such order. I was just taken aback. Yes, his gesture of good will was probably not completely genuine (maybe it was), but at least give the guy the courtesy of responding to his question, and actually caring that he’s another human being, not someone who you use and then throw away. Needless to say it annoyed me. Luckily she made some small talk after she ordered, which appeased me a little bit, but still, I was amazed at how rude the general population can be sometimes.

Eye Oh Eye

Eye Injury Free since……Saturday. Yep. I had to update my counter today. And I was doing so well. I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever be able to wear contacts again.

I ended up trying to do a little work on Friday night (which means I probably shouldn’t have) and I ended up taking a quick “nap.” These are always a bad choice, especially late at night, because I wasn’t going to wake up in 15 minutes. Even if I had set an alarm. When I do this I’m just going to sleep through the night, or wake up in several hours and have to get ready for bed anyways. Well, on Friday I tried for one of my 15 minute “naps.” I think I laid down at maybe 12:30…and then woke up at 4 with all of my clothes on, and my laptop in sleep mode next to me. Normal people would have gotten up, brushed their teeth, and put their pajamas on. Not me (mostly because I refrain from using the term normal in reference to myself).

Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but I put this ointment in my eye every night before I goto bed which helps keep my eyeball from sticking to my eyelid (which causes the issue since the part that got injured is weak and prone to tearing if it gets stuck). This wouldn’t be a problem if my eye would just keep itself lubricated, but it seems to fail in that area these days as well. Anyways, since I had just fallen asleep I obviously didn’t bother with the ointment. It had been a good three months since I injured it the last time, and when I woek up at 4AM my eye felt pretty good, so I figured I was good. Being lazy (as many people are on Saturday morning at 4AM) I quick flipped my light off, stowed my laptop, and went back to bed.

Unfortunately my alarm clock was still set to 6AM, since I woke up at 6AM to be at breakfast by 7AM with the guys on Fridays. Well, my alarm went off, I woke up in shock, opened my eyes, and low and behold, my eyeball had stuck to my eyelid, so it ripped slightly. It was slightly painful, but after I slept for awhile I couldn’t tell that it had happened, which meant it was only a slight tear.

I just wonder if it’s every going to get strong enough to withstand my eyes getting dry. Contacts are for sure out, because those stick to my eyes sometimes. So it would appear that I’m stuck with glasses, at least for the time being. Oh the travesty.