Switching to facebook

I'll be switching over to facebook for blogging from now on.

Wow .. Big lags here

So I see I'm lagging on my blog updates and that is in part because of the business of the season.

There will probably be some changes in my blog as I go forward and you are much more likely to hear from me on facebook so you may want to sign up there if you haven't already.

Then at least you can track my statuses.

Have a good christmas and remember Him!

I find that I tend to hate Christmas time because of the cost, busy-ness, and lists of things that must be done.

Not a really good place for a Christian to be.

I'd like to go to a system where you could only give one piece of fruit as a Christmas present ... but then some merchant would come up with Apples made of Gold or something and we'd still spend thousands of dollars.

Oh well. I do not begrudge the gifts once given and I hope that you find joy in them, but the true gifts are the friends we have be they many or few, fabulous or run of the mill, near or far.

So it's been a while ...

So let's play catch up.

1) Went to Thanksgiving at my folks which was great.

Especially enjoyed time with Mark at his new place, hanging out with the whole Youngsville clan on Thanksgiving, Mom and Dad, and two new friends -- Chris and Liana.

2) I put on five SOLID pounds over Thanksgiving just in time to start a new exercise routine today.

3) Seriously, I need to lay off the pepsi and sugar (he said while finishing a fresh baked chocolate chip cookie). Please pass the water.

4) The cats survived our house sitter .. .sigh.

5) Christmas decorations are up.

6) Nebraska won and is going to a decent bowl game.

7) I am most likely going to the playoffs in my fantasy football league.

8) Obama is so far ticking off "progressives" (i.e. liberals) with his cabinet choices. That is about the best I could hope for.

9) Remember to vote for Chambliss / Doyle tomorrow ... YOU MUST VOTE (in Georgia only of course).

10) I am ignoring a lot of things right now as I work on my submission for my conference in Cincinnati which is in 11 days. Deadline for my submission is Friday, but I'm hoping to put it in tonight or tomorrow at the latest.

11) For some reason all of my jeans have shrunk.

12) Christmas shopping is 90% done (need to do stocking work for Kradan).

13) I think I liked Quantom of Solace better than Transporter 3. Both were good. Neither was great.

Writing .....

So a bit of news about writing.

I'm going to go to a writers conference in December.

I've never been to one and from what I've read, they are mostly a waste of time. However, this one is being put on by the people who write the books on how to get published and it includes a 30 minute one on one with someone and a critique of up to 50 pages of your manuscript and that was worth me driving up to Cincinnati in December.

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So now I've pulled the book back out and I've been going through it again.

I have a 4th draft and a 5th draft that I'm reading through as well as changing the order of the 4th and 1st chapters around because I like the 4th better.

My plan will be to go through the 5th draft and clean it up as much as possible and then submit the first 50 pages of that to the writers conference for a critique.

So for right now, I'm reading through the 4th draft and then I'll read through the 5th draft and try to catch as many little things as possible especially in the first 50 pages.

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So if I seem like I'm absorbed doing something else, you're probably right.

Let's wander through a whole bunch of topics

1) No politics! (I have several things to say but will defer to another day).

2) One of the reasons that I write was made clear today. Jordan read through one of my stories (it's about 60 pages long and may become a full novel some day) and was really jolted by it. It touches somewhat on death and it triggered a very emotional response and we had a good talk. In the end, we came back to a few truths:

a) You have to enjoy every day that God gives you because you don't know how many there will be.

b) You ignore as many of the "little" things as you can and don't let them come between you and the people around you.

3) Okay .. a short journey into my brain ...

Here's what I was planning at 3 AM yesterday morning. Brain drift ... when I got to Kradan's parents house at Christmas, I won't be able to work in the gym so I can use my father-in-laws weight set that he has in his carport and then I thought that I need to remember not to do it early in the morning because Kradan's Mom needs a lot of sleep due to illness so I should wait till 10:30 ...

planning when to lift weights seven weeks from now .... hmmmm... too much planning.

4) Please continue to pray for our family as we deal with the stress of a whole lot of issues. We are doing well in one sense, but there is still a lot of stuff going on that we need calm and prayer and focus to work through. Thanks!

5) Please also pray for me in my job as I consider the various options: staying here and hoping I am not one of the ones cut, looking within HP, looking outside of HP. The last one is very unlikely just given my tenure, time off, etc.

6) What do I do about my screens? I haven't had screens on the windows of my house for a long time. Eight of them are under my house. The other several (maybe ten) are walled into my basement.

Funny story about how I stuck them in the little crawlspace under my lower stairs when I didn't have any sheetrock on the walls of the garage and then I sheetrocked the garage.

Do I trash the ones under the porch or somehow hold out hope that I'll things together and get them all up on windows at some point in time.

7) Anyone know a cheap, reliable gutter cleaner?

8) Ditto for someone to trim awkward tree branches near my roof?

Comments, quetions, etc are welcome as usual.

Let's talk about this year

So what is going on this year in the life of Ozzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

My list is very short this year:

1) Get finances under control ... okay ... this is actually a big one, but I have some ideas. We're going to take some Dave Ramsey concepts and use them. Probably not the whole enchilada because I'm not sure if my family could deal with it and we're not desperate enough to do it.

2) Spend time with the family whenever possible.

3) Exercise as many days as possible. Trying for five per week.

4) Write every day.. my mood, etc on days I write is 100% better and it goes toward my long term goals.

5) Get to where I need to be at work ... mostly by starting daily task lists for non-call work ... the call work can vary from 2 to 8 hours a day and I need to be ready when I have the lulls to jump onto something else.

It's been a big week

Politics: I'll keep this short. The Democrats have won so they are now responsible -- keep that in mind over the next few years.

If you live in Georgia, we have one more BIG election on December 2nd. It will be both the Senate seat (huge) as well as the Judicial Runoff. I'll be supporting Chambliss in the Senate and Doyle (a young, conservative woman) for the Judicial nod.

Finally, congratulations to Barak Obama. It is a sign of America's greatness that 40 years after MLK, we have a black president. Compare this to Iraq where they are killing people because your great, great grandfather killed my great, great grandfather.

Perhaps now we can do away with the affirmative action nonsense. How much more affirmative do we need to get than the presidency.

Now, on to the important things.

I turned 44 this wweek. For those of you who have read my notes and blogs over the years, you're probably expecting a bullet by bullet on each of the many goals I had at the start of this year.

Well, you'll be slightly disappointed since I'm just going to hit the highlights.

o Walked a half marathon
o Got Lasik (between 20-20 and 20-25 now)
o Worked as an election worker
o Sort of started working out at the gym

In general, I think I had a pretty good year as a father and husband. It could have been better, but the main thing is that I've started to get some insights into L and know that I have to keep myself calm to keep calm.

Writing was pretty stinky. I'm suppossed to have gotten a short story published by now or at least a lot more submitted. More on this later.

Money -- one of my goals was to keep us on track financially. It's not 100%, but much, much better than last year.

tomorrow: the coming year's goals.