Category: personal

i haven’t blogged in two weeks and my wife has been reminding me that my parents need me to post. it’s an odd feeling having an audience of two but the good news is that they are very loyal readers. so in order to keep them loyal i am posting now.

the reason that i haven’t posted in two weeks is really good. it’s a two fold reason, 1) i was on a mission trip for eight of the days. the youth ministry was repairing houses in vicksburg, mississippi. it was a great week but i couldn’t post anything because i didn’t have any internet access. 2) i’ve had a summer cold since getting back from mississippi. i hate summer colds. there are simply not fun. i’ve felt pretty miserable all week. i think i’m finally pretty close to over it.

the only two things that have really happened within the past two weeks are 1) lots of showings of the house, and 2) some good financial news. the showings are in an attempt to sell our house so we can buy one up in stevens point. we’ve averaged about one and a half showings per day. supposedly this isn’t bad – in fact it’s pretty good. we’ve been on the market 16 days and we’ve had 22 showings. now we have to get an offer and ell our house.

the financial good news is from parkview. when we leave baton rouge we knew that it would involve us going without an income for eight weeks. because of this we saved up all of our vacation time so that we would each have 4 weeks of vacation and thus cut the eight weeks down to four weeks. we figured we would just live the remaining four weeks off of our savings, credit, and capital in our house. this all changed this week when the parkview personnel committee met. they decided that they wanted to pay me for eight weeks vacation instead of four. this means that we’ll be losing a little with pam’s income (right now my salary is the main source of income where as in stevens point pam’s salary will be the main source). it was a very nice surprise that took away the stress of trying to move a family of four and live for a month without any income. thank you parkview.

thanks to our insurance (gieco) we get a rental car while they are fixing our window. i went to pickup the rental car and on a whim i asked how much over the insurance amount it would be to have a mustang convertible. they told me it was a whooping $10. i figured we would only be out of our caravan for a day or two and therefore it would be fun to see pam drive around in a convertible. i’m not real big on the whole hot car thing but i do have a soft spot for mustangs. they are just cool (especially a cherry red 1967 convertible stang with a 289 in it). i was right. she looks even cuter than normal when seen in a red stang convertible. of course, the collision center called back and said it would take two to three business days to get one part so it now looks like we’ll have the mustang for six day but still $60 isn’t a bad deal for seeing my wife in a car that looks almost as hot as she does. 🙂

i took some of the youth to baton rouge laser tag last night and of course pam went with us (if you know pam then you probably know that she has this weird obsession with laser tag). while we were in the facility someone decided it would be a good idea to bust in our passenger side front window and steal pam’s purse. they didn’t take anything else, not the ipod that was right beside it, not the other girls’ purses that were in the back of the vehicle, nothing. they took pam’s purse which had a credit card, a debit card, 2 gas cards, her checkbook, cellphone, and $1.09. pam and i started calling all the card companies last night to make sure that they were canceled and we have continued today. it has been a real pain. according to the officer who worked up our case there have been a lot of such auto break ins recently, all of them looking for cash. i guess it sucks to risk getting caught and get $1.09. i hope it ticked those guys off.

it really stinks.

i’m getting ready to go to bed and i’ve been too busy to really write anything but i thought i would keep my parents updated on the work that is taking place around the house. today we did the following:

• weeded the front flower beds and planted new plants – thanks to the help of the walters family who showed up with swamp lilies and various other plants that they had around their house.
• mulched the front flower beds.
• removed four old shutters and replaced them with new cranberry ones.
• kilzed the accent wall in adam’s room so it can be painted the same color as the rest of his room.
• packed and trashed most of the non-essential stuff in adam and noah’s rooms.
• took more trips to lowe’s than i wanted too.

we’ll probably be able to start painting the outside of the house towards the end of this week. anyone who is interested in painting, receiving some pizza, and being bossed around by my dogs is welcome to come and join us.

other than having a bee chase me while i ran this afternoon there wasn’t anything real exciting that happened. thanks to the bee i now definitely know where i stand with my oldest son. adam told me that there was a bee chasing me and then he quickly ran over to the other side of the road and continued his run. he pretty much continued to laugh and run while the bee chased me for two blocks. thanks for the help son. i’m so glad i helped bring you into the world.

my run for the day
distance – 1.5 miles
time – 16:03
pace – 10:30/mile

for those who know him and might be interested joe causey was married to nicole tonight. it was a wonderful ceremony and they make a great couple.

otherwise my day was spent meeting with our realtor, blake fowler, figuring out what needs to be done to the house before we put it on the market and the working on that list, which is:

• painting the exterior
• painting the accent wall in adam’s room
• touch up painting in several spots
• cleaning and stretching the carpet in three rooms
• replacing the baseboards
• replacing the front shutters
• and a few other piddly things

adam and i saw “pirates of the caribbean: at world’s end” today. we both thought it was merely okay. a few days ago grant asked on his blog if there would be any good sequels this summer. i’m beginning to think the answer will be “no.”

i called my parents today for the holiday phone call and my mom asked why i haven’t blogged in awhile. it’s only been three days but according to my mom she has a blog fix that needs to be met (i’m assuming that admitting there is a problem is the first step to recovery – only 11 more now mom). anyhow, pam and i have been working on the house all day and therefore i’m kind of tired but i will blog anyway.

after hoping and praying for 20 years that i would have the joy of jury duty the day has finally arrived. i know this sounds odd to many of you because you think of jury duty as a chore but that’s not the case with pam and i. we both want to serve on a jury. pam actually was called for jury duty a few years ago but she was never actually chosen. it was a sad time for her but she was at least able to say that she had been on jury duty. that is until yesterday when i received my jury summons. i have officially been called to jury duty … starting in september.

since we are moving to wisconsin at the end of august i don’t really think i’ll be able to make the court date. sometimes it sucks to me.

yesterday as i went to my front door to enter my home i was greeted with a package from terminix. the package was information concerning the incomplete termite inspection they had done on my house earlier in the day while i wasn’t home. two things were funny about this:

1. i didn’t order a termite inspection – it was my neighbors across the street who did. terminix had the right address they just inspected the wrong house. they’re loss, my gain (because the part they inspected was termite free).
2. they wrote down on their inspection form that they were scared of my dogs and therefore did not inspect the back of the house. let me say that again – they were scared of my dogs – the two killer basset hounds. this makes perfect sense because basset hounds have a long history of being vicious, killing machines. i believe in the official list of the world’s scariest dogs basset hounds are second (behind pit bulls but ahead of rottweilers and and chows). most people don’t know this but bassets save their most dangerous attacks for termite killers. it’s a little known fact that bassets and termites living in a symbiotic relationship. bassets protect the termites from those who would spray insecticides on them and the termites kill all the trees around where basset hounds live (bassets have a strange paranoid fear that all the trees in the world are out to get them – this is why in an act to puts trees in their place bassets constantly pee on trees and chew on sticks). thankfully the terminix people know of this symbiotic relationship and were smart enough to stay away from the killer basset hounds in my back yard.

the dogs being scrary would actually make sense if they had been hidden within the house. if you can’t see my dogs they sound terrifying. roux has a deep bass bark that sounds like he is a 100 pound mauler. when i’m out of town it’s nice to know that bark is inside my house with my family. of course, once anyone sees my two clowns all fear dissipates.

i’ve been using freemind mind mapping for awhile now for organizing everything from studies to our church planting adventure. today lifehacker listed mindmiester on their website. mindmeister is collaborative mind mapping and it was just what i’ve been hoping for. i love using the mind mapping software but i’ve been desiring to be able use it with other people so that we could map out an event, idea or whatever together. that’s exactly what mindmeister seems to be for. i haven’t used it in a group yet but the single version is just as good as freemind. i think i will probably use it for organizing our nicaraguan mission trip in july.