Dystopian Paradise

It’s a bit early, but I’m hopeful that “Fringe” will be successful and interesting. I’ve only watched the pilot so far, but it’s definitely enough to have me reminiscing about “The X-Files.” If you missed it, you should definitely check out the link above as they have all three episodes online. I know I’ll be watching the others ASAP.

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Flying to Pittsburgh for a short work trip and there’s a lot of time for reflection once I run out of “The Office” and “Scrubs”. I’m wondering how on the earth you balance 40+ hours a week at a job, cooking, exercising, time with the spouse, time with the little man, and the 100 other things that come up in the course of a week.

You know, I’ve been doing this for five years now and it actually seems like it’s getting harder, when my brain tells me it should be the other way around. Sure things are always changing, but it just feels a bit like I’m headed for a dead end eventually. Not that it’s any too soon, but only a crazy person would continue to drive the boat straight onto the rocks once they’ve seen the lighthouse.

The problem eight now is I don’t seem to know the direction to turn. I know and I trust that God is in control, but I haven’t been actively seeking his will lately and it has left me aimless and drifting, just as I knew it would. The trouble is that the only thing I can find that I can cut from my day is sleep and working out. Two things I really need to sustain my body.

But I think I may have found a way to balance by life a little better. I’ll blog about that soon.

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This post is more introspective than usual. Feel free to skim or skip.

Ever since we moved here 5 years ago Kassy and I have been looking for a small group of friends we could connect with on a regular basis. A group that would hold us accountable to living this Christian life, encourage us in times of doubt or struggle, and celebrate with us as we pass over the mountains. We’ve been a part of 3 groups properly, and each one has had it’s ups and downs.

We’re in between groups again now and trying to decide what God has in store for us in these next few months or years. The difficult decision right now is whether God wants us in a group together with Kaden or apart and each taking their turn watching him for an evening. I don’t have a good answer for this question, but it does bring up another question that I’d live to hear your thoughts on.

What are the benefits and drawbacks of being in a group together?

One of the biggest benefits I see of being in a group together is that we are growing to know more about God and eachother’s spirituality at the same time.

On the contrary it means we are keeping an eye on Kaden and so it makes it harder to get the most out of each study.

The other thing is that I feel we are both more open when the group is divided into only males or females.

I would love to have the one-on-one time with Kaden, but would hate to not see much of Kassy an additional might of the week.

As you can see this isn’t an east decision but we’ve decided to spend some more time in prayer seeking God’s voice and looking for opportunities where He is at work around us. I know the answer will come soon.

Let me know the things that have weighed on you when making similar decisions.

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This is the first post from my new iphone. With a new wordpress app for it I should be able to write posts from anywhere, meaning more posts.

Here’s a recent photo of Kaden so I can test the photo upload functionality. The picture is from a recent trip to the Oasis while Mom and Amy were here a few days back. We had a nice visit and now Kassy and Kaden are up in MO for a cousin’s wedding.

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Well, the past few weeks since mid-June have just flown by.  With the symbolic passing of another year, I marked the evening with several close friends playing a new board game that I enjoy very much, and wholeheartedly recommend, “Shadows Over Camelot.” More on that another time. Today I want to explain, for those who haven’t heard, just where my last 2 weeks have gone.

In essence they have gone to Dr’s visits.  After my birthay rolled around, I got to thinking it was time for an annual checkup, seeing as how it had been closer to two. So, I made an appointment, and dropped in, know full well that I’d gained my “new baby 10″, and should be eating out less, exercising more, and to have a mole behind my ear measured. Well, all went well, I get a recommendation for a podiatrist to fix up my ingrown toenails a week or so later, and then she measured the mole and it had grown. So, off I go to the dermatologist (getting a doctor’s recommendation skips you ahead of the two month wait), and sure enough we have that nasty little bugger biopsy’d. So there’s the first week.

Not too worried about ye ole mole, as I have several, and one mole looks about the same as the next, until I get a call on Saturday morning from my dermatologist, letting me know that I have an “in situ melanoma“, and that I’ll need to make an appointment on the following Monday with a surgeon for a consulation. In this consultation I learn that in situ melanoma is an early stage skin cancer, and if not caught early can be very deadly.  Thankfully, we had caught this as early as is possible, however, they needed to remove 1/2 cm margins around the mole to be sure to remove any sattelite cancerous cells that might still be lingering. So, we schedule that for last Friday (the 27th), a short two days after having my toenails operated on. In retrospect this might have been a bit much to handle, however, we are switching health plans as of today, and it made some financial sense.

Finally, the day after the surgery (Saturday) for those keeping score. Kassy, Kaden, and I attended a 1st birthday party for a friend’s daughter, and I was enjoying a delicious popcorn ball made with jello for flavoring & extra stickiness. However, during one of these bites of popcorn ball, I accidentally chipped a large chunk of enamel off of one of my two front teeth.  Thankfully, my two front teeth have very large fillings from an accident as a child, and they were likely going to have to be replaced sometime soon, but still, “when it rains it pours.”

After a long weekend, a few Vicodin, and a bit of limping things are looking up. Kaden is sleeping through the night again (hooray!), I’m not limping nearly as much, and my bandages on my neck are almost ready to come off.  All in all it looks like July should be a much better month than June was.

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So a week or so ago, we decided to take the family out for an evening walk. We thought it’d definitely put Kaden to sleep, and be good for us to get some exercise. Now, mind you this was around 9pm, so it was getting dark, but our neighborhood is a nice one, well lit, all that jazz, so we were comfortable taking a quick stroll around the block by the school and park, and then back to our house. Things were going just fine until we turned the corner and headed through the edge of the park, when we noticed that our quiet suburban neighborhood had been invaded by a snake.

Now, I’m not going to say that I have an irrational fear of snakes, but I have a significant disdain for them existing within my sight, and would much prefer to never see one again. But as it turns out, we saw this snake (thankfully 10-15 feet before we got to it), crossing the path just ahead of us. Now, this is not the simple little garter snake I’m used to from Missouri. I’ve only seen maybe three real snakes since we moved to Texas, and in order I’m about to tell you their stories.

1. Snake the First: Leaving work very late one evening, as I was driving across the parking lot there was a large (read: greater than three feet) snake making his way home from work as well, or perhaps he worked 3rd shift and was just heading in, all the same, our paths crossed, although simultaneously too close and not close enough, as you’ll see with the next encounter.
2. The second snake Kassy & I saw whilst driving home one evening, in the middle of an intersection near our house. This intelligent beast was slithering his way across four plus lanes of traffic, diagonally through the intersection we were turning left at. I simultaneously lost my breath, swerved around the snake, and for reasons still unbeknownswt to me, used the power locks to lock all the doors in our car. Now granted this snake was quite possibly the largest, non-captive, snake I’ve ever seen, but he still probably wouldn’t have been capable of operating the door of our car, let alone as we passed at 15mph.
3. The most recent snake was probably similar in size to the first, somewhere between three and maybe four feet long, but seeing as how we were out-of-doors, as the kids say, it scared the living daylights out of me. Not to mention it was dark, and who knows how many others were there just waiting for us to cross their paths. Anyway, now anytime I have to go out into the yard after dark I’m get anxious worrying about whether or not there is a snake in our backyard.

So without saying “I have an irrational fear of snakes,” I believe I have proved my point. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

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I had to share:

Anyway, things are good here. About to turn another year older, so I’m doing some introspection. But honestly, Kaden’s not sleeping really well right now because he’s sick, and so I’m just trying to survive.

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Well, Scrubs has come to a close, but I have to say that these last few episodes, although the season was cut drastically short by the writer’s strike we’re absolutely some of the funniest in a long time. This one, in particular has had me laughing several times, and has been mentioned at work a few times as well, so I thought I’d share with anyone out there who might have missed it. Thursday night is the season finale for The Office, and with that effectively the end of new TV until summer for our house. Oh sure, we’ll still watch The Daily Show, and Mythbusters, and a few other things, but really, what is TV without painful new episodes of everyone’s favorite manager stooping to all new lows. Here’s a bit to keep us all hanging on.

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Wow, I had no idea we were even up for best blog of all time, but apparently CNN is already selling shirts saying so.

I stumbled across this new feature of CNN.com early this morning, where they allow you to buy a t-shirt ($15) with one of the day’s top headlines printed across it, like this. The funny thing is that I also noticed that the URL was not protected at all, and so it allows things like this, that, or more deviously these.  I had a lot of un with it and couldn’t help but share the love.
Hope you enjoy!

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I’m not really sure what hulu.com is up to, but it looks interesting. Full length episodes on-line, full length feature films, really? OK. Sure, I’ll watch “Monty Python’s Meaning of Life,” thank you very much. Waiting for the shoe to drop.

[Edit:] Apparently, Hulu is a joint venture between NBC(Universal) & Newscorp(Fox), and they’ve signed agreements with several other production houses.  I’m pretty impressed with it overall. We watched a bit of “The Meaning of Life” tonight, honestly just from about 22 minutes in to around 35 minutes (nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more), but the resolution’s pretty good (not fully DVD quality mind you, but full screen is watchable), and it’s able to very quickly scan to wherever in the show you’d like to pick up.  All in all the web site is well done, and if they get more content I can guarantee that I’ll be back.

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