Tuesday, February 20, 2007
I have never been one of those individuals that follows what is going on in Hollywood. Whenever some starts talking about what is going on in one of the celebrities lives I often respond to them, "I don't know this person, never will, so why should I care?" Being a celebrity, wanting to be a celebrity, and following celebrity gossip seems very depressing to me. I bring all of this up because someone told me that Brittany Spears shaved her head a couple days ago. Now I remember a few years back when there were a lot of parents worried about the influence she had on their daughters. There was a lot of concern over pre-teens and teens a like dressing immodestly. I actually saw some of this going on, and thought where are these girl's parents? I looked at an article of what happened Britney Spears Back in Rehab, which also goes into the other things going on in her life. I think that now is the best time to show the pre-teen and teen girls Brittany Spears. Not for gossip, but for a warning of where bad choices can get you. Money and Celebrity cannot save you from the types of problems that everyone else deals with. This beautiful girl had what society says we should want; money, power, being "somebody", etc. And now she is in the middle of a horrible divorce(with 2 kids in the middle of it all), a shaved head, in rehab(again), and her career is over. So I think it would be a good idea to show our young people that LIFE IS REAL, even for those who we think are untouchable.
Monday, February 19, 2007
I had a hard time sleeping last night. I fell asleep for an hour or so but had a dream about what it means to be a man. I know how my mind got on that subject, I just don't know why I couldn't get it off my mind. Chris and I were talking about what it means to be a man, in specific earning one's keep. Also, finding purpose in life. I finally gave up fighting the thoughts so I mentally compiled a list.
1. A man defends those weaker than them.
2. A man set a good example for those younger than them.
3. A man respects women at all times.
4. A man makes sacrifices for his family.
5. A man leads his family in the right direction.
6. A man works for his keep. He finds purpose for his life.
7. A man seeks wisdom from his elders.
8. A man looks people in the eye when he is talking to them.
9. A man uses self control when making decisions.
10. A man knows his limits. He respects his limits, by admitting them.
11. A man apologizes when he wrongs another. He admits when he is wrong.
12. A man shows courage under adversity.
I am sure I could think of more. Anyone have anything to add?
1. A man defends those weaker than them.
2. A man set a good example for those younger than them.
3. A man respects women at all times.
4. A man makes sacrifices for his family.
5. A man leads his family in the right direction.
6. A man works for his keep. He finds purpose for his life.
7. A man seeks wisdom from his elders.
8. A man looks people in the eye when he is talking to them.
9. A man uses self control when making decisions.
10. A man knows his limits. He respects his limits, by admitting them.
11. A man apologizes when he wrongs another. He admits when he is wrong.
12. A man shows courage under adversity.
I am sure I could think of more. Anyone have anything to add?
Thursday, February 15, 2007
The Sprit of Wrath was on me today. I don't want to give the specific example of why I know this, but in a few situations I was focusing on other's faults and comparing my own life to them. Well I guess I can use this as an example because this is where it all started. For school today I was participating in a discusion over the Medicaid/Medicare(federal/state medical programs) problem, and how to resolve it. As a pseudo-ex-retail pharmacy technician I see all kinds of abuse of the Medicaid system. Individuals who are able to work, but choose not to because they can get a free ride on the State is the easiest example. It is too easy to get bothered by these type of situations, but with God's grace I was soon able to look past it and get on with life while I was working with these people. I don't want to give the impression that every person that is on Medicare/Medicaid is abusing it either. Most individuals (95%) really need it.
It is funny how I can get off into the thinking about how other's need to be doing this or that. I know that everyone does it, but that doesn't really help me realize what I am doing is wrong. I find it especially easy to get into this line of thought and even speech at work. Much of this can be easily seen by these two paraphrases: 1) "Take the plank out of your own eye before you attempt removing the splinter out of your neighbor's." 2) "Don't judge a man until you have walked in his shoes for a day."
So anyway, back to the Spirit of Wrath. I asked God in my prayer time today to cast this spirit back to hell and it is gone. Afterwards opened up the bible to psalm 103 and read versus 1-5. I think it meshes well with what I need to do after refocusing back to God and what he wants from me.
It is funny how I can get off into the thinking about how other's need to be doing this or that. I know that everyone does it, but that doesn't really help me realize what I am doing is wrong. I find it especially easy to get into this line of thought and even speech at work. Much of this can be easily seen by these two paraphrases: 1) "Take the plank out of your own eye before you attempt removing the splinter out of your neighbor's." 2) "Don't judge a man until you have walked in his shoes for a day."
So anyway, back to the Spirit of Wrath. I asked God in my prayer time today to cast this spirit back to hell and it is gone. Afterwards opened up the bible to psalm 103 and read versus 1-5. I think it meshes well with what I need to do after refocusing back to God and what he wants from me.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
I had a busy day today. I got home at 7:30am and fell asleep at 8am. I woke up for a meeting with the people in my Learning Team from school to finish up a project that is due on Monday. I wasn't much of a help(I was groggy). We finished up the meeting at 12pm and I tried to go back to sleep for another hour. I woke up again at 1:45pm and drove Matt and I over to the Luther Center where we helped a coworker move her aunt's furniture to a different floor of the building. I was glad to be able to serve someone for a change, rather than serving myself.
After Matt and I were done at the Luther Center we drove over to St. Pete's to go to confession. An interesting thing was mentioned by the priest. I told him about how we were starting a christian men's household and how we were running into problems that seemed to get in the way an awful lot. The priest said that we were definitely under spiritual attack which is to be expected when people try to create good things like a men's household. We will have to discuss this during our next meeting(hopefully on Monday).
Matt I went over to CJ and Amy's for dinner. It was nice to catch up with them and get a well balanced meal in. After the meal other people from the POP started to show up for the adult meeting. I mentioned the Montana trip to some of the other people in the branch and it looks like they would be interested. woo hoo!
After Matt and I were done at the Luther Center we drove over to St. Pete's to go to confession. An interesting thing was mentioned by the priest. I told him about how we were starting a christian men's household and how we were running into problems that seemed to get in the way an awful lot. The priest said that we were definitely under spiritual attack which is to be expected when people try to create good things like a men's household. We will have to discuss this during our next meeting(hopefully on Monday).
Matt I went over to CJ and Amy's for dinner. It was nice to catch up with them and get a well balanced meal in. After the meal other people from the POP started to show up for the adult meeting. I mentioned the Montana trip to some of the other people in the branch and it looks like they would be interested. woo hoo!
Friday, February 09, 2007
Back on thirds for the weekend.
I came to the realization today that I am not where I want to be spiritually. It really is crazy the way that I get all excited and into my prayer life then gradually stop. I finally realize that I am off the path after a month or so and repeat the process. I think the flaw that keeps me in this cycle is everything else in my life is very much the same. With school, I will be into it for the first 3 weeks and then just become lazy the the next 2, then play catchup on the last. Weird. Anyways, I am going to have to figure out a way to combat this mentality if I am going to change.
I have decided to start investing more of my money. I tend to spend frivolously at times, so making my money less accessible will help me combat this. I am trying out some EFT's for the first year or two I think, the rest I will keep in a money market account. I think I will burn my plans for buying another house for a couple years due to how bad the housing market is at this point. I read in two different articles that 1. the housing market hit it's peak. and 2. you can get a lot more back on your investment investing in the market than investing in property right now. Plus, I find investing to be kind of fun in a stress outlet sort of way.
My health care organization's class is wrapping up this Monday! I can't wait to get into a different class. This one was starting to get on my nerves. I liked the people I was working with, but there was a lot of work and some of it involved PowerPoint presentations(yuck!).
I came to the realization today that I am not where I want to be spiritually. It really is crazy the way that I get all excited and into my prayer life then gradually stop. I finally realize that I am off the path after a month or so and repeat the process. I think the flaw that keeps me in this cycle is everything else in my life is very much the same. With school, I will be into it for the first 3 weeks and then just become lazy the the next 2, then play catchup on the last. Weird. Anyways, I am going to have to figure out a way to combat this mentality if I am going to change.
I have decided to start investing more of my money. I tend to spend frivolously at times, so making my money less accessible will help me combat this. I am trying out some EFT's for the first year or two I think, the rest I will keep in a money market account. I think I will burn my plans for buying another house for a couple years due to how bad the housing market is at this point. I read in two different articles that 1. the housing market hit it's peak. and 2. you can get a lot more back on your investment investing in the market than investing in property right now. Plus, I find investing to be kind of fun in a stress outlet sort of way.
My health care organization's class is wrapping up this Monday! I can't wait to get into a different class. This one was starting to get on my nerves. I liked the people I was working with, but there was a lot of work and some of it involved PowerPoint presentations(yuck!).
Back on thirds for the weekend.
I came to the realization today that I am not where I want to be spiritually. It really is crazy the way that I get all excited and into my prayer life then gradually stop. I finally realize that I am off the path after a month or so and repeat the process. I think the flaw that keeps me in this cycle is everything else in my life is very much the same. With school, I will be into it for the first 3 weeks and then just become lazy the the next 2, then play catchup on the last. Weird. Anyways, I am going to have to figure out a way to combat this mentality if I am going to change.
I have decided to start investing more of my money. I tend to spend frivolously at times, so making my money less accessible will help me combat this. I am trying out some EFT's for the first year or two I think, the rest I will keep in a money market account. I think I will burn my plans for buying another house for a couple years due to how bad the housing market is at this point. I read in two different articles that 1. the housing market hit it's peak. and 2. you can get a lot more back on your investment investing in the market than investing in property right now. Plus, I find investing to be kind of fun in a stress outlet sort of way.
My health care organization's class is wrapping up this Monday! I can't wait to get into a different class. This one was starting to get on my nerves. I liked the people I was working with, but there was a lot of work and some of it involved PowerPoint presentations(yuck!).
I came to the realization today that I am not where I want to be spiritually. It really is crazy the way that I get all excited and into my prayer life then gradually stop. I finally realize that I am off the path after a month or so and repeat the process. I think the flaw that keeps me in this cycle is everything else in my life is very much the same. With school, I will be into it for the first 3 weeks and then just become lazy the the next 2, then play catchup on the last. Weird. Anyways, I am going to have to figure out a way to combat this mentality if I am going to change.
I have decided to start investing more of my money. I tend to spend frivolously at times, so making my money less accessible will help me combat this. I am trying out some EFT's for the first year or two I think, the rest I will keep in a money market account. I think I will burn my plans for buying another house for a couple years due to how bad the housing market is at this point. I read in two different articles that 1. the housing market hit it's peak. and 2. you can get a lot more back on your investment investing in the market than investing in property right now. Plus, I find investing to be kind of fun in a stress outlet sort of way.
My health care organization's class is wrapping up this Monday! I can't wait to get into a different class. This one was starting to get on my nerves. I liked the people I was working with, but there was a lot of work and some of it involved PowerPoint presentations(yuck!).
I was reminded about the trip to Glacier National Park this week, so I figured I should start a post about it. The only person that is positive that he can go as of today is me. We have a list of possibles Justin W., Eric J., Matt D., Sarah B., Greg W. and some of Justin's friends from South Bend. I am not sure Justin can go anymore due to getting a new job a month ago. We will have to see. I was able to pull enough strings to get out of school and work over June 29th to July 10th which was a complete miracle. If no one is able to go, I will do the trip myself, because I am not going to waste my only vacation time sitting around Rockford.
My initial plan was to split the trip up into 2 smaller trips in different parts of the park, but I have changed my mind. I would like to check out Lake Isabel. It considered a really strenuous hike. It is 30 miles total, 4000 feet of elevation gain, a mile of switchbacks, etc.
Here are a few links.
http://hikerchef.blogspot.com/2006/06/glacier-hiking.html
http://www.nps.gov/glac/index.htm
http://gorp.away.com/gorp/resource/us_national_park/mt/hik_gla4.htm
More to come later.
My initial plan was to split the trip up into 2 smaller trips in different parts of the park, but I have changed my mind. I would like to check out Lake Isabel. It considered a really strenuous hike. It is 30 miles total, 4000 feet of elevation gain, a mile of switchbacks, etc.
Here are a few links.
http://hikerchef.blogspot.com/2006/06/glacier-hiking.html
http://www.nps.gov/glac/index.htm
http://gorp.away.com/gorp/resource/us_national_park/mt/hik_gla4.htm
More to come later.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
It feels like there is too much to mention right now, so I will just go down the mental list I have right now.
The household had a well needed meeting last week. The three of us determined that we are not living up to the standards we need to in relation to what we want the household to represent. We all had little peeves with each other that we were not talking about, so we finally got to get those out in the open and taken care of. One of the biggest issues that we talked about was the fact that we are not doing anything to build our friendships. Much of the time spent is in front of the TV so we all unanimously decided to get rid of the cable. The thing is, since we made the decision to get rid of the cable I have barely had time to use it or cancel it. Which brings me onto the next subject...
I have been working nights for the past 2 weeks. I can't complain too much about it, because I like it. The only part that I don't like is the lack of sleep. On days I work I tend to sleep 3 to 4 hours so on the 3rd and 4th day I work I am a zombie. I blew up at Chris and Matt this morning because the lack of sleep is making me cranky. I got out of work late this morning due to a delta result on a baby's hemogram which ended up being an analytical error on the part of whoever ran the specimen a few days ago. In layman's terms, the results I was getting today did not correspond to the results from 2 days ago. So I finally got into bed at 815AM and had just fallen asleep when my phone rings. It is Carl, and his truck is stuck in some one's driveway(I don't want to get into that story), and he wants to know if I have a chain that he can use to pull him out. YARRRRR!!!!! ERIC NEED SLEEPP!!! It is one of those situations where you really really really don't want to, but you know that it is what God wants you to do. So I got dressed and drive down to 4th st. and get to where he is and his rear wheels have dug deep into the ground where his truck is at. So I jump in and back it up an couple inches and gun it out of the divots! Thank Jesus it only took 10 minutes to get him out.
So 9:30AM I am setting my alarm for 11:30am so that I can make it to 12:30 mass so I don't miss any of the Superbowl later. Ahh...sleep... Then the alarm goes off at 11:30am and I decide that 2 hours just won't cut it. So I change it to 2pm. Then 5 minutes after this I hear the shop vac going in the living room! It is going for like 10 minutes then goes off. I fall asleep then 5 minutes later music comes on! So I get up get dressed and declare my dislike of their choice of activities with some choice words, which by the way I should probably apologize for the way I described my displeasure. So I get up later on and try to go to Mass at 5pm (after the game has already started), once again another sacrifice that I really don't want to make. I come to find out it is canceled, so I go to the party.
The major reason for loss of sleep other than work would have to be school. This Heath care organizations class started out easy, but now it getting rough at the end. I did a 17 page paper last week and have another 7 page paper and 25 slide presentation due today which I am no where near finishing. I originally picked up this MHA degree program because of all the excess time I was wasting, now I am begging for an hour to just relax. I can't even find time to run.
On the subject of running, my dad wanted to sign up for the Indy mini-marathon. I agreed that I would like to do it as well since I just started to get back into running to help me quit smoking(2 weeks, 0 cigarettes so far). I am getting to where I need to be to start training for a 5k, but have to find the time to do the training first.
How is that for an update?
The household had a well needed meeting last week. The three of us determined that we are not living up to the standards we need to in relation to what we want the household to represent. We all had little peeves with each other that we were not talking about, so we finally got to get those out in the open and taken care of. One of the biggest issues that we talked about was the fact that we are not doing anything to build our friendships. Much of the time spent is in front of the TV so we all unanimously decided to get rid of the cable. The thing is, since we made the decision to get rid of the cable I have barely had time to use it or cancel it. Which brings me onto the next subject...
I have been working nights for the past 2 weeks. I can't complain too much about it, because I like it. The only part that I don't like is the lack of sleep. On days I work I tend to sleep 3 to 4 hours so on the 3rd and 4th day I work I am a zombie. I blew up at Chris and Matt this morning because the lack of sleep is making me cranky. I got out of work late this morning due to a delta result on a baby's hemogram which ended up being an analytical error on the part of whoever ran the specimen a few days ago. In layman's terms, the results I was getting today did not correspond to the results from 2 days ago. So I finally got into bed at 815AM and had just fallen asleep when my phone rings. It is Carl, and his truck is stuck in some one's driveway(I don't want to get into that story), and he wants to know if I have a chain that he can use to pull him out. YARRRRR!!!!! ERIC NEED SLEEPP!!! It is one of those situations where you really really really don't want to, but you know that it is what God wants you to do. So I got dressed and drive down to 4th st. and get to where he is and his rear wheels have dug deep into the ground where his truck is at. So I jump in and back it up an couple inches and gun it out of the divots! Thank Jesus it only took 10 minutes to get him out.
So 9:30AM I am setting my alarm for 11:30am so that I can make it to 12:30 mass so I don't miss any of the Superbowl later. Ahh...sleep... Then the alarm goes off at 11:30am and I decide that 2 hours just won't cut it. So I change it to 2pm. Then 5 minutes after this I hear the shop vac going in the living room! It is going for like 10 minutes then goes off. I fall asleep then 5 minutes later music comes on! So I get up get dressed and declare my dislike of their choice of activities with some choice words, which by the way I should probably apologize for the way I described my displeasure. So I get up later on and try to go to Mass at 5pm (after the game has already started), once again another sacrifice that I really don't want to make. I come to find out it is canceled, so I go to the party.
The major reason for loss of sleep other than work would have to be school. This Heath care organizations class started out easy, but now it getting rough at the end. I did a 17 page paper last week and have another 7 page paper and 25 slide presentation due today which I am no where near finishing. I originally picked up this MHA degree program because of all the excess time I was wasting, now I am begging for an hour to just relax. I can't even find time to run.
On the subject of running, my dad wanted to sign up for the Indy mini-marathon. I agreed that I would like to do it as well since I just started to get back into running to help me quit smoking(2 weeks, 0 cigarettes so far). I am getting to where I need to be to start training for a 5k, but have to find the time to do the training first.
How is that for an update?
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