Category Archives: Life

Be Humble and Content

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It may be a small book in the Bible, but it tells it like it is. Go James!

James 4

Friendship with the World

1Why do you fight and argue with each other? Isn’t it because you are full of selfish desires that fight to control your body? 2You want something you don’t have, and you will do anything to get it. You will even kill! But you still cannot get what you want, and you won’t get it by fighting and arguing. You should pray for it. 3Yet even when you do pray, your prayers are not answered, because you pray just for selfish reasons.

4You people aren’t faithful to God! Don’t you know that if you love the world, you are God’s enemies? And if you decide to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. 5Do you doubt the Scriptures that say, “God truly cares about the Spirit he has put in us”? [a]6In fact, God treats us with even greater kindness, just as the Scriptures say,

“God opposes everyone who is proud,

but he is kind to everyone who is humble.”

7Surrender to God! Resist the devil, and he will run from you. 8Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Clean up your lives, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you people who can’t make up your mind. 9Be sad and sorry and weep. Stop laughing and start crying. Be gloomy instead of glad. 10Be humble in the Lord’s presence, and he will honor you.

Saying Cruel Things about Others

11My friends, don’t say cruel things about others! If you do, or if you condemn others, you are condemning God’s Law. And if you condemn the Law, you put yourself above the Law and refuse to obey either it 12or God who gave it. God is our judge, and he can save or destroy us. What right do you have to condemn anyone?

Warning against Bragging

13You should know better than to say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to the city. We will do business there for a year and make a lot of money!” 14What do you know about tomorrow? How can you be so sure about your life? It is nothing more than mist that appears for only a little while before it disappears. 15You should say, “If the Lord lets us live, we will do these things.” 16Yet you are stupid enough to brag, and it is wrong to be so proud. 17If you don’t do what you know is right, you have sinned.

Source: BibleGateway.com (Contemporary English Version)

It’s not easy for some to be content with what they have. The desire to keep up with friends and family can consume us. Especially when those same people continue to succeed and are able to afford to live such lifestyles … OR when they can’t really afford it but rely on credit cards making it appear to others that they can. But that’s beside the point. The point is that we think, for some selfish and covetous reason, that we need such things in order to be happy and content.

We should just be still and realize that we can be content with much less. We truly can be content with fewer and less elaborate possessions. Homes don’t need to be decorated like display homes. Yards don’t need to be adorned with beautiful gardens. While visually pleasing, that shouldn’t be what we desire as a means of happiness and self-fulfillment. To live life believing that having such things proves your worthiness of living among a certain “class” of society is a such a falsehood. If that’s what it takes, then I’m not so sure I would want to live among that class.

In search of the humble and content class! :D

Labels – Breakfast Club Style

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There are labels for kids in high school. You can start to see the formation in elementary school, and they continue to take shape in middle school. Definitely, by high school, they are usually pretty clear.

I still don’t know what label I wore. I think (and others will probably have different opinions) I was pretty generic. I didn’t hang out with any one type of person. While I wasn’t close friends with people in any specific clique, I did get along with all types of people – still do.

The character, Brian Johnson, from The Breakfast Club said it best:

Saturday, March 24, 1984. Shermer High School, Shermer, Illinois. 60062.Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was that we did wrong…and what we did was wrong, but we think you’re crazy to make us write this essay telling you who we think we are. What do you care? You see us as you want to see us… in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. Correct? That’s the way we saw each other at seven o’clock this morning. We were brainwashed.

(That date was my 17th birthday, by the way!)

As we get older, we don’t so much use the labels we used in high school. However, the labels are still there. We see one another in terms of “types”. We are working parents, stay-at-home parents, executives, multitaskers/over-achievers, even hermits. Deep down, we’re still brains, athletes, basket cases, princesses, and criminals. Some of us learn to coexist and get along. Some still can’t (won’t?) associate with anyone other than the same “type” as themselves under any circumstances. I’m still the one who will associate with any “type”. I’m sort of a chameleon that way.

What type are you? What type were you in high school?

Vive le Weekend!

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Albeit a short weekend, it’s still a day off! As of this moment, I have 37.5 hours left before I have to clock in again. About 14 of those hours will be spent sleeping. How much can I do in 23 hours? For starters: this blog post!

There are so many things I need to get done. One might think that just because you have time off work, you must spend all of that time doing personal things that need to get done. I protest! I think it’s important to spend at least half of your time off doing things you enjoy doing as well. I enjoy being lazy resting. I just worked 11 days in a row, including 50 hours in the past six days. I think some rest is not only well-deserved but downright necessary!

I have a couple of movies I bought for $1.99 each at a nearby Blockbuster that’s closing. I plan on watching at least one of those. I also must give my seriously neglected camera a workout. I long to create a new piece of jewelry, too. However, you can’t force creativity to happen in a small window of time. So that may not happen … unless I watch movies at the same time. I do enjoy multitasking!

The main things I need to do are office related (including taxes). After working so much, personal office work is the last thing I want to do, though. :roll:

Nope! Twenty-three hours is just not enough time! Once a new manager is in place and the new staff is put on the weekend schedule, I think I might press for a full 4×10 work schedule so I can have my Sundays back. Having a full two days off in a row is more important to one’s mental well-being than I realized.

Vive le weekend!

A Letter to Waste Management

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Dear Waste Management,

I feel that it is arrogant of you to expect us to place our rubbish cans perfectly for you to make it easy for you to do your job only to have you place them lazily in the street behind the very cars that you don’t want blocking the cans in the first place. That’s just rude!

I saw that you almost skipped picking up a neighbor’s trash this morning because her car was blocking it. The poor lady came running out of her house waving her arm and yelling, “I’m moving it!” Yet, two weeks ago, you placed our cans so that they completely blocked our recycling bins from view of the recycling truck. Therefore, we were overlooked and have almost twice as much recycling out this time. I say almost because we ended up tossing a lot of recycling in the normal trash the last two weeks because our bins were full!

For the record, no, I don’t feel your job is easy or unimportant. However, when you show such little respect for us, how are we to show respect for you?

Sincerely,
A Homeowner Tired of Your Laziness

Here is what they do with rubbish cans when they’re done (and yes, I like saying “rubbish”)

There is room on the wide sidewalk on the other side of that mound of snow you see.

Impending Doom | A Blizzard’s a Comin’!

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OK – so maybe not this much snow is coming, but it’s supposedly a slow-moving system, which makes predictions extremely difficult. Currently, they predict 6-12 inches by us and 12-24 inches over the plains.

It seems unbelievable right now, though. I was just out braving the grocery store (not because I was in a panic with a nearly bare pantry – I just wanted sushi, soda, and some snack foods), and it’s a mild 42 degrees. Due west and northwest, the mountains are beautiful. Mountains to the southwest are a different story … obliterated by snow clouds.

What will tonight and tomorrow bring? Who knows! As usual. We could get a manageable 6 inches, or we could be buried under a foot or more. Our neighborhood is on the line between Winter Storm Warning and Blizzard Warning. :D I’m ready! I’ve got plenty of work, movies, games, and food to keep me busy.

Rethinking Goals and Schedules

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After two (or has it been three?) weeks in a row of mandatory five hours overtime with a max of ten (and of course, I do the full ten), I decided to take my full day off yesterday and not start before my scheduled late start time today. I didn’t even touch my own computer in that time. Refreshing and relaxing!

Experiencing that feeling made me want to rethink my goals and schedules. To get everything done, I generally multitask or switch gears quickly several times per day. My goal of five blog posts per week is now ridiculous in my head. I mean, who am I posting for? Why is it important to gather “followers” to my blog? What self satisfaction do I really get from that? I’d like to think that someone out there finds helpful information in some of my posts, but often, I post to ramble. So my goal is now modified to three posts per week. My weekly photo self assignments has been modified to at least twice per month.

Finally, I’m still pushing for a modified work schedule. The 4×10 (four ten-hour days) schedule is becoming more popular and has been mentioned as a possibility for the department I work in as well. Since I work two half days per week, I’ve suggested a twist on this for myself: 3×10 + 2×5. So five hours on Sunday afternoons and Wednesdays, and ten hours on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays with Thursdays off. Then I would still work the first Saturday (ten hours) of each month in exchange for the preceding Monday off. Ten hour days may sound like a lot to some of you reading, but I’d rather get work out of the way like this and get an extra day off to relax and feel more like this…

P.S. I clocked in today to find that we now have mandatory overtime of TEN hours overtime this week. It’s a good thing I already worked an extra two hours on Sunday. :)

Phishing – Run From the Hook!

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Don’t be a victim of phishing scams. If you allow yourself to become a victim of phishing, then don’t place the blame where it doesn’t belong. Phishers will create very official looking emails and web pages to lure you to enter your security information. DO NOT click links in these emails or enter your security info! ALWAYS go directly to the company’s website yourself to be sure you are on the right page. Check the URL at the top of your browser, too. Most login pages will begin with “https://”

Here are some good reads to arm yourself with knowledge:

Phishing: how to outwit the fraudsters
How Not to Get Hooked by a ‘Phishing’ Scam
After Epsilon: Avoiding Phishing Scams & Malware

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about phishing.

If you have to contact the company that you thought sent you the email with the link, please don’t harass them and accuse them of being at fault. They are trying to help you. A simple “thank you” will do nicely. :)

 

Choices

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Who we are is largely shaped by the choices we make. The beauty of it is that we do make choices. Even when nothing is chosen, we have made a choice not to choose! If we choose this instead of that and end up with undesirable consequences, does that mean we made a bad choice? Not necessarily. From such choices comes experience and knowledge. If we choose that instead of this, does that guarantee desirable consequences? Not always! This may work for one, and that may work for another. Perhaps in reverse, the opposite is true! You just never know.

Some readers may choose to assume they know what triggered this thought process. I doubt they’d be right because my mind is a complicated place. I’ll never tell! :)

1/22/12 UPDATE:

After thought … Often times, a person is fully aware of the consequences that may follow a choice they make. Yet, for reasons only they need to understand, they make the choice anyway often causing consternation among observers. So observers, take heart! For it is the chooser’s choice to suffer the consequences and work through whatever they need to work through to get to their ultimate goal. Sometimes it’s beneficial for a path to a goal to be longer. ;)

Not-So-Wordless Wednesday | Snow in Colorado

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Ya gotta love winter in Colorado! Especially in our area. We are at about an altitude 5800 feet in our neighborhood, which is fairly east of the foothills just at the beginning of the plains, and about 20 miles southeast of downtown Denver. It was in the 50s yesterday but quickly turned into snow in the wee hours of the morning.

I had to take Miranda to school early this morning, but I also seriously needed gas. After comparing getting gas after dropping her off to before dropping her off (about a 5 mile difference), I decided drive the one mile to get it first and also add weight to the car!

Four Years From Now…

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… there could be only three people living in this house: Greg, Miranda, and myself.
… Miranda will be graduating from high school.
… our dogs will be 12 and 13, and hopefully still with us.
… we will be credit card debt free!
… we will only have one car payment.
… we may be able to take a nice vacation in another country just for us.

Bring it, 2016!