ugg - nasty weekend. Sick on Friday, semi-okay on Sat, but then got ticked off because of dumb stuff Sat pm. Sunday woke up with a bad migraine and things went downhill from there.

But, here I am Monday and the migraine is letting up, so I'm going to work today.

Cold today. I'm not feeling well - my stomach is upset, and my joints are aching.
So I'm just going to stay home today, and try to stay warm and get some liquids and hope that things get better.

well, the home site is temporarily down as my friend upgrades his computer os, etc.

outside, temps are frigid.

inside, Ben's wanting to learn Excel .

Life continues to be interesting.

As the temperature rises to nearly freezing (nearing 32 degrees F), people are starting to get giddy from the 'heat' - one person mentioned this morning not wearing a hat because it was so 'warm'.

Sigh.

Growing older isn't much fun. In particular, in this cold weather, I don't feel well most of the time. But we still have to get things done, so we continue.

Worked on chores (dishes, supper, laundry) as well as watched some tv with Laura and the boys. Dropped into the bed, but didn't sleep well because of the cold (and the music playing all night across the hall...)

here's some current CCM songs that I really enjoy:

Casting Crowns Who Am I
Newsboys Presenc e
Phillips Craig & Dean You are God Alone
Casting Crowns Voice of Truth
Chris Tomlin Indescribable
By The Tree Beautiful One
Third Day / Steven Curtis Chapman / Mercy Me I See Love Salvador Heaven

Whoops - forgot to add
Mark Schultz - Letters from War
and just about anything from Chris Rice

Wow - when I read these lyrics
http://www.songlyrics.com/song-lyrics/Chris_Tomlin/Miscellaneous/Indescribable/248856.html
I weep over the wonderful nature of God.
Then I read
http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/thepassionofthechristsongs/iseelove.htm
and I weep over the love of Christ, which is above all other love that exists in the universe.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

Beginning another cold week here in Ohio.
Temperatures are hovering around 0 degrees F this morning.

At home, I've got chores to get caught up on, and need to help some of the others on some of their chores as well.

This coming weekend, our church begins a group study of the Warren book about finding your purpose. I'm hoping that everyone in the family participates.

Weather is snow - with an additional 4-7 inches expected tomorrow.

Watched Ella Enchanted yesterday - had some cute moments, but some awkward looking moments near the end.

Eldest son decided I needed to taxi him to a friends house last nite at 10pm, THEN, called around 2am for me to come and pick him up. Sigh - I'm so tired.

I'm so excited to at least temporarily be able to listen to WNZR via the mvnu.edu web site link. I graduated from Mt. Vernon Nazarene back in the ancient days. We didn't have a radio station back in those dark ages - or at least, if we did, we didn't know it.

Anyways, when they are playing music, they are awesome!

we had an inch of snow drop this morning around 4-5 am, causing chaos on the drive in. Took me an hour to make the 25 minute drive.

Last night was a quiet night, with some tv, some light supper, and time with the boys, while my daughter was at work and wife was at a party with friends.

Wow - what a morning. Let's see - the temp outside is 4 degrees, with a wind chill of -10. The kids have today off because of a teacher training. I return to work after a 3 day holiday.

Oh, and Ben was showing me another Invader Zim episode before I left the house.

Laura spent another night at friends last night. And the two younger boys returned from retreat.

Well, this has been a quiet weekend. Dan and Jon are on retreat in WV, Ben worked until close last nite and Laura worked until 11. That means Joyce and I were "home alone" after 4pm last nite.
Joyce decided she wanted to watch "Gone with the Wind", so we did. She then went off to bed when I was grumpy afterwards - after watching Rhett, I felt an empathy ... not a good thing at 11pm.
Then Ben needed a ride home, so I went and got him, and stayed up to watch some more "Invader Zim".

Well, I have a dr. appointment this pm so I can see what's going on with these glasses and my eyes. I can't see half the time, and even when I can see, I'm frequently feeling disconnected because of depth perception problems.

Jon turned 14 yesterday - it's hard to believe.
Alas, we couldn't afford to do much. He bought some expensive (sigh) shoes with his b-day money, we bought him a DQ ice cream cake and a couple of pizzas, and we watched a borrowed Invader Zim DVD and some TiVo'd Gilmore Girl episodes.

What weird Ohio weather. Temperatures may reach 60 today and tomorrow - and be back to freezing by the weekend!

It's rained pretty hard the past day or two as well. It's overwhelming the neighborhood storm drains, and the streets are about to flood.

Then, the two high school kids have end of semester exams the next 3 days - which means they have weird start and ending times.

And, the two youngest have to get packed for an upcoming retreat.

Busy times!

My eldest was watching, for the first time, Big Fish this morning as I left for work. He was at the ending, and as always when I see that movie, I wept at the ending.

However, this was the first time I'd seen the DVD. What ever possessed them to release it without closed captioning?

"Taste and see that the Lord is good..."

Well, it's raining ... again. But temps should be up in the 50s and 60s the next few days, which should be nice.

We had various dramas last night - a break up, a discovery of at least one intended move, with discussion of another. Life continues to be one of discovery.

If only I could teach the kids to be aware of their surroundings and to take an active part in improving things.

This morning I'm listening to http://www.livefromstudiob.com/ episodes - at this moment, Denver and the mile high orchestra. What a way to wake up!

Looks like things are back to working, sort of. This morning I tried to update and got a blogger server error message and lost my log entry :-(

Friday, I went with my 3 boys and about 2 dozen other friends to Ohio Deli, here in Columbus Ohio, to eat the "Dagwood Challenge". In 30 minutes, eat a side of french fries, 3 lbs of deli meat, tomato, lettuce, garlic mayo, cheese and a huge bun served together in a form that was probably 2/3 the side of a regulation basketball. There were about 6 of the 12 or so kids which successfully 'ate the whole thing' - and silly me, I was the lone adult also attempting the feat. But I succeeded as well.

Saturday, I went with 8 teens and 2 of my favorite people (Amy and Mike) to Circleville Ohio to their January Nazarene Teen Bible Quiz Tournament. Our team came in 7th in the morning competition, with one of our quizzers coming in 13th out of over 100 teens in individual scoring.

Saturday night, upon our return, my boys went out to eat on their own, and my wife and I went out to dinner at her favorite spot - Olive Garden.

Sunday we went to church a couple of times, I made lunch, we visited with friends at church after evening service, we came home, discovered the folly of trusting TiVo without question (it didn't record the first hour of the new 24 season!) and watched the first 2 episodes of the anime "Fruit Baskets".

What an exciting weekend! And next weekend is a 3 day weekend for me and a 4 day one for the kids!

Hmm - has the blogger server problems been resolved yet?

Weekend Update

Well, I tried this once, and got a stupid internal server error. I want to try a shorter message before I type all the previous msg - which blogger lost, of course - again.

Well , the rain has stopped - temporarily. The temperature dropped again. The heat pump is frozen over, so we are chilly in the house again.

But the worst part is that my new glasses came in - and they are terrible. I think something's wrong with them - because nearly everything is blurry. I'm supposed to give them a few days and then go back to the doctor if things don't get better.

It's not been 24 hrs yet, so I suppose it is possible that things will get better.

Well, more rain today. Surprise!
Some of the weather critters are predicting that by afternoon it will have stopped and that we might not get rain again until Saturday. Wow - that would be interesting.

Ran the dad taxi service last night - got the daughter from work, ferried a friend of her's home, then went home, the wife then took the girl to buy a new winter coat, then they came back and we all went to church (with another friend taken along), then picked up the oldest from work, the rest after church, took them all by a restraunt because a couple were begging for something to eat and my lovely daughter bought for them (and then forgot to get the one thing I asked for - a code icee - which she can, generally, get for free ... but she didn't forget here cherry icee...) and then took the friend home and then the rest home.

Get the idea that I didn't get much done in there? I did get supper made, and after I got back I got the dishes washed up.

I'm tired just thinking about it...

Even more rain today - in fact, every day for the next week, with perhaps the exception of Friday, is going to have rain according to the weather channel.

There's mud everywhere, and flooding around a lot of low lying areas.

Temperatures today are hovering around 40 F. That's good - any colder, and all this rain turns to ice and we have an even bigger mess on our hands.

The older kids are working (too much) and the younger kids are talking to friends, getting school work done (they say) etc. Jon auditions for Jazz Band today - I so hope he gets it.

Is this the year of the duck?

The rain continues - my neighborhood is sinking in the mud, we had lightening and thunder this morning, and they are predicting rain for 5 of the next 7 days - and no sun the other two days.

Another year begins

Well, it's New Year's Day. Last nite, some of us (the younger boys, my wife and I) spent the evening with the Oates - friends from church. This year, few adults made it over to spent it with us. And we just sat and talked, whereas in the past we've always played games and stuff.
But we had fun, drank bubbly fruit juice at midnight, and went home soon after because our friends had a trip to take today.

This morning, I whipped up some breakfast, began the Christmas thank you note writing - which there isn't much of, given that we didn't get much this year - and put some hot dogs on to cook.
We won't have much to snack on this year due to various frustrating situations that never seem to give us a break.

I'm really sore - I spent nearly the whole day yesterday on my feet, with only a few minutes of break - helping work on the neighborhood cleanup. The younger boys and my wife helped - there were a half dozen or more trailers of branches hauled away, as well as several hundred dollars of firewood cut up. And yet, there is still a lot more to do. I don't know if I am going to make it or not. I really need to get to the doctor about my abdomen pains - but I also can't afford to ignore this work after all that's happened.