So, today is a monumental day for my career job.  Today marks my 4 year anniversary with At&t.  Well, I’ve had the same job for 4 years.  It’s actually been about 0.3 years with At&t Wireless, 2.4 years with Cingular, and 1.3 years with At&t Mobility.  Nevertheless, it’s been a good 4 years.  I’ve seen a lot of people come and go and yet, I’m still here… enduring through every pay cut, every weekend working, and every poorly planned corporate decision to please the stock-holders and not those who actually produce the bottom line: the employees and customers.  No… I’m not bitter. 

This is the first load of stuff for my new house from Walmart.  (See related post on Shopping at Walmart).  Keep in mind, the trash can is full of goodies as well.  The fan has a remote control… need I say more.

Now all I need for the new house are the following:

• Rug for the bathroom
• Towels for the bathroom
• Couch
• TV Stand
• Coffee Table
• End tables
• Ironing Board
• Bed for my puppy
• Toothbrush holder
• Queen-sized bed
• Baking pans
• Toaster Oven
• Food
• Canister Set for the Kitchen
• Friends to come visit
• Furniture for the Porch
• A new back door

Hand me downs will be accepted and appreciated :) 

I uncovered this video and thought I would share it with everyone.  This is Maverick.  He died last summer, unfortunately.  However, will he was still alive, he kept getting out of his kennel and we couldn’t figure out how.  So, I had the bright idea to set up a camera and provoke him a little bit.  Enjoy!

Video

Yesterday, me and Chels and friends went on a hiking driving trip.  We went to a couple vistas.  We went swimming in sub-zero waters.  We built a rockin’ …umm… rock tower.  It was a genuine good time.  Along the way, we stopped at the famous Forksville Gerneral Store.  That’s where I saw this:

Now, you have to understand that Forksville is in the middle of no where, and if it weren’t for that store, I don’t think that there would even be a town.  However, there are still few excuses to hang a gramatically incorrect sign above a doorway.  Just my opinion, of course.

I know it sounds nerdy.  But posting updates from my life on a quazi-daily basis to blank screen and uploading them to a website for the world to see is actually far more exciting than it sounds.  However, it only becomes exciting when I know that I have a following.  Since itss debut in October of 2007, my blog has been accessed 771 times.  And that’s 770 times more than I ever expected to see.  And that doesn’t count the people reading on Facebook! 

What makes the experience even more fun is my fellow bloggers.  I wasn’t sure how much I was going to enjoy reading updates from my friends, but now I look forward to it on a daily basis.  Blogs such as  Existential Crisis (my friend, Kendy), Morning Coffee (my girlfriend), decrypting kenny’s mind (my brother), and Reminisce (my brother’s girlfriend) are blogs that I read faithfully (even though the two latter don’t update too frequently).  Nevertheless, if you are reading this and you have a blog that you would like to share, I would like to know about it.  If you don’t, I invite you to join this blogging revolution….  

…or… you really don’t have to, I suppose.

For my faithful following, thanks for reading.  More to come….

So there are a fair number of useless applications available for the iPhone. The best by far: the Wooo Button. For all those moments in everyday life that require celebration.

It’s been a long day… and I don’t feel any better than I did when it started.  Check back tomorrow.

No really, she can.  You put your hand up and say, “High five, Reece”  and she throws her little paw up in the air to meet yours.  I used a fair amount of treats to teach her how to do this so consequently, she thinks that every time she puts her paw up she is going to get one.

Recently, I became somewhat motivated to start reading more.  It was about that time that I realized, I’m not a person who is driven by motives.  This presented a problem.  Somewhere in there, however, I thought of audio books.  What a fantastic idea!  Not only could I read the books that I have always wanted to read, or maybe recently wanted to read, but I don’t even have to read!  Near the top of the list, Barak Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope”.

Now I don’t intend for this to be a formal book review, but I do want to touch on a couple things the book discusses that I find important and noteworthy, given the upcoming election.  I haven’t yet listened to the entire book, read by Obama himself, but I did listen to the section that I find the most interesting and important, his chapter on religion.

Don’t get me wrong, Obama has a vision for this country.  Should he be elected in November, I’ve no doubt that he will put some of his ideas into practice, which he discusses in the book.  Ideas of how to fix the national debt, medicare, and the education system are only some of the ideas he touches on.  While this is all well and good, there is one thing that I look for in a candidate, and that’s a man of faith.

In listening to his chapter on religion, a chapter Obama titles “Faith”, one would hope he would discuss a proper definition of faith.  Unfortunately, however, Obama explains that the black [Christian] church taught him this:

Faith doesn’t mean we don’t have doubts, or that you relinquish your hold on this world.

Obama uses these two points to describe his turning point or rather the point where he “embraced the Christian faith”.  However, proper study of the Bible will reveal points completely contrary to what Obama discusses.  The book of Hebrews defines faith in this way:

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
                                            (Hebrews 11:1)

According to Hebrews 11, there is no room for doubt in our faith.  The Bible uses the words sure and certain for a reason.  In other words, the fact that were are absolutely positive about what we believe is what actually makes it faith!  There can be no doubts!

Additionally, the book of Romans makes it very clear that we are no longer part of this world.

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
                                            (Romans 12:2)

Yes, we live in this world, but as Christians our citizenship resides in heaven.  Period.  So I guess, in a sense, we do need to endure this world, but at the same time we must ”relinquish” our old way of thinking, living, and even loving. 

Obama also explains that Jimmy Carter was the one who originally introduced the term “Evangelical Christian” into modern politics, and he explains how people like Ronald Regan, Jerry Falwell, and both Bushs were able to mobilize these “Christian foot soldiers” into political action.  He blames the fact that the issues that are important to evangelical Christians such as gay marriage, abortion, intelligent design, prayer in schools, etc., are the issues that often fill the headlines.  And these issues create the single greatest gap in American politics.  He acknowledges that democrats “don’t get religion”, and while that may be, I’d like to clear up the problem with any political party trying to “get religion”.  Simply put, religion is worthless.  It makes me cringe  to hear Christianity compared with Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, along with the rest of the world’s religions.  If we agree that Christianity needs to be set apart from the rest of them, there needs to be a clear difference about it.  Fortunately, there is and it lies in a simple definition of religion.

Religion is mans’ efforts to reach God.

Christianity, on the other hand, is God’s effort to reach man.  Now I’m not in a position to judge Obama and his understanding of Christianity.  But if he could prove to me that he grasps this knowledge, he would most undoubtedly, earn my vote.  Why is this so crucial to me in an election?  I relate it to a story in Matthew.  In an attempt to test Jesus, an expert in the law questioned him about which commandment was the most important. Jesus replied,

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
                                            (Matthew 22:37)

Jesus knew that out of all the laws set forth, if a man were to follow this single command, all the rest would be fulfilled.  For example, a man who loves the Lord is not going to lie, or idolize, or murder, or covet.  He will live above reproach.  In much the same manner, I believe that if a man professes to a faith based on grace and what God has done that the rest of his life will fall into place.  This includes his politics.  This country was built on faith and by men of faith.  And more than two hundred years later, this country still needs a man of faith. 

Part of my hesitation to believe that Obama is the man of faith this country needs is in the way he references the evangelical Christians as “they” and not as “we”.  Now I understand that in his explanation of the Christian religion, Obama takes a third person approach.  (Granted, his does profess to  having “embraced the Christian faith”.)  But his failure to fully move this explanation to the first person in the latter part of the chapter has me concerned.  When listening to the chapter, and Obama’s recognition that the “religious” generally fail to follow politics of the leftists, it seems more and more to me that this chapter was merely included to show the (again in quotes) “religious” that he is, in fact, a man who is also religious.  But as I stated earlier, this isn’t good enough.  This country both deserves and needs more than a man of mere “religiosity” and superficial religious debates.  It needs a man whose foundation lies in the Word of God, and man who understands the importance of that Word in politics, and a man with nothing less than a doubtless faith.

For those of you who haven’t heard, and for those of you who have heard and yet questioned, here it is. I have had, what I feel to be, a pretty sweet living situation: two years of rent free living in my own house while the homeowners were in Italy. The last time they were home, there was some talk that they may not go back to Italy. I explained to the homeowners not to let me stand in the way of them moving back into their own house. I simply asked for advanced notification so that I would have time to find a new place to live. I got 5 days….

That was friday night. I now have only one day off between now and thursday, the day they are moving back. To their credit, they did say that we could co-exist in the same house for a short while, but I don’t really see that happening. So, I have to move the majority of my possessions tomorrow. The problem? I don’t have a clue where I am going.

Granted, I can always move back home… but I really, really don’t want to do that.

I could get an apartment… but I don’t want to sign a lease.

I could move in with my girlfriend’s parents… but that might be weird.

What I really want to do is buy a house. But I can’t find, finance, and close on a house in a mere five days, so something temporary is going to have to do… perhaps a nice tent?

For those of you that I have actually talked to about this, I want to say thank you. Offering Glenmoore and Strasburg is very sweet of you, but I don’t really want to move. I love the area where I reside and, at this point in my life, I can’t imagine making a move outside of it. So, if I may ask, please pray for this. I need an open door… and I need one soon.

(Special thanks to proviatoes for the image.  Used with permission under the creative commons license.)