Catching Up - or catching my breath

Well, today is September 30th and I just realized I have not posted since the 24th, so I must be more efficient and timely in posting. It has just been a whirlwind week and to be truthful this has not been a major priority for me. On the 25th I walked in a 5K in downtown Atlanta which was phenomenal, but it took up a big chunk of time and so I skipped that day and apparently it has been downhill since. The weekend hit right behind that and it was a very busy time also. On Saturday we did Street Reach, which is a ministry to the children of the apartment complexes in and around Roswell, GA. We had our grandkids with us then so we had to pick them up then meet their parents to get them back home. It was also my wife's birthday and I had purchased tickets to the Fox Theatre to see Les Miserables (which is a subject for an entire post by the way). Les Mis was awesome, the Fox is incredible, and we plan to go back for a walking tour of it in the near future. So Saturday was a full day. Sunday we had prayer school at 8 am, two services that ended around 1:15 so we got out of church about 1:45, shot over to some friends house for a quick lunch, then back to church for Forever Free from 3 - 5, followed by Leadership from 5 to 6 (actually about 6:20 but that is also a topic for another discussion), then our Deacons Meeting until 7 PM. Then I had to work with some of the Deacons until about 8:30 -9:00, so as you can see Sunday is not a day of rest for me. Then it was back to the grind yesterday, and today I am playing catch up so.... deep breath.... maybe I can stay current this week.

Well, it's 9:58 PM Wednesday night and I am still at work. I was here last night until midnight, but it is way alright. I love my new job and feel like I am accomplishing great things while I am here so if I have to put in a little extra time it's no problem. They do allow for comp time but I may or may not use it. This week we have a group of interns in the house for training and it has been very refreshing to meet such an outstanding group as they are. All too often all you hear about the younger generation are those who are self-centered and spoiled, but these guys are willing to give their lives, at least a part of it, to help someone else. Gotta love that. I am trying to keep this blog current and really try to find something interesting to write about but this week has not allowed me a great deal of free time to give a lot of thought to writing, so it has just been mostly about my day. I am sitting here listening to some good contemporary Christian music while I am working which is quite awesome also. Speaking of music I have such eclectic tastes (at least I think I do). We won't even talk about secular music tonight, but I was just looking at my current iTunes playlist and it is a mix of stuff.
Two Sets of Jones - Big Tent Revival
Believe - Brooks and Dunn
And Now My Lifesong Sings - Casting Crowns
The More I Seek You - Kari Jobe
New Season - Martha Muzini
Holy - Clint Brown
He Reigns - Newsboys
Don't know the song - Salvador
Oops....gotta run.. time to close up shop and get out of Dodge.
More tomorrow.

Counter Strike and loss of sleep

It's early Tuesday morning and I am at work, on hold with Dell Customer Service. I have spoken to three people already, all of who asked me the exact same questions that none of them could answer. The fourth person has now transferred me to another phone number which went straight to voice mail, so I have basically spent the last 30 minutes on the phone on a useless adventure. Let me be quick to say that I have had nothing but great service from their Tech Support staff and their sales staff, but CS is seriously lacking. Oh yeah, those initials remind of the reason I started this post. Instead of Customer Service I wanted to talk about Counter Strike/Half Life. Some friends I worked with introduced me to this little addiction several years ago and I played it compulsively for hours at a time for a while. My home computer did not have the graphics power to support so I played on other computers. When they were no longer available I quit and haven't played for a couple of years. I have a new super fast PC at home now with the graphics to support the game so I reconnected to Steam and downloaded it last night, then promptly spent way too much time playing it again. So I needed coffee today, not green tea.

The Mid-day Tea Break

Well, here I sit with my cup of Green Tea (in attempting to be good and live longer it seems the proper thing to do to cut out a portion of the caffeine I intake on a daily basis). I wonder how many of us depend on that daily "jolt" to get us going, and foolishly think that we are immune to caffeine and its addictive nature? I certainly have fallen into that category. I have often made the boast, and it is true, that I can have several cups of coffee and go to bed and sleep well. I don't think that is necessarily something to be proud of.
One of the biggest downfalls of drinking coffee for me is the problem is causes when I try to fast for any length of time. I recall a time in the not too distant past where my wife and I were on a three day fast. Sometime in the afternoon of the second day we both had begun to feel quite bad with aches and pains in our body akin to those you feel when you have the flu. I was not otherwise sick and was having difficulty understanding the source of the pain. We were traveling to a meeting about 100 miles from home and about midway through the trip a thought hit me out of the blue. Perhaps this is caffeine withdrawal! (In our time of fasting we were only drinking water) To prove my hypothesis (and no other reason) I pulled into a gas station and bought a cup of coffee which my wife and I shared. Within minutes the pain was gone and we felt super. Lately we have been working out some and playing tennis to try to lose a little weight and get in shape, and I am thinking that perhaps a break from the caffeine might be beneficial. Sorry Starbucks, but the Venti Doubleshots with Energy have to go.
On that note do you know that a Venti Doubleshot with Energy has FIVE shots of Espresso plus 5 packages of whatever nifty little energy powder they use? WOW. It works for about the first 2 hours of the all night prayer meeting.
Anyway..gotta run.. this tea is nasty, I wonder if anybody made a fresh pot of joe?

The Wordy Geek

Monday Musings

Good morning cruel world. I have attempted (and failed) at blogging in the past but at the urging of friends (troublemakers perhaps) I am attempting again to do so. I'm not sure why anyone would want to hear what I write but that doesn't seem to be the reason most people blog does it? I would suspect that the large majority of blogs don't get read outside of a small group of friends or family, yet the blogosphere is bloated with the writings of would be Perez Hilton's or Rich Tatum's. So why shouldn't I clog up the drain even more? This will serve to consume more of the precious time that Facebook isnt' already consuming. I'm sure many articles have been written on this entire Social Networking phenomenon. People who have no connection other than an online world can and do become "friends". So maybe I will find that this is a "cool" way for me to interact with the rest of the world. Perhaps I'll find that there are people who really want to know what I have to say, and perhaps I'll find that for the most part they just wish I would shut up. Either way, today the adventure begins. Hang on tight, the ride could get bumpy.

The Wordy Geek