Pray

Just a note to all of you out there. I really need some prayer right now. I'm trying to heal and fix some things, and I need help. I'm not ready to talk about it, so please don't ask. I'll post again about this when I'm ready to be asked. Then you can ask away. But for please just pray. Know that I'm good and getting better, but still have a long way to go.

Freedom Writers

Earlier in the week, Jennifer found out that she could go and see the movie Freedom Writers because they were giving away tickets to teachers this weekend at all AMC Theaters. So, we got together with her parents and went to see it last night. I wasn't expecting a whole lot, when I went in. I figured it would be about the same as all the other inspirational teacher story that are already out there. But I have to say that it was great. I found myself crying and laughing and generally thankful for all the teacher in my life. I'm am surrounded by them.

Steve asked me afterwords if it made me want to be a teacher. It didn't, but it did give me a greater respect for the teachers in my life. I do know what it's like to be the husband and hear all the stories and feel all the strife that being a teacher brings. But I also get to see all the joys that teaching brings too. So, just a note to all those teachers who might read this. Thanks. Thanks for not giving up on the ones who nobody else cares about. The students that are just putting in their time. The ones that hate you. The ones that annoy you. The ones that love you. The ones who never seem to go away and the ones that leave too soon. I think I've been all of these at some point in my life. I think we all are to be teachers, in some way or another. I think we all have a lot to learn from each other. I also think we have a lot to learn from movies like this. No one should be forgotten. Whether because of mental or environmental handicaps, everyone needs to learn.

Now that that's off my chest, I'll let everyone go. If you get the chance, see this movie.

New Looks and Stuff

First off, you may have noticed that earlier today I changed things around a bit. I got tired of the old look and title and feel of things and also got tired of hearing how depressing it all sounded. So, things have changed. I hope you like it.

Second here are some pictures of our snow. I promised to put some up a few days ago. Now, the snow is almost all gone. But it was "fun" while it lasted.

This is the plow almost hitting Jennifer's car. Yes the big mound on the right is her car.
This is the view from outside. Thats all the snow they cleared off of the lot.
Out front our snow people were right at home.

Well, not a whole lot else has been happening. Just work and sleep. I really enjoyed having the four day weekend. It was great and very needed. I finally had a chance to just slow down and relax after the holidays. The bad thing about the way Christmas fell this year is that they were on my days off, so I didn't get any extra days off. It was nice to have Christmas Eve and Christmas off, but it also would have been nice to have that extra day in there. Oh well. I was more than ready to go back to work after the weekend. It really was just what I needed.

Well, I think that's all for now. I'll try and keep updating more. I always mean to, but forget when I have the time.

The Most Amazing Book

Well, I just finished reading this incredible book and, while I'm aware that this is starting to look like a blog about what I'm reading only, I really want to tell you all about this book. One of the good things about working in a book store is that I see all the books come in. On Thursday we got a bunch of a new book in that I hadn't ever seen or heard of. It was called The Invention Of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. I opened it up to see what it was about and found a novel as well as illustrations. It turns out it's about half writing and half pictures. It's meant for readers in the 4th-7th grade, but I have to say that I was intrigued. So, I started reading it on my lunch break (another benefit of working at a book store). Oh, and by the way, the book is over 500 pages long. I read the first 130 pages on my lunch and I was hooked right away.

I decided to borrow a copy from work and see if the whole book was as good. I had taken this weekend off and planned on not doing much of anything. I've been needing a break from work a lot in the last few weeks and so, I decided to take it this weekend. I knew that I would have no problem finishing it over the weekend. When I brought it to my manager he told me we have an advance reader's copy of it and so he gave me that one instead to keep.

So, I finished it yesterday. I think it's the first time in a long time that I've read a book in 3 days. Keep in mind that it's about half pictures, but still, I'm feeling pretty good about that. I'm not the fastest reader and so when I can read a book like this, it makes me want to read more. I'm not sure what to say about the story. I'll let the description from Scholastic (the publisher) tell you about the story.

"Orphan, Clock keeper, and thief, Hugo lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station, where his survival depends on secrets and anonymity. But when his world suddenly interlocks with an eccentric, bookish girl and a bitter old man who runs a toy booth in the station, Hugo's undercover life, and his most precious secret, are put in jeopardy. A cryptic drawing, a treasured notebook, a stolen key, a mechanical man, and a hidden message from Hugo's dead father form the backbone of this intricate, tender, and spellbinding mystery."

Well, I hope this sounds as interesting to all of you as it was to me. I plan on buying a copy that we have at work on Tuesday. There are a couple reasons for this. 1) I loved the book. 2) The copies we have are signed. 3) There are several pictures missing from the middle of the ARC one and I would like have the complete book. There's nothing like not knowing the complete story. I know I didn't really miss anything in that section, but it would be nice to have the whole thing anyway.

So, yeah. Things are going great. It's been a nice relaxing weekend. It's snowed a bunch last night. I might try and get some pictures of the snow up here later today. If I don't I'm sure Jennifer will.

Not much has been happening lately. It snowed or something similer to snow fell from the sky anyway. It's basicaly freezing rain and now we have a few inches of ice on everything. Which makes driving fun. It also takes forever to get into you car. Yesterday I left 30 minutes early for work to scrape off my windows and then get to work. I ended up being about 15 minutes late for work because it took me 45 minutes to scrape all the ice off my car. Plus it seems that something is wrong with the lock on my driver's side door. I have such great luck with cars, don't I.

Last Thursday I came home to find out that our cable had gone out for some reason. It turns out that the cable from the box in the back to our house had gone out. But they couldn't come out to look and find out what was wrong until Saturday. This wouldn't be a big deal if we didn't get our cable, phone and internet through the same people. As it turned out it wasn't a bad thing anyway. Without the distractions that keep me occupied on a daily basis, I read the last half of Eragon in those 3 days. I loved it. It seemed to get better as it went along. I think Christopher Paolini was learning as he went along. I hated how he finished it though. Not that the writing was bad, or anything like that. Let's just say that I'm happy that the second book, Eldest, is out or I might have gone mad waiting to find out what happened. I'm now reading Eldest and loving it too. Even though I've heard some bad things about the Eragon movie, I'm still looking forward to seeing it. I know that it won't compare to the book, but I'm hoping that it won't be a complete disaster. I've also heard, from people wh0 haven't read the book, that's it's a pretty good movie. So, I'm trying to find a time to go and see it.

Well, I think that's all for me today.

As my final post for today, my little writing buddie would like to say hello and let you know that he misses all of those who came to see him over the holidays. He gets pretty bored to the same 2 people everyday and loved have everyone here.

Car Stuff

Well, as a running theme on here I've kept you all updated on my car situation. So, here is some more car news. As some of you may know, Jennifer and I are planning on moving this summer, and when we move we're going to go car-free. It's something that I'm looking forward to more and more with everyday that goes by. So, for Christmas, Shawn and Sara got us a book called How to Live Well Without Owning a Car By Chris Balish. I finished this book over the weekend and I'm already looking for ways to go car-lite while still living in Lenexa. This means I'm trying to find ways to not drive as much and get to work sometimes without driving my car. I'm going to start walking with the hopes of soon walking to or from work. I probably won't do this everyday right now, mainly because I'm completely out of shape. But I would like to do this some, so that when I do move it will make the transition that much easier. So, thank you Shawn and Sara for the book and also the advice you have given us. The book was very helpful and has given me a lot to think about and look forward to.

On other car news. I sold my Buick on Monday. I got a whopping $250 for it. But seeing as I paid $500 for it almost 3 years ago. I'd say that it was a pretty good deal. I ended up selling it to a salvage yard about 40 miles south of here. Then with the money from that I bought a new battery for Jennifer's car and it seems to be working now as well. So, things are looking good in the car area for right now.

All of the car problems that we've been having lately, will just make being car-free all that much sweeter when that day finally comes. I can tell you that it feels great to not own 3 cars anymore. Being back to just 2 working cars is great. I pray that things will keep up like this for the next few months. I really can't wait to get this move over with. The looking forward to part is eating me up. I can't sleep at night sometimes just thinking about the things that we have in store for us. And yes I do know that not everything will be easy. But I do know that I can't wait to get out there and get settled. We are going out to Portland in March to get a look at things on the ground and hopefully find a place to live when we do move.

Well, anyway. That's the news on the car situation. I hope things are good for all of you.

Long time no update...

Well, it's been a while since I've had time to update this thing. I have wanted to do several things on here, so I might break this up in to a couple smaller posts.

So, today has been an interesting day. I haven't done much. Actually I woke up around noon today. Yesterday at work they asked me to come in late today and close tonight. I'm not really looking forward to it, but oh well. I got to sleep in, and I guess that's a good thing.

To catch you all up I'll try and start back on this weekend. On Sunday, like too many Sundays lately, we slept in. I think we've both been worn out from everything that's been going on lately and it's just hard to get up and moving for the 8:00AM service. I'm not sure what we can do about it, but I'm not sure if this is going to work anymore. We'll have to see how it goes. So, after sleeping in, we got up and went to meet Jennifer's parents for our Sunday afternoon lunch.

Then I convinced Jennifer to go to the movies with me. I wasn't too sure how she would like the movie, but I knew I wanted to see it that weekend. We went and saw the adaptation of the Ted Dekker book Thr3e. I read the book a while ago and have been waiting for this movie to come out. If you haven't heard of Ted Dekker, he is a Christian author who has quickly become one of my favorites in the short time I've been aware of him. Normally for a Christian movie like this, they just come out on video. They're also not always done that well. I've always hated that. It's like in order to see a good movie you have wait and then it's almost always a let down. I was really hoping that they wouldn't do that with Thr3e. Once I found out it was going to be in theatres, I knew I would go see it if it came to my area. So, when Thr3e released to a limited number of theaters on Jan. 5, I was looking for one to be my area. Luckily it happened to be at the one we always go to here, AMC 30, that is.

When I found out that it would be coming out in only a limited number of theaters, I wanted to make sure that I saw it on its first weekend out. I don't know if it would actually work, but I wanted to show the industry that you can put out good movies with Christian themes in big theaters and they will still do well.

I have to say though, that I went in with some trepidation. I never know what to expect for movies based on books. But I also know that Ted writes in such a way that making a movie of his books should be a pretty simple thing. If you haven't read anything by Ted, I highly recommend him. I've read several and I think Thr3e has been my favorite so far. He writes thrillers, so be prepared to stay up all night reading some of his books.

I won't give much of the movie away, other than to say that I thought they did a great job. They changed a few little things around, but all of the changes were good changes. I have to say that this is one of the better films I've seen in a long time. It shows that when you get a good story and a good studio together you can make a great movie. The great studio I'm referring to is Fox Faith Movies. They have some other movies coming out soon and I'm sure to try and see them as well.

I don't have a whole lot of time right now, but I'll say a few things to let you all know that I'm still alive and kicking. It seems that every time I post on here I'm talking about the cars in my life and the problems I've had with them. Well, yet again we're having a little bit of car trouble. At least this time it's not my car, it's Jennifer's. We think it might just the battery. We let it sit there for most of the time she had off from school and she says that she thinks the battery was having some problems before that too. The problem now, is finding time to get it taken care of.

On other car news I finally went and got plates for my new car. Which means tonight I can bring the old plates and things back to the guy I bought it from. I'm sure he's wondering what's up with the long wait. I have to say that it's not all my fault on this one though. I had to wait for my insurance company to send me proof of insurance. I didn't get that until midway through last week, and if you've read Jennifer's or Shawn and Sara's blogs, you'll know that last week was a busy week. Busy in a very good way, but busy none the less.

Well, all I can say is that with each new day I look forward to being car-free. I'm also looking at ways to be car-lite while still living here. I'm going to try and ride my bike to work and just use my car for backup purposes. We'll see how this all works out.

Well, I need to get going to work. I'll try and write more later.