Posted by Dale Sackrider, II on Feb 18, 2008 in
myThoughts
Hey - Pardon my dust while I work on the site. I just bought my wife a MacBook and thought I would apply a Mac Theme to the website. What do you think? Did you notice the sidebar is collapsible? Did you notice the Dock feature at the bottom of the page? I’m hoping to add widgets to the Dock and make the dock ’stick’ to the bottom of your browser instead of the bottom of my page - so that no matter where you are on my page, you see the Dock. Maybe over my head, but we’ll see…
Tags: website
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Posted by Dale Sackrider, II on Feb 16, 2008 in
myThoughts So? What happened to your New Year’s Resolutions? It’s February and most people have already abandoned their ‘resolve’ to lose weight, pay off debt, save more, read more, spend more time with family, give more to charity, volunteer more, watch less TV, go out to eat less, and spend less time online (don’t start that back up now - finish reading my blog first). If you haven’t already throw away your resolutions, then you may be on your way to atypical results! Want to know how I’m doing?
I’m going to tell you anyway - my goals were to lose weight, go back to school, pay down debt, get more involved in my church, eat out less, and read more - with an emphasis on my Bible reading. Lets start with the bad news:
- Bible Reading - I haven’t begun a Bible reading plan despite the best efforts from a good friend of mine, Jason. I have a bunch of excuses but no good reasons.
- Weight Loss - aarrrgghhh!!! I started out well with my diet, but haven’t lost any weight. Stephanie and I rearranged our living room to put in my bowflex and we bought her an elliptical, but so far we have only used the new room a handful of times.
- Dinning Out - this is supposed to foster a few new living habits, like spending less money, spending more time with family, and losing weight. For most of January we did great, but we both have slipped back into our old habits over the last few weeks and go out to eat often.
Lets move on to the moderate to good news:
- School - I had to postpone my college start date until March due to money issues, but all has been resolved and we are moving ahead with March 1st as my start date.
- Church involvement - We have been attending the evening services more regularly, however over the last two weeks we have been out with sicknesses. Stephanie hosted her first scrapbook meeting and I filled out all the paperwork to host a small group at our home, and this week was to be our first meeting - however the small group is currently listed as a young adults group and as such our first meeting was a combined meeting with all other young adults groups. We do have at least one confirmed couple that will be coming to our group and the actual first meeting will be Sunday.
- Paying down debt - I’ve made a huge jump forward in this area because of our tax refund this year. Last year we owed several hundred s of dollars to the IRS, however this year we got several back. I used the refund to pay off three small credit cards we had.
So how about you? Have your New Year’s Resolutions been reduced to New-First-Two-Weeks-of-the-Year Resolutions? Or are you chasing “results not typical”?
Tags: My Weight Loss, New Year's Resolutions
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Posted by Dale Sackrider, II on Feb 13, 2008 in
myThoughts
I took Zander and Lexi to a local fast food place with a playground earlier this week. While they were there, I met Kattie who was only 10 weeks old and every inch of 2 feet tall. I met Delanie who was 4 and 1/2 years old. I’d like to say I met their parents, since I did talk with them, and I did learn their children’s names and ages from them. I even learned that the dad enjoyed his newborn tax deduction so much that he took the time to show me that they bought a shirt for her that has Tax Deduction printed on the front. But I can’t say I meet them - since I didn’t ask their names, they didn’t ask mine, and we didn’t exchange any contact information, despite the fact that they were about the same age as Stephanie and me and they have kids close in age to our kids, and even made a comment that their older daughter was really enjoying the opportunity to play with Zander since her only other ‘friends’ were unable to interact on the same level due to age differences. Why didn’t we exchange information? Why didn’t I get to know them? Maybe I thought I could just ‘tune in’ next week and they would be there - all my other friends are.
I never realized how much TV was a part of everyone’s lives until the recent writers strike. As I spent time thinking about that fact, I realized something that might ring true for many of you guys as well. We have replaced actual human interaction with TV personalities. Think about it for a second - doesn’t the cast of friends make for a great click - with you in it?
Beautiful people that are funny, cool, and fun to hang out with are willing to share their lives with you every week. They don’t reject you, they never leave you out of what’s going on, and even when they do leave someone in the group out - its never you. Whether its the cast of Cheers, Friends, Sienfield, The OC, Las Vegas, Law and Order, or even Lost - you get to hang out with the cool crowd and no one questions whether or not you belong.
What - you think you haven’t replace actual friends for TV friends? Maybe you watch reality TV instead? You get to pick one of the teams on whatever show and they won’t turn you down - and you get to spy on exactly how the other team or teams are doing. You watch your new friends compete, argue, make other friends, lose weight, race to a finish line, struggle to survive, or just face their fears - all from your sofa. And they think you are great. They never turn on you, or vote you off - even when they get Fired!
When I was young, I heard stories of women that got so wrapped up in soap operas that they actually believed the cast were the characters they were playing. At the time I thought, how absurd, but now I think we all have fallen into a worse condition - we know they aren’t real, but would rather pretend they are than to turn off the TV and go make new friends.
Tags: Family, Friends, TV
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