Tag: Money

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myThoughts

The First Ascent of Mt Everest – When I met my wife

The Day I met my wife: There she was – sitting in the far corner booth being the center of attention for more than one of the guys at the table.

Allow me to set the scene; After church services, there were so many bible college students that headed for half price appetizers at Applebee’s that we would often ask for the smoking section knowing that we would fill it up and leave no room for smokers in the restraunt.  And even then, the people not from our church or college were often approached with the gospel at some point in the evening.  Even with the college’s “don’t go out to eat unless you have enough money to tip well” policy, I’m sure the local staff hated Wednesday and Sunday nights; we didn’t drink, we only ordered off the half price menu, and we stayed until 15 minutes before curfew and start demanding the check get there in a hurry so we wouldn’t be late.  A 20% tip on a $6 meal won’t put your kids through college.

I was only 18, a freshman in Bible College, over 500 miles away from home, trying to fit in this new world of mine.  To be honest, I’m not even sure I knew who I was exactly; so in a way I was meeting myself as much as I was meeting anyone else.  I was rather unpopular in high school, even though I played football and Track and Field, and was in the top 25% of my class scholatically.  But here, I had a clean slate.  No one knew me from high school here and it was a chance to invent myself as anything I wanted to be.  I chose a funny all the time, overbearing occasionally, always social, usually outgoing, obnoxious at times, and spiritual deep at times personality.

Back to the scene, I happen to be one of the guys making Stephanie the center of my attention.  I couldn’t tell you who else was at the table other than ‘the competition’ – two guys both spending quite a bit of their time with Stephanie.  One of the two guys was obviously making her feel uncomfortable.  The other guy was looking more and more like the hero saving her from the first guy.  I was on the side lines; I felt she was out of my league.  A conversation with the hero made me believe they had been dating for a while anyway – which wasn’t true, but I didn’t know any better.  Over the next year, she dated the hero (who turned out to be a zero – forgive the cliche’).  We did become great friends, spending a lot of time at a momument between the boys and girls dorms.  It would be another two years before we were married – but well worth the wait!

Look for these Moments in future posts for the series:

  • The Day I got married
  • The Day my Mother Died
  • The Day my Father-in-Law Died
  • The Day I interviewed with American Express
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myThoughts

New Year’s Resolutions – 2008

Well, that’s the bad thing about having a public blog. You may be able to run away from last year’s resolutions. You may be able to escape the fact that you haven’t made one ounce of progress in those lofty goals you set last year. But I cannot…

It’s here again – The new year. I read my post from last year – it was in my not so humble opinion, well written, well said, and well ignored. Every year, no matter how hard I try to NOT create ‘new year’s resolutions’, I find myself wanting to start anew and lose weight, reduce debt, go back to school, read more, etc, etc, etc. Last year, I started talking about setting goals instead of making resolutions (not in my blog entry, but among my family). Maybe this year, I will create a constitution for myself and my family. I don’t know how to make this time any different than before, but as with every preceding effort, I want to believe this time will be different…. My prayer from last year still holds true today:

What must I do to be saved from ‘eating too much’? What must I do to be saved from ‘credit card debt’? What must I do to be saved from ‘realism’? What must I do to be saved from ‘my same old ways’? What will make this different from last year, last week, last night? Am I the only one asking these questions?

I’m still asking those questions. I still don’t have the answers.

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myThoughts

Busy, Busy, Busy

Hello All! I haven’t written an entry in a while because I have been crazy busy! So here is the latests on a few fronts: Stephanie’s New Biz: You may have noticed the ABC link in my sidebar by now – Stephanie has started an online store selling cloth diapers. I have wanted to use cloth diapers for years, but Stephanie wasn’t interested until our sister-in-law Dana sent her a starter pack of cloth diapers. They are very cute, lots of patterns and accessories – these aren’t the cloth diapers that our mom’s had to use! Stephanie gave them a second look and after a lot of research, jumped in with both feet! Lexi has been in nothing but cloth diapers and we love them. That’s why she started the business – well let’s be honest, we hope it makes money as well! Anyway – most of you don’t have kids in diapers, so I’m not pulling an ‘AmWay’ on ya – I’m not looking to sell you a bunch of stuff or ‘share’ with you an ‘opportunity’ – but I do hope you check out her store and let her know what you think – its http://ababyconnection.com Work: Work has been crazy!!! This is the busiest time of the year for my team because we have a freeze window from Nov 16th through the first week of January – so any business teams that want to get their IT projects done before the end of the year have to get them done in the next few weeks. I’ve been working 60-80 hour weeks for the last month. Yesterday was an especially rough day because through an automated process all of my access was incorrectly revoked – my email, my network login, my remote access to work from home, basically every access I need to do my job was removed! To get it fixed, I had to open a support ticket with our helpdesk but the standard time frame to correct it is three days! So, I had to get my senior level VP to call the helpdesk for escalation – which puts the time frame at eight hours. Still, losing an entire work day during this time of year is insane. To top it off – we have a new director that started officially yesterday and the first time she hears my name is from an outside business team demanding that she ‘get Dale’s access fixed – its affecting our timelines!’ WOW – great first impression! Church: I’ve been feeling lately like I’ve been hiding in the pews and its time to take a step forward to help advance the Kingdom of God. So, I scheduled a meeting with my Pastor to talk about where I can ‘step it up’ in our church. Shortly after I had scheduled the meeting with my Pastor, I got an email from a cousin regarding a youth pastor position at their church. My cousin asked if I would be willing to talk with his pastor regarding the position – I said yes, but I wanted to talk to my pastor before I would consider a position with another church. Within a few hours of emailing that reply to my cousin, his pastor called me! We talked about my history and that church’s future – but I let him know that I was meeting with my pastor soon and wouldn’t be interested in pursuing a position (staff or volunteer) outside of my church until after I had an opportunity to talk with my pastor. He let me know that they also had another minister candidate already scheduled to come into town but wanted to talk with me anyway – he even suggested that I visit his church and consider volunteering there. I can’t blame him for trying! I enjoyed talking with him and I did pray about it, but I love my

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current church and I’m not looking for employment, I want to affect the Kingdom of God in a positive way. If that means a full time job, great! If not, that’s ok too. Anyway – I have since met with my Pastor to discuss where I fit in our church. It was a good meeting and while my pastor did not know it, what I really needed to hear was that there was a place for me in our church – and that is the exact words his used during our meeting. I left encouraged and excited about the future. Well, I hope to get back to regular blog entry’s after the 16th – until then…