Hello again

I have actually watched some NBA playoff basketball this season and have enjoyed it so far. Most of my enjoyment has come from watching the thugs down here getting upset about the Hawks taking it to the Heat. Evidently, the Heat weren't that good(who knew?), but I will try and watch the series against the Cavaliers.

Nicole is doing well with her classes and I made A's on my first two. Zach has finished track and is no longer grounded as he has pulled up his grades somewhat. Zach is still dating the same girl and has started driving(yikes). Chloe is in the middle of soccer and just finished with dance and her first recital(we are waiting on the dvd). I am no longer working at the tiny jail and have been sent back to work nights at the big jail for now after they closed most of the small one. It is an adjustment and I am just waiting to get back to days. My current plan is to stay put and finish my masters with the agency paying for it and then see what is available out in the world. I will try to avoid law enforcement or corrections, but stay in government if I change jobs. They just make it harder and harder to leave with steady increases in PDO if not money. I generally like people and have a positive outlook on life. Over time in my job I have developed an increasingly negative view of people and an increasingly dark sense of humor.

I have been getting into Stoic philosophy lately and have been reading Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. I am looking for a good biography of Marcus Aurelius if anyone has any ideas. Seneca cracks me up and was such a character. If not for him, Nero would have been worse. His life was Job's without the happy ending and far more wealth in the middle. I like to fancy myself a Stoic sometimes because I can usually bounce back from setbacks well and don't place great stock in material possessions. My problem is I am too big a fan of comfort to ever be a complete stoic and I do love the Georgia Bulldawgs more than a reasonable stoic should.

I am really writing all this just to prep myself for tomorrow as it is the anniversary of my mother's death.

Facebook

Ever since we got on face book it has been my excuse to keep me from this blog. I thought I would give a quick update. We are reviewing churches down here and have nearly settled on a Methodist Church where Zach has attended a couple of concerts. I was looking at a unitarian universalist church, but it seemed more like a club.

I am focusing on staying in the neighborhood of 200 through the holidays and have been keeping up running. I will be participating in a half-marathon in January with Joel and maybe Roger and Zach as well. I have gotten away from working out at the gym and have been doing a lot of pushups instead. I do about 200 a night. 200 is a common theme with me. Working nights makes me feel like I am 200 years old. I hope to eventually work up to 500 pushups a night, but we will see. I start my masters classes in January. I am taking Intro to Public Admin and Personnel Mgmt. We shall see. I didn't want to go the Criminal Justice route so that I could keep my options open.

Zach is grounded again because of grades. He is employing his tried and true method of waiting until the last minute to turn things in and rallying at the end of the quarter for a B. He reminds me of myself at his age except that I am able to check his grades and assignments online and e-mail his teachers. He will be getting his learner's permit in January(Yikes!).

Nicole is finally recovered from her crushed toe. I think it was a combination of Facebook and massive amounts of shopping that ultimately healed her.

Chloe is well behaved and talks non-stop. Zach was always able to entertain himself, but Chloe seems to lack that gene. She is an orchestrator and does not possess a pause button.

Cold November Rain

I worked alot of OT to pay for Georgia-Florida game experience. We had fun. We went to the Landing on Friday night and I had assured Nicole there would be kids there trick-or-treating and it would be appropriate family fun. The tricks time plays on our memories. There were very few kids, but we saw enough drunken young adult skin to last us a long while. If we go back we will either leave the youngins with a baby sitter or skip the Landing.

The game was tough. I hated it because I felt we were dominating in the first half everywhere but on the scoreboard. I don't think Urban Meyer is a good coach. He is a good recruiter and has unbelievable talent to play with, but his game plans are transparent and he doesn't seem to adjust well on game day. That makes it so hard to lose to his crying ass. I had talked a lot of garbage going into this game, but I was worried because of all the injuries and because I don't understand Willie Martinez. I work with a lot of Florida fans and will have to eat a ton of crow after this debacle. I will even have to hear it from a Mizzou fan for no reason other than my merciless non-stop trash talking with each of their losses.

We should be very good next year with all the experience our O-line is getting this year. Even with Stafford and Knowshon leaving we will be fine. This loss will sting, but I don't let it ruin a good time. We had a nice dinner after the game when Nicole and Chloe joined us (they were out spending money all day, Nicole decided to get her birthday present early). I stayed up late with the kids in the hotel room watching SNL. One thing I have decided is to take more trips. Even if they are short it is good to get out of the house. I also want to go on at least one trip a year with just me and the missus.

Georgia game...yikes

I was hoping it wouldn't be close, but I was afraid it would be. The Gator fans at work are smelling blood. I don't mind the true fans, but the Red Sox fans who come in at the end of conversations and don't know anything bug me with their comments. I am going to bed.

Palin pick, weight loss update

When I first heard that McCain picked Palin I thought it was pure genius. Especially the timing of the thing. I heard most of her speech at the convention and she brings a lot of fire to the table.
I think the pick was calculated to give independents and women a reason to vote for McCain and to give conservatives hope that McCain dies early in office. I still don't know who I will vote for this time around. I am leaning towards Obama because I think McCain is a bit old and those torture years had to make an impact on his life expectancy. I am not crazy about Palin as a president if something happens to McCain because I think she lets religion influence her too much.

I honestly think both candidates are moderates. Obama has a liberal voting record because there hasn't been too much that was really crazy come up for a vote and I don't have a problem with his votes for the most part. I think McCain has conservative beliefs, but he mostly votes like a moderate and he knows how to give to get. I think Obama also has this quality. Obama also seems even tempered and he smokes on the sly. I really can't lose in this election.

Weight loss update:
I have been stuck at about 195 for about a month. This week I may get it down to 192, but it is difficult to push like I used to. My goal weight is 185. I think I will make October the month where I hit it hard and log it down. I am running at least 1 5K that month and I can celebrate the achievement with a UGA victory over Florida.

Work update:
I took the Corrections Sergeant exam last month. 49 signed up to take it, 37 showed up for the initial exam. 13 of us made it to phase 2. 9 of us made it to phase 3. 7 of us passed the test and were placed on a waiting list. I am ranked 2nd on the list and expect to be promoted to Sergeant next spring.

Kid update:
Zach plays his first high school football game tomorrow. We are all looking forward to it. He has straight A's so far and has been keeping up with his homework. He is taking AP Human Geography and several advanced classes. He is looking at playing Lacrosse this winter(Lacrosse?)...
Chloe loves kindergarten and is going to Nicole's school. She is a bit bossy and wants to include everyone in her games all the time. She loves to play teacher especially and rule the roost.

Everyone is healthy and Nicole starts her second Master's class soon.

Religion and me...cont.

I can't remember where I was...Here we go.

I have had a few crises in faith over the years and am now trying to figure out where I am. We don't attend church much if at all and I don't miss it. We are going to start going back because I want the kids to have exposure to something to keep the cults off of them in college. I want their minds to have a healthy skepticism and be unafraid to challenge anyone who tries to pigeon hole their beliefs.

I have always struggled with the whole concept of evangelism. Maybe it is because it was never really stressed in the church I grew up in (they just wanted your soul, not everybody elses). I never felt like converting anyone. I tried to find some kind of "burden on my soul" for people close to me over the years and I just can't seem to swing it. I guess I view people's relationship with God to be too personal for my two cents or conversely I hold my own beliefs too closely to care to share them with anyone else.

Mission trips have never impressed me too much as a spiritual exercise either. I admire people going to help other people, but I just question how much starving folks care about the message when all they can think about is the cup of rice. My old partner at work was a jerk and very full of himself. He cared more about what people thought about evolution than anything else. I think it is because he read a few books about creationism and wanted to convert everyone to it. He was going on about this other deputy who was a Good Christian(as opposed to the bad kind) and had used his own savings to fly to Afghanistan and while there pay for some guy's surgery. I was impressed by the act and have met this guy and he seems nice. All I think about in this situation is that this guy works in Immokalee where some of the poorest people in the country live and he wants to fly to Afghanistan to help people? He could have quietly helped a dozen folks in Immokalee for what it cost him, but I guess it wasn't splashy enough. The Methodist Church in Ball Ground that we went to kept trying to get people together for trips to Mexico. One example of a good deed they kept bringing up was that they built this old lady a porch. I kept thinking, why in the hell are all you people going to Mexico to build porches? Mexicans know how to build a porch.

I am not trying to be negative. I am just trying to illustrate some of the reasons I don't feel as if I belong in any of the churches I can think of or have recently visited. Mega churches scare me to death. T.V. churches and churchmen scare me because they scared my mother and grandmother.

It would be easier to illustrate my beliefs if I said what I don't believe in. Here goes...

I don't believe I know enough about the 6 billion people on earth to know what works for everyone or what is right for everyone.

I don't believe religion should have any influence on government and that religious institutions should have to pay taxes. (I know this will never happen)

I don't believe every word in the Bible came straight out of God's mouth.

That was a little heavy so here are some things I do believe in...

God

Heaven(although I have no idea what it would be like, the closest definition of both heaven and hell that I have had explained to me and that makes any sense to me follows...Heaven is closeness to God and hell is distance from God)

Hell...there just has to be a Hell. There is no justice on earth. There has to be punishment for the wicked. I admire atheist countries justice system more than ours. In China, a death sentence is carried out in weeks not decades. I wish we could cane people.

I am religioned out for now.

Religion...briefly

I wanted to briefly throw in a few things about religion before I have to run Zach to Football. I have never been one to love a church. Growing up we would try to make it to Salem on First Sundays, but more often than not we would miss it. We would usually make it to most of revival week and when younger this was fun because you would sit in the hot church for the initial singing and preaching (about 30 minutes) and could then run around outside until the festivities inside died down (this could take anywhere from 1 hour on a slow night to nearly 3 hours).

As one neared the Age Of Accountability this church became less and less attractive. The Age of Accountability is reached when all the hellfire preaching and pressure from the congregation sinks into your skull and you actually think you are going to go to hell in the next second if you don't do something immediately. I have seen this, tragically, in children as young as 7 or 8 and in older people up into their 40s. With older people the congregation generally would have to convince them that whatever spiritual struggles they had been through and whatever church they had been to up until that point was not enough and their damnation was ensured unless they repented in the approved fashion. This generally worked best if they married into the church (e.g.-my father) as most newly married people cherish the idea of eternity with their spouse and generally want to get along with the crazy in-laws. People older than 40 aren't usually sought after and have too much pride as a rule to humble themselves appropriately before strangers.

Mercifully for me I passed through this age in one brutal week at revival through many altar callings and hours of prayer. I will always be thankful to this church and love it for the good music and the fact that it is where I first reached God. The only way it worked for me then was that I eventually entered into a place where everyone around me was forgotten and I reached out knowing I was accepted. I don't know how I knew or even how I got there, but I knew. I was 12 at the time and we were about to move to Waleska so it was a time of change in every sense of the word.

I started to become dissatisfied with the church because the impetus on individual salvation led me to think my work was done and also led me to become very judgemental of every other faith. I am not overstating things to say that in this church Catholicism(or for that matter Methodism) were as likely to lead to damnation as Budhism or Islam. These faiths were no better than atheism in many eyes (mine included for too many years) and even First Baptists were viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism(first at what, we wondered, with their indoor baptismal pools and fake wine and AC and indoor plumbing).

I didn't really begin to change my views until I got married to a strong willed woman (that's putting it kindly) who had seen much more of the world than I had and knew there were good people everywhere. She was also mortified when my Opera singing aunt tried to drag her to the front of the church for an altar calling one time. My wife thought they were going to pray for someone else and when she realized what was going on she was none too pleased. The arrogance of these people to assume they knew anything of her or what she had been through without even really talking to her is what inflamed her. We left immediately and never went back until my mother's funeral. We attended a small methodist church for awhile and really liked it until it started getting bigger and had all these committees. We literally had about 25 committees and only about 150 regularly attending parishioners. I will continue later as Zach is going to be late.