I am a meteorologist and a former youth leader at church…I have a lot to say on both subjects…and then some
😉   Mary had me get them out.
Mary and her friend Tishia did there first 5 km race today. Well they walked it. Their goal is to run it next year. They are contemplating another 5 k in the summer.
Update: Here are some Videos from Mary and one I took, and Mary’s weight loss blog.
Today, while it was a day off, seemed to have a lot happening. It started around 1 pm when Brandon came home, rather unexpectedly, and said that despite getting clearances to work for the Mountain, there was a hold on him working there from personnel.
That leads into the second thing. Brandon had been paying the truck payment when he lost his job. We have no margin in our finances right now, because our renter didn’t have a job until recently, and hadn’t been able to pay their rent the last couple of months. They are now planning to move out in another week. Oh yeah, the truck, so I get a call from the credit union about the payment. Luckily, the bank person told me that if we pay $50 we will be out of being 30 days overdue.
Mary came home around 4 pm and we got dinner started with Ben, Trisha, and Boys coming over. I made spaghetti. It was a good time, but then we had a long talk with Brandon, he’s not sure that the hold will come off of his job at the mountain.
So we are now praying and holding down the fort. Things seem to happen just when they need to, but it does make for busy time.
I have seen some the people with Word Press can bundle their Twitter Tweats together and send them out as a post. Well, I found a site that will do that for Blogger as well. Why don’t I change? I’m lazy. I don’t like change. Okay, I’m not that bad, but it is a pain. I like blogger’s functionality and I’m comfortable with how to use it. I might change in the future, to Word Press especially with my wife starting a Virtual Assistant business, where she is pretty much installing blogs and getting domain names for people.
Okay, I don’t tend to do these, but this one was tagged by my wife and it looked interesting. So here goes.
What Was I Doing 10 Years Ago?
I was in Jackson, Kentucky working as a Met Intern, the entry level position for the NWS. I was also working on my Attacking Anxiety and Depression materials.
5 Things On My To-Do List Today:
The day is almost done, so I’ll have to think about what I have to do for Saturday.
1. Take the garbage to the dump
2. Go to a couple of open houses
3. Listen to my podcasts
4. work on my podcast stuff
5. Work
Snacks I Enjoy:
Hmm…Nuts (usually cashews), Ice Cream, Oreos
Things I Would Do If I Were A Billionaire:
My wife pretty much has everything that I would pretty much do on her blog.
Places I Have Lived:
Starting from when I was a kid:
1. Woodbury, NJ
2. Sumter, SC
3. Chicago (Justice), IL
4. New Castle, PA
5. Somerdale, NJ
6. Fennville, MI
7. State College, PA
8. Fennville, MI
9. Grand Rapids, MI
10. State College, PA
11. Fennville, MI (Hmm…I’m sensing a pattern here)
12. South Pole station, Antarctica
13. Fennville, MI
14. Bowman, ND
15. South Pole Station, Antarctica
16. Fennville, MI
17. Holland, MI
18. Denver, CO
19. Bowman, ND
21. Holland, MI
22. Jackson, KY
23. Gaylord, MI (This is the place that I lived the longest in one place outside of growing up in Fennville as a kid.)
24. Boyne Falls, MI
I’m terrible at tagging, so if you like this, then Tag you do one.
While listening to net@night with Leo Laporte and Amber Macarthur, they interviewed one of the founders of the site Dipity.com. Basically, you can create a time line of you by merging your feeds from Flickr, Blogger, WordPress, YouTube, etc. While I have been blogging for about 4 years and had a Flickr account for about as long, my time line only goes back about one year, but once you start it will continue so that your time line will grow for as long as you contribute to it or the site remains up and viable. I might recommend that Mary do it for her new business so that people can see the time line of how and what she does. I’ll talk to her about it when I see her in the morning.
I recently found this on Geek Brief TV, a video podcast that I watch/listen to. CommonCraft. com has found some great ways to explain some of the web 2.0 things out there. Between my wife, my brother-in-law, and the CommonCraft.com explanation, I got on Twitter. This is really cool with Mary’s and mine new phones, instead of texting what I’m doing, I go to the mobile version of the site and type in what I’m doing.
I often mention that I listen to podcast instead of terrestrial radio. If you don’t know what this is then watch this:
Thursday morning at 400am, Karlie and I took Mary to meet up with her missions trip group and send her on her way to Nigeria. It sounded like a crazy day for travel, because when they got to the airport, Delta had canceled their flight (my hunch is that it was a MD-88). So there they were trying to figure out how to get to Nigeria. Initially, I thought that they lost their fight from Atlanta to Lagos, but it was the DTW to ATL flight. She called and said that they were possibly flying Air France to Rome for a 2 day layover then to Lagos. Then a call late in the day said that they drove to Toledo and flew to Atlanta, in plenty of time for their flight to Lagos.
So we went about 24 hours without hearing anything, then as I was working my way through the afternoon traffic in Gaylord, my phone began to ring with a really weird number on it. My hunch was right as it was Mary calling from a borrowed cellphone in Lagos. The connection wasn’t great and we got cut off twice, I knew she was there.
Today, as I was beginning my shift at work this afternoon (I swapped shifts), she called again with a much better connection. Mary had been at an orphanage most of the morning and had just gotten back from a church service. Here is a copy of her email to me:
Hi Family from Africa!
Hello everyone!
I am typing this email to you live from Lagos, Nigeria Africa! We arrived Friday morning and now it is Saturday evening. All is going very well! Sara and I have been blessed to be able to visit the orphanage twice so far! We had the first visit scheduled, but today’s visit was not! It is such a blessing to be able to go and love on those kids! We were able to take them many gifts, like toys, clothes, shoes, and such. And today, Sara and I gave out our Lifesavers and Starbursts! They loved it!!!!! The head of the orphanage, Deborah, is doing an amazing thing there, and Denny (from Gaylord) has been able to raise several thousands of dollars over the past few years to help build it further! What an awesome way to build God’s kingdom!!!! I will have many pictures to share when I get home!
If I don’t get to email again, God bless you all my family!
Especially you Jeff for taking care of everyone while I’m gone and holding down the fort! And for allowing me to come on this amazing mission!
I love you and miss you all!
Mary
So she is doing well, and we are holding down the fort. Trisha came over last night with Ethan and she and Kara were in the midst of fixing supper for us when I got home. A far cry from the chaos that reigned on Thursday when I got home, but that’s a story I’ll leave off.
We are going to try to do something for Brandon’s birthday tomorrow and Kaleb leaves early in the morning from Traverse City for England. Spring Break is this week for our teens so I won’t have to worry about bus duty this week much. If everything goes well, my mother-in-law will help out with that the following week while I am on midnights. Mary comes home then at the end of my Mids (Yeah!).
