Friday, August 31, 2007

Wow, what a day!

What a day this has been...

I took the day off today because I though it might be good for my mental health to have two four-day work weeks with a four-day weekend in between.

Our plan had been to get up early, and leave for Columbus by 9:00 AM. We didn't exactly get the start we wanted, but the business of the day made up for it in leaps and bounds.

By 10:30 or so we were on the road. We hit Polaris first for some places Jenn wanted to check out, and Ellie played on the most excellent playground in the mall while Jenn was doing her shopping and Silas was sleeping in the stroller.

We made our way from Polaris to Easton around 1-ish, and after hitting Target, Bath & Body Works, Old Navy, and Dick's Sporting Goods we grabbed a late lunch at Cosi. Great sandwiches if you ever get to check them out! While Jenn and Ellie wandered around to other stores at Easton, I spent most of our visit there in the Apple store, trying to decide what new gadgets and mac accessories I couldn't live without. Bumped into Huss while we were there, as he had just wrapped up an appointment in Columbus and was doing a little Mac accesorizing himself.

Knowing that we were going to run late, we made a mad dash from Easton straight to Jackson for the Waverly Jackson game tonight, where the home-town Tigers proceeded to stomp the IronMen flat into their pretty field.

Had a great time hanging at the game with Jodi, Ed Purpero, and Chris & Tesa. Also great to have so many of the kids from Youth acknowledge us old people as being their friends even in a public setting like a football game.

It's 12:30 AM now. I'm back in my recliner while the rest of the family is asleep. I won't go into detail about all of the crazy stuff we packed back from our one-day shopping spree, but among the spoils was a six dollar and fifty cent "dog" tent that we found on the clearance rack at Target. The provided photo, is the current view from my recliner.



As far as Ellie is concerned it was the best $6.50 we spent all day.

Good day today. Hopefully more good days to follow.

Roogles Out.

Something strange is afoot at the Circle K

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Jenn and I don't find ourselves at Circle K very often. I'm not sure if there aren't that many of them around, or if we just tend not to frequent them in favor of the more familiar convenience store like Speedway or BP... In any case, when we do find ourselves getting gas or pit stopping at a Circle K, I always smile to myself as I recall Bill and Ted pacing in the parking lot and coming to the realization that "something strange is afoot at the Circle K"

Blogged from my iPhone.

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Edit : We happened to be at that same Circle K a mere three days after our visit which prompted this blog entry... I got a better photo this time, so I'm replacing the bad one, with the better one.

Monday, August 20, 2007

Meltdown

so yesterday I had a meltdown...

First things first... I don't melt down. I do not stress, I work well under pressure, I am a control freak (to the extent that it is possible in any given situation)... and even when any of the above isn't true I pretty much don't let it get to me.

Second things second.... Obviously this is all hogwash (link provided for all of you not up on your redneck terminology). To the best of my knowledge everyone has stress. Most people worry about at least one thing, and some people worry about everything. The trick to not melting down, is that people find things to do with the stress... Some people run, some people fish, or take pictures, or punch things, or cry, or drink, or fly kites, or take walks, or go on a silent retreat, or something...

and then some people just bottle things up inside, they supress the urge to let it out, thinking that it will show weakness, or character flaws, or that someone might call them a pansy, or some other reason... and then, eventually there is no where left to store it all up, and they meltdown.

I'm one of those people.

Typically I can detect when a meltdown is approaching and take some action to hold it off, or find a way to release some of the pent-up stress so that the meltdown is less painful, and less draining. I do one of those things I mentioned above (walk,fish, getaway,etc) and things go back to bearable, and life goes on...

I won't bore you with the details of what's going on, or what got me to the general state of stress I was in on Sunday morning because it would... well... bore you.

But anyhoo.... Sunday morning, in the midst of amazing worship ( thanks Marty & gang ) and an equally amazing message from Steven, I melted. I hope that I melted quietly. I am allowing myself to believe that only one other person noticed, because then I'll be less worried about the fact that I melted in public.

The meltdown, thankfully, was short and was followed by an awesome afternoon ( see here and here and here ) with the RVCC Youth out at Chris & Tesa's place. What an amazing group of kids ( and adults ). What an awesome blessing to be part of this exciting ministry.

But anyhoo... That was yesterday, and now I am back to real life where melting down is not permitted.

Ah well....