W is for Weston

How could W not be for Weston?  Our baby boy is growing up.  I can’t believe I am the father of a 14 month old.  Time has gone by so fast, but at the same time, it is weird to remember him not being able to hold his head up, or just lying on the floor like a lump.  I decided to pick one of my favorite pictures of him from each month of his life, leaving out the present month due to my last post.  It has been wonderful to look back at the pictures and remember the different stages.  I tried to pick pictures that were really good, but at the same time, not on our walls or sent out to many other people.  You will most likely recognize some of the pictures because they were just too cute not to put on this post.  It was incredibly hard to narrow down each month to one picture since we have well over 6000 pictures of Wes so far, but I just picked one and went with it before I drove myself mad.  I think Liz took most of these, but Becky contributed quite a few, as well as a couple lucky shots I happened on.  It’s possible there is another photographer in there as well, so I apologize if I didn’t give you mention.  

Enjoy.

V is for Vindicated

You may remember this post from January of last year where I went on for a significant period of time complaining about the crappy weather and lack of snow.  Now that we got 2 back to back large snow storms I look back at that post and realize….. I was completely right!!  This snow is FANTASTIC!! 

Look at it in all of its glory!

This was the biggest snow event that I have ever experienced.  There was so much wonderful snow that I felt I owed it to my childhood self to build a snow tunnel to play in. 

I even tried to coax Weston into going in. 

He was reluctant at first, but I finally got him to join me.  I’m sure he will look back at this picture when he is older and dream about such levels of snow.

Thanks for reading.  

U is for Utterly Unimportant

Do you find the word “utterly” weird?  I immediately picture a cow and think “oh yes, completely.”  But perhaps that is just me.  I have been sitting at my desk for the past couple work days occasionally thinking about what my U post should be.  I haven’t really had very much to write about and therefore decided to write about the reason I have nothing much to write about.  I have been unfortunately slipping back to that guy that started this blog.  That fraction of a man that for lack of a better term, sleep walks through life. 

There are a multitude of factors that add up to a state such as this, but the biggest is of course the job.  I have enjoyed this job for the most part.  I worked hard and my company really took care of me for the good work that I did.  But times have sadly changed.  With our restructuring and new management, I’m not nearly as involved as I used to be.  There were times where I would spend 60% of my day in meetings having meaningful discussion.  Now I just spend the vast majority of my day staring at my computer with little human contact.  I’m not saying all of this to complain at the world for my job.  I am very thankful that I have a job, but deep within me is a yearning for something more.  Something that greatly challenges me, and something that I care about.  I want this company to be successful and fight for it not to be taken advantage of by insurance companies, but I ultimately do not care for the product that we make or the long term goals of the company.  I don't feel that that work I am doing here is valuable or important.  I have therefore determined that I need to find something more suited for me.  I just have no idea what that is. 

I would appreciate feedback from my readers for any suggestions.  The bottom line is that I’m very good in finance.  That is where my experience lies, and I have a good financial mind and the capacity to build powerful models to forecast the financial future of a company.  I can’t totally change careers and expect to find a good job.  I have interests in recreation, but will doubtfully be hired for a recreation management position with no experience.  My primary thought is to find a job where my skills can be used for something that matches my interests.  That is proving to be somewhat challenging as I ultimately do not want a position where the majority of my time is spent crunching numbers on a computer.  I also really enjoy discussion, making decisions, and activities.  I recently applied for a director of finance position for a resort.  That is certainly along the right track, but I’m still a little under qualified for that position.  What else can I do? When I look back over the recent years and the things I get passionate about, the list is not very big.  I enjoy religious discussion where I have to do a lot of research and write a position paper with many references.  I thrive on activities where I organize a great weekend or play a sport or game.  I’ve also got addicted to many weird hobbies such as forging, building a cannon, parkour, and many other very sad ones that shouldn’t be mentioned.  I don’t know how that can be applicable to a job, but if it is, sign me up.

There have been a couple people recently suggest going to seminary and being a pastor.  There is a part of me interested, but I honestly do not know if that is where God is calling me.  I plan to spend the next 2 months thinking and praying about what I should do next, then going application crazy right after our China trip.  At this point in time I am fairly open to anywhere in the country that isn’t central PA or a major city.  If you have any thoughts, please share. 

Thank you.      

T is for Tough Guys

I’ve been reading a bit of XKCD lately, and had comics on the brain.  One of the miserable days I spent last week hurting myself on a treadmill, I came up with a cartoon that I decided to try to draw.  Please don’t judge too harshly on lameness or drawing ability.  You might need to zoom in a little bit to read the dialog.  Due to size limitations on this blog, I just have to use links.

Part 1: Link Here

Part 2: Link Here

S is for Scientology

When requested to do a post on Scientology, I of course had to brush up on my knowledge. I went where any logical person would go to learn about such matters… South Park. The Season 9 Episode 12 titled “Trapped in the Closet” actually tells the story fairly well. There was quite a bit of controversy that came from this episode, and though some of the church leaders deny the story as being true, many people who were with the church for years and left came out in agreement. I thought about embedding some videos for you to watch, but I wasn’t sure how many people would actually watch it. You can find the full episode online. I’ll touch on the basics that are absolutely true about scientology and the controversial doctrine.

Buckle up. Scientologist believe that negative emotions are caused by something called body thetans. The founder, L. Ron Hubbard, discovered this and developed a way for the thetans to be removed so people can find happiness. For a nominal fee (a few hundred bucks) people can use a machine to remove the thetans. This fee is of course nominal as you are buying your happiness. You can see where people would buy into this. They want to figure out why they are unhappy and in this “church” they tell you directly and provide an easy way to make your life better. As you spend more time in the church, and contribute more money, you earn higher levels of membership. At a certain level you finally find out what thetans are and where they came from.

This is the doctrine revealed in South Park that caused the controversy. South Park did not change the story at all because they felt it was so ridiculous as is that it didn’t need to be altered. L. Ron Hubbard was a science fiction writer who came up with the doctrine. This explains where thetans come from:

It all began 75 million years ago. Back then there was a galactic federation of planets which was ruled over by the evil Lord Xenu. Xenu thought his galaxy was overpopulated, and so he rounded up countless aliens from all different planets, and then had those aliens frozen. The frozen alien bodies were loaded onto Xenu's galactic cruisers, which looked like DC-8s, except with rocket engines. The cruisers then took the frozen alien bodies to our planet, to Earth, and dumped them into the volcanoes of Hawaii. The aliens were no longer frozen, they were dead. The souls of those aliens, however, lived on, and all floated up towards the sky. But the evil Lord Xenu had prepared for this. Xenu didn't want their souls to return! And so he built giant soul-catchers in the sky! The souls were taken to a huge soul brain-washing facility, which Xenu had ALSO built on Earth. There the souls were forced to watch days of brainwashing material [Egyptian gods, Jesus carrying the Cross, and a bronze Buddha statue are shown] which tricked them into believing a false reality. Xenu then released the alien souls, which roamed the earth aimlessly in a fog of confusion. At the dawn of man, the souls finally found bodies which they can grab onto. They attached themselves to all mankind, which still to this day causes all our fears, our confusions, and our problems.

It sounds completely absurd to me that anyone would stay with the church after finding this out. However, if you’ve spent many years in a church and get far enough involved, I guess it is logical that you would believe just about anything the people in authority told you. I did find this video that shows some clips from the show mirrored with recordings from L. Ron.

Enjoy, and thanks for reading.

R is for Retro

On Sunday afternoon, I wanted to get a little exercise, but it was too cold outside. What other option did I have? Pull out the good ole DDR pad and get busy! I was remembering some of those great college days of arrow stamping, smelly footed joy. For those of you who don’t know. I sadly do have some DDR skills. Running through a series of songs on heavy, followed by push-ups and crunches is a decent workout.

After my rousing DDR session, I found myself even more nostalgic for those long lost college fads. I therefore decided to do some target shooting with my air soft gun and even played some Super Monkey Ball. After rocking the beginner stages, I headed straight for Monkey Target to land on that small yellow beacon in the middle of the water. What a wonderful time! Thank you college me for your silly, fun-junkie, finely honed skills.

Que?

I’ve spent the last few days occasionally thinking about what I wanted to write for my Q post. There are a number of words that start with the letter Q, but I couldn’t manage to fit a Q word to any of the events of my life over the past week. In fact, nothing very interesting happened to me over the past week. I did have the opportunity to be an expert witness for questioning in a bankruptcy court. However, that ended up not being a significant event as I drove all the way to Wilmington, DE to find out the judge approved our motion outside of court, and I turned around and drove back immediately.

I considered writing about the humorously boring evening that Keith and I spent walking around Best Buy talking geeky tech talk. I kid you not, it declined to serious discussion on the type of washing machines and refrigerators we might one day purchase. But then my thoughts trended toward the letter Q itself, and how peculiar it is. Liz and I occasionally play the alphabet game on our trips together. Though she normally dominates me, the key to victory is finding the Q. It is all down hill from there. It’s hard to find words with Q because I honestly think the letter is not all that important. Are there any words with the letter Q that couldn’t ultimately have the Q replaced by a C or K? It would make some words look a little funny, because we are familiar with the Q, but I believe it would work. At the same time, other languages rely on the Q a bit more that we do. I think the French might struggle to erase the letter from there language. “Ku’est-ce kue tu dis” just doesn’t work the same.

That concludes my thoughts for the day.

Merci pour la lecture