Monday, November 29, 2010

Christmas shopping

Thanksgiving is over. My wife knowing that I would be off from work for four days, made extra so I would have left overs during my vacation. So I have been filling my self with leftover turkey, sweet potatoes, and dressing. For breakfast for the last few days I've started my morning out right with a slice of pumpkin pie. But the big feast is over, after dinner it was time to start the battle plan for Christmas shopping. Time to start operation "Black Friday."

Before I got married my Christmas shopping consisted of going to the gift card rack, giving it a spin and grabbing whatever flew off. I didn't care that my Mom would end up getting $20 at Bass Pro Shop that she would neve use. I was not going to spend more than 5 minutes in a store with all the Holiday shopping nuts. Then I married the four star general of Black Friday shopping. My wife turns into this ultimate warrior only told in Greek fables as she prepares for her conquest of goods. Let me add that my wife is not greedy, she loves a good deal. It all starts with the Thursday news paper loaded with all the adds. They are spread out on the floor like maps of the battle field. Planning the route of attack of who to strike first and who had the best deal. I was recruited as special ops and intelligence gathering. I was to be on the look out for the deals she could not see as well as block the other enemy shoppers from grabbing the deals before her. The mission was to start at 0200 hrs (that's 2:00 in the morning for you civilians). Being the good soilder I am I was prepared for battle. I slept in my unifrom that night. Dressed in my jeans and sweat shirt, I slept on the couch so I could wake up and be ready for battle.

So it began at the first store. We were gathered in front of the first target to be raided with the other warriors. Waiting for the poor undefended soilder to open the gates. When the doors were finally opened it was like the barbarians were storming the castle. One of the warriors tried to flank my wife and I to get into the store first. So I threw an elbow up to block her way, she spoke in a different language, but I was pretty sure she just cussed me out. As we made our way onto the battle field, my wife gving me the orders of wich way to turn, we got stuck behind some confussed and scared rookies. They just stood there in shock watching the horror of what was going on around them. Seeing a small opening, I reached backed and grabbed a hand. I wasn't sure if it was my wife's hand or not, I just knew I only had one chance to get through. So I just pushed my way through until I saw day light, I was so thankful when I looked backed and saw I had indeed had grabbed my wife's hand and didn't leave a fallen soilder behind. We were able to grab the bounty that we wanted and be one of the first in line to check out.

That battle went on for a few hours, when we made our way back to home base we collasped and napped for a few hours. When I woke up I rewarded myself with a job well done by making my favorite, turkey, stuffing and cranberry sandwich. The taste of victory is so sweet.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Money

I teach a young married Bible study class at my church. This month we are doing a study on finances based off of Dame Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. He has some biblical principles to help people get out of debt. The church in a whole has been giving classes to over 80% of the church to help everyone out in these hard economic times. The goals are to help families overcome the burden of debt and help reduce the financial stress that is on most marriages. In the long run if the majority of people in our church have no debt and are managing their money well, we can better serve the community needs. This program is not a quick fix with short term goals, but a slow process with long term results. My wife and I have already gone through the classes and have notice a big difference with our money in a positive way.

So our Sunday school class topic was on saving.
Proverbs 21:20 “In the house of the wise are stores of choice food and oil, but a foolish man devours all he has.”
We talked about the importance of saving for the future and to be prepared for when a crisis strikes the family. Also we talked about the example we are teaching our kids by saving. Someone brought up that kids just see us swipe a card when we purchase something. This made me think how often I use cash, never. Then I began to realize that our whole society could be based on imaginary magical numbers. I don’t get a paper pay check anymore. My numbers are directly deposited to my account; I don’t even get a print out of my numbers that I earn anymore. If I want to see how many numbers I have I go online and see if I have more numbers than I did before. If I want to buy something I take my card and swipe it then they deduct some numbers from my account. When I pay my bills I go onto my computer and move some numbers from one place to another. It is like a video game, if I have a lot of numbers at the end of the month I win. Can we call it money anymore when it’s really just some numbers on the screen? Do they even need to print money anymore?
So here is what we are teaching our kids. If you go to a store, pick out what you want, you just wave this magic card through a slot and that’s it. What kids don’t understand is why dad is pulling his hair out and screaming because the numbers at the end of the month are not as big as they need to be, in fact they might have a little minus sign in front of them, which means game over. By the way one of Dave’s lessons is to buy everything in cash. Cash is easier to keep track of and harder to let go of. If you don’t have the cash to buy something then you don’t need it and shouldn’t buy it.

Proverbs 22:6 “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
If we have kids, I hope to teach them how to save their money. After all they'll be deciding which retirement home to put me in.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Two year Anniversary

So I missed Monday’s post because it was my two year anniversary being married to my wife. The first year was fun settling down and getting to know each others little habits and really planning our future together. The second year, though just as fun, went by really fast. I think that first year of being married you ignore the fact that life is going on around you, but the second year you end up trying to catch up with it.

The first year we were married, we had one major incident. That was when I was rushed to the hospital because my heart decided it wanted to try and jump out of my chest. As scary as that was, it was one of those moments you are thankful for that person God put in your life. If it was not for my wife being stubborn and taking me to the ER, I probably would not be here sharing my random meaningless thoughts with you now. But other than that we spent our first year traveling wherever we wanted to go and fixing our house up the way we wanted it, just being carefree newlyweds. You would do anything for each other to make sure the other person is happy. But the second year comes along and it’s as if God says ok no more fun, time for real life to hit you. So what happens in the second year is that you spend a Sunday morning trying to save everything on the bathroom floor from getting wet, because the last owners never had the septic tank pumped in the 13 years they owned the house and it decided to back up on you right before you go to church. Your marriage hits an all new level when you have a discussion looking down a septic tank drain asking your significant other,” Do you smell how bad that is?” That happened earlier in the year, the rest of the year was spent discovering new things about ourselves.

I never new I had a side of the bed. Until I was 35 I’ve slept alone spreading out and rolling to whatever side I wanted to sleep on. Sure early in my life I had a small twin bed that with one wrong move and I would end up having the dream that I was falling only to find out I was actually falling off the bed. But, in my adult years I had a queen bed all to myself, I would sleep dead center of it. When we got married we purchased a king size mattress, now I’m not saying that I haven’t slept in two years. But, I’ve always felt something was not quite right. So recently we decided to switch sides of the bed, you know mix things up a little to keep our relationship spontaneous. It was like discovering a new land, I was so comfortable. My wife said, “Why didn’t we try this sooner, I love it over here.” So we learned something very important after two years of marriage. I like to sleep on the left side of the bed and she likes the right side of the bed. I think because of this huge discovery our marriage will last a long time. Well that and we love each other and I can’t imagine my life without her.

Monday, November 8, 2010

Happy Anniversary

Today is my two year wedding anniversary. We celebrated by taking a trip to the mountains and spending time together this weekend. So as I say at the top of this blog that I will post a comic on Monday and Thursday, unless life gets in the way. Well, life got in the way, but in a good way. Happy Anniversary to a very wonderful person, companion, and best friend.

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12
9 Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their labor:
10 If either of them falls down,
one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls
and has no one to help them up.
11 Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.
But how can one keep warm alone?
12 Though one may be overpowered,
two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

A dark and stormy night (blog)

“It was a dark and stormy night….” These words were typed many times by Snoopy. He would often sit on top of his dog house to write the great American novel. Why did he start off like this? Maybe he thought he was adding some mystery or suspense to what he was about to write, maybe he just didn’t know what else to say.

According to my post counter I have written over 40 posts, that is a lot of rambling on about nothing. Looking back I have written a lot about my stubborn cat, my lovely wife, married life, what I did when I was single and other bits of useless information. Now I have my reasons, this blog is sort of like a public diary to record things for ideas for the comic. I am hoping to send this comic to a syndicate and be published. I’ve always enjoyed drawing cartoons and didn’t think it was that hard to write a three or four panel gag every day.

This week it has been raining a lot. What do we do when it rains? Nothing, when the wife and I do nothing I have nothing to write about. I could write about the new addition to our family, no not what you are thinking. We have somehow adopted a tailless cat. We call her Buttercup, Butter for short. She’s a big clumsy cat that comes inside, eats, wants petted for a little bit, and goes back outside. My cat doesn’t seem to mind, he knows who the king of the house is. My work is pretty much routine. Oh I could come up with something to write, like how I think it is gross to use the bathroom at work because either some guy comes in and wants to have an office meeting while I’m standing there trying to use the bathroom. Or, how I hate the feeling of sitting on a warm toilet seat knowing someone was just there before me and most of the guys in my office don’t practice decent hygiene. I could complain about people in general, and how I get a chuckle when people ride my tail when I am driving and pass me to either get behind the slow person that was in front of me or get caught at the red light. No matter what I end up right behind them, I like to wave at them in their rear view mirror.

So syndicates require you to submit at least 30 daily comic strips and 4 Sunday comics to show that the comic has enough material to regularly be published everyday. Charles Schulz’s Peanuts was turned down many times, because most syndicates thought he couldn’t come up with enough ideas and stories about a bunch of kids. He could only come up with 50 years worth of stories. After my 44 little blog posts, I think I know what was happening when Mr. Schulz had a writers block. “It was a dark and stormy night….”

Monday, November 1, 2010

putting on pants

Halloween has passed, which means the Holidays will be quickly approaching. Approximately, 7 weeks till Christmas. One of the great things about this time of year is I bring out the sweat and flannel pants to sit around in. This is when you will see me of an evening or weekend sitting around in my comfortable stretchy pants. My cat loves this time of year because it gets cold for him too and he sits by the couch waiting for me to sit down so he can lie next to me and get warm. Now he has a choice to make, sit next to me or share the blanket with my wife that she hibernates under all winter.

My wife has broken part of my tradition of wearing sweat pants. I used to enjoy Thanksgiving when I was single. Most people did not understand that I looked forward too spending this time alone. I would get a big steak, baked potato, mac and cheese, and a pumpkin pie all too my self. Along with some other snack favorites like cookies and Little Debbie cakes. I would sit around all Thanksgiving weekend; watching football and dumb movies, enjoying my bounty of food, all while enjoying the freedom that the elastic from my sweat pants would allow my stomach to grow. Then when my wife and I started dating I had to go to her family for the holidays. It was nice because there was more food to eat, but it wasn’t the same. I had to put on pants. That’s right, it’s strange to say but when you get involved in a serious relationship with someone you have to put on pants for the holidays.

Not that I am complaining about being married or that my Holidays have been ruined. I mean I do get to eat more food that I didn’t have to cook and it is nice to spend time with someone you love during this time of year. But when you indulge yourself with the amount of intake of food that I do around this time of year, the last thing I need is a leather strap around my waist to hold back the expanding mass of girth, a.k.a. my stomach. So now goodbye Halloween and hello Holiday season, it is the most wonderful time of the year. Even with out my stretchy pants.