social networking - connections and reconnections

I've been on the net for years now. That's a pretty simple thing to figure out considering that I've been involved in some way or another with computer networking as my job for almost 20 years. In all that time I've avoided many of the popular sites that have sprung up, especially those dedicated to social networking. I hated AOL and it's instant messaging from the outset. I've used it sparingly but never really liked it. I avoided Plaxo for years due to the privacy concerns that many industry leaders raised when they broke onto the scene. I've rarely even browsed on Myspace much less set up a profile. My sole foray into the popular culture of the net was in starting this blog just over 2 years ago. But even in this I've not been very active, as you can see by my post count. However, over that past year or so I've begun to break down a few of these barriers I've built up. I signed up with Plaxo after reading a review in PC Magazine about how many of the privacy concerns have been answered. I've loved it so far. It has allowed me to get updated information from many of my contacts and even more importantly has allowed me to keep the data easily synced between my office, home and laptop computers.

More recently I read some comments from a good friend of mine about how he had found many old friends on Facebook and Myspace. I thought "You know I think I signed up for a Facebook account a while back but never did anything with it." I went back and set up my profile and in a very short while have connected with friends ranging from my high school days to some that I am in school or work with currently. There was one person in particular that I went to high school with whom I had been looking for off and on for the last 10 years or so. Within 2 days of getting active on facebook we had reconnected. We also reconnected with some of the students from our youth group in Georgia that we haven't talked to in almost 5 years.

Now that I'm reconnecting with all these folks I guess I'll have to do a much better job of using this blog for what it was originally set up for - a way to keep our friends and loved ones updated on what's going on with our family as we follow the path that God has laid before us.

and the silence is broken...

I've noticed from my site statistics that there are at least a few people out there who still check this blog on a regular basis. So, after far too long a time spent away from writing, I have returned to break the silence that has held sway here for more than 4 months. Some may ask, "Why were you gone? Where were you?" Well, this past semester at school was an incredibly stressful one for our family. It wasn't so much the workload as it was all the external things that occurred. There was a lot of traveling and many external crises that had to be dealt with. All of this on top of the stack of books that I had to read and the papers that I had to write left little time, and even less desire for blogging.

The first weekend after school started we made the 13+ hour trip to Baton Rouge for a surprise party for my Mom's 80th birthday. It was a wonderful occasion but far too quick of a trip. We left Louisville on Wednesday and came back on Sunday. About a month later was Dee Dee's sister's wedding on a small island off the coast of Belize. The kids and I didn't go to the wedding but a week without Dee Dee here and with my mom and cousin in town to help out with the kids so I could go to school and work added to the stress level a bit.

A little later on in the semester we took our van in to the shop because the air conditioner was making noise whenever we turned it on. The estimate to fix all that was wrong was around $1800. Being poor seminary students we don't have $1800 lying around to fix the air conditioner. We do however have some pretty wonderful friends in Baton Rouge several of whom happen to be mechanics who offered to help and who refuse to take payment. So during Spring Break off to Baton Rouge we went once again. Toward the end of the semester we took the van in to the shop again (I honestly don't remember exactly what was going on that time) and the estimate to fix the shocks, struts, rear wheel cylinders, etc, etc, etc, was around $1500. Again, poor seminary students here. We did get the things fixed that were major safety issues and then my father-in-law helped me replace the shocks. OK, he replaced the shocks while I handed him tools and parts.

Somehow, through all the traveling, visitors, automotive and financial crises I actually managed to pull my best set of grades since starting seminary. I got an A and three A-'s for the semester. I was planning to take at least one and possibly two classes this summer but decided I needed a break for a while. So for now I'm reading some fiction I picked up from the library and just taking a much needed break from academics. I leave 3 weeks from today for my ADT at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, OH. I'm really looking forward to getting there and actually being able to engage in ministry with Airmen. A huge bonus is that one of my flight mates from last summer at OTS and the Chaplain Candidate Course will be arriving just a few days after I do.

Well, that's about it for now. I will try my best to make sure that it's not another 4 months before my next post.

to blog or not to blog...? to blog!

It's been a while since I blogged anything significant. I want to blog because I want to exercise those writing muscles, to keep the creative juices flowing as it were. I know that's a tired old cliche, but it's true. I want to write and I know that the best way to improve writing is simply to do it over and over again. I've simply been in a blogging funk for the past several months. This past semester at seminary wasn't as difficult or time-consuming as previous semesters but for some reason I just had more trouble keeping up with the reading and finding time to do the things that I really wanted to do. The spring semester starts in a week and a half and I'm taking more classes this time. Maybe with more time constraints on me I'll actually do a better job of managing my time and finding the time to blog.

One of my biggest concerns as this semester starts is finances. Our credit card balances are creeping ever higher and our income is not reciprocating. Even with a small scholarship this semester's tuition and books will come to around $1600. I received a small raise at the church to start the new year but I'm still only working part time. Plus, due to the busyness of the holidays Dee Dee has not had any Pampered Chef shows for approximately 2 months. Things will start getting a little better pretty soon as she has 6 kitchen shows and 1 catalog show scheduled over the next 4-5 weeks. I placed advertising from Yahoo! on the blog a while back in the hopes of creating a little bit of income from that, but the fact that I haven't blogged much has not helped the effort. That's one incentive to keep blogging. The more I blog, and the more people I get coming to the blog regularly, the more chance I will have that someone will actually click on an ad now and then.

I'm officially done with my language study now. I took Introductory Biblical Hebrew this past semester and by the grace of God managed to pull an A- in the class. So, no more foreign alphabets, no more vocabulary, no more grammar. At least not until I get onto active duty with the Air Force and they see my background in languages and decide to send me back to DLI to pick up yet another language. Actually, I'm not sure if they would bother sending a Chaplain to DLI for language school, but I wouldn't mind spending another year out there in the Monterey Bay area.

This spring I'll be taking four classes - Systematic Theology II, Biblical Counseling in Human Crises, The Ministry of Teaching, and Lifespan Developments. I'm really looking forward to this semester. I've got some great professors and the classes sound really interesting. I was planning on taking The Ministry of Proclamation (a preaching class) but after looking at the syllabus I decided that I needed to put that class off another semester or two. The class is basically designed to be a culmination of your seminary training so I'll wait and take it in the final semester or two before graduation.

Well, that about does it for tonight. I'm going to go surf the web for a while and try to find something interesting to blog about for tomorrow. Hope to see you then.