2005 At a Glance
I wanted to come up with a list of questions that you can answer for reflecting on 2005, but I found these instead. Take a look over them. If you have a question that would add value to this exercise, drop it into the comments box and I’ll consider adding it.
{MORE}
- What did I learn? (skills, knowledge, awareness, etc.)
- What did I accomplish? A list of my wins and achievements.
- What would I have done differently? Why?
- What did I complete or release? What still feels incomplete to me?
- What were the most significant events of the year past? List the top three.
- What did I do right? What do I feel especially good about? What was my greatest contribution?
- What were the fun things I did? What were the not-so-fun?
- What were my biggest challenges/roadblocks/difficulties?
- How am I different this year than last?
- For what am I particularly grateful?
I’m an Old Man
Yesterday I had the opportunity to go play some basketball with a friend, and a couple neighborhood kids. Yes, kids… Probably in the 12-15 year old range. My friend and I are both in our mid 20’s, love playing basketball, and we are both out of shape… so when we teamed up against the neighborhood kids, I figured it would be a fairly decent game (but I knew we would win). {MORE} Fortunately, I was right about winning, and wrong about being a decent game. Apparently 2 out of shape, mid-twenties can clean house against 2 kids half their age and weight.
After we won our game, we insisted on switching up the teams to make things more even. We played two more games of low intensity, half-court ball (my team won both games). At that point I was spent. I had just exerted more energy playing basketball, than I had spent the past 6 months combined. Today, I am only slightly sore (not too shabby), and I’m looking forward to hitting the court again.
I’m only in my mid 20’s, I should still be as active as I was when I was in high school (or even college), but I’m not. I’m more concerned with watching television, making more money, and getting to bed early (which I never do). I’d like to see a change in my fitness routine for 2006. I don’t like feeling like an old man at such a young age.
The Bathtub…
It doesn’t hurt to take a hard look at yourself from time to time, and this should help get you started!
During a visit to the mental asylum, a visitor asked the Director what the criterion was which defined whether or not a patient should be institutionalized. "Well," said the Director, "we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the patient and ask him or her to empty the bathtub." "Oh, I understand," said the visitor "A normal person would use the bucket because it’s bigger than the spoon or the teacup.
"No." said the Director, "A normal person would pull the plug."
Do you want a room with or without a view?
I thought this was hysterical! It’s good to laugh every day. 
New Photos Uploaded!
We finally got around to uploading some pictures for the above header. We wanted the header to show images pertaining to what was going on in our lives. Let me give you a description of each of the images so you can appreciate them more (listed from left to right):{MORE}
- This photo was taken last friday morning (12/9). You might not be able to tell from the photo, but the snow we received the night before covered everything.
- This photo shows the inside of the Christmas cards I bought for Paniris. As you can see, I haven’t started writing anything yet… I still have time!
- This is a closeup photo of the new iMac my company is buying. I probably should have zoomed out, but I wanted you to see the detail.
- This was supposed to be a photo of my new truck, but apparently a sparkling clean car causes quite a flash. If you look close enough you might be able to see it.
Just call me BatGirl…
Yesterday was full of events that I could have never expected. On the scale of weird/strange I suppose its not that bad, but here goes…So I go into work a little early because we are supposed to get anywhere from 6-12 inches of snow in the afternoon. The morning was going fairly well, nice and quiet. Usually I have a couple people come up and visit in the mornings while they get some things done around the church building. Around 10:45ish I had a visit from a quite unexpected visitor. I’m sitting at my desk going through mail and through some stuff on my desk (we just moved into our church building 2 weeks ago!) and I see this strange shadow fly by. Now, just so you understand the setting, my office opens up to the lobby with a 6 foot horizontal window without any glass or anything. And our lobby has at least 20-30 foot ceilings. Ok, so after I see the shadow I hear flapping…yes flapping of wings. My firs inclination was a bird, but then I realized its way too cold for a bird. So I peak out of my window and much to my disgust, fear, and everything else was a BAT! Yes, that is correct, a beady eyed black fuzzy screaching (oh yes) creepy evil bat! I almost peed my pants instantly!! I had never seen a bat before and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to scream because I wasn’t sure how they responded to incredibly high pitched noises. I ran back to my desk and hunkered down in my office chair, because that was obviously going to help! I couldn’t laugh, I couldn’t cry and I sure a heck couldn’t scream. And I would have left but that would’ve meant going under the screaching flying bat to the front doors-there was no way I was putting my precious little head out there.
So, I go back and try to watch it without being seen. He fly’s back and forth between the sanctuary and the front doors before heading up to the rafters in the ceiling to hang out. Yup, they really do hang upside down. For a minute I was awe struck-I mean here was this animal as creepy as it was actually hanging upside down in the church-just like they do in the movies! Well, my staring apparently creeped him out and he came flying down towards my office, THEN I screamed. I’m talking blood curdling, high pitched, glass breaking scream. I was now under my desk. At this point I’m irritated and I think ok, you had a stinkin’ worm in your green pepper and you called Kyle, now would be the BEST time to call him-because this is a bonified emergency. Well, needless to say he found it neither funny nor amusing-he was at work. I asked him what I should do and much to my amazement he said, "I don’nt know!" I don’t know? I constantly tease my husband for all his little known facts and trivia and now he can’t help me with my bat issues? So, then I called our building contractor-he too laughed and said he would try and find someone to help. So, I wait. AND I WAIT. AND THEN I WAIT SOME FREAKIN’ MORE. Finally I’m annoyed. So, I think who would know better how to get rid of an animal than your mom-she’s supposed to know it all, right? So, I call my mom. What does she do-LAUGHS! And I don’t mean chuckle, I mean laughing so hard you can’t help it laughing. Which made me start to giggle until it flew at my office again. She doesn’t know what to do either. So, I get off the phone with her after a while and call our assistant pastor. Even though it was his day off, I figured someone had to help me out. So, he says he’s on his way up there anyway. So, I keep trying to watch the bat-I don’t want to lose him for fear that he’ll get lost until Sunday morning halfway through the sermon, and for fear that everyone will think I’m making this up. So, the pastor gets up there soon after that, walks into the building and the stupid bat attempts to dive bomb right next to him! Hahahahaha…I cracked up! He ran and screamed! So, we then get the bright idea to call animal control. After calling 3 different numbers I finally get The Animal Control. I attempt to explain to her that we have a bat in our building when the thing flies right in and back out of my office around the corner and kind of skims the top of the pastor’s head. I scream, the pastor screams and the poor woman on the phone is hysterically laughing. Then she tells me they don’t deal with bats, only cats and dogs. She gives me yet another number.
At this point its almost over an hour later. So, the pastor tells me to go ahead and take a long lunch until we can get someone out there to take care of it. So I email myself a bunch of work, grab my stuff and frantically run out the door never looking back. It was quite a day. And now this morning, almost 24 hours later I’m sitting here at Panera goofing and getting some other work done because we have about 7 inches of snow covering the church parking lot with the bat locked inside! Yup, the exterminator guy couldn’t get out to us yesterday because of all the snow. So, that darn bat is still inside the building and we don’t know where he is! So yes, just call me BatGirl.