Guess Who?

Maybe I am wrong but I think they look very similar.....what do you think?

Can she have some beef jerky?

People are funny. Maybe I should back up and fill in some details. I love taking Lydia with me to “guy” stores, for example: Home Depot, Harbor Freight, and Sears. We always have a great time and meet some interesting people along the way. Lydia can bring out the best in roughneck men, so I have found. A little while back we where at Harbor Freight looking for a 6” magnetic bowl that you can temporarily keep screws and bolts in when working so they do not get lost. When we found the gem and went to check out, one of the workers asked me if Lydia could have a piece of candy. Before you cast judgment on the decision I made I am of the mindset that you normally do not take candy from strangers, laced with drugs, dirty, etc... But this guy was being very thoughtful so I said, “sure.” He ran off to the back and was gone for several minutes. I almost walked out because I thought he forgot about us. But just in time he returned. He had a box of those sweetheart candies in his hand. As he handed it to Lydia I noticed something peculiar about the box, it was opened. He explained that it was all he had and he did in fact eat some earlier, hence the opened box. We thanked him and walked out with our half eaten box of candy. It was a lesson for Lydia on giving all that you have, literally. She was so excited!

Outing number 2. A few days later I took Lydia to an appointment and as we were waiting in the lobby a young couple came in and sat down. It was 8:30am so still breakfast time. Not too long after they sat down I hear a voice behind me say “sir, sir, excuse me, sir.” Realizing that I am the target of the attention getter, I turn around and smile and say “yes” as I notice the couple each with his and her super 64oz Mountain Dew and 18” long stick of beef jerky in each hand (remember still breakfast time). With a tone of sweetness and tenderness the man asks me “can she have some beef jerky?” as he is chewing what appears to be a bite from his bounty. Thankfully I was on my toes enough to say “oh thank you, but no, the beef jerky is too spicy for her.” At least I thought that was a safe answer. The beef jerky would have been harder to accept without consuming in front of the donators. (and I really do think that it would have been too spicy.) This too proved to be another teaching moment for Lydia in how we thanked the man for being so generous to us. He did not understand what was wrong with the beef jerky, but accepted my “thank you” anyway.

I am not sure what I was doing to provoke such generosity, maybe it was Lydia’s charm....either way I love to receive gifts and I think that these men were very generous in their offers. I have tried not to theologize the sweethearts and the beef jerky but I couldn’t help it. Sometimes I have wondered what I have sacrificed for others, or even God. These men gave all they had, it was a little...umm...well, I don’t know how to put it. Let me just say, I was blown away by their generosity, yet we were unable to enjoy their gifts because they were not “acceptable”. Is that how I give to you? Is that how I give of my resources to God? Thankfully, that is not what God has done for me, and us. He gives us his best! But it is a good reminder that we should give our best to others and God, because it may not be acceptable otherwise.

Christmas Card Time per Bonnie

Bonnie, here, entering into my husband’s blogging world. This year I considered writing a Christmas letter instead of sending a photocard. It made sense because we have news to share (i.e. pregnancy, graduation, etc), and not too many great photos of ourselves. But I changed my mind when I heard of a great deal from Shutterfly! They are offering a sweet deal to bloggers that I just couldn’t pass up. Fifty free holiday cards if I share how great Shutterfly is! Not too difficult to do since I have had only good experiences with this company. I get my photos printed from Shutterfly because they often have good promotions like free shipping.

So I began to shop around on their site to see which cards I might like. Their designs are AWESOME, so it’s extremely difficult to narrow down the choices.

So, do I want one that has a Christian flare, like this one?

Or, this one is nice and simple, sophisticated

This one would be great if I can’t get my stuff together in time for Christmas

this one is cool because it combines the letter idea with the photocard

Excited to get some free cards and to see how they turn out, thanks to Shutterfly!

"SPITFIRE" in the Morning

Scary!!! That is how I would describe what happened.

Bonnie and I are training for a half and full marathon, (well, Bonnie is training, I am thinking about how I should be training.) So, it was a beautiful day and Bonnie had scheduled her 12 mile run for the week on Wednesday to accommodate for my school schedule. As Bonnie leaves for her run, she informs me that she will be back around 12 noon. A side note, Lydia was sleeping so I put Bonnie's phone, (which she left with me) and my phone on vibrate. Mistake #1. Secondly, around 11:45 am I decided to wake Lydia up from her morning nap to feed her lunch. Good job Josh, you remembered to feed your child...Then I took Lydia into the kitchen, without the phones, Mistake #2.

As 12 noon rolls around we are looking for Bonnie but she is nowhere in sight. No worries, maybe she went longer than she originally anticipated. At 12:20 pm I get worried and I decide to go looking for Bonnie. So, I grab Lydia, grab my phone and look at it, “Oh no”, I have six missed calls from an unknown Louisville phone number, over the last 45 minutes. My heart sank, “where is Bonnie?” It was that same feeling you get when you remember that you have a child and you haven't heard a peep from her in 10 minutes and you wonder where is she? and what on earth is she getting into? Except this was a little more terrifying, (a lot more terrifying actually).

So, I call the number and a young female voice answers, “hello?” then I say “is Bonnie near you?” The girl proceeds to tell me that Bonnie stopped in there (there being a coffee shop, which made me wonder at first if this was for real) 45 minutes ago because she was being followed!!! “What?” “Where is she now?” and the girl tells me that Bonnie decided to run home down the major street. “Oh no” our credit card number just got stolen over the weekend, a brick was thrown through our car window in a parking lot while we were sleeping, (All happening while we were at a wedding in Toronto, Canada. “Oh Canada, we stand on guard for thee,” I guess Canadian's don't include foreigners in their theme song...oh well.)so, what next?

Lydia and I (a.k.a. “Search and Rescue”) tore out of the driveway and made it 500ft before we spotted our missing target. She was not happy. I will leave the details out. But, I will tell you, HUSBANDS you would be wise to have your phone duct-taped to your body if your wife is going on a long run and you are her only source of protection. And secondly, you need to arm your wife with “SPITFIRE”!

After Bonnie and I “worked through some things” (I will leave the details out) I decided to go on a mission to find the “SPITFIRE”. I had heard about it somewhere, I don't remember where, but it looked pretty cool. It is basically pepper spray in a device that you can aim in any direction, even hit a target that comes from behind to attack you. Regular pepper spray is awkward and not as precise. So, needless to say I called several running stores, all of them carried it but only one store had any in stock, and they only had one left. (That should tell you something if every running store in Louisville is sold out of them and you yourself don't even have one...told me something) So, I drove to the store and bought the last one. The best $14.99 I spent on protection devices.(Plus the store owner threw in a free refill, awesome!) I rushed home (after stopping at Lowe's by my house to see if they had anything on sale, of course) and surprised Bonnie with her new weapon. I happily attached the weapon to Bonnie's keychain and gave her a thorough demonstration on how to use the weapon.

So, if you haven't purchased a “SPITFIRE” for your wife, now is the time to shine. Make her happy and give her the power of “Fire”. Go to the link below to see the weapon. (I don't get any kickback if you purchase one, just the satisfaction knowing that you are listening to my wisdom.)

http://www.spitfire.us/about.htm

Parking Lot Surprise!

ok, so I had to share this story. A few days ago, Bonnie, Lydia and I went on our nightly walk across the street to our local Ghetto-Wal-Mart to look for potting soil. So, we got our potting soil and headed across the other street to the Posh-Target to look for something else, I forgot what it was. As we were walking, looking for lost treasure in the parking lot we noticed something white, glistening on the ground. Wal-Mart parking lots are notorious for goodies, coins, spare tires, broken sunglasses and an occasional tube sock. But, that day we were in for a surprise. Bonnie spotted the gem first and as we came upon it we noticed that we had seen one before. When we were standing over top of it looking down on it we asked “could this be what we think it is?”. Sure enough we had stumbled upon a pregnancy test. Yep, a USED pregnancy test right there in the Wal-Mart parking lot. So, as we stared at it, face down, we did what anyone would do and I dared Bonnie to flip it over to see what the result was. (I just didn’t want to touch it and I knew Bonnie would not turn down a dare.) So naturally she used the very end of her flip-flop and flipped the object over. As it landed face up we both bent down at the same time to see what the result was. Could it really be? Is it possible? Positive! Someone was pregnant and we got to share in their results right there in the Wal-Mart parking lot. We were amazed we looked around to see if there was anyone to congratulate but nobody suspicious was around so we continued on our journey to the posh-Target, which by the way has a large drink and popcorn combo for $1.50. We get that combo on special occasions and make several laps around the store just so we can eat our popcorn and fill up as many times as possible with our Diet Dr. Pepper/Cherry Coke combo.

A few days after we found the positive pregnancy test in the parking lot I began to wonder, “how did that test find its way onto the dirty, hot pavement in a Wal-Mart parking lot?” I mean, I think we have our first test saved somewhere special in a ziplock bag to keep forever, maybe even get it bronzed one day. I can just imagine the frantic girl buying a pregnancy test at the pharmacy (hopefully she bought it, but I have my doubts) and then rushing to the Wal-Mart bathroom to administer the test. But, my stomach began to turn. What if she didn’t wait long enough? What if she immediately left the bathroom, test in hand, and walked out to the parking lot and looked down and saw that it was negative and threw it on the ground and walked off? Those things can take several minutes to saturate the testing area (I have read the directions thoroughly, that is how I know). She might get a big surprise in a couple months. Somebody is pregnant and I know it. Let’s hope she does too.

On the Road Again, and Again, and Again

The first entry on this blog has been inspired by my friend John Randolph (http://jcrandolph.blogspot.com/). He and his wife travel a lot, but he made the comment that we (Bonnie, Lydia, me) travel more than they do. So this has raised a couple questions, “how much do we travel in a year and how much should we travel in a year?”.

I guess the fact that I started this blog 3 months ago and this is the first entry (and possibly the only entry) is evidence that we do travel a bit, eh? And a side note, the reason this blog was created was for the same reason anyone creates a blog, because it is the thing to do these days. It is like watching A.I. or talking about communism, or even like wearing big white-frame sunglasses to match your big white SUV. Everyone does it and that is all there is to it.

Back to this entry, so how much should a person travel in a year? There are many variables to this question for the sake of argument we are limiting it to pleasure trips, beach, see family, see another country, see a national amusement etc...(no business trips allowed). One blogger blogged her trip around the world in six months and she estimated her budget to be about $3,000 US per person/per month of their travels. (http://www.gonomad.com/traveldesk/0710/how-to-spend.html) So traveling can cost a ton of money. But besides budgets, how should a person decide how much he or she should travel in a year?

One factor that I have “felt” over the past year of traveling is the physical and mental exhaustion (P.M.E. for short) that comes from traveling. I find myself sleeping more, feeling queasy from unfamiliar foods, and feeling physically out of shape. The P.M.E Index, I think, can be a constant and consistent factor in helping a person determine how much he or she should travel in a year. To answer a possible rebuttal, “doesn’t this seem rather subjective?” Yes. But so is determining how much to travel in a year. Some years may require more travel than others, but through a Travel Log Book I think a person can learn how to curb the travel pains over time. Which, this is what I have kept since the very first trip Bonnie and I ever took.

As a pilot, I was trained in keeping a log book (http://www.sportys.com/acb/showdetl.cfm?DID=19&CATID=176&Product_ID=1550&count=1&Pcount=23 about $10 plus s/h), so for fun I bought an extra pilot’s log book and began entering our travels in the log book. I renamed several of the columns to include new titles such as: automobile, train, and races (we run marathons). Then the mode of travel was logged under the proper column and now I can keep a running tally of how many hours we spent in the car, airplane, train etc... Looking at the travels over the past year I have been able to come to some good conclusions about how much we traveled before the P.M.E. kicked in.

Just for numbers sake, Bonnie and I were gone 36 days last year (from July 08-July 09), we spent 13 hours in a plane and 93.5 hours in a car over those days traveling. Not to mention that we had guests stay at our house 83 days over the same course of time, (when we were actually home). This means we were gone 10% of the year and we had visitors 23% of the year, that’s 33% of the year we either had visitors or we were visiting someone.

So, what is our P.M.E. Index? After thinking through this and looking at the numbers I think I can conclude that it takes 2 weeks to fully recover for every 1 week of entertaining visitors and 3 weeks to fully recover for every 1 week of traveling. If we didn’t have responsibilities of work, church, keeping a routine for Lydia, schoolwork, etc... we could travel every few weeks. But, since we have all these responsibilities nothing would get done if we were gone all the time. So, I think 5 weeks a year of traveling is our absolute limit, and 6 weeks a year of entertaining guests is our absolute limit (12 weeks entertaining guests last year was a little too much). This means 11 weeks of the year are either spent traveling or entertaining guests, and at this rate you would have on average 3.7 weeks in between each trip/guests week to recover, which would be sufficient for us based on previous observations. I think that could be a sustainable pace for us.

What is your P.M.E Index? This might be something fun to think through and log how much you really travel and then compare it to us. Do you travel more than the Brown’s (especially you Mr. Randolph)? I would like to know if you do.

For fun and in case you wondered: since we began our traveling in November of 2004, we have spent 634 total hours traveling. This means that we have traveled around the world TWICE by plane and we are a quarter of the way around the earth on our second lap by car. I will let you know when we have traveled to the moon, we are 33% of the way there with only 159,675 miles to go...

Returning from our Virginia trip for Lydia's first Birthday Party.