Emotion Defies Logic

So Dallas is late this month and both tests errored out instead of giving a reading. Logically, I do not want another kid. Doctor visits, Hospital fees, DIAPERS, frequent crying, long nights, etc. Emotionally, there is a part of me that wants that third; I do not know why. Dallas doesn’t want to have go through the hormonal and body changes of carrying a third kid. At this point, we know nothing…she thinks she’s not, a part of me hopes she is…

But Before the Grace of God Drive I…

Sometime before Dallas and I were married she received two traffic violations in San Antonio. Just recently, a Friendswood cop just happened to run her plates as she was driving through on the way to the store. The warrants popped up and she also had an invalid license. The cop was ready to take her to jail. I’m not sure why he changed his mind and let her go with a ticket for the license, but he did.
Today, we made the three hour drive from Houston to San Antonio, only to find out the power was out at the courthouse and they were turning people away. Through a small miracle, they started allowing people back into the building shortly before 1 o’clock. We were again told that there was no judge to see and we would have to come back on Monday. Not only was coming back on Monday an impossible situation, a city prosecutor happened to overhear the exchange and took us to see the judge. Just after he accepted our arrangement for a payment plan and printed out the agreement, the power went off again. It went off again while the clerk was trying input into the system. Luckily for us, she was able to draw up manual forms and have the judge sign them. In the course of an entire 8 hour court day, we managed to slip into a 20 minute window that few others got in.
Luck, or divine intervention?

Houston Skyline on Our Way Home

My Day at School

When Dallas and I registered Leo for school and went to the classroom, we immediately were transported back to our time in school and wished we were going back to school. Everyday that Leo comes home and shows us what he has learned, we sit there amazed and reminisced that we don’t remember learning that at his age.

Well, today I got the opportunity to spend the day at school with Leo. When Dallas has volunteered, she is very limited on her time in the classroom and overall involvement. With the Watch DOGS (Dads Of Great Students) program and an early dismissal I got to spend almost an entire half day at school with Leo’s class. By being in the class and being able to interact with the other students and observe my own son I learned a lot about his strengths and weaknesses as a student.

Because of my experience, I have changed my involvement and approach with my son with his homework.

Vibrating Strings of the Soul

Take any stringed instrument and pluck a string…it resonates…but the strings next to it are also affected. They vibrate in harmony with that first string and have fed off its energy.

Take almost any processing system and throw trash into it…you will get trash out the other end.

Eat the worst foods for you and you will feel bad, if not severely ill.

This is where music has taken me. I have realized that whatever stimuli I put into my head, is what my perspective changes to. I have long said that we are the product of our environment. The sad love songs depress me…heavy metal makes me angry and I can feel the pain the artist felt that brought him to that creation. If I choose upbeat, positive music, it resonates through my life. My perspective on life has changed lately; I am vibrating on a new chord and others are taking notice.

Spin your labels

Working in a grocery store, we always tell partners to spin their labels. What this means is for them to make sure that that cans at the shelf edge have the label facing out towards the customer. I thought this would be an interesting title since I’m continuing my thoughts on labeling and religion.

I remember the last time I started listening to religious music (think rock/praise not hymns) my wife asked me if I was going to start back down that path and I can see her asking me that again. I thought to myself, “listening to Christian music doesn’t make me anymore of a Christian than listening to metal makes me a devil worshipper or listening to rap makes me a gun-toting, crack-selling, cop-killer. Word!”

If I had a choice in being labeled, which we rarely do since we don’t get to label ourselves, I would want to be labeled dependable, loyal, bold, and a familyman. We can influence how others label us through our actions and choices: the way we talk, the clothes we wear, the people we associate with…choices.

Filtering My Faith

As I continue to listen to KSBJ, I notice that I am not really focused on the music and my mind roams freely. It’s as if I am filtering what I am listening to based on what I am interested in. Currently, my interest lies in self-growth and human relations.

I find it odd how people can easily be misjudged. You can have someone who is a total jerk 6 days a week and pulls out their religion, like a coat, and wears it on Sunday. You can also have the Atheist who donates his time and money to charities and helps others in need. In the end, the Atheist will be mislabeled a Christian, when in fact the “Christian” has been mislabeled.

This statement is not all inclusive, but quite a few Christians I have known, I would rather have never met. My ex-wife’s parents are a prime example of this. They were devout Baptist and always preached about God’s hand in their lives, but they were the first ones to turn their back on family and friends when things didn’t fit into their cookie-cutter version of religion. Religion teaches us about love and forgiveness…I guess they were sick that Sunday.

Where Religion Failed Me..or did I fail it?

For the longest time, I have told people that my religion was on hold; meaning that I still held some beliefs but was no longer practicing. I love how people practice religion and practice medicine, a true testament that there are some things that we will never master, but I digress.

I was watching Kingdom of Heaven recently (because I like Orlando Bloom and the time period it was set in, as I like history) and it somehow prompted me to search out the Christian radio station. I was listening to it yesterday and the top 20 countdown and not much registered with me. However, this morning while taking Leo to school they were talking about emotional hoarding and another topic about making your spouse laugh.

While driving back home, I was thinking that I wanted to go back and read Paul’s letter to Corinth and Thessali because they offer really good advice on how to interact with one another. As my mind wandered, I realized that the bible is full of good advice, even I do not hold it as 100% historical fact.

Another odd fact that I realized was that most people, myself previously included, are fine with religion until some major catastrophe, then they want someone (God) to atone for the wrong they have had done to them. The oddity here is that religion doesn’t work that way. The supreme being doesn’t have to answer to its underlings.

My faith was on shaky ground after the passing of my father. It spurned further after reading the DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons. The books themselves didn’t damage my faith, it just showed me that I wasn’t the only one with those kind of questions. I still believe the Camerlengo’s speech about religion is flawed, but at its heart it is there to comfort and serve the community. Think about it, strip out all inconsistencies, scandals, and money funneling and the church is about helping people emotionally.

The Daytime Vampire

It is unfortunate that a fellow manager was injured in a car accident, but the incident has afforded a much-overdue schedule change for me. I did a little mental math and figured that I have worked for HEB for almost three years, and in those three years, I have worked overnight almost 2.5 of those years. The biggest reason that I wanted to get promoted from a Stock Controller to an ADM (Assistant Department Manager) was to get off nights; the second reason was a pay increase. Even as an ADM I got rescheduled overnight to clean house with the night crew. I got promoted again and moved to Houston, got sent overnight due to attrition.

Now, since my store is the only store that is doube-stacked (having both a salary and an hourly grocery manager) I am being requested to step in and help a fellow manager at another store. I am all for this as it allows me a chance to learn new things from a different store format. But…getting to my point, I am back to working days starting next week.

And the peasants rejoice…

Happiness is Painful

I don’t remember the exact line from ConAir, but it goes something like this: Moments of happiness actually cause him pain.

I was having some pain in base of my skull; that one spot in my neck that is really hard for me to pop. While we down in Victoria, we went to go to see our old chiropractor and he made several spinal adjustments on Dallas and I. One of the weird things about this particular chiropractor is that it always feels like he may have missed something, but I always feel the effects in my back and neck in the following days. So today, I have a shooting pain on the left side of my neck radiating down into my shoulder and and up through my head to my left eye. I decided to bite the bullet and take a vicodin to rid the pain. I haven’t taken one in several months and i remember that they always make me feel happy, grateful, and loving.

About 20 minutes after taking it, those feelings started to kick in and at the same time I felt sadness that I don’t feel those feelings more often. It saddened me almost to the of tears.

(Please read my previous post “The Vicodin Heresy” to further understand my experiences with medication.)

Throwing up on the Web

One of the things that you are taught as a professional, is not to throw up on people with your words. If you’ve ever been talking to a friend and you see their eyes glaze over or their attention dart to something else, congratulations! You’ve just thrown up all over them. What’s interesting about this, is that in order to become a proficient blogger, you must throw up on the web on a regular basis.

Since getting an iPad, I have gotten better about my post rate on this blog. Part of that is me telling myself that one of the reasons I got the iPad was to write more, so it kind of forces my hand.

The Roses Along the Highway

One of the interesting things I always find on my road trips is the scrap you find along the highway. On my recent trip to Spring, TX, I found a unique site. At one point, about every foot-foot-and-a-half, there was a roll of toilet paper. Not that unusual on first sight, but after about thirty of these in various states of being squished or rained on, I noticed that a few of them were a light blue color…then it dawned on me, a portapotty must have lost it loads on the highway!!! Oh, gross! I’d hate to have to be the technician responsible for cleaning up that mess!

Starbucks Revisited

So here I am sitting at Starbucks after my meeting in Spring, TX. As I was pulling up, I realized that this is the same Starbucks that I went to to gather my thoughts before my interview that brought me to Houston. I still have mixed feeling about the move, but the transfer has taut me a lot about myself, my family, and the business that I am involved in.

I have almost completed Tim Ferriss’ 4 hour work week, and it made me wonder about my time with Primerica. I wonder what their business presentation looks like now with the market collapse? One thing that I always knew when I was involved with Primerica was that I was not target market, so I didn’t know target market, thus making it very difficult for me to succeed as I was uncomfortable/unwilling to make cold approaches.

I can say that having an iPad for my meeting today was wonderful! Immediate thoughts are that multitasking and 3G would have made it amazing. I used it for almost 8 hours taking notes in Evernote and a few audio notes while the speaker was talking faster than I could type. Currently , I am at 67% power…the laptop users that didn’t bring a power cord were sunk after about 5 hours.

Frozen Thoughts

While working overnight in the frozen department, I have plenty of time to think, listen to audiobooks or music. One thing that I have noticed is that I will get some ideas while listening to the books, I also get even better ideas while listening to music. With the music, I tend to listen to a lot of songs I already know so I kind of tune it out and just enjoy rhythm.

Recently, I have been listening to Tim Ferriss’ 4 Hour Work Week. One of the things at have been most taxing on me is figuring out a niche to break into…well, while listening to Pandora Radio it finally hit me. I’m not going to detail it here for fear of losing intellectual property rights…all I’ll say is that I have my ex-wife to thank for this. If this really takes off, I’m not giving here a dime of it!!!

Passed Us By…

Is there intelligent life out there besides us? If I had to give a guess I’d say yes…I feel like we are just some other entities’ ant farm, but on a much grander scale. If that is true…many people wonder then why haven’t they tried to contact us? Maybe they have and we’re just to stupid to decipher their message or see the clues around us. Or maybe it’s because we’re a truly dispicable species. Looking forward, I can only hope we can look back in a millennium and progressed as much as we have in the past millennium. We really are terrible…we exploit everything possible, we fight over myths (and I don’t mean minor arguments…how many wars are fought over religion. Religion is nothing more than a bunch of myths borrowed from another culture or some idea so done dreamed up.).

Maybe intelligent life has seen us and passed us by like a piece of trash we pass on the sidewalk…thinking that we are not worth the effort…

To be continued…

New Toy

The first series iPad was released today and I managed to snag one at the local Best Buy. So far, I love everything about it except that it’s a little heavy, but for the battery power they pack into it…I’ll deal. I curse apple for making things so desirable…thank god they don’t make women or drugs!!!!