time management

I don't take many vacation days. I never have. There are two reasons for this. First, Golden and I tend to stay near home unless we are visiting family. Second, I view vacation time the same way that I view money. Before I spend it I feel that I should have some saved back for emergencies.

I do like to take vacation time around the Christmas holiday, though, because we need to see family that we don't see frequently and it allows me to get good bang for my buck on my vacation days. I will technically be on vacation from December 24th to January 2nd, but I will only need to spend four vacation days for that ten day break.

The company I work for doesn't tend to like employees stocking up excessive vacation time so I may need to stop being so prudent shortly. I will also be getting an extra week of vacation every year starting in May, so I will have little reason not to take some occasional time off. Maybe that will be the turning of a new leaf for me. I'll have to think about that when I get back from this vacation.

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

small talk

My first job after graduating college and getting married was not a good job by any stretch of the imagination. It didn't have anything to do with my major in college. It was what I was supposed to do at that point in my life, but I can honestly say that I have never had a worse job at any other time in my life.

The position was temp data entry clerk. The pay was lousy, the supervisor was sadistically evil, and almost no one in the office knew me or really cared to make eye contact with me. At least that was the impression that I got.

There were a couple of ladies who sat next to me who always brightened my day. One was probably in her mid fifties and the other was probably in her early sixties. We weren't really supposed to take time to talk, but that didn't keep them from striking up conversations. As has been the case many times in my life, they treated me like one of the girls. It kept me from thinking about the lousy job so I didn't complain.

The younger woman talked to me the most because she sat next to me. Once she made me listen to a Prince song on her discman so that I could assess whether I thought it was sexy. She went into great detail about her first failed marriage and other family issues that she had lived through. Once she even complained that one of the other women in the office should be wearing a bra. How do you respond to any of that?

I didn't get as much time to speak with the other woman. I did hear about the llama that she was raising. She also talked about her divorce, but not as much as the younger coworker because she didn't have the same opportunity to do so.

When we didn't have things to type, we would go to the file room to help out where we could. There were a three or four people whose job it was to work the file room. One of these people was a man who looked like he was in his early thirties. He was a very nice man, but he was kind of awkward in a cheery way (if you can imagine that). I really felt for him, but he didn't ever seem to have a depressed approach to life, so maybe he didn't need my pity.

One day while I was filing I heard the conversation below (or at least a very close approximation of what is below) between this man and the older of the women I worked with. It started when she was talking about some run of the mill movie that she had seen recently.

Nice but clueless man: I just saw a movie that you would probably like.
Sixty-something-year-old woman: Oh really?
Man: Yeah, it is called Bring It On. I think you would enjoy it.
Woman: Really? What is it about.
Man: It is a cheerleading movie. If you like cheerleading movies, you would like it.
Woman: (Didn't really say anything.)
Man: It's about these cheerleaders who... (He went on to briefly describe the plot)

I nearly choked to keep from laughing. I couldn't see them because a shelf of files was between them and me, but I couldn't help picturing in my mind what the expression on my poor coworker's face must look like.

I am sure somewhere there was a sixty-year-old woman who enjoyed the movie Bring It On, but I am quite sure that this was not the target demographic for the movie. I am also quite sure that the women I worked with were not the exceptions to the rule who would have liked this movie. If you do happen to like cheerleading movies, though, this may just be a good renter for you.

the graduate

This weekend we went to Springfield to see Ms Carisma's (my sister) graduation from MSU, which was formerly SMSU. She was to get her MBA. I was going to get to see family, which was a little exciting, but I was also going to have to sit through a graduation, which was less exciting. I have sat through three graduations so far at Evangel and I remembered three hour long ceremonies that seemed to drag on forever.

The graduation was in the arena where basketball games are held. There were chairs set up for graduates on the court, and the rest of the seating was first come first served. We showed up early enough to get seats near mid-court three rows up.

The ceremony was for business and education graduates, and apparently a few stranglers from other programs. I counted 600 in all. Given my past experiences I was ready for a long ceremony.

Ms Carisma was one of the first students to walk into the arena and so was about the fifth or sixth of the six hundred there to have her name called and receive her hood. She sat on the front row, which I found kind of humorous because she had commented that she would have to do her best to stay awake. You can't hide that you are sleeping on the front row.

The main speaker was relatively humorous and gave a speech that probably was better directed toward me than toward my sister. The main gist of it could be summarized by the statement, "Be skeptical rather than cynical because cynicism is laziness." He probably spoke for twenty minutes.

When names started getting read off I noticed that there were two people reading names. Graduates walked to podiums on either side of the court and so it essentially doubled the speed of reading off the graduates and having them come up. At Evangel, the process easily took 30-45 minutes. I think the entire process at Friday's graduation took 15 minutes.

Within 65 minutes of the start of the ceremony it was complete. We almost waited for a table at the Outback longer than the actual graduation ceremony took. This improved my opinion of the situation tremendously. It was nice to get time to talk to and eat with family afterwards.

I have two closing thoughts. First, why do institutions of higher learning bother with an alma mater song? They are always real hokey. Second, now I am the least educated between me and my sister. I hope it don't show.

pop vs soda

Unless I think it will help my communication with someone who uses the word "soda" I don't use that word. I grew up saying "pop," so that is what I call it. I tended to live in areas where people call it "pop," so I always thought that most people used the word. When someone says soda it still sticks out to me.

When I visited California for work a few years ago, I met up with a friend in the area and we drove along the cost north of San Francisco. We found a restaurant near one of the beaches, which were colder than you might expect in July, and enjoyed lunch. When it came time to order I asked the waitress what kind of pop they had. Her response: "You're from the Midwest, aren't you?" Was it that obvious? She went on to say that she hadn't heard the word "pop" since she lived in Chicago. That relieved me a little embarressment because Chicago is not a backwater place.

I was already aware of the site, but the Pop vs. Soda page has a bit more significance to me after that experience. One useless thing I noticed is that areas that vote more Democratic in presidential elections (the linked site reverses the red and blue voting counties) tend to use the word "soda" and areas that vote more Republican tend to use the words "pop" or "coke." I think they both have to do with geography more than anything else.

I don't think I could get comfortable saying "soda" much even if I tried. It's like changing political parties. You should only do it because of deeply held beliefs or to spite your parents.

it's a gift

• Random Bargain Bin CD: $3.00
• Musical socks: $9.99
• Chia pet: $15.99
• Embroidered sweater: $34.49
• Gourmet snack basket: $57.95
• The look on their faces when they open your gift and see that you don't have a clue what they really wanted: Priceless

It seems that a lot of things that people would never spend the money on for themselves are popular purchases come this time of year. Why would a person buy themed boxers if it weren't an act of desperation? There should be a better way of going about this.

The people who have to buy for me must be especially frustrated. Each year I put the same things on my wish list: Some C.S. Lewis book I don't yet have, any book of comics (Dilbert, Far Side, etc) I don't yet have, and any XBox game I don't yet have. I don't know how to make a better list. I don't really look around at what I might want to have at other times of the year because I don't like to be tempted to spend money. When this time of year comes around, I don't know what I want to put on a list.

Golden completed the last of the family gift buying yesterday, so I am happy we won't have to resort to buying musical socks this year. If we forgot anyone, I hope that person likes chia pets.

it's a mystery

The question of the week in Elevate class was whether we were thinkers or feelers. I am a thinker. Apparently thinkers tend to try to make God logical or explainable. To be a Christian is to be a mystic, our text claimed. You can't be a 100% thinker and accept Christ because you can't understand God enough to simply accept Him out of logical knowledge. This is probably true. I do think there is a real danger at both ends of this spectrum, though. If you think everything can be scientifically explained then you will never have enough answers and if you think that all truth is a mystery your doctrines will probably veer from truth quickly.

There is one major reason that I am not a feeler. I hate to be manipulated, especially by emotional means, so I would rather know whether something is true before getting all wrapped up in it. It's probably something like the person who has been burned in relationships so many times they are afraid to try any more. I am completely emotionally cold in any situation where I think my emotions might be manipulated.

At the beginning of class we had a perfect illustration of going too far in feelings without much thought. An individual from the church came into class to explain that we should not be shopping at Target because they are not allowing the Salvation Army to solicit for donations on the store premises. This is true, but not the entire story. Target has actually had this policy for all groups besides the Salvation Army for a while, but decided recently that if the policy were to stay in place it should apply to the Salvation Army as well. This is understandable, and it is hardly an assault on Christianity. If Focus on the Family says it's true--but I digress.

Because of situations like this, one of my favorite web sites that I visit very frequently is snopes.com. The purpose of the site is to investigate whether specific urban legends, email forwards, and old wives tales have any truth to them. There is a page that contains the latest updates to the site and I frequent almost daily. I was floored by the numbers of false stories I have heard in a church setting that are detailed in the Glurge Gallery and the page on Religion. At my office you have been "snoped" if something you asserted has been proven untrue. Believe it or not, I am not the most active person to "snope" others in my office.

For all my passion, though, I have to acknowledge that it all pushes me more to the extreme of not allowing myself to be a feeler. It's not wrong to be a thinker, but it can't be healthy not to be a little bit of a feeler too. I believe that this is a conflict in my personality that I will always have to deal with. I'd rather overthink something than be sucked in emotionally to it. I just need to make sure that isn't my undoing.

out of shape

Growing up I was always as active as any other boy, but for some reason I have never had the endurance of most other boys. Since I was smaller than most I always attributed it to that, but when I reached college I determined that this could not be the case.

Over one Christmas break my mom took me to the hospital to have tests run. My heart was fine. X-rays revealed nothing but a minor case of scoliosis (in elementary I complained that I had schooliosis, so I actually wasn't too far off), I tested negative for asthma (which is good because my dad had asthma), but the tests we got back said that my lung utilization wasn't perfect, but was not horrible.

Fast forward to today. I don't do too much that would qualify as exercise in part because I can't last long doing anything aerobic, and in part because I am lazy. Because I don't do much exercise when I have to do any exercise it takes a lot out of me. What do I mean? I am still sore from shoveling snow for forty minutes on Thursday. How pathetic is that?

happy kwanzaa

Merry Christmas! Happy Channuka! Happy Kwanzaa!

There are two dualling aspects of my personallity that come out around this time of year. One part of my personallity appreciates the fact that American and corporate culture as of late takes great strides to not exclude people. Another part asks whether there are actually Americans who celebrate Kwanzaa.

In one episode of Futurama Bender takes over the role of the robotic Santa Claus and runs into Kwanzaabot, who promptly displays a book entitled What The Heck Is Kwanzaa that has a bunch of confused kids on the cover. That is how I think most Americans view this holiday.

Christmas is ingrained into the American tradition. Channuka is ingrained as well, albeit to a lesser degree. I have yet to meet anyone who actually celebrates Kwanzaa, though.

I am not saying this is a bad holiday. As this site attests, many of the traditions around the holiday are very laudable. My complaint is that including Kwanzaa with Christmas and Channuka smacks of politically correct posturing.

The purpose of including Channuka is two-fold. First, most Jewish people who honor this holiday do not accept that Jesus is the Christ, so celebrating Christ's birth even indirectly could be a conflict of interest. Also, a substantial percentage of the American population are observant Jews, and so to include Channuka as part of the holidays is relevant.

Kwanzaa, on the other hand, is not a holiday that is celebrated at the exclusion of Christmas by those who honor it, and I don't know yet that many people do honor it. It could be that I am not in the right circles to get to know someone who does celebrate Kwanzaa, but I don't think that I would know many people who did celebrate Kwanzaa even if every single friend I had came from an African heritage.

In truth, I think it's a great thing to tell someone who honors the holiday to have a happy Kwanzaa. I just think it is a mistake to mention it like it is an alternative celebration to Christmas.

Update (September 29, 2010): I have since learned that some people who celebrate Kwanzaa do indeed replace Christmas with it, leaving my argument invalid. You live, you learn.

replace with bloc?

Every time I do a spell check in Blogger with a post that includes the word "blog" I am asked if I want to replace the word with something else like "bloc." This is humorous on a couple of levels. First, and most obvious, is that I am being corrected when I am posting this text to my blog. Second, who actually uses the word "bloc" except within narrow discussions in political science?

Someone needs to take this up with Blogger, which is a word I was asked to replace with "Blocker" when I ran the spell checker. Figures.

tithing

Sunday's lesson in the Elevate class was on money. We went through the whole discussion about when it is good and bad, which I won't address here, then touched on the topic of tithing. I relayed my feelings in class and appreciate Forrest putting up with me hogging time in class, but I would like to reiterate here in a more structured form what I think of tithing.

I grew up thinking about tithing like a rule that must be followed. I think a lot of people have the same view I had. It's like paying taxes, or as I said in class, paying an employee minimum wage. It is illegal to pay less, and to pay more is going above and beyond the call of duty.

There are three problems this creates. First, it demands that obedience be to the letter rather than spirit of the law (and it is part of the Law that Christ already fulfilled). Second, it allows people to believe they can measure themselves spiritually against someone else. Third, it does not address the reasons that we are to be generous (support of ministry and helping the poor).

My view on tithing is that, even if I am giving ten percent to a church, it is not really a tithe. It is an offering. If Golden and I were to give 5% or 15% that would be because that is the amount that we determined we should give to a church or ministry.

The entirety of my doctrine on church and charity giving is formed by specific passages in the New Testament. In Matthew 6 Jesus tells a crowd not to be like the hypocrites who announce their giving with trumpets. In Matthew 23 Jesus calls those who emphasize tithing over more important matters of the Law hypocrites. (Note that Jesus' audience was actually under the Law at the time.) In Matthew 25 Jesus lists care for those who are less fortunate as a big part of what separates the sheep from the goats. In 1 Corinthians 16 Paul tells that church that they should consistently set aside money for ministry. In 2 Corinthians 8-9 Paul reminds that church of the following points.

• They should give as they have already purposed in their hearts.
• They should not give begrudgingly or under compulsion.
• Their generosity will be rewarded. (money given with the intent to receive more is not generosity.)

I haven't really said much of what I have interpreted from the passages above because I think they are generally self-explanatory. I do think some of what is said in those passages is largely ignored (especially about not letting the right hand know what the left is giving). Basically, what I believe is that we are not under a law that states we should give 10%, but rather we are under a law that specifies that we should give generously.

When I hear someone preach on Malachi 3 I want to scream, "That was for the Israelites! They got the rule, but we got the principle."

dropped on

When I see someone accidentally drop a glass of something on someone else, I typically feel for the person who dropped the drink more than the person who was on the receiving end of the liquid. This was the case on Thursday at work as well.

I was in my cube discussing a work-related issue with one of the guys in my group. For no reason that either of us could figure he suddenly lost control of his hot chocolate (it was more lukewarm chocolate at the time) and it fell to my desk and splattered around the immediate area. I actually only caught a little bit of the hot chocolate on the side of my leg, and I think the brunt of the spray simply soaked into my chair. You can see where the hot chocolate soaked into the chair in the picture of the seat of my chair below.
There were two funny things that came of this. First, neither of us reacted immediately. I think he was embarrassed, and I was still processing what had happened. There were probably five seconds that went by of silence, but it must have seemed much longer to him. Once I realized I didn't get doused too bad, all I could do was laugh at the situation. I figured that if I would have found this funny as a bystander there was no reason not to find this funny as a participant in the event.

The second funny thing had to do with my blog post from that day. That was the day that I posted "dumped on," which was ironic in itself. The spiller happens to read my blog, and so a different coworker (T-Bop) who also reads my blog decided to tape the following sign on his door. As of this posting the sign is still there.

dumped on

As I was driving to work yesterday I ended up behind a medium-sized, empty dump truck. I prefer not to be stuck behind large vehicles, but it wasn't a big deal. Then I read the sign on the back of the truck. It stated that cars should stay 300 feet behind the truck and that drivers were responsible for any damage caused to their own cars.

This begs the obvious question. Was this sign for real? It seems ludicrous to me that the owner of the dump truck could expect to absolve himself of legal responsibility by recommending that other drivers give him an entire football field length in clearance. Does this mean that I can avoid responsibility for any accident that I might cause by adding signs to my car that state the following?

"Dangerous driver. Stay 300 feet away. Not responsible for damages caused to vehicles within 300 feet of this car."

My guess is that this is just a scare tactic to keep people from tailing the dump truck, but why not at least put a reasonable distance on the sign like 50 feet? If it is too dangerous to be 50 feet behind a dump truck I would question whether that dump truck should be on the road.