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Mark's Ramblings
January 18th, 2013

Slept pretty good on the new bed.  Set it at 100%. Still some back pain but ok.  I ate yogurt and drank 2 cups of coffee. I have not worked out since Monday.  I woke up in time but did not push it.  I played with the Lucy but that was it.  I hugged Caroline.  She is a very beautiful woman wrapped in a very delicate mental package.  She is amazing but reserved like her mother.  I did not see Anna this morning. Karen had already taken her to school.  I did go in and kiss Caleb.  He is Glorfindel to me.  He is beautiful and I am so blessed to have him.  I love them all the same but different.  Caroline is the first.  We made our mistakes on her.  She is my most delicate on the inside.  She is  my akward teenager.  She will be stunningly beautiful.  Anna is my athelete and lives from her heart.  She is more like me than any of the others.  She is beautiful and kind.  She makes me happy. I call her Joy or Galadriel.  She is beautiful and smart. I love being with her and doing things with her.  She is my companion.    

I am somewhat apprehensive this morning. I do not know why but I feel somewhat isolated and afraid something is going to go bad at work today.  Something really bad like I get in trouble at a high level. I think it may be because I am ignoring the Dell emails from Karen Watson.  They are overwhelming and I am tyring to concentrate on getting Wylie open.  Jesus calling was really good.  It talked about sticking close to go when things are tough.  I am going to take it to heart.  

Karen - I love her.  She is beautiful.  Her pride she brought into the relationship. That she can own. Many of the other bad habbits can be directly attributed to me and my influence on her.  I am blessed to have her and hope to grow old with her.  She is really amazing. She is beautiful and smart. She is insightful and forgiving.  

That is all for today.

 
Snow Days

Snow Days

It is the 4 day home from work and school.  I am very glad I bought the new heat pump since the old one would have frozen up by now and we would even be colder than we are now.  I am not too sure that I am crazy about heat pumps.  We have had a hard time getting the house over 63 degrees.  It is a 5 ton 15 SEER unit,but does not seem to do much better than the old one did when it was new.  

I am really glad that I do not live somewhere that it snows more than a couple of times a year. It is novel for a day or two but by the fourth day, I am ready for the summer.  My kids on the other hand, enjoy the change and the cold.  My middle daughter Anna, loves the snow. She really loves life in general.  She is as competative as she is friendly.  

 
Texas A&M University Moo Duk Kwan Club
Sunday, 24 January 2010 01:03

It is seems indiscriminate how people come into your life and influence the way you see others and more importantly, yourself.  It is also interesting how joining one recreational club in college could change your life.  The Texas A&M Moo Duk Kwan Club is one such club that has served to influence and guide me in both my collegiate and professional life.   This being said, my good friend and martial arts teacher Fred Hackett just deployed again to Iraq.  He is one of those people, along with Greg Caplinger, Steve Hunter, Dr. Michael Trulson, Tony, Trulson, Carl Dixon and a long list of other martial artists who helped me hone my martial art skills and more importantly my life skills.  It really is remarkable how physical training influences the other areas of one's life. I was lucky enough to learn with and from these gentlemen.

 If I never told you Thanks Guys!

Below is a short video that was put together from footage taken of Fred over the last 20 plus years.  It was assembled by the martial art school that Fred works out with when he is not serving his country or working in corporate law.   I just wanted to put it up on the site and say thanks to Fred for all he does for his friends, family and country.

Dim lights Download Embed Embed this video on your site

 
Home owners woes - Plumbing...

Sometimes things just don't go as planned.  I bought a faucet a couple of years ago that I expected to solve all my dish washing needs.  It swiveled and had a cool water wand that pulled right out of the center of the spout.  This looked really great and further cemented my view of the evolution of modern man.  My illlusion was quickly dismantled by a tempermental applicance that only worked correctly for a couple of weeks.  Deciding that we did not want to replace the faucent again until we could afford to replace the sink.  Come to think of it the cabnet where the sink resided was looking old and outdated.  We decided to just wait until we could afford to remodel the kitchen.  In the mean time we were unable to swivel the old faucet or pull out the new fangled sprayer since they think always had to be manually refeed back down the spicket arm.  In other words, our faucent was pretty useless and made workin in the kitchen a real pain.  My wonderful wife never complained but visitors to the house reminded me that this was not an optimal sollution to my dish washing needs.

More to come.  I am testing my comment section to see why I cannot make it work the way I wish.

 
Deer and Chutney
Friday, 22 January 2010 01:23

On Sunday morning after church my wife informed me that our garage refrigerator and freezer were not cooling properly.  Upon further inspection, I realized I had unplugged them on accident the evening before, thus all the frozen meat had defrosted and needed to be cooked.  My wife being a wise woman decided to make the best of the situation, Lemonade from Lemons as the phrase goes and convinced me to have  friends from church over for dinner.  They were very pleasant guests and helped us eat much of the chicken, fish and some T-bone steaks.  I greedily horded the deer meet for me to consume at some later date.  That brings me to the title of my blog post, deer and chutney.  I began cooking the back strap and skirt steak around 8:00PM.  It was rather late and I was not happy with the way the back strap was cooking so I brought in the meat for my wife to work her culinary magic upon it.  As any good southern woman knows, few things are bad dipped in flour and pan fried in oil.  This is what she did and they were very tasty.  As I savored the first bite of venison, I knew that the experience could be further extenuated if I had the right condiment.   Getting up from my favorite eating spot (the ottoman in front of the TV)  I went and rummaged around the refrigerator.  That would be the inside refrigerator which will be the focus of a future blog entry.  Upon inspection of what might add the perfect accent to my deer, I found some chutney given to me by my dear friends Butch and Laura Hall.  They sent us a wonderful Christmas care package full of all sorts of wonderful items.  From Kokopelli wine bottle corks to Anasazi beans.  The Halls are truly wonderful people.   In the refrigerator, I found the magical missing ingredient for my dinner to be complete.

Even though the kids had lost the controller to the satellite and I had to listen to Sesame Street, I was very content to eat my dinner and ponder how fortunate I was to have a wonderful wife, dear friends and 3 healthy children.  God is good and I am a very blessed man. Sometimes I do not see it until I step out of what my own expectations are for my life and look at how God  always gives me more than I needed much less deserved.


My cup runneth over.