what to do

So today we got an offer on our house.  It’s a really low offer, but it’s an offer.  We’re going to counter, but what to counter?  Too low, and we may not get much back.  Too high, and the buyer may just walk away.

Is it better to name your price, and hold out?  Should we stake our claim, and let the chips fall where they may?  Possibly rent?  What if I just want the whole thing to be over?

And in the back of my mind, as I sit here thinking only of our money, I have this in the back of my head (among other things):

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

“No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.”

Jesus – Matthew 6:19-24

I don’t want to be greedy.  Money is a fleeting part of this life.  And in this economy, I should be happy that we can sell the house at all.  But what hurts is that we weren’t the irresponsible ones.  We even knew friends who took out loans they shouldn’t have.  But we didn’t do that.  We saved for nearly 6 months, banking thousands of dollars towards a downpayment.   And now it’s all gone.  Part of me almost wishes we hadn’t bought the house.

What to do?  I suppose the only thing I can do is pray, trust that it will all work out, and accept whatever outcome results.

a sad sad day

I can’t recall exactly when I got it.  I do remember though, that I got it from my father.  He either didn’t want it anymore, or it didn’t fit, I don’t recall.  But one way or another I have had it for nearly 14 years.  What is it?  In a word, THE SHIRT.

This post is really the true test to see if you really know me.  Because anyone who has been around me for any significant period of time, knows THE SHIRT.  You may not know it as, THE SHIRT, but you know about it none the less.  When I describe it, it is very likely that you’ll know exactly which shirt, THE SHIRT, is.

Short sleaved, green, plaid.

It is, without a doubt, my favorite shirt.  Even a friend of mine from high school, who I haven’t seen in person in almost 10 years, recently saw a picture of me wearing THE SHIRT, and actually commented that she couldn’t believe I still had it.

Crystal and I have even discussed going back over the years and gathering all the pictures of me wearing THE SHIRT, and putting them together as sort of a timeline-of-me-and-THE-SHIRT.  We’ve found pictures of my in high school, through college, even (I believe) up to this past summer.

Well today, my dear friends, a very sad and awful thing happened.  THE SHIRT was torn.  Now I realize this was inevitable.  Objects, clothing, cars, houses, none of these things last forever.  But despite the fact that the shirt is old, and I knew it would shortly succumb to the ravages of time, I did infact shed a tear for THE SHIRT, as I acknowledged that I had likely worn it for the last time.  Not a literal tear of course, figurative tears.

Now, I don’t like shopping.  And part of the reason I don’t like shopping is because I like the clothes that I have.  I would prefer that I could just keep the clothes I have, rather than buy new ones, because new ones, aren’t as good as the old ones.  It leaves me wondering now, what shirt will replace THE SHIRT as my new favorite shirt?  Will it survive for as long as THE SHIRT?  Can THE SHIRT ever truly be replaced?

Only time will tell.

struggle

I’ve ridden my bike to work and back every day for nearly 4 months.  It’s about 2.25 miles one way.  In both directions I go up hills, and down hills.  Today I decided that my bike ride is a metaphor for life.

Each day we travel, there will be hard times (going up hill), normal times (the flat stuff), and easy times (racing downhill).  But then there are some times, where life just gets hard no matter which direction you’re going.  For the last two days it has been really really windy here.  And as luck would have it, the wind seems to blow directly from the direction I’m heading when I’m on my way home.  And so for over two miles, I have to ride into the wind, and it’s hard.

We’ve heard not a word from the lady who we thought was going to buy our house.  I almost had hope that we would actually sell it.  But it’s been nearly 4 days, and I’ve called and left messages; but we haven’t heard a word.

I know you’ve all been doing so already, but would you please pray for me.  Pray for us.  Pray for our house.  And perhaps pray for the woman, that she may still be interested after all.

i think about stuff like this a lot

No word on the house yet.  They potential buyer didn’t submit the offer today like we expected.  I have faith that it will come tomorrow (Thursday).  We’ll keep you all informed as to the situation.  And your continued prayers are greatly appreciated.

And no, this isn’t the pumpkin blog.  I keep forgetting to download the pictures from my camera.  I have a horrible short term memory.

I often sit during my day and ponder different things as to the basic nature of our existence, that I expect most people don’t ever consider.  Not so much spiritual things (though I often think about those as well), but more simple things like time and space.  Consider these two things:

1) By the time you consider a certain time as ‘now’, that moment is no longer ‘now’, but is in fact in the past.  Even more disturbing is that this delay is longer than one might imagine, because not only does it take us a certain amount of time to think about what ‘now’ is, but it also takes a certain amount of time for our senses to detect the environment around us.  What does all this mean?  It means we never actually experience ‘now’, we only experience that which was just moments ago.

2)  When you take into account your personal motion, the rotation of the earth, the orbit of the earth around the sun, the orbit of our solar system in the galaxy, and potentially the motion of our galaxy through the universe, you and I will never be in the same exact location in space twice.  Ever.

Pretty trippy stuff, eh?

just under the wire

So first off, yes, I will be blogging about giant pumpkins.  And Tom, it depends on how you carve it.  Several of them were carved into make-shift boats in a relatively short period of time.  But I digress…

The big news from yesterday is something I’m trying not to get too excited about just yet.  I am hopeful, but until things are more solid, I’m not going to count my chicken’s as it were.  With only 3 weeks to go on our listing contract, sometime tomorrow (or today, or a previous day, depending on whenever you read this), we should be getting an offer on our house.

The lady seems really nice.  She’s got financing already (supposedly), and we’ve given her all the paperwork necessary.  I’ve started working with a title company to get things set up ahead of time.  And assuming that the details work out, there is a good chance that we will have a pending sale on our house.

My hopes at this point are three fold: 1) that she doesn’t back out, 2) that we’re able to come to a mutually beneficial pricing situation, and 3) that something absurd and unexpected doesn’t derail the whole thing.

Your prayers are greatly appreciated.

one more small delay before the big

Sorry, another blank post for today.  But hopefully, it will be worth it.  Yet more BIG things await.  You’ll see in a few days, but until then, I’m keeping this one under my hat.

under construction

I have a post coming, but I need to get pictures loaded before I can do it.  This is just a post to say I posted.  The post that is coming after this is big.  Literally.

That is all.

rain and restlessness

So over the course of the last two days, we’ve finally gotten rain.  Not much, showers off and on, mostly over night.  It’s the first real rain we’ve had since Memorial Day back in May.  Today it was rainy, gray, and cool.  It felt like home.

If there’s been one daily reminder of the fact that we’re not in Michigan any more, it’s the weather.  It’s probably one of the simplest things I miss.  Usually around this time of year I’ve had my sweater collection out for at least 2 or 3 weeks.  But this year, I finally worn pants for the first time in like 4 months.  And I’m serious when I say that.  This last week was literally the first time I’ve worn pants since the beginning of June when it started getting really hot all the time.  Today with the cool wet weather just felt nice.  I wanted to hang around outside all day.  Even after it got dark.

I went for two walks tonight, one of them after 11pm, even now at almost 1am, I’m still not tired and I want to go back outside again.  I’ve been really restless all day.  If I could, I think I’d sleep outside tonight, but that’s hardly practical.  Too many creatures call our little courtyard home.

Yeah, so it’s late, and I can’t think of a good way to wrap this one up.  Sorry about the boring post.  I’ll try to do better next time.  At least I did it.

1 out of 4 ain’t bad

So today didn’t go like I’d hoped, but I’ve got good reasons.  Not excuses mind you, actualy reasons.  Ok, maybe a couple of them are excuses.  I went to bed late last night, which caused me to wake up late as well.  Then shortly after I got home from work, we went out with some people for sushi (the main focus of this post), and didn’t get home until 9:30.  After walking the dog, I basically fell asleep on the chair in the living room.  So you see?  I just didn’t have time to do the other stuff.  Yeah….

So, about the sushi.  It’s one of about a handful of totally new experiences I’ve had since getting out to California.  Along with kayaking, visiting San Francisco, and eating at an actual Chinese restaurant, these things go along with my “I’ll try anything once” motto.  Though most of those listed, I would definitely do again.

Here are my views on sushi in a nutshell: I wouldn’t go out of my way to eat it it on my own, or probably even with just Crystal and I. It’s interesting to eat, and very filling, but not worth the money it costs.

I prefer the nigiri/sashimi (raw fish, what most people think sushi is), to the rolls.  Most of the rolls are ok, but there are a few sauces that get put on them that I don’t care for.  The best roll I had last night was actually the weirdest; eel.  Well, the spider roll was pretty good too (fried soft shell crab).

But anyway, after we all split the bill for the birthday guy (that’s why we were there), Crystal and I walked out of there paying $72.  Now, if we’d just paid for ourselves, I think it would have come in closer to $55-60, but this still ranks up there as one of the most expensive meals Crystal and I have had together.  And while it’s a good experience to share food with friends, I’m just not convinced that the food is worth the money.

So basically my take on sushi going forward is that I’ll go with other people, if it’s on some kind of occasion, but I don’t see myself becoming a regular.  I don’t like it enough, to convince me that the whole experience is anything other than a  waste of money.

the practice of living

Does anyone read this anymore?  I’ve been so lax about updating since we got out here.  Probably even longer than that.  Honestly though, this blog isn’t the only thing I’ve abandoned.  I haven’t really touched my camera in a month.  I haven’t ridden my bike for anything other than commuting in close to 2.  I haven’t finished one book since we got out here.  I still haven’t even finished the last season of Lost!

Part of the reason I never update this blog, is because I keep thinking that I need to come up with something worthy of reading, which means I hardly ever write anything.  So here’s what I’ve decided to do: until I can get back up to speed with real indepth posting, I’m just going to try to blog about what I’ve done everyday; the things that were on my mind; perhaps thoughts about what I’ve read or watched or listened to.  I can’t promise that it will all be interesting, but I need to get back into the habit of things.  I’ve let too many things go.

So, starting tomorrow (Friday, October 3, 2008), I am going to try to do a few small new things everyday:

1. Blog about my day.
2. Take at least one photograph.
3. Read at least one chapter in whatever book I’m currently working on.
4. Exercise in some way other than riding my bike to work.

Four things.  Four simple things.  But I’ve got to do something.  I’ve been letting my mood get in the way of the things I enjoy doing.  And though my overall demeanor hasn’t really changed, sometimes it takes action to change the heart.

I heard a quote today from a guy on one of the podcasts I listen to (the Fermi project podcast, I’ll blog about it later).  I’ll paraphrase it here, because I don’t want to butcher it, but it went something like this:

There is a reason that doctors “practice” medicine, and athletes and artists “practice” their craft, because in doing so they truly become what they set out to be.  It makes sense then that if christians really want to become like Christ, they should “practice” being like him.  To practice being like Christ means to do the things that He would do, even if at the time you don’t necessarily feel like it.  But in time, practicing these things will lead you to truly become like Christ.

Now obviously my 4 proposals aren’t specific to following Christ, even though that is very important to me as well. And truth be told, I do have a few things that in that vein that I’m going to try to “practice” going forward (again, a blog for another day).  But in a simpler way I need to try to get my life back on track after the move.  I’ve been in a sort of holding pattern ever since we got out here.  If I’m ever going to get back to where I was in my day to day goings on, I think it’s going to take “practicing” life, in order for me to really get back to life.  Does that make sense?

So hey, if you still read this, let me know.  Leave a comment or two.  I hope to be able to share with you all my journey back to being me.  And besides, no man is an island, especially in the Kingdom, so I need people to keep me accountable.  I’ll see you all tomorrow.