The Shape of Things

• Spend less than $200 for food for the entire month
• Buy an alarm clock (so that I won’t have my iPhone on my bedside stand)
• Run a 5k in less than 25 min (my personal best is 25:50)
• Play Wii Fit everyday
• Read the book of Genesis (taking notes on each chapter)
• Learn 5 words in Portuguese
• Write a [written] letter to my nieces and nephew
• Call family once a week
• Date night with Kelly at least twice

My Grandma has dementia…

Not an easy thing to deal with.  Not for me, not for my parents, not for my sister, and especially not for my Grandma.  I was fortunate enough to be able to visit her last fall and it was a very strange thing to be able to look at her and know that she doesn’t really understand her surroundings.  She was able to remember me and we even had a few laughs about my childhood.  She also got to meet my wife which was great.

Now my Mom and her siblings have to figure out how to take care of her.  Do they move her in with one of them?  Try assisted living?  Nursing home?  None of them are great choices which makes the decision quite difficult.

I know what you are thinking… and no I didn’t name this blog post “The Savages” based on my family.  I actually went to see a great movie last Tuesday called The Savages.  It is about a highly educated brother and sister who suddenly get a call from Arizona regarding their father.  They haven’t spoken to him in what seems like quite a few years and he is in the later stages of dementia.  It stars Laura Linney and (my all-time favorite actor) Phillip Seymor Hoffman. 

I believe it is still playing at the Landmark Harvard Exit if you feel up to seeing it.

Well this weekend Kelly and I finally got our garage door opener installed. It took a good 2 months but we did it!! The whole experience turned out to be great for team building. She was definitely the project manager and I the laborer…

It feels great to have completed our first “big” home improvement project. Although I feel like there are many more to come, and oddly enough I welcome them… just don’t tell Kelly.

The last 10 days my wife and I have had quite a few visitors in our home. Last weekend we had the honor of having my mom fly out from Minnesota to visit us. She has been going through some hard times with the illnesses of her mother and sister-in-law so we thought it would be nice to have her out for a relaxing weekend.

Then Tuesday night we had our “C Group” over from church. We host this group on a weekly basis. Typically there are around 8 – 10 that show up. We have dinner together, share stories, and pray for each other.

Wednesday night we had our next door neighbors over for dinner. I have to say my wife Kelly has become quite the cook. We had cashew chicken and it was excellent! It was really nice to get to know our neighbors a little bit better. They are currently engaged (to be married next spring) so maybe we can be hopefully help them out in the next few stressful months as we went through the same thing a year ago.

Finally tonight we hosted two of my co-workers and close friends, Dale and Aaron. Kelly cooked chicken curry and we watched the Golden State – Utah basketball game. It was a great night… even though Derek Fisher absolutely killed the warriors in the 4th quarter with 14 points!!

I guess what I am getting at in this post is that God has decided to bless us enough financially to purchase a home and we feel so grateful to be able to share that with family and friends. Community is a strange and funny thing. It is so hard to get to a point where you are truly living in community – and often if you do get there, people move away or you drift apart somehow. I am happy to say that I think we are getting to know lots of people here in Seattle and that we aren’t just “talking” about community, but we are actively pursuing it.

As I was sitting on the plane waiting for everyone to sit down I looked outside and saw something that I had never seen before. 4 fire trucks, 2 police cars, and a hearse. I was immediately drawn into the situation. Who could it be? Who is this important? After a few minutes I could see the casket… covered in an American Flag. Red, White, and Blue.

I can’t really tell you why but my mind went straight to my Dad. My Dad was in the Vietnam war. I was feeling quite afraid that “what if my Dad had died in the war”. Then I was getting mad that we have troops in Iraq. But then I started thinking that unless my Dad was brave enough to go to war I might not have this comfortable life.

Pro-War? Anti-War?

In Seattle at this point in time its seems to be very popular or hip to be Anti-War. I guess my feelings is that it is as subjective a topic as anything else. I would tend to say I am more against the current war in Iraq… however I am in favor of the war in Afghanistan, the pending war in Iran??? I haven’t decided my views on that just yet.

I am certainly blessed to have been given such a wonderful wife.

Proverbs 18:22

Every year from 1991 – 1998 I went deer hunting with my Dad. It was always an adventure and as I grow older I miss it more and more. For all of those people who think that you just go and ‘kill’ an animal it is much more. I sit in the cold, wait for hours and hours just to see a deer and if my eye is good enough I shoot the deer. Then I have to gut it, carry it out of the woods, and haul it back home. Then you clean it up, cut it up, fry it up, and then eat it up. So the next time that you have steak at a restaurant, just think to yourself who is a killer and who is a hunter. I work for my meat!! You just sit there and order it off of a menu and have someone else kill it for you.

Anyway, that is a my rant for the week…