'Twas the night before Christmas

Grandma and Grandpa have two Great Danes. They call them Samson and Delilah. Seems like that oughta' mean something.
Seeing as my aunt and uncle named them, perhaps it does.

//
It's a white Christmas for Illinois. Brr.
\\
All the radio stations sound the same right now.
Christmas tunes are Christmas tunes. And by tomorrow night, they'll be gone.
///

I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own - Snow Patrol

YAH HOOOO!

Wow! I'm like so chipper right now. I'm about to freak myself out.

Don't know why. Maybe its the fact that I've been spending more time in the Bible, or the brother that took time out of his day yesterday to help me sort some of life problems out. Or maybe it's the weather. The last two days have been insanely nice. Or perhaps it was the 7 am mountain bike ride with the shop guys. That was pretty incredible. Fun. Awesome. Beautiful. Endorphin-inducing. I had a perma-grin the whole time. Had to floss to get the mud out.

Or maybe it's all the time spent with friends. Gotta' love Christmas-time for that. Or perhaps it's the upcoming road trip to Illinois.

Or it could simply be that I got a paycheck yesterday. Paychecks always make me happy.

I'm a lucky guy. Life's good.
["\/"]
An older customer was buying a present for his wife. We got talking on how they met. Freshman year of high school. She was a year older. They dated all through high school, married at 18 and stayed together for the following 47 years. They have three kids.

"I always told my kids to stay away from salesman and PK's," he said. "All my kids went to business school; my oldest son married a pastor's daughter, my daughter married a pastor's son, and my youngest daughter married a salesman."

Both the son and the son-in-law salesman are now pastors. Too cool.
/;/;/;/
Time to finish my Christmas shopping. Toodles.
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I prefer a good poem. But this is whats in my mind:
Col 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

the good times

Man, it's been good having Buc around the shop. Totally dig the beard, man.

The dear little song "Christmas Shoes" was playing on the radio. Buc's like, "why didn't the store owner just give the kid the shoes?"

whoa. hang on. I've been getting all sappy over this song for years. Now you're saying I oughta' be mad at the store owner? C'mon, man!

"I mean, he didn't even give the little guy a discount. Scrooge or something."

I can no longer feel sappy about the song. Agh! The crimes of greedy entrepreneurs!!! Down with the shoe guy! Off with his head!!!
,,,
Have I mentioned Kay and the girls are vacationing in Florida? Hopefully the shop will still be standing at their return.
//
Thursday, the Schweitzer Methodist Church donated 115 bicycles to kids of the Boys and Girls Club. So I left work a little early, grabbed the shop vehicle and some tools and headed over there. Tim and Greg also showed up to lend a hand.
It was so cool watching these kids working with strangers to build these bikes. Some of them have a pretty hard go. The organizer, Tim, was telling me about a little kindergarten-aged girl who gets picked up from Missouri Hotel every morning at 6:30 (Heck, most mornings I'm not even awake before 7.), and then dropped off at 9pm. That's her life. She's raised by volunteers.

Does anybody hear her?
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Great party at Naterz tonight. Pity it snowed. Ah well, we shall use that as an excuse to party again. Reparty, anybody?
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I love living in a corner apartment on the fourth floor. Downside is the radiator heat has lost some of its radianceness by the time it gets up here. And, well, a corner apartment does catch a lot of wind.
But the views are awesome....
+++++
Cory has just informed me he's figured out how to download stuff from Limewire without getting caught. He lost me somewhere around the required bandwidth splitter...
/\/\/\
Ooh, new believers gettin' baptized,
Momma's hands raised up high,
Havin' a Hallelujah good time
A smile on everybody's face.

That's what I love about Sunday:
Cat-napping on the porch swing;
You curled up next to me,
The smell of jasmine wakes us up.
Take a walk down a back road,
Tackle box and a cane pole;
Carve our names in that white oak,
An' steal a kiss as the sun fades,
That's what I love about Sunday,
-Craig Morgan