Last year about this time I’d just gotten out of the hospital for pericarditis and was just about to go back in for the same.

Forty-three years ago today I was in the hospital, but for a much happier visit!

hint hint

KIDS & LOVE

WHAT EXACTLY IS MARRIAGE??

“Marriage is when you get to keep your girl and don’t have to give her back to her parents.”
Eric, 6

“When somebody’s been dating for a while, the boy might propose to the girl. He says to her, ‘I’ll take you for a whole life, or at least until we have kids and get divorced, but you got to do one particular thing for me.’ Then she says yes, but she’s wondering what the thing is and whether it’s naughty or not. She can’t wait to find out.”
Anita, 9

HOW DOES A PERSON DECIDE WHOM TO MARRY??

“You flip a nickel, and heads means you stay with him and tails means you try the next one.”
Kelly, 9

“My mother says to look for a man who is kind….That’s what I’ll do…I’ll find somebody who’s kinda tall and handsome.”
Carolyn, 8

WHAT’S THE PROPER AGE TO GET MARRIED?

“Eighty-four, because at that , you don’t have to work anymore, and you can spend all your time loving each other in your bedroom.”
Carolyn, 8

“Once I’m done with kindergarten, I’m going to find me a wife.”
Bert, 5

HOW DID YOUR MOM AND DAD MEET??

“They were at a dance party at a friend’s house. Then they went for a drive, but their car broke down…It was a good thing, because it gave them a chance to find out about their values.”
Lottie, 9

“My father was doing some strange chores for my mother. They won’t tell me what kind.”
Jeremy, 8

WHAT DO MOST PEOPLE DO ON A DATE??

“On the first date, they just tell each other lies, and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date.”
Martin, 10

“Many daters just eat pork chops and french fries and talk about love.”
Craig, 9

WHEN IS IT OKAY TO KISS SOMEONE?

“You should never kiss a girl unless you have enough bucks to buy her a ring and her own VCR, ’cause she’ll want to have videos of the wedding.”
Allan, 10

“Never kiss in front of other people. It’s a big embarrassing thing if anybody sees you…If nobody sees you, I might be willing to try it with a handsome boy, but just for a few hours.”
Kally, 9

from www.mikeysfunnies.com

I’ve shamelessly copied this from my Facebook page, but I figured people here may be interested. Or not.

Rules:
Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you. (I can’t tag 25 people since I don’t have Premium, but I’ll tag some. Feel free to pass this along even if I didn’t tag you.)

1. I’m the youngest of seven children and enjoy being part of a big family. I have three brothers, three sisters and two step-brothers. Curiously, my sisters all have FOUR brothers and only TWO sisters. Amazing.
2. As you can tell by the last entry, I enjoy humor and think dry humor is usually the most clever.
3. I married my best friend when I was 19. She’s still my best friend. After Jesus, Bev is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
4. Speaking of Jesus, I became a born again Christian (John 3:3) when I was 13. I thought I was a pretty good guy until the Holy Spirit showed me that I couldn’t get to heaven by being a good person. On April 7, 1979 I trusted Jesus Christ alone for my salvation. My life has never been the same.
5. I have four kids (plus one in heaven): Tara lives in New Mexico, Greg lives in Lancaster, Kaitie and Dylan live at home. I love my kids.
6. For my full time job, I am a computer network administrator for Luthercare. It’s a cool job. As an added bonus, Bev now works there too.
7. I am also the senior pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Lititz PA. Before that, I was the church’s youth pastor for about 10 years. Previous to that, I was the youth pastor at Open Door Baptist Church in Clermont, Florida. Altogether, I was a youth pastor for about 20 years.
8. Yeah I’m a geek. Ask Kaitie. I love electronic gizmos. I love working in the computer industry.
9. I like to hunt. We didn’t get licenses this year, and I really missed being in the woods.
10. I hate to shop … unless it involves electronics or firearms. Then I’m good.
11. I have a blog on Xanga. Check it out. I think MySpace is incredibly stupid.
12. My Mom died this past year (March 31, 2008) from cancer. I’m still dealing with that.
13. I love to play the guitar. Notice I didn’t say I’m great at playing the guitar. But I really really enjoy doing it.
14. In the past 10 years I’ve developed asthma, especially exercised induced asthma.
15. I think it’s stupid that if you want numbered lists or hyperlinks in these notes you have to insert the html code. Sheesh, come on Facebook! What is this – 1995?   [note: don't forget that I wrote this for Facebook. Xanga coolly lets you do all this stuff at the click of a button.]
16. If I could have a few additional lifetimes, I’d be a carpenter in one, something in the medical field in another, maybe a musician in one …. and in one, definitely a superhero!
17. I’m interested in medical things, sort of as a hobby. I’m not reticent to talk about most medical issues, including body parts, female reproduction (Bev says I understand this better than most women), and other icky stuff. My eldest daughter is a nurse and Greg’s studying to be an EMT, so medical jargon can flow pretty freely around here.
18. I enjoy teaching and writing. Judging by the comments I get, people seem to enjoy how I communicate, although they could be lying.
19. I love playing basketball, but I don’t play nearly as much as I’d like. My schedule is too full as it is, and something has to go.
20. As a teenager, I played Asteroids a lot. Once I played for several hours on one quarter before I had to stop to go to a wedding. I think I got a parking ticket that day. Now I like playing Halo and Halo 2 on X-Box 360.
21. I have some problems with OCD.
22. I’ve lived in only two states and I’ve only been outside the US once (to the Canadadian side of Niagara Falls for vacation), I have traveled all up and down the east coast if that gets me any points.
23. I like to use big words. I believe a large vocabulary is powerful. I don’t try to flaunt this though.
24. I should read more nonfiction, but I don’t. Most of my reading is for recreation so I tend towards fiction. I like action-adventure style movies usually.
25. I like most everything Celtic and especially Irish. Kaitie, Bev and I used to take Irish dancing. Someday we WILL visit Ireland!

So there you have it. Leave some comments.

We had weird weather yesterday and today. It started snowing last evening and accumulated quickly. By 10:30-ish when we walked the dogs, there was about 4-5 inches of snow on the ground. We ended with a foot of snow!

The weird thing is that it only seemed to hit our little town of Lititz and the small town south of us. Other places right around us had a coating, an inch, a couple of inches, but nowhere near a foot!

We’re not on a mountain or have any other really significant reasons for a storm to park over our town, but it did. Odd.

Oh well, my kids got a snow day, so they’re happy!

I was kind of pulling for the Cardinals, but it was a good game regardless. There were way too many penalties, especially by Phoenix. We had fun having several people over to watch the game. I had to beat up someone-who-shall-remain-nameless for acting up, but it was all good.

Did your team win?

Sometimes I miss those people I used to know on Xanga, but who have since dropped out of sight. It’s amazing how you can make friends with people whose voice you’ve never heard, but you share their life and yours, and somehow they start to take a special place in your heart. Then they just drop off the radar.

But there are many others that for one reason or another are out of my life. At least one of them died from cancer, some began blogging elsewhere and others just sort of drifted away.

Since it’s snowing in PA this week, this story seemed like good advice. Read on:

It was snowing heavily and blowing to the point that visibility was almost zero when John got off work. He made his way to his car and wondered how he was going to make it home. He sat in his car while it warmed up and thought about his situation.

He finally remembered his dad’s advice that if he got caught in a blizzard he should wait for a snow plow to come by and follow it. That way he would not get stuck in a snow drift.

This made him feel much better and sure enough in a little while a snow plow went by and he started to follow it. As he followed the snow plow, he was feeling very smug as they continued and he was not having any problem with the blizzard conditions.

After an hour had passed, he was somewhat surprised when the snow plow stopped and the driver got out and came back to his car and signaled for him to roll down his window. The snow plow driver wanted to know if he was all right as he had been following him for a long time.

John said that he was fine and told him of his dad’s advice to follow a snow plow when caught in a blizzard.

The driver replied that it was okay with him and he could continue if he wanted, but he was done with the Wal-Mart parking lot and was going over to Sears next.

How many credits do Xanga Plugz cost? I understand that you can run them for various amounts of time, but I couldn’t find anywhere in the Xanga Plugz Help pages that actually listed the cost. Seems like that should be a pretty obvious point of discussion.

Come on, Xanga. You can do better than that.