My wife and I made FIVE GLORIOUS YEARS on Friday June 17th, 2005. I never would have thought that I would be blessed with the wonderful marriage that I am in. My wife is perfect for met. She is nothing that I expected and EVERYTHING that I wanted and needed. God is truly wonderful. I always dreamed of being married as a child but the assumptions I made about what a "real" marriage would be like included minor to moderate levels of chaos and a distinct level of eggshell walking that "everyone knows" is just part of it. Prior to getting married I think 3 out of every 4 married couples told us how awful marriage was. The only ones who didn't were the older couples working on their 30th, 40th or 50th years of marriages. They had it right. Marriage takes hard work and it ONLY works if you work at it. If YOU sacrifice to make it work well, it will. I know that now. If anything my expectations were WAY too low about what marriage would be. I feel like we were married yesterday ...

Add three beautiful and active children to the mix and you have the blurr that is my life the past five years. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Personal notes

Work: I managed to get out of a fix at work. Work goes like this.

Task 1. High priority, needs immediate attention.
Task 2. High priority, needs immediate attention.
Task 3. High priority, needs immediate attention.
Not enough time to do it even if I worked 24 hours a day ... this is typical in corporate America

One of those tasks got pushed back until Friday but it ideally needed to be done two or three days earlier in order to meet a tight deadline and the glacial pace of getting work done in a massive corporate environment. I am used to small company life. We get things done when they need to be done. In mega-corp world, there is documentation that has to be in order, processes that have to be followed to the letter, scores of contacts that must be made to coordinate masses of folks being in the same place at the same time to open access to this resource or that ... all just to do one 15 minute task. Anyway, we were debugging a database that is used in Holland. I do not have direct access to it. It has to be fixed by Sunday night (Monday morning in Holland). My only quick access to the database is via calling someone who types in commands with me dictating on the phone. She gives me feedback either verbally or via email. Information is difficult to analyze that way. That is a hassle of a way to support something but it is what we have to work with for now. Fortunately we "accidentally received" a recent export of the problem database and I managed to get a look at it this morning and discover the problem in no time. Normally a request like that takes days so I didn't even bother. We didn't even request it but it sure came in handy. It just showed up with some other export information that we asked for eons ago. Last night when I went to sleep I was wondering what kind of hate mail I was going to be getting from a DBA that was going to get pulled away from his family to load an complete export of a database I know worked. I wouldn't be doing all the hard work. The DBA would ... Fortunately, because I had this miracle data, I was able to send out a quick fix to the problem without inconveniencing too many folks. There was much rejoicing.

House:

Still isn't sold. We are still living in an apartment. Too much typing to explain how that happened. I love having access to a pool. It will be on my list of things to look for in a new house ... provided paying rent and a house note doesn't kill us financially first. Prayers welcome in this area. St. Joseph, pray for us!!!

Reading:

It is taking me forever to read anything these days.

Still, I am forever working on Salvation Is from the Jews by Roy Schoeman
Just bought and started a book with a most controversial title: How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization by Dr. Thomas E. Woods Jr.

The book seems to be a well researched counter to the idea that the Catholic Church HINDERED progress of all sorts throughout the centuries. In fact, it argues quite the opposite. It also spends time tearing down some of the clear prejudices about the Church that exist in the minds of most Americans raised on mild a diet of latent anti-Catholic bias. The most obvious example that I can think of is the rampant belief that millions were killed at the hands of the Catholic Church during the Inquisition. Reality is far from it and recent scholarship has pretty much vindiacted the Catholic Church from the gaudy claims of the Black Legend. I look forward to reading it.

Bowling:

I am bowling in a no-tap league, which for the non-bowlers stopping by means that if I get nine pins on the first shot, it counts as a strike. That’s it. If I get nine in two shots, it is still nine. I had to get a ball drilled and so with virtually no research and an undisclosed amount of cash I settled on the now discontinued Ebonite V2 Clean.



For the fashion conscious it violates all social norms: purple/blue ball, green finger inserts, white thumb insert. Then again, we are talking about bowling. One gaze down a few lanes of bowler’s shoes and butterfly collars will give one the distinct hint that fashion is not a high priority. I'm with it ...

My average after 6 games is 228.3. I have the highest average in the league but I am thinking that I wouldn't have higher than a 180 average without the no-tap advantage. I am also expecting reality to set in sooner or later. I am struggling with spares but I am not shooting at very many. The good news is that a high percentage of my strikes are legitimate and not of the 9-pin variety. For having not bowled seriously in five years, I must admit being pleased as punch that I haven't forgotten how to bowl. I did not expect to come out of the gate shooting 180's in practice and averaging near 230 in a no-tap league. Like I said, reality will overwhelm me at some point and I will have to work back up to the 190 average I used to carry with much patience.

Weather:

There was ANOTHER tornado down here on Friday. It was sighted at I-10 and 74 which is south of Baton Rouge in Prairieville. There were no injuries but it was blamed for an accident that happened on the Interstate at the time it crossed the road. My keen web search skills turned up ZERO fancy pictures of the twister.

Speaking of skills



Fathers Day is tomorrow ... woo hoo!!!