Merry Christmas

We had a pretty good year this year. It was not perfect, but we did our best to give the kids a good day and instill them with values I hope they will retain for life.

Through some financial aid juggling, we had more money than normal this year. We were able to get the kids several larger gifts that we have never been able to afford before. We were also able to give a lot more to others this holiday season, and that is what I am happiest about.

We were able to buy gifts for our closest friends children, and spend a wonderful evening with them. We also tried really hard to teach the kids about charity. Landon's 1st grade class ran a food drive at his school. He was mostly concerned at first with the rewards he got for bringing in the food items, but as time wore on he started to understand the reason for it. When the class took a short field trip to deliver the items, he actually asked a question as to whether or not the place took food for dogs that didn't have any. When he told us this, we told him that we would make sure and help some dogs in need. We took the kids to Petco, and they picked out a few dog and cat toys, and we bought a couple of bags of high quality food and took them to the shelter we got Emma from. They were extremely grateful.

One more thing we did to teach them about giving was the giving tree at the local mall. We had the kids pick out a child as close to their age as possible( to aid in gift choices), and Jenny and I picked a teen. We then had them pick out toys and/or clothing for their child and deliver them to the mall service desk. (the lady there was very rude, and I thought if she was more receptive the kids would have gotten the message better, but that is out of my control). Landon seemed to have the most fun picking out items for an 8 year old girl. Elizabeth I don't think quite understood, but hopefully something sticks with her.

We had the kids pick out gifts for each other, and they helped (with a little coaching) pick out a gift for their older sister, and little cousin. They enjoyed this part very much.

Overall I think we did make some impression on Landon at least. His Christmas wish he did at school said "I wish everybody will have dinner at their house" It might seem simple, but he was worried about those that did not have food for their families.

I think that is a success.

30 years

I turned 30 this Sunday. I spent a wonderful weekend with a couple of the best friends I ever had. Thank you, James and Lori, for sharing this milestone with me. Much thanks also to My mom, the Owens', and Jonny, for sharing babysitting duties so that I could enjoy my weekend.

In the few months preceding my birthday I started really looking at my life. I realized I don't really like who I am. I mentioned it this way to my best friend Mike: "I have come to the realization that I am a complete asshole" The fact that he couldn't really contradict that was proof enough. I need to change some things, both internal and external.

Externally, I need to work on my relationships with others. I have had very few close friends. I don't think I have ever been anyone's 'best friend' I think this is partially due to the fact that I do not express myself well. I need to work on telling the people that I love, that I love them. I need to tell people that I appreciate them. That they make me happy. I need to be a better friend.

Internally I need to work on pleasing myself. I have tons of great ideas. My mind is always running in a hundred directions (at least). Sometimes I even get up the ambition to flesh out these ideas. It rarely happens, and when it does I almost never finish them. It frustrates me to no end. I need to try new things. I am working on it. The opportunity came up recently to join my adventuresome uncle on a climb of Mt. St Helens. (It seemed fitting that the mountain blew 30 years ago and I was turning 30). It was spontaneous, and out of my comfort zone. While I do feel I did my best, I was unable to complete that task as well. It hurt me inside to quit at one more thing. Someday I will have to do it again, and this time make it all the way to the summit. My follow through on things is horrible. I have a tremendous love for music, and thought it would be great to start a blog to share my thoughts with others. I wrote a hundred posts n my head that never made it to cyberspace. Once again, no follow through. I can look around me and see several unfinished projects. I need to start accomplishing things. I need to be happy with myself. I start school on Aug 30th in one attempt to better myself and not squander my intelligence.

I would like anyone who reads this to help me out. If I am being a jerk, cll me on it. Tell me when I am being insensitive. I want to be a better person. I want to actually accomplish things. Encourage me is I start to falter. I need all the help I can get.

Bittersweet.

Father's Day should be a day for me to have fun with my kids. Instead, it turns into a miserable day of me thinking of all the things I have done wrong as a father. My oldest has never called me. NEVER. I am supposed to call her each week on Sunday at 7pm. Pretty specific, huh? That is because her mother and grandparents find it to inconvenient to let me know what is going on with their schedules so that I can attempt to make calls at other times during the week. Making phone calls from my house is not an easy task. Landon and Elizabeth have 1 volume level: LOUD. talking to a 9 year old on the phine is not easy. She is distracted by whatever is going on around her. I don't know if she even cares. I feel like I try. Maybe I should try harder. Maybe I should give up. I remember when I was a kid wanting to talk to my absent father. I would hear his voice on the answering maching and want to return the call. Longing to return his calls. I wasn't allowed to. In a way I hope they are stopping her fromcalling like my mom did to me. Because then I have hope that she cares.

The kids I have at home I don't know that I am that much better off with. I look with envy at other fathers that share their talents with their children. The high school sports star teaching his boy to throw a football etc. I have never been particularly good at anything. I have nothing special to share. I think they know it. Trying to teach my son to ride a bike, I cannot figure out why he is having such a hard time pedaling. A good friend pointed out that his tires needed more air. He pumped them up, and became a hero when Landon could all the sudden could get some forward momentum. It shouldn't have bothered me. It did. A lot.

Right now the kids are at church. They wanted to go there rather than stay home with me. More bitter than sweet.

Am I really this much of an ass....

So My friend Took this personality test, So I thought it would be fun. Now I just feel like an ass.

Your Type is INTJ

Introverted	Intuitive	Thinking	Judging
Strength of the preferences %
33	62	75	33

I'll post some excerpts form the results with my commentary.

To outsiders, INTJs may appear to project an aura of "definiteness", of self-confidence. This self-confidence, sometimes mistaken for simple arrogance by the less decisive, is actually of a very specific rather than a general nature; its source lies in the specialized knowledge systems that most INTJs start building at an early age. When it comes to their own areas of expertise -- and INTJs can have several -- they will be able to tell you almost immediately whether or not they can help you, and if so, how. INTJs know what they know, and perhaps still more importantly, they know what they don't know.

My buddies used to say If Steve is arguing the point he is right. It usually referred to music but that would qualify as my area of expertise according to this.

Whatever system an INTJ happens to be working on is for them the equivalent of a moral cause to an INFJ; both perfectionism and disregard for authority may come into play, as INTJs can be unsparing of both themselves and the others on the project. Anyone considered to be "slacking," including superiors, will lose their respect -- and will generally be made aware of this; INTJs have also been known to take it upon themselves to implement critical decisions without consulting their supervisors or co-workers.

I ran into this problem in my Safeway days a lot. I told my 'superiors' more often than I should have what I thought of their lack of performance. Fortunately, most of them were too stupid to realize I was serious.

Typical INTJ career choices are in the sciences and engineering, but they can be found wherever a combination of intellect and incisiveness are required (e.g., law, some areas of academia).

While the career opportunities never came about, Science and engineering has always intrigued me.

Personal relationships, particularly romantic ones, can be the INTJ's Achilles heel. While they are capable of caring deeply for others (usually a select few), and are willing to spend a great deal of time and effort on a relationship, the knowledge and self-confidence that make them so successful in other areas can suddenly abandon or mislead them in interpersonal situations.

This happens in part because many INTJs do not readily grasp the social rituals; for instance, they tend to have little patience and less understanding of such things as small talk and flirtation (which most types consider half the fun of a relationship). To complicate matters, INTJs are usually extremely private people, and can often be naturally impassive as well, which makes them easy to misread and misunderstand. Perhaps the most fundamental problem, however, is that INTJs really want people to make sense. :-) This sometimes results in a peculiar naivete', paralleling that of many Fs -- only instead of expecting inexhaustible affection and empathy from a romantic relationship, the INTJ will expect inexhaustible reasonability and directness.

Probably the strongest INTJ assets in the interpersonal area are their intuitive abilities and their willingness to "work at" a relationship. Although as Ts they do not always have the kind of natural empathy that many Fs do, the Intuitive function can often act as a good substitute by synthesizing the probable meanings behind such things as tone of voice, turn of phrase, and facial expression. This ability can then be honed and directed by consistent, repeated efforts to understand and support those they care about, and those relationships which ultimately do become established with an INTJ tend to be characterized by their robustness, stability, and good communications.

Wow- that just summed up most of my past relationship fights. I bet if my wife reads this she will think I added the smiley,but it was there from the initial analysis.

Due to my upcoming milestone birthday I have been doing a lot of looking back on my life. There are things I want to change for the future. This just made me realize I may have further to go than I thought.

Child Health care.

Anyone have a couple hundred thousand dollars I could have? Anyone at all??Damn. Maybe then I could get the kids to the doctors they need without digging my credit score farther into the hole.

Elizabeth has had a strange bruise looking thing (hematoma?) on her bottom lip since May when she fell down the stairs. It has always looked strange, but never really seemed to bother her unless someone asked. She always chimed in with "I fell on the stairs". Around Christmas time, it developed what looked like small blisters on either side of it. They also have a tendency to bleed quite profusely. A couple days after Christmas her lip bled for over an hour and a half so we took her to the urgent care center here in town. After waiting for 1.5 more hours in the waiting room the bleeding stopped 10 minutes before we got to see a doctor. His reaction when we tell him about it: "Thats really weird" I wanted to hit him. No kidding it's weird, if it was normal I would take care of it at home, you buffoon. He said he thought it might be infected, so he said the antibiotics she needed for her concurrent ear infection would take care of that too.. There has been no change in the lip. Tonight it bled for 3 hours or better. I don't even know where to take her.

Landon, on the other hand, seems to not be responding to his medication anymore. He takes Guanfacine to aid in impulse control. It used to help a lot. Now I see no change before or after dosing. I finally started giving him melatonin at night so he would sleep through the night, even then i'm not sure how early he gets up, since I could sleep through a hurricane. The last pediatrician that was seeing him has moved back east, and introducing new doctors is always a pain, since, Landon is inevitably on his best behavior when we need him to break down. There is no way to know what will set him off, but we have not had a meltdown-free day for several days now. If you have not seen one of Landon's full on meltdowns count your self lucky. I need something that can calm him down in an instant. A well timed re-direct can work, but the wrong one will just escalate the meltdown exponentially. I have no way of knowing what will be a trigger or a pacifier. He doesn't technically meet Autism diagnoses, but shares many of the same symptoms. I don't know what type of specialist he needs. He has seen Autism specialists, they say he in not autistic, and recommend ADHD specialists. The ADHD specialists say he is autistic. I just need some freaking help.

2009 BCS season

Due to bragging rights rivalry with some good friends,I figured I would analyze the bowl game records of the various conferences to see who had the best bowl season. I do concede that my beloved Pac-10 had a horrible bowl season. the SEC however was not the best overall (though they did get the title game). I would say the best over all was the Big 10, who won 4 out of 4 bowl games against opponents ranked in the top 25 as of the last BCS rankings. I could complain for days about the ranking system, but this is the accepted data to use, so that is what i will go by. I guess the Pac-10 SEC competition will have to be settled on the field next year GO DUCKS!!

My data

Christmas is over.

Christmas is over. And yet, i still don't find the relief I wish would come.

Christmas is at once both the greatest holiday and the worst rolled into one. The absolute joy of children and the spending time together of families in the celebration of Christ's birth, along with stress disappointment and crowds.I used to like Christmas, and in fact, I still try to. It has become harder and harder for me to truly enjoy this time of year.

Music:
As a self proclaimed music lover, the music of the season drives me nuts.... Maybe it comes from my years of working retail and listening to the same 12 songs over and over again. I know there are artists that have made wonderful original holiday related songs,(I was sent a great one by the Sick Puppies on their email list this year) but they get 0 airplay. It is all the same Jingle Bells, Oh Holy Night, Rudolph the Congested Reindeer, over and over and over again. Growing up the radio station 97RockI listened to played a selection of rock Christmas songs, many of them originals. I don't know why no one else has the balls to play something out of the ordinary.

Gifting
"'Tis better to give than receive." I have heard this quote thousands of times since i was a child and for the most part it rings true. I do enjoy picking out a thoughtful gift for someone that they will truly enjoy, or even better, NEED. I hate how we are pressured to exchange gifts. I went out of my way this year so that someone I bought gifts for would not have the time to feel obligated to give me a gift in return. My gift is a token of friendship and thanks, and I need/want nothing but continued friendship in return. Friendship means more than the paltry amount I can spend on a gift. (Even if they did think it was too much when opened). On a slightly selfish note, I have rarely gotten anything I actually wanted as a gift. I'm easy to please, give me an iTunes or Home Depot gift card. (On a slight tangent: this goes the same for Thank You cards (birthday, wedding, etc. in my book. If you want a card from me because you give me something, save your money and just buy your own damn card. If you want to make sure I like the gift you should have taken the time to get something I really wanted.)

Family Drama
Forced family gatherings can be wonderful, or they can be a disaster. Some people take what should be a great time of sharing and enjoying each other's company as a time to 'air the dirty laundry' so to speak. If you have a problem with a family member deal with it privately, don't include it in your pre-desert toast. My family life is complicated, partially due to my own indiscretions, partially to my family's. I have 1 phone call I make every year, and for the second year in a row it went un-answered/unreturned. I tried not to show it, but that ruined the rest of my day with the family I had around. It gets really hard to have a relationshp when only 1 person make any effort.

I had many other thoughts about this, but I guess I can leave that for next year's post-holiday rant. I hope everyone has a great new year.