Author Archives: jstueve

Me and my mommed ride

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Some public confessions first from my lunch hour foray in tho the wilds of Richardson (namely Cambell and Central in front of Atlanta Bread Company)

To the eldergy gentleman riding the nice harley:

I hope you don’t take my angry gestures personally, I wasn’t that bothered by the fact that you were backing out of a full-sized parking space in to the wrong lane, then used that lane to turn into exit lane, which was impeding my driving past the front of the restaurant.  I wasn’t angrily gesturing at you, rather at…

To the nice young man driving the beemer behind me:

I’m sorry that my lack of a turn signal confused you into thinking that I was turning right, rather than proceeding through.  It certainly would have confused me too, especially since you couldn’t have known the actions of the above mentioned biker in slowing down traffic in four directions.  I’m happy to have helped you in your quarterly inspection of you personal traffic control device (aka irritating small car horn), it does indeed work.  I’m unsure why you repeated the inspection procedure so many times in such a short duration.  Perhaps you’ve had better luck with you device actually clearing traffic in front of your much more important car.  I hope you weren’t late by the 10 extra seconds it took for the biker to clear the lane so I could drive through.

Now on to my regularly scheduled post

Multimedia message This is my ride.  I changed from my sporty 99 Mercury Sable for car pooling reasons, since my morning commute now includes 4 junior passengers that are dropped off along my circuitous route to work.  Its throughly mommed, and I’m certainly man enough to drive this hunk of car.  So when I roll up to you in this ride, don’t be shocked.

Daily Walk 365 – Day 3

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Are ya bored yet? 😉

Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives to all generously and without criticizing, and it will be given to him. — James 1:5 (HCSB)

How many times have I tried to find wisdom without asking God. This self-help book, this seminar, this special on TV, this episode of Oprah (well not many times that last one) Truth be told on the wisdom front, I too often trust my intuition rather than specifically asking God — to my shame.

Last night SS commentary talked about discipline (Hebrews 13ish IIRC) and how God disciplines those he loves. The commentary compared how we discipline (often poorly, selfishly, and pridefully) to God’s discipline (which is awesome, unselfish and beneficial to us). Our reaction to discipline is much like our kids, we don’t like it, but when we’ve learned our lesson we’re cherish their loving correction.

I think its like that with asking for wisdom (and this verse isn’t asking for wealth, prosperity, good feelings, which given the ongoing trials, discipline growth put to rest any ‘name it — claim it’ notions). In being a good disciplinarian, God wants us to ask Him for wisdom. But he won’t nag us, complain or belittle us if we act like a teenager and seek that elsewhere. He’ll wait for us to fall, fail and flounder then graciously help us up, dust us off, and remind us that He’s always here to help.

Do we disappoint him when we fail?

Seeking wisdom elsewhere is a childish thing (also called teenage rebellion), as we mature we should put away childish things, and seek the source of wisdom, and heed it.

Peace.

Daily Routine

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Multimedia messageThe return of school brings with it the return of routine.  Summer is filled with chaotic non-routineness that makes it difficult at times.  School is the chance to start again with a new routine.  The first day is a given, everyone’s nervous and its almost a relief to get out of bed, its what happens on day 2+ which makes what happens each morning a routine.  By the end of the first week, we’ll be settled into whatever we’re going to do each morning.

So now is the time to change the patterns.

Pattern 1:  Morning — enjoy it, don’t miss it:  What do I mean?  Confession:  I usually crawl out of bed in just enough time to wake all the kids, and scramble out in time to get them to school before the bell rings.  Now is the time, to make each morning different.  Enjoy the conversations, give the kids time to wake up and get moving without a rush, break the fast together, and start the day right.  Today was a great start.  Thank you honey.

Pattern 2: Devotional — get straight: The top picture is my morning allotment of reading material. I usually do it over coffee when I get to the office.  In the spirit of confession, I haven’t done that at all, and it effects my endurance at the end of the day. While it might seem overkill all stacked up together, its isn’t more than a couple of pages in each book, easily done.  When I’m straight with God, I’m straight with myself, and it makes me a better person, husband, employee and friend.  I shouldn’t let this slip.

Pattern 3: Return to home — This is a routine that needs to be well thought out.  And it hasn’t ever been, its been more ad hoc than regular in past years.  This year, my two daughters are middle schoolers, and in a bit of a no-mans land when its time for school to get out.  Walking home is a challenging distance, and two major roads cause me and Angie to worry.  However, Liberty Rec Center is a shorter distance, and on my way home.  Yesterday the girls waited there for me to pick them up, and — they enjoyed it!  Sooo.. an opportunity presents itself.  A routine of picking them up at the Rec Center will scream at me to start doing that whole exercise thing I’ve been promising to get around to, and I hope to incorporate that into a routine as well.

Like I mentioned previously, this is day two, we’ll see how it shakes out by the end of week two, but for now, I see a lot of promise in our changes.

Daily Walk 365 – Day 2

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For it is God who is working among you both the willing and the working for His good purpose. — Philippians 2:13 (HCSB)

That seems a bit awkward in structure… unfamiliar, shouldn’t be since Bobby’s camping out in Philippians on Sunday mornings, lets look at some different translations.

for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. — Phil 2:13 (NIV)

Hmmm… Maybe its because this verse is tucked between such awesome parts of Philippians (verse 2:5ff — “your attitude should be like Christ’s” and 2:14 — “do everything without complaining or arguing”) that I’ve missed it as I breeze through. But its still seems odd phrasing. Can Eugene Peterson do anything with this?

That energy is God’s energy, an energy deep within you, God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure. — Phil 2:13 (Message)

Hmmm. The exhortation to change your attitude (v 2.5ff) seems to also join with Christ in allowing God to work in and with ourselves towards His will. The book adds another quotation (as it does for most of the days… but I won’t always transcribe it here) that seems important as I dwell on this passage.

In God’s plan, God is the standard for perfection. We don’t compare ourselves to others; they are just as fouled up as we are. The goal is to be like him; anything less in inadequate. — Max Lucado

Max always does a great job of clearing things up. Though the exhortation to perfection is a bit disconcerting to those with a perfectionist bent, it is good to realize that our model isn’t our friend, neighbor, mentor, teacher, or critic. Our model is Christ, who when faced with disappointment, exhaustion, pain, and indecision, reached out to God (or as yesterday’s excerpt mentions — call out to God). Even in our imperfection, that method is open to us, thanks to Christ’s sacrifice. And in calling out to God, we also have to be open to listening, hearing and allowing God to work in us and through us towards His purposes, not ours.

I don’t do that enough, may I do it evermore as I run this race.

Peace.

Daily Walk 365 – Introduction and Day 1

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The new school season started today, and yesterday was promotion Sunday.  As I walked into my class, I found a nice present from our Family Minister: Walking with Christ Every Day: 365 daily devotions for men

I wasn’t expecting it, but with the summer winding down, and a few more classes on my schedule (Sunday and Wednesday, and participating in Sunday evening and some blurry Men’s-ministry-that’ll-happen-someday-soon) I’ve been really dwelling on the fact that I’m not that great at two things I used to enjoy immensely: Blogging, and spending time with God. (not necessarily in that order)

So this welcome present, presents an opportunity for me.

  1. Get reconnected with my Savior.
  2. Wonderful blog fodder.

So while I may not actually blog about my daily reading, I’ll keep up my daily reading, and if the spirit moves, I’ll blog about it with the above title — Daily Walk 365 – Day # (If any of my two readers are bored enough to search for this later).

I blog in bursts, so don’t get too involved in reading these that you don’t suddenly get whip-lash reading another post on Survivor strategy, or Lost mysteries.  I blog for myself, you know.

Anyhoo, I hope you enjoy, Day 1, below the fold

Continue reading →

Summing up

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I want to start something new that will hopefully use this blog other than a sucking black-hole of dullness.  But first I’ll quickly summarize what’s happened since the way-to-big tv was bought.

  • It was TOO big.  Conventional wisdom is get the biggest TV in your budget, that is bunk, it should be get the biggest TV that won’t overpower your room and doesn’t make it seem like a big dark cave with a glowing window to other worlds.  Not to say I didn’t LOVE the escapism quality, but this is the living room not a media room.  We needed balance, so we took it back and got a reasonable 46″ LCD and it fits into the room much better.
  • Kids arrived safely from camps, over nighters, and other activities.
  • We didn’t swim as much this summer, a bit longer of a drive, and a longer available season (instead of the Texas pool only open during summer hours season) made it less of a priority.  But we’ll be swimming more during the fall and winter when our pool is still open.
  • School shopping was abbreviated, and we’ll continue with clothes shopping as the budget allows instead of a huge suck from our wallet.
  • All the kids are in school, can you say HALLY-LOO-JA!
  • Co-ed Softball for Angie an I start tomorrow.  I’m still considering whether a season ending injury the first game is a good or a bad thing.

And that pretty much sums up the last month of Summer.  So have fun with that.

Funny thing happened on the way to the theater

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So we got Danny and Brenna off to their 4 day camp, then back home with Lauren and MJ.  Lauren went over to a friend’s house and so MJ, Angie and I were playing on  our computers.  Angie decided we’d sneak out to see Kung Fu Panda with MJ.  But we got a late start and couldn’t make the movie show time.

The next show would start after we’d have to pick up Lauren, so we worked out some logistics, then decided to go to Cosco to fill our larder.  After grabbing some frozen stuff to put in our freezer in the garage, we figured had a bit of time to do some window shopping.

Wait, need to esplain, no it is too much, will summ up: Our current HDTV has lost one of the color channels.  Unless we like watching smurfs or leprhchans (blue of green) watching our TV had become a little frustrating.  Especially, if like Angie loves to do, you’re watching a home design show and they decribe a vibrant yellow that looks like a muddy green.  So yesterday it was sorta like the TV commercial where the wife says, yeah, we need a new TV, and the guy grabs his keys.

We went to Conn’s, mostly because we have good credit history with them (about to pay off three kitchen appliances we bought in ’05) and started looking.  Our current TV is a 28″ HDTV CRT, and so we started out at around 30″ and just kept going up.  We liked a 46″ LCD, and so asked the salesman to run a credit check.  While he was doing that we wandered to the rear of the store and found some absolutely lovely DLPs.  The price for DLPs is much less than an LCD, the cost is a bit more space (can’t wall mount) and a DLP does have a bulb that will wear out.  So while we were watching the pretty pictures, and wondering around the small furniture section, the sales guy comes back and says, you can pretty much get what you want (he ran the high end of the LCDs we were looking at).  I respond with, “That’s a bit scary.”  We talked with him a bit about the DLPs, then it was time to get Lauren, and try to make the show.

Only we waited to long, by the time we got Lauren and headed back to the freeway, the clock had again ticked past and we’d get to the theater too late.  So back home to do research and discuss some options.  We use our living room to host a weekly American Idol party when that’s in season, and so that was part of the discussion.  We talked viewing angles, and flexibility of rearranging, and sizes, and by the end of the time, we’d pretty much agreed on a moderate sized LCD in the middle of our price range.

We set off to Pei Wei to eat, then back to Conn’s to make the buying decision.  We got back to the store, and start to look and narrow down.  The one I liked from my research was a bit about our agreed upon price point, and so we hemmed and hawed, and wound up back in the back with the DLPs, and a nice console that met Angie’s standards.  The console ended up being out of stock, and then looked at the DLPs a bit more closer, the one we liked was a 60″, but next to it, the same model and features was a 65” a hundred less.  We bit, then added an upscaling DVD player (not ready for Blu-Ray yet) and some cables, and we’re out the door.

We had to drive to almost Irving to pick up the behemoth after dropping off the kids, to clear out the van.  The box filled up the back of the van (with the seats folded), and setup was a breeze.  We obviously need to do some rearranging, and maybe buy different furniture for it.

Once we placed it in the room, we realized how absolutely ginormous this thing is… Turning it on, was surreal, crisp vibrant colors, deep fine features in 1080i from the Verizon FiOS tuner.  MJ, just wanted to play a game, so he hooked up his SpongeBob game contoller and got lovely 16bit quality pixelated video that he played avidly.  Still have to test the Wii and hookup the upconverting DVD.

As you can see from the picture, about 4 of our old screens would fit in the screen size of the new one.  We’re a bit overwhelmed, but I think we can adapt. :)  (link to the TV at amazon)

Happy Anniversary, 15 Years of Love…

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My bride wrote about our courting on her blog. She got it right, but let me add some stuff from my perspective (and because if I don’t she’ll cream me).

The first ‘date/meeting’ was at Marakesh (a Morracan restaurant) in Mission Valley, which is a good 20 minute drive from Pacific Beach where I shared an apartment when I wasn’t on the ship. Also PB (as it is affectionately known) was about a 20 minute drive to work in the morning, and muster in the Navy is usually 7:00 AM, which means park by at least 6:00 AM, walk down the pier to the ship, scramble up ten stories of ladders (they don’t put passenger elevators on those things) get dressed, then back down to get the POD (Plan of the Day) from the XO (Executive Officer) at Officer’s Call before greeting my Division for muster. So yeah, I had to leave a bit earlier than I’d have liked. But I fell in love with her that night. Look at that picture over there, her eyes and smile still captivate me, can you blame me?

And I do remember who lost that Superbowl the next day, in those days tradition was the Buffalo Bills would shred the AFC then pitifully lose the Superbowl against the NFC Champion, often it was the Cowboys that had the privileged, but I believe that year the Redskins had the honor.

It is also of note, apart from cruises, trips or business and family we haven’t spent a night apart since that first weekend. There have been up times and down times, times of uproarious laughter and deepest tears. But through it all, my bride has stuck by me, and I’ve tried my best to pamper her in the way a Princess should.

You see, back in the dark days before the internet, we had ‘handles’ on that 32-line BBS. Mine was pretty plain, being the senior Ensign (kinda like being the oldest Freshman) I had the honorary title of ‘Bull Ensign’ so I chose ‘Bull’ as my handle. Angie changed hers about as much as she changes her Facebook photo, but usually it was some concoction of ‘Princess’. We went to a few of the San Diego Connection parties, their Halloween bash was a celebration of Geekiness, and another party we had to leave early because … well… it WAS California, and we’re talking about a lot of geeky singles. I think there was a CSI episode loosely based on a SDC party.

Now we’ve decided to start playing softball in the fall on the co-ed team. Which also brings back some memories of our courting days. I used to play for the ship’s softball team, and drug Angie along to watch, and she met a few of the other girlfriends and wives. One night, I made an error (I know SHOCKING, right?) at second base, and was getting mad at myself, and one of the wives yelled out, ‘Shake it off, Bull!’ but in a really strong Jersey accent. So when you come to a softball game this fall, and I mess up, you’ll probably hear Angie yell that.

Oh… San Diego memories. We can talk about shopping for rings in Horton Plaza. Proposing again for the second time, correctly this time, outside of Sea Port village. Living in her mom’s apartment in the IB (Imperial Beach, home of John from Cincinnati), moving into our cramped studio apartment on G-Street across the street from Sea Port Village, the same weekend we drove to San Leandro to deliver her Mom’s stuff.

Its been quite a ride, baby. Can’t wait for the following 35 years. 🙂