dwilson

Who wants to grow up?

I ran across this when I was cleaning out some old email files. I don’t know where it originated, but I felt at the time that it was worthwhile enough to save it.

I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as an adult. I have decided I would like to accept the responsibilities of an 8 year-old.

I want to go to McDonald’s and think that it’s a four star restaurant.

I want to sail sticks across a fresh mud puddle and make a sidewalk with rocks.

I want to think M&Ms are better than money because you can eat them.

I want to lie under a big oak tree and run a lemonade stand with my friends on a hot summer’s day.

I want to return to a time when life was simple; When all you knew were colors, multiplication tables, and nursery rhymes, but that didn’t bother you, because you didn’t know what you didn’t know and you didn’t care.

All you knew was to be happy because you were blissfully unaware of all the things that should make you worried or upset.

I want to think the world is fair. That everyone is honest and good.

I want to believe that anything is possible. I want to be oblivious to the complexities of life and be overly excited by the little things again.

I want to live simple again. I don’t want my day to consist of computer crashes, mountains of paperwork, depressing news, how to survive more days in the month than there is money in the bank, doctor bills, gossip, illness, and loss of loved ones.

I want to believe in the power of smiles, hugs, a kind word, truth, justice, peace, dreams, the imagination, mankind, and making angels in the snow.

So… here’s my checkbook and my car-keys, my credit card bills and my 401K statements. I am officially resigning from adulthood.

Or…..should I wait until I’m 90 to do that.

25 things

One of my cousins sent me a note on Facebook – you know, one of those viral kinds that you get and are asked to send out to a bunch of people and it goes on and on.

I don’t normally jump into those things, but in this one intrigued me. He had put together a list of 25 interesting facts about himself. Among other things, I learned that my cousin had been stung by some type of jellyfish and that he had delivered peaches to John and Yoko in Japan.

In his note, he requested that I make a list of 25 things about me and send it back to him along with some people that I want to learn more about. It took me about a week to think of 25 things to put on my list. It wasn’t that easy to come up with at least 25 halfway interesting things about me, and yes, there were plenty of things that I wasn’t willing to make know publicly.

Here’s the list I came up with…

1. Love to travel – have visited 35 of the 50 US states and 8 foreign countries

2. Fanatic about motorsports – have competetively drag raced motorcycles and have raced sprint karts

3. Have driven a motorcycle from 0 to 145 mph in 9 seconds

4. Would love to make a full time income on the internet

5. Started smoking when I was in the third grade. Quit smoking later that evening after my dad found out

6. Graduated from college 11 years after I graduated from high school

7. Fired from my first full time job at Mervyns. Today they are out of business….hmmmm

8. Been to 6 indy car races – 5 as a guest of the Bobby Rahal team

9. When I was very young, my dad told me that the big, black Seafirst Bank building was the box that the Space Needle came in. It was quite a few years before I realized that didn’t make any sense

10. Addicted to chocolate – the darker the better (up to 85%)

11. Drink an average of 18 oz of Tree Top juice every day

12. The first time I made chili, I entered it into a contest and took 2nd place

13. Worked in the interpretive center at Ft Simcoe, giving tours and telling stories about it’s history. I’m sure that the guests never even realized that half of the stories I made up.

14. Can go a full day without a latte, but my wife can’t

15. Started a friends pant leg on fire while attempting to refill a disposable butane lighter with gasoline

16. I never forward those emails that go around without first verifying them with Snopes

17. I once wore ski boots to marching band practice

18. Made the state honor roll on a math exam in high school – one of only two students from my school to score at that level, but by the time my children reached the 8th grade, I could no longer help them with their math homework

19. For all 4,529 people who have asked me, “Do you play basketball?” The answer is, “No, are you a jockey?”

20. The odds are pretty fair that I might become father-in-law to 2 pastors

21. I’ve hiked to the top of Mt St Helens and looked down into the steaming crater

22. The first Mongolian Food restaurant I ate at was in Moscow, Russia

23. Paying half of one year of my daughter’s college cost me almost as much as I paid for my entire college career.

24. Did a double flip off a 200 ft high bridge (with a bungee attached)

25. I keep a journal in blog form at http://highvantagepoint.com

Joe Parsons – Winter X Freestyle Gold

Here’s a followup to my previous post about Joe Parsons winning the Gold Medal at the Winter X Games in the Speed and Style event.

Last night, Joe Parsons concluded the Winter X Games by winning yet another Gold Medal – this time in the Freestyle even.

As a neighbor that he doesn’t even know, I must congratulate him on a job well done.

“The Negotiator” by Dee Henderson

My oldest daughter gave the first book of the series, “The Negotiator”, which is part of Dee Henderson’s O’Malley series, to my wife along with a strong recommendation to read it. My wife was in the middle of the “Twilight” series at the time, so I picked up “The Negotiator” and read it.

After I finished “The Negotiator”, I found out that it was only the first book in a series of six. I was happy about that because I had been so captivated by “The Negotiator”, that I had read it through in just a few days. In fact, it was the first Christian novel I had read for many months, and I became compelled to get back into the reading mode.

The book is about a hostage negotiator, Kate O’Malley, who had become targeted for a hit. The ensuing investigation brought up the name of someone that she was not prepared to face again.

The book is filled with non-stop action and suspense, though it is considered to be a romantic novel. I never thought I would ever read a romance book, let alone enjoy it. It held my attention from cover to cover, despite my short attention span.

“The Guardian” by Dee Henderson is book two of the O’Malley series, and a review of that book should follow shortly.


Other Reviews of “The Negotiator” by Dee Henderson

CWaltersWrite Blog

“The Negotiator”, written by dee henderson, is a compelling novel. henderson intertwines captivating characters with an intense plotline. this suspense/romance novel combines pulse-pounding action …

Families.com

The O’Malleys are an unusual family. Most of us get our brothers and sisters through chance or fate, whatever you like to call it; the O’Malleys are brothers and sisters by choice.

The Loud Librarian

The Negotiator by Dee Henderson – A huge number of my patrons at the library read nothing but Christian fiction, and are always asking for suggestions of authors to try. As I am NOT well versed in Christian fiction, I’m making a good …

Reading to Know

I have enjoyed all of Dee Henderson’s books. This was the first one of hers I ever read …

Pray for Barak Obama

I received an email from my Uncle John recently that was a plea to pray for our new president Barak Obama. This is critical. Whether you support his policies, or not, he needs our prayers, his family needs our prayers, and our country needs our prayers.

We aren’t the only ones who will be lifting our prayers for the Obama family. Even the George W Bush family will be praying for them and encouraging them.

Cheap Lattes

I’m pretty sure that Starbucks doesn’t think too highly of people like us. Oh, well, I’m not too concerned how the feel – ever since Schultzie orphaned our beloved Sonics and left them to be adopted by some Oklahoma swindler.

We used to spend lots of $$$ at the coffee stands. In fact, my wife still has an exhaustive collection of punch cards from every corner stand between home and work and church and shopping.

Personal Latte StandWe have converted to “poor man’s lattes” and have eliminated the more….sophisticated version. We snagged us a $29.95 Mr. Coffee espresso maker down at the local Shopko. The milk frother doesn’t work so well so we just microwave the milk. But, hey, for the $4.50 I would spend on a venti mocha, I can drink a latte every day, all week.

We’ve collected all the essentials for making a variety of lattes. We even buy the 16 oz paper cups and lids with the skinny little straws, so when we get to work, everyone will think that we stopped at the corner latte stand. It’s all about the image, you know.

Right now, while I’m sitting at my computer, I’m sipping a delicious hot mocha – and I didn’t even have to leave my house.

Snooze Button…

snooze-buttonI pushed the snooze button for a half hour this morning. Normally, I push it once and get up. I don’t know what my problem was today. I got to bed at a good hour last night. I just couldn’t pull my lazy bum out of bed.

That’s bad news for me. It’s so easy for me to make that a habit. I need to force myself to get up when the alarm goes off or I’ll eventually end up sleeping until noon.

I’m really not sure why people who don’t like to get up in the morning push the snooze button so many times. It’s kinda like getting up several times every morning.

I suspect that I’m not the only one to have problems with the snooze button….

Winter X Games Style and Speed – Joe Parsons

While channel surfing on the television this evening, I paused on ESPN long enough to see that they were starting the semi-finals of the Winter X Games snocross event called Style and Speed.

This event is a race between two snowmobilers who have to run through a course that combines racing with freestyle. For those of my readers who are unfamiliar with freestyle, watch this video.

Keep in mind that the video above was from a year ago. The sport has progressed to the point that most competitions feature backflips and other tricks that completely amaze me.

What caught my attention and held my interest in the program (besides the fact that I’m a motorsports junkie), was that I noticed the name “Joe Parsons” listed as one of the semi-finalists. That was a familiar name to me.

We used to live about 2 blocks from the Parsons family.

It’s not like we were friends, or anything. In fact, I didn’t even know the family. I just saw their snowmobile trailer next to their home whenever I drove by.

My daughter, Ashley, graduated with Joe. They weren’t friends, but she knew who he was. She said that Joe missed a lot of school. Presumably he was out racing his snowmobile in various events.

In the Winter X Games event for 2009, Joe Parsons went on to win the Gold Medal.

I doubt I’ll ever get a chance to speak with him, so I’ll just comment here. Congratulations, Joe, on your Winter X Games Gold Medal. It’s always exciting to see locals rise to such levels.

I See in Black and White

Is truth dependent upon an individual’s standards or their culture? Are there no absolute truth’s?

I’ve always believed that God created a very black and white world, leaving very little gray area. The philosophy of relativism has always confused me. When I stumbled across this website, I better understood why it so confused me. Relativism contradicts itself every way you look at it.

Bible Resources

For those who are using the internet for their bible studies and research, I thought I would add another option that I stumbled upon.

BibleGateway.com is a popular site that I mentioned in a previous post has been my primary bible resource site for several years.

I think I may have found a new favorite. Biblos.com allows you to read different versions in parallel and it provides Greek text and interpretations, in addition to the commentaries, lexicons, atlases, etc. All this is in a much simpler navigation style of web page.

To your spiritual enrichment,
Don Wilson