High Vantage Point

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.

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.

We 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.

I 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….

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.

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.

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

Watch this video before you read on.

I might be….different….than most people, but when I saw this video, it reminded me of the book, “Dominion” which I had just finished listening to on audiobook.

So, what the heck does this video have to do with “Dominion”? Both made me think about how people of different races think about and act toward one another.

I’ve always considered myself to be “color blind”, but after listening to “Dominion”, I might have to admit that I put various people in little boxes and think differently about them in certain settings. That doesn’t apply only to race, either. I think that I might think differently of people from different economic standing, as well.

I’ve always tried to treat others with great kindness, but maybe, without even realizing it, I have reacted to others in ways that might not have been appropriate. One more character flaw to work on.

The book “Dominion” also touches on the subject of why God allows bad things to happen to good people. Many people turn away from God as the result of not fully understanding things that have happened in their lives. This book provides a very revealing example.

I was captivated throughout the book.

My idea of shopping, and my wife, Leslie’s, idea of shopping are very different, indeed.

When I go shopping, I know exactly what I want and I look for it. If I find it, I buy it. If I don’t find it, I leave. I’m in and out in 10 minutes.

When Leslie goes shopping, she has a general idea of what she wants. She goes to the rack and proceeds to touch each and every item and analyze the color, style, price, etc., then she moves to the next rack to start the process again.

After she has thoroughly memorized the entire inventory in the department, she selects two or item from each rack and carries them to the dressing rooms. Two hours later, she lines up in the check-out area to purchase the two or three items she has selected.

When I go shopping with Leslie, I spend a bunch of time just waiting. Waiting for her to finish her shopping is one of the most agonizing things I’m compelled to do. I’m happy to say, that I found a list of ways for guys to keep themselves occupied while waiting for their wives. Try them out and let me know how they work for you.

I’m not sure what I enjoyed more - the Movie I was watching, or the commercials.

There was a commercial for “ShamWoW!” It’s some type of hybrid chamois/paper towel that absorbs 40 times its weight in liquid. This particular infomercial presents several examples of how to use it. After each example, they wring it out into a plate to show how much liquid it soaked up.

That commercial was followed by one for the “Barack Obama Victory Plate.” This commemorative plate has a picture of our new president with some inscriptions about what a great president he’s going to be. Listening to this commercial was not dissimilar to listening to George Stephanopoulos report on the landslide victory over John McCain….sickening.

I’m impressed by the marketing savvy of Hallmark. Think of it as an up-sell. Once you purchase your ShamWow! you will need a plate to wring out the waste into.

This is an event that happens about this time each year. Leslie won’t miss an episode.

There will be several weeks of auditions to endure. We’ll have to listen to thousands of “William Hungs” just to find a few “Carrie Underwoods” and “David Cooks”.

The one benefit of losing my wife to American Idol during this season, is that I have more time in the evening to work on HighVantagePoint.

We still have some together time, despite American Idol. That’s because we both are glued to “24″. I won’t go so far as to say that we are indebted to Jack Bauer for the success of our marriage, but it’s great to have found something that pulls us together for at least one hour each week.