High Vantage Point

I need to do the dishes more frequently.

I realized that I had never put up a photo of our new home. We’ve been here a year, now.

Here’s a couple shots at dusk last winter. Since then, we’ve added an underground irrigation system and have planted 25,000 sq ft of lawn.

I wrote this post almost a year ago, but never published it. I went a long time without blogging and am just getting back into the swing of things. I found this in my “incomplete drafts” folder so I decided to publish it, now.

Christmas 2007

Yes, we are late but this year we actually got this sent out. Usually, we procrastinate writing this letter until it’s too late and then simply don’t do it.

For the first time ever, we have a good excuse for being late. We have spent the past several months building and moving into our new house.

Our 2300 Sq. Ft. home sits on one acre in the East Valley area of Yakima. We enjoy our view of the Ahtanum Ridge and the valley below.

We have much work ahead of us to complete several projects – mostly the landscaping, a deck on the rear of the house, and an adjacent garage/shop that Don has dreamed of for many, many years.

We moved into our home just in time for our annual family Christmas Eve dinner and gift exchange. Joining us were all three of our children, Mom and Dad Wilson, Ted and Debbi and family, Dave and Vickie and family, Dennis and Shenna and family, and Alyssa’s boyfriend, Daniel.

Alyssa is living in Nampa, ID, sharing a house with four of her friends that she met while attending Northwest Nazarene University. She graduated this past May from the nursing program at NNU and is now preparing to get her masters degree so that she can become a school teacher. She spends most of her spare time with Daniel.

Ashley is attending Yakima Valley Community College and working at The Coldstone Creamery. She isn’t clear, yet, as to what her major career emphasis will be, but has plenty of time to decide. She just purchased a Siberian Husky puppy that she has named Kaiyah, who has quickly become a beloved member of our family.

When Austin isn’t working on his “homeschool” work, he’s playing xbox or computer games. Kart racing is out of season, and we’re trying to decide if we should race again next summer or if we should sell the karts and get some dirt bikes to ride around the surrounding hillside. Austin is pictured, here with Ashley’s puppy, Kaiyah.

We wish you all the merriest of Christmas seasons. May God bless you, richly, as you celebrate the birth of his son, Jesus Christ.

Don and Leslie Wilson

Alyssa, Ashley, Austin

Now, I’m even late for Christmas 2008, so I think I’ll add those details, now.

Christmas 2008

We celebrated Jesus birth in the traditional manner – by gathering with all our family and eating lots of food. Hey, we prayed before each meal, alright?!

The traditional soup kitchen meal at our home preceded the Christmas Eve celebration at our church. Then we followed up with the opening of gifts. We were joined for the evening by Mom and Dad, Ted and Debbie and thier 3, Vickie and Dave and their 2, Dennis and Shenna and their 3, and finally, Leslie and I and our 3 plus Alyssa’s boyfriend, Casey, Ashley’s boyfriend, Eric, and Eric’s brother Ryan……whew! Soup is all we can afford.

Austin has his driving permit so he’s learning to drive more than just a racing kart. He attends East Valley High School and is active in they youth group at West Valley Church of the Nazarene.

Ashley is attending Central Washington University, my dad’s and my alma mater. It’s nice to have her close enough to see her fairly frequently. I’ve already mentioned her boyfriend, Eric, who is also attending CWU and is an intern at the local CMA Church.

Alyssa works at a child care center in Nampa, while preparing to enter a master’s of education program at Northwest Nazarene University. She is dating Casey who is the Pastor of the Children’s Ministries at Valley Shepard Church of the Nazarene in Meridian, ID.

Leslie still cuts hair, I still collect payments from apple sales, and we both spend the rest of our time working in, on, and around our house. We spent the better part of last year putting in the irrigation and planting our lawn.

As before, we wish you all the merriest of Christmas seasons. May God bless you, richly, as you celebrate the birth of his son, Jesus Christ.

Don and Leslie Wilson
Alyssa, Ashley, Austin

We were getting a little cluttered in our pantry and needed to do something about it. This had been on my honey-do list for long enough.

On Saturday, I made the 10 mile trek to Home Depot to purchase a couple door racks to install. After arriving back at the homestead and preparing to get ‘er done, I found that the included hardware didn’t include the proper fasteners for hollow doors.

That left me with two options – either run back into town for hollow door anchors, or install solid core doors.

Since we needed some other things at Shopko, anyway, we stopped by Lowes for the hollow door anchors.

We had already arranged to meet some friends for dinner Saturday evening, so I had to put off the installation until Sunday afternoon.

I can do most of the fix-it jobs around the house, but what takes a professional 10 minutes will usually take me 2 hours, bloodied knuckles, and some silently muttered language that I’m not very proud of.

This task was no different. In fact, my daughter, Ashley, felt sorry for me and gave me her assistance.

Well, you can see the results in the photo above. Not bad, for me. Functional – that was my purpose.

When the temperature around our home reached single digits, we had to make it a point to give Kaiyah, our Siberian Husky fresh water several times each day. Usually we just add a layer of fresh water on top of the ice in her bowl until it reaches several inches thick. Then we pound out the ice and start over.

I usually knock the ice out of her bowl somewhere outside her kennel, but a few nights ago, someone left the big block of ice inside her kennel. This block was about 12 inches in diameter and at least 3 inches thick. I’d say it would have to have been at least 5-10 pounds of ice. More on this later.

I got to bed a little late one night. I needed to be up around 4:00 a.m. the next morning, so 11:00 is way to late to settle down at night. I was very tired, so sleep came to me swiftly.

I awoke about 1:30 a.m. to the sound of Kaiyah whining. I was annoyed at being awaken, but chose to ignore her and attempt to get back to sleep.

The whining continued. Around 2:30, I climbed angrily out of bed and began to dress. My wife stopped me and convinced me that going out would only reinforce her whining, as she would know that if she whines long enough, she will get what she wants. It was likely that a coyote was hanging around and Kaiyah just wanted to go play.

Finally, around 3:30, after continued whining, I got up and went to the other end of the house and curled up on a couch to get a brief nap before I had to get up and around.

I overslept and was a little late for work, therefore, I was in a big hurry and wasn’t able to tend to Kaiyah before leaving.

Around 8:00, Leslie called me from home and exclaimed, “You won’t believe what happened to Kaiyah!”

All kinds of horrible thoughts bounced around in my head. I replied, “Oh no, what’s wrong?”

She told me this story….

Leslie walked out the garage door to tend to Kaiyah. Kaiyah sat and looked at Leslie without moving.

That is highly unusual. Kaiyah is pretty high strung and always is on her hind legs, jumping up and down in her kennel when people come around…..but this time, Kaiyah just sat.

Leslie asked, “What’s wrong, Kaiyah.”

Kaiyah sat and looked.

Again, Leslie asked, “What’s wrong, Kaiyah.”

Slowly, Kaiyah began to stand.

It was at that moment, that Leslie saw that the big block of ice was stuck to Kaiyah’s butt. No wonder she was whining all night! Who wouldn’t whine if they had a 10 pound block of ice stuck to their butt.

Leslie slowly helped Kaiyah into the garage and began to pour warm water over the ice to get it to release it’s grip on Kaiyah’s butt hairs.

When it finally fell off, Kaiyah immediately became herself again, and jumped up and down, excitedly asking for food.

Does this make us bad parents?

I’m so sorry – we have no photos.

The other day, it got down to 3 degrees F, here. At the same time, the wind was gusting at our house up to about 30 mph. I was outside in that for a little while, then hurried back in the house.

We worried about our dog, who lives outside in a kennel next to our house. Siberian Huskies are made for the cold, but how cold can they handle for extended periods of time. A quick internet search revealed that they are good down to -50 or -60 degrees F.

I ran across this wind chill table. According to the table, we reached 30-35 degrees below zero. It felt like it!

Although I haven’t posted here in some time, I have been actively writing and publishing material on the internet.  I thought that I should let you know about last week’s project which was a post on HubPages called “Lyrics to Amazing Grace“.

“Lyrics to Amazing Grace” is designed as a commercial website, but I’ve added a good summary of the history of the song.  The story behind the song is really interesting, and I had a great time researching it.

I’ve always liked the song “Amazing Grace” and decided to use it as a topic for a web project.  The project was to undertake the challenge of creating a website that would reach the top in a Google search.  I selected the topic because of my interest in the song, and a desire to learn about its origin.

I began by deciding on a keyphrase that I would target.  That keyphrase was “Lyrics to Amazing Grace”.  I selected this keyphrase because my research determined that if I reach the #1 position in a Google search, I would receive 180 visitors to my site on a daily basis.  Also, the competition is a very low 2,000 sites competing for that keyphrase.

As it turns out, I published the site on 2/10 and by 2/12 the google search for the phrase match “Lyrics to Amazing Grace” was in the #7 position.  Not only that, but there are 2 other websites in the top 20 positions of the Google search that point directly to my website.  Now, of course, that can quickly change, but I’m working on some techniques that should improve the ranking.  In addition, I’m working on creating more high ranking links to that site.  this blog post is one of them.  Take notice that the title to this blog post is “Lyrics to Amazing Grace” and there is a heavy use of that phrase throughout this post.  That is done purposely so that the search engine spiders that crawl around the web seeking appropriate content will easily recognize the topic of this post.

All that probably sounds pretty Geekie to most, but I find it pretty fascinating and I don’t really consider myself a Geek.

I ran across a funny little display of some of the idiosyncrasies of the English language. I immediately thought of Uncle Stan. I know Stan will enjoy this and I’m sure there are others. Read on….

Let’s face it – English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France … Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat. We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, two geese. So one moose, two meese? One index, two indices? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out, and in which an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

P.S. – Why doesn’t “Buick” rhyme with “quick”?

It’s been almost forever since I’ve posted. I haven’t found 2 seconds to sit down a my computer in ages.

There’s been so much happening, I’ll have to summarize.

Top story: We’ve finally moved into our new house. It snowed and rained the whole time we were moving our things in. But it was beautiful weather before and beautiful after. My family has been staying their, now, for about a week, but I haven’t slept their once yet.

I haven’t slept in my new home because I’ve been staying at Dad and Mom’s house while they have been in Seattle. Their week with Opal became 2 weeks when Dad got sick and ended up spending one of those weeks in the hospital. They are coming home tomorrow. Ken is driving them to Cle Elum and my brother-in-law, Dave, is driving with me to meet them there and drive them the rest of the way home.

Ashley just got a new puppy that lives with us. It’s a beautiful little Siberian Husky. We call her “Kaiyah” which is the name of a mountain range in Alaska.

A couple weeks ago, I went to the Apple Cup at Husky Stadium with my wife and my two younger children. One of the clients of a beautician at my wife’s salon gave the tickets to us. What an amazing game. Whether a Husky fan or a Cougar fan, you’ve got to admit that it was a very exciting game.

My job has become quite challenging in recent months. In September, one of the managers that works for me retired, and in November, one of my two mailroom clerks left for a higher paying job. I was asked to absorb those positions within my group rather than to replace the positions. So, I did some restructuring of my department and re-aligned the duties within my staff. I have a great group of people working with me who have really stepped up to the challenge, but as a group we have been really taxed. Once we’ve completed all the cross training, we’ll be fine, but in the meantime there’s lots of overtime for those of us who aren’t eligible for overtime pay.

Always remember, ‘It is, what it is. Never let the things that you have no control over, get under your skin. That’s just life. When you do have a problem, remember these steps. Recognize it, address it, learn from it, get over it, and move on.

I was searching the web and happened across an amazing and interesting website called BibleMap.org. With this website, you can type in any book and chapter from the bible and it will pull up a map pointing to every location identified within that reference. What a great tool to aid in biblical research!