Christmas With A Purpose

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you have had a great day thus far and continue to enjoy the last week of 2007! I, for one, will be looking for some time to write, both for the blog here and just in general. For those of you who haven't heard yet, we're pulling Regenerate Our Culture back to it's feet, starting with the magazine, and I really hope to write a few articles over there this year.

I was talking to a friend the other day and she made a comment that made me think. Somewhere along the way, we've made Christmas about visiting family we pretend to like and stuffing our faces with food. Instead of focusing on Christ and really enjoying our time with family, we've turned instead gluttony and being fake. Where's the "joy to the world" and "peace on earth" in that? Well, today I'm making it a point to really be thankful for what Christ has done for me, I'm going to enjoy spending time with my family -- fairly easy since I actually like most of them... okay, all of them -- and while I'm going to enjoy the food that is always amazing around here, I will not stuff my face. I promise.

Today, and life in general, really is different when you come at it with a purpose. Try it, enjoy the difference, taste the rainbow. Merry Christmas!

P.S. If you're interested in being involved with ROC at all, drop us a line -- contact [at] regenerateourculture [dot] com -- and let us know how you want to be involved! We're still in the beginning stages of pulling it all back together, but we're going to need plenty of writers, probably some people who can proofread articles, and since I'm currently working on the website, I could use some people who enjoy burying themselves in PHP. Once things get rolling, it would also be great to have some people who enjoy photography and graphic design.

Takin' it back

I was just cleaning up some stuff on my server and ran across this link. Anyone remember when we launched this?

http://thebeginning.regenerateourculture.com/

There is an audio clip on there with some music that I played.. umm.. yeah. A lot of things have changed in two years, including the music I play.

Let There Be Light!

Extra, extra, read all about it, Jake has internet again! Actually, we got it back yesterday, but I'm just now getting around to posting about it. We lost our electricity for about 48 hours, which really is a lot shorter than the 7-10 days that they were predicting!

A few good things actually came out of the whole thing. Since Dad and I didn't work, we had enough time to clean up all of the major stuff in the front yard, which really turned out to be a lot of fun! I found some work gloves that are awesome, got to climb all up in a frozen pine tree -- and had the scare of my life when I put my foot down on an inch of solid ice at 25 feet in the air -- pulled some huge limbs off a pine tree with some rope tied to the back of my dad's pickup, and sawed way too many limbs into pieces. (I have a few pictures of the whole event up right now and we'll be adding more in the next day or so.)

We also got enough firewood out of the deal to keep us at least semi-warm until the power was turned on. And we hung out as a family a little more than we usually do. Something about only having one source of heat in the house brings the entire family together!

We're getting back into the swing of things now. I enjoy being able to get up at 2am and get something to drink without stubbing my toe in the dark. I like being able to see where I've stubbed my toe without pulling out a flashlight.

In other news, we've had our Christmas tree up since Sunday, yet we've yet to decorate it. Oh, and Al Gore is against divorce... because it's bad for the environment! Really!

Icey status update

For those of you that don't know, I live in Tulsa, OK. If you haven't heard the news and seen the pics, we've had quite a bit of ice the last couple of days. Freezing rain, basically. Everything is coated in an inch or so of ice, power lines are down, and hundreds of trees in the area have collapsed onto themselves, roofs, cars and one huge branch fell inches in front of my neighbor. It's pretty crazy around here.

My dad and I didn't go into work today, he doesn't have power at the shop and since I don't get off until late, I didn't want to be out on the roads in case it freezes. So far, we've spent the day sawing branches into pieces, making trips around town looking for batteries and stopping at free wifi hotspots where they still have power.

It's fun, I'm sawing wood, being wet. Lotsa pictures coming next time I get internet. Thank you IHOP for the free wifi!

Thought for the day [12-8]

Don't get so caught up thinking through your future and trying to figure it out that you forget to live in the present. Sure, it's good to be prepared, but it's also good to balance your checkbook, pay your bills and.. ahem.. clean your room.