A birds eye view.

I love the view from our attic window. I am starting to frame out that room up there so that I can use it as an office. It is going to be a very large room and I am going to love being able to CLOSE the door so that when I am on a private business call I'll get some peace and quiet. Right now I have to shush the kids running up and down the hallway to try and keep it a little bit quiet while I'm on the phone.

See View.

wow I wrote that a long time ago.

Redneck sports.

On the 4th of July we had the opportunity to go to a marvelous redneck sporting event.

Lawn tractor races.

It was a lot of fun. See pictures.

Jadin enjoying the heat.

Tristram also enjoying the heat. The race oval is behind him.

Simeon and his Aunt Katie

Is that not a sweet lawn mower or what!

Blast from the past.

Over the past 3 years through the remodel on our house we have boxed up a lot of stuff that is barely making it's way out of those boxes. One think that I found is a tape that made of my band when I was in college. Yeah back then I did not have the recording technology that I have today. We recorded this with a boombox and a microphone. I took the tape and did a line-in recording to my PC so I could clean up the audio on some of the tracks. I plan on re-doing all of the songs on the album but I was really pumped that I finally found it. I wrote most of the music in these songs, and I play the drums on all of these tracks. Here's one of my favorites.


"Darren" - This song is about a guy named Darren that we knew who killed himself. A real shame. He was a great guy too.

Hiking in the woods with pansies.

Today my friend Chris and I returned from a short campout and hike with 7 boys. Most of these 7 view themselves as "Macho", "Suave", "Cool", "Tough" etc... Well if I let the experience speak for them I felt like I was out in the woods with a bunch of pansies. I can guarantee that tomorrow at church some will be itching at some poison ivy, bug bites etc. At this point I am currently tick and poison ivy free. About 10 minutes after the hike began we started hearing things like "are we there yet?", "How much farther do we have to hike till we're done?", "Hey I have four bars on my cell phone. This is a great spot." Needless to say I had to laugh at all of this. When I was their age I loved to be outside. What is it these days that keep our youth from enjoying the outdoors? I have no idea so I'll continue to enjoy it myself in the meantime. Note to self, bring earplugs to keep youth radicalist lazialist propaganda from reaching my ears in the late late evening.

A Photo. if you look close you can see the rock I caught in mid-air......

Notice most of the boys are picking up rocks to throw in the lake and Hmmmm someone is enjoying the cellular telephone.......isn't nature wonderful.

Side note - Five of the kids did pretty good, as far as the hiking goes. It was a certain 2 of the kids that really just didn't get into the spirit of it at all.

The Rollercoasters of life.

Well it is Thursday and GREAT things to report. For the past two months we have not had a lot of what I would call our "bigger" jobs going on . I've been upgrading and updating our website, searching for work, applying for new vendor hardware partnerships, and the like. We got a call from one of our best customers yesterday with a Ton of work for us to do. Now the race begins. It has been a few slow months here at the office and that all changes yesterday. It will now be a Seven week coordination fest. Getting people to and from all the jobs all over the country, along with equipment, tools, and of course heavy equipment rental orchestrated across all these places. YEAH. But this is what we've been waiting for so I'm Ready. What a relief............

Now I just have to wait 30-45 days to get paid.

An awesome scripture.

I was sitting there on Sunday looking through the scriptures when one caught mine eye.

Proverbs 5:18-19 KJV - "Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love."

Now hind is translated in to "a doe" not that it is a bad thing to love her hind.....Wink Wink.

I just love that phrase. The wife of thy youth. AKA when we are all shriveled up remember to look upon her as though she were young..

Loosely translated, Keep Yer paws on yer own woman. And make sure she is Your woman.

I really do love my wife. I remember the day we met. I was going to ask her out and she was standing over by some guy. I thought he was her boyfriend. And well he kind of was. But I moved as fast as possible, staking my claim and not letting anyone dance with her for very long during a latter dancing activity. I kept stealing her back. Not long after that I proposed. we were married and now she is mine......HA HA HA.....I just thought you might want to know that.

D

Changes/Friendship/Me

Have you ever looked at yourself in the mental mirror and asked, "What happened to me?" Well perhaps not. But I have. There was a point in my life when I was almost always happy, smiling, had not really a care in the world. What others said did not offend me, and I was a pretty happy-go-lucky person. Sometimes that person still manifests himself in me, but not as often as I would like. What went wrong? I dunno. I'll be sorting that out for myself. I'd have to say that the most difficult time in my life was when I lived in a small town called Warden, WA.

"A short version of the Warden story"

2 weeks before my freshmen year in Colville, WA, my father came into my room on a friday and told me that I needed to pack my things cause we were moving on monday. I knew we were looking at moving but did not expect it to happen like this. I had lived in Colville since the 3rd grade, I had friends there, I was going to soon be the drummer for the HS Jazz band, I really liked the way my life was going, but how are you going to argue that case to your parents. Oh yeah one more important thing. I wasn't allowed to tell anyone that I was leaving. Long story behind that part but it made it all that much harder.

I remember the first day of school in Warden kind of like a movie. I walked into the Gym and a group of kids all started to chant and tease me. they threw papers at me, My older sister, not long after became a thriving part of that little club. Needless to say I had entered school at day 1 and had been labelled an outcast. I also knew that I had to endure 4 years of that. After a "wonderful" first week at school I went to church. I loved to go to church and always took the assignments I recieved with lots of zeal and duty. That first sunday in that new ward I was greeted by the faces of a great many of the hecklers from school that week. Lets just say that I was a bit overwhelmed. Soon after I was called at church to be the Teachers Quorum president. That did not help any. I think of the 14 or so teachers that there were I set up the sacrament every sunday. On church activity nights all they did was play basketball. So i stayed outside and rode my skateboard, while dodging the cars of the older kids who could drive that were trying to run me over. (my sister's friends) I never went inactive... I just did my duty and kept to myself.

Finally by my Jr year the heckling had turned a but violent. I did gain the trust of a few people that had been labelled as outcasts too. On a few occasions cars would be following me from school or church activities and I knew that it was a group of these people that were probably drinking and had it in their mind to harm me. On a few occasions they succeded, but most of the time I lost them. Halfway through my Jr year I just could not tolerate it any longer. I decided to apply to the running start program. In WA it is a program that allows HS students to go to college early and the credits count for HS and college. So I took the college entrance exams and passed. The next 1.5 years went a lot smoother. I worked full time and went to college full time. I was welcomed by almost everyone I met at college. I felt like it was therapy. Yeah I was a lot younger than most of them but they were great. I really did enjoy my time there. I think that is what saved my attitude for my church mission. I had grown quite bitter towards all of the people in Warden save a few. It helped me to see that not everyone is mean like that. To this day I have a real problem with people who are not accepting of others.

My misson only made me better. I like to think of it as Deep Therapy. I really needed it. I threw myself at my mission with all I had inside and the Lord magnified it 1000 times. I can truly say my mission was one of the truly satisfying times in my life.

Since my misson I have had a lot of ups and downs. I have found myself at times surrounded by people whose attitudes bring out that undesireable side of me. It tends to be people who are really negative or pessimistic and it snaps me back into what I would call a "Warden" mode. One of these people happens to be my sister. She and her husband and kids have just recently moved to Provo, UT. I hope and pray she can accept the people there. I had a hard time with her here. We lived 30 minutes from each other in the city and in 3 years she has come to see me on 3 occasions. We just have this inability to be close. I tried to see her at least 1-2 times per month, sometimes just popping in to say hi but I just feel a negative vibe being around her so it made it very difficult. Another group were the people I worked with at Wachter Network, my last job. I was with them for 3 years. I am glad to not be there anymore. Even though life is harder now I feel less of a negative drain on me.

If you are reading this you are probably one of the only friends I have ever had. All I ask is please be patient with me. My friend "skills" are a bit lackluster. I envy those people who grew up with a group of friends, either in school, or college. I had truly very few. I really have a hard time making friends, so for your friendship I am truly thankful.


Rant over...........

One of those days.

Have you ever had one of those days? You know the ones that nothing goes right in it? Well mine has been a couple of consecutive days or has it been weeks. After lying awake in bed since 3am this morning I have decided to go ahead and write this.

For those of you who do not know I am sort of self employed. I own a company called Stevens International Enterprises Inc. Which owns a company called WiFiable LLC. Now just because I own them does not mean I am "rollin in it". I get paid just like everyone else, except I only get paid when there is money left AFTER paying for everything else. WiFiable has been my main source of income since I walked away from my "regular" job on January 3 of this year.

Many people tell me that they couldn't do what I have done etc. Well let me tell you that sometimes I don't like doing it either. I believe that some of my aquaintances also think that I sit around and do nothing all day. Yes I do get to see my family all day, hang with them, eat with them, watch a little TV with they boys from time to time, but there is a major flipside too. Work does not start at 8 and end at 5, ever. Work can be and is sometimes around the clock. Customers can call me at 2am and I have to put on a chipper happy tone. "Can I Help you?" Sometimes I have had to leave in the middle of dinner to drive 3+ hours to middle of nowhere Oklahoma and fix something that takes 30 minutes and drive home that night. I also do not get paid like a "normal" job. Sometimes I'll get $25,000 in a week, then I have to pay employees, Travel Expenses, Insurances, Equipment rentals, etc. then sometime later I get paid. Sometimes I don't get paid. sometimes the customer for some insane reason thinks they can pay their Net 30 bill in Net 150.......

Anyway point being, the grass is not always greener. Don't ever tell me that I "have it so good" or you might get a call from me some morning at 3 am asking if you want to accompany me on a short 4 hr drive to climb a 130' tall 1' wide tower and (literally) hang out there till the problem is fixed.

Not to menton the stress that can creep into home life. The next time your wife (or significant other) asks you how much the paycheck was this week tell them that there wasn't one and you have no idea when the next one will come.... See how well that goes over.


Rant over.......