A cold night in Alabama

I realize that we are over a week into the month of January, and I have a confession to make.  Rebecca and I finally got around to taking our Christmas decorations down on Saturday.  We didn't want to take them down because we are of the "purist" people.  That means we don't put up Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving.  It seems like every year we forget just how busy December is and how hard it is to find time to put a tree up and decorate the house.  So we didn't even get our tree up until a week or two before Christmas.  After going through all of the effort, we wanted to make sure the tree and all of the decorations felt wanted, so we just left them up.

OK, now back to the story.  I put all of the boxes of decorations in the attic on Saturday afternoon.  As it got later in the evening, we got a little bit cold but didn't really think anything of it.  We just covered up in a blanket and played the new Super Mario Bros. for the Wii after Mary Beth went to bed.  (As a side note, that game is great and I think my wife is addicted.)  After I got a serious case of what I have termed "Nintendo thumb," we called it a night and went to bed.  Mary Beth woke us up crying a little before 2:00.  As I went to check on her, I decided that the house was too cold and went to crank up the thermostat.  When I did, nothing happened.  No response at all.  Dead.  Get the idea?  So we all piled up in the bed trying to get warm for the next 30 minutes, then decided that it was just too cold to sleep.  So, about 2:45, we did a quick Google search for hotels in Decatur, AL.  We couldn't justify spending much when we were only going to be there about six hours, but we didn't want to go to some shady place, either.  It's a fine line.  We ended up at the La Quinta Inn and had a warm room in which to sleep and get ready for church.  I think "La Quinta" may mean "place to go when you're thermostat doesn't work."

After church, we had a good friend who just happens to own a Heating and Cooling business come over to see what we needed to do.  I thought we might need to buy a new thermostat.  Rebecca was hoping it wasn't the entire heating unit.  After a few checks and about 10 minutes, our friend flipped a switch in the attic and told me to check the thermostat.  POWER!  HEAT!  He saved the day by turning the power on to the heating unit.  When I was putting decorations up on Saturday, I had inadvertently flipped that power switch.  So I felt like a big loser the rest of the day, but at least I was a warm loser.

Stay on target

I'm already finding it very difficult to keep up with my goals for the year, and barely over a week into the year!  That doesn't bode well for those goals I set.  I believe I didn't appropriate my time correctly and vastly underestimated the time I need for work.  Not my photography work, but my full-time job.  It's the one that pays the bills, so it takes priority over a lot of other things such as this blog and redesigning my web site.  Hopefully it's just the first-of-the-year rush and things will slow down in a few weeks.  If not, it's going to be a long year.

On a much lighter note, it snowed. In Alabama. And it stuck to the ground.  Not a lot of snow, mind you, but a little is better than nothing, especially when it hasn't been more than a degree or two above freezing all week.  Even large bodies of water are starting to freeze over.  It's a different winter world than I'm used to, and it makes me feel like a little kid.  Seeing the snow falling yesterday and again this morning just made me giddy inside.  I hope to leave my office to see several inches on the ground.  I doubt it will happen, but I'd love to go home, bundle up with my wife and 15-month-old, and play in the snow.

New Year, New Blog, New Goals

As we enter this new year, we are no longer in the "ohs."  Every new year, millions (probably billions) of people make resolutions, most of which will probably be broken some time before spring rolls around.  People resolve to lose weight, to read more, to watch less television, to be a better husband/wife/father/mother/daughter/son.  Resolutions are good, but I didn't want to make resolutions this year.  Everybody does it, so I wanted to do something different.  Therefore, I'm making goals for 2010.

Let me note now that I already typed out my goals for 2010 and saved them to my external hard drive.  Then my hard drive crashed, so I no longer have my original set of goals.  I think there were about 12 of them because 12 is my favorite number.  It seemed like a good number to me.  If I only made a few and didn't meet all of the goals, I'd beat myself up about it.  If I make too many, I'm again setting myself up for failure because I won't be able to meet all of my goals.

Without further ado, here are my goals for 2010 (the ones I remember, at least).

1.   Grow closer to God.  I want to make sure that people know that I'm just an instrument of the Almighty.
2.   Finish my MBA.  I'm on track to complete it in December.
3.   Redesign my web site.  Look for the redesign of J McKnight Photography to come early in January.
4.   Four weddings and a funeral. I want to shoot at least four weddings this year.  I was just kidding about the funeral.
5.   Blog regularly.  I want to update this blog at least twice every week.  One update will be photography related and the other will be personal.
6.   Read six books.  My plan is to read at least four business related books and two photography related books.  If the books happen to overlap, that's just a plus.  When I finish a book, I'll post a review here on my blog.
7.   Run in three 5k races.  This will give me a goal to stay in shape in a round-about way.
8.   Stop biting my fingernails.  This one's been on my list for a while.  Hopefully this is the year I succeed at doing it.
9.  
10.
11.
12.

I'll update this post as I remember the last five of my goals.