I just finished two books (well, one I’m finishing tonight) – ‘The Invention of Hugo Caberet’ and ‘My life as a 3 foot tall monster’, the later of which is a short ‘bio’ of Kevin Clash, the puppeteer who does Elmo for Sesame Street. The Hugo Caberet book is cool, and I would recommend it, but other than that, nothing really life changing.

The Elmo book is a big ‘meh…’. It ranks up there in the category of people that are famous thinking that they have something earth shattering to say or to pass along to others. It’s that Universal knowledge that seems to not really ever be either Universal or knowledge. In fact, I would rather that they just simply didn’t say anything…

Wow, that’s being a bit harsh eh? .

But the thing is, I’ve really felt like photography has been a relaxing, creative outlet that strangely is mixed with work and I wanted to bring up the camera for similar reasoning that someone might bring up a guitar; it just would be fun to work with and allowed me to worship a bit by being creative.

Anyway, now I’m sharing with y’all. Enjoy. And for you folks that have made Cedar Campus a destination, feel free to share cool stories.

Photoalbum # 1 – Family

Photoalbum #2 – People

Photoalbum #3 – Cool Photos Part 1

Photoalbum #4 – Cool Photos Part 2

AND….Photos from the soo locks. We got a chance to see a boat go through.

Enjoy…and again, click on the above to check out the full albums.

A couple of days later, I noticed that I had a sharp stinging pain near my elbow. In between exchanging phone calls and figuring out why this electron was not flowing the right way, I took my terribly long fingernail, I have long fingernails, and scatched at the itch thinking that this little itch was no different than any other mosquito bite, ingrown hair, or whatever else could cause the sharp pain I felt. It’s the little things.

Almost immediately a sharp pain came when pressing my elbow on the table. ‘That’s odd’, I thought, as I just continued to work. The next day, the small little pinprick of a bite had turned into a red raisin-sized bite looking up at me. ‘That’s odd too’, I thought as I watched that raisn grow into a quarter, become raised, and a pancake-sized area surround it. It’s the little things.

Thursday I went in to get looked at at promptcare. Since it was the end of the day, I managed to avoid the oxymoron of prompt care (which, in my experience, has never really prompt). To their credit the receptionist, who was dressed from head to toe in a very imposing, out of place, black scrub, was really responsive about getting me in. I was given a strong antibiotic and told to go home and ice what had become a boil. It’s the little things.

Boils are essentially the worst thing you could wish on someone. Hearing Sunday school stories growing up, I never really could visualize a boil and neither could I find too much sympathy for the Egyptians who were given boils all over their bodies. Wow, I was wrong. One boil has brought back those stories countless times this week and as I stared at the almost inch high mountain raising up from my skin I wondered what it might have been like to be an Egyptian and having countless versions of these all over your body.

Well, Saturday comes and while on a road trip the boil, well, exploded. Puss and gunk just started shooting out of this skin volcano while we were at a zoo in Springfield. Needless to say, it was a little awkward. That night I made a return visit to my black scrubbed friends at prompt care; again, it was the end of the day so prompt care was really quite prompt. I was greeted by a wonderfully surprised nurse who took one look at Mt St. Helens and was a bit taken back. We joked that I brought a small ray of light to her otherwise dull day. She was wonderfully kind and helpful as she re-dressed my arm after getting some of the evil out of it. What surprised me was that I felt proressively better as the day progressed.

If this were a play, though, today would have been the final act. I knew my fate. This morning when I woke up my suddenly quiet friend on my arm had died back down a bit, and there were just faint whisps of steam coming from it’s summit. I got tested on Saturday for MRSA and was to receive the results this afternoon. This time around there were no black scrubs, but I did get called up and the nurse while walking me back grabbed my chart. She asked me in the room ‘Do you smoke?’ ‘No.’ ‘When did you stop?’ Slightly confused and recalling the groucho marx skit where he asked ‘When did you stop beating your wife?’ I laughed. She didn’t. She looked at me, the chart, and the little ‘Hi, my name is pete juvinall’ paper that I carried in with me and realized she grabbed the wrong chart. She went hurriedly out of the room. It’s the little things.

Well, my doctor came in and we got down to business. My doctor is wonderful; he’s very kind and compassionate, and watches homestar runner and reads stuff on C-Net; in essence, my kind of guy. He took one look at it and I told him he my permission to go a digging and a digging he went. In true Jack Bauer/24 style, we pulled out the bright light and the prodding began. When it was all done I had what amounted to a hole in my arm but I felt tons better; the infection had begun to dig into my skin and had made it’s way in quite deeply. The other shoe dropped when i found out I did have a methacyllin resistant staph infection. Fortunatly, it was not resistant to other antibiotics which I’m now promptly on.

Driving back, it made me appreciate the age I’m in. I can’t imagine having an infection like this 100 or 200 years ago. Suddenly, it made sense why the average lifespan was so low. It amazed me that such such a little thing like a bacteria can do so much damage and inflict so much pain, but of course, it’s always the little things that sneak up. 

 - Yesterday was technology day.  We ended up severing ties with our dear ‘friends’ Verizon; we switched to vonage.  Along with that, I followed the instructions on their site and made our house into a closed loop.  If you cut your physical connection to Verizon, you can plug your vonage router into a phone jack in your house and suddenly all of your phones are vonage phones; it’s very cool.  We also bought an iMac this year; yes, an iMac.  Last night, after some struggle, I finally finished configuring it (it always is a struggle in a paradigm shift). We are owners of a computer manufactured by Apple…wow, I said it. I hear admitting it is a first step.

 - Lord willing, we’ll have some big news to announce soon. Pray for us if you think about it, we’re trying to make something logistically work that will be…big.

 - Along with that, Sunday was one of those Spirit filled days at Church where God really affirmed alot of things in our hearts.  The talk is available here, and it was about God’s will for us, and death and doing your life well.  Great stuff; we sang ‘We Rest On Thee’ afterwards, which, if one could have them, is our theme song as a couple (like Over The Rhine’s music, that song factors in a couple of key moments for us in our marriage).  Anyway, couldn’t sing the second or third verse just for weeping; the Pastor led and I have to wonder what he was thinking. It’s a balm to have God really challenge, convict and encourage you all at the same time. 

We go in faith, our own great weakness feeling,
And needing more each day Thy grace to know:
Yet from our hearts a song of triumph pealing,
“We rest on Thee, and in Thy Name we go.”
Yet from our hearts a song of triumph pealing,
“We rest on Thee, and in Thy Name we go.”

Periodically trains have been crawling past us on the railroad tracks in the background.

Hopefully we’ll not be shoveling our roof .

Oh, and one more picture sitting at our front door.  Here’s where you see the real hight of things (the top of the railing is about 4 feet high):

Noon Update: This is suposed to go on for another 12 hours potentially.  The snow is now above the railing and way above the roof on the car.  Updates coming shortly for pictures.  The snow shows no signs of stopping…

9 p.m. Update: I think the snow has stopped.  Regardless, I finished making a second pass through the driveway only to land at a three foot drift known as my street.  Seriously, it’s pretty sad when you don’t know where your street is and the snow is too deep to feel the street.  I had to dig into the snow to find the curb.  The big variable will be how much they can get plowed by dawn as to whether things will open again tomorrow or not.

On getting a snack:

“I want Cereal!  That’s NOT Cereal, that’s Cherrios!”

On apologizing after getting in trouble:

“I’m sorry” 

“Why are you sorry Aidan?”

“I’m sorry because I want you to be happy.  I love you daddy!”

On What he wants to be when he grows up:

“I want to be an astronaut and play music.”

Today was a battle of inches.  It started around 5:50 this morning with Aidan getting up to go potty and wanting to wake up for the day.  Melissa is sick and so I flew solo for most of the day.  During the midst of the day there were a ton of time outs, a couple of spankings and a few stern talks; we’re firm believers in a strata of discipline.  Tonight, I may have bit off more than I could chew in starting to get rid of his pacificer by cutting the tip of it down.  Needless to say, he isn’t going to be right away and notices things are a bit different.

Tonight I also thought about how God sees us.  While I was sitting with him, weary and sinking into despair about the length of my day I thought about how God sees us and about how, as a perfect God, how much he may get frustrated at our behavior and yet still loves us.  How some days as we try and learn lessons changing us becomes a battle of inches.  For Aidan, my ultimate goal is an individual who loves and respects authority and who does things with integrity.  For God, the ultimate goal is fitting us for heaven, in technical terms to sanctify us. 

Along the way there are huges lessons that are learned – learning to go potty, eating solid food, learning to read – but there are also days that are battles that gain only inches on the way to adulthood; the only results of which are tears, disciplines and sorrow at the end of the day. In these days, it’s important to think about the final product.

Days like today make me look at my father and God with tons more respect that had before today started.

Melissa’s mom passed away last Sunday morning rather suddenly.  Please pray for us and the family as we navigate the upcoming months.

I’m finishing grading from the semester today.  Over the next week, I’m taking a brief break from blogging (unless something cool comes up) and catching up on some reading.  Specifically, Edward Tufte’s new book and U2byU2.  Starting Monday, we’ll be traveling, first to Danville and then on to Urbana @ St. Louis where Melissa and I will be working with Paul Grant on the Urbana.org webcast. 

I’m going to bring some of my stuff down and hopefully do a TWiT-style podcast (maybe) that I’ll post up here (it depends on how ambitious I am and what I’m doing).  At the very least, Notes… will switch over to Urbana coverage and what we’re doing each day.  So, get outside, drink some hot chocolate and I’ll see you all in a week.

Merry Christmas!

We had an additional night of ibuprofen/tylenol and his fever was non-existent for the whole night (thanks for your prayers!).  The new themometer was really nice because we didn’t have to wake him up to get his temp.  We gave him his last dose of it this morning and we’re going to watch his temprature all day. 

However, he is on a stronger antibiotic that is giving him more diapers.  We’re giving him gatorade today to keep his electrolytes up so he doesn’t get dehydrated and we’ll see how that goes.  Thanks fo your prayers.

Much love,

Pete, Melissa, and Aidan