Lent

This year for some inexplicable reason I decided to give up one of my very favorite things. Pop.

Now, I mostly drink diet anyway so it won't be a huge deal for me calorie-wise but I am trying to make a meaningful sacrifice during this time. This should count as I typically crave the stuff like nobody's business.

My wife decided to give up sweets of all kinds. I think that that would be pretty hard to manage since it's tough to define everything that is a sweet. Neither of us smoke but take this for example. Are Swisher Sweets, sweets? Either way, no sweets for her until at least after Easter.

I will try to be nice and not eat too many sweets in front of her. :)

Durability

On of the things that always amazes is me is when you see patio furniture that looks like it could go in any living room and not look out of place. The cushions and fabric look and feel just like a normal couch.

My question is, if they can make couches durable enough to survive as patio furniture then why can't they make them durable enough to withstand my kids and dog?

Maybe the best solution for me would be to buy a patio set instead of couches the next time I go shopping for furniture. Then perhaps they would last more than a year without looking like they had sat outside forever.

My New Blog

I finally got my own domain and started a new blog. It's called Arctic Doom, mostly just because I think that that sounds cool, but I'll be blogging on a variety of topics including God, personal finance, and science.

Check it out if you get the chance. FYI I will still be posting here as well.

Camera Phone?

Our most recent camera had a cool feature that I hadn't thought of before but love now that I have it. It uses one of those canon camera batteries that you would normally expect to see on a cell phone.

It lasts way longer than AA's and recharging it is pretty painless. Now that cameras use so much power doing large megapixel pictures and video, this really helps.

Plus most cameras now have huge view screens that eat up power relentlessly and this makes it much easier to deal with that.

The only downside is if I'm out of town and forget the charger. I can't just pop in a couple AA's to get me by, but so far that hasn't happened.

New Laptop

The church is replacing my wife's work laptop! I'm pretty excited because the old one has become a Frankenstein monster of replaced parts and issues. I have replaced parts, had it fixed and cleaned all in the name of keeping it working as long as possible.

Thankfully our problems are nearly over as we are getting a new dell with which to work from now on.

I'm excited!!