amazing west...

this is a picture that i took today while traveling through texas.... i love this state...

-D

Mele Kalikimaka!!!

So, this is Christmas. laura and I are in greenwood, sc... and I LOVE my nephews... they are amazing. the boy in the photo is one of my sister's sons. Joshua. He's the man (actually they all are)... anyways, today dad, Josh, me and the boys went to the gun range and shot some guns... thats kinda country of me to say.lol. either way, i've had a lot of fun down here. laura is staying until the 26th but i'm staying until the 27th, when Nick Connolly will pick me up in augusta on I-20. cause then we're heading to SEATTLE!>!>!>!
it should be fun...

but anyways, until then, have a merry christmas! i'll drop back in tomorrow and let y'all know what Santa brought me...

- d

The Delamination of Emotion

Disclaimer: This blog is not supposed to offend anybody or insult the way they share information. Thank you.

Blog is below lyrics...

A billion people died on the news tonight
But not so many cried at the terrible sight
Well mama said
It's just make believe
You can't believe everything you see
So baby close your eyes to the lullabies
On the news tonight

Who's the one to decide that it would be alright
To put the music behind the news tonight
Well mama said
You can't believe everything you hear
The diagetic world is so unclear
So baby close your ears
On the news tonight
On the news tonight

The unobtrusive tones on the news tonight
And mama said
Mmm

Why don't the newscasters cry when they read about people who die
At least they could be decent enough to put just a tear in their eyes
Mama said
It's just make believe
You cant believe everything you see
So baby close your eyes to the lullabies
On the news tonight

Grandad (laura's grandfather) passed away last night... We will remember him always...


So, this morning marks the second death that I have received over text message. I understand that people sending texts are most likely sending to large amounts of people but I really feel that the advancement of modern technology has delaminated the spiritual transfer of emotion. Just as the lyrics read up top, news casters make a massacre of people a three minute excerpt, and then onto tomorrow's weather... Has our world removed ourselves from death/sadness/tears in order to remove ourselves from that side of emotion all together? What happened to true mourning? I'm not saying that people have not been mourning this recent death, don't get me wrong. But my father even told me this morning to just text message my mom and let her know that Grandad died... I refused to... I feel that is kind of disrespectful for me to talk of his death in such a trivial transfer of information. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know. I just feel today's society relies on technology to ease the pain in our lives... Once again, I'm not saying that the people that have delivered text messages about sad stuff are trying to avoid anything. I'm just blogging...

- D

Business, Cotswold, and Trump...

So, i've been pretty darn busy lately, with a lot of things on my mind...
First off, i can't say enough how much I love my business, or actually business in general. I love learning about and learning about how to make more money. I'm looking very soon to purchase my first rental property, probably up in mooresville. I've been focusing a lot lately on the real estate market and achieving passive income. Hopefully it will all work out, i'm sure i'll learn a lot along the way...
One big reason i'm wanting to make more money is so that I can move out of this crime ridden neighborhood. Yesterday, some of our more favorable neighbors (insert sarcasm here) decided to have a drug related gun shooting robbery at their house. Yes, you heard me right. (insert, "holy crap!" here.) So i'm looking to move my wife and I deeper into the beautiful queen city... I'm hoping for either lansdowne or cotswold neighborhoods. Both are very up and coming and beautiful older homes... who knows, i might never be able to afford living there but i'll sure as heck try...
on a lighter note, i've been listening to Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki's book "Why We Want You To Be Rich." It's absolutely amazing. The book goes into a lot how, if you want money and you want it to be able to support you, you have to do it yourself. America is so far into debt and it's not going to be able to help anybody with social security or anything like that. Did you know that in approx. 10-20 years, over 70 million "baby boomers" are going to be retiring and be "expecting" america to pay them their social security... well guess what. that money won't be there...
fact: if each of the 75 million baby boomers begins to collect just $1000 a month in medicare and social security benefits, the total added to the U.S. Government's payroll is 75 BILLION dollars a month. This is similar to the cost of one "hurricane katrina" or one "iraq war" a month!!!
now, what do you do? well, pretty much you can't rely on anyone but yourself... if you want money to last you, you have to do it yourself...

anyways, thats my venting for the day... and don't get me wrong, i'm not some "anti america" nut... i love america but there are some mistakes that the country has made that are going to affect a large number of people in the future...

til' next time,

- D

be patient...

so i've really been struggling lately...

do you ever feel like your being sucked dry by everything around you. ok, for the next couple of sentences, please just let me rant and not judge me as being a hateful person... ok here it goes...

first of all, in my business class, i'm surrounded by excuse giving slackers. there's this woman in my class that said it wasn't fair that employers look at your credit score along with your resume/application (she said a number of things like divorce, could cause a bad credit score) . i spoke up saying that employers are too busy to deal with her excuses about why your credit score sucks. i also brought up that Google recieves over 1,000,000 resumes a year and that they don't have time to hear some lame excuse on why you stink at being responsible.

second frustration, and i'm not actually frustrated with this but... i've been very very busy with work lately, which is a good thing and its not exactly work i'm frustrated with, its the face that i work my tail off ALL day and then go to night class so i'm finding it hard to find time to sneeze not to mention sit and relax... right now, we have Laura's sister and her husband living with us, which i don't mind but it is extra people in our house which i'm not used to. but we are able to bless them right now so that's good.

oh and i'm also waiting to hear from my friend Mike, to hear whether he is wanting to merge companies or not. oh yea, i guess i havent talked about that. well, i've been subcontracting out this guy i met this past summer to hang doors for me and do other carpentry stuff. well i've been praying about us possibly merging. main reason, is my fairly large clientelle plus mike's incredible skill of carpentry should (should) equal a lot of money.


so that's my frustration, its not one single thing, its just everything combined. its very heavy on me, but i guess thats why i decided to give my life to Christ, who takes my burdens and makes them "not as heavy"...

well, thanks for listening y'all...
sorry for not blogging for a while...

- D

donald and elias day...

SOOOOOO,
i got to babysit my little buddy today, Elias! Its Nick and Jessies's son, (read blog below)... we had so much fun. first off, we bundled up (cause it was cold) and headed to the new Home Depot Design Center. I figured nothing better for a little boy than some good power tools and thousand dollar doors,lol... after that, we headed back to the house to get him some milk... he took a nap in my arms while we watched some Saved by The Bell. waking up a bit later, we packed up and headed to South Park mall.
Nothin' like a good day of spoiling my favorite boy! so first place we went, Janie and Jack! they have the cutest (am i allowed to say cute?) clothes for children there. i wanted to buy him everything in it, but i decided on a nice litle onesie for the winter.

next, after shopping, we went to the food court for a little ChickFilA for me and some mushy stuff for Elias. It's funny how quickly you learn stuff about children while your with them for an extended period of time. While eating, i had his little container of food a hair too close to him and the second i took my eyes off of him while feeding him, he threw his hand into the container and covered his whole hand with fruity purple mush...



well, it was now the end of our fun filled day, so we packed everything back up and started to head back to Jessie's work to drop him off...
a good day if i may say so myself...


I've had so much fun with him today and I hope to be able to again soon... I love that boy...
more pics to come later...

-D

Shelby, The City of Pleasant Living

So this past weekend has been quite a busy one... Friday afternoon, Laura and I headed to her hometown, Shelby, NC. I love it here, its such a peaceful town (for the most part). Well, when we got there, we went and visited her grandfather in the hospital. His health has not been good at all lately, due to heart problems and kidney problems. But we got to visit with him and even pray for him this afternoon before we left town.

Well friday evening, we went to Shelby High School's homecoming game, it was a ton of fun! Her ten year class reunion was this weekend so there were a ton of Laura's old friends there. I got to meet a lot of neat folks that I've heard stories about for years but never had a face to go with the person! well after the game, we all went to a little pub in uptown and hung out there for a while...

saturday, we just relaxed for the most part of the day, Laura had a baby shower to go to but I just hung out with her brother, Jay. then saturday night we went to the country club for the class reunion. it was a TON of fun... it was great meeting all of Laura's old friends. We met a lot of cool folks that we're going to be hanging out with soon, so that should be fun...

anyways, one thing that didn't happen this weekend was a lot of sleep, so i'm going to take a nap now and catch up on this blog later...

till our next time...

Amazing Love, how can it be?

So, Laura and I got to hang out with Nick and Jessie this evening. I swear, i love those two people (and of course their son) more than anything. They truly are some of the biggest blessings in our lives. Their faith is incredible and their friendship is amazing. I walked downstairs at their condo to check on their sleeping prince, Elias. Its funny sometimes how much i love that boy. how is it that a son thats not even mine can draw me to tears when i think about the plans God has for him but then bring me the warmest smile when he laughs or drools or tries ever so delicately to walk.... is it possible that i will one day love my own son even more? i can only imagine so. i pray that one day when laura and i have a son, we will be able to raise him in such a Godly home such as Nick and Jessies. to surround our children with such amazing love.

doors, doors, doors...

So, work has been going so good lately, i've been staying SOOO busy, its amazing. Ever since i started tithing off of the business, God has blown the doors off my business... i can honestly say that i can't afford to not tithe... i love carpentry so much, i'm such a nerd. its just amazing how things are built. i can't wait to be able to expand my business even more so that i can start employing more and more folks... i've got a big project coming up soon with my buddy mike. we're replacing a whole front entry unit so it should be a lot of fun and a great learning experience... i'll post pics when its done...

That's what families are for...

So, just recently, Laura and I have had the privilege of having her sister and brother-in-law move in with us for a little while until they find a new home and the area. I can't say enough how much I love it. And for so many reasons, first off, we get to hang out with their 3 week old baby Isaiah, who is the most adorable baby ever... second, i love chris (hope's husband). he is such an awesome man of God and he's absolutely hilarious. thirdly, i'm really happy to able to bless them with a place to stay while their up here in the area.

Anyways, dinner is almost ready so i need to go. but i'm really glad to be blogging again. talk to you soon.