Chris​Hubbs​.com

I had three things on my to-do list for the weekend as of last Friday afternoon. And though I kept busy all weekend, those three things are still on my to-do list. How did that happen? I suppose I could do like Becky does and add items to my to-do list after I’ve done them just so I can cross them off. But when you use an on-line list that removes completed items from view, there’s not a lot of satisfaction in it.

Still, I managed to get a bunch of stuff done around the house: mowed the lawn, cleaned out the gutters and installed some gutter guard, did the dishes (well, at least unloaded and loaded the dishwasher). Led music for both Saturday night and Sunday morning church services. Took the girls to the park to play in the splash pad. Laura, who last year was too scared of the water to even want to get wet, was running through the sprayers yesterday with great enthusiasm. I foresee many trips to the park this summer.

And now it’s Monday again. I guess I’ll be hitting ‘postpone’ on those tasks a few more times.

Signs that spring is finally here:

• Warmer weather, finally. high temps in the 70’s for the majority of this week. Woohoo!
• The grill has been retrieved from its exile in the shed and is being prepared for some cooking. We’re gonna use it for the first time this season tomorrow.
• The snowblower has been exiled to the shed, taking the grill’s place.
• We’ve sown grass seed in our annual attempt to get grass to grow under the oak tree on the west side of the house. I will try to be consistent with watering this year and see if we can get something going.
• Softball! We had our first (and probably only) softball practice last night. This morning my throwing elbow is quite sore.

Along with spring comes my list-making of all the house tasks that need done now that the weather’s warmer. The driveway is in sad shape and needs patching - this winter was really hard on it. (Really, we’ll need to replace the driveway within the next few years.) The trip and soffet on the house needs scraped and repainted. We need to keep replacing windows. The garage door really needs replaced, but it can wait one more year. On the smaller list, I need to clean out and organize the garage, and get the pegboard hung in the basement. And the list goes on… and I’m sure I’m forgetting things.

Still… the weather is warm, the sun is shining… I’m not gonna complain.

Today is my last work day for the year. Thanks to a day of vacation tomorrow and a generous holiday schedule from my employer, I will be able to enjoy the better part of two weeks away from the office. Not that it’ll be slow during that time… we leave Saturday to visit my family in Wisconsin. It will be so good to have everyone back together… Rebecca gets back from Panama on Saturday. Oh, and I’m also very ready to be allowed to dig into the massive pile of cookies that Becky has been making over the past couple of weeks. I think her goal this year was to make so many cookies that she could take them up to my family’s place and still have cookies left at the end of the visit. I’ll bet she achieved it.

Lots of other blogs do Top 10 lists at the end of the year, proclaiming their best new albums or movies or books or the like. I don’t think I’ll be doing that here. First of all, I doubt I’ve bought 10 CDs all year. And I haven’t watched too many movies, either. I may do a book roundup, though - I’m probably gonna be over 80 books for the year, maybe I can do a retrospective.

After reading the above two paragraphs, I’m amazed that content like this keeps anyone coming back to this blog. :-) Thanks for reading, and Merry Christmas.

I was reading Psalm 131 this morning and was struck by the picture of contentment painted in its three short verses:

O LORD, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time forth and forevermore.

With two small girls at our house, this picture is a familiar one. When Laura snuggles up on my wife’s lap, she is the picture of contentment. She’s not worried about things “too great and marvelous” - she just wants to rest and to feel the love of her mother. She is secure in the arms of one who she knows loves her, will care for her, and will keep her safe. So she sits quietly, peaceful in the knowledge that she’s in good hands, and content.

As God’s people our hope and contentment is in the Lord. He can handle the great and marvelous things. I want to focus on resting in Him and trusting His goodness today.

Last Wednesday night we left the girls at church (Laura for AWANA, Addie to play in the nursery) and ran a few errands, then arrived back a few minutes early to pick them up. Becky went over to chat with one of her friends, and I, having a few minutes on my hands, wandered into the sanctuary to play the piano.

There are few things I enjoy more than the chance to sit down in a dark, quiet room and play a nice piano. I don’t get to do it very often any more. So I sat and improvised a little George Winston-esque jazz, just enjoying the sounds and textures. Occasionally someone would come through the sanctuary, hear the piano, look up, and nod or say hello, but otherwise it was quiet. Then Cubbies got out, and here came the three and four year olds.

I could hear them tearing down the hallway toward the sanctuary. Laura’s friends Abigail and Ella got to the door of the sanctuary first, but stopped short as the entered the doorway, saw the room dark, and heard the piano music. They looked up at me to see where it was coming from, then just stood there, not sure what to do, but intimidated by the room and the situation.

Then Laura reached the door. She followed their gaze to the piano, saw me sitting there, and took off at a full run up the aisle to the piano, yelling “Daddeeeeeeee!” at the top of her lungs. She crashed up to the piano, gave me a hug, and proceeded to show me the picture she’d drawn at Cubbies.

Now I’ve not used this blog to draw lots of devotional illustrations from my children thus far, but this one was so immediately obvious that I just couldn’t let it go. Hebrews 4:16 instructs us to “…come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” We aren’t to fear coming to God with our needs and concerns, quivering at the dark door like some ancient Israelite priest. Instead, we’re called to come in boldly, running up the aisle to the One who we know loves us like no one else can. Thanks, Father, for the vivid reminder.

I hit the scale last Saturday after a fairly physically strenuous day of outdoor work (OK, strenuous for me at least), a time when usually the scale is nice to me (hey, I know how to work the system), and I was not happy at what I saw. It wasn’t Garfield’s “one at a time, please”, but it was a few pounds higher than I thought it would be, and a solid 7 or so pounds higher than it was when I was at my low point back in February or so. Eesh. I haven’t been just totally letting myself go, I guess, but I have been snacking too much lately and well, we do all enjoy dessert.

So I declared this week to be “No Excuses” week for me when it came to exercise - I needed to do something every day. With the gym only 1 mile down the road I don’t really have much excuse anyway; in general, my natural laziness + staying up too late at night = not getting up to work out in the morning. So this week there hasn’t been anything compelling to stay up and watch on TV (World Series starts tonight, though… uh oh), I haven’t been involved in a really engrossing book (my other late-night weakness), and so it’s been better.

• Monday: 2 miles on the treadmill.
• Tuesday: 1 mile on the treadmill, some weights. I have only recently discovered the bench press, and it’s frightening how little I can press. Something to work on.
• Wednesday: 2 more miles on the treadmill, with a better time than on Monday.

My other good accountability tool in this is an online calorie tracker. I’ve been using The Daily Plate off an on for a while now… this week it’s back on. It lets you enter your height/weight/age and a weight loss goal, and then gives you a calorie-per-day target. It has calorie info for pretty much anything you’d eat, so you can just look it up, indicate how much you ate, and it gives you a nice nutritional summary.

So that’s my big push for this week. It feels good, too. Hopefully the scale will be a little friendlier to me next time I get on. Then the challenge is continuing. I think long-term it’s unrealistic to think I will hit the gym every morning every week, but if I could hit it 3 times a week plus play basketball one night? Well, that will be a big help.

I have a usual stop on my way to work in the mornings: the Road Ranger convenience store at the corner of Blair’s Ferry and I-380. I have an old 52oz insulated mug that I have a habit of filling up with Diet Pepsi. Yeah, I guess I’m a little bit addicted. Ever since they became Road Ranger, the refills of that mug have been pleasantly inexpensive - I’ve been paying a whole $0.62 for a refill.

This morning, though, there was a change - they’ve upped the price on me to $1.05. I guess that’s $0.99 + sales tax. And suddenly I’m not so excited about it. Something about paying with a dollar and still getting change back was cool with me; something about paying a dollar plus another coin makes it seem much less appealing. Still, I’m not quite sure that just going cold turkey is such a good idea, either. And then there’s the all-too-tempting vending machine at work where a 20 oz bottle of pop costs $1.25. Heck, if I’m gonna do that, I may as well just stop for my $1.05 mug in the morning.

Maybe a better alternative would be to buy a pack of bottled pop from the store, throw it in the fridge, and bring along a bottle in the morning. That’d cut the price down, and hopefully start weaning my caffeine addiction… well, a guy can hope.

First off, sorry to any of you who tried to leave comments yesterday. Something with the way the upgraded theme interacts with the spam catcher is leaving something to be desired. I’m working on it, but in the mean time if it disallows a comment of yours, send me an email to let me know, would you? Thanks.

Otherwise, it’s Wednesday. I am looking forward to a couple packages coming later in the week, though. Tomorrow, DHL should be bringing the new shoes I ordered last night. I’ve had my old Converse Chuck Taylor lo-tops for a year now, and have worn them out pretty good. It was time for a new pair. This time I’m living on the wild side - instead of replacing my black ones with another black pair, I’m getting green. That should be fun. :-) I don’t think I’ve ever had a package delivered via DHL before, and I will say now that I’m very impressed with their package tracking on their website - it seems to be more granular and updated more frequently than UPS’s tracking info ever is.

Earlier in the week I got a gift card from work as an “alternative reward”. Cool. Even better is that with that gift card I’m getting a set of Shure E2c headphones. I know several folks that swear by them, and I’ve been thinking about the purchase for a while now. They were on “clearance” at Target last week for $89, but I got ’em off Amazon for $60.

This weekend on Saturday we’re headed to Des Moines overnight - we just needed to get out of town for a day or two. All my business travel has finally added up to enough Hilton rewards points to get us a free hotel room on Saturday night, and I don’t have to lead music on Sunday, so we’re off to visit the zoo, an orchard, and whatever else we find interesting in the big city. Can’t wait.