The Second Coming

I couldn't pass this up - it's just too funny. Well, I think so. I'm sure there are many who will be offended.

Religion has been on my mind today, because a good friend of mine - who also happens to be a Jehova Witness - sent an email today containing an attachment consisting of a monologue by Drew Carey. In it, he made reference to how many holidays we have in this country that have nothing to do with the Bible.

Huh? How many biblical holidays do we need? Do Christians have exclusive rights to what we celebrate? Hmm - this is a little reminiscent of why the founders of this country separated church from state!

Anyway, Drew mentioned how Christmas is really a Pagan holiday and that Halloween was a Satanic holiday. True, Christmas has Pagan origins, but so does Halloween. But I'm just curious - isn't Satan part of the Christian belief system? The origins of Christmas and Halloween pre-date Christianity, so how could Halloween be a Satanic holiday if the idea of Satan didn't even exist, yet?

I don't celebrate any religious holidays, because I'm not religious. I just celebrate holidays because they're holidays, not because of any religious undertones (or overtones). What's wrong with spending some quality time with friends and family and just being joyous and happy about being alive?

Every day should be a celebration, and I think life is more about having faith in ourselves and in others than it is about having faith in some unseen force or entity. After all, it is undeniable that we exist. And if you reach out to me when you need me, you'll actually feel my hand.

Dream Shopping

Have you noticed that the biggest shopping day of the year is creeping ever closer to Halloween? Whatever happened to Thanksgiving? I guess it's dead - it's been outgrown by Christmas trees. Pretty soon, people will start believing that the colors of Thanksgiving are red and green. Then again, what colors are associated with Thanksgiving? Golden brown? Nobody's going to rob me of my turkey!!

I don't celebrate the holidays. At least not in the sense of knowing what the holidays actually mean. I wonder sometimes if anyone knows anymore. It's just an excuse to take time off work. For me, it's kind of a piggy-backing off other people's religious beliefs. Christmas? SURE, I'll take time off for that! Time to get as far away from the Christmas madness as possible... What I want for Christmas is to not have to go Christmas shopping. Then again, there's not many people who would notice if I didn't.

I went shopping for a dream today. We took another trip up to Grass Valley - we left early in the afternoon on Friday, hoping to beat the traffic. Apparently, everyone else who was going away for the week of Thanksgiving also left early on Friday to beat the traffic. It took us nearly six hours to get there. Today, it took less than three hours to return home.

While in (or I should say, near) Grass Valley, I took a look at a 5-acre parcel of land that my wife and I really like. Here's a couple of shots of it:



The land has a gentle slope to it, leveling out at the bottom. This shot was taken up at a high spot, near where we would build a house, looking down (toward where my wife would have her animals, and I could fly my planes).



And here is a shot from down low, looking up the slope. The area where the trees are is where we would build -- probably a bit to the left of center in the image. You can kind of see my car behind a tree on the right.

It's a dream. We don't know if we can get it or not. They're asking more than we can afford, but it is a buyer's market right now, and we hope to be able to make a reasonable offer that we can afford and that they would accept. There's already a well there and the perc and mantle has been done, we would just need to put in a septic system and start building.

Either way, if we can get the land and discover that, for some reason, we can't work it out, it is in a great area that is growing and we would have no problem selling it. It would be a huge change for us to move out there - we'd have to figure out the whole telecommuting thing with work - but we're ready for a change. Ready to get away from where we are now, anyway.

We've got to follow our dreams while we have them, or they'll never happen. We have to make our dreams come true, as I don't think they will come true on their own.

Keep your fingers crossed. And send your donations to.... Just kidding. I think I'll start playing the Lotto - maybe I'll get lucky.

It's So Cold

I'm sure my previous post is getting old and tired and certainly it's not very up-beat, so I'm posting a new post. Not sure what to post, but anything has got to be better.

Interesting changes in the house and senate, eh? It will be interesting to see what the new crew can do to start putting a stop to all this madness. It will take generations to recover from Bush's regime, and people will probably blame it all on Clinton and Lewinsky. Somehow that is worse than anything the Bush's administration ever did. Ha! Well, we're still stuck with the guy for two more years. Hopefully, in time, America will recover some semblance of what America used to stand for. Maybe someone will figure out how to piece our Bill of Rights back together.

Enough ranting and bashing - there's plenty of other voices out there doing that for me. Progress has been slow on the Questor project. Oh, and here come the holidays! Joy. I'm not going to have this fuselage done anywhere near Christmas, which was my goal, but then life is like that. I just have to keep forging ahead.

Well, I think it's time to put some more Questor photos together. Until then, keep smiling. Oh, I've got a whole script written up for a continuation of the Roger and Eric conversation... but who knows when I'll ever get around to shooting it.