I’d rather be the world’s best janitor than the world’s worst CEO.

I think it resonates with the way he viewed the world and what his values were. He didn’t place value on possessions or compensation, but on being excellent at whatever he was doing. This held true even if he was doing a job that was completely transparent to the people around him. One of the things I’ve noticed in most workplaces is that the average person doesn’t share this sentiment. Most people would rather be average or even below average at their jobs as long as it means they get paid.

What a scary thought!

A workplace full of people that hate their jobs and make every effort to sabotage themselves and keep themselves from achieving the true excellence they are capable of. Why would anyone do that?

Let me leave you with this question…

Are you striving for excellence in everything you do? If not, why not?

To truly understand why they both were so eager for me to come home, you have to understand what the gifts awaiting me were. Ethan got me this:

Lego Star Wars Echo Base

Lauren tried to sway Ethan into picking something a little more… grown up for me to which Ethan said “but MOM, Dad loves Legos and he loves Star Wars and he’ll tell me ‘Oh son, thanks so much. I just want to give you a big hug’”

Ethan is right though. I do love Legos and Star Wars, and Star Wars Legos if it matters. And if anyone has one of these that they are looking to give away, send me an email. ;p

Evie is just like her brother and so I ended up with this:

Mega Bloks

Do you see a theme going here? If this theme extended to Lauren, then I might end up with a spa gift certificate. Luckily that didn’t happen, not this year anyway.

So I rushed home so the kids could help me open my/their gifts and we could get ready for dinner. Ah dinner. We had a reservation at El Jarro de Arturo for the whole motley group. The food was great, as always, and we ended up sitting in the same place as last year.

We ended up crashing early, about 11:30, but it was a great day and I’m so glad I got to spend time with my family because they really are the most important thing in life.

I’m not afraid of leaving the age of youthful ignorance and in fact I am ready to embrace what is coming in the near future. I’ll admit that I’ve fallen short of completing a few goals that I set for myself, but I also never could have imagined what it was actually going to be like to be a father and a husband. With what I know now, I’ll gladly take the tradeoff.

So here I am, on the doorstep of a life change that so many before me have dreaded and I’m ready. I’m ready to move forward and I’m ready to keep learning and growing and I’m ready to do it with my family at my side. I know I’ve still got a year until the big THREE OH, but I’m prepared. Prepared for what life has to offer in the next stage of life.

I couldn’t get in to see a regular doc so I headed over to Texas Medclinic. They gave me a steroid shot and prescription strength Benadryl figuring it was an allergic reaction to a spider bite. They also gave me a prescription for antibiotics in case it wasn’t an allergic reaction.

I gave it 24 more hours and the redness had continued to spread, almost covering the entire top of my foot at this point. I called another doctor who agreed to see me that day. He walked in, took one look and said that it was a Staph infection. Staph can be one nasty infection if not caught early. They gave me a shot of antibiotics and told me to start the antibiotics I got from the Medclinic.

It’s been less than 24 hours since I started the meds and the swelling has gone down drastically. Hopefully it continues to get better over the next 2 days.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned here has nothing to do with going to the doctor, but just how important your feet really are. The swelling and pain made it almost impossible to walk on my left foot. I began compensating by walking on the outside of the foot which really hurt my calf and knee.

I’ve been unable to fully walk for nearly 4 days at this point and I have about had enough. I can’t even imagine what life would be like with chronic foot pain, but I really feel for anyone that has to deal with it.

My old words of advice would be to take care of those feet. Oh and, guys, there is nothing wrong with going to the doctor. I’m not stubborn when it comes to going to the doctor, but if I had been then there is a good chance I could be looking at amputation, something that would be not fun to deal with at age 28.

• Grommit, our basset hound, hurts his leg. We think it was some type of dislocation. $450 in vet bills
• My car overheats due to a leak in the radiator. $$$$
• I get bit/stung by lord only knows what and my foot swells up in spectacular fashion
• The sliding door on the van decides to break.

How’s that for a list? I know I am totally forgetting a few things because when I had a long list well before I actually got around to writing this post and now I can’t actually remember them.

Alright LIFE, I’ve had enough! Time to let someone else deal with chaos.

Not too long ago my wife started attending MOPS over at Castle Hills First Baptist, an older, but still quite large church here in San Antonio. After seeing how much the kids enjoyed it, we decided to start attending weekend services there. This was just a few weeks ago. I had been enjoying the new church, just as I had in the past, up until this past weekend. This past Sunday was different.

The message was about obedience and disobedience and the rewards you will reap for being obedient to God versus the curses you will receive for being disobedient. I could tell there was something going on that was different, something I hadn’t experienced in a long time. At the end of the service, there was an altar call to pray for the nation, our state, our city, and our communities and I felt led to go up there. When I hit my knees, a flood of emotion came over me like I’ve never experienced before. I could tell that God was speaking to me. He was telling me that it was time to let him back in control.

You see, I’m a fairly independent person. I’ve always felt confident that I could resolve any issue that came up or fix any problem. This isn’t how God wants us to live. He wants us to trust him to resolve our issues and our problems and I’ve spent the last 6 years hardening my heart against letting God have any say so in my life. It took 6 years to get there and only an hour for him to wipe that away.

I’m not big on discussing feelings and emotions so it’s a miracle that I’m willing to share this with anyone, but I’ve felt different since Sunday. I’m still stressed about the things I was stressed about, but I don’t feel like the burden is mine alone. It’s going to take a while to shift gears from “I can do all things through myself” to “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”, but I’m confident I can get back to that and let God really use me for something great.

I guess that all depends on your frame of mind. If you are content to float along, blissfully unaware of your own mortality, then the phrase is just something used as a motivation tool for young people. If, however, you consider the fates of people taken from this world far too early, then it may carry a much greater meaning. A co-worker of mine, one who started on the same day as me, tragically passed away in a car accident earlier this week. He was 27. Also consider the fate of Natasha Richardson, the wife of actor Liam Neeson, a 45 year old successful woman who tragically passed away after a minor fall on a beginner ski slope.

Carpe Diem, sieze the day.

Now re-consider the significance of the phrase. At the ripe age of 28 I’ve often taken for granted the idea that I’ll live a long and healthy life. I’m sure those that passed away unexpectedly this week shared that same sentiment, but there were other plans that kept that from coming true. Will that happen to me as well? Only God truly knows that, but how would you live your life differently if you knew you had 35 years on this earth versus 75?

Should the length of your stay change the way in which you live? I can’t say for sure, but my gut tells me the answer should be no. Whether you make it to 22 or 102, shouldn’t we be treating every day as a special and valuable time to embrace life and live it to it’s fullest? I think so.

Far too often we get caught up in the minor details of the world and forget what really is important. It’s so easy to lose sight of this when life is going well, but I think it’s something we should all consider on a regular basis.

Are you seizing the day?

Today, I am going to pick up and iPhone for my wonderful wife. This is going to bring the total count of Apple products in my home to an astounding 4. This is madness. I’ve not gone out of my way to hate on Apple, but I’ve never bought into the idea of paying a premium for a trendy brand name. As the products have become more affordable I’ve slowly started to acquire them. I’m kind of enjoying their ease of use, but I’m not quite ready to jump on the Apple bandwagon and pretend they are the end all, be all of electronics.

As a first step, I took a sample test today and while I passed without any problems, there were far too many concepts that I was either unfamiliar with or had zero knowledge of. Granted, most PHP developers will never venture into these areas, it was a very humbling experience. I’m going to be devoting the next few weeks to the preparation of taking the exam so things over here will probably be light, but no worse than they’ve been over the last few weeks.

I do have a handful of funny quotes from Ethan that I am trying to compile in my mind and prep for posting. That kid is a riot.