davejenbarnes

You know the feeling… right after you try on a new pair of jeans, or for me, it was my wedding dress at the final fitting… breathing is tight and it’s easier to stand up straight for a little while until the heat of your body loosens up the fabric and relaxes the seams enough to allow a little stretching room so you can sit down without ripping anything… that’s this new template. Thanks, Jamie for permission to base an experiment off your blog design. There is adjusting and warming and stretching which must take place… my goals include getting the navigation bar working and the archiving in another window. One huge goal has been reached and is in the same adjusting phase as this entire site right now, and that is the gallery which I set up earlier today with the help of my bro! Thanks, Jer! …I wish the gallery didn’t have broken image ?’s… *sigh* Well, with this entry, I leave you now to do more tweaking to welcome the new year with a new site!

The move to davejenbarnes.com is com-plete! finally… one of the tricks up my sleeves has been revealed. Now, hopefully I can get the extra stuff to work… comments, tracking, RSS, etc. Keep checking back … Our site is growing! Yay!

the friday five:

1. What was your biggest accomplishment this year?
Personally, I will define biggest as requiring God’s help: surviving! This summer was a rough one for the two of us and God brought us through it!

2. What was your biggest disappointment?
Biggest again defined as requiring God’s help: deciding to wait to have children until I am on David’s health insurance plan (which won’t be until Sept ‘04, so don’t bug us for kids until then at least ;-)… it truly has been disappointing for me.

3. What do you hope the new year brings?
I hope it brings a better place to live (better meaning bigger; our apartment ROCKS, it’s just a little small for when we have children) I hope it brings children. I hope the new year brings better web-designing-skills for me to use!

4. Will you be making any New Year’s resolutions? If yes, what will they be?
New Year’s resolutions? If I do make them, it will be to send out birthday cards to everyone whose birthdays and addresses I know… and to send them on time!

5. What are your plans for New Year’s Eve?
Do we have plans? I think I will probably stay up late playing Roller Coaster Tycoon on mom and dad’s Pee-Cee. David wants desperately to set off fireworks, but we’re going to try to do that before NYE (New Year’s Eve) with Mark but we haven’t touched base with them to see when/if they’re free… Mark, we’ll be getting in touch with you guys soon!

Merry Christmas to all reading this! David and I and both cats made it to the Knight’s house after a frenzied morning of balancing the checkbook, finishing folding the laundry, packing, loading the car, watering the plants, and keeping the kitties calm. The drive was enjoyable. Coupled with good conversation, the trip “home” was very relaxing and exciting at the same time… not because I haven’t been home in a long time, but exciting because this is Christmas and we had the entire davejenbarnes clan in the car. The feelings I felt on the way up today reminded me of the excitement I felt when we first moved into this house.

I can remember my first trip here, to this place I now remember as “home.” I was eleven or twelve… twelve; it was in 1989… and all four of us were in the cab of dad’s little GMC “Jimmy” pickup truck. Dad drove, I was in the middle straddling the shift stick, mom was in the passenger seat and nine year old Jerry was in mom’s lap. Not very safe, but very cozy. It was late–we were driving out to this house in the evenings to put a fresh coat of paint on all the rooms and generally get things ready for the big move. Funny how I don’t remember moving in, but I remember painting in the dark with a flashlight… In that cozy little truck late at night, probably on a school night even, I was wide awake. I must have looked like the cats did when we brought them in earlier today–wide eyed and bushy tailed. When my parents suggested I relax and lean back, I replied that I wanted to memorize everything about getting home. every tree. every curve in the road. I was anxious for those feelings of familiarity that only come with time. At twelve, I didn’t realize that those feelings would develop on their own with no effort from me in the process. I smile now to realize that I finally have the history which gives me those feelings of familiarity. It is so good to be home again.

The friday five on Monday… hey, Friday was busy as well as our 4th anniversary! This is going to take help from David:

1. List your five favorite beverages.
In no particular order: Iron Horse, Water, Milk, Apple Juice, and … more Water!
2. List your five favorite websites.
Guess who likes what! homestarrunner.com it’s dot com!!, GameFAQs, Apple, cube.ign.com, and Orisinal games
3. List your five favorite snack foods.
Nori Maki Rice crackers, Toblerone, strawberries… mmmm, dried cuttlefish, & let’s see.. french bread with home-made ranch dressing
4. List your five favorite board and/or card games.
Dave will need to answer this one and the next one… I’ll have him update it when he gets home.
5. List your five favorite computer and/or game system games.

Today is the fourth anniversary of my graduation from Baylor, where I completed my 5-year degree plan in 4.5 years so that tomorrow could be my fourth anniversary with David. The traditional fourth anniversary gift is flowers and fruit and the modern gift is an appliance, neither of which would I ever expect to receive from David. The appliance has captured our conversations more than the flowers and fruit, but the only appliance we don’t already own and would like to is a nice Kitchen Aid mixer. Several things prevent us from running out and getting one tomorrow for our anniversary… 1. cost-those puppies are expensive! 2. size-have you seen our tiny apartment?! where would we put the thing? 3. practicality-we already own a hand-held mixer and what we don’t use that for is what we mix with muscle power. God has provided every appliance we need at this place in our lives and even some we don’t need. So we’ve decided to skip the gift and just be thankful for these four wonderful, easy, fun, entertaining and blessed four years of marriage we’ve been gifted with and give each other the gift of hope and hard work so that the next four years may be as wonderful, easy, fun, entertaining and blessed as the first four.

Yes, our first four years, in fact the first year especially, was easy for us. EASY?! I can hear the doubt in your minds. Yes, easy. Being married to David has been a natural and … easy … thing for me. Not easy as in easy=no effort, but easy as in easy=the effort and hard work has been enjoyable and therefore the effort and work fade and the enjoyable part is left to linger in your memory. It helps, considerably, that we have had to and chosen to rely on God so often for so much. He is truly a member of this marriage and without Him holding us together, these first four years of our lives together would not have been.

Praise the Lord for four magnificent years!

My beloved Saturn!!! Somebody doesn’t like Saturns… and you can see it here. Ok, this is a little vague, so I’ll clarify if you don’t get it. Watch for the car thrown through the window which crashes inside the restaurant. It’s a black Saturn Ion, QC (quad-coupe (four doors on that two door style of car))… My guess is that Doctor Octopus has something against GM taking over the line of cars and making “A different kind of car. A different kind of company” now just another line of GM cars… plain-jane-buick-look-alikes (look for the blog entry about the Saturn minivan). I agree with you, Doctor Octopus, about throwing that car as long as it’s because of your disgruntled feelings about GM’s ownership!!