Year / 2009

by Greg

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up, Folks

It all started last Monday. Meaning, ten days ago or so. The previous day we had a mini-birthday party for our oldest daughter, Kirstie. Some friends came over, we played games, we sang birthday songs, we ate birthday cake, we opened birthday presents. It was wonderful. But that night, pretty sure it was the middle of the night (isn’t it always?) Kirstie threw up.

Now, let me tell you something about my wife’s genes. See, the Walker clan have this thing where, when they throw up… they don’t stop. So, the same seems to be true for most of my children. And Kirstie is no exception.

The rest of the night wasn’t too bad, but there were a few episodes, and it continued through a lazy Monday, till Kirstie perked up by evening. That seemed to be that. At the dinner table that night I even admonished the children to make sure to get their sleep this week, and be sure to keep drinking lots of juice and water. “That should keep us healthy,” I spoke wisely.

Should have listened to my own advice…

Wednesday night, having had no further evidence of this strange, short-lived stomach bug, we entertained some friends. They hadn’t visited our home before, but we had a grand time. They are game players, so we played Dutch Blitz literally into the wee hours of the morning! They and their three young boys stayed till around one in the morning! It was a blast, but the girls were up till after 11pm, and the boys didn’t go to bed till 1:15am or so!! We were all exhausted, and I had work to do after they left, so it was around four in the morning before I was in bed!

Needless to say, that pretty much exhausted us. But we were not done.

Thursday held more of the same. It was a long day of being tired – and a full office day for me. Work is very busy at the moment, and especially so last week as I had a short week due to one last day working at the Apple store (meaning I had one less day to get web work done in my office). So, a long day of work, and a tiring day of tired kids for Jen… we probably should have been done. Instead? We went to visit our good friends who live WAY too far away for the evening. We knew our limitations, and made sure to leave not too late… got the kids (and us!) in bed by 11:15pm or so. (Well, I was in bed a tad later…) 🙂

Needless to say, that pretty much exhausted us. But we were not done…

Apple days – especially the closing shift ones for me – are very long days. I had a lot to finish still, so despite the tiredness, I got up around eight to start my day. I call those my twelve-hour days. Usually 8:30am-8:30pm. That’s long and hard for me, but equally hard for Jen. So, it was a very long, hard, tiring day… piling onto our already exhausted family.

Ohhhh wait. How could I forget?

Friday morning at 5am, the craziness started.

Alex woke up enough to get to the bathroom sink, and threw up in the sink. What was that I had said about getting lots or rest and making sure to drink fluids… wait… what was that first one again….

Right! REST!

So, having less rest than ever… sickness took hold of us, slammed us to the matt, held us in a sleeper hold, added a pile drive or two, and then pinned us to the matt again, down for the count. Really. It was that bad.

After Alex, Julia started getting sick. Both of them were sick on Friday, as was I. I felt a bit queasy on Thursday night when I went to sleep, but made it to sleep and didn’t think too much of it. Felt well enough to go to Apple on Friday – and wasn’t going to call in sick my last day there anyway! BUT, probably about three hours into my day there, I began feeling definite signs that I was definitely sick. So, I pressed through, but that was probably not very smart. Came home that night – exhausted – to a family exhausted from a day of sickness.

We went to bed that night, hoping we had endured the worst of it.

As I recall, that night passed relatively peacefully. In fact, on Saturday, it was only I who felt bad. I woke up feeling exhausted, achy, head-achy, and a tad queasy. But, there was a houseful of germ-infested, sickness-filled bedding to clean! So, I set out that morning to eliminate the germs right then and there. I opened every window, and removed, washed and dried every piece of bedding on every bed. It was quite an undertaking. I sprayed every surface I could think of with Lysol. The house was completely free of germs when I was done.

Or so I thought.

After completely exhausting any energy I may have had left in my body, I collapsed on the couch around dinner time and began feeling really, really cold. I hadn’t felt like eating much all day. I think I had a bowl of soup for lunch. Whatever was going on, it was not good! We had canceled out on a trip to Buffalo that day for a big extended family birthday party, and as I laid on the couch barely conscious and shivering, I was really thankful we had not made the trip!

I also began wondering about the next morning. I really wasn’t sure I was going to be able to sing as planned. The brevity of the bug passing through my children did give me hope, but mine seemed different. I went to bed around 11 that night (super early for me!) and just felt awful. If I hadn’t been exhausted, it would have been hard to actually go to sleep, I think. I was thankful that no other children were throwing up, though. That was a positive.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, Emma woke Jen up, or was it Julia? I don’t know, but she didn’t sleep very much. (And I certainly was no help! I woke up at 2 or 3am, so achy that it hurt to even breathe! Somehow I found a position that allowed me to go to sleep, only to wake up drenched in sweat a little while later!)

What a miserable few days!!!

Oh right, and it was Daylight Savings Time. I lost an hour of sleep that night. Nice. 🙂

Magically, I woke up at 6:40am, right before my alarm was to go off, and was neither sweaty, nor achy… and felt pretty OK! I rolled out of bed and got ready for the gig. All was pretty good, even mostly didn’t have a head ache. I was grateful for my healthy body and perhaps even more for the quiet house around me. That was a great sound. I began thinking we had finally made it through.

I’ve got to stop thinking that…

I instant messaged Jen in between first and second service and found out that the baby was now sick 🙁 Poor little Emma, whose first birthday is only days away, was not only throwing up, but it was about every 15-30 minutes! And, it was kinda strange looking, so it was definitely a concern to Jen – and now me! I had to go back to work, so with a knot in my gut – for Emma and Jen, not from a stomach bug – I sang my songs, then went back and talked to Jen on the phone. We were both praying that God would just remove this sickness at least from Jen, but I think from all of our household, too!

I got home and helped with Emma. Jen had her wrapped in a towel to catch anything she might not want to keep down. But actually, she had started getting better already. She was pretty happy, cheery and playing. We were so glad! Everyone else seemed pretty good, too, and Jen and Ian were crossing their fingers that they had somehow escaped this pesky bug!

Meanwhile, reality set in for me again and I had a pretty hard rest of the day – still quite achy, not very hungry, exhausted, and even cold/shaky. Not good. But when my body saw it’s chance to rest, it took it. I was in bed pretty early that night.

Oh wait… 🙂

Before I went to bed, Ian, who had just been saying that evening, “I feel just fine, Mom,” … yes, you know. He made it to a much cleaner place than most of the small children, but … it was only the beginning. In true Walker fashion, there were many more episodes for Ian that night and through the next day.

“WHEN IS THIS GOING TO END???” we wondered, simply exhausted. (But, admittedly, getting rather good at the whole vomit triage routine…)

I had another hard night – just strange overpowering flu symptoms. Jen did, too… no one has been sleeping well for quite some time in our house. Thankfully, most everyone was so exhausted that we did sleep in Monday. All of us. I still worked several hours in my office that day, but committed to not working more than a half a normal day. And indeed, that’s what I did. I think that was helpful, as there was no more aching, nor was I exhausted. There was also no more throw up happening in the house from the early afternoon on. It appeared that we were finally done.

Tuesday came and went without any trouble, so we even went out for a little pre-birthday treat for Julia (whose birthday was the next day) at Burger King. All did well, and we were home and in bed by a pretty normal Campbell bed time. Nice!

The Part You Just Can’t Make Up

Yes folks, as if that all wasn’t bad enough…

All day today (Wednesday) was very good. No throw ups. Much less exhaustion. All was getting back to normal. Had a fun birthday day -doing lots of fun things Julia wanted to do. Some of it was making fun things in the kitchen with Dad. We made a green birthday cake, which we later iced with green icing, and topped with green sprinkles. Then for dinner, she helped me make green pancakes and some sausage, to boot. (She loves the color green, can you tell?)

We stuffed ourselves with all of the green cuisine, and celebrated our beautiful little girl. Even made it to bed, and were settling down for the night when…

“Mom!” came the troubled voice from the top of the steps, “Julia threw up!!” Big sister Kirstie was appalled and so were her parents! WHAT??!?!? NO WAY. NO WAY! Again???

Sure enough… Julia had thrown up, so we began the clean up process. Jen started in on the mess in the room and I began prepping a bath for little Julia.

This is shocking… prepare yourself…

Not two minutes later, from downstairs we hear, “Ian is throwing up!!!”

YOU. HAVE. GOT. TO. BE. KIDDING. ME.

No one was laughing.

It was true, but thankfully, I could tell something was different about these two, nearly simultaneous incidents. Both Julia and Ian showed no after effects. They were completely happy, alert, and totally fine after spewing their dinners on the floor. (Wish they could have found a better place for them…) My best guess is something that we ate was not “kosher”. Jen has already gone through the leftovers and some of the ingredients (the eggs in particular) and appropriately disposed of them.

But seriously, folks. How much can we really take? Do you know how much laundry we have done in the last 11 days? How many times we’ve changed sheets, pillow cases and blankets? How many times we’ve said, “Get the bucket!”? 🙂

Really, really crazy. From the stomach bug, to, what? Food poisoning? Not sure, but … can it please stop?

I’m hoping that by chronicling it, I’m putting an end to the story. Perhaps the pen is mightier than the germ? Let’s see…

THE END

(I think that probably did it.) 😉

by Greg

A Good Cup of Tea

Constant Comment teaJust enjoying some of my favorite tea this afternoon and thought it would be a good idea to post it as a little recommendation here at GregsHead.net. (Click the tea bag to the right to see a listing of Constant Comment varieties at Amazon.com!)

I have lots of ideas floating around in my head, and would love to flesh them out here … but it’s been a very busy couple of weeks in web work (and even a Buffalo Bills show). Some of it is coming to a close this week, so perhaps I’ll have a bit more time to elaborate next week… we’ll see.

Either way, glad I have some of this tea on hand… 🙂

by Greg

Twitter Craze

I mentioned Twitter here a few posts ago. I think I also mentioned that it’s not a technology I’ve found much of a use for. There is definitely a place for it. It’s a pretty good way for a business to handle things like press releases. By creating a Twitter account, and then advertising that on your website, email, and other avenues, people can subscribe to any updates you send out over the service (updates which are often viewed by the receiver on their mobile phone, so you can catch them anywhere) and if there is a related link, you can even include that.

The concept is decent, but the implementation has been … well, almost to the point of annoying.

It started in 2006, and I, being a fan of tech podcasts have followed it from its infancy. The tech show hosts were (almost) all infatuated with it at first. All they talked about was Twitter! It was crazy! But then it died down, and they referenced it on a more normal scale… probably using it for what it is best used for – short, to the point, news bulletins. (Some even use it as a resource. For example, they are traveling, in a city they don’t know, and they ask a question on Twitter, and then anyone “following” them who has an answer replies back. The downside is, people who check their Twitter feed less frequently reply many days later.) 🙂

I signed up for an account sometime in 2007, just to see what all the tech buzz was about. I had also created a Facebook account that year, as that was another thing the tech shows could not stop talking about! I took a look around both and found that, basically, Twitter was a one-function service that was nearly identical to one of many that Facebook provided. Facebook allows you to “broadcast” a status message – much like Twitter’s “tweets” – that anyone who is on your list of friends can see and interact with. But as I mentioned, Facebook has much more to offer. Much easier to share information, photos, videos… you can even play virtual games with friends. (I like to play Scrabble…) 🙂

So, with much more “real” interaction with people on Facebook, and no need to duplicate that using Twitter, I chose to use Facebook. (I need to also say that I do not have a cell phone. Twitter might have more draw to someone sharing info over a mobile device.)

Now, sometime last year, Twitter “hit the mainstream”. Not only are more people using it, but it’s becoming popular, and even a “credible” source of information. (See more about Twitter here.) It’s even gotten so popular late last year that Hollywood celebrities are now “Tweeting” their every move.

Fascinating.

I’ve definitely never caught on, as you have probably guessed. But, a client of mine joined the Twitter community last year and has really had some interesting adventures using their service. (You can find his Twitter info and “follow” him at his website: acemarketingagency.com.) I added his Twitter feed to my RSS folder and follow along. There are some extraneous comments directed to other people, but his general posts are often links to articles or other web content worth viewing. Today he posted a link to the following video that I thought did a pretty good job of summarizing the Twitter experience. 🙂

Enjoy…

by Greg

A Journey Shared… Again

Yesterday a friend called and said that she had been reading my book, A Journey Shared, and was really enjoying. She talked about the conversational style of the writing, but how it made her really think about the content. I was really glad to hear it, especially almost four years now after I published it.

In fact, I was intrigued, so I picked up a copy of the book – one of the two we have in the house I think! – and read the brief introduction, as well as the first “chapter”. (Chapter is in quotes because they really are just short “entries” more than chapters, as a chapter seems worthy of more lengthy prose. At least to me.)

As I read the introduction, I was glad for what I had written. Made me want to read more. (Some of it was kinda funny… a little advertisement for iUniverse.com, the publishing company I chose… but, that’s nice too.) And, I thought about what my friend had said. She was right. It does make you think. 🙂

At the end of the intro, I recommended that people might buy a copy for a friend. Some have. But it’s been a long while since there was any talk about this little book. I thought it might be good to change that.

Below is the introduction to the book, A Journey Shared. You can purchase it in many places actually. Probably easiest via Amazon.com (linked to the right.) I actually don’t make much money at all from the royalties on the book, believe it or not. But I would love to hear that you have a copy, or gave a copy to a friend. There are some cool thoughts about life with God in there, and perhaps it would be an encouragement to you or someone you know.

As I say below, “This journey is meant to be shared.”

So, I wanted to share it with you… again. Enjoy.

Introduction
January 31st, 2005

Hi. My name is Greg. You have already seen my head, it’s on the cover of this book. This book has been an adventure for me. A Journey, as the title suggests. Most of the material published herein was first posted (grammatical errors and all) on my blog page. It has had several homes, but has finally rested at www.GregsHead.net.

I am a writer at heart. I always have been. From my earliest childhood memories, that is what I wanted to do! So, the advent of the blog page has been a wonderful thing for me – a simple, fast, and free place to write about anything and everything. And that certainly has been what you can find at that website. There is definitely a good reason to call the page “Random & Wandering Thoughts From Greg’s Head”.

But I began to hear from people. Some simple comments, “Hey, good blog!” But a few were more in-depth. Some people were really touched by my blogs. I have heard that several folks have used them as personal devotionals, or even devotionals for group meetings. That is so great! My primary purpose for writing these “blogs” is not really for the reader. It is, (read Audience) but mostly it is a way for me to process The Journey.

As comments continued to come in, a few suggested that I should print the blog for those who can not access the internet. (Namely, my Grandparents!) I thought it was worth checking into, so I did. I found iUniverse.com. They are the publishers of this book. They offered a great way for me to make the blog page (in an edited, and compiled, and organized way) available without having to go through a publisher who would require printing 1000s of copies up front! I did not want to do that. This way, the book will be available through my website, and through iUniverse.com and at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and more! Sounds like a great deal!

I am excited to share these writings in this format. As I went through and corrected spellings, and grammar and punctuations, and added or repaired sentences a necessary – I also got to relive the journey. What a year it has been. Every day with God is an adventure, but you string a year or a year and a half of those together, and you have quite a Journey.

And the Journey was meant to be shared.

You may not agree with all of the things I say. I have a friend who doesn’t agree with most of the things I say. But hopefully you will hear things from my Journey with our Father that will encourage you. That will ring true in you. That perhaps, you can share with someone else.

Thank you for purchasing this book. It certainly helps us when you do. I encourage you to purchase copies for people who may be strengthened by reading the life shared within. But money is not the goal with this book. If you can share my Journey with another, please do. Please visit the blog page. It is updated quite often. Please send a friend there.

The Journey is meant to be shared. So please do.

See you inside…
Greg Campbell

by Greg

It Comes Down To This

Two Big Games

The Sabres are basically already eliminated from the 2009 Stanley Cup playoffs. They have only 9 games left, and they are a full 8 points out of the top eight spots – the playoff teams. They fell to the 10th spot and have been hovering there for quite a while, thanks largely to long absences by their top two stars, Ryan Miller and Thomas Vanek.

But perhaps, really, it’s just because they’re not that good.

Still, after watching them fight back two days ago – impressively, I might add – from a 3-1 deficit against the team directly above them in the standings… there’s still a very small glimmer of hope.

In fact, it’s really only as big as the next two games.

Toronto has had a rough season. The Sabres should beat them. It’s a home game, and they should win. (After their most recent slump, though, the Leafs are only 3 points behind the Sabres in the conference standings!)

The big game is tomorrow night, in Montreal. Hockey Night in Canada. Montreal is currently holding the 8th playoff spot. The Sabres will effectively be eliminated if they give that team two points. If they win both the next two, they will climb to within 4 points though, with seven games remaining. That’s still doable.

So, it should be interesting… looking forward to watching the next two games to see if this team has any fight left in them. They get their star goalie back tonight… perhaps that (plus the big come-from-behind win on Wednesday) will be just the boost they need.

by Greg

US Government Now Running the Auto Industry? Ludicrous!

Folks, you know that I don’t often comment politically here, but this is just so completely insane that I would like to go on record here, officially, at GregsHead.net and say that we are so far from what the founders of this country intended our government to be that within a very short time (perhaps only a couple years?) our country will no longer exist as it has for over 200 years.

It’s certainly been a gradual decline over the past decades (decline into government controlling, rather than representing the people) but it’s been kicked into high gear by the election of the “rock star” president (and initially, the party wars that landed a majority of his party in the congress to help push through his very centralized, big-government policies) who is implementing plans to put us another trillion ($1,000,000,000,000) in debt. Ugh.

But I seriously can’t even believe this. (The article)

The US government is making top-level business decisions for General Motors, a private business?????? WHAT?? Why is a “task force” assembled by our federal government dictating what a private business should do?? Why? Because the dummies at the private business decided it would be a good idea to become indebted to the federal government. Makes me even more proud of Ford for standing up and saying, “No thanks.” (Commented on that here previously.)

Wow. Just… wow.

I’m inclined to be concerned for our kids, grandkids, and beyond, but recently I have been reminded of these words from the Message translation of Matthew 6:34:

Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

Definitely words to keep close to the front of your mind these days.

[LINK] Obama outlines plan for GM/Chrysler (Wall Street Journal)

by Greg

Perhaps You Could Help?

Was talking with some friends of ours yesterday about the very recent death of their son-in-law. He was only 33 years old, and has a wife and two boys (12 and 13) who are now without their dad, who was also the one who brought in nearly all of the household income. I also found out they did not have life insurance, so their family is trying to help, but a fund has also been set up for them, and I thought I would pass that along here, in case you might be able to help them out.

To help, send donations here:

Michael and Tyler Stringer
Scholarship Fund
Five Star Bank
2425 Rochester Road
Canandaigua, NY 14424

More information available from Channel 10’s website here.

by Greg

Made Me Smile…

Kirstie's Signature
On a lighter note, on my way home to my family yesterday afternoon (from my work that morning) I spotted a piece of paper with some drawings our five-year-old had made sometime earlier that week. I smiled at their amorphous cuteness. Fun to see what her mind and tiny hands had created.

But then I spotted her signature. Somehow, my heart welled with emotion and my smile got even bigger. (It is again as I type this.) There was something about the little dot over the “i”, and the backwards letters. The determination and pride with which they were applied to her creation, yet the beautiful, innocent simplicity in them. It was just perfect and made me so love that I get to be her Daddy. 🙂

Made me wonder if that’s how our Daddy feels when he sees our creations? Does he love to see the creations of his creations? They aren’t always spectacular, but they are unique and a piece of who we are. Doesn’t have to be art… can be anything we do or say perhaps. But is bears our signature.

And I just bet it does make him smile.

by Greg

Scary Dream!

IE 8 for Mac?This morning, just before I woke up… I was still in a bit of a dream state. Everything seemed normal. I was talking with someone, and they wanted to show me something on their computer. It was a Mac, of course. (Just like in the movies, my dreams have a disproportionate amount of Macs to computers running Windows…)

But then…

The owner of the nice Mac clicked on a strange menu near the top right of the screen that just said “Internet” – and when they did… they selected “Browse Internet” (or something like that) from the menu and…

(Insert scary music…)

INTERNET EXPLORER 8 … FOR THE MAC CAME UP!!!

I think I actually woke up startled. Then was very happy this was just a dream. IE 8, not only running natively on a Mac, not only designed for a Mac, but… integrated into the OS?!?!? Yikes.

Must have eaten something pretty bad before bed last night…

by Greg

The Story of Creation

I have been wanting to intentionally, methodically read through the Old Testament again recently, and somehow chose today to start that process. I almost started in a book other than Genesis, but decided, how can you not start there?

I’m glad I did.

I noticed a few things in what I read that I wanted to write out here.

First, I noticed that there was an order to things. There was definitely a process to the story. From formless and void to separating the waters. From separating water from water (which is pretty interesting) to separating water from land. Then the lights: sun, moon & stars. Then plants, animals – also in a sequence – and then finally, people. There was an order.

Why did he do that? Why didn’t he just—POOF—make everything? How did he choose the order? Did one thing build on the other? Was each step part of his original blue print? Is God such an artist that he was even just “making it up” as he goes? Could he have been that spontaneous? Was he simply enjoying the process?

Who can know? Not I. But the fact that he built one thing upon another stuck out to me. Maybe not the way I would have done it. (But, thankfully, I’m not God.)

Then God said, “Let the land sprout with vegetation—every sort of seed-bearing plant, and trees that grow seed-bearing fruit. These seeds will then produce the kinds of plants and trees from which they came.” And that is what happened. The land produced vegetation—all sorts of seed-bearing plants, and trees with seed-bearing fruit. Their seeds produced plants and trees of the same kind. And God saw that it was good.

This was another cool thing I noticed. Not only did he make stuff, he made it so that the stuff could make stuff. Amazing. We can’t really imagine infusing life into anything, especially from nothing… but he infused so much life, and such a pattern, that the life he created could also re-create. Plants, fish, birds, animals, even people. He built in the ability to reproduce “of the same kind.” That really should be amazing, I think. Perhaps we’re so used to it—it’s just how it is—but, really… it is astounding.

Jesus did say, “I am the Life.”

Mostly, I noticed that God is incredible, and I hope to see him more in the pages of the Old Testament again, through the slightly dimmer vision of those who knew him before he was fully revealed in Jesus. We’re pretty lucky in that regard. Jesus – the full representation of God – made himself known, and after defeating sin, and death, and shame by dying on the cross, he got back up and lives with us today. Here. Now.

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.
Hebrews 1:1-3