Stupid Fat Hobbit

So, I finished reading ‘The Shack’ this morning and decided I should try to put some thoughts down before going out to the internet and seeing what the general response is there. About 2 months ago, a small group of people were talking about it while I was over at their house. They highly recommended the book but at the time I was reading something else, probably the Twilight series and I decided it could wait. Then a couple of weeks ago, my mom called me to ask me if I’d read it…My mom is a voracious reader and I’m the only child she has that loves reading as much as she does. I told her that I was re-reading The Lord of the Rings but that when I was finished, I would pick it up and read it…Now, if you haven’t read it yet and plan to (which I recommend), stop reading here as there will be some spoilers in this review…Okay, here we go…

Even though I’ve been in the room with people who’ve read the book, I had not heard anything about the premise of the book other than it was spiritual in nature. To say that the blatant religiousness of the book took me by surprise would be a major understatement. I was expecting some sideways reference to Jesus or possibly the Holy Spirit, not a weekend with the Holy Trinity. First, I’d like to cover what I liked about the book but I don’t want to cover the reason why he finds himself in a shack with the Trinity because I think each person will respond differently to that situation and I don’t want to tarnish it with anticipation.

• Anyway, much of what is written resonates deeply with my interpretation of religion. The thought that the basis of life is relationships and that the greatest relationship in the universe is that of the three persons of the Trinity should be very comfortable with everyone. I have always had a rather weird view of ‘organized religion’. There is a big part of me that believes the Church is necessary but there is another part that knows deep down inside that a lot of what we consider to be ‘Christian’ probably has nothing to do with what God set out to do when he created the first man. While I was reading the book, I thought often of my father, who I’ve tried to get to go to church many times, and many times he’s told me that he has a different kind of relationship with God and that he doesn’t need to go to church to experience it. For the first time, I think I actually believe him…
• I love the way the author paints the scenes with colors and scents. I’m a visual person and the better a person can draw their world, the easier it is for me to understand it.
• I love the way this book treats forgiveness. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the phrase ‘forgive and forget’ as if these two things were linked and that one begets the other. In practice, I’ve given and received forgiveness many times and, knowing the situation has not been forgotten, felt like forgiveness has not taken place. In reality, we are not capable of consciously forgetting anything (that doesn’t come from this book) and life would be a lot easier to deal with if we understood that we may have to forgive someone many times for the same thing before true healing takes place.

There are one or two things about this book that I tend to disagree with though and I think it’s only fair to mention these also.

• First and foremost, you get the definite impression that the author does not believe in evil; especially in a personage such as the devil. Not only does he treat bad things as the absence of goodness (he says so much in comparing darkness to the absence of light); he doesn’t even mention the serpent in the Garden of Eden when Eve took the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
• I’m not particularly thrilled with the way the book ends either. You almost get the impression that once the ‘real story’ has been explained, the author completely ran out of material and just shut the book down. It’s not very graceful and leaves the reader feeling disconnected somehow; like something is missing but not in a ‘I need to go and explore this mystery’ kind of way…It’s much more of a letdown feeling.

I’m sure there are many more theological debates that could be held but as this is a work of pseudo-fiction, we should probably not debate them here.

I feel quite certain that the author (or at least one of the co-authors) read and very-much liked ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’ and ‘One’ by Richard Bach. Reading this book, I got very close to the same feelings I had when I read those books as a young adult.

So, the long and the short of it is that The Shack is a very good read and will make you think about your relationship with God (all 3 of Him) and with others.

I’m a spender, I like going out shopping and buying things with the money my hard-working wife earns. I get warm fuzzy’s from finding things that I want (not need) and purchasing them, bringing them home, using them once, and forgetting about them. Deep inside I know it’s wasteful but I’m wired that way. Or at least I have been most of my life. I’ve made a pact with myself to accept the things I have as good enough and not replacing them until they are so broken they can’t be fixed or so obsolete that they must be replaced (we’ll see how long this pact lasts). Anyway, I have a deep ability to love but in most other things I am rather shallow and I try to live my life so that I don’t hurt others with my personality. Periodically, my deep ability to love overshadows all the shallowness in my life and I receive all the joy I need for a day or two from a simple act or from another person. Yesterday was such a day.

I went to Wal-Mart after work to pick up two things that I needed for the way you have to live when you live in an RV. As I was walking through the parking lot, my cell phone rings and I see it’s from the 713 area code. I don’t know anyone in the 713 area code in fact prior to this call, I couldn’t have told you where the 713 area code was from. I was pretty certain it was going to be some telemarketer and I was sort of sadistically looking forward to making sure this person was in no state of mind to make another sale the entire evening (shallow, I know). Anyway, I answered the phone and the voice on the other end said “Patrick Landry, you’ll never guess who this is!” Well, that’s no fun, if I’ll NEVER GUESS, why even try but the person seemed intent on giving me some time to come up with an answer so I just kind of mumbled that I didn’t even know where the number was from. Finally, in a fit of pity for me, he said, “It’s Keenan Johnson”. Can you believe it, Keenan Johnson was calling me! I was floored, it was just too great to believe…Really. Those of you who have read my blog before may be attempting to insert a hint of sarcasm into those lines and in 88.65% of the cases, you’d be correct but this time you’d be DEAD WRONG. Perhaps some history would help…

Keenan and I started school together in 1st grade. Where we went, the Catholic schools were 1-3 and 4-12 (Kinder was somewhere else). Anyway, like I said Keenan and I started together in 1st grade. For the first 6 weeks of 4th grade, I was placed in a local public school and Keenan went on to the 4-12 Catholic School. At the end of the 6 weeks, I’d been beaten up at least 3 times (something about a big mouth, I don’t know what they’re talking about) and my parents decided I needed to be moved for my safety. So, as we’re driving in to the Catholic school for my first day there, the first person I see running around the playground is Keenan. I could not contain my excitement. I almost jumped out of the car. I don’t know why I felt so close to him at school, we didn’t hang out together after school or on weekends but at school we were good friends and even then, I knew that good friends, really good friends, were a rare commodity. So we went to school together through 12th grade. We crossed the stage, promised to keep in touch…and never saw or spoke to each other again. In February of 2009, I moved here to San Antonio and in order to facilitate communication with many people who had never heard of a blog, much less the now famous and widely read Stupid Fat Hobbit blog, I reluctantly opened a facebook account. At first, I only had about 6 friends but as I started searching around, I noticed that several of my old High School classmates were on facebook as well. Then one day, probably around March, I saw that Keenan had a facebook page as well. Immediately, I sent a friend request and sat down to wait for the acceptance. Unfortunately, Keenan was not hyper-active on facebook like many of my friends are and it took a while for him to respond. We wrote on each others’ wall once or twice, I gave him my phone number and that was it. Then yesterday, almost 26 years since we’ve spoken to each other, he calls me up to talk. We spent about 35 minutes on the phone (probably 30 more than he expected) and tried to do a little catching up. I bought two things at Wal-Mart, neither of which were even remotely close to the two I went in there to buy and I left feeling more satisfied than I’ve ever felt leaving a Wal-Mart before. Thanks, Keenan. You made my day, probably my week. I can’t wait to talk to you again…

BTW, the 713 area code is in Houston…

I’m not really known as a sentimental person. I wear my emotions (and my thoughts) out on my sleeves for certain but sentimentality is really for people who live outside of the present and it cannot be said that I fall into that category. There have been times though, when I’ve taken stock of the people who have been placed in my path and appreciated what those people have meant to me. This has happened increasingly over the time that I’ve been geographically separated from the family and I’ve gotten more time to sit and be quiet (yes I have, shut up).

Anyway, Debbie and I had several great conversations today over all three of our favorite communication medium (e-mail, text, and phone). Tonight, as I hung up the phone from an all-to-short conversation with her, I realized just how truly blessed I am to have her in my life. There were many of you who commended me for being the single dad while she was away in Pakistan (and I truly deserve the Dad of the Year Award for it) but the truth is, she is doing the same thing now, better than I did it, and with less time and resources than I had. Of course, in both cases, we had some great friends helping us out but consider that I worked the same schedule as the kids while she does not, Jeremy had a really good after school carpool during soccer season which he doesn’t have now with baseball, and 3rd quarter in any school is the longest and hardest by all accounts. Yet the kids are thriving and doing better in school, overall, than they did under my regime. They seem healthy and (mostly) happy and God knows they are eating better with Deb than they ever ate with me.

My Everlasting Love

So this is my tribute to my wife, whom I love dearly for being a great wife, mother, daughter, coach, worker, Air Force Officer, friend, exercise partner, and boundary watcher. She may not be perfect, no one is really, but she’s perfect to me! I love you, baby. Sweet dreams…

We’re at day 3 on our cruise and we’ve just realized that we’re trapped in Hell and have to be here for another 4+ days. Day 1 wasn’t horrid though our cruise director Butch, really his name is Butch, doesn’t know how to shut up on the PA system. He spoke for 32 minutes straight during the life boat demonstration!

Anyway, there is not a friendly employee on board and no one, I mean NO ONE is in a hurry to get anything done. It took me 45 minutes to get a $7 bottle of wine that I paid $30 for! A bottle of Berringer White Zinfandel for $30, stupid me…Anyway, Debbie and I went run yesterday (day 2) on the running track/pedway/old food storage path. After the run, we went and sat in the separate steam rooms for about 5 minutes. When Debbie came out, her Nike running shoes and Oakley sunglasses had been stolen from the bench outside the steam room. There was a Carnival employee in the locker room the entire time she was in the steam room but they saw nothing. Debbie’s mood was shattered, no running and less sun for the next 6 days made Debbie a sour person (rightly so) to be around for the rest of the day!

So this morning, we get up early to go to our manicure (her)/facial & shaving (me) at the spa. We get there and the lady behind the counter (the rude one who wasn’t concerned about Debbie’s shoes yesterday) tells us that our appointment was supposed to be yesterday and that she called us ‘all morning’ and we never answered. We had confirmed the appointments the day we got on board and there are no messages on our phone. Plus we had to give her our room number 17 times yesterday because we kept checking back to see if anyone had turned in Debbie’s shoes (maybe a fit of conscience). So we canceled everything! We had fitness evaluations and detoxifications scheduled, we canceled them all. Screw these people. If we could get off of the boat right now, we would.

We now understand why you pay $3,000 more for a Disney 7 day cruise, because it’s worth it to not have a comedy of errors and clowns who don’t know what the hell their doing ruining your vacation…

Gee Mr. Obama,
Your fix to the problem seems to be worse than the problem itself!

Buh-bye...

Only 46 months left…

Yeah, I been away for a while. I’m sorry I’m sure but it’s really been a weird few weeks and blogging has not been uppermost in my mind.

Anyway, I’ve been wondering about life changes and how to handle them. Take for example boxer shorts. I love boxer shorts; I haven’t always but today they’re the undergarment of choice and have been for several very comfortable years. The problem is that I have fairly colorful boxers, several of which were given to me by my fun and stylish daughter. So along with the gray and blue stripes; I also have the odd Sponge Bob Square Pants or bright red ones with black hearts and ‘Love’ written all over them; or I even have a pair with pickup lines written all over them (I’ve lost my number, can I have yours? is my favorite or maybe ‘If I created the alphabet, I’d put U and I together’ cute, don’t you think).

When I was working at Aquinas, no one ever saw my underwear and I’ve never really believed the old ‘wear the clean pair in case you get in a wreck’ thing. Yes, they’re clean::get over it! Here at my new job, I go to the gym every morning, workout and then shower there so I don’t have to shower in the RV. The problem, if you haven’t caught on yet, is that other grown men shower at the gym as well. As far as I can tell, I’m the only man at the gym with a bright yellow pair of Sponge Bob Square Pants underwear (though they are very cute).

Lately though, I’ve felt like I need to wear more mature boxers and I’m not sure why that is. Is there anything wrong with wearing bright, colorful, cartoon-themed boxers? Only the people in the gym ever get to see them so is that a bad thing?

Well, this has certainly been a week to remember and nothing really happened until Wednesday afternoon. Some of you may be aware that I traveled back to Virginia on Wednesday night so that I could be in court on Thursday morning. The trip went well though we had hoped that the judge would throw the case out completely but she didn’t. All she did was set a court date for May 4th, so now I’ll have to fly back there for that date. At least that trip will coincide with a weekend so I’ll get to spend a little time with the wife and kids then. Anyway, I left San Antonio at 4 PM on Wednesday and got back at 10:30 on Thursday. We made it to court on time, spent 10 minutes in the courtroom and we were done. Remarkable! I was amazed on my trip to see so many openly gay couples. Guys holding hands girls kissing each other goodbye, blech!!! It was disgusting. And if you’re gay or are pro-gay, don’t write to me telling me my opinion is wrong. It’s mine and I can have it if I want to. Get your own blog and I promise you I won’t read it…

Where was I? Oh yeah, Friday was very good though I was beat. Yesterday, I stayed in my PJ’s the whole day and watched the ’24′ DVD’s that my mom had loaned to me. I’d never seen the show and decided to check it out. Not too shabby, I’m halfway through season 2 now.

Today, I decided to attend Mass on this side of San Antonio rather than making the 40 minute trip to my old parish that I had been making. The priest who was there when we were here last now has a parish right up the road from where I’m staying so I decided to go see him and say hello. You could tell as I walked up that he recognized my face but couldn’t put a name to it. We talked for a couple of minutes and then I went and sat down. He hadn’t changed very much at all, he forgot to call the kids up to dismiss them for the Children’s Liturgy just like he used to do all the time. But then something happened that I’ve never had happen before. Halfway through his homily, the fire alarm started shrieking and the strobe lights started flashing. He looked up at the congregation and said, “everything is going to be alright, you stay here and I’ll go.” It was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in Mass. He walked to the back of the church and went into the ‘cry room’ where he was told that a little boy in the room had ‘accidentally’ pulled the fire alarm and set it off. Luckily, someone in the church was able to turn the alarm off after about 5 minutes (which seemed like a year) and Fr. continued Mass like nothing ever happened. It was very funny though maybe you needed to be there. Anyway, I’ve pretty much decided I’ll just make the long trip to my old parish from now on…

So now I’m doing laundry and getting ready to head back to the old RV for some more R & R. Have a blessed day.

So yesterday I’m flipping through the 8 channels I get here in the Recreational Vehicle and I know, somewhere deep inside, that channel 2 is CNN (or HLN, or MSNBC; liberal you know) and that channel 3 is Fox News (fair and balance, okay so maybe it tips my way a little bit, shutup). Anyway, I’m scanning the channels, takes about 4 seconds and I see this group of 6 people discussing the economic stimulus package and they are giving it a pretty good wallop for it’s money. The usual stuff for Fox News, won’t see any real jobs for 10 years, economy should have been allowed to recover on its’ own, we’re all going to hell and Congress now owns the hand-basket…that kind of stuff…So I hit the up arrow to see what ESPN has on and low and behold, Glenn Beck is holding court and discussing possible future outcomes for the year 2014 (that’s one year after our new president is elected, in case you’re not paying attention).

So, I pop the down arrow and lo and behold, CNN is doing a little stimulus package revisit (3 days later…) and they are starting to think that maybe, just maybe this stimulus package was passed a little too quickly and maybe this won’t be the best thing since sliced bread, and who’s going to pay the bill for this incredible amount of pork!!! HELLO, Ding, ding, ding…anybody home??? Idiots. Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it. Oh well, stinks being us but it’s okay because we won’t be us too much longer.

God bless us all, we’re going to need it.

I needed some groceries today so I drove over to the HEB in Boerne, TX. HEB is a upper-mid range grocery store that is wonderful and has just about everything you need without having to pay too much for it.

It’s getting a little chilly here tonight (30 degrees) so I put my Newport R.I. sweater on before heading out. Anyway, I got my stuff and checked out and was literally walking through the doors of the store when I passed a lady walking into the store with a Newport R.I. t-shirt!! How the heck does that happen?

And on. And on…Yesterday I started my trek to Texas to begin my new job on Monday. The girls got up to see me off before getting ready for school and work. The boy well, let’s not talk about the boy…Anyway, I drove from 6:30 AM to a little after midnight and finally stopped just outside of Baton Rouge to hole up in a hotel for a few hours. Today, I only had to make it to my parents house and I’ll complete the drive tomorrow (a little over 6 hours) and set up life in the RV for 5 months. It’s funny how you miss certain things that you really didn’t know you would miss. I’ve only been gone a little over a day but I do miss the sound of the voices that I’ve come to love over the past 13 years. It’s really going to be an interesting time. My old job has already called twice about work related stuff and twice for fun kind of stuff. I totally enjoyed them both!
The kids seem fine, I’ve spoken to both of them a couple of times and mom seems well also. I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings!