Your Resolutions for the New Year

Not being one to take special interest in resolutions of the New Year's variety, I have been a bit of a wet blanket this January as I have been asked about my list of New Year's Resolutions. I have countered this awkward social situation by creating a list of resolutions that I would like to see you follow this year.

Don't kid yourself. It is obvious to us all that your life has not quite reached the Fulfilled plateau. Below find several resolutions to which your adherence is a must in 2008:

(in no order of importance)

1. If you claim to be a Patriots fan, generate a list of at least five reasons why. All reasons must not include any reference to winning.

2. Do not allow the balance on your credit card to carry over to the next month.

3. If you have more than one credit card, cancel all but one.

4. Walk more, especially in the company of loved ones.

5. Vote.

6. Buy, listen to, and love "Born in the USA" by Bruce Springsteen. If you have been a New Jersey resident for more than any ten years of you life, make this Resolution #1.

7. Buy a pickup truck, or at least imagine how much better your life would be with a pickup truck.

8. Tip your garbage man and mailman more than you tip your bartender.

9. Realize and embrace the fact that the current purse craze is stupid. Use a twelve-step program, if necessary. Convince yourself and your friends that a purse with a letter on the outside is no more special than one without. Remind yourself that wanting something just because every one of your friends has one is not a good reason to do anything.

10. Eat more legumes.

11. Write your mother a card on a day other than Mother's Day, her birthday, or Valentine's Day. Make it a Blank Inside card, and write your own sincere message.

12. Make Brian Regan a part of your life.

13. Meditate on the Lord's unmerited favor to you in 2007. Expect more of it in 2008.

The Lord Watches Over the Sojourner

The odometer on my little truck is coming up on 172,777 miles. While a seemingly inconsequential milestone, it will mark 125,000 miles that I have traveled since the purchase of my 2001 Dodge Dakota 3 ½ years ago. Some quick arithmetic reveals that I am averaging 35,700 miles of travel per year.

My truck and I have been as far east as Riverhead, Long Island, NY; as far west as Beaver Falls, PA; as far north as Cheektowaga, NY; and as far south as Virginia Beach, VA.

I am having a difficult time choosing an average speed for my total time traveled calculations. Somewhere between 30 miles per hour and 60 mph, so for round number’s sake, I will assume that I have traveled an average speed of 45 miles an hour throughout the past 3 ½ years.

In light of the above, consider the below:

Hours Behind the Wheel: 2,777 hours, 40 minutes
Days Behind the Wheel: 115.7 days
Weeks Behind the Wheel: 16.5 weeks
Years Behind the Wheel: 0.32 years

All said, I have spent 9.1 % of the last 3 ½ years of my life behind the wheel of my truck!

How good is my Heavenly Father to have preserved me through all this! And yet how often do I neglect to meditate upon my dependency for God’s care in even ordinary aspects of life? My little truck has been free from any trouble worse than a persistently on-again-off-again “Check Engine” light, and yet how unfaithful I am to remember my Lord in thanksgiving for granting me a reliable vehicle.

My heart should be more often in tune with Psalm 121, which reads:

“I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.
The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore.”

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Photos from our vacation at Brigantine Beach on the Jersey Shore are now posted on my Facebook page. The first link below will take you to the main album, and the second link includes four photos that I took of Becca at midnight on the beach using a tripod, a Mag light, and some old-fashioned 30 second exposure. Enjoy.

http://geneva.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011291&l=444bc&id=151101370

http://geneva.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2002498&l=fae53&id=151101370

Moby-Dicktionary

My apologies in advance for the obvious title. You've come to expect more because I usually deliver more. Not today.

I finished reading Moby Dick this afternoon. I had started reading in January. Nine months and 725 pages later I can finally lay to rest the tale of the white whale. I am proud to be able to say that I have read the complete, unabridged version of the novel, but I may only have enough time to finish one other book before the end of the year.

Since AP Literature class with Mr. Collins (Hackettstown High, senior year), I have made it my policy as I read to underline words that I don't know, look up the definition, and write each in the bottom margin. A work like Farenheit 451 or Blue Like Jazz will net me a dozen vocabulary words, but a piece from a theologian, or worse, the Romantic Era, will slow page-turning without fail.

Below is the complete list of vocabulary words from my reading of Moby Dick -- 352 in all:

(pages 1 - 99) hypo, insular, lath, lee, decoction, portentous, grapnel, extant, wight, glazier, waiscot, dint, yeast, ever and anon, aggregate, welter, founder, tallow, direful, skrimshander, arrant, toper, obstreperous, plaguy, ider, fargo, nonplus, grego, wrapall, dreadnot, andirons, expostulation, stave, ablution, accost, sally, bombazine, scoria, proffer, candelabra, incredulous, doleful, brevet, verdure, maw, cenotaph, canticle, bale, obliquity, swarthy, main-truck, kelson, inexorable, phrenology, promintory, pyspepsia, unbidden, confabulate, tester, vitiate, nonce, punctilious, offing, hillock, spile, quohog, chamois, larboard, by dint of, repast, belie, ply, stultify, segacity, galliot, venerable, thews, parmacetty, transome, annuitant, chancery, anomalous, sanguinary, sepulchral, oblique, celerity, (100 - 199) pilau, crotchet, appellative, stove, confluent, prate, calabash, humbug, bugbear, costermonger, jocular, vernal, stave, palavere, demigod, apotheosis, carrion, plaudit, puissant, feret, pestiferous, conspicuous, palpable, quoggy, macassar, staid, pantemime, latent, evince, vicissitude, ignomonious, craven, cholera, camphorate, unvitiate, tacit, binnacle, cudgel, spermacetti, opine, ellucidate, baleen, misenthropic, appellative, tallow, aver, ferule, hone, rotund, subaltern, in terrorem, sultanism, husting, mizen, saline, pallid, abstenious, convivial, sedentary, buckler, credulous, scimitar, scabbard, progenitor, indolent, languor, cark, upbraiding, inscrutable, vortice, (200 - 299) tost, capstan, volition, quail, chalice, sidelong, pugilist, demigorgon, waggish, strand, chassee, ubiquitous, erudite, gainsay, sanguine, bruit, august, lacquer, cant, howdah, legerdemain, cordon, somnambulism, peremptory, corroborative, prefecture, aliment, ascendency, corporeal, evanescent, quiescent, sordid, perquisite, warp, samphire, swart, ebon, wallow, inculcating, enigmatical, adroit, tyro, aslant, dun, haply, bivouack, vacuity, perfidious, fuller, (300 - 399) erudition, abaft, peltry, serry, subaltern, cozen, billet, brook, conflagration, comport, poniard, brigandish, swart, visage, fetid, perfidious, bantam, maelstrom, archiepiscopacy, advert, antediluvian, veracious, hippogriff, fastidious, skrimshander, elucidate, argosy, conciliate, fastidious, unctuous, integument, rapacious, poniards, rood, punctilious, peradventure (five on one page!), interdicted, lotus, maw, peremptorily, scaramouch, laudanum (400 - 499), ligature, interregnum, calomel, jalap, gamboge, soldadoe, cooper, orlop, pannier, bandy, vacillation, volition, subtilise, portcullis, supine, galliot, busk, farthingale, unctuous, tierce, limpid, pelisse, sagacious, beadle, veneration, indomitable, paregoric, ponderosity, sordid, tutelary, confluent, flexion, nosegay, obsequious, proas, corsair, kentledge, gallied, dromedary, consternation, dalliance, bower, unctuous, lassitude, sated (500 - 599), rapacious, emolument, sinecure, fob, perquisite, cupidity, worsted, ambergris, diddle, aspersion, opine, poltroon, mollify, acerbity, appelation, coalesce, recondite, rapt, plethoric, misanthrope, profundity, mermetical, freshet, ablution, morass, talisman, scorbutic, erudite, verdant, tendril, woof, folio, hawser, antideluvian, emprise, lexicographer (five on one page!), chirography, placard, credulous, osseous, recondite, peremptorily, remunerate, cachalot, primogeniture, bruit, antidiluvian, anamalous, compendious, spavine (600 - 699), prate, puncheon, shook, demi-john, sinecure, lave, importunity, orison, corpusant, hooroosh, boon, epaulet, sagacious, incommodious, taffrail, gambol, argosy, pennon, poltroon (700 - 725), pertinacious, prescience, evanescence, hawser, heliotrope.

[Ed. note]: Please feel free to comment with the definitions of any of these words that you know from memory. Words like 'woof' and 'shook' obviously have other meanings as used by Herman Melville. Any repeats are incidental, and are not intended to bolster the list.

On Choosing the Cover of One's Book

"Don't judge a book by its cover" is a proverb recited to remind those who would listen that the true character of a man or object cannot always be discerned by outward appearances.

One who would fail to listen might commit himself to wedding a girl because of her outward beauty, only to find her lacking in morals, sensibility, or faithfulness. One who would heed the advice may purchase a house despite its need of cosmetic touch-up because he has a vision for what the house could become.

The proverb lends itself to many situations, and is often applied in a suitable context. Its wisdom is understood by even a simple mind; the desired effect in its recital is typically achieved without additional commentary.

Men and women would almost universally accept the general wisdom of this proverb, yet I find that we are quick to decorate or polish our own metaphorical "book covers" and expect others to judge them as we would wish. Below are a few ways in which I find this most curiously expressed.

Care Where I Vacation Syndrome - I am no more certain today than I was the first time I saw an "OBX" bumper sticker of what is hoped to be gained by letting the world know where you vacation. Is it an attempt to communicate one's superior taste in vacation destinations? It certainly can't be done in hopes of expressing one's uniqueness--I could spot ten "OBX's" and at least 20 "LBI's" in a week if I was looking for them. If there were a place on earth where I loved to vacation more than any other, I would let as few people in on the secret as I could and then expend whatever loose change I had in my pocket to mail next summer's rental deposit--not to buy a bumper sticker.

Care Where I Shop Syndrome - What self-respecting person willingly pays money to advertise for clothing companies? Why anyone buys and wears hoodies with nothing but "GAP" across the front, or tee's with "Old Navy" and an American flag across the chest is far beyond me. It's stupid. I don't care where you shop. Really, I don't. How much you spend on clothes is between you and your wallet. Why do you want so desperately for everyone to know where you bought your shirt? The more telling question may be, Do you care that much about where other people shop that you project those same thoughts on to everyone else? I don't know who to blame with this, because each of the major retail stores is just as guilty as the next. The "Abercrombie's" and "Banana Republic's" bother me most because they're the priciest, but dumb "Old Navy" print tee's are nearly as bothersome.

Care What Sports I Have My Kid Signed Up For - This is perhaps the most puzzling to me. Do you, Mrs. Mom or Mr. Dad, really love soccer (or basketball or hockey or cheer team or wrestling, etc. for that matter)? Is the best way for you to pay homage to your kids' current favorite game to fix a static cling the shape of a soccer ball to the window of your Yukon? Or do you just do it because they passed them out with the jerseys and you don't want to be perceived as unsupportive of your kids? Team-personalized stickers for middle-school teams reek of elitist families bragging that they have enough money for Johnny and Susie to make (read: afford) the traveling team. The generic hockey pucks or megaphones just ring hollow. I have less of a problem with it if you're doing it because Johnny or Susie really loves his or her sport, but if Johnny or Susie doesn't realize how much you're already doing to be supportive of their sporting exploits, maybe you should make them aware and re-command control of the leash. And if you're afraid that being the only van at practice without "team spirit" will scar John or Sue, then maybe you should grow a spine and find something better than "O" magazine to read while you wait for the end of practice.

Care What Charity I Support - See my 09/24/05 post titled "Show Your Support" for more on this topic. It's not that I expect unbelievers to heed Jesus' command to "not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing," but it does appall me to see how external people are with their "good deeds."


I don't have enough to say about Care How Pimped My Vehicle Is Syndrome or Care How Good My Kid's Grades Are Syndrome to devote an entire paragraph to each, but each category's members fall under my same general sense of disgust and disapproval.

Not that you should care.