A good friend told me once that any day that starts with him being able to be vertical has to be a good day. The same could be said about a new year. Being above ground and vertical is a very good thing. Over the past few days a few snow squalls have blown through leaving behind about four inches of snow. East of here in Soda Springs, which is about 1,200 feet higher in elevation, some six to eight inches of snow are on the ground. The snow is rather dry, unfortunately, having left almost all the moisture behind in the Sierra Nevada mountains where it came down in somewhat unwelcome quantities. There’s been enough snow, however, to cause me to get out the snowblower the past three mornings and get rid of the snow on the driveway. Maybe this counts as exercise?

The month of January will be very busy. I’ll be headed to Belgium on the 8th returning on the 19th. After a couple of days at home, I’ll be headed for Orlando and the Lotusphere Convention for the last week of the month. I’ve gotten quite used to listening to podcasts on my iPod, but that whole setup is built around my home PC. I need to get this stuff transferred to a laptop so that I can keep up-to-date while I’m travelling. I’ll need to figure out if there is a way to transfer my history from the home desktop computer to a laptop so I don’t end up downloading everything all over again. That’s just a waste of bandwidth.

I think I have the e-mail posting problem resolved, but there’s still one problem that currently belies explanation. I’ve put a wget command in crontab to run every hour. That is working, but I’m also getting a "file or directory not found" email being sent from the web server at the time that the crontab is being run. I’ll have to ask someone at work if they know what the problem might be. It’s pretty strange. But, because I think email is now working correctly, I’ll send one in this afternoon and see if it gets posted.

The remnants of Christmas have pretty much disappeared from around the house. The only thing left are the lights along the roof of the house that Jared put up when he visited here over Thanksgiving. The Young Men’s organization in our Ward is doing a service project this week of taking down lights and I’ve signed up. They should be coming on Wednesday which will remove the last evidence that we decorated for Christmas this year. Bradica (the dog) now has several fewer things to stand underneath as both Christmas trees are down. Why do dogs stand underneath trees and branches so that they rub across their backs? Or is it that only our dog stands underneath things? It’s also another mystery for a Sunday morning.

It’s time to head for the shower and get cleaned up to go to Church. Today is Fast Sunday — the day when we skip two meals in a 24-hour period and donate the money we would have spent to the Church to be spent on the poor. This Sunday we are being asked to fast and pray for the families of the victims of massive Tsunami’s that followed the earthquake in the Indian Ocean and to donate generously to the relief efforts. They are indeed in our thoughts and prayers and we’ll make a significant donation today.

Nina and I were talking last evening at dinner about the difference that one year can make. Last year at this time we were in Chandler, Arizona spending the Christmas vacation with our daughter Jaelene and her family. We were living in Colorado Springs and thought that we would be there for the rest of my working career. It’s now a year later and we’re living in Pocatello, Idaho and in a completely different job. Our wildest imaginations would not have predicted this outcome to the year.

In fact, if someone had told us we would be in Pocatello and would like living here, we would have written them off as being crazy. The truth is, we’re here and we’re quite happy to be here. We like the house, we like where we are living, we like the Ward we attend, I enjoy my job, our life is much less hectic, and in general, life is very good.

Nina is in Soda Springs today visiting with some family who have come up for the day. I need to be at work (I’ve used up all my vacation for the year cruising round rivers and oceans) so I didn’t go over. It’s supposed to start raining and then snowing as the evening progresses so I expect she won’t stay over there too late in the afternoon. The weather right now is mostly cloudy and somewhat windy. I don’t know where the bad weather is, but it isn’t very visible right now. The big news is the massive loss of life in south Asia because of the tidal waves following a massive earthquake in the Indian Ocean. The estimates currently are in excess of 60,000 people dead with thousands missing. There are no warning systems in that part of the world for people to get to higher ground or further inland. Everyone there lives by the sea since that’s the source of most of their food and livelihood and they didn’t stand a chance. The earthquake, measuring 9 on the Richter scale, is one of the largest earthquakes in modern history. It changed the orbital speed of the planet by about 3 microseconds and changed the wobble about the earth’s axis by about an inch. Other estimates are that one teutonic plate slide about 98 feet under another plate, making the earth slightly smaller around and moving stuff in the Pacific Ocean all around.

The Church has asked us to fast and pray for the victims’ families on this upcoming Fast Sunday and then to make very generous donations to the humanitarian funds. We will do that. As this year comes to an end and I look at my life and conditions, we are truly blessed. We have enough to share.

I was checking the news this morning and learned that there are only six days left in this year, counting today! There isn’t much time left to wrap up anything left over before the New Year. Some things just can’t be done in the time remaining (like losing weight). We’ll be here in Pocatello for the holidays, unlike some trips we’ve made in previous years. In fact, the most important part of the holiday is FOOTBALL! The day will start with the Rose Parade, followed by several football games. These games become more important in the following days as the Bowl Championship Series winds up another year of pratfalls.

The other important thing about a new year, at least for Nina, is that it’s time to make some New Year Resolutions. I can easily forego this masochistic behavior! However, for the past several days, Nina has been reminding me about all the things that will change with the coming of the new year. I like things that stay the same — like oatmeal for breakfast….

Happy New Year!

Heather, Ty, and family left a few minutes ago to drive back to Orem. We’ve had a very lovely Christmas Eve visit with them. Heather and Ty arrived yesterday late afternoon and spent the night. Mom and dad drove over from Soda Springs this afternoon and will stay until tomorrow. We’ve had a very nice Christmas Eve and it isn’t over, yet. Right now we’re watching a previously recorded edition of Music and the Spoken Word. Earlier we had a small Family Home Evening to read the Christmas story and sing some Christmas carols. That was followed by our traditional Christmas Eve dinner. Our practice has been to have the big dinner on Christmas Eve and then everyone fends for themselves on Christmas Day so Nina doesn’t have to do any food preparation. I think this is a nice practice.

Jared just called to let us know that he’s arrived safely to Dawnmarie’s house. He’s on a fairly far-ranging road trip and it’s good to know that he’s arrived safely at his next destination.

The world has largely discounted the idea of a Savior, even amongst the Christian world. Each year the idea of religious underpinnings to this holiday is further eroded. Some cities hold Christmas parades, and ban religious floats. The commercialization increases. The movies on TV are centered on Santa Claus with little reference to the real reason for this holiday. The newspaper recently ran a long article on the pagan origins of Christmas and how the Catholic Church incorporated them as a way to appease non-Christians.

There has never been a more urgent need to understand the real reason for celebrating this holiday. The eternal perspective has been lost. The decisions we make in this life have eternal consequences. Values have meaning and importance in our lives (which for some reason was surprising to the political pundits after the last election). But more importantly, we do have a Savior in Jesus Christ. He has prepared the way for us to be together as families and live for eternity. There is a reason for us to be here at this time in the history of the world. I’m very thankful to have this testimony and perspective on life. At this Christmas season, it is my personal prayer that my family will enjoy peace and joy in their lives as they celebrate the birth of the Savior of the World!