Coincidents?

Several years ago, I was asked to speak the congregation at church.

The topic I was given was "The Lords Tender Mercies".

I'm certain that many you who've read my blog entries, up till now, would expect this to be the last thing anyone would want me to do.  Considering my swearing and general negativity... (Recently)

What I wound up doing, the day that I was writing this talk, was listening to music on my computer and doing various research on the topic.

As I listened to the MP3 player, I started paring down to just instrumentals, and finally down to one song.

This song starts out very slow & quiet.  You can hear the drones starting to fire up, followed by the chanter playing "Amazing Grace".  As the song progresses, additional pipers join in, and the music & sound swells!

The song itself was written by John Newton.

He was involved with the Slave Trade in the 1740's.

During his time as a sailor, he was known as a very profane person, who even shocked other sailors with his words and behaviors.

On one of his trips in 1748, he was in a violent storm.  It was during this storm that he begged for mercy from God.

This didn't end his slave trading career, but it did eventually lead him to stop around 1755 and pursue Christianity.


A movie by the name of "Amazing Grace" was filmed, that showed how he helped to influence Britain's involvement in the Slave Trade.

The term "tender mercies" shows up in both the Bible and the Book of Mormon.

In The Book of Mormon, Nephi is writing about his father's preaching, and how the people want to take his life.
Here is how his testamony is strengthened: (1 Nephi 1:20)

But behold, I, Nephi, will show unto you that the tender ^cmercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith, to make them mighty even unto the power of ^ddeliverance.

 In the Bible, Jacob prays to God that he is "not worthy of the least of all the ^bmercies, and of all the truth, which thou hast shewed unto thy servant;" (Genesis 32:10 KJV)

Now when, I finished delivering my speech, I sat down, knowing that God had directed me to say those things which were needed to those in attendance that day.

What struck me as "Coincidental" was that I watched shortly after how many others referred to "John Newton" and "Amazing Grace".

This is referring to other speakers at church, not just in my own congregation, but also people on TV/Radio.

I was thrilled that I had been shown the "Tender Mercies" and others had also received the same inspiration.

God Bless you!

'Ow! My giant blue head!' -Megamind

Ok, so I'm not Megamind, although, I do love that movie.

So what if I love animated movies? I might be closer to 40 than to 30, but I love to watch those shows, and having kids makes it easier to enjoy them.

Well, the point with the quote containing "Ow!..." is that my head has been hurting the past few days.

Just about completely right above the eyes in the forehead... basically in the sinuses, where I was told by my family doctor... "... there's no such thing as a Sinus headache, they're all migraines..."

So, WTF does that mean to me?

It means, that there's very little they can or will do these days.

Yesterday (Sunday), I didn't go to church because I hurt so bad, and spent a great deal of the day with an ice pack on my head.

I think the temperatures outside reach into the 90's and so, I wound up with a heat pad around my head last night, sipping hot chocolate, because the heat felt good to my head & sinuses.

I should've taken a shower/bath yesterday, but wound up not doing it, even though, a nice hot bath often helps with my headaches.

Last night, after finishing a movie (I forgot which one it was), I got ready for bed, took a two Benadryl, put some of that vaporizer/Vicks stuff into the humidifier of my CPAP machine, and laid down.

Awhile later, I was asleep and only woke up to use the bathroom.  While standing there, I thought.. Hey! It might be gone, only to have it start to hit me again, just before I laid back down again.

I did finally manage to fall back to sleep.  I don't currently have much of a headache, although, I wouldn't be surprised if I got hit with another one today.

I suppose, the only thing I didn't do yesterday was to use my Oxygen (O2)...  If Ellie were home, she'd have suggested that I use it.

I don't know if I use it enough when I get headaches, as much as I'd prefer to use pain pills.

The pain pills used to work really well, but now... I need more and more to get the darn headaches to go away.

I don't think that I'm addicted to the pills... at least not emotionally, but my body is very used to them.

The pain wasn't going away, and based on some similar headaches that week, I took two of my pain pills instead of the one that I was allotted to take a day.

My headache didn't get better, but my mood improved, and I was doing a bit more, instead of just pacing around the house with my ice pack strapped to my head and swearing.

Well, today, I'm doing OK, but I can feel that another headache might appear again.

My nose is runny today and I still have that nasty post nasal drip going on.

Too bad that I live in one of the states that REAL Pseudoephedrine requires a prescription to get.  Instead of walking into a store and picking it up off the shelf and buying it.

I got tired of calling to get prescriptions for it, so I gave up trying to get it to use it.  Although, right now, it might really help me during the day, and help me get through these headaches better, by drying up my sinuses.

To make matters worse for me today, my little office upstairs where I work, is already very warm, and the AC unit & fan together make me really cold, so I shut them off... only to start sweating again after 20+ minutes.

I just feel like I've entered some form/level of hell right now.

Dang it... I wish Ellie were here.  She really soothes my nerves.

I love her very, very much.

I'm awake!!! Mostly.

I had a hard time sleeping.  So much so, that I slept through the 6:00 AM alarm clock that I'd been waking up to most of this week.

Normally I don't use the alarm clock, because my family is up and making so much dang noise that I can't sleep past 7:00 AM or so anyway.

My cell phone alarm reminding me to take my pills woke me up.

As you've seen this week, I've been battling some sort of allergy/cold with lots of post nasal drip.  Well last night/this morning, I got woken up by pain the right sinus area just under the eye.  Dang thing really hurt!

So, I got up, took some dayquil, and laid back down on my left side and fell to sleep.

This presents a problem... Sleeping on my left side shuts out my hearing to the world... mostly.

I've lost most of the hearing in my right ear.  Been that way since I was a kid.

So, I got up and had breakfast "on a stick"... (Ok, for Jose Jalapeno... On a "steeck")

Ever see these things yet?

I found them at Wal-Mart.  They're basically a pancake/sausage corn-dog-like microwave food.

Not too bad, they might even taste better if I had syrup to dip them in.  I think my wife took the syrup with her camping, instead of making a fresh batch on the camp stove.

My left knee aches now, and I'm just in a tired, worn out state.

Today, I'm burning some sandalwood stick incense and it's not too bad.  I usually prefer the scent of Opium.

I've never smoked/injected any drugs nor have I ingested any drugs that weren't prescribed to me.  So, I don't know why I like the smell of Opium, but I do.  Perhaps, if I wasn't a "Mormon dude" (I hate the term Mormon, but it's shorter than typing out the full name of my church.), I'd probably visit an Opium den.

Well, enough with that crap... I'm listening to the "Bar J Wranglers" singing cowboy songs, so I'm going to wrap up this blog entry and get to work...

AHA! I found some!!

While making toast, I grabbed my LED flashlight, and went to garage so that I could scan the shelves of food better.

I found several large cans of dry packed hot chocolate!

So, now I've got some hot chocolate at home to combat this dang post nasal drip.

If you want to know how to torture me, figure out a way to force my sinuses to drain into my throat.

ACK!

I've had a hard time working today, because of the post nasal drip and of course, from YouTube.

I finally closed the tab in my browser, and hope that I don't get bored or tempted to reopen a tab to YouTube.

I'm working on different defects now.

The XML parsing, I put on hold, so that we can run through out list of Defects and clean those up, instead of shoving more new technology into our tool(s).

Makes sense, eh?

Well, from a usability perspective, it makes great sense.  If it's going to be quirky/unstable for the people who're trying to retrieve data from your database, they're going to stop using it.

For the end-user/customer, they're less concerned about what's available to Tech Support, and more interested into the new features/reports/diagnosis of their environment.  This is where I've been semi-focused.

Well, I need to focus more on the smaller defects that need to be fixed, and I also need a license to the UI components we use, as they are expensive and they're expecting me to reach in and fix problems around those components.  Really hard to do when you cannot build/compile them.

So, they're working on that, while I'm investigating everything else...

Time for more hot chocolate, and I hope that the nasal drip & chocolate mixture doesn't make me sick.

I almost wish I was working from the office today.

I work from an office all the time... Usually my home office.

Today, I wish that I was actually at the building.... Only for the following reason...

I have really bad post nasal drip right now, and they have a FREE hot chocolate dispenser there... and I'm out of hot chocolate at home.

Currently, I don't know if my post nasal drip is from a cold or from allergies.

I'm told that there shouldn't really be any allergy problems this time of the year for me... yet, here I am with slime dripping down my throat.  (mm... tastes like chicken)

Actually, it makes me feel nauseated and the back of my mouth itches really badly.  Drinking water only reminds me how badly it's irritated.

It's much cooler outside today, and it's nicer, but it also sucks.  I want the crisp coldness of October when it's cool, but I appreciate it because the hot weather was just sapping me really badly.

I suppose, I could just drink/sip hot water, but who wants to do that?  I suppose I could slurp lots of broth, but that gets expensive after a while, as broth doesn't come free/cheap.

Also, hot chocolate isn't that good for me either.  Hey, I know it's got a lot of sugar, and as previously stated, I know I'm heavy.

Yesterday, my weight was 317, which is down from like 330+ (I think) from several weeks ago when I saw my GP's assistant, who was flipping out at my weight gain.

My weight loss is attributed to my stopping the Zyprexa.

Don't get me wrong, Zyprexa is a great medication and I miss it at times, as it used to knock me out at night, so that I could just fall to sleep.

These days, I'm starting to feel "normal" with just Lamictal and the Effexor, although, I'm going to drop the Effexor in another week or so, when I go up to 200 mg of Lamictal.

I'm just feeling.... Irritated today.