Blue Christmas . . .

I’m feeling blue right now.  Finally the rounds are complete, we’ve made all the appearances, and now it’s time to take down the tree, clean the house, and return to normal life.

I just wish normal life didn’t include humid, almost muggy weather with a high temp in the mid 70’s just four days after my White Christmas.

 The most AMAZING thing happened last night . . .

IT SNOWED.  Yes, here along the Gulf Coast where a heavy frost is something to get excited about . . . it actually snowed.

There’s probably a good 3 inches of beautiful white stuff on the ground.  This is an awesome Christmas gift from God, because Jami’s never seen snow before and she’s thrilled!  We were driving home from our friends’ Christmas Eve dinner at 10:30 p.m. — a drive that normally takes one hour took THREE!  The roads were a mess, but fortunately we made it home safely by about 1:45 a.m.  Well, everything was so beautiful and Jami was so excited, we bundled up and played in the snow at 2:00 a.m. on Christmas Morning!  She loved it and you should have seen the puppies — they were absolutely hysterical! 

This kind of thing doesn’t happen here very often, and the couple of times it has happened in my 40 years, it happened in February or early March.  So a White Christmas on the Gulf Coast is truly a miracle.

God is so good!

Wishing all of you a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I read an interesting paragraph from Andy Koom regarding wars the way they used to be fought, and wars the way they are fought today.  Some of you may already be readers of http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=andykoom, but for those who aren’t, please read on:

I heard something interesting today.  Lincoln gave the go to Sherman to literally scorch the earth from Atlanta to the ocean during the Civil War.  During WWII, Dresden was firebombed and Hiroshima and Nagasake were slightly tinged, yet FDR and Truman are remembered to be great war time Presidents.  Gulf War I was masterminded exquisitely by the military, not the politicians.  Then of course we had the forgotten war, the Korean War and Vietnam.  What happened in these two wars?  The liberal dove politicians simply got in the way of their military commanders.  MacArthur clearly wanted to drive the Chicoms back to the Yalu River, and now we have the Kim Jong Mentally Il menace to deal with.  The field commanders during Vietnam desperately wanted more air support, but collateral damage considerations ultimately led to 58,000 dead Americans and a lost war.  A small example.  We Were Soldiers was a movie that was ridiculed last year.  I had no idea why it was, but I didn’t give any thought about it.  Then I saw it.  I figured out why the liberals hated it: it depicted American soldiers in Vietnam acting professionally and bravely, and winning resoundingly in a battle with the help of massive air support.  Also there is some religious subplots, which automatically makes it anti-science.  God is mentioned, but not in the “god damn” variety.  We obviously can’t let that happen, so the lefty movie critics resorted to their animal instincts and gave it poor reviews.  The reasonably “professional” movie critics such as Roger Ebert and AO Scott, howeve, gave it very good reviews.  Liberals love to squabble about “learning from history.”  It’s not farfetched to say that many of them know what they’re pulling off purposefully to give an edge to the enemy in some sick attempt to write their own version of history.

Changing the subject . . .

Things were getting a little weird there, so we’re going to move on to a new topic.  In keeping with the Christmas season, I’m curious to know how you all spend your holiday.  Do you like the way you spend your day(s), or are there things you’d like to change?  I’ll get us started . . .

The Spiritual Side of Christmas . . .

I love Christmas — well, I love certain things about Christmas.  I love the things we’re supposed to love about Christmas, for sure!  God gave us the most awesome Christmas gift in the birth of his precious Son.  And something that recently occurred to me is that Jesus’ earthly family carried that forward, in being obedient to God’s plan and letting Jesus carry out that plan.  I suppose their flesh could have interfered, could have made it more difficult for Him to minister to the lost. 

Of course, I have no scripture to back this up, but think about how parents try to influence their children’s choices, to either live vicariously through their children, or keep their children close to home.  Don’t you think Joseph wanted Jesus to “carry on the family business” or Mary might have thought, “wouldn’t it be nice for my son to marry, have children, and grow old in the house down the road?”  Don’t you think that those thoughts may have crossed their minds once or twice?  They were human, after all.

But the amazing thing is, God knew who on this earth would be obedient to His plan.  He chose Mary and Joseph to be the earthly parents of Jesus because He knew they would raise Jesus in a Godly home and respect the divine plan He’d written for our salvation.  So in a way, their obedience is a gift to us, too.

It’s an example to all of us who have children — to raise our children to follow the Lord and then get out of the way, so that they can recognize His will for their lives, not ours.  Frightening, and yet liberating, because as long as our children follow the Lord, we really have nothing to fear.  His perfect will results in perfect peace.  My Christmas wish for you is that you find His perfect will for your life, and thus His perfect peace . . .

The Ho-Ho-Ho Side of Christmas . . .

I love the decorations!  I have my “kitchen sink tree” that has everything but hanging from its branches.  I look at my tree like a scrapbook of memories that we pull out each year.  Just about every ornament on it has a special memory, a special significance for one or more of us.  There are the little Madame Alexander ornaments that my mom started buying for Jami her first Christmas.  And my “Scarlet O’Hara” ornaments (GWTW is my favorite book).  The seashell ornament my sister made from tiny, tiny shells she collected on the shores of the Sea of Galilea when she visited Israel.  Many goofy ornaments that remind me of AJ (Santa on a surfboard, a mouse with cheese [he loves cheese], the crawfish wishing us all a “Merry Christmas”) . . .

The most special ornaments of all are the ones that AJ makes from wood he saves from the trunk of our tree each year.  He’s done this every year since we’ve been married, and he always does something that symbolizes the three of us . . . three hearts, three stars, a little wooden book with our three names engraved in it . . . a most awesome tradition . . .

The Hum-Hum-Humbug Side of Christmas . . .

While AJ and I’ve been married almost 13 years (and it’s our first and only marriage), we have several folks in the family who’ve been down the aisle more than once.  Needless to say, we have an EXTENDED family!  And each family requests our presence at their home at some point during Christmas.  Here’s our schedule beginning tomorrow:

December 23:  Christmas with AJ’s mom, step-dad, sister, etc.  (100 miles round-trip)

December 24:  Christmas Eve with AJ’s “adopted” family, Leo and Diann  (120 miles round-trip)

December 25:  Christmas Morning at home; Christmas Evening with AJ’s dad, step-mom, sister, etc. (120 miles round-trip)

December 26:  Christmas with Laura’s mom, sister, etc. (80 miles round-trip)

December 27:  Christmas with Laura’s aunt, uncle, etc. (100 miles round-trip)

If I’ve added that all together right, it’s over 500 miles driving in five days.  Sheesh! 

Now, I love all these people.  I really do.  But I’m really tired of doing this every year.  Some of you might say, “Why don’t you stay over at one of their houses and go on to the next stop the next day?”  It seems simple enough, but the fact is — who wants to live out of a suitcase for four or five days, stopping at different houses along the way?

It’s tiring and because we are at so many places over the holiday, NO ONE ever comes to our house, because we’re never home.  The only reason I put up a Christmas tree is because AJ and Jami would miss it and because it would depress me even more not to have one.  But it is a lot of work considering how much we’re gone the main days of the month.

Does anyone have any suggestions?    I’m listening!!!

Wowsers —

I’ve been away for a few days and just had the opportunity to read my comments . . . To read what some of you wrote, you’d think I was writhing on the floor with a foamy mouth because I’m overreacting to an article that struck my interest and seems (IMHO) to foretell of things to come.

What really amuses me, is aside from the comments I wrote in response to the “tut-tutting” of some readers, I didn’t interject much of a personal opinion regarding the articles.  Simply a sentence or two.  I copied the articles, pasted them into my blog with appropriate credits given, for your reading pleasure and contemplation.

If anyone is overreacting, it is those who are determined to insist that I’m sitting there with a “tin-foil hat” foaming at the mouth in fear, when nothing could be further from the truth . . .

Please note the paragraph below which I emphasize in bold and italics —

First published:  Wednesday, April 14, 2004

By Sherrie Gossett

What the FDA Won’t Tell You about the VeriChip

By Dale Hurd
CBN News Sr. Reporter

CBN.com – (CBN News) – A little electronic capsule, smaller than a dime, could be one of the biggest technological advances in how we share and store private medical records. It may also be one of the most controversial.

Known as the VeriChip, it is a microchip that is implanted under a person’s skin, and then scanned with a special reader device to reveal important medical data about that person.

Applied Digital, the Florida-based company that makes the VeriChip, hopes the implant will revolutionize how doctors obtain medical information, particularly in emergency situations. Theoretically, if a person can’t speak, medics could scan that person and quickly be linked to a database that would provide crucial information like the patient’s identity, blood type and drug allergies.

Dr. Csaba Magassi, a plastic surgeon in Northern Virginia, is among a nationwide network of doctors who are ready and waiting to implant the VeriChip into willing patients. His office receives calls daily from people inquiring about the chip.

Dr. Magassi said, “If you are in an auto accident, [and] you are unconscious, they could scan you, know exactly who you are; your medical history can easily be printed out onto the hospital record.”

Dr. Magassi added, “If a patient comes in requesting the VeriChip, I usually tell them it takes between two and five minutes to place the device in place. A needle which contains the VeriChip is inserted. The needle pushes the device through, and it is implanted permanently. Put a bandaid on and you are done.”

Dr. Magassi demonstrated the procedure for CBN News on an apple. Once the microchip was inserted, the hand-held scanner read the number on the chip using radio frequency waves. Think of it as a human barcode.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the VeriChip implant for medical use in humans in October, a huge victory for Applied Digital.

In an effort to jumpstart interest, the company launched the “Get Chipped” campaign. It is offering a discount to the first few hundred people who get the implant, and also plans to donate hundreds of scanners to the nation’s trauma units to promote use of the VeriChip.

But in a letter obtained by CBN News from the FDA to the VeriChip makers, the microchip is not completely safe. In fact, the letter lists a whole host of health risks associated with the device, including “adverse tissue reaction,” “electrical hazards” and “MRI incompatibility.”

Applied Digital and the Food and Drug Administration refused our requests for an interview to discuss these risks.

Consumer privacy advocate Katherine Albrecht said, “There are millions of people that have read the press reports about all the positives of this technology, but really have no idea about its dangers.”

Albrecht strongly opposes the VeriChip for the physical risks it poses, as well as the privacy risks. She has been called “the Erin Brokovich of RFID chips.”

On her Web site, http://www.spychips.com, Albrecht reveals the potential dangers of the VeriChip and other radio frequency identification methods.

Albrecht said, “There’s a very serious concern that, already, engineers and people who think along those lines are already thinking like hackers and criminals — they’re already starting to say, how can this system be compromised, how can it be abused? When you are dealing with a radio frequency device, by design, it is transmitting info using invisible radio waves at a distance. In this case, that distance is only a couple of inches or a couple of feet so it’s not a huge distance, but it means that anyone who can get within a couple of inches or a few feet of you, even with a reader device they have hidden in a backpack or a purse, would be able to scan that number, obtain that info and potentially duplicate it.”

And it is not just private medical information at stake. The microchip implant technology has been around for several years now, and has been used for a variety of different applications.

Thousands of chips have been implanted in pets by veterinarians for identification purposes. Livestock is now chipped to track things like mad-cow disease. Manufacturers are putting chips in products like clothing and shoes for marketing research.

In Mexico, the attorney general and his top aides were chipped for security purposes. And, in Spain at the Baja Beach Club, patrons can get a microchip with their financial information implanted, so they can pay for their cocktails with a swipe of the arm. As these pictures seem to suggest, getting chipped is fun and painless.

Applied Digital also launched a brand new application for the chip last year called the “VeriPay.” This implant would hold all of a person’s financial information. Rather than swipe a card or pay cash, consumers would scan their wrists for purchases. And, if a swipe of the wrist becomes too troublesome, there are already prototypes made of doorway portals that can simply scan a person and their purchases as they walk through the door.

Allbrecht said, “I think there is a very real concern that, down the road, such a chip would become mandatory. And not necessarily initially, but it would be voluntary, in the same way let’s say as credit cards or a drivers license is voluntary. No one forces you to have a driver’s license or to have a cell phone, but yet the vast majority of people do, because it is very difficult to function in a normal society without it.”

For now, though, a microchip implant is voluntary. Only a few thousand chips have been sold and only a fraction of those have been implanted in humans.

For someone who wants an implant for medical purposes, Dr. Magassi and others are standing by. Magassi says, “If they want it, God love ‘em. I’ll put it in. It’s as simple as that.”

The VeriChip just recently made its debut in a Miami, Florida nightclub, where patrons had the opportunity to “Get Chipped,” much like the Baja Beach club patrons in Spain.

Privacy . . . does it exist, or is it just a dream???

Perhaps you’ve heard about the court that ruled a teenager’s right to privacy had been violated when said teenager’s parent eavesdropped on a telephone conversation? ( http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41880 )

Well, here’s something that goes even further to demonstrate how rare an animal true privacy is becoming (italicized text copied from www.spychips.com — check it out for additional information regarding what I consider to be a huge indicator of Christ’s imminent return):

RFID stands for Radio Frequency IDentification, a technology that uses tiny computer chips smaller than a grain of sand to track items at a distance. RFID “spy chips” have been hidden in the packaging of Gillette razor products and in other products you might buy at a local Wal-Mart, Target, or Tesco – and they are already being used to spy on people.

Above: Magnified image of actual tag found in Gillette Mach3 razor blades.

Each tiny chip is hooked up to an antenna that picks up electromagnetic energy beamed at it from a reader device. When it picks up the energy, the chip sends back its unique identification number to the reader device, allowing the item to be remotely identified. Spy chips can beam back information anywhere from a couple of inches to up to 20 or 30 feet away.

1. With today’s bar code technology, every can of Coke has the same UPC or bar code number as every other can (a can of Coke in Toronto has the same number as a can of Coke in Topeka). With RFID, each individual can of Coke would have a unique ID number which could be linked to the person buying it when they scan a credit card or a frequent shopper card (i.e., an “item registration system”).

2. Unlike a bar code, these chips can be read from a distance, right through your clothes, wallet, backpack or purse — without your knowledge or consent — by anybody with the right reader device. In a way, it gives strangers x-ray vision powers to spy on you, to identify both you and the things you’re wearing and carrying.

3. Unlike the bar code, RFID could be bad for your health. RFID supporters envision a world where RFID reader devices are everywhere – in stores, in floors, in doorways, on airplanes — even in the refrigerators and medicine cabinets of our own homes. In such a world, we and our children would be continually bombarded with electromagnetic energy. Researchers do not know the long-term health effects of chronic exposure to the energy emitted by these reader devices.

Many huge corporations, including Philip Morris, Procter and Gamble, and Wal-Mart, have begun experimenting with RFID spy chip technology. Gillette is leading the pack, and recently placed an order for up to 500 million RFID tags from a company called “Alien Technology” (we kid you not). These big companies envision a day when every single product on the face of the planet is tracked with RFID spy chips!

As consumers we have no way of knowing which packages contain these chips. While some chips are visible inside a package (see our pictures of Gillette spy chips), RFID chips can be well hidden. For example they can be sewn into the seams of clothes, sandwiched between layers of cardboard, molded into plastic or rubber, and integrated into consumer package design.

This technology is rapidly evolving and becoming more sophisticated. Now RFID spy chips can even be printed, meaning the dot on a printed letter “i” could be used to track you. In addition, the tell-tale copper antennas commonly seen attached to RFID chips can now be printed with conductive ink, making them nearly imperceptible. Companies are even experimenting with making the product packages themselves serve as antennas.

As you can see, it could soon be virtually impossible for a consumer to know whether a product or package contains an RFID spy chip. For this reason, CASPIAN (the creator of this web site) is proposing federal labeling legislation, the RFID Right to Know Act, which would require complete disclosures on any consumer products containing RFID devices.

We believe the public has an absolute right to know when they are interacting with technology that could affect their health and privacy.

Don’t you?

Join us. Let’s fight this battle before big corporations track our every move.

I know part of the reason it hurts so bad — I feel like I let her down.  I didn’t keep her safe.  And I can never fix that.

It keeps hitting me in waves.  I think I’m okay, and then I’ll look at a particular spot on the floor and I can SEE her lying there.  My chest hurts so bad, it just feels like there’s a hole where my heart should be. 

Monday night I stayed up late to work on a Christmas present.  AJ decided to go to bed, and Sydney watched to make sure he was “in for the night.”  Then she quietly walked around to his (her) recliner and hopped up.  She rested her chin on the arm of the chair and her eyes closed in that peaceful way that dogs’ eyes do when they’re sleeping.  I can’t tell you how many times I’d wander back into the living room after turning in for the night to find her curled up in the chair, or better yet, lying on her back on the sofa.  I figured, when a dog’s reached the ripe old age of 11, she’s entitled to a few perks.  So I never made her get down. 

She’d become quite a beggar in her later years.  I blame this completely on AJ.  He was always slipping her little bits of this and that when he thought I wasn’t looking.  And since I knew it was pointless to fight him on it, I started slipping her little things here and there, too.  She loved cheese, and a bit of ham here and there.  Especially a raw egg cracked in her bowl.  When AJ gathered the eggs and found a cracked one in the dozen, it was a banner day! 

The day before she died, Jami got very put out with her.  She had a piece of fried chicken on a plate on the dining room table.  She went to get something, and guess who snatched the chicken from her plate?  What a stinker!    She wasn’t usually so bold, but I guess the chicken was within easy reach . . .

There’s still a few of her hairs on the recliner cushion.  I don’t want to vacuum the cushion.  Totally irrational, I know.  Something else I know is that I’ve been crying for what seems like hours and I just can’t seem to find an end to it.  I miss her so much and I want her back.  And that’s not going to happen.  I don’t think I’ve ever been so full of grief over the loss of an animal.

I know it will pass, eventually.  The pain will become an ache, dull and not so intense.  And I’ll be able to think about her without feeling this way.  Please forgive me for wailing away on my blog.  I’d like to scream, but I’d wake Jami up and disturb the neighbors.  So thank goodness for the blog.