I meant for this to be posted back in January, so please pardon the tardiness.

Last year was one full of life lessons, many of which are probably understood to be common sense to all you smart people out there. But, lo, I had to be taught these things the hard way. Here are the top 8 bits of wisdom I learned in 2008, in no particular order.

1. Owning a home does not automatically equate to a slew of tax writeoffs.

2. Crabgrass is much easier to grow than Bermuda.

3. My quiver may not be full yet.

4. The Word of God is living and active.

5. God is completely fulfilled, glorified, and soveriegn in and of Himself.

6. I am completely arrogant, selfish, and apathetic in and of myself.

7. Boasting about tomorrow is a symptom of pride and ignorance.

8. My wife is very patient and forgiving.

So long 2008, thanks for the memories.

I’m happy to announce that I’ll now be doing business as Sparrow Visual.

December 1 marked my first day of being a full-time self-employed designer, and so far its been a great week. I’m currently working on a custom website for a photographer in Arizona, which should launch before Christmas. You can check out the landing page at lyralyra.com.

It’s been exciting and humbling to see the Lord provide for us. I’m sure that our faith will be stretched all the more as the months and years go on, but it will be good to be reminded that He is the one who feeds the birds of the air and clothes the lilies of the field. And if He says that we are more valuable than the sparrows and flowers, then we will be well provided for.

I’m laying on my back right now with my left foot elevated and ice packed. This morning I experienced a first: breaking a bone. And this isn’t some silly head injury; it’s my pinky toe.

Here’s the story. I was out on an early morning crime fighting expedition when my foot caught the edge of a cell phone tower that was recently installed on top of a tall building that I often leap over in a single bound. (more…)

Rather than forwarding an email everyone, I’m going to properly utilize the technology of the Internet, via blog software, to share something I read today that I considered quite funny.

This is from a blog post by Kevin Cornell from his Bearskinrug Articles.

…you don’t need to have magic powers, or have super-strength to be a hero. There’s a hero in all of us, just waiting to come out. Like yesterday, I was driving the car, and I came to this four-way intersection. And there were three other cars at the intersection. So I waved one fellow on, even though I could have gone. Then I waved the next fellow on. And then, I felt so good, I waved the other car on. But cars kept appearing behind all those cars I waved on. So I selflessly waved a few of them on as well. And behind me, all the other cars were honking their admiration for my sacrifice. Until finally the guy behind me got out of his car to congratulate me, or get my autograph or something. But I don’t go in for that kind of ego-inflating, so I just ignored his taps on my window. Anyway, I don’t have the right kind of pen for signing a tire iron.

(I didn’t ask Mr. Cornell if I could include his writings here. Hopefully he won’t try to find me and ask me to autograph his tire iron.)

Owning a home is a great privilege and blessing. But most good things tend to come with some less-than-desirable baggage. All worldly possessions require some degree of cleaning, fixing, maintaining, or preserving (which sometimes makes me wonder why we always want more).

Anyways, today I changed one of the air intake filters to our heating/air conditioning ducting. Here’s what the new filter looks like:

Here’s a picture of the one I removed:

Nasty. It’s no wonder that we’ve all been caughing and sneezing so much.

The packaging suggested that these filters should be replaced every 3 months, but I was pretty sure this one was over due by a few days. Whoever installed this old one did fill in the date when it was installed, but it left me a bit confused:

After a bit of thinking I concluded that this old filter was installed way back when dates were still in the single digits. Definitely over 3 months ago.