The Brighter Side of Things

Quick Update

marksears — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 03:34:24 +0000

Hello all,

I hate to disappoint but there will be no vacation updates this year. I know I said a few weeks ago, they were soon to come but this year’s vacation has come and gone. We had a little extra to do this year. I will say the vacation was great for the whole family. We had a great time together. We tanned a little and played in the rain some as well. It rained on us the first day at the beach and the day before we were to leave, we got wet. Overall, it was a great time to spend with each other.

Now for the next thing, my children attend a school that is in need of funding to build a building to allow then to hold school in a real building. They are currently having classes in a group of one-room portable classrooms. The village is neat but we want them to have a home. Please follow the links below to the Greer Middle College Charter High School site and vote for us so we can give a great run at getting this money. You can vote as many as five times for the school. Thanks and I hope to announce that we won the prize here.

Vote for Greer Middle College Charter high

Don’t You Just Love email?

marksears — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:28:57 +0000

I was reading my email this morning and thought, “This will make a good blog post”. Every day I get hundreds of emails. Most of it is trash that is filtered but there is other trash (cute forwards) that gets sent to me by my wonderful friends. I love ‘em anyway. Being the good friend that I am I look them over and then delete them. However, from time to time I get a good one that bears the necessity to pass along to the next friend that I notice didn’t get copied on them. Today, I got one that I decided to share with my three readers that still look at the blog regularly. I’ve yet to realize why you are still looking since I post so regularly. But for you three, here is a great definition of our friendship:

Are you tired of those sissy ‘friendship’ poems that always sound good, but never actually come close to reality? Well, here is a series of promises that actually speak of True Friendship. You WON’T see cutesy little smiley faces on this card- Just the stone cold truth
of our great friendship.

1. When you are sad, I will jump on the person who made you sad
like a spider monkey jacked up on Mountain Dew!!!
2. When you are blue, I will try to dislodge whatever is choking you.
3. When you smile, I will know you are plotting something that I must be involved in.
4. When you’re scared, we will high tail it out of here.
5. When you are worried, I will tell you horrible stories about how much worse it could be until you quit whining, ya big baby!!!!
6. When you are confused, I will use little words.
7. When you are sick, Stay away from me until you are well again.
I don’t want whatever you have….
8. When you fall, I’ll pick you up and dust you off– After I laugh!!!

This is my oath….. I pledge it to the end.. ‘Why?’ you may ask;
– because you are my FRIEND!

***********************
Friendship is like peeing your pants, everyone can see it, but only YOU
can feel the true warmth.
**********************
Try sending this to 10 of your closest friends .. including the person
who sent this to you ….. Then, get depressed ’cause you can only think of 4!

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Coming attraction: Daily Vacation updates

See you soon.

Can it get any hotter?

marksears — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 19:41:01 +0000

OK, it seems like I have these lapses when I forget to post something or I get too lazy or I’ve been aboard the mother ship and the Wi-Fi stinks. No matter the reason I have noticed people have been looking at the blog and nothing new has been on here in several months. Well, summer is here and it is hot outside so maybe I can find time to sit in a nice cool chair at the computer and share some of my random wisdom.

I want to start by saying thank you to those of you who have been looking at the blog. Life is so busy and we all have things going on so I will work at giving you some content that is worth looking at from time to time.

Today I have a portion of a poem to share with you. I like literature though you could never convince ANY of my English teachers or professors. I just find it hard to sit and read. I like to but it seems that if I try I learn that I like sleeping better. If I get still enough to read I usually get sleepy. That doesn’t factor in the temperature. The higher it gets the easier it is to sleep. Anyway, here is what I wanted to share with you.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

…Robert Frost

It seems that most things worth having are often found on that less traveled road. If we don’t have to work for things then we don’t develop the true appreciation for them. That is what makes hard work feel so gratifying. Ponder this point made by Mr. Frost. I have taken the road less traveled many times and that is when the biggest differences have been made in my life. Let me know what some of the less traveled roads you have taken are and over the next few days I will post some stories about my less traveled roads and let’s see if we can teach and learn as we share.

See you soon,

MS

I’ve got to do better

marksears — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 08:27:08 +0000

Well, it has been three months since my last post. I can say two of you have been checking on a regular basis to see if I have put anything new out here. Well, I am back. It has been a very busy three months. I am not going to try to catch you up. That just makes this a history lesson of my life. At this writing, it is now 3:48 am and I am in one of those sleepless states. In the past when I was in that state of sleeplessness, I was best at blogging. All I know is the last three months I have not slept any better than when I was regular at posting something on here but my sleep patters did change. I found myself falling asleep sometime early in the evening with my children in the living room watching television. Actually, I did not remember that part. The part I do remember is waking up between 3 am and 4 am and moving from the sofa to the bed. I have to admit there were several nights mixed in that I did not wake up until 4:30 and just watched TV (that was left on when the children went to bed) until the alarm went off telling me to get up.

I guess that brings me to the whole point of this post, I am going to try to get back on a more normal routine and I think it will all start with my sleep patterns. I am going to start going to bed at a normal time. Maybe with a normal sleep pattern I will make better use of my awaking hours simply because I will be more rested. This should bring about a more regular schedule with all other aspects of my daily life.

With all the changes that have taken place in my life lately, my focus has changes as well. I have trimmed many things from my calendar. I will say that the blog will probably be more random that it has been in the past although I may fall into a historical rut from time to time and just post about what is going on around the house. I will try to keep things interesting and entertaining, just to give you a reason to come back and see what is happening. With that, I am going to go back to bed now to see if I can get the second half of a good nights sleep. See you in a few days.

Another Day in Paradise

marksears — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:25:38 +0000

Wow! Winter storm settled in and blanketed the area. It is beautiful. I love the cold weather. It has been a great day spent a lot of time with the wife and kids.

Those of you that attend Freedom Fellowship there will be no services tomorrow. The ice on the ground and the stuff that is falling now will make for bad travel tomorrow morning so the decision was made to cancel services tomorrow. I guess we will see you all next Sunday.

The move of the day was my son skating down the driveway. He did great until he got on flat ground. Then his feet went straight up in the air and he caught himself with the back of his head on the street. He is fine. I think he was a little shaken at first but once he got over the shock, he was great.

Can-cert update. The new date is February 21. I will post the details and directions later. I just wanted to let you all know the date so you can get it on your calendar.

I am going to head back to the window and watch the snowfall.

Just a Quick Note

marksears — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 13:47:36 +0000

The benefit concert I talked about in my last post has been postponed. Richie (our drummer) will be celebrating the life of his Grandmother this afternoon. She went home to her Savior Wednesday evening. Please join me in praying for Richie and his family during this difficult time.

I will let you know the new information as soon as the date is final. It should be later this week. I will also remember to post directions this time.

Late Night Post

marksears — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 04:50:06 +0000

Hello everyone,

Our band, Forecast Reign, will be playing a benefit concert for the Heritage Baptist Food Pantry January 24 in the evening. Admission is two or more cans of food. We are hoping for a GREAT turn out. We want to help this ministry so much. They are so giving and gracious to the homeless people in our area. I do not know of another church that feeds the homeless like these people. There are several churches and other organizations that serve meals through soup kitchens and facilities like that. However, this group of people comes into the church kitchen three days a week and prepares a full meal for them. They then put it in a van and transport it several blocks away to a central location that the homeless know to go to on these given days and they make sure these people have three hot meals a week. If you are not able to make it to the “Can-cert” on January 24th but still want to help just get in touch with me. This is not only an offer for this evening but all the time. If you want to help this ministry you can collect cans of non-perishable food items and Let me know. I can put you in touch with them directly or assist you in getting the donations to them or both.

Come on out and help us make this a successful event for the people in need in this area.

Thanks and hope to hear from you and see you on the twenty-fourth.

Merry Christmas

marksears — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 14:07:13 +0000

Wishing everyone a VERY Merry Christmas!

Veggie Soup

marksears — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 20:17:33 +0000

OK, the title is a little miss leading. I really don’t have a topic for this post but there is a theme. The title was an inspiration from my son who has joined me to bring our house to a truly divided house. He started a vegetarian diet about a month and a half ago. Thus the count is now two against two. I no longer stand alone.

Just a quick disclaimer here: I started writing this post December 1st, the day after my last post. So it may sound a little mixed up but bear with me. At least I am posting something and it even has some relevance to what has been going on the last two weeks. If you read between the lines you will see why it has taken two weeks to complete this post. I guess I’d better start on the next one tomorrow so you will have something to read in the next two weeks (hopefully sooner).

The two biggest days in the history of my blog were both after several weeks with no posts. There was one day that 23 people looked at my post. I may have to take a few more hiatuses and my readership may be high enough to actually sell advertisements on here. I won’t do that. This was simply a project not a business venture. I get a kick out of this blog. I can pretty much say what is on my mind and my wife doesn’t fuss about it. She does, however, tell me how stupid I can be. I love that about her. She can tell me what she thinks and I just can’t get mad about it. Mainly because I know she is right most of the time.

OK just a quick update on some things that were regular mentions at one time. The band, we have been working together the last several months. We are getting a focus and have set some goals to work toward. We have two dates scheduled for 2010 right now. That is two more than we had scheduled in December of 2008. It is exciting to hear how we are starting to sound with the new line of personnel we have. At this time I am not playing Bass guitar. I am splitting duty between acoustic guitar and keys. That is a true challenge since I haven’t spent any amount of time on the keys in many years. So I am working really hard at this. As a group we have developed a good sound and only time will tell if everyone likes the sound as much as we do.

I’ll have more soon.

Welcome Back

marksears — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:23:52 +0000

Hello my one trooper. I know at least one person has been checking on a regular basis to see if I have changed something. Thank you very much. My hopes are that it is more than one person and I haven’t lost all readership.

Thing have been rather crazy around my house. But it is time to bring things back to normal. I plan to start posting on a regular basis (like you haven’t heard that one before). There have been several events that have broken routine but it is time to take back things as I know them. Bear with me and I will have some regularly planned things mixed with sheer thoughts from a mad man.

I’ll post some things as catch up and maybe a treat in honor of the Christmas Season. Check back soon.