jaydeltathree

This past weekend

So what all happened? We left Friday night to go to my mother's house. We got there and then went to Taqueria Arandas for dinner. After we finished eating, my mother went to Kroger's and we went back to the house. I don't know exactly when she got in, as I went to bed sometime after 10pm. I woke up around 6am and left for Port Arthur to have breakfast with my father. We went to Conn's and looked at a very nice priced digital SLR camera. He also took me by Lois's so that I could meet her granddaughter, who was celebrating her third birthday that day. We went back to his house and I made the mistake of getting on the computer. We had been talking about Linux distributions, so I downloaded virtualBox so he could play around with some distros in there. In the process I also ended up downloading utorrent and 7zip. That kept me there later than I should have been, as I'd told Carolina I'd be back before the morning was over.

When I got ready to leave my dad's, he noticed that the rear driver's side tire was almost flat. He guided me to a shop where I got a cheap replacement, and then I headed back to Houston. By the time I got there, it was after 3pm. We hung out there for awhile, and then went to Maria's. My brother-in-law was on the porch relaxing with one of his friends, Ivan. Ivan explained to me that I was rude to him the last time I was there--I walked past him many times and never spoke. I remembered that the last time I had a terrible headache, plus I wasn't sure he spoke english. He demonstrated his understanding of several languages, including German and Arabic. He picked these up as a merchant marine. After leaving there, we went to see my other sister-in-law Rosalba. We stayed there for awhile and then came home.

Sunday we went to church as usual, but I started the day off much better than usual. I'd gotten to bed around 10 or 11 the night before, so I got up around 7 and decided to put on an old CD and sing along in praise to God. The CD was Jesus is Alive. That really got me going spiritually. I then went out and ran two miles. I showered and then we got off to church. Carolina was helping with the preschoolers, so she left early by herself. Since I'd already gotten off to a good start in the morning, I was really moved in the service. I had already been moved to tears once that morning by myself, and it happened twice during the praise and worship at church. It felt good. I can remember when this happened before, and I've always taken it to mean that God is moving and doing that work in my heart that I've asked him to do, to take away the heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh, a heart that is tender and receptive to His voice. One of the deacons spoke about justice and retribution. The examples he gave from his own life were very powerful.

When I got home, I found that the network connection wasn't working. I'd tried it the night before and thought I just needed to reboot my laptop, but I found that I just wasn't receiving a signal from the modem gateway. I went to the computer with the wired connection and was able to connect without a problem. I rebooted the modem with no results. I checked the user's manual and went through the troubleshooting steps, also with no results. Finally, I called Motorola. I was pleasantly relieved to find that the customer service was knowledgable, not reading from some canned script or something. Apparently, while we were in Houston, the channel I was using became overrun, possibly by the nearby ISP. The customer service rep also mentioned my WEP 128-bit settings as a possible culprit, but I'd never had a problem with them before. Anyway, we got it fixed. I also took this opportunity to switch from WEP to WPA.

I also got a pleasant surprise that afternoon as I got a call from SGM Quarles. I'd sent him a letter a week ago with my contact information. We talked for awhile, and I told him I'd be trying to contact Julio and get with Silvia so we could get something together.