Moving my blog...

I've decided to setup a site of my own, and have moved my blog (and its contents) over there.

Please update your links to go here now for the main page, and here for the blog.

Absent Friends

2008 is drawing to a close, and with the new year around the corner and so many things in my life in flux, I find my thoughts turning to the year ahead.

I've never been one for making resolutions. Despite our best intentions Real Life has a way of coming in and scattering the best laid plans to the four winds.

I started to think about how I could make next year better than this one and had intended on posting them up here. As I sat mulling over what worked for my family and I in 2008 and what I'd like to change, a thought smacked me upside the head like a two by four.

Back in September, I lost a friend.

A husband and father of two, Thomas "Mac" McDonald was one of the good guys. Someone you'd want to have a beer with. Or to have at your side in a bar fight. We worked for more than five years side by side. He was someone that could be counted on. Period. I can't think of too many people I can say that about.

Mac drowned while trying to save his daughter's life at Lighthouse Beach on Labor Day Weekend. Thanks to a quick thinking lifeguard, his daughter survived.

Mac didn't.

His family is devastated. I'm sure the Holiday Season - their first without him - is going to be unbearable.

Puts everything in perspective, doesn't it? Suddenly my stupid little laundry list of gripes about my own life seems pretty ridiculous.

So I guess for 2009, I'll be more thankful. God willing, I'll spend more time enjoying my family and being grateful for all the blessings we have, and less time focusing on what doesn't work.

Because you just never know.