I would suppose that all of us have done it at some point of our lives. This morning I did it again. I crossed that threshold.

For the first time in a long long time I found myself totally spent. Physically, emotionally, mentally. It's all on the table. I had felt tendencies earlier this month but seemed to have circumvented the problem and continued on. This morning I am in a time warp. Yuk!

The first time I awoke and looked at the clock, it was 12:16 am., I was able to go back to sleep and awoke at 6:20 am. Much better. I thought I would just lie there for a few minutes, next thing I knew it was 7:20 am. That was nearly blissful.

I decided to give myself the day off. At least the office part. I continue to coordinate the comings and goings of shipments but "working in the office " is out of bounds today.

I actually did some computer stuff but it wasn't really work. I ordered a replacement laptop today. I got the go ahead several months ago but I am very reluctant to spend that kind of money, even if it is someone else's money. Laptops or notebooks have really come down in price, much like all the other computers. This one began at just over a thousand dollars before I began to customized it. Lots of memory, a huge processor, plenty of USB ports, some high end software, cutting edge anti-virus and spyware, added capacity batteries and I am almost excited to see it come in. Actually the ship date given is January 30, 2006 but the order confirmation said five days. I may have to e-mail Michael to find out for sure.

My existing laptop is still capable. If our old computer man Chad was still in town, I probably would have just given him my laptop to clean up. It is a Dell, almost six years old. It was a top end computer when it was purchased, but that was back when they weren't putting much memory and processors were about an eighth of what they are now. I get an error message quite often saying I have exceeded the memory capacity. And that is saving very little to the hard drive and yet many, many, many discs of stored records. In fact I have them grouped by year.

The new computer is equipped with a lot of the new fad stuff, one of which is wireless networking. We'll see how it works. Hopefully things will progress where eventually we will have broadband at the jobsite, then we will have wireless for all our machines.

The last thing I put in my cart was a large flat screen monitor for Krl. She is using my old desktop out here, the tried and true AST Bravo. By any standard it is ancient (it was purchased new in 1997), but something about how it is configured it would work right alongside computers which exceeded its capacities. It had a bank of USB ports long before it was popular and could have been cashed in on in Canada for way more than what was paid for it.

I feel like I am fixing to have to learn some new tricks.

Before it was all said and done I had roamed around the Dell website for almost two hours. I bet they thought I had stolen that cart.

Today is Roy's birthday. He has let everyone know about it weeks in advance. He has celebrated it for the past week. This morning I didn't even mention it to him. I could tell it was really irritating him, but I just ignored the fact. Finally he told me he was upset that I wouldn't even wish him Happy Birthday. I told him "But it's next week" and he said "No". I continued to make him think he had told me wrong. Finally I told him to come to my trailer to help with a project and Krl gave him his gift. We got pictures and everything. Roy is a big University of Texas fan. A large part of his wardrobe is burnt orange. We selected a corduroy orange UT cap along with a National Champion Shirt and a pair of orange shades (which are also safety glasses). He was surprised to say the least. Then I took him back to the bale dock in the company SUV, raised the hatch and there was a huge sheet cake proclaiming "Happy Birthday Roy". He felt about an inch tall. I had set him up perfectly. At last check he was still serving his "buds" birthday cake!

Heh, heh! All in a days play!

Be the real deal!

FATHER, I need YOU every hour. I pray for those near and dear who are in need. I ask safety for Adam and his men. Let YOUR glory fill the earth!