Naughton’s Nonsense

I heard a good story at church yesterday concerning a five year old boy in our parish. Recently it was the boy’s Saint’s Day and his parents were struggling to find him an appropriate gift that would either teach or have religious significance, but not be inappropriate for the age.. They finally settled on a Veggietales DVD. They wrapped it up and gave it to the boy who was very excited to be getting a gift. The boy opened it with great anticipation and pulled the DVD out, and his head fell, as tears began to well. And he said “I hate this video”. The parents completely shocked and taken aback asked the boy if he was expecting something else, and what that might be. The parents expected to hear the usual matchbox cars or remote control, however were pleasantly surprised when he turned to them and said he wanted a blessing cross to hang on his wall and to use when he plays priest.

As I heard this story I was completely humbled. It is amazing how much we can learn from the children God has given us. They can even teach us what is and is not an appropriate gift for a Saint’s Day. Everyone is given to us for our salvation, especially our children.

On Tuesday Nov. 7 2006 my Corolla went to its end. This was the first car my wife and I purchased together, and we were not even married yet. I was in desperate need of a car and I found the Toyota, however I was about $500 short of the $1700 sticker price. So she (my girlfriend, now my wife) loaned me the $500. It had 80K on it when it was purchased in 1996. It left us with over 210K on it. It served us well and need very little maintenance till the very end. In the end it needed over $1000 in brake work. More then I was prepared to put in it. I will miss that car a lot, it was fun to drive and we have a lot of memories in it. It took us on our honeymoon, brought us to Kentucky, and served very reliably and faithfully for many years. I know I am being a bit over sentimental, and that it was just a car, but I even feel a little guilty for taking only $50 for it, and selling it to someone who is going to use it in a demolition derby. Well hopefully it will serve this person well one last time.

WhooHoo! Our church is featured on the front page of the Orthodox Church in America’s website. We have been placed there since it is missions appeals month and we are a mission in the Diocese of the South, a diocese of the Orthodox Church in America. It is kind of shocking to be running through your daily list of web pages and come across one with your picture. In other good news we have also just received eight people to the catechuminate.

During the summer of 95′ I found a new job. In ignorance I applied at J.C. Penney’s for an electronics salesperson position. The part I was ignorant about was the fact that Penney’s did not have an electronics department. However, they liked me and hired me to sell men’s suits. And the was my first exposure to working on straight commission. During that summer not much else happened. I eagerly awaited Tabitha’s return to graduate school, and worked. I believe I might have taken a trip to NC that summer, but my memory is weak on that point. I am sure Tabitha could tell me. Once fall returned so did all the students and my girlfriend. It seems to me that Fall and Winter of that year were pretty uneventful. I did make a trip to Cincinnati over Christmas break to surprise Tabitha at a Wesleyan convention that she and her family were attending (or was that 94′). Who knows? She knows. Anyway it was Easter of 96′ that we decided to get married, and that is when my life began to change forever in every way. We chose the 4th of July for that momentous occasion, so that we would always have fireworks on our anniversary. In just three months the magic that is my mother-in-law and wife managed to organize our wedding, make the wedding dress and a couple of bridal gowns, and make the reception dinner. It was amazing. There were of course things that went wrong but all in all everything went smoothly; and we had a beautiful wedding! We continued to live in Kent for the next month, at which point we moved to Kentucky, because my wife had secured an excellent job with Asbury College. Little did I know of the history and world that I was stepping into.

For those of us with bandwidth to burn and disk space that has cobwebs collecting in the unused recesses , I have put together this small quicktime movie. It is rather jerky (I was shooting on a small digital camera) but it should give you the basic idea. I am providing some commentary, and you even catch a glimpse of me at some point. There are a few clips that went squat on me, can you figure out what I did wrong. Oh well this is not meant to be a masterpiece, just a way of showing you around the new place. Enjoy.
walkthrough File Size: 8.4 MB

Well we closed this morning on our new home YEAH! We have already had the fridge delivered and the duct work cleaned. Now it is time to have the carpets cleaned and the begin moving in. Man there is so much to do and I can already feel the money pit vacuum turning on. We look forward to finally being able to comfortably entertain though.Now all that needs to happen is my G5 needs to ship. And yes I am getting the dualie!

After all my traveling in the summer of 93′ I decided to settle back into working and preparing for my debut at Kent State University. I was working as a customer service rep. for a universal remote control company. What great fun teaching morons how to be more lazy. I choose Kent for purely financial reasons and the fact that I am lazy also. I lived in Kent which meant I could stay at home and my dad worked for Kent which meant I got to go for free. So given all that I choose to make a great and wise decision to sign up not only for early morning classes but to take 18 credit hours, while maintaining a job. Well needless to say that first semester of college did not go well. So for second semester I decided to drop down to 12 credit hours. I soon began finding myself in the poll hall more and more and dropping classes more and more. Soon I was down to something like 6 hours, a part time job, and a lot of pool hall time. I was also attending Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship through all of this year. Well after much contemplation and the end of the semester I decided to stop going to college and try my hand at the working life.So during the summer of 1994 I got a full-time job with an residential electrician who had probably been shocked one to many times. It was an ok job except for the fact that all he did was talk about all the other electricians and how bad they were. I became more and more disgruntled. The needle that broke the camels back was after having me work in a muddy pit all day long he would not let me get into the work van with my muddy clothes on. Fortunately it was in the middle of winter so I had multiple layers of clothing on and was able to strip down and still be decent. So after approximately six months I quit. During this time I decided I needed to continue attending Inter-Varsity to continue having good Christian friendships. This is also around the time I met my future wife. I still remember one of our earliest conversations was about which was more important lighting or sound. The next job was with a commercial electrical contractor who happened to be a friend of the family. This was a great job and I really enjoyed working there, however it was not meant to be. I kept getting sick and decided that the environment I was working in was not conducive to my health. So it was now summer of 1995 and time to find employment yet again.

It was brought to my attention that some of the people I emailed about the new house could not open the link to the pictures. I tried this morning and it still works but anyway I decided to post the pictures here. So follow this link and view our new house with the old inhabitants stuff in it.