Christmas Post continued

Man Christmas came and went and I didn’t feel ready like usual. The past month or so has been a blur and now I’m hoping things will sort of readjust and we’ll slow down a bit, but I’m dubious that will happen. My New years resolution is to blog on a more regular basis, not because I fear becoming irrelevant, but because of the cathartic value of it. I enjoy sharing what’s on my heart with the world and there’s much deeper… and even darker side than I’ve put out there.

A week ago last Saturday I took my state exam for the “2-15” Life, Health, and Variable Annuity license and passed it on the first shot. It was 165 questions and you have 165 minutes to take it so it’s was a rather mind numbing experience. I’m now looking to put that license to practice. Last January I obtained my “2-20” Property and Casualty or General Lines Agent’s license which was no easy task either. That’s 2 major licenses in one year and I’m now the total package and should be quite valuable to somebody out there. In my current job in the posh Ocean Reef Community at an insurance agency there I’m somewhat limited at the amount of success I can obtain, but I do enjoy working there and know I’ll need to start looking at some options. I met with Kristina Seaman from our Life Group and her Regional leader to discuss selling Primerica life insurance and financial products. I was quite impressed with the product just not sure it’s the right move for me at this time. I realized early on that if we are going to be able to weather this economic downturn Gail and I both will need to become more valuable and we do need to get other stream of income flowing in order to beat it. My hope is to have my own business one day but know I still have much to learn.

Last week I was reminiscing about Christmas times past growing up in Richmond Virginia and how I miss being there very much. Some fairly major things have happened since I wrote that oddly enough. My step-dad fell a while back and cracked one of the vertebrae in his neck, he was taken to the hospital on Christmas day and is still there. Monday he will likely be moved to a rehab facility for a few weeks. As it is he will get better but the Dr. explained that this type of injury could have been horribly worse and if he falls again and re-injures himself it may not go so well. I say it’s because even at 88 years old he’s “as tough as shoe leather” as my grandma used to say.
He’s always been such and independent person and hate to see how the effects of time are robbing him of that.

One Christmas sticks out when I was a kid as pretty funny. We had just moved into the house shown above and it was like the 2 Christmas there and my step-brother Tom Cooper was a Sr. in high school and still living at home and I was maybe 10 and my sister Diane was like 6. We woke up early on Christmas morning and went rushing in to see if ol’ Nick was able to find our new house and hook us up with a little sum’in-sum’in, and boy were we not disappointed. I got a set of drums (the el cheapo kind but still they were awesome)! So I set out to beating on them having a ball (it was probably 6 am) and Tom walked in all wore out tired looking and said…

“Oh, drums”.

Tom finished his Sr. year and moved out.

~Billy

 

The Christmas Post

The picture on the header is my folks house in Richmond Va. and around this time of year especially I start to get a little homesick. This year is different from the past years because my folks are older and my stepdad Charlie Cooper is having a rough go of things these days. Mi Madre is also having a tough time as the full time caregiver and essentialy bares the brunt of the whole ordeal. I thank God for my wonderful sister Diane, she does a lot for them and is a pretty awesome lady. Also my step sister Melissa here in Florida, she’s doing a lot for my dad and stepmom. And me, I just get to live large here at trailer park here in Homa-stead.

To give a little perspective I was about 7 when they got together which was about 40 years ago and this new man in our lives was kind of a larger than life action figure. He came up working in the West Va. coal mines and scored a football scholarship to the University of Virginia and was eventually captain of the football team. When WW II broke out he enlisted with the Marines because he believed it was his duty to defend this country and what we stand for. After officers training at UNC Chapel Hill it was off to battle. Starting in Pearl Harbor and eventually ending up as a 1st Lt. in the 5th Marine division he hit the blazing hot black beaches on Iwo Jima where he was wouned once in the stomach, patched up and sent back only to be shot in the left arm. This injury sent him home and left him with a paralyzed left arm and partial hearing loss from a mortar that landed and went off near his head. There are so many stories and he’s even been interviewed many times about it for the news. I used to take his Purple Heart to school and show and tell it. He had a stronger right arm than Popeye, trust me you didn’t want to be on the recieveng end.
Honestly though we never really knew he was paralyzed because he refused to let it be an issue to slow him down much.

One of my favorite stories was my sister and I liked to watch the old Shirley Temple movies on Saturday afternoons (before cable or even remotes) and in one particular movie she starred with Bill “Bojangles”. When Charlie was sent to Norfolk to the VA hospital for treatment Bill Bojangles came and entertained the guys there. Needless to say my sis and I were somewhat starstruck that he had been in the presence of such greatness. That’s just the tip of the iceburg though, there’s so so much more.

Sometime after all that his first wife “Peggy” died of encephalitis, he married again for a short time but divorced and ended up in Richmond Va. as a science teacher, he also coached football, track and field, baseball, and worked his way up to the Athletic Director at Thomas Jefferson High School. There he met a fair haired little vixen named Marian Finch who herself was recently divorced with 2 little kids (that’d be mi madre) and they married, he had 3 kids of his own but they were all nearly grown so we never really knew them that well. When he retired he was AD over 2 high schools in the Richmond area. We were used to him being quoted in the paper occaisionally.

They eventually moved into the house in the picture above in about 1972 and that’s basically where all our childhood memories are. I remember a lot of Christmases in that house and I don’t ever recall a bad one. I’ve seen it snow on Christmas day, which is kind of rare. I also remember one Christams day where it was so warm I played out in the yard barefooted, also rare. They always made sure we got plenty of stuff for Christmas, and you know today I don’t think we have any of that “stuff” left from those days just the memories of it. Like the fire place we used to hang our stockings on. I remember the fires in the fireplace and the stocking being filled to overflowing with cool stuff but the only thing I really remember is getting an orange in the bottom. Every year there was different stuff but we always got a (fresh… no not the same one) orange.

I remember asking why and them saying they always got fruit in their stocking as kids. Growing up in the depression era in a poor part of mining country fresh fruit on a bitter cold day was probably more than a treat, it may have even been a way to escape to a very different place where something like that would have been grown. An orange in the stocking may have been a pearl of incalculable price. Or maybe it was just piece of fruit on a cold winter day.

By the way I’ll probably put an orange in my kids stocking, like I have in past years. She may not remember all the cool junk but one day she may put an orange in her kids stocking and they’ll ask her why.

I suppose that’s really the point of Christmas though in a weird kind of way. I mean the reason for Christmas is to celebrate the birth of God becoming man and taking on the sin of the world and to become sin on our behalf so we can spend eternity with Him. We don’t have any relics of his walking this earth, just some really amazing written accounts of His having been here and instead of an orange we have five loaves and a couple of fish.

If you can connect these dots by the way, you may be waaaay wierder than me.

But I didn’t write all that to tell you that, there’s more you’ll just have to wait till next installment…

~Billy

 

How the Insurance Agent saved Christmas

I like a little Insurance Agent humor now and then, ya know like… “How many Insurance agents does it take to change a light bulb?”.

It’s a trick question; everyone knows you have to read the policy first to find out if it’s a covered risk.

Hello, duh!

 

Anyway… below is a little story someone sent me and it’s pretty funny, enjoy!

 

 

How the Insurance Agent Saved Christmas

 

Every Who down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot, but the Grinch, who lived just north of downtown, did not.
“I must stop all this nonsense!” the old Grinchy declared and he drew up a plan for his mission with care.

Then he put on his coat and made a quick call on his Trusted Choice® agent near the Whoville town hall.
“Am I covered,” he asked, “for the use of a sled and a dog with a sawed-off stick tied to his head?”

“Since it’s not self-propelled,” the insurance man said, “You have coverage for the use of the dog and the sled.”
Why do you ask?” he inquired, for he knew the Grinch well, and he secretly hoped for more insurance to sell.

“I’m taking away Christmas!” the Grinch said with a sneer. “The Whos won’t have new presents to open this year!
After Santa delivers the goodies, I’ll sneak into Who-houses and condos. The Who kids’ll freak!
When they find the next morning I’ve made off with their stuff and they won’t have a Christmas. Now, isn’t that tough!”

The agent was horrified, stunned with alarm and he though t about sending the Grinch off to State Farm.
But he kept his cool, and said, “That won’t work, you see theft of contents is insured under the ISO HO-3.

And that isn’t all, you’ll have trouble galore. When they find out who did it, they’re gonna be sore.

And your coverage won’t help,” the agent concluded, “because harm caused by intentional acts is excluded.”

The Grinch ran the numbers for the possible tab from stuffing the holiday loot in his bag.
After looking them over, he had to conclude if he lost in court, he would definitely be…scrunched.

So, what happened next? Well, in Whoville they say the Grinch’s small heart grew two sizes that day.
“Merry Christmas! Happy Kwanzaa! Happy Hanukkah, too!” He cried to the Whos, who said, “Same back to you!”

The agent said, “Grinch, you seem like a smart fella, I think you should purchase a personal umbrella.”
So the Grinch filled the paperwork out on the spot and wrote out a check while the ink was still hot.
The agent was thrilled when, according to HUD, he found out the Grinch needed coverage for flood.

When it was all done, the Grinch gave up his mission, and the agent had earned a nice Christmas commission.
They went out for a drink. The agent paid for the gin, and the Whos in the bar gathered ’round and joined in.

And the Grinch raised his glass and said, “This is delightful, I’m just sure you don’t get service like this from Geico!”

 

–         Tim Dodge, Director of Research & External Communications, Big “I” of New York

 

 

~Billy

 

Rick Warren / Barack Hussein Obama connection

This just in…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/17/rick-warren-obama-invocat_n_151877.html

Barack Obama has picked Pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation at the big shindiggity-brewhaha in Washington next month according to the Huffington Post.

This is causing the radical leftists heads  to nearly explode. We should actually have film at 11:00 of one of them having a cow. That’ll be cool. 

Barack has done some pretty just right of left things here lately, and it’s very intersting. My first impression of these things are the first 4 years he’ll govern from the middle to get re-lected then…

~Billy

 

Runs of the mill…

These are some things on my mind lately:

 

-My wife has to work on Christmas day so I need to come up with something fun for Nichole and I to do.

-I’m up for suggestions.

-I’m really busy at work.

-I’m really blessed to be busy at work.

-Thank you God for your many many blessings.

-I’m tired this bailout stuff. How did we wake up one day in such a big mess?

-Hello… we didn’t.

-I’m working on 3 different books at one time “Financial Peace Revisited”, “You’re money matters”, and the “One minute millionaire”.

-I’m still broke, upside down in my house, and lost 1/3 of our retirement.

-We made it through this month with everybody paid and money left over for gifts, guess I’m not that broke.

-We were in JC Penneys the other day and made some purchases, my wife said “and we did it without using the credit card!”

-I and Dave Ramsey were both really proud of her, she gets it.

-According to Travis and some other sources I’ve heard this makes us some of the wealthiest folks on the planet.

-It’s all about perspective… perspective of the truth.

-Gas prices are going to go way back up, OPEC is cutting production so expect that to hit us soon.

-I hope we learned our lesson this past year… but I doubt it.

-better start drilling and whatever NOW!

-Caroline Kennedy, Fran Drescher for Senator of New York… so I guess that proves it, wealth and popularity are really the only qualifications you need.

-I’m about to go off on a Puff Daddy style rant, but so what?

-What kind of pinhead would name their kid Adolf Hitler?

-My nephew Ben Weaver is in Iraq, I wished he could have been home for the big party we had at our house.

-I’d rather be in Virginia this year, the picture on the header makes me homesick.

-Things are rough up there, parents need our help BAD.

-Actually both sets of parents need our help “BAD”.

-I have a big test coming up Saturday.

 

~Billy

 

Sunday muddle…

WOW! What a wild past few days, by yesterday afternoon we were all toast in my house.

Started last week by having our Life Group Friday night and that was a lot of fun. Next Friday will be our last one for a few weeks and I’m already looking forward to the Spring Life group. What was kind of cool was after we got done with the lesson everybody just wanted to hang out, have some snacks and jaw a while. That’s a good feeling to have your friends comfortable in your house. The “spiritual gift” of hospitality is one that only a few people I’ve known in my life to truly have, I’m not sure if we have that gift very strong but I always like hanging out with friends.

We’ve got some big decisions to make in our household coming up.

Saturday we got up early to get the house ready for a yearly big party with all my wife’s family, she has a big family we had close to 50 people at our house. I was expecting it to tip over but it handled the whole crew like a champ. Saturday night Gail’s brother Bruce and family from down on Cudjoe Key stayed over so we could go do some shopping and hanging out yesterday. Their young daughter Trista got really sick and they had to cut things a little short so Gail, Nichole, and I set out to get our shopping done and had a good afternoon. We went one of our favorite places Beef O’Grady’s for lunch and Gail got to watch the Dolphin game and I got to see the Skins get beat up by the Bengals.

We went to Southland mall and though there were a lot of people milling around it was a surprisingly pleasant experience. I’m noticing a lot of people are cutting way back on Christmas this year, I know we have. Heard that folks are actually saving money and clearing up credit debt, this has caused massive panic with the folks that drive our economy, namely big companies like, oh I don’t know… banks, auto manufacturers, and their ilk.

Surprisingly (or not) there are 3 business that are booming right now, Process Servers, Repo guys and gals, and video game manufacturers.
Yeah video games and systems are flying off the shelf. The spin on this I’ve heard is that folks don’t have a lot of disposable income right now but video games and systems are lasting and provide entertainment in a setting where people don’t have to go out and spend a lot of money on popcorn, candy, and drinks.

Hmmm… my spin is a little different. I think we have such stressful and complicated lives video games are a great way to check out for a while.
My 8 year old nephew proudly told me yesterday he has a bunch of games and listed them off but the only one I recognized was “Halo”.

Halo by the way is in not a game about angels, just turning people into them.

~Billy

 

“They took the family Jesus”

Every year we hear stories about folks stealing the Christmas decorations off the lawn, in front of the Municipal Building, or church, or wherever. This year we have the stories about the agnostics and atheists having their voice heard as well during the “holiday” season.

By the way my thought is if Christmas offends, GO TO WORK that day!

Well it seems reuniting yourself with your missing baby Jesus, menorah, or inflatable Santa Claus has gone high tech and folks have come up with a pretty cool way to catch the Grinchiful thieves, vandals, and anarchists. The article below should spark some pretty good debate, especially when you read the tag line at the bottom of the article.

We’ve certainly come a long way from the light up plastic baby Jesus.

“GPS, hidden cameras watch over Baby Jesus”

Several thoughts come to mind:
-why has “lawn ornament crime” (henceforth “LOC”) become such a big business over the past few years?
-are there any statistics to show that LOC is on the increase or decrease?
-is there an LOC rehab program available to those that struggle with this?
-are there social factors involved that would make those who steal or vandalize LO’s actually the victim and not just the perpetrator (henceforth “perp”)?
-who knew LO’s were so expensive? $1800 bucks for 1 baby Jesus, holy…

~Billy

 

New WordPress changes

I’m not realy taking a shine to the new changes on WordPress.

How about you?

~Billy

 

Funny stuff

I’m putting this one out there for my friend Ela Bella whose not feeling quite up to par.

~Billy

 

Sunday muddle… I’M BACK!!!

I’ve gotten some emails and comments about not having blogged for a while and basically seems like time evaporates faster than I can seem to catch up with it. I’m a child of God, a husband, a dad, an insurance agent, and all those things fill your time. It’s good to be busy though. At night you lay down and it feels good to get to lay there and think of the days offerings and tenderly slip off to sleep gently and fairly quickly… then wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, or the dog is scratching fleas, or you here a noise or something and you wake the next morning ready to take a nap. Life is good.

 

Yesterday my daughter Nichole and I pulled in to church a few minutes after 7 am and things were going like usual. We had a guest leader for worship Julio and a friend of his Tito played the bass. They are friends of Mike Betancourt our resident drummer and worship leader and they play a lot together. Josiah and I played guitar and think it would have been better if I had sat it out because there were enough musicians and I would have enjoyed just being a part of the congregation. It was fun though and by the 3^rd service we were cooking in grease.

 

Sunday night at Plantation Key was a whole horse of another color. Josiah lead with guitar, Mike and Reina sang, I played bass, and Mike’s fiancée played the drums. SHE ROCKS!!!

 

The set went really well and I think for putting it together like we did with Jessie out of town it went really excellent.

 

I had a chance to chat with Anne Johnson a while last night and that was neat, what a really cool lady. Josiah rode down with me and back and we had a really good chat also, I’m impressed with him and his brother Zech they’ve really got good heads on their shoulders and their folks have done a pretty good job with them. It’s evident.

 

Travis’ message on the 4^th chapter of Jonah was I felt the best of the series. He really nailed it with the thought that we “like to serve the God of the vine” and “don’t like to serve the God of the worm and the east wind”. This was a particularly fresh and insightful take on Jonah. The “vine” being a time of prosperity and things going well, the “worm” and the “vine”… NOT!  I have a friend Jerry who says the story of Jonah isn’t the “fish” but the “vine”.

 

I concur.

 

~Billy