Monday, December 04, 2006

This and That -- Times four


This, One:
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Christmas is coming. Now 21 days, are you almost ready?
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That's what Advent is about, this is the candle set-up for the First Sunday of Advent. There are four Sundays of Advent before Christmas, here there is one candle for each Sunday.
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Advent is all about being ready for the true Christmas. It is a time to draw close to God. This Scripture may be appropriate for this first week of Advent:

"Jesus said to his disciples: 'Be constantly on the watch! Stay awake!...You do not know when the Master of the house is coming.'" Mark. 13:33 First Sunday of Advent

When I was growing up I never had heard of Advent. That was even in the Baptist Church in Nebraska, I just don't remember talking about Advent.

Then the series of Methodist Churches I belonged to in Texas, New Hampshire, and back in Texas didn't really talk about Advent much and so I didn't know much about it.

Neither did the Baptist churches dwell on it until we moved to the First Baptist Church of Conroe. For the last two years and again this year we are lighting Advent candles. Yesterday we lit the first one. Then the preacher talked about getting ready to celebrate Christmas, the Birth of Christ.

Some links on Advent:
Meditations for Each Week of Advent
Advent Begins December 3, The start of the Christmas season
Advent Calendar, 2006 ("25 fun filled days of surprises")
Advent from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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That, Two:
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St. Louis is at it again. Not only does St. Louis have the worst crime rate [St. Louis Tops Dangerous City List (link)] in the nation, it also has terrible weather.

This summer when we came through they had tornados, two in one week. Tens of thousands had their power out for days. Houston power companies send their trucks and crews to Florida and the rest of the Gulf Coast every summer to help with hurricane relief. Maybe we should be sending them to St. Louis also.

Now their at again with the weather, they had sixteen (16) inches of snow in St. Louis last Friday and Saturday. About 464,000 customers were without power.

I'll pick Montgomery, Texas, any day of the week or year or for my entire life. You'll find maybe an inch of snow every 20 years, golf year around, no murders for since I've been here, pretty scenery and hills, good fishing, and on-and-on with the good life here.
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This, Three:

My blogging last Saturday took a turn for another year. Bravo, Jim has done a whole year now.

The graph above shows the activity for the month of November as provided by my SiteMeter. 555 posts on this blog, about 11,652 hits or clicks, and 208 posts on my other blogs kept my busy.

My goal of 12,000 clicks the first year was short by 348. I tried to fudge this by blogging about the Bachelor and Britney Spears and tagging appropriately.

Enter Britney Spears

Britney Spears (link Dec 1) helped to get 146 clicks with 228 page views on Friday, December 1 [not on the above graph]. Previous day high was on November 29, with 105 clicks and 239 page views. This was the blog telling of Lorenzo and Jen (link 28th)(link 29th).

That was exciting but I won't do it again for the numbers. In fact I'm trying to figure out how to cut down some on my blogging. I may not post every day? And definitely I need to be more faithful in my reading of friends' blogs.
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That, Four:
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There is Christmas in the air! Above is the first group of Christmas carolers I have heard this year. I have a feeling a lot more will be coming right along.

You'd better be good, you'd better be nice. Santa is watching too!

# posted by Jim : 12/04/2006 12:29:00 AM
Comments:
We celebrate the advent Sundays in our church.
Uh about paradise in Texas. If you'd could get rid of about a billion people, I'd be interested.
# posted by Blogger Cliff : Mon Dec 04, 09:49:00 AM 2006
 
Hey dad,

I agree with everything you said about Montgomery/Lake Conroe being a great place to live except for the "hills". I can't think of any around there unless you count 12 foot changes in elevation over a 100 ft distance a hill. But, I guess everything is relative after living in (absolute) "flat" Houston as long as you did.
# posted by Blogger Mitch : Mon Dec 04, 11:12:00 AM 2006
 
Now Mitch, come back to see us again. There are real hills, a lot more that 12 feet, we live on one?
They aren't Arkansas hills, just nice rolling ones.
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# posted by Blogger Jim : Mon Dec 04, 12:38:00 PM 2006
 
And Cliff, we don't mess with those other billion people. They aren't where we go at all.
And Houston is no more congested than Omaha, probably not as bad. The freeways take us to the parts we want to go.
Our area is a rural subdivision on the north side of Lake Conroe.
The neighbors [out of the subdivision] still have cattle and horses.
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# posted by Blogger Jim : Mon Dec 04, 12:41:00 PM 2006
 
Our church doesn't celebrate the Advent Sunday's. No church I have ever been to does that. Like you, I knew very little about it until the past few years.

I wouldn't want to live in St. Louis for sure. I'm not fond of the big cities at all. I'm just a small town country gal! I like hills too!!
# posted by Blogger Rachel : Mon Dec 04, 01:37:00 PM 2006
 
Scragends Mum used to always light the advent candles each sunday. We used to have an advent candle in our house each year that we could light each night to count the days down. I haven't been able to find one here. I miss it.

Great post Jim.

Take care xx
# posted by Blogger PinkCat : Mon Dec 04, 07:16:00 PM 2006
 
Hi Jim I am used to the advent wreath with it's for candles. It is a really nice tradition I feel and reminds us that Christmas more then commerce, though it is joyful to give.
At the facility where I work we have been having lots of Chritmas concerts and carols.
Cheers Margaret
# posted by Blogger Margaret : Tue Dec 05, 01:31:00 AM 2006
 

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