My son is in Uppsala, Sweden this weekend. I am so jealous. I would love to go to Sweden someday. I knew several Swedish exchange students who went to my high school. Two of them played on the soccer team with me.
I tried to track them down today. One of them was a bit easier to find because he stayed with a good friend of mine so I was able to track him down on Facebook. I took a long shot and reached out to a Joakim Axelsson who was about the right age to have been the Swedish friend I was looking for. Joakim wrote back and told me that he encouraged my efforts but he was not the Joakim I was looking for.
I also found someone that might be my friend, Svante, on Facebook. There were only a couple of pictures and the account doesn’t look like it has been touched in some time. My friend had red hair and the man in the pictures also had red hair.
I am excited that I will be traveling to Europe at the end of April. My son and I are going to visit Budapest and Barcelona. Hungary is a special place in my heart so I get to show him around there and he will show me around Barcelona. It will be my first time back in Europe in 17 years.
I have thought about these cards several times over the past 5 years. I wasn’t sure if I still had them. OI found them in a box of baseball cards recently stuck to the side. The Kansas City Police Department would hand them out at games and other events around town.
The recent Chiefs success has made me think about the first years I started attending games at Arrowhead in the late 70’s. I don’t think any of those teams had a winning record. But each year I had new hope. My dad was able to get some good seats from his workplace and we went to a lot of games, especially in the pre-season. I got to go on the field several times through various clinics. I remember one involved kicker Nick Lowery. For more Chiefs memories, see my recent post, How ’bout those Chiefs?!
Web projects are also a response to limits. Budget constraints, resource constraints (people and skills), client constraints, number of stakeholders, and time constraints (some projects are event critical). All of these different constraints will shape the solution that you deliver.
This picture came up in my Facebook memories this morning. We bought three guinea pigs on this day four years ago after saying goodbye to two piggie friends at the end of 2019. We were so excited to have piggies in the house again.
When we went to the pet store, I told the kids not to get attached to any of the pigs right away because we needed to check them out and make sure they weren’t sick.
I ignored that advice and fell in love right away with a cream, brown, and white pig that we named Butterscotch.
We had a lot of fun with them when we brought them home and sat in a circle. They enjoyed exploring their new surroundings and we enjoyed seeing their individual personalities as they interacted with us.
Unfortunately, one of the pigs was sick. Pumpkin Spice (pictured above in the middle) had a respiratory infection. She seemed to get better and then her health crashed quickly about three weeks later and she died in my son’s arms. Butterscotch also had health issues and was only with us for nine months.
Teddy, our Abyssinian Guinea Pig, is still with us today and is such a joy. She was the most timid of the three when we first got them. But she warmed up and is very affectionate. I love it when she licks my face. Happy pig-aversary, Teddy!
I am not strongly against Tailwind but I found this comic by Alvaro Montero very funny. You can find the original at comiCSS. I came across it on Mastodon.
The context of this passage was speaking to Christians in a church and learning from people of all ages. But the same truth applies to other places. We can learn something from everyone we meet. It takes humility to have that perspective but it is a perspective I want to have in my life. There is not a single person that I can’t learn something from. I need to be willing to listen and hear. Pride will keep me from being able to do that.
You could see the determination and grit of my son ten years ago as he climbed up a slide on a playground. He has continued to display that same determination in pursuing the things he wants out of life. He did it two years ago when he applied for a presidential fellowship at Murray State, which has allowed him to study graphic design there.
And he has shown the same determination as he sought an opportunity to study at Elisava School of Design and Engineering in Barcelona this spring. He had to work so much of it out for himself as he pursued a program that others from his school had not done before him. He has had many challenges along the way. Several have occurred right as he is on the cusp of seeing that dream become a reality.
I am so proud of my son and the determination he has shown. I am praying that the final obstacles that stand in his way will fall and that he will be in Barcelona a week from today starting his educational adventure.
This post was inspired by my wife’s Facebook post. She used the picture and talked about my son’s determination and grit.
