After a lot of consideration, I will be ending this blog and expanding my professional blog to include the same personal posts that would be found here. I just have one too many blogs to keep up with any more. If you subscribe to this via FeedBurner, you won’t see this post at all! Instead, you’ll be getting posts from RickScheibner.net very soon. If you subscribe via the native WordPress feed, please consider putting this feed into your reader instead. Leave me a comment or sent me an email (rickscheibner [at] gmail [dot] com) if you have any questions. I’ll leave this up on WordPress.com for archive purposes. Thanks a ton for taking time out of your busy day to read Another Storm. It’s been a great ride. We’ll see you over at the new place very soon!

It’s safe to say that 2006 and 2007 have been a wild ride of a couple of years for me. Maybe the wildest two consecutive years of my life. Last year, the breakdown and eventual end to my second marriage just about brought me to my knees. Although things had not been well for a long time, the actual end of it was a bitter pill to swallow.  It was downright ugly at times.

Last May, the mother of my two boys announced that she was taking a job and moving away some 200 miles away in another part of the state. Double ouch. For eight years, I had been used to being able to run across town to pick my boys up any time they needed to go somewhere. For them, coming to Dad’s wasn’t a big deal because they went back and forth so effortlessly. It wasn’t a perfect situation by any means, but I was sure able to be a dad to them.  Those of you who are in this situation know what I’m talking about. But for them to be in a completely different part of the state was foreign to me, and I’ve spent a lot of time grieving that change in our lives. I’m bitter that I have to drive four hours to see a ball game or go to a concert. I’m a family guy at heart, and I truly value things like commitment and involvement, so these things really do hang like a cloud above my head.

So between those two things, I have had a lot in my life that has just plain sucked. At different times, I’ve considered using this blog to vent, but for some reason it’s never seemed like the right time. Maybe this is a good time now. Oh, and a good change that happened to me, but not without some stress, is that I moved to a different town last summer. I’ve been working here in Hermiston for 6 years now, but I commuted 30 miles for the first five years. It’s nice to not have to do that any more.  Like I said, it was a good change, but tough to leave some friends and things that have been familiar to me for so long.

Now to get to some good stuff. I’ve twittered about Susan a time or two before, and on Christmas Eve, she agreed to be my wife. We’ve been together since last summer, and have been talking about future plans for a while now.  As terrible and gut-wrenching everything else has been, she has brought that much calm and order to my life. And it’s not just a one-way street, either. I’m able to provide things in this relationship that she needs. What’s really cool is that my family absolutely adores her, especially my boys. They’ve wanted to spend the night at Susan’s over Christmas break rather than my boring old apartment! Go figure. Anyway, we’ve got some rough times ahead (to be expected any time two families are put together), but I’m very encouraged by the tools we already have to go about solving those differences.  In the face of everything else, I consider myself blessed.

So there you have it.  It hasn’t been pretty the last couple of years, but I’m adjusting and sure have some things to look forward to.  I’ll let you know when the wedding takes place.

It’s true, and here’s the BlogThing to prove it. I guess I’m just getting crotchety in my old age.  HT to John.

You Are 24% Open Minded

You may be surprised to hear that you’re not very open minded… and a little judgmental. You tend to dislike others that are different from you. While you may be open to a few new things, you don’t reach far beyond what you believe. And it’s likely that you don’t even want to discuss different points of view!

Do you Twitter?  I do.  In case you’ve been hiding under a rock, Twitter asks the simple question, “What are you doing right now?”  You can catch me at twitter.com/rickscheibner. I update mine fairly regularly. 

In case you missed them, here are my last few posts from there:

• Still Christmasing on the 26th & 27th
• 
  My best-ever Christmas just got doubly good…I’m picking my boys up first thing in the morning rather than the 26th!
• kinda regret not having Star Wars Legos when I was a kid
• 
  Did I mention Christmas was going to be cool this year?
• 
  On the cusp of Christmas Eve…I’m feeling it
• 
  DA has 4 interceptsions….grrrrr
• understanding
  
• 
  Gonna be an awesome Christmas Eve…more later
• 
  Countdown check: 4 days, and I still have some shopping to do. Better head for the mall.
  
• 
  Here’s the pizza I’m making: http://tinyurl.com/yrryyk You’re welcome
• 
  Making pizza tonight, and finishing that new shelf to hang the stockings
• 
  Just put up a post on Fatbloggers, my first in many moons….I need to hit that again right after the holidays
• 
  Christmas break–don’t return to school until Jan. 3
• 
  Kids are gonna rock the house this afternoon–you’ve never been to an elementary sing-along like this before.
• 
  That girl can just plain sing
• 
  Sometimes, popcorn balls for breakfast is an ok thing to do
• 
  Will it snow? Enquiring minds want to know!
• 
  She’s a baking machine…learn something new about her every day
• 
  My chicken tortilla soup is Susan’s favorite

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Christmas

Straight, No Chaser from Indiana U. Best Christmas music I’ve heard all year, and just in time.

We are on the cusp of the 2007 college bowl season. For whatever reason, the Beavers got put into a lower bowl than they should have been. Prediction: This will be the most lopsided victory this year. The Terapins just aren’t prepared for this defense. Here’s a little YouTube thing to get you into the spirit:

Pretty creative if you ask me.

Maybe it’s true that everybody can dance.

I just found this downright disturbing.

You?

This is a short video produced in the 1960’s to show what life might be like in 1999. They got a lot of things right: Home shopping and e-mail (“electronic correspondence machine”). It’s interesting to see the husband-wife stereotypes perpetuated here. Wife does the shopping, husband pays the bills. Also, do any kids play like that any more? Mine sure don’t.

I’ve decided that if caffeine were a controlled substance, I’d be a junkie turning tricks out on the street corner just to get my daily fix.  So really, there’s not much separating me from the meth user or heroin addict.  My vice is legal; theirs is not.  What a humbling thought.