MichaelDLilly.com

Sorry to my buds in Baltimore, GO STEELERS!  Though I do think it is crazy that Arizona made the Super Bowl….  And I think its nuts that Kurt freaking Warner lead them to it.  Regardless, the Steelers have long since had a special place in my heart

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Suffering | TheResurgence.

Check it out.

Cliff notes:  want to stop the pain, quit.  But quitting comes with a bigger cost than the pain…

PS, the pick at the top is pretty cool, I will probably rip off that idea.

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A great thing happened today.  The mayor asked 25 local churches to step up and help out the food bank in Lansing.  On Christmas Eve the churches all put out the call to stock the shelves of the food bank.  The goal was $40k.  Riv stepped up big, as did the rest of the area churches, and together we raised $114k for the local food bank.  Thousands of people showed up today to help deliver food all across the Lansing area, and asked a simple question: is there anything thing you would would like us to pray for?

It was a great thing, and I’m very proud of the Lansing area churches for answering the call…  Noel talked a little about it here, and he posted a couple pics of the dealio as well.  Please continue to pray for this mission, the people that were helped this weekend aren’t out of this mess yet, at least now they hopefully don’t feel alone.

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Diana says: I don’t want the snow to melt, because its covering the cars in their back yard (our neighbors), kinda looks like they just have a couple little hills.

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I finally worked up the courage to look at my yearly statement from my retirement account…

I know all of you are probably looking at the same kind of numbers but man -44% on the year…

I am not the guy that will jump off a building because of bad financial news, but I am the one who is seriously considering stopping or cutting contributions… At least sitting in my efund I would only be losing about 1.5% on accout of inflation…

Have any of you made this decision yet?

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Its a wonder we have never met, because I always seem to use the coffee machine mere minutes after you do, even @ 7:15 when there are not many people here at work anyway.  I’m writing because apparently you don’t notice that you always spill coffee all over the place, and I’m kinda tired of cleaning it up.  If your mom cleans up after you at home, feel free to bring her to work to.  Otherwise, there is a stack of napkins just to the left of the coffee machine, feel free to wipe it up…

Kindest regards,

Not your Mom

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A guy dodged traffic to pull out in front of me on Pennsylvania Ave yesterday.  I had to swerve to miss him, thus sending me fishtailing down Penn during rush hour…  Once I got control of my vehicle, I rolled my window down and waved at my new best friend.  Yes I said waved, and I only waved….Yes I waved with all of my fingers.  Shockingly he wouldn’t look at me at either of the red lights before we parted ways, he was to busy enjoying his glorious Bigbee coffee.  Sure hope the coffee was worth about getting my wife and I killed.

Diana was pretty certain she would have handled it better   And yes she was talking about the driving part when she said that.

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I got to work a couple minutes before my key fob would actually unlock the door…  This put me standing and shivering for about 2 minutes till my fob would work.  Normally I’m very understanding, just a little less so at -9 degrees.

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One of my goals for the last couple months has been to take more pictures, and in doing so start paying far more attention to the technical aspects therein.   I was doing pretty good for a while, the flickr photos on the side of this page where rolling along nicely, showing progress in my quest to shoot more.

Well I just noticed that they are the same from the beginning of December.  What sucks is we have had some beautiful snow storms to be out shooting, and I just have not had the motivation…  Time to get back to it.

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Do you have emails in your inbox that you are refusing to open right now?   Is that based on the person who sent it to you or the subject line?

Right now I have two of those chilling in my inbox.  The one I will use as an example, is from my Union President (someone I often let the emails chill for a while) subject line contains the name of our Union Lawyer (another reason to not read it)….  My work is doing layoffs right now, for now I am not included in them which I am very greatful for.  But right now I do not have the grace to extend to my Union that it would require to listen to some of the things they have to say.

Times suck.  Layoffs are happening all over the place, and this is the first time its happened here in a very long time.  We live in Michigan people, we are the unemployment armpit of the nation right now…  Union rhetoric won’t chante that.

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