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PAUL L. MCCORD JR. | K5GLH – OKLAHOMA CITY

paulmccord.net - PAUL L. MCCORD JR. | K5GLH – OKLAHOMA CITY

Took Tree Down

Our Christmas tree.
 

Two days ago I took our Christmas Tree down in an attempt to get back to normal life. Our tree is a nine foot tall fake tree that we bought at Garden Ridge last year.  It is very pretty and looks natural.  We put the tree up on Thanksgiving day and decided that it was time to come down.  This Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year season has been one of lots of turmoil and sickness around the house. As I have spoken earlier, we’ve had family members going through some tough times with illness and we have appreciated the prayers.  About two weeks ago my son, wife and I all came down with the flu. I missed four days of work because of that. I was already scheduled to be off work the week of Christmas and all the way up until January 3rd.  It has been nice being off and able to relax but we are still suffering from chest congestion that just does not want to go away.  Nevertheless we are going to go back to work on time no matter how we feel.

It has been nice celebrating Christmas but since we have been sick, no one wanted to come over and have a family visit. As disappointing as that was, we understand.  Hopefully next year we can have a real family Christmas where people are around. By then we’ll have our first grand daughter that is due in March.  We are anxiously awaiting her arrival and know that will be some exciting times.  My wife and I are both excited about that and know that our biggest challenge will be getting her to come 0ver and visit.

It is hard to believe that tomorrow is 2013.  It seems like 2012 went so fast that I don’t know where it went.  We can only hope that 2013 brings some normalcy with the weather…a year of rain and not so hot as we have been the last two years.  Also I would like to get back into my photography. I’ve not taken any pictures in nearly two years. Well I have but not those that are strictly for the purpose of photography and not family events.  I’ve had my Flickr account since 2005 and so I should make use of it since I am paying for it.  Now that I have paid for this site for five more years, and have my Flickr account, I need to get back into photography.  I got out of it when we started fixing up our old house to sell it in 2010. Then we were preparing to move to our new house in 2011.  Then we were so far out from downtown and with gas prices being so expensive that I have not felt like driving around to take pictures.  I am going to it in 2013 regardless of the gas prices. It is really something that puts my mind at ease in a tumultuous world.  The world is just too stressful to not have a hobby.  I guess after tomorrow’s New Year’s Day celebrations, it is time to get back to normal life again.

Enjoying Time Off

I am not use to posting from my phone so if things are mis-spelled, you know how spell correction works. Well this week we have been off for Christmas. Although my wife and I have been down with the flu during this time, we haven’t experienced this much time to relax in a long time. That has been very nice.

We did have a disappointing snow storm where we didn’t even get enough to cover the ground. My wife and I have not been able to be off at the same time in a long time. So despite being sick, it has been nice being off. I am still shocked to know that 2013 is almost over. This year seems like a blur and has been rather uneventful. It seems to have lost any sense of satisfaction more than any other year. Let’s hope that 2013 is a better year.

New Bible

Holy Bible KJV

My son gave me this incredible King James Bible for Christmas and I am so proud of it.  It was hand made by Local Church Bible Publishers and is incredible quality leather.  This organization builds Bibles for the cost of the materials as a ministry to those starting out.  I’ve had a lot of Bibles over the years but never one of this quality.  It is made from two colors of leather, and has two book marks.  My son and his wife bought one for themselves about a month or so ago and I guess I must have marveled about its quality too much because they got me one.  I don’t think you can get a person a better gift than God’s word anyway.  This is certainly one of my prize possessions and I hope to spend many hours learning God’s Word with it.

 

We Had a Good Christmas

Well Christmas has come and gone and despite having the flu, we had a good day.  This year it was only my wife and I along with my son that still lives at home.  All three of  us have had the flu over the last two weeks and so no one wanted to come around.  First it was my son, then my wife and then it was me.  I took four days of sick leave last week and now we are enjoying our week off for Christmas and the New Year.  This week we were told that a big snow storm was coming and that we would have a white Christmas.  Well the storm went South of us and although we did not get very much, we did get some sleet.

We got a little sleet at our house this morning. It certainly was not the snow storm that was predicted.
 

As you can see in this picture, we did not get enough to cover the ground but it was nice anyway.  I took this picture of my back yard yesterday, Christmas.  This morning we woke up to 12 degrees, the coldest temperature we have experienced in a couple years.  I really hope that we can start off 2012 (that’s twenty thirteen) with some rain because we have been so dry over the last two years.  We really need to have a very wet year to catch up on the drought.

My wife and I are feeling better today though we both have pretty thick chest congestion.  That seems to be the one part that is the slowest to get rid of.  I am hopeful that it will go away soon so that we can get back to life again.    We were very blessed this Christmas as we were healing and most of the family was doing better financially as well as getting along with other relatives. While no one came over for Christmas, we can have the peace of knowing that our relatives are doing so much better than they were last Christmas.  God has been so good to us that I think he deserves the praise.

I am only two weeks away from this web site needing to be renewed, or changed. I am thinking that we will just keep it the way it is.  It will be easier than trying to move to another host and get a new domain name.  Not to mention, the search engines already have this one covered pretty well.  I just thought I would post a big Merry Christmas to the world before the end of the year arrives and I forget. Thank you for stopping by.

 

 

Nice Christmas Visit

Christmas 2010

I know most people can relate to the fact that everyone seems busy these days and never has time to get together.  Well this Christmas we had a rare occasion for my family to get together for a visit.  From left to right in the above photo we have me, my son Kevin, my dad, my brother Mike, and my sister Marian.  My sister has lived out of state for 30 years so it is a rare treat when she can come.  We had a very good time and managed to be able to laugh at some things.  It seems like this year has been a particularly tough time for many in our family so this was a great time.

Holiday versus Christmas

I know I have this discussion every Christmas but it is a topic that just angers me again and again and again.  I have never been to a doctor to be diagnosed as an obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) but I often wonder if I have it because there are certain things that I just cannot stand to let go unanswered.  It is no secret if you read the Bible that the world is against God.  People will openly bash on God and this was told of in many places in the Bible.  This alone should make me want to have compassion on those people and desire to see them come to the saving knowledge of Jesus.  Since these people neither want to hear about Jesus nor acknowledge HIS birthday on Christmas, they make a conscious decision to refer to it as holiday.  It does not take a rocket scientist to see this is intentional.  First, the term holiday is three syllables while Christmas is two.  Secondly I hear many times on television where they say “Happy holiday and a happy New Year”.  They make a point to spell out New Year but always refer to Christmas as holiday.

The message is clear.  They want to enjoy the festivities of Christmas without acknowledging Jesus.  In the early days people would say Happy Holiday”s”…plural.  This seemed innocent enough because making it plural could be a generic term to refer to Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year.  As time went on, they started being so bold to take off the “s” and just say holiday.  They speak of making your “holiday cookies”, or “this holiday”.  There have been times where I thought I was just over reacting and my OCD was taking over but then a year ago I found an online discussion on Friendfeed about this very topic.  Someone posted a complaint similar to mine and people were very vicious in their comments back to them.  They were saying that Christmas is not a religious holiday and that you do not have to believe in Jesus to participate in the festivities.  When this notion was questioned, the people were even more forceful in their notion that Christmas has evolved from a religious holiday to an all inclusive holiday for all…not just Christians.  If this is true then I want no part of it.

The last ten or more years this has bothered me more and more.  In recent years I have grown a true hatred for Christmas as a holiday.  It seems that it has zero to do with the original intent of celebrating Jesus’ birth.  Anymore I see atheists on the television news preaching to us that we need to hurry up and buy our loved one a gift and not procrastinate.  How can one procrastinate on doing something that is spontaneous and from the heart?  Christmas gift buying has become a duty and therefore not really a gift at all.  The point being is that if you receive a Christmas gift, there is no reason at all to feel that someone loved you so much that they thought of  you to buy you a gift.  The real truth is that your loved one had an obligation, a duty to fulfill that they would go into debt to participate in this act that is promoted by people that do not even believe in Jesus.  They cannot even bring themselves to say the word CHRISTmas because it contains the word CHRIST.  I recently saw a statistic that more than 50% of Americans are still paying for last Christmas.

Since Christmas festivities are so engrained into our society as a practice, I do not see it going away completely any time soon.  I do see them changing the name of it to holiday on our work and school day off lists. They will eventually, sooner than later, give everyone the “bank holiday” off instead of Christmas.  Remember when we use to have a holiday for Washington’s birthday and Lincoln’s birthday?  Now it is just President’s day.  This is not the same thing and has no relevance to the argument except to say that there is a precedence for making a generic holiday.  You can write this down that  you heard it from me first because this WILL happen.

The media will throw out Hanukkah or Kwanzaa when they are called on their intentional omission of the word Christmas.  They will say they do not want to offend these other religions.  There is nothing to offend!  Christmas is the only one that gives gifts and has Christmas trees.  It is the only one that has a fictitious character named Santa Claus that has reindeer with bells.  You will notice that all of these commercials that use the word holiday instead of Christmas have bells and Christmas songs playing in the background, yet they are referring to Hanukkah or Kwanzaa?  It is clear that these commercials are aimed at Christmas even though they will not say the word.  The way I see it is from Jesus’ own mouth.  He said in Matthew 12:30… “He that is not with me is against me;…” Am I the only one that is offended by this?  To me it is a principal that must be pointed out.  This is a calculated, intentional move and they are not innocent.  For this reason, I have come to the point where I want nothing to do with Christmas.  Since it has been successfully hijacked and people have no problem with it, then it has lost its meaning.  To me it is worse than not participating at all.

I have been sitting here for the last hour or so while my wife has been watching the Food Network. They have been saying holiday this and holiday that but will never say the word Christmas.  Occasionally one of the guests will slip and say the word but none of the hosts will say it.  They keep going from one host to the next and will not say the word Christmas.  This one host came on for a thirty second segment and said the word holiday six times but did not say the word Christmas even once.    If one or two people on Food Network said holiday, I could see it being a slip but when every person and every subtitle uses holiday dozens of times in a 30 minute show, you know it is a company policy.  The program Paula Deen was on and every single person on the show said holiday many times and not one of them said Christmas. I became so mad that I muted the TV.  It is to the point that I just want to mute the TV from Halloween to the New Year so I don’t beat the television off the wall with a club.  This is not innocent and should not be ignored.

It is not often that I want to give praise to a politician but I am very proud of our Senator Inhoffe for refusing to to participate in a Tulsa paraded for changing the name from Christmas parade to Holiday parade.  He has participated in this parade many years until last year when they changed the name of it to Holiday parade.  If you read the comments on the CBS story, you will see just how bad this issue is.  There are those including the Mayor of Tulsa that defend the use of the word holiday because they want to be inclusive.  This is outrageous and anyone with a brain can see.  CHRISTmas is about CHRIST!  Jesus is the CHRIST! CHRISTIANITY is about CHRIST.  As ridiculous as it sounds for me to repeat this again and again, there are actually those that try to say that Christmas has nothing to do with Jesus.  Read the comments of the CBS story above and you will see someone actually trying to make the claim.

I am so sick of Christians with their soft attitudes of not wanting to offend people.  The world is against God whether you tell them or not.  You might just as well tell them because they are going to be offended anyway.  I have had Christians tell me not to speak of homosexuality because it is judgmental and we do not want to offend them.  It is this very wimpy attitude that is causing the church to collapse.  Here you have churches that are too interested in growth that they water down the message.  Christianity is not violen
t, not hate filled, not judgmental but you are going to be accused of it anyway.  Stop being defensive and speak out!  There is a culture war and one side is fighting violently while the other side sits quietly and pretends that it is not happening.  There are those that want Christianity wiped from the world and they are active in their pursuits.  To sit and play nice does not stop them.  To not preach to others will not make them leave you alone.  They want Christianity erased and our failure to speak up and be heard just makes it easier.

The Bible spoke of this many times and it is not going away.  In Romans 8:7 is says…

Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.

Christians need to wake up and realize that the world is coming for them whether they sit quietly or speak out.  They need to understand that they are going to be accused of being hateful, racist, sexist, homophobic no matter whether they sit at home and do nothing or actually get up and speak.

As for Christmas in its current form I say bah humbug because the very people that are pressuring you to go buy your loved one a gift for Christmas are the same ones that will not even say the word Christmas.  They deny Christ and denounce you if you do.  They call you names, they try to silence your voice by calling what you say “hate speech”.  Remember the Bible told you of this many times.  Here are just a few…

Matthew 10:22 And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.

Matthew 24:9 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake.

Mark 13:13 And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

Luke 21:12 But before all these, they shall lay their hands on you, and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues, and into prisons, being brought before kings and rulers for my name’s sake.

Luke 21:17 And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake.

John 15:21 But all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake, because they know not him that sent me.

We can sit here and bury our heads in the sand and say that if we play nice to them they will be nice to us but that will be denying reality.  The friendly days toward Christians in the United States are over so do not kid yourself.  The Bible said there would be a falling away…

2 Thessalonians 3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;

This battle is far greater than just calling it Christmas or holiday.  But Christians need to understand that terms like inclusiveness or open minded are key words that they are not welcome.  I am convinced that in my lifetime, the things that I am saying will result in a conviction of a crime.  I have been involved in many online discussions where Christians were attacked openly as being hate filled and without apology told that we need to be stopped.  These conversations went along the line where Christians were defending themselves saying that they were not hateful and that they did not judge anyone.  They would say these are God’s laws and that it was God saying it, not them.  The opposition would come back with force and ask them “Do you believe it?” and the Christian would say “yes” and then they would pile on even more saying you agree with the hate that is in the Bible.

The world is against God and His Word.  They will read things out of context and try to make the case for contradictions.  They will see where God’s Word will speak against a certain behavior such as homosexuality and then it will be taken as hate speech.  Anyone that advocates the Bible and agrees with it will be considered hate filled and will be listed as terrorists or at least someone that is is dangerous to society.  As incredible as it is to believe, there are actually those that think Christianity is hate filled and violent.  They spread this lie and the actions of a Christian are completely irrelevant.  The Christian can sit at home and do nothing to anyone and they will still be attacked.

I keep using terms like “will” as though this is future tense.  The truth is that it is already happening before our eyes in our own country.  There was a day as recent as the 1980’s when being called a Christian in America was a resume enhancement.  To be called a Christian meant that this person was to be admired.  In just a couple decades the same society has come to place Christians on terrorist watch lists.  Let us not forget that our current Homeland Security Secretary pointed this out in April 2009.  You can read about it here… Article.  This is our own government speaking these things and they have portrayed anyone that believes in traditional values to be evil.  Just remember what the Bible said in Isaiah…

Isaiah 5:20 Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

This is not something I made up.  The writing has been on the wall for some time.  The Christmas versus holiday argument is just a symptom of a greater problem.  I would encourage Christians to get involved in politics and journalism and help to write some of these wrongs from the inside.  You can sit at home and pray all day but you cannot expect God to do this for you if you sit at home and fail to act.  Christianity is not violent toward anyone and should not be.  They do however have an obligation to become active in the government that rules the land.  The silent majority is sitting at home being pummeled by stones from the government and the media.  Stand up and let your political officials know that you are there.  If they fail to recognize you, then remove them.  I would like to congratulate James Lankford, of the Falls Creek camp in Southern Oklahoma for standing up and running for Congress and winning.  Acts like these can be done on a greater scale if people stand up and take a stand.

Christmas Eve Snowstorm

Christmas Eve Snow 2009

Wow!  We often complain about never having snow here in Oklahoma City.  Most of the time if we do have winter weather, it ends up being sleet or freezing rain.  Yesterday it was a nice 65 degrees and we were really enjoying it.  This morning I woke up at 6:00 AM and it was raining.  By 7:15 it had turned to sleet.  The sleet fell for nearly four hours before turning to snow.  By noon the National Weather Service had issued a blizzard warning for most of Oklahoma including Oklahoma City.  In my 43 years I cannot remember ever having a blizzard warning here.  The picture above shows looking behind my house toward the North.  The picture below shows a view looking across the street.  I was having a difficult time taking this picture because I the snow was blowing in my face even though the wind was from behind the house and I was on the front porch.

Christmas Eve Snow 2009

To be honest, I was very skeptical of this being much of a winter weather event because we have been promised these storms before and ended up with rain.  When these pictures were taken, the wind was blowing 50+ miles per hour (MPH).  Although we received 14.1 inches of snow, the drifts were pretty high.  We had to shovel a huge drift from behind the car just so we could back out of the drive way to pick up my son from work.

The good thing about this snow is that tomorrow is Christmas and we have not had a white Christmas in 20 years.  As of the time I am posting this, it is still snowing pretty hard.  The radar shows that it is almost over.  It looks like the snow will not last more than a couple more hours.  Tomorrow should be a nice clear day for Christmas although we will have a nice snow covered day.  While it is nice to have the snow, I have been watching the weather coverage all day and it has been telling us about one car accident in Midwest City that involved 50 cars.  Another accident in El Reno involved 20+ cars.  I know there have been many others but these two are the ones that really stood out to me.  Let’s hope no one was seriously injured.  It would be tragic for someone to have injuries on Christmas eve.  I did drive to the store just outside my residential area about an hour ago and it was tough but manageable.  As long as  you don’t stop in a deep snow drift you are okay.  We had to help push another car so they could get moving.

For us, it has been a nice day.  Our white Christmas is a welcome site and we are happy to see it despite having nearly zero visibility.

I Miss Colors

Ray Trent Park

As much as I love my hometown, there is one thing that it really lacks in the winter time and that is color.  As the photo above is in black and white, it is representative of some of the days we have in the winter.  This is Ray Trent park in Del City on a cold winter day with no leaves on the trees and a slight fog on a cloudy day.

Colors of OKC

Fortunately our winters are not too long and our wonderful colors return.  What brings this on is an unusual cold snap that we had this past week as did most of the rest of the nation.  We had temperatures that hovered around 10 degrees.  We went nearly a whole week where the temperature never climbed above freezing.  The colorful flowers were taken at the Myriad Gardens in Oklahoma City during the autumn transition.

I love taking pictures whenever I can but lately I have been so busy with work, family, and trying to fix things around the house.  We are looking to move in the next year so we are trying to get the house sellable.  This means taking my tower down and getting rid of it.  Though it is a bit sad to part with my ham radio tower, it will also give me some peace during storm season.  Every time we have lightning nearby, I cringe because one strike to my tower could burn the house down.  This is ironic because I love severe weather other than that.  People often say “just disconnect the cables” but if they only knew how many cables and how they were routed through the wall.  Well now they are removed and the tower is next after Christmas.

I can hardly wait until I have some time to go take some more pictures because it is enjoyable and I love to be able to share them on Flickr. By the time Spring comes around we will see a lot of colors with trees and flowers blooming.  I love to get out and take pictures then.  There is something psychological about the Spring time.  It is almost as if there is life for everyone to experience.  The birds singing, the flowers blooming, and it even smells fresh.  I love it and sure miss it when we have weeks like this.  I should be grateful because we use to live at Eielson AFB near Fairbanks, Alaska.  When we lived there, I could barely stand it when March would arrive and it would still be –15 degrees.  We are very fortunate to be able to experience all four seasons here.  It does seem that Winter is going to be colder this year since it is still not winter and we have already been as low as 10 degrees.  At least the cold will kill many of the insects and maybe next summer will not be as bad with fleas and ticks.  It has been a long time since we have had a real cold winter so I guess we are due for one.  Another good thing about having a cold winter is that spring is that much more pleasant after one.  I hope you all have a nice CHRISTtmas.    Thanks for stopping by.

Christmas at the Brite's

Christmas 2008

This morning we rose early to go to Checotah, Oklahoma to visit my father in law.  We had a pretty good time there except that I was a little under the weather.  Early this morning our warm weather came to an end as a cold front came crashing through.  At 4:00 AM a line of severe thunderstorms came through bringing hail and high winds.  We lost power three or four times.  Shortly after that, the cold front came through and dropped the temperature more than 20 degrees but the sun was shining.  We left at 8:00 AM to go to Checotah and eventually caught up with the storms.  By the time we arrived, it was raining.  Around 2:00 PM, the clouds cleared away and it was not too bad.   We all enjoyed ourselves though I have had a sore throat, stopped up head, and now my ribs are hurting.  I hope this clears up before I have to go back to work on Monday.  In the above picture, we have Sunday and I standing in front of the house on the lower level kitchen.

We opened our Christmas presents and visited together for a while.  We had a wonderful meal to eat.  I was asked to help set up a home wifi system and was actually looking forward to it.  My wife, looking out for me told them that I did not feel good and could not do it.  Later I asked if they were ready to work on it and she told me no and we could do it another time since I was not feeling well.  I did not know that my wife had spoken to her until after we started home.  She is always looking out for me and helping me out.  I sat in the car sending Twitter messages on my phone all the way home while Sunday drove home.  As always it was a good time.  We enjoyed seeing family and visiting.  Unlike the portrayal in the movie Four Christmases, we actually look forward to seeing the family.  Sunday has a great dad and step mom.

Last night our dog had two siezures and it really scared us.  She is 15 years old and was out of control for a few minutes.  That was pretty scary though she is back to normal now.  Now we are home and the house is very cold since we had the heat turned off the whole time we were gone.  I thought I would share how our day went and hope yours went just as well as ours did.

Christmas At My Dad's

Christmas with my dad

I just arrived home from visiting my dad’s house and we had a pretty good time.  We laughed so hard that I worried for him bursting a blood vessel :) .  In the above photo, my dad and Retha managed to pull it together enough to answer the cell phone.  My dad was talking to his mom in Wynnewood.  The call did not last very long because he could not stop laughing.  I would love to tell you what we were laughing about but it may not be appropriate to post online.  I will just tell you it was about a stunt that he did when he was a teenager.  This Christmas weekend has been very good and more than a blessing.
Christmas with my dad

Even Larry got into the laughing.  We have always been told that laughter is good for your health and after tonight, we are all healthy enough to be marathon runners.  Tomorrow we are going to go to Sunday’s dad’s house and I will make a point to post online.  If tomorrow is going to be like the rest of the weekend, it will be a great time.    Today was such a good day all the way around as the temperatures approached 80.  The last time I checked it was 76 degrees on the day after Christmas.  The house was so hot that we opened the windows and let the 30 MPH wind blow through.  Our puppy dog Sandy needs some prayers though.  She is nearly 15 years old and she had two siezures this afternoon.  My wife was distraught over that for good reason.  Since we will not be near the computer all day tomorrow, I will enable Twitter notifications on my cell phone.  I will be back sometime tomorrow night though.  Again, thanks for all the well wishes for our family.