Wanna Get Away?

Check your local Community College! It appears that our local community college's across the nation have become travel agencies along with their normal title of learning centers. Our local CC has a wonderful travel catalog with destinations across the globe. You can build a school in Honduras or learn Italian in Italy or just take in the sights and smells on a 10 day tour of China - it's all here right at our local CC. I was very impressed not only on the travel options but on the price of travel. The CC because of their school status get great deals on plane tickets, hotels, and transportation in foreign lands and why wouldn't you check out some alternatives when a plane ticket to a foreign land can run you in excess of a $1,000 us dollars.

In my MBA program we have the opportunity to go to China for 14 days this next spring, however because of the severe price and cost to travel I have decided to take a rain check on this trip. It made me quite frustrated to find that Portland Community College runs a 10 day tour with airfare included at half the cost of my MBA program trip...... again it's always good to look around before booking flights overseas. I am a strong proponent of travel and God has blessed me that I have had the opportunity to see many far away lands from Cuernavaca Mexico to The Highlands in Scotland. One thing I have witnessed in my travels is that we live like kings in the USA and we should be grateful for all that God has given us in our free land. Having clean water, shoes, coats, and three meals a day is much more than a large portion of the globe gets everyday.

So next time you are looking to get away - check out your local CC and you might be pleasantly surprised of the options you have to travel right from your backyard and with people that live where you live.

World Clock

World Clock
Click here


My friend sent me a link to the world clock today and it was intriguing enough that I thought I would publish a little piece about it on our blog. I can't speak for the credibility of the site but the statistics and numbers were very scary. It tells you how many cars are produced, how many barrels of oil, how many abortions, world population, and the list goes on. Some of these statistics are very sad to me - abortions, species extinction, forest cut, military expenditures, etc. etc. The one positive I noticed was that there is more bycycles being produced than cars per minute in the world and that makes me feel pretty good!

This site really brings in the fact that we really need to be pressing into the word and trusting that God has a larger plan than this earth will ever offer. The site is being serviced and produced by a gentleman name "Peter Russell".

Peter Russell is a well educated man hailing from Cambridge in the UK and now sitting as a fellow on the think tank "The Institute of Noetic Sciences". He has some interesting views on life and I can't say that I agree with a whole lot of what he writes about, however it is always good to have perspective.

A brief bio is as follows:
Peter Russell is a fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, of The World Business Academy and of The Findhorn Foundation, and an Honorary Member of The Club of Budapest.

At Cambridge University (UK), he studied mathematics and theoretical physics. Then, as he became increasingly fascinated by the mysteries of the human mind he changed to experimental psychology. Pursuing this interest, he traveled to India to study meditation and eastern philosophy, and on his return took up the first research post ever offered in Britain on the psychology of meditation.

He also has a post-graduate degree in computer science, and conducted there some of the early work on 3-dimensional displays, presaging by some twenty years the advent of virtual reality.

In the mid-seventies Peter Russell joined forces with Tony Buzan and helped teach "Mind Maps" and learning methods to a variety of international organizations and educational institutions.

Since then his corporate programs have focused increasingly on self-development, creativity, stress management, and sustainable environmental practices. Clients have included IBM, Apple, Digital, American Express, Barclays Bank, Swedish Telecom, ICI, Shell Oil and British Petroleum.

His principal interest is the deeper, spiritual significance of the times we are passing through. He has written several books in this area -- The TM Technique, The Upanishads, The Brain Book, The Global Brain Awakens, The Creative Manager, The Consciousness Revolution, Waking Up in Time, and From Science to God.

As one of the more revolutionary futurists Peter Russell has been a keynote speaker at many international conferences, in Europe, Japan and the USA. His multi-image shows and videos, The Global Brain and The White Hole in Time have won praise and prizes from around the world. In 1993 the environmental magazine Buzzworm voted Peter Russell "Eco-Philosopher Extraordinaire" of the year.

The one place on this website that was very interesting to me was the "Life Expectancy Calculator" - click here life expectancy that will tell you your age and life expectancy by filing out a series of questions related to your history and lifestyle. My virtual age was 15.62 years of age and Melissa is 1 years old - even though I am 28 and she just turned 32 in real life? I guess I will grow to be an old man and she will be at my funeral..... I know that God's timing is perfect and I will live my days on earth serving him for as long as he has me here. Hope you find the website interesting.

Cheers,

N

Charity Navigator

This time of year I always start to think about charities and if we have some extra money we can give away. I found a really kool website called Charity Navigator - tis the season for giving! This website is very important because it tells you exactly how much of your donation goes to the cause that they support. Navigator also rates charities by a star system and lists the financials of the organization and how much is spend on administrative costs and executive salaries.

A couple of my personal favorite charities in the Portland Metro are as follows:

Northwest Medical Teams

The Belmont Foundation

Dogs for the Deaf (I actually raised one of these dogs)

Melissa 32nd Birthday!

Yesterday was Melissa's 32nd birthday and we made a day of it! I had class in the morning so Mel made her way over to see her friends over in the Couv for lunch and had a nice time visiting while I was studying. Afternoon came around and we made our way over to the rock gym in Beaverton "Stoneworks". I think it had been over 5 months before I even looked at my harness and rock shoes but we made a go of it!



The gym is perfect and it is a shame that Mel and I don't make it over there more. They have a great bouldering course that wraps around the whole facility and then have multiple selected routes that you can lead climb or use the existing rope system that they have hanging down from the top. Overall we had a great time. About 5 of us where there climbing and bouldering for around 3 hours. The forearms got pretty pumped out in that time and everybody was ready to go.

After climbing for 3 hours we headed back to our house for the real celebration. We had a good size group of 10 people who came over for food and games. Laura and Dwayne brought over the scrabble and card games that where a total hit with everybody. We played "Take Two" "Mafia", and "Nerts". Don't ask me where the name came from, apparently it has been around since the great depression. Melissa and Tamara ruled the winner's circle of the Nerts game until we realized they were cheating! Melissa got two lashes with the wet noodle and we went back to playing by the rules. We have wonderful friends and feel blessed to have so many of them join us for Mel's special day.

Story of Hope

Stop Junk Mail

I don't know about everybody else but Mel and I get about 10lbs of paper advertisements and credit cards offers every week. It drives me nuts and with the amount of paper that accumulates in our home I went out looking for answers and came up with a pretty sweet solution. There is a website call ProQuo http://www.proquo.com/ the website is to help you reduce the amount of paper trash and junk mail that comes into your house. You can electronically opt out of some of the offers and others you actually have to mail in a stop letter. The site is very user friendly and it offers just about every possible solution to stop getting junk mail.

Hope it helps - we will have to report on how it works for us as I have opted out of just about everything we can opt out of!!!

Praise the Lord!!!