Phillip Lehner dot com

So the wife and I recently went to the beach on vacation and in preparation for the trip I decided to begin slimming down a bit.  I saw a great clip on the web demonstrating an exercise routine designed for small spaces and using only body weight.  The routine is called burpees.  It is basically a series of pushups, lunges, and leaps all smashed together.  I never worked out much in high school or college so it surprised me to discover that the more I exercise the more energy I seem to have.  My wife is very much into organics and natural prevention of disease and illness so I have developed an interest in the “natural-pathic” world as well.  There are so many great tools on the web to help inform about great methods to keep fit and well naturally.  One such tool I found today is Natural Medicine Talk.  A web forum devoted to great community based information regarding natural remedies and preventions.  Being a forum, you are somewhat inundated with information, but from what I have read so far most of it seems extremely helpful.  Another site I came across today is Healthy Fellow which is a little more my style (being a blogger).  This site is full of terrific, practical, fact-based healthy ways to eat and live.  I have a lot of reading to do, but you can expect to hear more about these sites in the future.

I realize that it is a holiday created by greeting card companies to make a buck.  I also am aware that Christmas has more to do with pagan ritual and Western consumerism than Jesus’ birth, but I love to celebrate it!  I think that any excuse to make a big deal about somebody is a good thing, so Mom, here is your big day!

I was reading about giving to the poor this morning (more on that at a later date) in Proverbs 19 when I remembered the classic “proverb-a-day” thing where you read whatever chapter in Proverbs that corresponds with the date.  Today is the 10th so I flipped to Proverbs 10 and saw that the first verse reads “The proverbs of Solomon. A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish son [is] the heaviness of his mother.”  I am not sure why Solomon affiliated his father with gladness and his mother with heaviness, but I know what that resonates with in my life.  As a man I remember that making the men in my life proud was always forefront and typically very difficult (if not impossible) to achieve.  Now, in reality they were likely quite proud of me, but I rarely new it because I rarely heard it from them.  It is as if the default with a man is presumed status quo and occasionally when something particularly noteworthy takes place they take notice (or get “glad”) and I get congratulated.  My Mother on the other hand was different.  She frequently sang my praises and told my that I was special and would do great things.  She raised me and my siblings on her own for several years after my Father died when I was still quite young.  During these years, my Mom kept her head up around us all day, every day.  She was almost always optimistic and upbeat and frequently emphasized what we were good at.  However, when we got selfish and acted out there crept in the heaviness that accompanied her disapproval.  At the time I did not understand the complexities of losing the life you hold most dear and having to continue the fight alone.  I did not understand any loss but my own.  Now however I understand that much of the heaviness of those moments grew from the tremendous weight that she carried.

Mom, I am proud of you!  You fought hard and look at where you got us!  I love you and hope that I helped give you the honor due on your day!

See this is probably not at all what was Solomon had on his mind when he wrote that.  God breathed special meaning as I read it and gave me deliverance from a burden I was unnecessarily carrying all these years!  Praise God! He frees me every day.

What can you possibly add to this?  It is simply amazing…

A friend named Cody recently visited us here in Nashville and solidified an interest that has been stirring for a while in my mind and spirit.  That interest is in phonographs and vinyl lp’s.  With the current state of digital copyright laws, crappy digital music quality, and microscopic album art, it is almost surprising to me that more people have found themselves immersed in warm fat sound that is analog music.

Numark TT-1700

After getting stirred up about the old vinyls, I mentioned my interest at work and a coworker told me that he was getting rid of his old turntable.  I let him know that I would gladly take it off his hands, so he brought it in.  Turns out that he was an amateur DJ, playing some weddings and such and that that turntable is a pretty good player.  It is a Numark TT1700 with a Stanton 500 cartridge and stylus on it and he took amazing care of it.

Turntable Setup

While I could do without the purple, but it plays records and I didn’t have to pay a dime for it.  In case you are uninitiated, this is a bit better than entry-level DJ gear and he also gave me his old Gemini crossfader which I use purely as a phono-amp.  I spent the day today finalizing my setup so we will be able to listen without a huge ordeal.  And feel pretty confidant that I succeeded.

I finally got to bring my old speakers out of retirement (against Hannah’s wishes) and discovered that our little storage bedside thing stores lp’s like a charm.  We got to pick up a couple of new ones today (lp’s that is).  Hannah got an America record with “Muskrat Love” and I found Daniel Amos’ Horrendous Disc which has “Hound of Heaven” among several other great tracks.  We spent most of the afternoon reading the liners and looking at the art (both of which are totally visible on vinyl) and wondering what we have been spending all this money on for 10 years of buying CD’s.  Depressing really.  In closing, I am adding a series of record images that we have been listening to recently.  Hopefully, I can write again soon with some suggestions and notes on records I have come across.  Please drop me a note or comment if you have any suggestions.

Introducing the Beatles (front)

Introducing the Beatles (back)

Introducing the Beatles (disc)

imagine (front)

imagine (back)

John Locke will do what John Locke has to.

So season 5 begins and Phillip for one is NOT disappointed.  The producers made a statement at the end of season 4 that more questions would be answered than asked in season 5.  So far they appear to be keeping their word.  I will not spoil anything for you if you are behind, but I have to say that John Locke is the ruler of the Universe and is likely in league with the Chuck Norris.  Thus he will do whatever he has to do to win.  Winning in this case means protecting the island and if you have to die to make that a reality…       so be it.  This guy gets so much stronger as he gets older he makes Benjamin Button look like a second rate Forrest Gump clone…   wait Button was already a second rate Gump clone.  More on that later, but for now if you have a pulse and are not caught up to current episodes then heed my warning:

JOHN LOCKE WILL DO WHAT JOHN LOCK HAS TO.

And that may include destroying you and the ones you love if you do not get onboard.

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Christmas was pretty low key this year. It was the first year we were able to stay in Tennessee and got to minimize our travel, which made for a much more relaxing break.

I will add plenty of details soon, but my family wanted a copy of all the photos.

Here is a link. (Warning: this is a 100MB download)

Mr. Madoff

Your Mama must be proud. Why is it, do you think, that it is criminal for a big business tycoon to commit fraud via a Ponzi scheme resulting in a $50 billion loss but it is perfectly O.K. for the U.S. government to do the same thing so long as we all call it Social Security.  Makes one wonder how many other equal or greater schemes are cooking in the elaborate and confusing world of Wall Street.

I guess I should explain a bit of this in case you have been living under a rock the past couple of days.  Bernard Madoff recently confessed to having orchestrated a Ponzi scheme resulting in a $50 BILLION LOSS!  I don’t even understand what that kind of money means.  Enough to make his $10 million bond a drop in the bucket, I suppose.  Provides another chink in the armor for the sneaky globalists when they pull the plug and tank the U.S. economy.  Enough paranoid ranting.  I could really freak myself out if I endulged.

What do you think?