We stopped getting Cable TV earlier this year. It was a great decision that we made. We have managed to save money over those months, and we have also managed to do more productive things with our time. Last weekend, Wendy and I took a short trip to St. George, UT. There was a TV in the room. Actually there were two TV’s for some reason I couldn’t figure out. I turned it on, and quickly realized, I have not been missing anything from live broadcast TV, and then turned it off. This weekend, I watched the last quarter of the MSU football game. Wow, either I had forgotten how bad commercials are, or they have gotten progressively worse since the last time I was subjected to them. I was considering buying this season’s The Walking Dead, but at over $40, it just seems a bit much. The show has not been as good lately in my opinion. Besides, Netflix has all the past seasons on streaming. I can wait until it comes out on streaming if I decide I want to watch it. I have bought the season for Gotham and have been enjoying it. Wendy and I bought and have been watching this season’s Modern Family and Big Bang Theory. They have been OK, but I believe the writers are running out of material. We may not buy their next seasons. Will have to see. Although I have to admit, it is really nice to watch a TV show without having to grab the remote to skip commercials or have to sit through them. On to better things.
Fire testing
Passed my CPAT (physical test) today. I’ve taken that test more times than I can remember. They told us they would let us know where we stand on the list some time later. I already took the written test a couple of weeks ago. This is for the Metro Fire Consortium.
No Boots on the ground against ISIL
There will be no American boots on the ground in the fight against ISIL. Call me a skeptic, but the last time I heard this many reassurances, it was “If you like your doctor and health insurance, you can keep it”.
Number 2
We just got back from the doctor’s office for the 20 week ultrasound. The baby looks healthy, has 4 chambers in the heart, 2 kidneys, an aorta, 2 legs, 2 arms, and everything else that should be normal. Its a good thing I saved my Boy Scout uniform as I might be needing it. We also learned that our baby is going to be a boy. We are going to start thinking about a name and are excited! He is due sometime in mid February.
Facebook hiatus, trying something a little different.
I decided to cut back on my Facebook usage last month. It started easily when we went to Yellowstone as there was no Internet access. Afterwards, I decided it was nice not spending so much time looking at Facebook. I decided to stay away for a month. I realize that keeping up with friends can be difficult without Facebook, but I still want to keep myself from being drawn in as much. I found a way to post to Facebook through my blog, so I will be doing it that way for now while.
Easter, because it’s important
I felt the desire to write a little bit about why Easter is important to me.
First off, I’m a Christian, so it should be a no brainer why its important to me. You know, Christmas and Easter, the two “Christian” holidays where people show up for a church service or mass so they can get OK with God by saying they went to church.
Lots of religious beliefs and theologies have a significant figure that started their movement. LDS has Joseph Smith, Islam has Muhammad, Buddhism has Budha, atheists and agnostics have themselves, and most importantly Christians have Jesus or Yeshua as He was probably known by those who were witnessed to His life.
Here is what Easter is about to Christians. There was this guy named Jesus. He lived mostly in the Galilee region of Israel over 2000 years ago. Why was He important? Well, He claimed to be (and I believe He is) the son of God. The God of Abraham and the Jews as He was know by at the time. There were lots of gods (little g) worshiped and recognized by people in the land those days. Their gods all had names and images.
There was no image of God, and his name, YHVH, was considered very holy by those who worshiped him. This God is the one who spoke the Universe into existence. You want to understand about power, you have to realize that He only had to speak to make the Universe created as we know it. Some time after man was created, God gave man one simple rule, and then man broke that rule. Not only did he break it, but he lied about it and then tried to say it wasn’t his fault. What a pitiful beginning for man. God’s perfectness and holiness make it so that He can not be around sin. He hates it. So God’s pinnacle of His creation, whom He gave free will, was now awash in sin. The relationship that He had with man was now messed up.
Our pastor gave a great illustration today about sin and relationships. Imagine there is a married couple. Being married is about being in a relationship, sharing, loving, and making a life with your spouse. The relationship God desires to have with man is similar. Imagine that one of the partners of this marriage had a sexual relationship with someone who was not their spouse. The one who was cheated on would be very angry, and would probably not want to be around the one who cheated. There is no act that the cheater could ever possibly do to remove the pain and memory of what was done to the spouse by cheating. It will always be there. This is very similar to how it is with God and man. When we sin, it hurts God in a way that a spouse would be hurt from a cheating partner. There is nothing man can do to heal this divide that sin has caused between man and God. Restoration can only come from the one who was hurt. The only chance the cheater has is that there is faith that the one who was cheated on will offer forgiveness. Without that, the relationship can not continue.
The only thing that could be done to make up for the sins of man was the blood of the innocent. During those times, Jews sacrificed animals, who took the punishment for Jews not being loyal to God with sin.
So back to why this Jesus guy was so important. I’m not going to go into all of the prophecies that the Jews had been taught about the one that God would send to heal this relationship between His people and God. Jesus met those prophecies. More importantly, He lived a sinless life while on Earth. He spent the last three years of his life on Earth in ministry telling Jews and non Jews about repenting from sin, performing miracles, teaching about love, peace, and about God’s coming Kingdom.
During the Passover celebration one night, he was seized by the high Jewish priests and accused of being a blasphemer. This charge could only hold true if he was not the Son of God that he claimed to be. He was sentenced to death as an innocent man on what we remember now as Good Friday. He died a horribly painful death on a cross. After the Roman guards proved that he was dead by pushing a spear through his side, his body was given to Joseph of Arimathea. He owned a stone burial area that he had planned to use for himself. He decided to let Jesus borrow his burial site. On that Friday as the sun was going down, He was lowered from the cross and placed in the tomb (sepulchre) where a large stone was used to cover the entrance. Roman guards were also placed at the entrance to this tomb to ensure that no one would do anything to the body of Jesus as his death was very controversial.
Here’s the best part. Saturday, nothing. Sunday, the stone was rolled away and Jesus arose from the grave. Pretty amazing right? Many say unbelievable. I can’t prove it happened, you can’t prove it didn’t happen, but I have faith that it happened. There is one thing that Christianity has over all other beliefs. Death has no grip on Christians, which means that life on Earth also has no grip on Christians. For us, life is just a short time of waiting to be with God for eternity.
I don’t know if I emphasized it enough, but Jesus was dead. D-E-D dead. He defeated death by bringing himself back to life. I can not do enough to tell you how important that is, and how it is not found with anyone else’s beliefs. There is no place you can go to visit where Jesus is buried, because he is alive. People have an idea of where he may have been buried for those few days. Guess what, it doesn’t matter because it is an empty tomb.
This is just what is so great about getting forgiveness from God. Its a gift. It is offered to us freely, and we don’t deserve it. That is what is called grace (unwarranted favor). There is nothing we can do to earn forgiveness. Any religion that has you do lots of works or has requirements that have to be met to find favor with the one they worship is nothing but pride. Look at me and what I have done to find favor. And better yet, there is only one sin that can not be forgiven by God, and that is not accepting his free gift.
Lots of people think that being a Christian is about following a bunch of rules that God made to kill your fun. No, that isn’t it. Read what I said in the previous paragraph. Its not about what you do. The other popular idea is that if someone was a good person, did enough good things, there’s this heavenly scale God will use to decide if you are going to Heaven or hell. So how much is enough? Both ideas are completely untrue. If anyone tries to tell you otherwise, they are lying. There is nothing you do that earns you favor with God. You can accept what He wants to give you, and that’s it. The Bible has plenty of scripture to tell you about this. If you want to bother looking into it, its there for you to find.
Choosing to sin is choosing to separate yourself from God. Sin causes death. Since God gave us all free will, we all have the option of pushing God away. He’ll even let us spend eternity away from Him if that is what we want. That is hell. Complete separation from God for eternity. You think there is evil on Earth now, you have no idea what it will be like when God completely removes himself from your life. If that is what you want, you can foolishly choose that.
If you want a pretty good book to read about someone trying to proving that Jesus isn’t who He says He is, I’d recommend The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. The guy was a unbelieving journalist who set to to prove that Jesus was a lie. What he found was different.
Of course if you want to know more about Jesus, just read the Bible.
I believe that Easter is the most significant of the holidays that Christians observe. Some would argue its Christmas because without Jesus being born, he couldn’t have been crucified and raised from the dead. Well, I believe that without Jesus rising from the dead, there would be no need to celebrate the birth of a baby in a lowly little town in Israel.
Merry Christmas 2013
2013 has been one of the biggest years for us here at the Cotting family. Our biggest event was the birth of our daughter Mia. She was born in early January at 5lbs 13 oz. Since then, Mia has become what all of our plans for the day seem to revolve around.
Mia is a healthy and happy 11 month old girl. She has been steadily following the 50th percentile on all the growth charts. Not very long after she started crawling, she started trying to stand up which moved to walking. Crawling was a short time in her life, and we are now on to full toddler hood. Her development has been fairly advanced along the way, but we aren’t signing her up for the smart kid school just yet. Mia is talking a lot in baby talk. She got that from her mother’s side of the family. She is a big fan of her books. She’s turning out to be very independent, just like her mom. Poor kid, everyone says she looks like me.
On the same week that Mia was born, I started paramedic school. It was a very tough program. I spent an untold number of hours reading text books, studying, and memorizing stuff. Learning at this age was much more difficult than when I was in my 20’s. However, I feel like I am now a better student than I was with my study habits. It just takes longer for stuff to soak in. The course ran from January through November. Class met 4 times a week for the first part of the program and then dropped down to 2 times a week for the last part of the program. I had over 150 hours of clinical time (time spent working in hospitals) and over 400 hours of time working with the fire departments running calls. I learned a lot, but also realize I have a lot more to learn. Wendy was incredibly supportive of me this past year. My parents were also a big help with babysitting so I could study at night. We are hoping that me being a paramedic will help me get hired sooner to a fire department.
Unfortunately for me, I haven’t been able to do many of the things that I enjoy this year, mainly because of studying. I didn’t get to ride my bike very much, and I also didn’t get to interact people outside of school and family. Now that I’m done with that, I’ve been able to get back to exercising and doing some of my hobbies. I hope my friends don’t think I’ve forgotten them.
One of those hobbies I enjoy is computers. I’ve decided that it is time for the Anvilgear.com domain to go away. Sometime next year, it will be gone. At another time in my life I thought I was going to start a backpacking equipment company with that name. Well, that never happened, so the more relevant cotting.us is becoming the home for our websites and email addresses. So make sure you make the switch if you want to continue to keep up with us. The even less used anvilheadproductions.com will also be going away.
Wendy continues to enjoy her job as a pediatric urgentologist. This time of year is really busy for her as there are lots of sick kids and not enough doctors. During the summer, she took Mia with her to Texas to see her brother get married. She really enjoyed getting to be with her family for a little while. She has enjoyed being a mother and in my biased opinion has done a great job with Mia.
My brother and his wife bought a house in California. They are living in Lancaster. In even bigger news they recently welcomed a one year old boy into their family. They are currently foster parents, and are moving towards adoption. We are very excited for them.
In spring of this year, my parents sold their house and moved out here to Utah. They bought a house that is about 10 minutes away from us. They have been a big help this year with babysitting, and really enjoy having a grand baby near by. I am glad to have them closer now as flying to Mississippi was not going to be a convenient way to stay connected with them.
Our Christmas plans are fairly simple. We are having my parents come over here for the day. My parents have bought most of the inventory of the baby toy aisle for Mia which she will be getting for Christmas and her birthday next month. I’m not sure where we are going to put all this stuff.
We’ve been very blessed this year. We hope you have a great Christmas season.
Jason, Wendy, Mia
Photos: http://photos.cotting.us
Political cartoons about anti gun and anti Syria stuff
Merry Christmas! 2012
Hello everyone! Hope you are doing great. Time for the annual update. Wendy and I have had some changes go on with more in store for next year.
Around Christmas time of last year, Wendy found out that she had been overpaid by her company for the previous two years. I already wrote an in depth description about it so I won’t go into details. We are now paying it back, and it has had a big effect on our lifestyle, but we are grateful that we still have everything we need.
I swore off an old oath that I would never go back to school again and took two classes at the local institutions for higher learning. Human Physiology and Medical terminology. I needed those classes so I can go to paramedic school. I was also quoted as saying I would never become a paramedic. Sensing a pattern? I will be going to the University of Utah for paramedic school starting this January. The program is sponsored by the Salt Lake City Fire Department. I hope that I will be able to make a good impression on someone during my clinicals there so I have a better chance at getting hired.
I also just finished a fire academy where I earned my Utah firefighting certifications. This will allow me to apply for more fire departments as most of them require that before you can apply with them. We are hoping that once I finish paramedic school this time next year, I will be a more desirable candidate so I can have a better chance of getting hired by a fire department.
During the summer I did a lot of bicycling. I did a fair amount of riding with my neighbor Dean. He helped me to ride farther than I normally do and which helped me to improve my endurance. He talked me into going down to southern Utah with him and some friends to do a century ride. It is called the Deparado Duo. He did the full 200 miles. I was quite content to just do 100 miles. It wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be, but I’m glad to have gotten my first century ride down. Maybe I can do more in the future.
At the end of last year I decided to not drink soda for a year. I am just about to my one year mark with that. Honestly, I don’t really miss it. Unfortunately, when company comes over we don’t have much to offer them other than tea, milk, and water. It was originally a weight control decision, but the more I’ve learned about soda the more I realize it’s really just a good health decision. If you drink more than a few sodas a month, I’d encourage you to try going a year without it just to see what its like.
My parents have put their house up for sale in MS. They haven’t had much luck with getting anyone to buy it, but hopefully someone will come along soon and buy it. Once they sell it, they will be moving out here to UT to be closer to us.
Wendy found out on Mother’s day that she is pregnant. It is going to be a girl, and her name will be Mia June Cotting. June is Wendy’s grandmother’s name. Mia’s expected due date is Jan 20th, about a week after my paramedic school starts. Although I’ve been told that new babies mostly just sleep, I just wish this was going to be easier. We are excited about starting the new phase of our life in parenthood. Wendy and Mia have been doing well and the doctors say everything is how it should be. We feel very blessed with how well things have gone for us.
Wendy still really loves her job doing urgent care for kids. She’s had a pretty busy year, and the winter virus season has now started here in UT. She has a great schedule where she works in the evenings. It is going to work out great once we have Mia here as I will be at school during the day, and then I can be home while she works in the evenings.
We didn’t go on vacations or backpacking trips this year like we have in previous years. This year we just had staycations. We did drive out to CA to visit with my brother and his wife. We took the dogs with us, and it was a nice little get away.
The dogs are doing great. Daisy has taken up catching the frisbee. She’s gotten really good at it and can jump pretty high. Madie just follows her around with a tennis ball in her mouth watching Daisy catch the frisbee.
This Christmas we are enjoying a quiet day at home. I don’t imagine there will be many more quiet Christmases once we have a kido running around the house.
We hope you all have a great Christmas and a wonderful New Year.
Guns, Beer, and Automobiles
Since the tragedy at the Sandy Hook Elementary school, there has been a lot more attention placed on tougher gun control. President Obama stated in his last 2012 election debate that he wanted an assault weapons ban in his next term in office. It seems hypocritical that he is allowed to have people carrying assault weapons to defend his family, but he doesn’t want me to be able to have an assault weapon to be able to defend my family. Is this what they call executive privilege?
I really don’t see how placing a ban is going to stop people getting killed. That is what this is about, keeping people from being killed, isn’t it? People are killed by lots of ways, not just by guns. The CDC has a report on 75 years of mortality in the US. Guess what’s not on the top of that list?
This argument of preventing responsible law abiding people like myself from being able to buy certain types of guns and magazines of certain capacity makes no sense to me. Shouldn’t we be doing something to hinder the criminals who do the killings and not the people who obey the laws? Laws are for people who choose to obey them. Making a law to stop a criminal is like using a window screen to keep out cold air. I propose that if we are going to try to put a stop to senseless killings, why not take it another step and make another ridiculous ban on something that kills people.
Drunk driving. If you ban the sale of hard liquor (parallel with assault weapons) and ban the sale of any more than a two pack of beer (parallel with the sale of high capacity magazines because 2 drinks tend to be what keep you below the .08% blood alcohol limit for legally driving), then that will keep people from driving drunk. Makes sense right? Here is the picture I am trying to draw here. I like shooting guns. Firing an assault weapon is fun, especially when you have a 30 round clip. You can just keep pulling the trigger and destroy the paper target, soda can, or what ever non leathal target it is you are shooting at. Its fun and no body gets hurt. I don’t drink (personal reasons but nothing against those that do), but I’ll try to draw a comparison. There are plenty of people who enjoy alcohol responsibly. Yet there are those who enjoy it irresponsibly. The irresponsible ones are the ones who drive while under the influence and cause a death because of it. Just as there are people who enjoy drinking responsibly, there are people who also enjoy using assault weapons with high capacity magazines responsibly.
In the United States, the number one cause of death for the last 75 years is heart disease. Personally, I believe that if you are wanting to make a difference in saving lives, start with what causes the most deaths to see if you can cut a chunk out of that. (Something that doesn’t make sense to me is that breast cancer awareness is more popular than heart disease prevention which is the number one killer of women). So maybe we should create laws that influence heart disease deaths by banning the sales of sugary foods and drinks, banning cigarette smoking, banning not exercising, and obesity. All of those things can be culprits for heart disease. Seeing as how the government is having to foot the bill for the healthcare of people who have allowed themselves to become unhealthy by their lifestyle and get heart disease, then the government should intervene in people’s lives so they won’t have to pay for people’s bad decisions. [No I’m no being serious but its for the sake of argument].
In the USA in 2010, there were 10,228 [reference per DOT] total fatalities for vehicles involved in crashes associated with a driver who’s blood alcohol was at least .08%. That is about 31% of all vehicle crash related fatalities. In the USA in 2010, there were 11,078 [reference per CDC] total fatalities for homicides by discharge of firearm out of a total of 16,259 [reference per CDC] homicides which is about 68% of all homicides.
Wow, that’s also a lot of people who are dying because of alcohol and driving, only 850 less than people being killed with guns. This won’t result in a ban of alcohol sales or vehicle sales, or even talk about it on the news media. So why should we do something only to ban guns when there is a similar amount of senseless deaths going on with DUI deaths? There is no logical sense to do it.
Guns are not dangerous. If they are, then vehicles are more dangerous because in 2010 there were 35,332 [reference per CDC] deaths associated with vehicle accidents. I grew up with many guns in my home. My dad taught me how to shoot a gun and respect guns before I was old enough to read well. No one got shot in my home, and no gun accidentally went off either. Our guns were not locked up, they were just in closet of the bathroom my brother and I used. People who claim that guns are dangerous, and we should do away with them are just ignorant [definition]. That’s not to be mean or make fun of them, but that is the correct term to show their lack of knowledge or experience with guns to be able to come to a logical conclusion. Lack of familiarity causes fear, which drives a lot of people who want to get rid of guns. Who is dangerous is the criminals who may or may not be using guns.
People say that there is no need for an assault weapon to go hunting. That’s true. People are also saying that assault weapons are only made for killing people. I’ll give you that too. That is why I would own an assault rifle, to kill people who are trying to hurt me or my family. An assault rifle will do it much more effectively than a bolt action hunting rifle will do. I have no intention to go out and kill people, but if someone comes into my home looking for trouble, they’ll get it at about 2700 ft/sec.
If you haven’t heard it before, I will say it again. Gun laws only effect those of us who obey the law. People who go on mass shootings are showing their blatant disregard for the law by shooting people, what good would a speed bump like a gun law do to keep them from their objective of spreading terror. Its not just that I don’t want to lose my rights as an American citizen to be able to own a weapon, its that this idea of creating MORE gun laws is going to do nothing to solve the problem of people shooting other people. Mike Huckabee has made some of the best remarks I’ve heard recently about tackling the issue of what happened in CT.
We don’t have a gun problem, we have a morality problem. Even if you took up all the guns in the country, you’d still have people wanting to kill other people. It hass been going on since Cain and Abel, and will continue until the end of human history. If there’s not a gun to kill a room full of people, several pipe bombs will do the trick. So will a large vehicle plowing into a crowd of people. I’m not trying to plead my case just because I don’t want to lose my guns, but because spending time making more gun laws, (which we already have plenty of) will not solve the problem of people killing people. You can’t legislate morality.
Back in 1776, the muskets that our forefathers kept in their homes could have been classified as assault rifles as they were similar in capability as to what the English army was using at the time. Its because they had those guns in their homes that we have the country that we have today. I have no plans to want to go to war with the government by shooting police officers and members of our military with assault weapons. But, as a friend of mine said recently on Facebook, “An armed populace is the final point in the checks and balances that keeps our government in check.”
Read your history about dictators that didn’t allow guns. They are not a civilization I would have wanted to be a part of. Starting conspiracy theory rant now. Its my fear that episodes like this are being exploited by radicals who want to get guns out of the hands of citizenry so that they can’t be opposed. When people don’t educate themselves about what is really being done, their freedoms will be pulled right out from under them without even realizing it. Call me crazy, but with the rapid increase in shootings that are getting attention, I wouldn’t put it past a radical agenda of some kind to be behind this to make us lose our right to bear arms.
Make no doubt about it. If someone ever decides to invade my home to threaten me or my family, I will use lethal force to defend myself and my family. I hope that day never comes, but I will be ready for it.