Personal – MacYourMom.com

Would you give up some privacy for lower premiums?

So the Progressive insurance company has a new product that lets you earn a discount by plugging in a little dongle to your car that reports on your driving habits. It raises some interesting questions about how much privacy we’re willing to give up, not to the government, but to a corporation.

At first, it’s very off putting because we can imagine how we could be penalized for bad driving – or even the kind of driving we do every day if they deem it to constitute a bad risk. Of course, there’s only so much data they can collect from today’s cars, like engine RPM and acceleration. And Progressive, at least for now, promises that your rates can’t go up based on the data they collect.

On the other hand, let’s take it a step further. What if they could collect data on things like attentiveness, how well you change lanes, whether you’re prone to jackrabbit starts or abrupt stops? (Such things would be possible if the car’s computer collected data like turn signal activation or if an eye-tracking camera were mounted on the visor or rearview mirror.)

Right now insurance companies base their premiums on general demographic data–age, gender, where you live, what kind of car you drive– plus your driving history, i.e. tickets and accidents. But if they had more data about your specific driving, they could better assess how much of a risk you are. There are some people who are effectively a zero risk. I can imagine they might offered a near-zero premium.

Conversely, a driver who is a higher risk might pay a higher premium. However, what if the insurance company could incentivize bad drivers to become better drivers? Perhaps on a month-by-month basis they could provide feedback to the drivers with ways to improve their driving, maybe with free training. And maybe they would say something like, “If you change these factors next month, we will reduce your premium next month by $50.”

Not only would that help reduce the risks for the insurance carriers from those drivers, but they would also reduce the risk for their good drivers as well.

With a few bits of already available technology, this could be a reality. It would take changes in what data cars record, thus how automakers build them, as well as a change in the regulatory environments in most states, but it’s something to think about.

My Ikea hack mail rack and charging station

Ever since I saw this Ikea hack mail rack linked at Lifehacker.com back in February, I knew I wanted to build one for myself. (In case you don’t know what an Ikea hack is, it’s the combination of various products purchased at the giant discount-price Swedish home decor retailer, Ikea, in unexpected or unintended ways. There’s even a whole blog dedicated to them.)

I primarily wanted to replace the mail-catching basket we had by the front door. We have an antique telephone table I inherited from my mom, on top of which is precariously perched a basket containing way too much mail. (I do a cursory sort as I come in from work each day, tossing out junk in the recycling basket set there for the purpose and putting the rest in the basket, but too often that’s where it stays in a giant heap.) Because it’s so top-heavy, the kids are always knocking it over, sending the mail flying all over the living room.

Ikea hack to the rescue! We were going to Ikea today to pick up a mattress for Anthony to sleep on in his new room (cf. previous post) as well as various other items like a lamp, a shelf, and what not. I remembered the hack I wanted to build, so I looked up the clipped Lifehacker article in Evernote on my iPhone and picked up the necessary materials. You can see the complete instructions at the first link above, but here’s how it went for me.

The original hack called for using three of the Ikea KNUFF magazine holders and some spare wood to make an impromptu shelf. The KNUFF come in pairs so I decided to use four. I also opted to buy a new shelf, the EKBY JARPEN/EKBY BJARNUM combination, for a more polished look. Since it was a little longer than the original hack’s shelf, it could hold four KNUFFs pretty well. The original hack also opted to stain the shelf and magazine holders, but since the Ekby shelf was already a birch veneer, I left the Knuffs untreated. We’ll see how that works out long term.

I started by laying out the four Knuffs under the shelf on my desk, spacing them equally and then marking their left and right edges on the shelf bottom.

The next step was to drill pilot holes for the screws in the short side of the Knuffs where they would attach to the shelf. Then I would hold the Knuff in position against the shelf and mark the spot for the pilot hole there through the hole in the Knuff. Everything went well until I realized that my big hands just didn’t fit well into the Knuffs. I’d already drilled all the pilot holes in them, but I had no choice. More on that in a second.

My other immediate discovery was that there is a wide variety in the relative size of the Knuffs. While the pair in each package were the same size, those from different pairs varied in both width and depth. If you attempt this hack, it might be worth keeping that in mind when shopping and try to find pairs that are alike. In my case, I just made sure to place the thinner ones on the outside and the thicker together inside and so it looks okay.

I made sure to number the KNUFFs as well as their place on the bottom of the shelf since each pilot hole and placement of the KNUFFs was to be unique. Wouldn’t do to lose track and try to figure out which was supposed to be where while in the midst of putting it on the wall.

As for my pilot hole problem, I went back and drilled a second hole in each KNUFF, closer to the opening into which I could fit my hand.

You can see here that I ended up drilling two pilot holes in the bottom of the shelf for the first box. That’s why we do dry runs! Otherwise I would have done a lot more unnecessary drilling.

Of course, when drilling into the bottom of the shelf, be sure not to go all the way through. That would be bad. Not “crossing the streams” bad, but still bad.

Once all the pre-assembly and testing and dry runs were done, it was time to put everything in place. First I put up the shelf as per the instructions. It was a tiny bit tricky because I wanted to avoid both a light switch’s and an electrical outlet’s wire runs. I ended up a tiny bit further from the door than I wanted, but that’s okay.

After the shelf was in place, I screwed the Knuffs into the bottom of the shelf with regular wood screws and then screwed them to the wall as well. I didn’t use anchors or anything because I don’t expect them to be load-bearing. It’s just for basic stability.

Here’s the final result. The mirror with key hooks was there before, but I had to move it higher up the wall. But now I have four sorting bins for bills; needs-to-be-scanned; magazines, Netflix, etc.; and needs-to-be-shredded. Everything else goes right into the recycling bin. Plus there’s room on top to plug in a phone or Kindle or iPad for recharging and space for outgoing mail.

I am curious to see how long it lasts. The Knuffs are not made of very tough material so the first time a child grabs the bottom of one of them to keep from falling or as a climbing handhold, it’s going to come apart. One other consideration is that I might bore a hole up through the shelf to run the charging cables. I have one of those outlets with USB power ports on the wall down below, so it makes a great charging station by the door. So that’s it for now.

What modifications would you have made to the hack? Would you build one of these?

…And we’re back

Has it really been since the beginning of May since I wrote a post? Sorry about that. It’s just that I so often say what I want with a paragraph or two on Facebook or Google+ or a sentence or two on Twitter that writing a whole blog post seems excessive and redundant. Not to mention all that’s been going on to keep me away from the blog. To wit, let’s recap.

For those of you who don’t follow me or Melanie on Facebook, Twitter, of G+ and don’t read her blog, we’re expecting again. We found out about the time my blog writing went kaput. Coincidence? I think not. We’re in the throws of “morning” sickness, which means that Melanie is sick all day and all night and I do my best to pick up the slack before and after work. Anyway, we seem to be nearing the end of that godawful phase and we’re entering the nice part of pregnancy before the third trimester is upon us.
The due date is January 7. Since this is a caesarean section by necessity (four previous ones), it will be a scheduled delivery. Scheduled deliveries are invariably scheduled before the due date. I’m pushing for December 31. Tax deduction, you know. Plus if it takes longer than we expect, we could have the first child born in the new year. Bonus!
Melanie’s sister Theresa, who has lived with us the last 3-1/2 years has moved out and moved back to Texas. This is bittersweet. (I would tease her by saying bitter for Melanie and sweet for me, if she were here. She’d know I was kidding. Or am I?) No, really, it’s bittersweet in that we’re sad to see her go, especially the kids who obviously loved having their auntie here; and Melanie who got to have her best friend around all the time; and all of us who benefited from having a third adult to watch kids or run an errand or cook dinner. The sweetness of the bittersweet comes from the fact that three adults and four children in our little house was a lot, and now we have a bedroom for the boys to be in. Ben can move out from his sisters’ room and Anthony out of ours. That’s right, for the past 16 months we’ve have a third occupant of our bedroom. It will be nice to get our room back. For the next 6 months. Sigh.

So that’s what we’ve been up to. There’s been more, of course, family gatherings, plans for a trip to Texas in September for my brother-in-law’s wedding, plans for a trip to Texas at the end of August for me for the Catholic New Media Conference, plus the usual trappings of work, summer weekends at farmers markets; trips to visit Grandma in Maine; and so on.

But now, my hands are back on the tiller and the ship of this blog is being sailed again. We’re back.

They should have had a Lifehammer in Logan, Utah

Perhaps you’ve heard the news story out of Utah about the car with a dad and three kids that flipped into an icy river. Eight men in passing cars leapt into the river to rescue them, including one man who shot out a window with his handgun and another who had a knife to cut them from the seatbelts. It sounds like they’re all going to make it, but it’s a scary scenario right out of my nightmares.

Living in Massachusetts, I can’t count on passersby having a handy handgun or knife to help us in a similar situation, which is why I purchased two Lifehammers, one for my car and one for Melanie’s. They are designed for the single purpose of getting you out of your car in an emergency. One end has a pointed steel hammer that punches readily through tempered auto glass while the other has a razor in a safety position for cutting through seat belts.

They sit right in the little map pocket by the driver’s door for at-hand access. I keep in mind that it’s not just for an accident that I may get into or Melanie, God forbid, but if like in the story above, we encounter others in similar need.

(Note: Although that’s an Amazon affiliate link, I don’t have any interest in Lifehammer other than wanting people to be safe when driving with their kids or to be able to help others at need.)

My Day In and Out of the Jury Box

That was … interesting. I had jury duty on Monday in a district court. It’s my third time in the past 15 years or so and in none of them was I actually impaneled.

I arrived at the courthouse at 8:30am as per the instructions and we were ushered into a small library with room for about 25 people. We first watched a nice politically correct film about the jury system and how it used to exclude women and minorities, which might be interesting in an academic setting, but seemed irrelevant from a practical standpoint.

After the movie (shown on a tiny 15” screen to a roomful of people by the way), we got a half-hour break from 9:30 to 10:00. We were told that there was a high-profile arraignment in the courthouse that day, four teens accused of shooting a 21-year-old the day before, and that while we wouldn’t be called for that case, we should avoid it.

Let me add that the conditions for the juror pool were less than ideal. Defendants and lawyers milled around the open door to the jury room, discussing their cases. We used the same bathrooms as the defendants and those there for the cases as well, potentially tainting the juror pool. We also had no access to any kind of refreshments, such as vending machines or even water. There may have been some in the building but no one told us and the court officer in charge of us was gone for hours at a time.

Back to the arraignment: At one point a giant commotion broke out and we heard yells and screams and saw officers running past our door. Outside we heard sirens and saw police cars streaming to the courthouse. It turns out there was a brawl in the courtroom where the arraignment took place, between friends of family of the victim and defendants. It even spilled out into the parking lot outside our window.

So after that little excitement everything quieted down and we sat and waited. And waited. Noon came and went. Then so did 1pm and no one came around to check on us or tells us we could break for lunch. This started to be a problem for me. As a diabetic, I’m not supposed to let my blood sugar drop too low nor am I supposed to let myself get dehydrated. I had decided to see if I could find a court officer about it when he came back and gave us a choice: A judge wanted to impanel a jury. We could go now and get it over with or we could take an hour for lunch and come back for impanelment. The vast majority of people said: “Now!” and since we were told it would take about 30 minutes, I went along with it. I could last another 30 minutes.

Jury selection is an interesting process. Keep in mind that Massachusetts has a one-day/one-trial system. When called for jury duty you must serve only one day waiting for a trial. If you don’t get impaneled, your duty is done. If you are impaneled, you serve until the end of the trial and then you’re done. First, the first 15 people were sat in the jury box. Then the judge introduced us to the defendant, the lawyers, the witnesses, and the alleged victims and then told us she expected the trial to take 3 days. After that she asked a series of questions related to our ability to serve. Those answered in the affirmative we called up to discuss it with the judge in the presence of the lawyers. The jurors were either returned to the jury box or sent to sit in the courtroom with the rest of us.

After the judge’s questioned were dealt with the lawyers were able to challenge for cause. One by one the original panel were called to the bench and then dismissed. At one point, I was called up to sit in the jury box and then called before the judge. I was asked about something on my jury questionnaire, an incident when I was 20 where I was charged in a court in Maine for a driving-related offense although the charge was later dropped. She asked if this would render me unable to be impartial. I said no. Then she asked if my employment by the Archdiocese of Boston would make me unable to be impartial. I said no again. I could see where they were going with this: Was I inclined to be forgiving of a “youthful indiscretion” because of my background and supposed bleeding-heart ways? I’m sure it was the prosecutor who asked for me to be dismissed.

Eventually, every one of the original jurors was replaced by new jurors and after about an hour or so in the courtroom we were eventually sent home with an apology from the court officer and encouragement to complain to the jury commissioner about conditions we were subjected to.

So, that was my third experience of jury duty. I’m now 0 for 3 in getting on a jury and twice I’ve been challenged for cause by one of the lawyers. It was a long day, but I did my duty and will do it again if called. I’ll just remember to bring snacks next time.

Photo by http://flic.kr/p/7c2Ftq

The Butterfly Place

As I’m on vacation this week, we decided to take the kids on a day trip yesterday. As few weeks ago, the Get My Perks website, a Groupon clone, offered a deal for The Butterfly Place, a small family-run butterfly house about an hour away in Westford, MA.

The kids love butterflies, especially Isabella, and she can identify many of the species by name. For her birthday, she received a butterfly-raising kit, which we used to raise some Painted Lady butterflies and then release them. I even made up a bedtime story for her when she was toddler called “Fly away, butterfly.”

So you imagine how entranced she was when we entered the butterfly house and she saw hundreds of butterflies of all shapes and colors and sizes flying around her. It’s not a large building at all, a few hundred square feet, and it contains dozens of butterfly friendly plants strewn among stone paths. And yet it was quite magical at times. Some of the butterflies would flit past your face while others would land just inches away on leaves and flowers.

I even seemed to attract more than my fair share with butterflies spontaneously landing on my hat and arms and legs with no prompting by me. I later realized that as a diabetic there’s a larger than normal amount of sugar in my sweat and that must have been what attracted them.

It doesn’t take long to walk through, but it’s nice to just stand or sit in one place and be entranced by the beautiful, flitting things.

With the Get My Perks deal, we paid $20 for two adults and two kids (three and over), plus an identification guide to the butterflies. Without it, the cost would have been $40, which might have been enough to dissuade us from going, but I’m glad it didn’t. The pure joy on the kids’ faces would have been worth the trip and cost at that price.

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10 Years of Bettnet.com

Yesterday, July 3, marked the 10th anniversary of this blog, Bettnet.com. I began on July 3, 2001, 2 months before 9/11 and 6 months before the Church’s “9/11” of the big explosion of the clergy sex-abuse scandal.

The first six years of my blog were marked by lots of personal commentary and news analysis of that scandal, especially as it related to the Archdiocese of Boston, which gained for this site a loyal readership to whom I am still grateful. To this day, I still encounter people online and in person who tell me that they have enjoyed my writing over the years.

The past four years of the blog have been marked by a much lower frequency of posting and a marked change in content. With the advent of four children in five years and a new job working for the Church, it meant I could no longer write about the subjects and I had less time for it anyway. In addition, the rise of social networks like Twitter and Facebook have given me other outlets for writing and interacting with people online.

This blog has become more of a hub of my online presence, the “canonical” place where all my Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and other content connects back to and originates from. I’ve also spent more time writing about my political views, about technology, and about my family.

This doesn’t mean I’m not involved in Catholic new media. I’m just doing so professionally. I’m really proud of our work at the Archdiocese. Last week, I was interviewed by the Boston Herald after Pope Benedict sent out a tweet for the launch of the new Vatican website News.va. I was able to tell them about much of what of what we’re doing at the Archdiocese in this area.

In addition, I’m heavily involved in our radio show, The Good Catholic Life, especially all the online components of the show: the website, the daily transcript, the podcast, the email to subscribers, the Facebook page, and so on. (Incidentally, I’ll be on the show today at 4pm (1060AM in Boston, live streaming at WQOM.org, or for download later at our website) talking about new media and the Church.

This summer, I’ll also be going to World Youth Day in Madrid with the Boston pilgrimage. Our office will be documenting the trip at www.wydmadridboston.com. We’ll be posting daily blog updates and real-time photos, video, and status updates from the field so that the families at home can follow along on the pilgrimage. We think we’ll providing unprecedented coverage of the pilgrimage, especially for an organization of our size.

The indisputable nature of the Internet is that it’s always changing. For example, today Facebook is the 1-ton gorilla of social networking. Yesterday, it was MySpace. Tomorrow, it could be Google Plus. And so this website, which as been around longer than of them(!)—I set up my first page in 1996—is still evolving. What it is today, will be different from what it will be tomorrow, just as it’s different from what it was 10 years ago.

I’m just looking forward—God willing—to what it will be on the blog’s 20th anniversary in 2021.

What car should a growing family buy?

Our Buick Terraza

It’s time for our family to start thinking about a new vehicle to transport us around. Our lease is up in February and we want to plan for the future. Unfortunately, the options for large and growing families are limited.

For the past four years, Melanie and I have been driving a 2006 Buick Terraza, or as I like to call it “the minivan no one has heard of”. It’s a decent enough vehicle, with two sliding doors and three rows of seats. It even has an in-car DVD/TV system, although we’ve used it just a couple of times total. (Our kids don’t watch much in the way of movies or videos.) On the downside, the rear seats don’t flat, like those in newer, more popular minivans and so in order to haul anything big, you have to take the massive and awkward contraptions out and store them somewhere. (And since we don’t have a garage, storage options are limited.) And when the seats are not folded flat, the view to the rear through the headrests on those seats is somewhat limited.

The Terraza seats six, at least when there are four kids in car sears. Two adults in front, two car seats in the middle bucket seats, and two in the rear bench. In Massachusetts, child must ride in car seats until they are five, and then they can use a booster until they are 4’9”. Bella just turned five so we’ve picked up a booster seat, which should allow us to get a slim adult, like my sister-in-law, in the back between Bella and Sophia, getting us up to seven and just barely allowing everyone in our house to travel places in one car.

We lease the Terraza from a company I’ve been doing business with for about 14 years, which leases out one- or two-year-old vehicles, mainly from rental fleets. I got my Dodge Stratus from them way back in 1998 and then upgraded to the Dodge Intrepid. About 18 months after we were married and when Bells was six months it was time to bow to the inevitable and move up to the minivan. The way this company works, when you get into the last year of your lease, which I’ve generally taken for five years at a time, they offer to let you get a new lease early. They keep a loyal customer and I get a newer car. So now we’ve just received the letter from them and we’re starting to think of a new vehicle.

So what kind of car will we want to have for the next four or five years? We have had four children in the past five years. We hope to … slow that pace down from here, but we are open to God sending us more children. Melanie conceivably (pun intended) has another 10 years of possible child-bearing. (To reiterate, we are not expecting another child at this time.) Meanwhile, in four years Isabella, Sophia, and Benedict will have moved up to booster seats, but will not yet be old enough to go without. Anthony will be just about to move to a booster. Yet there could one, two, or even three more kids. (Eep!)

So the big questions is: What do we get?

I asked this over on Facebook and got a variety of answers, including 12-passenger van, 15-passenger van, Chevy Suburban, Honda Odyssey, GMC Acadia, and even a school bus (though that was tongue-in-cheek.)

I think I will eliminate the Odyssey and Acadia right off the bat, although they are both nice looking vehicles. The Odyssey’s main seating advantage over the Terraza is that the middle seats are a bench, not buckets so you get on extra there. And the Acadia has no seating advantage over the Terraza. Otherwise, both are very nice vehicles with lots of interesting options, although the Odyssey is so popular it will be hard to find used and the Acadia is just pretty expensive.

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I’ve seen a lot of families go for the large-capacity vans, especially since there are so many in the used-car market and they just have capacity galore. I’ve been told by some who’ve owned them that I should go for the 15-passenger variant instead of the 12 because the 12’s back seat butts right up against the rear door, leaving almost no cargo room, unless I take out the rear bench (cf. no garage, no storage, above). Some have warned that these are difficult to drive in the snow, get terrible gas mileage, and big and bulky to drive and park in general. Melanie will be driving it most of the time so difficulty, especially in snow, is a concern. But my sister just got a full-size van so we’ll ask her how she feels about it.

And then there’s the Suburban. My brother owns one of these to carry his family with six kids and has taken many long road trips in it. With front and middle bench seats, it can also seat nine, although the ninth passenger sitting in the middle between the driver and the right-side passenger has to be over 12 years old. Still, even without that seat, you can get a good six in the back, which is two more than we can do now.

So we’re still thinking about it. What should we get? What do you big families drive and how many of your kids are in car seats still?

Anthony’s Baptism

My son, Anthony Ignatius, was baptized today in our parish of St. Joseph. It was a beautiful sacrament, as always, but the day wasn’t without its challenges.

It started yesterday when I got a call from my friend and our former pastor, Fr. Murphy, that he wouldn’t be able to make it today. That was disappointing because he married Melanie and me and has baptized our first three kids. But we have a great pastor now, Fr. Currie, who was just awesome and always gives so completely of himself in every way. He is truly Christ-like in the way he empties himself for his parish.

This morning, as we rushed about with last minute preparations, Melanie got a text from her sister, who was at work (she’d forgot to ask for today off from work to attend the baptism). Her sister said she was coming home early, because she was sick. She’s had an awful migraine since December(!) and today it was bad enough to be making her sick to her stomach.

Melanie was already rushing because we were down one set of hands and wasn’t paying close enough attention to what she was chopping that she sliced off the end of her thumb. She was bleeding pretty good. I thought she should go to the ER, but she insisted she wasn’t going to miss the baptism. She wrapped it in a bunch of gauze and then we tried to make ourselves and the kids presentable enough. None of us ended up in our nice clothes because Melanie was one-handed and we’d lost so much time cleaning up her hand.

Finally we got to the church and the ceremony began and then Anthony began filling his diaper. Loudly. Repeatedly. My sister, who was holding him, looked down and he was leaking through his own clothes and the baptismal gown that all the kids have worn. While Fr. Currie continued his homily, I quickly moved Anthony to a pew and my other sister came to my assistance and I changed him as best I could.

After the ceremony, as we got to the house, I had to calm my family, convincing them that my sister-in-law was not contagious and going to make them all sick with a stomach bug. Finally, Melanie and her dad and Anthony were bundled off the ER where she was fixed up and got home fifteen minutes after the last guest had left.

I feel bad for Melanie, but in the end what matters is that Anthony has received the cleansing from original sin and gained entrance to the family of God. And of course, Melanie will be fine. Meanwhile, here are some pictures of the ceremony.

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I have diabetes

I have diabetes. That was the diagnosis this morning from my doctor as she called with results from my blood test. I don’t know what type of diabetes it is yet—I didn’t think to ask—but she hopes we can manage it through diet and exercise. Already I’ve got appointments with a nutritionist and a diabetes specialist.

This is wholly inconvenient right now because in just about a week Melanie will be heading into the hospital herself to give birth to our son, our fourth child. I just don’t have time for diabetes or any chronic illness.

So now I contemplate the life changes that are about to ensue on top of the massive changes a new baby brings anyway. Getting a decent meal on the table every night is a challenge under normal circumstances, for instance, but preparing a dinner fit for a diabetic diet is yet more complication. But we’ll manage. That’s what families do. We adapt and move on to the new normal.

Yet, this is also fortunate timing as well. Just as Melanie is about to head in for major surgery (her pregnancies require C-sections now), I have something to offer up on her behalf. While she lies on the operating table, restrained in a cruciform, suffering the twin agonies of having her insides mucked about by doctors as well as not being able to immediately hold her newborn son, I will now offer more than quiet reassurance and prayers. I can now offer up any sufferings from this ailment, everything from the small things like the foods I can no longer enjoy in any appreciable quantity, like ice cream or pasta, to the larger pains, like the no-doubt exhausting exercise regimen I’m going to have to fit in to a busy life, to whatever larger sacrifices and pains will eventually come from the disease that will be my companion from now on. Compared to her own sufferings on the operating table and after, these are small things, but I offer them nonetheless, just as I offer my comparatively insignificant sufferings up alongside those of my Savior who suffered Himself upon the Cross for our sins.

Likewise, it is fortuitous timing as well because Ash Wednesday is right around the corner. The fasting of Lent will have new meaning to me this year and I hope a more fruitful one than usual. Confronted by my own mortality, I contemplate the mortality of the God-Man who is Immortal and take comfort in the knowledge that whatever life presents in this world is not the sum total of existence.The God-who-suffers-with-us knows the troubles and pains that will confront us in this valley, even as He prepares a place for us on the mountaintop.

Maybe that’s all a little too flowery for this Tuesday night in February. Maybe I’m feeling a bit too dramatic and overwrought by being saddled with a disease borne not just with courage, but also aplomb by millions of Americans, most of whom will struggle much more mightily with it than I will.

But forgive a man for being a little introspective a half day after being confronted again with his own frailties and eventual mortality. Tomorrow, I hope to have a little more perspective, but tonight I will ponder and pray.