Christmas Blues

With Christmas coming my health is at an all-time low due to the lack of sleep I'm getting, and wellness is at an all time low which equates with my bank account. I can't wait until the whole show is over!

Of course my kids don't feel the same. I have two kids still at home. Alex is 9 and Carly is nearly 12 (Xmas eve is her birthday, bad timing I know, how I would have hated to wait for the two big events of the year for presents one day after another.)

I run a small computer business, small because not many "friends" want to pay me for fixing their computers, and I have a web design website that I'm not sure anyone has even visited, let alone want to order anything. And I'll be buggered if I'm going to pay, pay, pay. Seems that the search engines have also jumped on to the pay, pay, pay, thing, The whole thing sucks! You can check out my website at Junee Magic. I've included a member's section with downloads and javascript and dhtml code to help out any would-be webmasters, and that is proving more popular than anyone wanting me to design their site for them. Fair enough too. I didn't want to pay either. I wanted to learn it myself and I approve of anyone else doing the same.

How do I explain to someone I've just designed a website for why their site doesn't show up in a google search? Well, if you want to pay bulk money every month to see your site listed on the top search engines, go ahead. Eventually, it might get listed on about page 20, if anyone is willing to wade through that many pages to find one particular site, but personally I have an aversion to all the advertising, spam, popup crap, etc. The internet has gone to the pack, and that pack is the advertising gurus that are constantly trying to get in your pocket.

Anyway, back to Christmas. Another drain on the back pocket. A whole lot of crap to boot!!!

Sure, I believe in God, and I'm a good Christian, but the whole Catholic Church thing is a load of shit, and these days when my kids ask me about it that's exactly what I tell them.

Christmas is so commercialized these days that it's lost the whole concept of the institution. All my kids care about is what they're getting, nothing to do with the "baby Jesus" thing. If Jesus was still around he'd be absolutely horrified to see what's happening in "HIS" name. He wasn't even a Catholic. And I'm sure he wouldn't be accepting of the crap that the church is handing out and teaching. That wasn't the message at all. The bible wasn't even the message. Something the church put together 400 years after Jesus died to try to consolidate the church. More political than anything else.

I'm diverging, get me on about the church and I get a real bee in my bonnet. And yes, I've had a bad experience with a "man of God". What a joke!

Anyway, Christmas. Yes, once again I've diverged. Today our day started with Cricket. Both the kids play and I help in the Canteen, so it was 8:30 am at cricket, which didn't finish until 12:30 pm, then off to Wagga for the Touch Football grand final which both boy teams were competing in. Carly's team got knocked out last week in the first of the semi-finals, and since they play in the under-14's it was a great acheivement that they even made the finals, since out girls are all 10 and 11, 1 12-year old, and one child only 8.

Both the boys teams (under 12s and under 14s) won the grand finals. A huge achievement for Junee, (with a population of about 5,000) playing in the Wagga comp (with a population of around 60,000). I'm a very proud parent, as you can see. It's all good, healthy fun and the kids benefit hugely.