It’s been over a year since my last update (gee, I suck at this!). So, since my last update, we have moved to another house…this one on the lake! Elliott has started Kindergarten. Time flies!
Preston and Russell are both in the band, and they are going to State again this year. Should be lots of fun to watch in San Antonio again!
Hey, it’s July! That means we’re more than halfway through the year…thank God! 2020 has been a challenge for most people, I think. We’ve had the Coronavirus/Covid-19 that has been crippling our economy and killing people right and left. We’ve had the Black Lives Matter protests which have turned into riots (they do matter). And through it all, President Trump has been our fearless leader… or not. He seems to think that if he ignores everything it will all work out. I hope he’s right; I really do.
Looking on the bright side, though, we get to go see my mom in Michigan in a couple of days! To be honest, I think I’ve already checked out in my mind… I do dread the drive, though. Two long days… We’re splitting it up so that it is one super-long day, followed by one medium-long day. Hopefully that will make it work.
For KDE font/gui size issues after switching to NVIDIA driver, I found the following post:
It’s a nvidia thing lol I had the same issue and never even noticed it until one day I gave the free noveau drivers a try and everything looked way better and smaller. For some reason nvidia sets/forces my DPI to I believe 120, anyways it’s really easy to solve.
Open the nvidia.conf file in your text editor
sudoedit /etc/X11/mhwd.d/nvidia.conf
Then edit or add the option DPI under the screen display sub section and disable UseEdidDpi.
To make things easier here is what I have under my “Screen” section which now forces the use of 96 for dpi scaling.
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Device0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Option "UseEdidDpi" "False"
Option "DPI" "96x96"
EndSubSection
EndSection
I hope this helps you as it did for me.
All I can say about that is, Thank you, God! The Holidays are so stressful. We started out with Elliott’s birth, then Todd’s birthday. We followed that up with Christmas, which we were planning on having at Donna’s parents, but since her dad had the flu we ended up staying home. We got to see my brothers, his wife and son, and my other brother on Christmas Eve. We actually got to go to our own Church’s Christmas Eve mass, which was kind of awesome.
Between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, we had Donna’s dad’s Christmas Party. Her dad was better by then, and so we all went and had a good time. It turns out that Todd had the flu all that time, and so we ended up making my brother and his family, and then my family in Michigan sick with flu…. Ugh. Then I ended up getting the flu, and so we ended up staying home for New Year’s and Preston’s birthday… Then we had Christmas with Donna’s parents the following weekend. I had a sore throat the entire time…turned out to be strep. We finally all got better.
Then we had Elliott’s baptism, which was nice, but Russell was a toot for family pictures earlier in the day. Turns out he was getting sick. He had strep the next day. Followed by flu later in the week. And then Preston got the flu and strep at the same time that weekend… Let me just say, this is getting old! Oh, I forgot to say.. Elliott had the flu at around the same time that I did. He actually didn’t do too bad with it.
Slayaway Camp is a fun little puzzle game for those of us who love 80s slasher movies. I’m going to post some Killer Kodes which are used to unlock additional killers in the game:
campgate2016
freshmaker
gygax
badu
smiggles
beaster
lichee
griffin
gnollnumbertwo
forhades
comewithme
theyfloat
nananananananana
adieutube
slashback
awristrocket
scooper
dont-hang-up
groundhog
butthead
woodguardian
gotyoubabe
cup-of-wishes
soafraid
blowholepower
postlakeview
gonnalaughatu
bowels-out
I took Wednesday through the Monday-after-Easter off of work to focus more on Holy Week. I am so glad I did! It was exhausting… and beautiful! I think that each evening’s service was more beautiful than the one before! The only thing that I didn’t get to go to was the Tenebrae service, which is a shame. I always loved that service in the Lutheran church. But it was held after evening Mass, and the kids were – horrid – ! I found out later that the service lasted an hour and a half. It’s a good thing I didn’t force them to stay. I don’t think that would have gone over too well. But as the days went on, I think that the kids began to enjoy it more and become a bit more well-behaved. It ended up being a very nice Paschal celebration!
I’ve been really lazy with my updates this last year. Sorry about that! It’s been a pretty interesting year, to say the least. My Father-In-Law had a liver transplant a few weeks ago. That has been a real blessing for our family. He is doing much better than he had been. I’ve been really excited to see how much he has progressed!
God has really been blessing our family. We were getting a little frustrated with some things at church, and as is our modus operandi, decided to try going back to the Catholic Church. Well our priest at the Orthodox Church, Father Peter, stepped in and set us straight! Instead of running from our problems, he has been helping us talk them out. I am really thankful for him.
Preston and Russell have both continued to serve at the altar at church. Preston has really taken to it! He knows how to do most of the liturgy already, and I’ve heard him asking to learn how to do other parts! I’ve been singing for the church choir, with the most important part being the Propers. It has been challenging, stressful, fun, and completely fulfilling!
Todd still doesn’t like to eat much (except for candy, bread, and other junk-type food), so he’s still a tiny little dude. I’m sure he’ll get better, though.
I’ve started a new diet as of one week ago. My cholesterol has been a bit too high and my doctor keeps wanting me to take statins. I have taken them before and don’t like the way they make me feel, so I think I’m going to try taking this low-cholesterol diet thing seriously this time! I’ve also decided to experiment with going gluten-free. This makes Russie pretty happy. He is glad to not be the only one! Let me tell you, my stomach has felt much better in the last week than it has in years! I’m not sure if it is because of the smaller portions that I’ve been eating, or the lack of gluten, but whatever it is, I like it… I used to have problems with heartburn almost constantly. I have only had a couple of small episodes of heartburn since I’ve started my new diet. Yay!!!
Well, it’s Advent now. I normally look forward to Advent because I like to do a devotion as a family. The kids always enjoy it, especially the playing-with-fire part! But it has been a rough start, I’ll tell you what! The furnace went out = -$400. The front tires on the van needed to be changed = -$300. And now it seems that Preston’s lousy teeth are going to cost us another $200! Poor kid, he got his Mama’s teeth… lol
But, despite it all, we’re still getting by. And that’s what counts. Right?
We made it through our first Lent as Orthodox Christians. I can’t say we did the greatest job at fasting, but we tried. I think that we did okay, so that’s good. I know that I can’t expect perfection right at first, but as long as we’re constantly improving in our relationship with God I think that we’re on the right track.
The boys got to participate in the Paschal procession. Preston was the Holy Torch Bearer (at least, I think that was his title!), and Russell got to carry the Holy Water.
Lent begins for us Orthodox this week, about a week-and-a-half before non-orthodox have Easter! I’m excited, and a little nervous, to be beginning Lent. You see, in the Western Rite of the Orthodox Church, the Lenten discipline is to fast and abstain (from meat) every day of Lent except on Sundays! I’m not sure I can handle that yet… Donna is planning on doing Monday/Wednesday/Friday as meatless for the entire family. I am going to attempt to do closer to what the Church call for… but no promises! This is one thing that I love about the Orthodox Church. The Church expects a lot from its members, but it also realizes that everyone is at a different point in their spiritual journeys. It doesn’t proclaim that its members are “going to hell” because of their failures. Rather, the Orthodox Church, as a true hospital for sinners wants us to work towards the goal. I can handle that attitude, and honestly, I think I am more likely to reach (or at least, get close to) the goal. Additionally, I will be striving towards the goal with the right attitude — not avoiding hellfire — but striving towards being more like Christ. After all, that is the ultimate goal of life.