place of nathan.

A couple months ago, I mentioned I was getting published.
It just happened, and I’m the cover story, too!

In Roll Call Child Check-in, I examine New Hope’s recent implementation of Roll Call’s Child-check-in features.

We implemented the check-in beginning in September, and haven’t looked back since.

Here’s a link to download the digital pdf, if you’re interested.

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The end of this month, I will be attending a conference for newly elected officials, since I’m a newly elected official. I take office on January 1, 2008 on the Waterloo Town Council.

There is a lot I need to learn, and I’m looking forward to learning more about what is ahead of me. In particular, I need to learn about Open Door laws, what I can and what I cannot do behind a closed door. You know me–I always want to do the correct, ethical thing, so it will drive me crazy until I figure out what I can and can’t do.

Another thing I’m looking forward to is reading through the ordinance book. It’s in a 2 1/2 or 3″ binder. Lots of reading, but I look forward to reading through that intently, and getting up to speed with what Waterloo’s ordinances look like.

The great thing about this conference is it’s in downtown Fort Wayne, so I’ll get to drive my beautiful wife Emily to work, park in her lot, and then get to drive home with her right next to me. It will be great to get to spend extra time with her!

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My blog has been pretty quiet this week, hasn’t it?

I just wasn’t in a good mood all week. I was ticked off, pessimistic and downright in a very poor mood. I didn’t want to blog, so I didn’t.

My bad attitude was a direct result of my allergy medication. Yesterday I started taking DayQui and NyQuil to control my symptoms, and it’s been doing pretty good job, and best of all, without the side effects of irritability! Yeah!

The DayQuil give me a slight case of shakes and dry mouth about 3 hours after I take the medication, but it’s a reasonable side effect considering the alternative of irritability and pessimism, which makes me annoyed at myself, which only ticks me off at myself all the more.

So I’m back, the normal, positive Nathan. I am glad about that.

Sorry if I offended you at all this week. I may have been too short, rude, etc. It wasn’t me–it was my medication! Irritability no more!

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When I was in college, I was a scholarship athlete. I would go on daily runs with my teammates. On easy days, we often talked most of the run.
On guy in particular was the biggest pessimist I’ve ever met. Everything was a negative–everything. I hated running with this guy because he would always make negative comments and never talk about anything positive.

On more than one occasion, I stopped to ‘tie my shoe’ so I could get away from him. I just couldn’t stand being around such pessimism any more.

Well, today I am annoying myself, and If I had a fake shoe string to tie, I would do it to get away from myself.

Today, I find myself annoying, as I am such a pessimist today! I don’t like it one bit!

What is God attempting to teach me? Patience? Whatever it is, I pray thee Lord, help me to find it quickly!

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This week my allergies have been acting up, and it’s been annoying.

This time of year, allergies make my eustachian tube swell closed, so air pressure cannot escape from my ear.
This creates unequal pressure between my eardrum and atmospheric pressure, and I hear a ‘crackle’ in my ear as my eardrum shifts a bit under the unequal pressure with movement such a chewing, yawning, etc.

It also slightly distorts my hearing out of my one ear. Normally it’s just the left ear, but when it’s really bad, it affects both my ears. Everything is slightly muffled. I don’t think I am hearing any tonal differences, just a bit muffled.

Another symptom of my allergies this time of year is sinus congestion. It gets really bad. At times, I have coughed up rather large pieces of phloem. About the size of a golfball. No, not really. More like a small marble, i would say.
But this phloem also is in my throat as I sleep, which means I snore, or so my wife tells me.

To combat this allergy, Claritin-D works the best–actually, it works perfectly, but it has side effects. It makes me very irritable. It’s like I’m constantly ticked off already, so you better not cross me!
This is not a good side effect, so I am trying to deal with the allergies by taking Benadryl Allergy, which helps a lot, and only slightly increases my irritability. I have to still try to be the happy optimist I normally am. While I’m on these drugs, I turn into a huge pessimist. It’s really odd.

Have you ever had such a side effect? How do you deal with being so irritable? How do you suggest I deal with my irritability?
And, I apologize in advance if I turn on you as a pessimist!

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Last night we had a great marriage conference, as we showed Part 1 of Mark Gungor’s Laughing Your Way to a Better Marriage Marriage Conference. Gungor is funny. If you weren’t there, you missed out! Perhaps you’ll be able to make it next time!
We served catered desserts, and Emily and I made coffee for the night. In all, we served more than 120 cups of coffee in about a 30-minute span. We were well prepared this time. In our previous attempt at making coffee, we weren’t ready for the rush, and got caught unable to produce more coffee quickly enough (the coffee makers take about 10 minutes to heat back up after making an 11-cup pot.
We have 6 pumpers on hand, and served those 6 a total of 11 times. we started off with 4 house and 2 decaf, and had the coffee makers heated up and ready to go for when there was an empty pumper. Because we were prepared well in advance, we had no problem keeping up with demand this time. We were down to close to one pumper of house for a moment before we could produce two more, so we didn’t have a shortage this time (we did have a major shortage last time!)

Emily and I reserved our seats before anyone else got there, and we ended up getting to sit with some really cool people! Lloyd and Janet, Guy and Jody, and our new friends Justin and Bobbie. Guy and Justin play on an indoor soccer league, and I’m looking forward to playing with them! It will be a load of fun and good exercise!

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The local newspaper included this as part of their article on the Waterloo Town Council election on Wednesday:

The top three vote totals went to winners Nathan “Nate” Diehl with 136 votes, Albert “Al” Shuman with 127 and incumbent William “Bill” Hubartt with 119.

Notice how all three have a “Name”? Well, Al and Bill go by their shortened names–I do not. Sure, I answer to Nate, and there are a few people who always call me Nate, but not tons.

When I first saw that, I was like, ‘What the heck? Why did they call me “Nate”?’ And then I started trying to think of where they would have heard someone call me Nate.
And I couldn’t think of anyone!
Tuesday night I was at the Saddle Barn with the DeKalb County Republican party to watch the returns, and Jay Oberholzer (Chairman) called me ‘Nathan’ on multiple occasions. My wife always calls me Nathan. My parents both call me Nathan.

I can’t for the life of me figure out where they got I went by the name Nate.

I’m not mad, don’t get me wrong. I certainly do answer to Nate, and I’m not offended by it in the least. I think it is funny.
I like my name Nathan, and I would like to keep with it, if you don’t mind. I don’t think this disturbing occurrence it will continue. Waterloo’s normal beat writer, Katheryn, wasn’t on our story, it was the editor and another reporter, I think (the article actually didn’t have a byline). If Katheryn picks up this bad habit, I’ll be forced to ask her to call me by my given name.

Just thought I’d share that with you. Hope it made you smile.

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Emily left yesterday morning for a business trip to Saint Louis, Missouri and Tempe, Arizona. She gets to meet people she talks to on the phone all the time, go over some things, and provide lunch for the whole team there, and take the managers out to dinner. Emily will return Friday afternoon, and I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to picking her up at the airport!

This morning as I was getting ready, I made breakfast, as I do every morning. I picked up two bowls, then remembered my wife wasn’t home. A few minutes later, I picked up two spoons, then remembered my wife wasn’t home.
I miss my wife. Emily is a good wife to me, and I am very much looking forward to her arriving back in Indiana for my enjoyment again! I love my wife!

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About a year ago, I got a Cingular 8125 phone/pda. I have enjoyed it a lot over the course of the past year, and it’s kept me from missing appointment after appointment. That scheduler has saved me more than once–although I occasionally still drop a ball here or there when I don’t pay enough attention to the pda.

When I was in college at Taylor in the fall of 1996, my next door neighbor Steve West bought a new kicking computer–Windows 95 and everything. One of our favorite things to do on the computer was play speed solitaire. We would see how quickly we could play the game. It was all about speed and high score.

Combine those two stories–my pda has solitaire on it, and over the course of the past year, I have played speed solitaire on it over and over. When I first got the phone, my goal was to score 5000 points. I did this rarely at first. Once I was able to score 6000 points, the 5000 mark wasn’t such a great goal any more. It just didn’t satisfy me any more. Now my goal was 6000, which I was rarely able to hit at first, too. Well, a couple weeks ago I scored 7000, and now 6000 isn’t very satisfying any more.

The problem is, it’s really hard to score 7000 in solitaire. You have to be good and get a lucky deal. The problem is this–it is a somewhat rare combination. I’ve only scored 7000 that one time. Since then, 6000 is a disappointment. 5000 doesn’t even feel like an accomplishment any more–it feels more like a failure.

What once felt like a great accomplishment now feels like failure.

I think very often in our walk with God, we run up against the same thing. Getting a taste of something better makes the things we used to do seem not so great any more–we want to experience more of God. We want to know God better, we want to serve God better.
Once we get ‘better’, the ‘old ways’ which were once satisfying are no longer satisfying. It’s not enough to simply keep on doing what we’ve always done–we need to do more.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t do the ‘old ways’, but they should be stepping stones to getting to deeper, better things.

So the question of the day–what are you doing this week to advance your relationship with God?

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results are in:
Diehl 136
Schuman 127
Hubartt 119
Smith and Bice followed close behind.

And yes, this is the final results (it`s a small town, u know…L

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I was thinking this morning, I like change–I thrive on change.
One of the driving forces behind my work is: There has to be a better way.

I am always open to change, and I’m always looking for change.

That’s not to say I change everything all the time, because I don’t. I have worked at the same job for more than six years. I’ve lived in the same house for over five years. I have gotten to date or be married to the same woman for more than four years.
But here’s the deal–I am not doing the same things, the same way, as I was doing six years. My house doesn’t look the same today as it did five years ago. My relationship with my wife isn’t the same today as it was four years ago.

I thrive on change. There has to be a better way to organize everything going on. There has to be a better way to save money on car insurance than switching to Geico (there is, and I did it about a year ago). There has to be a way to save money by cutting costs, not increasing taxes.
I want to find that costs to cut, I want to save money, I want to save time, i want to change. I thrive on change. Do you?

What benefit is there to avoiding change at all costs? Is it worth it to avoid change at all costs? Is it worth it to thrive on change?

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