Santa Matt's ramblings

Earlier this week, Mrs. Santa and I decided to have a day to ourselves. So we set up plans and started Saturday morning with the glorious task of mowing the lawn. Once that was done we hopped into our mini-van and headed for Frankenmuth Michigan. We had planned a day of geocaching, shopping and a nice dinner. For those that may not know, geocaching is using a GPS receiver to locate caches. They may be an actual cache like an old ammo can containing a logbook and trinkets or a virtual cache where you go and observe something and then log it on line. I have a Tom tom bluetooth GPS. This is a receiver only and talks to my Nokia internet tablet. I use Maemo Mapper to display maps controlled by the Tom tom. We used this to get close, to navigate the roads. I also have a Garmin ForeTrex 101 which we would use walking to actually locate the cache. We drove into Frankenmuth from the south end. We stopped at Bronner's for our first cache. Now Mrs. Claus and I had been talking about geocachi...

A friend of mine related this story to me. He doubted it was true, as do I but it is a good story none the less. There was a woman who was very active in her Catholic church. Her specialty was organizing meals. It didn't matter, funeral luncheon, pot luck or a fund raising dinner, she was there to make it happen. And after each meal she would announce to everyone, "Keep your fork for desert." as the dishes were cleaned away. Well she died and when she was layed out in her casket, instead of holding a rosary as is the Catholic custom, she was holding a fork. Everyone noticed this and some would smile remembering her announcing at each meal, "Save your fork for desert." Some people thought it was in bad taste. And a great many people were just puzzled. When the time for the sermon came at her Funeral Mass, Father commented, "Some of you may have noticed she was layed out with a fork rather than a rosary as is our custom. This was at her request in her final w...

Life is like a really good mystery movie. We start out with no clue as to what is going on. But little by little we learn things and the solution becomes clearer and clearer. As we progress through the movie and more of the plot is revealed we get excited, we want to know all of the answers to our questions. Was the butler really polishing the silver? Was that God that answered my prayers and helped me get that job? Was the poison really in his coffee? Is there a heaven and will I be welcome? Watching the movie we have our theories. We start to pick out suspects based on the revealed clues. In life we have our faith, our beliefs, based on what religion has revealed to us. But right up to the moment the clever hero or heroine gets the confession from the murderer, we are waiting for one more plot twist. And right up to the moment we die, we will have questions. Is there life after death? Did I pick the right church? What will happen to me? What did God mean by that revelation? As we wat...

When we were young we did things to honor our mothers. We would not step on cracks in the sidewalk, etc. Our mother probably enjoyed our thoughts but what she really wanted and how we should have honored her was to clean our rooms. It is much the same with God. We make all kinds of ritual prayers and that is good. But what God really wants is for us to clean our rooms. He wants us to clean the room of our soul. God Bless you and yours

Sometimes special people enter our lives. When I first met my wife's family, there was one person I did not meet, Mary her sister. Mary was only allowed home twice per year and she was never allowed to travel alone. No, she was not a secret agent or a convicted criminal, she was and is a nun, a Sister of Notre Dame. Down through the years visitation rules have relaxed some. I have seen her many times, either at the family or at church functions. Mary taught me many things. Some in her kindly cheerful voice, some just by the way she lives her life. Yeah, I know, she's a nun. She is supposed to live a exemplary life. But sometimes you meet a member of a religious order that shines in a special way. People that even if they were not in a religious vocation would still be holy. Mary is one of those. Mary is one of the people that answered my questions during the years that I was looking for a church. She is responsible for my starting to sing in church. I tell my religious ed stud...

Where I go to church there were two women. They are not related, but you rarely saw one without the other. As they grew older, one of them developed emphysema. Eventually this brought her to the final days of her life and she entered hospice. You may or may not know that hospice is a kind of care, not a facility. Someone may be in hospice in the care center, in a convalescence center or in a private residence. When this woman entered hospice, she was taken in by her friend. Her friend set aside a bedroom, equipped it with oxygen and a hospital bed. She cared for her day and night, only taking a few hours sleep for herself when a hospice volunteer would sit and watch for her. I have someone who will do that for me. I married her. But the loving friendship of these two women is inspiring. "This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." John 13:35 God Bless you and yours

I use an Apple Newton. I have for years. And although I am slowly moving from the Newton to a Nokia Internet Tablet, there are still times I use my Newton and still some things it does better than anything else I have found. But that is a topic for another posting. In this posting I want to explain how I make maps for use with my Garmin Fortrex 101 GPS and GPSMap Lite for the Newton. Also, this tutorial will be for making maps on a PC. Apologies to my Mac friends but I have just never made a map on my Mac. The first decision is to decide are we making a road map or a wilderness-hiking map. Both follow the same basic principles but there is a difference in the map source. For Road maps I use maps captured from MS MapPoint. I have also used Google mapping. For hiking maps I generally use satellite photos from Google Earth. I did download a special mapping version of AdobeReader and you can get pdf versions of most US topographical maps from the US geological survey web site. But I found ...

As you may have guessed by now, if you have been reading my posts, I am a faithful Christian and a devout Roman Catholic. As such I pray a lot. And I pray in all of the forms of prayer. Briefly there are five forms of prayer. Blessing and adoration: This is where we tell God how much we love Him. And because God blesses us, we can bless others, including returning that blessing to God. Petition: Prayers of petition are when we ask for something for ourselves. Intercession: These are the prayers where we ask for something for someone else. Thanksgiving: A prayer where we thank God for all he has done. Praise: This is where we tell God how great he is. As I was saying, I pray a lot, from the small things, "God please help me find my keys.", to the big things, "Thank you God for this wonderful life you have given me. God regularly answers my prayers. Yeah I know what some of you are thinking "Nut ball!" but at least listen to a couple of stories before you make up...

Many years ago I had the good fortune to attend a Franklin Time Management seminar. At the time I was really into the Franklin. I never went anywhere without that Franklin Day Planner under my arm. One of the things you do if you follow the Franklin method is to set life long goals. And to help you in this you fill out these special pages. One of them is Called "Beliefs and Goals". I sat and ponder those "Beliefs" for many days and eventually came up with what I figured defined my life at the time. This was the first iteration of "My Rules". As time moved along and my Franklin was replaced with a Newton (Are all management systems named after scientists?) I just kept my rules in my head spouting them off to people as seemed relevant. Then along comes this show on TV called NCIS. It is my favorite show, a nice blend of procedural, mystery, action and humor. Now in case you have not seen the show, the lead investigator, played by Mark Harmon, has a set of ru...

Last night I sat vigil for a woman in hospice at the end of her life. She had family but sometimes they have to leave to get rest themselves. Earlier, in my Santa Claus post, I told how my mother had died in hospice surrounded by hospice staff. I had to get some rest and I did not think she would pass so quickly. But she did, but not alone because of the wonderful staff there. Well last night I paid some of that back. I sat with Rose. I rubbed her shoulder and sang hymns to her, the cross above her bed letting me know she was a woman of faith. I would read to myself a bit and then do it again. Sometime while I was reading, so gently that I did not even know the exact moment, she died. But I don't do this because I feel a need to "pay back". I do this because it needs to be done and because my spirit soars with the thought that I can help someone, some family, at that most difficult time. Rose died last night, but not alone. God Bless you and yours

When the phone rang at 5:00 AM I answered it right away. I am a light sleeper and come awake quickly and calls at 5:00 AM are never good unless they are from overseas or about babies being born. It was my mother. It seems my father had an infection in his leg and had gone to the hospital by ambulance. Once they had drained it, my mother said, they would need a ride home. So my wife and I got up, showered, got dressed and went to the hospital. When we arrived, a nurse in the emergency room called to me. He said your mother said you look like Santa. Then he led us to a patient elevator to go up to where my father was and my mother was waiting. On the way up he broke the news. "Your father has necrotizing fasciitis." I was stunned and my wife looked at me. "Flesh eating bacteria" I told her. Once we were in the waiting room my mother filled in what we had missed. My father had awakened in the night and told my mother that his leg hurt terribly and to call for an ambula...

Many years ago a friend of mine told me that at Christmas time he dressed up as Santa for his family. He even brought his suit to work and after work one evening put it on so I and others in the office could see how he looked. I still have a Polaroid picture of him tucked away. I thought it was pretty cool and that maybe some day I might like to try it. My chance came a few years later. At the children's Mass at our church, Santa would always make an appearance at the end of the service. The youth minister was always Santa but one year he told the organizer that he no longer wanted to be Santa as he was afraid that now that his sons were older they might recognize him and not believe in Santa. The organizer, Susie, could not find anyone else to be Santa. Everyone was too shy. She came to me and asked me if I would do it. I said "Sure". At the time I worked for an Alarm Company and company policy forbid having a beard but the church's costume came with a pretty nice be...

There are several good books out about Protestants converting to Roman Catholicism. I have read both Scott Hahn's book and Alex Jones' book. Although there are some similarities, their books are much better and offer insights that I can only now think about in retrospect. My family was not the church going kind. My parents were good people and believed in God and Jesus Christ but they were not practicing Christians. So when I was twelve years old and in the seventh grade I decided I needed to go to church on my own and see what religion was all about. We lived in the kind of neighborhood that could not make up its mind if it was country or suburbia. There were small clusters of houses off of the two lane county road, although we were only a couple miles from the small town of Grand Blanc, a kind of suburb of Flint. Well the only church in walking distance was a Baptist church about a quarter mile down the road. So Sundays I would walk to church. I met some very good people ther...

I suppose the first topic of my blog should be a bit about why I felt the need to fill the internet a bit more with my ramblings and what kinds of things I'm going to ramble about. I am at a point in my life where my outlook on what is important is changing. Due to a number of factors, I find myself spending more time in contemplation. Some of this is religious and spiritual in nature and some of it is just thoughts I find interesting. As for the religious and spiritual aspects, I will say right up front that I am a proud Roman Catholic, a Fourth Degree member of the Knights of Columbus and a Senior Catechist commissioned by the Bishop. That being said, I am not attempting to produce something canon to the Roman Catholic Church. I may well say something that differs from canon. If you wish to know the "Catholic" aspect of something I write, leave me a message and I will find out. I am also interested in technology. I have a Nokia internet tablet that I have hacked to do m...