My wife and I therefore decided to host a cookout Monday here at our new home. Folks started showing up at about 2 in the afternoon, and stayed until about 2 in the morning. A wonderful day!

When mealtime came, everyone was of course most helpful in the kitchen. I’ve been a stage manager for about six years, so when it comes to big group projects like that, I’m generally the take-charge type, giving everyone assignments and making sure everyone has what they need.

Naturally, everyone was in and out of the refrigerator all day and all night…I’d estimate the door was opened no less than 150 times Monday. I understand that there is no actual mechanical connection between the door of a refrigerator and the guts that actually make it run, but I believe all that action broke our refrigerator’s poor little cold heart.

Death In The Family

Throughout the evening, people kept checking the freezer for ice, but it seemed like the water in the ice trays just didn’t want to freeze!

The next morning, as I was working (in my home office) my wife came in to let me know that nothing in our refrigerator is cold. The fridge was dead. We had figured that this refrigerator was on its last legs, so we’d been planning to replace it, but we were hoping to wait at least until the New Year. Alas.

I had an old mini-fridge from college out in the garage, so I hauled it into the kitchen and plugged it in and we loaded everything that could fit into it.

So I called into work and told them I was taking the day off, then we went shopping for refrigerators and bought a nice one, one of those side-by-side models with a water filter and a spout in the door.

Replacement

Unfortunately, this came at a pretty bad time as far as buying a replacement goes. I’ve just started paying tuition, and while we can afford it, we don’t have a lot of surplus after that and living expenses.

If you’ve ever heard of Dave Ramsey, you’ll know he gives great amounts of applied common sense in the form of financial advice to his audience via books, seminars, and his radio show. In regards to taking control of your finances, you’ll know the first thing he advises his audience do is to set aside $1000 in an (easily accessible) emergency fund in the bank. After then becoming debt-free, you are to add to it until your emergency fund can cover three to six months of living expenses.

I am in the middle of this third step, building the emergency fund from the original $1000 seed up to the 3-6 month expense coverage. As this was an emergency, I withdrew from the emergency fund to buy the new fridge. Across the next couple paychecks I get, I’ll put the same amount back into the emergency fund.

You have no idea how nice it is to be able to handle a moderately significant financial ‘crisis’ like this without breaking a sweat. We’re not financially hurting, and we don’t have to live on rice and beans for the next three months because of this. We didn’t have to put it on a credit card and pay it back at 29% interest or whatever the going scam is these days. That feeling is awesome.

A Word of Advice: If you don’t have an emergency fund like this, start one. You have no idea how good it will make you feel to have it when you need it. And believe me (and anyone else with sense), sooner or later, you will need it.

Also, if you don’t know Dave Ramsey or his financial advice, I can’t recommend his book Financial Peace enough. Buy it, borrow it, check it out from the library, or swipe a friend’s copy, but read it.

Meeting For Coffee

“Sure, I’ll meet you at Starbucks,” I told my sister. I hate coffee, but I really wanted to spend some time with her before her weedding. “Which one are you guys at?”

“Oh, the one up north, at 55 and 461,” she replied. “You know, over by Lowe’s.”

I had just been to that very shopping center earlier today, and I knew of no such establishment. “Oh…right. How do you get there again?”

“Well it’s right there, you know, over by Lowe’s.” Hadn’t she already told me that?

“You mean that little coffee stand out in the parking lot by Wal-Mart?”

“No, it’s a walk-in place. You get to it before you come to all those restaurants.”

Now we were getting somewhere. I continued my discussion with her, getting very detailed directions to the Starbucks where she was waiting, that I had no idea 5 minutes ago was there. But the directions just didn’t make sense.

“Sis, with the directions you give, it seems like the Starbucks should be taking up the same space as the Interstate exit. How on earth do I get there?

“Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. I get off the Interstate and turn right…”

“Oh! You’re coming from the Interstate?”

Where Are You Coming From?

Our miscommunication had a lot to do with the fact that I was physically coming from a different place than my sister thought. The directions she gave were great directions, and they would have easily got me where I needed to go, except for one thing. Her starting point and my starting point were different.

I’ve noticed this is a common source of miscommunication, not just when giving directions to a physical place but when communicating ideas in general. The vocabularies we use can have different meanings depending on where our listener is coming from, on what his or her perspective is.

I encourage you, the next time you feel like you’re having a hard time communicating something, take a little bit of time to consider this. Where are you coming from, and where is your listener coming from? What’s the difference, and how can you use this knowledge to bridge the communication gap?

Today, my sister is going to be married. It’s been quite a while coming, as she has been dating her husband-to-be for two years today. I am thrilled for them! Please keep them in prayer today and over the next several weeks as they learn and grow and cleave together in marriage.

I’m writing this in a house full of groomsmen as we prepare to leave for the outdoor venue to set up chairs and staging for the ceremony. We’ll be pretty well occupied all day. But don’t worry, I won’t leave you with nothing to read today. Instead, I’ll refer you to an interesting article I recently read.

Focus or Broaden Your Expertise?

Timothy Ferriss has some pretty incredible ideas about life and work and freedom. He frequently lays out ideas that fly in the face of common and accepted business practice, yet these ideas really appeal to one’s common sense. I submit for your reading pleasure Ferriss’ recent article called The Top 5 Reasons to be a Jack of All Trades.