Kaka for City, really?

O my goodness. I can't tell you the excitement this news story has filled me with. Kaka, who's won pretty much everything football has to offer, both individually and with Milan, looks like he might just be on the brink of a staggering £107 million pound move to Manchester City, currently 15th in the Barclays Premier League. The wages offer is a reported £500,000 per week. Vast sums of money.

Not vast enough though, for me to become one of these raving lunatics who goes into a rant about the money involved. What's the difference between £100 million for Kaka and £47 million for Zinedine Zidane? Or £30 million for Juan Seba Veron? Or £20 million for Robbie Keane? Or £15 million for Alan Shearer back in the day? Rubbish. As soon as you get into the multi millions you're already in the bracket of "more-than-I'll-earn-in-a-lifetime", what's the difference?

Also it's not like this guy is spending beyond his means, £100 million for Kaka is like me giving you a tenner for a ham sandwich - it's slightly overpriced, but it's not gonna break the bank. Besides, there aren't many ham sandwiches in the world that are better than this one.

Finally, saw a great comment on a football website I like to browse:

"...so if Kaka belongs to Jesus, does this mean we're going to have another Carlos Tevez affair, with third party owners involved?..."

Brilliant.

Happy New Year

Have a great night folks, lots of you will have parties planned and friends to see, I hope you have a great evening.

This picture is a bit random, but I typed "party" into google images and this was the first result! I think it's quite cool.

There are lots of you who I have long intended to catch up with, and just haven't done it yet, I'm sorry, and I will be in touch soon.

New year's resolutions? I don't have any, much as Finlay tried to force me into making some when we were out for coffee last night. Maybe I will make some, but just don't fancy it right now. It probably is good for us mind, making promises to ourselves, to God, or to others and then fulfilling them surely bound to be good for our discipline or something. But it goes back to the easy to say, hard to fulfil thing from yesterday, I may know it's good, but will I do it? It's the fear of letting yourself down that can put us off.

God help me this new year, to live for you, naturally. To do what you would do, without thinking about it.

I'm all talk sometimes, this is a chance to do it.

d

It's Dark Outside

So the evenings are getting longer again, work is oh so quiet, with everyone else being off, and I'm enjoying things at the moment. I truly have nothing to complain about, Christmas has been lovely, and I'm going to get to see some more of my friends and family over the next week or so. It's great.

Liverpool are riding high on top of the league, three points clear and if Liverpool finish this season as strongly as they did last, then we will win the league.

And what a year I've had.

I'm a graduate having finished my maths degree, I've spent a little time on the dole, I've now got a full-time, "proper" job, and I'm married to the love of my life. I have an awful habit though, of procrastinating. I have stuff that's needed done since october, just stuff that I don't see the urgency in, but I should just bloody do it, and stuff round the house, I just tend to leave it till another time. Sort it out. Right ok, I'm gonna do some stuff I've been putting off when I go home. Today.

It takes a lot to change character. For the better at least. Stuff like this I can see it should be fixed, but implementing that is alot harder than talking about implementing it. What makes us do stuff? Like live in a certain way even though we know there's a better way? I believe I should not procrastinate, yet I do it. And it's not that I ALWAYS do what I think I shouldn't, for instance, I know I should eat when I'm hungry, so I do. No problem with that whatsoever. what is emotion, is that what drives some of our actions? Eating feels good so I'll do it. Getting the box for the Christmas tree out of the attic feels labourious, so I'll not do it?

What is that?

Oh I don't know. I've talked some nonsense in this entry, I know, forgive me, I'll be inspired next time around.
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A turbulent month to round off a year of change...

I haven't blogged in a while. It's been hard you see, to write anything that doesn't look insignificant or petty compared to what's gone on in December. Many of you will will know that Lynne McGeehan passed away on Thursday 11th December, aged just 25 (you can see an article on her passing here.) Lynne was a cousin of my lovely wife Carla, so I was witness, at close proximity, to the unimaginable grief felt by the family, though what I saw was only a glimpse, the real grief will be felt every time the family are together, and there is an empty seat at the table. Lynne is survived by her mum, dad and 2 sisters, and all I could think of when I was with them was the injustice of it all. "This isn't fair," is all I could think, no words can comfort a family who have lost someone so dear. It puts a real perspective on things. It shows us just how fragile life is, Lynne remember was not sick, she didn't have any terminal illness, she went to bed one night, and God called her home. And it is so painful for those left behind.

Maybe we can learn from this. Maybe we should take stock of our relationships, do our families know that we love them? Do we take them for granted? We just don't know when we'll find ourselves asking just the same questions the McGeehans have been asking the past couple of weeks.

And then life just gets in the way. I use the word "life" loosely, what it is is not truly life. I call work to say I'm off on the monday for the funeral, and the end of the week my manager is asking me questions like "so, you were off on monday, do you have any leave left for this year or are you taking it unpaid?" What?! I don't care! There's more to life than bloody timesheets! I've spent the weekend with a family grieving the loss of a young girl, and all you care about is which budget the day is going to come out of? That said my manager has been very good with my early departures on the previous thursday and friday, and she is only doing her job, it's not her fault at all, but man, there must be more than this?

So that's pretty much dominated our minds this Christmas, we had our "first Christmas together" which was nice, but mainly it's been a real time of sorting our priorities, focusing on what it is that we feel is important. So we hope to spend more time with our friends and family the next wee while, we can so easily be sidetracked into thinking work is somehow what life is about.

I had planned to go from here and talk about the rest of our year, in a kind of annual review way, but I really am struggling to figure out how some of the other stuff is important in light of Lynne's passing. I'll come back to this...
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Work

Man. The working life is tough. I mean, not tough as in persecuted christians in the far east, or famine struck countries in central africa. I just mean tough relatively speaking. Today is Monday. I feel tired, work's pretty slow, I haven't even any excuse for feeling this way (this does not however mean that these feelings are insignificant.)

I get the bus home. It usually takes 45 minutes. And it really is depressing. And I usually feel nauseous by the time I'm home, then I'll sit down for a while with a drink of water. Then I'll think about tea, except usually my wonderful wife has thought about it long ago, and has it underway. Then it's 8pm, I'll need to go to bed in a couple of hours. Let's watch TV.

What a crappy existence. I need some of this "life to the full", cos I really ain't feeling it right now.

And I hate this thing that is slowly seeping into my life, that says the weekend is going to be OK. And living for the pay packet, it's just the rat race, and I'm getting sucked in.

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy my weekends, but enduring the week so I can enjoy my weekends isn't exactly life to the full, is it? And does my enjoyment even come into it?! Does God care that work-life is dragging at the moment. I need to live for him. Each and every moment.

I've got a cousin called John, who's in the states right now (check his blog). His attitude to jogging was just great:

I have always found running to be kinda boring especially just running
around and around a track but iv [sic] decided that in order to teach myself
discipline and all that type of thing that i should stick at this thing. Iv found that while im running my mind can be cleared and so iv had some really
good times of prayer and fellowship with God. By making the run a spiritual
thing it becomes so much more beneficial and enjoyable.

What a guy. I need that. It's real, intentional, I'm gonna make this day about God attitude. This is what is not only going to make the day more enjoyable for me, but more beneficial to others. I really think my benefit is completely secondary to the needs of everyone else, and serving God through love of people. God's got a salvation plan for mankind, to hell with how I feel about life!

That's got me thinking anyway, and already I feel like I've been dragged out of that pit of self-pity/self-doubt I was in. Thank God.

Back in the game

Blogging game that is. It's been a while, I know, and I'm not gonna promise to do this like every day for the next 20 years, cos it just ain't happenin'.

Update on life:

Working in LIT, an IT firm in Belfast town centre.
Married for nearly 2 months, to Carla, who is just wonderful.
Live on the King's road in East Belfast, which is wonderful, nice area, if you're thinking of moving, come to the east, it's a real place where real people live, with their families! (Unlike the Lisburn road for instance, where pretend people live...only joking I used to live there with great people, some of whom have in fact moved to east Belfast too, making them real people again.)

So that's you all up to date.

That'll do for now. I may blog again today, unless I get busy at work.

d

Football

Flip me the champions league is great. Just watchin the Champions League Weekly magazine show on Sky Sports, I cannot wait till it kicks off for proper.

Now. The Berbatov transfer. I was so cross. United make me cross. They are rule breaking, drugs cheating, vomit inducing pricks. They agree an illegal transfer with a player without asking permission from his rightful club, and then bribe the club not to take up their complaint against united. How is that ok??? In terms of the premier league rules, there is something awry there. The victim club has to raise a complaint against the offending club in order for the governing bod to step in and punish said offending club?! Also, this offending club is the very one who complained about the threat of another club doing the same to them! In my book that is the equivalent of a person going to the police having received a death threat in late June, then later in the summer going out and shooting someone. And not only that, but the authorities cannot act unless said murder victim lodges a written complaint!!!

The Man City story brought a welcome side story to the day.
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