This is a forwarded email I got from my girlfriend, and it's without a doubt the most inspiring story I've ever read. I don't know if it's true or not, you never know with all the junk that goes around in email forwards, but that's beside the point. I hope you enjoy this story as much as I did.

    The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings. Perhaps it's the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it's the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are the most enjoyable hours of the week for me. A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the garage with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other.  What began as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those unexpected life-lesson moments we all experience from time to time. I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way I came across an older sounding chap with a tremendous signal and a golden voice fit for the broadcasting business. He was telling whoever he was talking with something about a thousand marbles. I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say...

"Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you're busy with your job. I'm sure they pay you well, but it's a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. It's hard to believe a young man such as you should have to work sixty to seventy hours a week to make ends meet. Let me tell you something that has helped me keep my own priorities straight.

You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years. I multiplied 75 years times 52 weeks in a year, and I came up with 3900, which is the number of Saturdays the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now, stick with me, Tom, I'm getting to the important part.

It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail, and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy. I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had (I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1000 marbles), and took them home and put them inside a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear.

Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life. There's nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight. Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure that if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time; and the one thing we can all use is a little more time."

    You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fellow signed off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to work on the antenna that morning, and then I was going to meet up with a few hams to work on the next club newsletter. Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss.

    "Come on honey, I'm taking you and the kids to breakfast." I said.

    "What brought this on?" she asked with a smile.

    "Oh, nothing special, it's just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. And hey, can we stop at a toy store while we're out? I need to buy some marbles."

I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too!

People say they'll go "to the ends of the earth" for someone they love. But is that really true? It is for me. When God led me to Rachel, I had never seen her before; I knew nothing about her. Now, one year and six months later, I fully understand why we were brought together. Never in my life have I gotten so much joy out of a relationship. I've had a few girlfriends, and each of them caught my attention in one way or another, but Rachel is different. When I'm away from her, I find myself desperately wanting to be near her again. When life's burdens become far to heavy to bear, simply feeling the warmth of her touch against my skin makes the pain seem to disappear completely. We've each been through hell in our own ways throughout this love affair, but we both remain standing together as one despite it all. I love her with all my soul, and going to the ends of the earth is the least I am willing to do for her.

When the sun is on it's way toward the western horizon, the sky and the clouds and the earth in all their diverse beauty come together in an indescribable moment of radiance. Some have said the rays of sun coming though the clouds are the fingers of God, tenderly caressing their creation as an expression of love. Being with Rachel is like standing on a grassy hilltop as these drops of golden sun pass over and wash my cares away. It's great, it's grand, it's wonderful, it's love; and I truly feel that this love will last forever.

Have you ever read a mediocre blog entry, posted an award-winning comment, and recommended the blog simply so people might see your comment-writing skills? It's selfish, but hey, I've done it.

This is really long, and I'm sorry for all you "tl;dr" people, but I've been working on this for a long time, and I would appreciate some input. It's not really a blog entry, per se, but more of a journal entry (notice I said Journal, and not diary. There's a difference). So, if you could read it, and make some sense of it, and let me know what you think, I would really appreciate it. Thanks, ~Josh

    When I went in to apply for a job at Entegris after returning home from my first year of college, I was hired on the spot and given the choice to work twelve hour days or twelve hour nights. I gave it some thought, and decided to work nights for two reasons. The first reason was because the interviewer had said that the night shift gets $1.25 an hour more than the day shift. The second was because working through the night, and sleeping through the day would mean less time around my parents and a virtual continuation of the independence that I had come to love after living on campus at an out-of-state college. This is where I'm going to begin this story; the story of my life.

    Working nights was really great. Exactly what I'd hoped it would be, actually. I slept all day, while my family kept busy doing their thing, and worked all night while they slept. On my days off I kept my sleep schedule, sleeping all day and staying awake all night watching movies, or gaming, or going to bars or pool halls to make use of my new pool cue. It was absolute freedom. Independence without financial burden. I was living at home, with no bills, and a massive, full-time income. Living this "high-life" put me in a state of nostalgia, and I had never been happier. To top it all off, an old friend from high school called me up and wanted to get together with me. We'll call him Dave. He was living at home with his mom, didn't have a job, and was more than willing to hang out with me overnight on my days off. And so it was, the two of us were like a team; tearing up the night, finding anything and everything we could do, and doing it (at my expense, which was no big deal because I was loaded and had nothing better to spend my money on). We were together every single night for months, and the more time I spent with him, the more I began to realize that he wasn't my friend at all; he was a professional bum living off other people's money. After a year or so of wasting my time and money on this jerk, I finally realized what was really going on.

   One night, Dave was over at my house using my computer and refusing to get off it so I could take him home and get some sleep. It wasn't the first time he'd done this, and it bothered me greatly every time, but for some reason I was more pissed off about it this time than ever before. With each additional moment I spent on the couch, fighting sleep and waiting for him to finish whatever it was he was doing, I grew more and more enraged with his presence. After a good 30-45 minutes of boiling impatience, he was finally ready for me to take him home. I couldn't wait to be rid of him, and finally get some much needed sleep. We got in my car, and headed towards his place. It took everything I had not to tell him to find a bridge and jump off it, but I kept my mouth shut. That is, until we made it into the downtown area of my hometown. It was then when I pulled my car into a parking space on the street in front of the bar, and said "Let's have a couple beers before we turn in." Now, I'd gone from wanting to tell him never to contact me again to wanting to buy him a beer. I was really confused at this, but for some reason I felt that God wanted me in that bar right then and there. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why God would want me in a bar of all places.

    We went in, and the place was hopping. I didn't see anyone I knew, or had seen before, so I just sat down at an open barstool next to a guy who was obviously drunk (I love talking to drunks. If you ever get the chance, I'd recommend it. It more fun than you could possibly imagine) and said, "what's up." After having a beer or two, I noticed a girl sitting a few barstools down from us. She wasn't one of those girls every guy would walk up to and drool over, but something inside me said there was something special about her, and I was deeply intrigued. A thought crossed my mind that I never in my life would've dreamed I would ever even consider. I thought, "I'm gonna get that girl to take me home with her tonight." As soon as I thought this, I just about ran out of the bar screaming, begging God to smite me for even allowing such a thought into my head. But thanks to the drunken state I was in (Ephesians 5:18 says, "drunkenness leads to life ruining behavior"), and Satan's powerful temptation skills, that feeling lasted a whole fraction of a second before escaping me completely. I got up, and approached her, all the while giving her a look that said "I can love you like no other", and headed over to the juke box to play a few songs I that I knew were loaded with sexual innuendos. This is where my story begins.

    I woke up the next morning in the girl's bed. Although I couldn't remember her name, I did remember everything else. I remembered being pissed at my friend; I remembered that God had stopped my car in front of a bar; I remembered that God had turned my head towards a girl a few barstools over; I remembered Satan telling me to have sex with her, a trap which apparently I had fallen into. I didn't know what to feel. The guilt was crushing, but Satan again tempted me, saying that all this was "God's plan". I again chose to go with what Satan was saying, because if having premarital sex with a girl I'd only known a few hours was God's plan for my life, that would mean I hadn't sinned, and the guilt (which would've been far to heavy to bear) would go away completely. And besides, it was quite obvious God wanted me to meet this girl. Maybe he wanted me to have sex with her, too.

    To suggest coincidence in this next scenario would be absolutely ridiculous. Dave was asleep on the floor in the next bedroom. I kicked him, and whispered "let's go" as not to wake the girl. I walked back to the bar, got my car, and drove it around the block to the parking lot at the apartment where my friend was waiting. On my way there, I drove past a billboard that said "We need to talk. ~God." I felt the blood rush out of my face. My brain exploded into a million gerbils which then formed a line and river danced on my dashboard. The feeling passed as my new buddy Satan and I laughed it off as an ironic coincidence.

    Several times I sought out this girl, who's name is Rachel, in hopes of getting a little more of "God's plan." After a while, she told me about her myspace page and I told her about my Xanga page. Now we could keep in touch with each other on a more regular basis, and in doing so we both learned a great deal about each other. After a month or two, I asked Rachel to be my girlfriend. I had spent a great deal of time with her, and learned a lot about her, and I now understood why God had pointed her out to me. From what I knew about her at the time, she seemed to be everything I'd ever wanted.

    A year after this initial encounter, I moved out of my parents house and into my own apartment. I got a roommate to split the bills with, and it was all good. After about a month of living with my roommate, he had to move out. In the same week (virtually the same day) he moved out, Rachel lease was terminated without warning (or reason for that matter), and she ended up homeless. The kids were allowed to stay with another tenant in the building, a friend of Rachel's, and I offered Rachel my newly available spare bedroom until she could find a new place to live.

    We called every low-income apartment complex (Rachel is a single mother of three on welfare) and homeless shelter in Hennipen County only to find the apartments had 1-2 year waiting lists (she put her name on all of them), and all the shelters were full. We prayed for an option. After about a week, one of the apartments called us back with an open room. Rachel gave them all the information they requested, and we thanked God for answering our prayers. About an hour after she had hung up the phone, they called back and said they couldn't accept her application because of her bad credit. We were devastated, and had no idea what to do.

    Just when we thought things couldn't possibly get worse, the county sent her a letter that said that since she had "moved out" of the apartment they were paying rent for, they assumed she had found another source of income, and that her welfare case would be terminated. We immediately protested, and tried to explain everything to them (both over the phone and in person), only to find there was nothing we could do to stop this from happening. It's been five months now, and her case has been denied several times due to "a glitch in the system" and poor communication at the welfare office.

    What started out as a good deed has become several months of cohabitation, kids and all. I'm barely scraping by financially, even without having to pay for groceries or laundry, and our living together before marriage is described in the bible as adultery (although we're not living as a married couple, or doing married couple things before marriage, which is how the bible describes cohabitation, I still feel it's wrong). My parents have all but disowned me, and my friends have labeled me "bad company" (1 Corinthians 15:33) and no longer want to associate with me, but I firmly believe there are no other options. Is all this is the result of my "buddying up" with Satan, and completely ignoring God, or am I correct in thinking I'm trying to do good? I love Rachel, and her children, and I believe that throwing her family out on the street with nothing would be a more abominable sin against God, and crime against her, than our living together could ever be.

What do you think? Is it wrong of my friends and family to confuse my attempt to help out a friend with something they see as an "intolerable sin" or am I really engaging in something I shouldn't be?

    When Jennifer Lopez sings, "love don't cost a thing", do you tend to agree or disagree? Some say love is merely an emotion, and emotions are free. But are they? Sure, emotions in themselves are free; it doesn't cost anyone anything to feel something. Every emotion, however, comes maybe not with a "price tag" per se, but at a cost. To love someone, for example, you must spend time with them. Thomas Dewar, a Scottish whisky distiller (and as such, the perfect person to take relationship advice from), once said, "Love is an ocean of emotions entirely surrounded by expenses." Amy Carmichael, a 19th century missionary who opened an orphanage and founded a mission in Dohnavur, India, said, "You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving." Consider this. If you are the sole breadwinner in a relationship, and your lover has unmet primary needs and/or materialistic desires, you'll be expected to fulfill them. If you are ambitious, the time you spend with your lover might render you unable to effectively pursue your career goals, which will lose you money in the long run.

    Are you in a dating relationship? Is there not a financial burden there, however big or small? Even if both people in a dating relationship are working, and maybe paying their own way through it all, there is money involved. Say you take your girlfriend to the Renaissance Festival (just because you're that "white and nerdy"). Although it's not a first for either of you, you're both looking for some cool costumes. Fitting in at such an event is crucial, and besides, it'd be really fun for both of you to walk around in matching outfits. You find a leotard that fit's like a body glove, complete with "nut pouch" (I've seen this very outfit, and in my uproarious laughter I did pee a little) for $140. Now that you're out a decent amount of money, for good reason of course, you're off to find an equally ridiculous outfit for your woman.

    She walks into a shop, and, after trying everything on, finally decides on a dress. For one, it doesn't even remotely match your outfit's color. Secondly, it's $200, and of course she has to have the matching purse, hat with quill, belt, sword, shoes, tights, necklace, and earrings, bringing the total to $800. Because you love her, with a shaking hand you pass your credit card (or as your girlfriend views it, your "magical goodies creator") to the clerk, and go about the rest of your evening together. Now you've dropped $940, not including the three hours you spent at the hookah bar together, or those mead drinking competitions you held between the two of you, and what have you gained on top of material possessions? LOVE. If you had chosen to tell your girlfriend to buy these things herself, she might have said (in a situation that agrees with this post), "Why? Does thou not love me enough to share thou's wealth amongst this passionate crowd of two?" Had you said, "Screw that, buy it yourself!" she would've taken offense, and questioned your love for her. In this situation, can you see how, without expense, true love becomes questioned?

    Are you married? I'm not. But I do know that marriage and money go hand-in-hand. Recently my girlfriend and I have been looking at rings, dresses, typical registry items, wedding costs, and so on. I've found that even the most conservative engagement ring costs a few thousand dollars, and that a decent looking wedding dress can cost upwards of a thousand dollars as well. And in a marriage, the wedding is only the first expense of the extensive list that generally follows. Moving out of where your own homes costs money; moving into a new home costs money; unpacking and combining your things costs you lots of time and frustration; everything involved in having a baby costs money, and raising children is not only a huge headache, but also a massive financial responsibility. The list goes on.

    If you ask me, there's nothing more expensive than relationships. The love itself may be free, but any relationship costs money, whether it be dating, or marriage, or even platonic. But at any rate, the value is far greater than the cost.

What do you think? Is love really free?

Make LOTS of money over time.

I was speaking with a coworker about townhomes, and he mentioned an idea that sounds pretty darn brilliant. He'd mentioned that a friend of his owned several townhomes, and rented them out. I gave it some thought, and, after doing some serious math, came to the conclusion that buying townhomes and renting them is an excellent way to get started in the real estate business.

Step 1: Buy a townhouse for $100,000 on a 30 year, fixed rate mortgage (that's roughly $300/month).
Step 2: Put the townhome on the market as a rental property, and charge $1000/month rent.
Step 3: Bank $700/month
Step 4: After 10 years, sell the townhouse for $200,000.
Step 5: Enjoy the $184,000 you've just made (That's $18,400 a  year for basically doing nothing).

You see? Five easy steps to start becoming a millionaire. If you would like my "proven system" on tape, you're an idiot for believing those God-forsaken radio commercials.