If you have not see the Strongbad “Trogdor” video, here it is. I know its weird, but since Homestar Runner and Strongbad tend to be internet icons, I’ll let you decide if the internet is weird before the video, or after the video. You see: my wife’s relative had her house burn down on Monday last week. Burninated. Most everything is gone or destroyed. It is pretty tough since that sort of event is so life altering. She’s still waiting on more information about insurance and hasn’t begun (to my knowledge) the process of discovering the costs of rebuilding.
As you can imagine, this post is a reminder to back up documents off-site, or to keep them in a safe-deposit box at a bank/secure location. I need to do this, too. Some of the documents that she had are gone forever, some can be had for a fee (reproduction and shipping and handling costs), and some are going to be sorely missed. Things like children’s first moments, photos, some computer data, and of course various valuables that are destroyed when flames hit them.
Consider her fire as a great lesson for us to learn from. Consider her blessing in not being home for the fire (and therefore unscathed). Make sure you have life-important things like wills covered in duplicate. Make sure you have considered a location to store offsite data (external hard drives or sites that offer low-cost data hosting for such cases are a good idea). Make sure that you tell your loved ones they’re loved – you never know what might strike, but you do know it won’t be Trogdor.
Note: This post is a tiny bit light hearted because the relative is actually doing pretty well emotionally. I’m actually feeling kind of sick, but such is life. Gotta travel tomorrow, so we’ll see how that goes.
Genesis Chapter 2 talks about God’s order. God’s system is in place and there is very little left to Adam other maintaining the garden (Gen. 2:15) and than naming the animals (Gen. 2:19). God knows that no suitable helper is available for Adam in the animals, but shows Adam this through the animal naming process. Adam can identify the male and female of the various animals, but there is a distinct hole where his helper is lacking. Genesis 2 ends with the fulfillment of that need as well as a look into man’s need for a completing partner (some of the best material I’ve heard on the subject can be listened to in MP3 format 
My wife and sister came up with the idea of the Pantry Survivor competition wherein they would attempt to go to the store once in an entire week (at the beginning of the ‘stunt’) and then combine that with whatever was already stashed in the pantry to create meals for the family for as long as possible. The super-challenge in all of this is that it is four adults and two children (plus one on the way – no, not us, my sister). As previously stated somewhere my sister and her husband are staying with us until they can move into a new condo they’re buying. So the food needs to feed the whole family and last as long as possible until they just have to go to the store. The competition stands to see what they can create, what they can make stretch, and what they can concoct out of substitutes as needed.
