David Ancell / Thursday, November 24, 2011 / Comments(0)
Today is Thanksgiving Day. It is Simon’s first Thanksgiving. He is currently asleep on my chest as I reach over him to type this on my iPhone using the WordPress app.
I have so much to be thankful for now. God has given me what I have desired for a long time. He has made me the father of a family. I may have started at a later age than most, but I have a beautiful wife and son. It has been especially nice to see the little guy smile and hear him coo lately.
Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers!
Category: News on My Life
David Ancell / Saturday, October 22, 2011 / Comments(0)
Today, my son Simon is seven weeks old. As I type, he’s sleeping in the Baby Bjorn carrier that I’m wearing. I’ve been wanting to post something to the blog about him for some time. Finally, I figured this was a good time to go for it.
It’s an interesting time for him to be seven weeks old. There were seven weeks between my first date and second date with my wife and another seven weeks after that before the third date. Four years ago today, right after our first date, I had the accident on I-65 which could have killed me. Someone crossed the median in front of me, and I couldn’t avoid him. Then, a tractor trailer ran over my trunk with his back tires. So, I needed recovery time and couldn’t easily travel for dates. Things got much better (and dates more frequent) after that.
Maybe I’m biased because I’m his dad, but I was struck from the beginning at how beautiful of a baby he is. Now, in the last week, he has become more interactive. We can hear him coo. We can shake a rattle in front of him and watch him follow it with his eyes. He smiles. I hear it won’t be too long before he can laugh. My challenge will be to try to make him laugh when he can.
So, God spared my life four years ago, and now he has given me a family. Yes, I have been blessed greatly. I just need to remember this, especially when it is 3 AM.
Category: News on My Life
David Ancell / Saturday, August 20, 2011 / Comments(0)
Wow, it has been a month and a half since I have blogged. I do have a podcast in process, but I’m not sure when I will get it finished. Time has just been hard to find.
About a month ago, Yana and I closed on a new house. We’ve had a lot of work to do to get through closing in less than 30 days from when we got our contract. This is the first house I’ve owned. We have been steadily moving, and we are very thankful for a lot of people who have helped us. Right now, the move is almost done.
As for the baby, well, we are expecting him any time. He’s going to be a pretty big guy right off the bat. Everything we have heard from the doctors has indicated that he is making great progress.
Oh, I did get my new iMac that I had been wanting. It’s one fast computer with a gorgeous screen. As soon as I got it, I installed Mac OS X Lion on it since it didn’t come preinstalled. The installation went without a problem, and Lion is a lot of fun to use. I think the gesture thing is a gimmick that won’t really be used for long, but there’s plenty more to the OS. Unlike a lot of reviewers, I like LaunchPad. If I can get around to it, I’ll write more on this later.
I’ll be sure to let everyone know when the little guy is born. After that, we’ll see how often I make it to this blog.
Category: News on My Life
David Ancell / Sunday, April 24, 2011 / Comments(0)
Alleluia! He is risen! I wish a most Blessed and Happy Easter to all of my family, friends, and anyone who is reading this.
As we were getting up this morning, my wife reminded me that this Easter marks twenty years since I became Catholic. I was baptized on the Easter Vigil in 1991 as a sophomore in high school. Somehow, this had slipped my mind. Good thing I have a wife! This is one blogging occasion that I don’t want to miss!
Truly, I am thankful that God has led me to the Catholic Church. It has become so much of who I am that I cannot imagine being anything else. Nothing compares to being able to be fed, sometimes daily, with none other than the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, whose resurrection we celebrate this day.
This doesn’t mean that it was always easy, nor have I always felt the way that I do now. When I was in college and pharmacy school in Mississippi, I was jealous of the Protestants. They seemed to be happy in their faith. At the time, I knew of few Catholics whose love for Jesus Christ was so visible. Campus ministry wasn’t too helpful either. I tried to accept what I was being taught, but something didn’t seem quite right. It probably didn’t help that I was also somewhat anti-intellectual at the time. Well, actually, that may have been the grace of God at the time as I might have fallen for who knows what.
However, something sustained me. To explain this, I need to go back to the time before I became Catholic. When I was about three or four, I have a vague memory of being in church and watching someone put something in my aunt’s mouth. I remember thinking “I want one of those.” This never left me, and I would later come to know just what it was that I wanted. It was nothing less than the Holy Eucharist, God himself, and I believed in it! While I was preparing to enter the Church, I longed to receive him. During the last few weeks before the Easter Vigil, I was really counting down the days, tired of watching people receive what I so badly wanted but could not yet receive. The thought that I would get to join the Church the night before Easter Sunday really appealed to me. It was one less day I had to wait to receive him.
It was that total self-gift that God has given us in the Eucharist that sustained me during years of kind of “wandering in the dessert.” I was always at Sunday Mass. No matter what others had to offer, I knew that only in the Catholic Church was I receiving Jesus himself in the Eucharist. Despite sensing that something wasn’t really right (though I couldn’t put my finger on it), I wasn’t leaving the Church.
Shortly after graduation from pharmacy school, I reached the stage where I learned that the things that didn’t seem right really weren’t right. In many cases, this wasn’t really the fault of those involved. However, now I was being fed with the authentic faith. I came back to my practice of praying before the Blessed Sacrament that I had kind of fallen away from. The result was a transformation that would still be a difficult road, but now I realized I had a purpose. The things I discovered about the faith shortly after graduating from pharmacy school started me a path of falling in love with the Church all over again. It became clear that there were many people who were near my age may never have had a chance to know what I had learned. I figured out what had been bugging me. I wanted to do something about it.
What would I do? This would take years to fully develop. The seeds were actually planted while I was in pharmacy school. There were web sites being put out by people defending the teachings of the Church. I had rarely seen people defend the teachings, and I must admit that I didn’t like them at first. Still, I had my own web page and did some of the same stuff. Later, when I was working and had money, I would buy some Catholic teachings on tape. God was telling me that I could do this on a local level. So, I began recording RCIA talks into my computer and making CDs (later MP3s). A couple of years later, I joined an RCIA where I was allowed to give some talks, which I also recorded. God was using my desire to teach, my media hobby, and my geekiness for his own purpose.
Things have continued to change. I am learning more about the faith, and especially about liturgy. Yana and I will have our first-born son this September. I am going to be working in my own domestic church. Don’t get me wrong; I never want to stop working however I can in evangelization and the use of new media. I don’t think God called me to it just to take it away completely, especially since I still have the desire. However, I do know that my ultimate responsibility will be for the souls of those whom God has entrusted directly to Yana and me. I thank God for all he has given me these past twenty years and pray for his continued help for me and my family.
Category: Catholic, News on My Life, Spirituality
David Ancell / Saturday, March 05, 2011 / Comments(0)
It has been so hard to hold our news inside me. Thankfully, the time to announce has come. Are you ready? Well, you probably already figured out from the title that our news is . . . (drum roll please) . . .
Yana and I are expecting our first baby in September!
This baby has already been to Disney, though in utero. We didn’t know we were expecting at the time. During our first weekend in January, we went grocery shopping. Yana noticed that she couldn’t stand the smell of the fish in the seafood department or the sight of the chicken in the meat department. Then, she noticed she was getting unusually tired. Well, these symptoms were a little suspicious based on what we know. The next morning, it was time for a little test. You can probably guess the results. Yana wanted to get to the doctor’s office the next morning, but it was closed due to a snowstorm. Two days later, she got in and confirmed what we already knew. Four days later, we saw a little one and a little heart beat on ultrasound.
Things have been going well, and we are excited! Of course, prayers are very much appreciated.
Category: News on My Life
David Ancell / Wednesday, February 23, 2011 / Comments(0)
Last weekend, Yana and I took a trip to Lexington, Kentucky to be at a party for a friend. It’s kind of ironic that I’d go there just after taking the test to become licensed there (which I passed, by the way), but I digress. After the party, we went to the mall. There I found what has to be the best Apple store that I’ve ever seen. I got to play with quite a lot of stuff there.
Since I’ve been on Verizon, I hadn’t really been interested in the iPhone 4. Now, with its availability, it may be an option some time in the future. The retina display really is a sight to see. The ones in the store have service on them, so I got to send my wife an e-mail from one of them just for fun. After that, I played with a MacBook Air. It is a lightning fast device since it has a solid-state drive. It will be a while before I’m in the market for a laptop, so we’ll see how it evolves.
The best thing, of course, is the 27-inch iMac. I will be getting one of those before too long (after Lion is released). The display is beautiful, and it’s lightning fast. I’ve been doing some high-definition video since getting married, and I want something that will allow me to preserve it in high-definition.
I was not impressed with the Magic Trackpad. Maybe it is because I’m just not a big fan of trackpads. It is too hard for me to have precise control. I tried it with Indesign on the demo unit, and it was a little difficult to place an object just where I wanted it.
The new Magic Mouse is something that I have played with off and on, and I have mixed feelings about it. I currently have the old version of the Magic Mouse. The new one does not have a scroll wheel that can get clogged up and quit working, but it also lacks the squeeze buttons that I use to call up Expose. The gesture concept isn’t the best for me because I tend not to memorize stuff, and I hope that Apple won’t get to a point that learning the gestures is necessary to use Mac OS.
It’s hard to believe that, just ten years ago, I would have called the Mac a “Macintrash” computer. Now, I find that it is faster, handles multitasking better, and is so much less of a headache to maintain. Let’s just hope that the absence of Steve Jobs doesn’t hurt their creativity. They need to keep it up.
Category: News on My Life, Technology
David Ancell / Thursday, February 17, 2011 / Comments(0)
My employer has asked me to get licensed to practice pharmacy in Kentucky. The reason has to do with the way we do business and the way pharmacy is regulated in some states. I’ll spare you the excruciating details.
Pharmacists have two different tests that they must pass to become licensed. There is an exam called the NAPLEX, which is the test of general drug knowledge. As far as I know, it’s used by every state in the United States. Pharmacists also have to take an exam on pharmacy law. Most, though not all, states use an exam called the Multistate Jurisprudence Exam (MPJE).
The NAPLEX isn’t much of an issue. Normally, one can get by with taking it just one time. After that, one can just use a license by exam as the basis for getting a license in an additional state. However, the MPJE is another story. Since laws vary by state, one normally has to take it again for every state in which one desires a license.
I have taken and passed the MPJE for three different states, and today I just took the one for Kentucky (still awaiting the results). How I have passed it in the past is usually a mystery to me because I could swear that I failed it when I walked out of it. It’s just a weird test, and sometimes I have a sneakin’ suspicion that they grade it by rolling dice at the NABP office. We’ll see how this one goes.
Category: News on My Life, Pharmacy
David Ancell / Sunday, October 31, 2010 / Comments(0)
Yana and I registered at the aforementioned parish this morning. After this morning’s Mass, I’m even more excited about being there. I don’t know if this is a regular thing or not, but they had a beautiful chanted Mass. Some of the chant was English, but the Gloria, Sanctus, Mysterium Fidei, and Agnus Dei were all chanted in Latin. This is a great example of what we would get if Vatican II were actually implemented as is stated in Sacrosanctum Concilium. By the way, did I mention that, after everyone receives the Eucharist at every Mass, the parish sings Salve Regina.
We had a chance to introduce ourselves to the pastor. He told us how important it was for him that we stick with tradition and to do what Jesus Christ wants instead of doing our own thing. We are grateful for this. We have firsthand knowledge of what happens when a parish does its own thing, and it is a very, very ugly picture.
Category: Catholic, News on My Life
David Ancell / Saturday, October 30, 2010 / Comment(1)
Yana and I haven’t signed the dotted line on this one yet, but we have chosen our parish. We are planning to register at Church of the Assumption in Nashville. It is a beautiful German church that actually looks like a church, including gorgeous high altars. We may actually get to see one used since they have the Extraordinary Form of the Mass once a month.
This parish is quite orthodox. I especially appreciate the availability of Confession before each Sunday Mass. There are usually a lot of people going to Confession, but you can still get in. The liturgy there is excellent. I only wish they had weekday Mass because they are just right down the road from where I work.
Category: Catholic, News on My Life
David Ancell / Saturday, October 30, 2010 / Comments(0)
I have never really liked my names that I have given this blog, so I have now chosen a new one that reflects the underlying thoughts behind many of my posts. Rather than put it in a blog post, I decided to make my explanation a permanent page which you can access by clicking About This Blog.
I will probably be changing the WordPress theme at some point as well. The theme is what provides the look and feel of a blog. I’m not a big fan of the theme I have. It’s good enough, but it doesn’t have quite the look I’m going for. Please feel free to send suggestions.
Category: Catholic, Doctrine, News on My Life