Whoops, forgot to breathe.

Not a lot of time for a post today, as I'm having to prepare for my upcoming, insane weekend.

As I've explained before, my family is large and close-knit (family tree here), so any sort of celebratory occasion becomes a major event.  That's why there are upwards of 30 people attending my baby niece's (Cousin L) first birthday party tomorrow.

So, once I finish my work-week and my weekend starts, here is my schedule:

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We must focus on these important issues facing our country.

For those of you who aren't exposed to national news (but manage to get online to read blogs, for whatever reason), the White House has released the President's long-form birth certificate.  While the "birthers" (those who want to believe President Obama is not a natural-born American citizen) were originally perceived as a fringe group, a recent study reported that roughly 40% of Republicans shared this belief.  (I'm going to go out on a limb and bet that these are the same people who believe he's Muslim, or that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11, or that Iraq had WMDs.)

Donald Trump, a self-made gazillionaire (who, oh yeah, just also happened to inherit millions in prime real estate from his daddy), is now trying to call President Obama's scholastic credentials into question.  Trump, who I guess is bored between shooting crappy reality shows and buying implants for airheaded Miss America contestants, now wants to waste even more of the White House and the general public's time in trying to demand release of all of the President's college transcripts, from everywhere he attended.

So now that all but the most vocal crazies have accepted that, yes, President Obama is legally entitled to remain President, I have to wonder what will be the next conspiracy theory to take hold and distract away from all the actually important issues our country is facing.  Here's what I'm predicting the next generation of birthers to demand:

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Had I known how to save a life...

No post today because I've got this morning filled up with my scheduled blood donation to the Red Cross.  This is my 8th donation, making me a part of the prestigious "Gallon Donor" club.

Summer is a really hard time for the Red Cross.  There are more accidents and more people needed blood, but less people giving due to disruptions in their regular schedule, whether due to vacation, or time off school, or whatever.

If you want to help, please call 1-800-REDCROSS (1-800-733-2767) or visit the Red Cross blood donation website.

Once saved, always saved? I'm gonna go with the Bible on this one...

I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.  My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.  I and the Father are one. ~ John 10:28-30

I was raised in a church that very fervently believed you could lose your salvation if you "backslid", a term I have come to despise.  Basically, the concept was that, even if you had priorly asked Jesus for forgiveness and dedicated your life to him, if you sinned badly enough or for long enough, you could lose your salvation.  If you died within this time period, you would go to hell.

Now, for this church, "backslid" could mean everything from listening to secular music to hanging out with non-Christian kids.  (You were allowed to witness to them, but not to be friends with them.  Yeah, it doesn't make any more sense to me as an adult than it did to me then.)  Basically, if you weren't, as they often termed it, "100% on-fire sold-out for Jesus", you were worse than a sinner, you were a lukewarm Christian, and Jesus would spit you out of his mouth.

You could even sin through your emotions.  If you didn't wake up every morning filled with energy from the joy of the Holy Spirit, you must be in sin.  The same thing was true if you didn't witness to every single stranger you met in your day-to-day life.  You were expected to be on that "just-got-back-from-a-missions-trip" high, 24-7.  If you didn't feel it, the problem was you.  A popular saying was that, "If you feel far from God, it must be you; He didn't move."

So the pattern was, you go to a youth rally, you get pumped up, you leave, you have that emotional (I now no longer believe it was spiritual) high for a while, you lose it, you feel guilt over having "backslid", you go crying and crawling down to an altar call to rededicate your life, or you go on another (often expensive) trip or rally, get that high again, rinse, repeat.

In an insecure, obsessive-compulsive youth, this sort of thinking led me down paths of paranoia and depression.  I constantly confessed every little sin, every unhappy thought, the second it happened, terrified of falling dead and being condemned to hell.  This grew into a festering hate for myself, and hate for the hypocrites I was surrounded with in my youth group.

As an adult, I can now realize that the doctrine of "conditional salvation" has no biblical basis, and was a tool of manipulation wielded by a controlling church.  However, I still run into a lot of people who very strongly believe that a person can lose their salvation.  Here are some of the arguments I hear most frequently, and why I believe they are not scripturally sound.

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I make money online.

This blog started as a hobby, a mean of stress relief.  To this day, that remains its primary function.

However, I do make a little bit of money off of it.  I have also made money off other internet activities as well, all entirely legal and over-the-table.

Now, I'm not saying I make the crazy amounts you see boasted on sleazy sidebar ads, you know, the hundreds or thousands of dollars a day people claim to receive.  In a bad month, I pull in about an extra $20.  In a good month, it may be $100.

Also...it is work.  There's nothing easy and effortless about it.  It takes time, and it's not always enjoyable.  (Some of it is downright tedious.)  But, though it's low-paying and not always a ton of fun, it's something I can do in my spare time, from home.  And I've come to really appreciate having that little bit of extra income.

So, how does one do it?  How do you make money online?  Well, there are quite a few ways.  I'm going to break them down for you, and tell you what's worked for me.

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