Doug Boude (rhymes with 'loud')

My Top 20 Life Lessons for Boys and Young Men

2010-05-06T09:30:00-05:00

Life Lessons for Boys, Young Men, and Men

Things i've learned over the years that, if taken to heart by a young man, will save him immense amounts of grief. If you are a father or mentor to young men and/or boys, make it a point to help instill these things into them. By example is always best, but weaving such things into daily conversation and situations can have a positive affect as well. <

My Top 20 Life Lessons for Husbands and Fathers

2010-04-22T01:45:00-05:00

Following are the top 20 things that I have come to learn over the years that I feel, if implemented, taught, embraced, and adhered to, will be the keys to maintaining a happy and efficient home, as well as a posterity fully prepared to go forth and do likewise.
Feel free to add to this list in the comments! :)

(note: the followi

HOW TO MAKE THE PERFECT CUP OF COFFEE

2010-04-17T10:47:00-05:00

PROLOGUE

All the world's a coffee drinker. If you're not, it would behoove you to at least take the time to explore this little side of heaven in the manner I describe in the rest of this post. I know, you may have tried 'coffee' before and didn't like it; but I say to you that every cup of coffee is not created equal, and as with every meal you've ever eaten, the end product is

The Joys of Arachnids!

2009-11-09T08:36:47-05:00

For the past four years I've had the privilege of caring for and learning about several tarantulas and a scorpion. Today I donated them to a local Montessori school so that other people can benefit from them as much as me and my kiddos have. To help the teachers, I created a short document on the care of these guys and some of the fun facts that we have learned about them. It is no way intended to be comprehensive, but will definitely give you

Buying a New Home is Easy! Part 2 of 2

2009-09-07T23:18:00-05:00

Just before completing the process of moving into my wife and I's new home, I did a blog post covering what I consider to be a lot of good tips, info, and ideas. Now that we've been in the home for a full week, there are a few more things regarding this process I'd like to share as well.

If you haven't read the fi

Buying a New Home is EASY! Part 1 of 2

2009-08-24T22:50:00-05:00

(I shared more details prior to this post in a previous post)

Tomorrow morning at 9 am, my wife and I go to close on our new home. Just to make sure we come prepared, we called the builder today to find out what the specific amount of closing costs would be. To our surprise, I was told that the only t

Assurant Health (NYSE:AIZ) Denies Coverage Because Young Man is Autistic

2009-07-15T16:42:00-05:00

I have spent the majority of today shopping around for medical benefits for myself and my family. Only it wasn't very much like shopping; not at all. It was more like going through a divorce, or a death, or some other traumatic event that causes the rest of life to be put on hold while you do lots of typing, talking, researching, worrying, counseling, fretting, waiting anxiously, and spending money you didn't have to begin with.

Employers: Save Yourself And Your Employees Some Healthcare Cash!

2009-07-15T14:18:00-05:00

Health Benefits and the costs thereof. I won't even pretend to be anal enough to have managed to have wrapped my head around the unnecessarily over-complicated subject of health benefits, but I did just go through an experience regarding that topic that I feel is worthy of sharing.

The Scenario
I am the non-custodial parent of several children for which I provide support and me

Buying a New Home in San Antonio

2009-06-26T12:16:00-05:00

My wife and I have recently been involved in the search for and procurement of a new home. It started one Saturday this past April when we were driving down the hiway and on a whim decided to stop in at the Centex office in a newly developed subdivision, just to "check it out". By Sunday afternoon we had already selected the model and all of the upgrades for our new home, and were embarked upon the journey of havi

My Yoke is Easy and My Burden is Light

2009-01-15T08:03:15-05:00

For twelve years I dedicated myself to Christianity. Not the casual, “add it to your collection of good things you lay claim to” style of Christianity; I rather gave myself to it, immersed myself in it, surrounded myself with it, and spent every waking moment working hard in one fashion or another trying desperately to achieve my understanding of what it meant to “b

On Being Sorry...

2008-10-04T12:34:00-05:00
"Sorry", the word itself, is so very often misused and abused. 99% of the time, "sorry" is thrown out in the midst of a disagreement more as a mockery and gesture of pure loathing for the other person rather than the healing, fulfilling word that it was intended to be. Though no expert on the subject, living life and being observant along the way has resulted in some relevant insight, so I&n

DON'T GET SICK IN ARKANSAS!

2008-09-26T19:14:00-05:00

Let me begin this post by telling you the moral of the story you are about to read: DON'T GET SICK IN ARKANSAS.

That is not to target ALL Arkansans (because I haven't met every single one of them), but the ones I and others I know HAVE encountered have convinced me that the Arkansan stereotype came AFTER the Arkansan, not before. The following account is further substantiation of that stereotype. It

Promoting Family Unity: Lowering Your Utility Bills!

2008-05-07T15:20:00-05:00
Okay, I just have to boast a little bit about the great success my family and I had this past month with our energy conservation, evidence being our electric bill. Grand total for the month of April: $96.

For context's sake, here's the scenario:

We live in a two story, 2500 sq foot home that is half brick. It is situated east-west, so our back porch area sees the sun all day long (thus making the southe

Making Your Home a Pleasant Place to Be: Project Birdbath

2008-02-26T13:11:00-05:00
My lovely lady and I love to nest. That is, we are always looking for ways to make our home our favorite place to be. Lately, (since we south Texans are privileged to an early onset of GORGEOUS weather), our attention has been on the backyard. We have several projects in the works, all of them on a shoestring budget, so I thought I'd share one with you all in the hope that it will inspire you, too; a little bit of effort goes a lon

Diary of a 'Work From Home' Man - Part I

2008-02-01T20:45:42-05:00
Okay, it's been exactly 14 business days since I became a free agent, and by my estimation, I have officially been working ten times harder than I ever did at a "real" job...at least it feels like that. For some reason I had it in my head that I would have eight hours a day now to purely dedicate to coding; my bubble has been burst, however, as I find that, unless I'm willing to put in extra hours in the evening as well (

Movie Review; Dan In Real Life

2008-01-23T14:56:00-05:00

It was a blustery day in the Hundred Acre Woods…no, wait. It was actually a gray, cold, rainy, overcast Sunday afternoon in San Antonio. Well, cold for us south Texans, anyway. I had five of my children with me and we were looking for an economical way to entertain ourselves, so we settled on one of our “old reliables&rdqu

The Dark Side of Good Intentions

2008-01-04T11:16:50-05:00

As I traversed the route I always do from my Jeep to the entrance of the office building where I work, I glanced at the now empty nest that lay in the ivy bed under the oak tree. Pin feathers and empty, broken egg shells decorated the area as scavengers had left it somewhat disheveled in their search for any of the ducklings which may not have hatched. The raccoons found nothing in the nest, howeve

Promoting Family Unity - The Power of Forgiveness

2007-09-22T07:36:00-05:00
The other day a very close friend of mine IM’d me, quite distraught and looking for input on a situation he had at home between he and his two young daughters. The situation was that his wife’s father was terminally ill and so she was out of town, spending as much time with her father and family until he passed away. So my friend, we’ll call him John, was left to tend to all of his usual burdens as provider and da

To Every Man A Penny

2007-09-05T00:06:00-05:00

“There’s one more waffle if anybody wants it!”, called mom from the kitchen. All around the dining room table the kids and dad sat looking quite full, with only syrup and crumbs on their plates. “I think everybody’s full, Sweety”, dad called back, the children’s nodding heads confirming his observation. Mom appea

Promoting Family Unity: A Weekend at the Beach!

2007-08-20T23:20:00-05:00
The plan materialized late one night over sweating glasses of White Merlot when Jen and I did the budget and weighed out our options.Camping was up there on the list, and fared well with regards to the budget; but even at night up in the south Texas hill country, it's STILL too hot to sleep comfortably outdoors, so we opted to postpone camping until late fall. Neither she nor her children had ever been to Mustang Islan

The Boude Bunch: When Two Families Become One

2007-08-20T23:09:00-05:00
Promoting family unity is an ongoing process, one that can be extremely complex, fragile, and always requiring constant vigilance and purpose. The process can be even more challenging when the family you're unifying was once two separate ones. Enter if you will into the realm of "The Steps": Step children, step parents.Not only are there the normal human social hurdles to overcome when blending lives in this

Have You Heard the One About...

2007-08-14T11:33:00-05:00
It was a moonless, black, rainy night in the heart of the Texas Hill country as I hugged the hairpin curves of the two-lane blacktop, earnestly striving to make it to my appointment on time. Fall had descended a month ago and the black silhouettes of the dormant mesquite trees were the only thing outside of my truck's narrow high beams that I could discern. That is, until I rounded yet another sharp left bend in the road and saw, t

The Battle of the Bulge

2007-08-10T12:59:39-05:00
I'm an observer. Not only do I look at what's in front of me while I drive down life's highway, I take note of the ever changing landscape on either side of me. One of those landscapes that seems to be "evolving" is my body. I can think back to my senior year in high school when I was a wrestler, weighing in at 129 pounds of pure muscle and sinew. My waist was 30 inches, and my height...well, it was exactly the same as it

Promoting Family Unity

2007-07-10T17:34:00-05:00

We just moved into a new house. Fairly large, 2,500 square foot, two story house nestled (very tightly!) in a new subdivision in north San Antonio. The back porch is extra large and shaded by its own roof from the cruelly hot south Texas sun. This provides an absolutely lovely place to set up the hammock and

The Key to True Conflict Resolution

2007-07-01T06:23:00-05:00
A design pattern is a recurring concept, arrangement of things, and/or repeated process. Life is composed entirely of such patterns. From the patterns found in the genetic blueprints of even the simplest form of life to the consistent and measurable rising and setting of the sun: life is a beautiful matrix of overlaid and interacting patterns. Ah, but more than simply random patterns, these are patterns in the very des

American Sign Language as a Second Language

2007-06-23T10:03:56-05:00
On every Tuesday and Thursday evening in the month of June, I have been taking a sign language class. Of course the first question that tends to come to mind is "why?", so let me address that first. If you've ever read Kipling's 'The Elephant's Child', then you've caught a glimpse into the mind that drives one who is plagued with "insatiable curiosity"; they do odd things, like travel to the

My Grandpa

2007-05-31T01:29:00-05:00

My mind swam as I drove the thirty minutes to the hospital, my thoughts wandering back and forth between the cares of my day and my love and concern for my grandpa. I had just walked in from a pleasant lunch with one of my fellow Masons when the front desk lady flagged me down and handed me a scribbled note that read “grandpa – hospital – emergency – call mom”. Sometim

Fishtank

2006-09-01T01:34:00-05:00

One day a man caught two little fishes while hunting for crawdads in a small Texas stream with his two children. “Come see what I caught!” he called to Lilly and Brandon. They both looked up from their own crawdad hunt, and wading out of the creek and onto its rocky bank, ran to where t

Family Constitution

2006-07-10T13:47:47-05:00

Happiness of the family as a whole generally comes from strength in two main areas: Order and Stability. Each of these areas can be broken down into a few sub areas, all of them as important as the other, and all lending to the success of the whole and achievement of a truly happy family. Order comes by addressing self-discipline, having good and fair rules in place, and having consistency in en

New Member of the Family!

2006-06-03T00:00:00-05:00
We went yesterday to see the potential new member of the family. There were lots of others there, but she was the one that caught our eye. We spent about an hour getting to know her, talking to the administrators, and just taking it all in, trying to imagine what it would be like to have her as a member of our family. I mean, we already had one, so how much would our lives change if we added one more? And besides that, she is black, so how