It was good day...

Man, the weather was great today.

Tonight, when I got to church the power was off in the building so we had our youth group meeting in the back of my pick-up truck. I cracked the driver-side door so that the bed light would stay on. We started out with some "Would Youth Rather..." questions. Then, we played a ridiculous game about buying a duck. We concluded with a devotional and a time of prayer. Youth group in the back of an F-150 was actually pretty cool.

When I got home and Alias came on it was a terrific episode where Sydney is burried alive in Havanna and the APO team is under lockdown because of a biohazard release in their offices. So who has to come to Sydney's rescue? Marshall! Marshall is the best. He had to dig out a bad guy's eye with a spork to get past retina scan based encryption on the bad guy's computer network. That's right, he saved Sydney Bristow's life with a homemade cellphone scanner, THEN he saved Hong Kong from a massive bio-terror attack with a spork. It was a whole show with Marshall as the lead character and it rocked!

Tomorrow night Survivor is on. It doesn't get much better than that.

The Great Lawn Mystery

So on Saturday I mowed my yard. Then, I wet it and fertilized it with some of that expensive Scott's Turf Builder. Then the light, misty rain started and soaked in my fertilizer all day Sunday, but not hard enough to wash it away. Perfect.

But today I get a call from Carmen. Someone has driven on our yard. When I got home I saw what looked someone had done a three point turn in my driveway putting ruts on either side. I had to walk the dog so I got the digicam and snapped a few pics. Then, I walked the whole neighborhood looking for more evidence. By the tracks, I knew I was looking for a big dualie truck. I found where a similar truck had torn up the side of the street two houses down. I also photographed this for evidence. The damage in my yard was by far the worse.

I returned to my yard to re-examine the tracks. The vehicle could have easily pulled into my driveway then backed out onto the street if it needed to turn around. Why did it turn around in my yard? Three possibilities emerged. 1) It could have been a vandal who just was out to destroy property with his big dual wheel pick up truck, or 2) It could have been that a crazed fan of a certain adult entertainer was staking out my front yard (see previous post), or 3) It was a commercial vehical of some sort that needed to back up to something in my yard.

Eureka!

It must have a been a line crew checking for damage from last night's storm or today's high winds. The tracks back up to the telephone pole in my front yard. The proximity of the other sets of tracks to a pole confirm this theory. The culprit is either The power company, the telephone company, or the cable company. They will all get e-mail from me tonight. I appreciate the work they do to provide reliable service to my home. But I also pay for that service so the least they could do is clean up after themselves with a little grass seed and straw.

The Stripper Next Door

So tonight when I got home I discovered that I had email from a gentleman named "Moon" who had met "Angel" at a club in Georgia a few weeks ago.

Needless to say, we weren't in Georgia then and if we were I don't think they would let an eight year old girl into this particular type of club. I did a little searching on the internet and discovered that just a TLD away from my daughter's web site is one of another "Angel." This other Angel is a "model," if you know what I mean.

Now, I wouldn't try to judge Moon and his buddies but there are lots of guys in and out of this particular club (whose signs are all over the interstate). One of those other guys might be the type to go looking for his "Angel" at the wrong house. So now I've got to be extra extra careful about what kind of information I put on the web. And then there's another problem. Just as easily as Moon typed in the wrong domain to get to my daughter's site, some of our friends and family could accidentally land on the other Angel's web site by a similar mistake.

I should have bought that other domain two years ago when it was available but it just seemed a little paranoid. Now I'm really paranoid.

Survivor Wednesday

Looks like the youth group will be getting out early again this week!

That's right, Survivor is on Wednesday night again to make room for College Basketball. I had to make a post about Survivor because I wanted to show you guys this picture I found of the Star Wars Kid whoopin' up on Redneck James.



Fantasy Leaguers get your picks in. This week I'll be movin' on up like the Jefferson's!

Still not a preacher

So I had to speak tonight at Church...

I took Chris' advice and made sure the Church got out on time. OK, they got out a half an hour early. My 5 pages of notes condensed down to maybe twenty minutes of actual talk time. That's probably because it felt like I was speaking about a mile a minute.

Oh well, I gave it the best I had. I can't make it work on my own anyway. The Holy Spirit has to take over and make something of it. If God was able to speak to someone's spiritual need in my twenty minutes of spluttering then all the praise belongs to Him.

I did learn this though, Next time I'll put my notes in a binder so they don't get out of order. Doh!

Preach it Preacha!

I'm not a preacher nor do I play one on Sunday mornings. And yet, here I am trying to put together a "sermon" for tomorrow night's service.

No, I have not put this off to the last minute. That would be about 11:00 tonight. Besides, I have notes in my Pocket PC that I've been jotting down for the last two weeks. I just need to assemble them into something coherent. The thing is, I'm not very much into teaching adults. No offense to any adults reading this but you guys intimidate the heck out of me.

I am very much into letting God stretch me. With the Lord's help I'll get through this without committing any major heresy. Maybe I'll come out of this a little bit better of a minister. Truth is I've done this twice before. But this is the first time at Miami and the other two times were nerve-racking too. So ya'll pray.

It's going to be about spiritual growth, specifically what is keeping us from growing spiritually. And like any good sermon it's got three points:

Complacency - Being satisfied where you're at
Secret Sin - Hiding from God
Ignorance - Lack of discipleship

Mobile Bytes

It's my new Pocket PC Blog! I figured since I spend way too much time looking at Pocket PC sites and trying out software I might as well do something productive with the information.

It's a no-nonsense software review site. It's updated everytime I find something cool. Of particular interest are programs that are cool and FREE. Check it out.

Mobile Bytes

Short-Lived Coolness

Chris showed me a clock that he had stashed away in his office. It was a mirror with the Last Supper painted on it and it had a light and a rainbow colored spinning disk inside so that the whole scene radiated with rainbow power. It also had some ocean waves behind the clock face.

It was awesome! I hung it in the Youth room Sunday morning.

I was briefly "cool" for a period of time in about the seventh grade. But this clock's moment of glory was even more short lived than my own. Tonight, I went up to youth room and discovered that its disk has stopped spinning. Oh it's still fun to have around but it's "coolness" is greatly diminished... much like me in High School.

I don't know what you would call this kind of flea market knick knack so I can't even find one on eBay. I guess I'll try to find a painting of Jesus on black velvet. That's the only thing I can think of that would be a worthy replacement

Friday Fantasy League Update

Yes, I'm still number 6 out of 7 players on my Survivor Fantasy League Private Tribe. Two newbies to the league currently occupy the top two spots. Debbie and Chris are numbers 1 and 2 followed by Fantasy League veteran Carol Ann. Darryl continues his precipitous fall down to number 4 this week followed by my daughter Angel who is also dropping like a rock down from number 2 the first week.

The only person with fewer points than me is Lindsey. In fact she's more than 200 points back. I would think that she wasn't even playing but all her team members are still in the game so it could be case of the worst Fantasy League luck ever.

Here's the important thing to note. Even though I'm in the next to last spot I closed the gap between myself and the number one position by 8 points this week. The full court press is on!

Upward Dads

So the Upward Basketball season is over now and Angel's award ceremony for Upward Cheerleading was tonight. She's been driving me crazy with this cheer for the last month.

"We are the Upward Girls.
We wear our hair in curls.
We wear our skirts above our knees.

We don't care for toys.
We love our Upward boys.
And that spells victory."

After hearing that for about the thousandth time I created the Dad's response.

"I am an Upward Dad.
Your cheers, they drive me mad.
I'll be glad when it's through.

No, cheering's not a sport.
And yes, your skirt's too short.
But I still love you."

If you really want to embarass your daughter follow it with one of those toe touch kicks.

The Parable of the Builders

I picked up a new book on Youth Ministry yesterday at the Bible Outlet in Concord Mills (no relation).

Right there on the first page it's talking about the parable of the bulders found in Matthew 7:24-26. The writer says:

"Jesus didn't tell the parable of the wise and foolish builders to condemn the sand."

Wow. That seems to be stating the obvious but in terms of youth ministry how many youth leaders model their ministry after popular culture? If youth group is all a rock-n-roll show (or if you rather, sipping coffee to a background of acoustic guitar) then it's not the culture's fault when those ministries fail. The sand is just sand. The condemnation is on the minister for building there.

Butt Whuppin'

I'm getting tore up in the Survivor Fantasy League this year. After the second week of scoring I'm now 84 points back from the leader on my private tribe. I'm also 158 points away from any position in the top 100 overall leaderboard. I keep telling myself "this is a marathon and not a sprint." I'm visualizing my team on the overall leaderboard.

So, I'm number 6 out 7 players on my private tribe. Here's the new strategy.

1) No more trivia answers. I gave 120 points in the form of trivia question answers to three of the people now kicking my tail on my private tribe. You people are CUT OFF!

2) I'm beginning my analysis of the next week's episode beginning on FRIDAY. So far I've waited until about an hour before the show to make my picks and in my hurry to look at the available video previews and read online speculation I've made two huge mistakes that cost me dearly.

3) The secret weapon is in effect. It's an upgrade from a tool I used in previous seasons. It's developed by me for me and it only gets more accurate as the season goes on.

I do take heart in the fact that Debbie is number one on my private tribe. Last week she was dead last. Things can change fast in this game... and they will... oh yes... they will!

Atheism on the Decline

The World Tribune headline reads "God is not so dead." Take that Nietzsche!

"Two developments are plaguing atheism these days. One is that it appears to be losing its scientific underpinnings. The other is the historical experience of hundreds of millions of people worldwide that atheists are in no position to claim the moral high ground."

Source: World Tribune

The article is an interesting read. On the surface the news may sound encouraging but I believe that humanism is taking ground inside the Christian church. I'm not even referring to specific hot issues like homosexuality. In a more general trend, A lot of Christians either don't understand the difference between a Christ-centered worldview and self-centered one or they just don't care to live out a Christ-centered one. So the humanism that is still prevalant in our culture gets influence inside the Church through "worldy" Christians.

Is it good news that more people claim to believe in God if fewer of them seem to have really been changed by their relationship with Him?

Garage Jumping = Extreme Running?

An Orlando Florida news station is running a story on a new teen "trend" called garage jumping.

Garage jumping seems to be inspired by Parkour AKA Free-Running. It looks really cool when this guy does it. It's truly something for the adrenaline junkies of the world. It's kind of like skateboarding if you take away the board and add a death wish.

It's not for untrained teenage posers though. One of the kids in the Orlando story found out the hard way when he tried to hop across an 80 foot high gap between parking garages... and missed.

Source: Local6.com

More Information: Wikipedia