Month: October 2003

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halloween

i officially feel pretty crudy now. therefore, i’m not going to type very much and i’ll put off describing the great and final battle for supremacy of the my front yard until later (needless to say our lawn is strewn with the dead and mangled bodies and yellow jackets and azela bushes and my body is marked with the battle scars of fighting stinging insects).

tonight was halloween and so i left the house for the first time tonight to take the kids trick or treating. adam went as strong bad (from www.homestarrunner.com) and noah went as a walmart emplyee. it was fun – always is. i have to say that i can’t stand older kids who go to the houses begging for candy without having a custome on. i’m okay with older kids trick or treating (i’m okay with teens and adults trick-or-treating also) as long as they take the time to put on a costume. it’s just plain lazy not to try some type of costume. if you came to our house with a costume we gave you a handful of candy, even if it was a lousy costume. no costume though and we gave you one tootsie roll. the interesting thing was people who came with others who were in costume. a handful for you and one tootise roll for you. it was fun to watch their faces.

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please pass the nyquil

not feeling very good. feeling very cold like. going to bed now so i want be putting in a long entry. tomorrow if i feel better i will detail the final defeat of the yellow jackets and the destruction of the bush that housed and offered them comfort. in the past i may have lost a few battles with these two foes of homeowners, but today i one the war. long live raid.long live shovels. viva la 5928 gettysburg drive.!

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can’t sleep

it’s 1:41 a.m. and i can’t go to sleep. therefore, it’s time to mention that we had squirrel number 2 appear in the student center tonight. the band (those who shall remain nameless) was practicing before the view started and in the middle of “did you feel the mountains tremble” a small gray missile shot across the room. of course, the music stopped and the chase began. there were about 5 of us trying to corner the beast and force it into a garbage bag (it’s a little known fact but squirrels are terrified of garbage bags – their natural enemies). we chased it for 5 minutes and wewere just about to catch it when it vanished. i don’t mean that it found a good hiding spot. it disappeared. ceased to be visible. entered a different dimension. it just was no longer there. it would appear that this squirrel had training from siegfried and roy (prepares it was a squirrel that actually attacked roy horn rather than a white tiger). we looked for the creature but couldn’t find him again. i was pretty sure that he would pop up during the “view”, but he didn’t. that would have been interesting and maybe even good because in my opinion tonight’s “view” was just kind of there – neither great nor terrible (while the past 6 week’s “view”s have been amazing). it certainly would have made the night memorable to have a squirrel appear in the middle of the “view”.

if this keeps up we’re going to make this little guy the student ministry mascot or turn him into squirrel stew.

anyway, good night guys and girls.

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lazy

sorry to have disappointed my two loyal fans (hey mom, hey dad) and not have written anything in the blog but i’ve been away on a church staff retreat until tonight and therefore i haven’t been able to type anything in the blog. i haven’t forgotten about the yellow jacket situation. it’s just that i haven’t taken care of the problem yet and i feel as though i shouldn’t write about that until i have solved the situation. it will be solved by thursday night because that bush and all it’s small flying friends are going down.

the retreat was very good. i can’t really write about any of the stuff discussed during it but it was still good. two things are worth mentioning. 1) bill pruitt found a tennis racket type electrical device that i believe to be a hand-held electic fly swatter. this proved to be quite enjoyable for me but not for any of the other people around me who for some reason kept getting zapped by the thing. 🙂 2) we went to a resturant monday night that listed on it’s menu a “buttload of wings”. i asked the waitress how big a “buttload of wings” was but she didn’t have a very definate answer. i guess it depends upon who’s butt it’s being measured by. i thought the whole thing was very funny. the waitress apparently didn’t. i think she spat in my food.

now, i will stop avoiding working on my chapel message and get back to work. good night all.

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the night the squirrel went bezerk

tonight i was attack by a ray stevens’ song.

well, at least that’s what it felt like. tonight i went up to the student center to set up the stuff that i normally set up on sunday mornings (i’m trying to streamline the mornings a little). being in a church by yourself at night is always a little freaky. i believe the reason for this is because church buildings are structures that are meant for life. their meant to be moving and full of hustle and bustle. when you enter a church building you expect conversations between friends to be going on, laughter and tears to be pouring forth, and songs and teaching to be occurring. even the silence that occurs in a church building is full of expectancy and fellowship. church buildings always feel weird when their empty, kind of like a party after every body has left. even though it feels weird i always enjoy being up at the church alone because it prepares me for the joy of when everyone else is up there. i enjoy it but i’m still a little tense because like i said the building doesn’t feel quite right empty.

while i was walking up to the balcony to get a spot light i was lost in thought about something. i turned the corner to enter the balcony and was immediately jumped at by a terrified gray squirrel. he was trying to get away from me but apparently got confused and thought the best way to avoid me was to jump at my face. of course, he was right because i fell to the floor quicker than i should have (which i am now paying for in pain). the squirrel flew right down the stairs and went somewhere i couldn’t see. it took me a moment to overcome my fright (and believe me, i was frightened) and then realized that it was up to me to get rid of this little acrobatic rodent. if i didn’t youth sunday school would be very interesting in the morning. i could just picture the squirrel running through the opening assembly. the girls shouting and the guys trying to catch the thing. it would be utter chaos.

so i went down stairs trying to chase the squirrel out the open window through which it had come. of course, the squirrel didn’t know that i was trying to free it. it thought i was trying to turn it into a meal. therefore, it ran in every direction except the one that i need it to. it wouldn’t go anywhere near the open window. i chased it and chased it. up the stairs, down the stairs, through chairs, around tables. i eventually was able to chase it up the stairs to the open window but i never actually was able to see it go ou the window. i assume that it did but who knows. tomorrow’s sunday school could be very interesting.

you’re not going to believe this second part and i’m too tired to tell it completely so i’ll mention it now and finish it tomorrow. i was attacked by yellow jackets again and i have the marks to prove it. i’ll tell the story of the ninja trained yellow jackets tomorrow. i’m not sure what i have done to the world’s yellow jacket population but it is apparent that every yellowe jacket on the earth has it in for me.

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what did i say

today i filled in for three out of four parkview high school bible teachers. i taught the classes as a group. it was fun but i learned something. i am not meant to be a school teacher. don’t get me wrong i love teaching. i get to do alot of it. i love to study for the lesson, prepared the lesson, and give the lesson. yet doing this within ministry is different. i don’t have to teach the same lesson 6 times in one day. i teach the same lesson twice at most. i might preach the same message three times but that’s very unlikely. today, subbing for the bible teachers i had to teach the same lesson six times. by the end of it i was boring myself on a subject that i like very much. i loved preparing this lesson and it was fun being with all the students but there is no way i could do that every day. if i had to teach the same lesson six times every day i’m afraid i would go absolutely crazy and start slobbering and such. after around the third time of doing the lesson i began to forget which points i had made in which classes and what stories i had told to illustrate what point. it all began to run together and get very confusing. i think i now understand better why my high school teachers shouted all the time…they were stark-raving mad from teaching the same lesson all day long. i’m really surprised more teachers aren’t on very large doses of prozac.

while driving back from the parkview football game tonight (which was boring because they were killing their opponent) i saw a guy cutting his front yard. it was 9:40 p.m. and his riding lawn mower only had one working head light. this seemed really odd to me. i’ll have to drive by the guy’s house tomorrow and see if the yard looks any good. if he was able to do a decent job of mowing his front yard in the pitch black night then i may just have to stop and tell him that i am impressed. i figure if you have to mow your lawn at 9:40 p.m. on a friday night then your life is probably too busy.

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ice capades

every year to say “thanks” parkview baptist church takes its ministers out to a swank restaurant. tonight was the scheduled date for this year’s culinary “thanks”. i always love this date. i love the fact that our church is this nice. i love eating with all the other ministers and their spouses / dates. i love the jokes that come out of it. i love the fact that it is the one time a year that i eat at a really nice restaurant. i am basically a man with pretty common tastes. if i have to choose a restaurant to eat at it’s going to most likely be “riverside patty.” i’m pretty much a “low brow” type of guy and therefore stick to resturants that are a step or two below the resturants that we go to for the “pastor appericiation meal”. with this said it�s still fun to do it once a year. tonight we went to the capitol restaurant in the bankone building.

the food was excellent, the service was great, the company was very enjoyable. the whole evening was fun. i was however perplexed by one item during the evening. i heard a rumor that the urinals within their bathrooms were different from the typical bathroom fixture. I went to investigate this and found out that it wasn�t that they were different in their make from a normal, everyday urinal, rather they were stocked differently. the capital restaurant took ordinary, plain-jane urinals and filled them with ice. now i know i probably sound like a big, backwoods, redneck saying this but i�ve never used the bathroom on ice before. this was an entirely new experience for me. i thought the whole concept was a little odd. kind of like writing your name in the snow, only inside.

if you do a search on askjeeves.com on why in the world people would put perfectly good ice into a urinal you find out that it reduces the ammonia smell of the pee. it�s done at nicer restaurants (apparently because the average urinal cake is less ritzy than ice). i had actually kind of already figured that much out before asking jeeves, but it was nice to have confirmation of the fact. so basically i can now determine the quality of the restaurant by checking out it�s bathroom. ice equals top quality dining establishment, while urinal cakes equal a restaurant of lower quality.

of course, this means that if you�re a guest at my house and you find ice instead of blue water in the john, then we are putting out the red carpet for you.

p.s. thanks again parkview for a wonderful evening. your pastors (including me) really appreciate ya’ll.

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the last drop

i ate the last bowl of pam’s homemade chicken noodle soup today (making a total of 8 bowls in three meals). pretty much the highlight of a day that basically stunk except for the soup. of course, that is the beauty of good soup…it’s good food for stinky days. tomorrow better be a good one because i am out of soup.

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once again but with teeth

i ate three more bowls of pam’s homemade chicken noodle soup tonight. that’s some good soup. it’s the best chicken noodle soup in the world and i’ll wrestle you to detah if you disagreee with me.

last sunday while “those who shall remain nameless” (the praise band for “the view”) was practicing a guy came by the church looking for a little financial help to fix a fan belt. i was able to help him and he came back today to say “thanks”. that was great but during the week he apparently had his two front teeth pulled and they were missing today. i don’t have anything against people without teeth, in fact i hope one day to have lived to the point that i no longer have teeth and have joined the ranks of the world’s toothless population. with this said, i need to state here that it’s very odd to see a guy with teeth one day and then no teeth the next time you see him. i found myself staring at the gap in the gentleman’s smile. i couldn’t help it and the more i tried to avoid looking at his smile the more my eyes were locked on it. it would have been okay if the guy had not of been so happy and thankful and smiling, but no he had to continue to smile and show his gap proudly. i focused on it so much that i began to lose my thought during the conversation. it was as though the gap had a hypnotic quality. then of course, my mouth starting getting into the action and began to slip out “fruedian” remarks.

“i’m glad we could help, we really like to sink our teeth into people’s problems.”
“yeah, i know. sometimes life gives us more than we can chew.”
“yep, at the end of the month my check book has a big gap in it also.”

i couldn’t take it anymore, i was just standing there staring intently into the guy’s mouth. i finally just reached the point where i had to stare at the ground. of course, that pretty much ended the conversation. too bad to cause the guy was pretty nice, and he had a great smile. 🙂

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i’ll wrestle you for it

my wife makes the best chicken noodle soup in the world. it’s true and i’ll wrestle you to death if you disagree with me. you might not think that chicken noodle soup is that big of a deal. of course, you would be wrong. homemade chicken noodle soup is better than the feeling you get after a sneeze that you struggled really hard with. it’s better than the feeling you get when you find the perfect parking spot that three other people just drove past. it’s better than a glass of ice cold water right after you finished cutting the lawn on a hot day. it’s that good, and pam’s is the best. i’ll wrestle you to death if you disagree. she made this soup tonight and i ate three bowls. it’ was really good.

i think that most of western society has neglected the joys of soup. there is simply nothing as good as homemade soup on a chili night. soup is the best of two worlds. it’s a warm drink to warm you up and a meal at the same time. i don’t really understand why everyone neglects soup. if they had a spoonful of pam’s chicken noodle soup those soup haters would change their minds. it’s the best soup in the world and if you disagree with me i’ll wrestle you to death.

btw, last night i had to drive two hours to percy quinn state park in mississippi for parkview church’s men’s retreat. i left baton rouge late because of the pbs homecoming and i didn’t get to the park until around 11. of course by then there weren’t any park rangers around. i tried calling everyone whose cell phone i knew to get them to tell me where in the park they were. no one answered so i drove around looking for cars that i knew. i didn’t see any. around 12:30 a.m. after driving around for 2 1/2 hours looking for them i decided that there was no way i was driving the 2 hours back to baton rouge and i could just find the in the morning. so i slept in my car. i haven’t done that in a while. it felt very transient. kind of cool. not sure why it felt so cool. that has to be something spiritual to it because it was just fun. of course, it would have been better with some of pam’s chicken noodle soup. it’s the best in the world and if you disagree with me i’ll wrestle you to death.

i found the guys this morning and the retreat was awesome.