Month: December 2004

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justice in housing?

jordan cooper recently quoted the following from an ap story. here’s the quote:

    in only four of the nation’s 3,066 counties can someone working full-time and earning federal minimum wage afford to pay rent and utilities on a one-bedroom apartment, an advocacy group on low-income housing reported Monday.

    a two-bedroom rental is even more of a burden – the typical worker must earn at least $15.37 an hour to pay rent and utilities, the national low Income housing coalition said in its annual “out of reach” report. that’s nearly three times the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour.

you can read the rest of the article here.

this is absolutely amazing to me. it kind of destroys the concept of a “livable wage”. how can a wage be considered livable when you can’t even afford a one bedroom apartment on that wage? i’m not trying to support the concept of “entitlement”, or trying to argue that the government should “ordain” that everyone get a certain amount of income. it just seems that a worker should be able to at least afford housing (without any luxuries) on the minimum wage.

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fine dining

goldencorrallast week, the 13th to be exact, was noah’s, my youngest, birthday. tradition at the terrell household is that the evening of your birthday you get to pick what the family eats – be it going out to eat at your favorite restaurant or having the family cook your favorite meal at home. noah is definitely a child who loves to eat out so pam and i knew that we would be eating out the night of his birthday. in fact, noah had been talking about his birthday for weeks before hand. noah had decided that the family would go to “las palmas” – the best mexican restaurant in baton rouge (which isn’t saying much because baton rouge is not known for mexican food). this was cool because pam and i both like “las palmas” and adam, my oldest, somewhat likes the restaurant also. this seemed be a “win / win” situation and i was excited about that.

of course, noah decided to change his mind the actual day of his borthday. that afternoon after i picked him up from school he announced his decision to change the plan. it went like this. “dad,” he said, “do you know where we are going out to eat tonight?”

“yep,” i said, “we’re going to ‘las palmas'”

“nope”

“what? you said ‘las palmas’ this morning.”

“i changed my mind. now i want to go to my favorite restaurant in the whole world.”

it was at this point that i braced myself. first, i really thought that las palmas was his favorite restaurant in the whole world (excluding rasin canes or mcdonald’s), and second, this was his birthday and our tradition said that he got to pick the spot. what would happen if he picked “ruth’s chris steak house” or some other extremely expensive place to eat? so i prepared myself for the worst and asked “what’s your favorite restaurant?”

noah said “the same place i went for my birthday last year and the place i want to go every year!”

last year for some very random reason noah picked to eat his birthday meal at “the golden corral“. we had only eaten there once before during his six previous years of life. we did not eat there again duriong last year because his borthday meal wasn’t the best experience. i’m not usually a food snob. i like very simple foods and simple resturants. yet our previous experience at “the golden corral” had been such that i could not believe that noah would want to go back there. so i asked him why it was his favorite restaurant.

“because i can get pizza, nachos, and tacos at the same time.”

his answer made sense so we went to “the golden corral” and i have to admit that it wasn’t that bad.

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jonnybaker: open source conferencing…

jonnybaker: open source conferencing…

i’m mainly blogging about this article because i want to remember it and i don’t desire to keep it as “new” on my bloglines feeds. it’s an interesting concept for doing “church” or maybe more “sunday school”. you set up different rooms for that are then filled with “themes” that have been suggested by individuals within the group. the only person who has to stay in these rooms are the ones who proposed the “theme” for that room. everyone else is free to roam from room to room. this way they will “cross pollinate” the conversations from each room. at the end of the day all the groups give outline of what was discussed in each room.

i want to remember this because i would like to do it someday. pasting it here on the blog is easier than filing the thing away somewhere only to be forgotten.

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fred the explorer & the weekend

pam, the boys, and i just got back from the mobile, alabama for the weekend. we were there to throw a surprise party for pam’s dad. the surprise was that his birthday isn’t until december 28th and pam’s birthday was actually the 18th, the day the party was thrown. what better way to surprise someone with a surprise party than to hold it on someone else’s birthday. it was a good party and he was definitely surprised.

fred, the explorer, had a “check engine” light on its dashboard come on this afternoon. well, there is 180 miles between mobile and baton rouge and i really didn’t feel like breaking down in-between the two cities so my dad and i took it to autozone to have them pull out their “code checking thingy”. this little device hooks up to an electronic port in the truck and is supposed to tell me why the “check engine” light is on. it took awhile but we finally got the guy to bring the “code checking thingy” to my explorer and plug it in. the “thingy” told us that my truck was suffering from a code “p0455” – which was an “emissions evacuation system leak – gross leak”. this sounded pretty bad to me. still the guy at autozone didn’t know what it meant and nether did my dad or i so we went home to search the internet – the source of all automotive knowledge. after a quick search of the net i found out that my truck was probably suffering from the most deadly of all vehicle problems – a loose gas tank cap.

we tightened the gas cap and the “check engine” light hasn’t come on since then.

i feel better knowing that my truck takes such good care of me.

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CHRISTmas and family

i’m presently at my parents for the next several hours ending a weekend that has been spent with the two families. i’ll post more about it when i get back home. all and all it has been a good weekend.

side note – i’ve recently fallen in love with photoblogs. it’s cool to check the pictures of people i do know and even cooler to check the pictures of people i don’t know. i’m not sure why it fascinates me to look into the lives of total strangers.

one of the photoblogs that i really like right now is top left pixel.

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in need of prozac?

i haven’t posted in a few days because i have had a mini-depression in regards to ministry.

every now and then i go through periods of depression in regards to the work of CHRIST. during these times i sometimes feel like i’m not doing anything worth squat or i’m not making a difference at all or it just feels like nothing i do goes the way it is supposed to. i can’t always tell you why these times happen and there never seems to be much that is predictable about them. sometimes they are related to a specific event that has happened or did not happen but sometimes they are related to events at all. sometimes they last for three to four months, while other times that are over very quickly. sometimes they are times that i can later look back on and see significant progress and growth that took place during them, both in my own life and within the ministry. other times it is just a bland time that i was going through. they never really seem to make sense.

for the past week i’ve gone through a brief one. i say “brief” because for one it was only a week and second i believe it is actually ending. i don’t know why it happened but i do know that i didn’t enjoy being around myself and therefore i am fairly sure that no one else enjoyed being around me either. i sure do hope it is over.

i don’t like these times but because of past experience i am always able to tell myself that “it will pass” and i will enjoy ministry again.

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how stupid are we

mood cross jewlrey

how stupid can we CHRISTians get? have we really been reduced to making “mood” cross pendants? the sad thing is that some of us will spend money on buying these things and will like we are honoring GOD by doing so. good, GOD fearing parents will buy these things for their kids and by doing so think that they are helping their kids to stay close to GOD.

    I hate, I despise your feasts! I can’t stand the stench of your solemn assemblies. even if you offer ME your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept [them]; I will have no regard for your fellowship offerings of fattened cattle. take away from ME the noise of your songs!I will not listen to the music of your harps. but let justice flow like water,

    and righteousness, like an unfailing stream.

why couldn’t we spend our time on justice rather than inventing “mood” cross pendants?

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vengence is miine saith the santa

i just ran across this article concerning santas brawling after the annual santa run in newton, england. every year in newton around 4,000 sanntas run through the streets to raise money for charity. at the end of this year’s race 30 santas started fighting in the street. it became so bad that officers had to use cs spray and batons to beat the disturbance into peace. even though i wasn’t there to see this whole thing the mental picture just makes me laugh.

i wonder if they’re on the “naughty list” now?

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all i want for CHRISTmas is ….

santa visited noah’s class today and did what santa does best – he asked the boys and girls what they would like him to bring them for CHRISTmas. my seven year old son could only think of one thing to say when asked this question. what did he ask for? what was the only thing on his mind? when noah opened his mouth the words that came out were, “i want a really cool keychain for CHRISTmas.”

why does a seven year old need a “really cool keychain”? even if he really needed a keychain what would make this item rate so high that it would be the only thing that he would mention?

i don’t have the slightest idea.