I mispell things!
i have not listened to the news or read anything online all day. it was not until a few minutes ago that i learned about all the virginia tech shooting. this is one of those moments that makes no sense. all i can do is pray for those in the area and hope that the bride of CHRIST in blacksburg, virginia shines in it’s answer to the situation.
[tags]stupid, shooting, virginia tech[/tags]
i desparstely wish that google calendar would add a task list to it’s features. it’s the web based calendar that i enjoy the most and it would be tons better if it only had a task list (sung to the tune of “if i only had a brain”)
today in sunday school we were talking about john 13:1-17 where JESUS washes HIS disciples feet. during the conversation i asked the guys in the group what were the most humiliating jobs in our present time. without hesitation one of the guys to my left shouted out “youth minister.”
it’s moments like this that make me feel good about all the money spent on my education. 4 years on my b.s. and 3 on my m.div. oh yes that was money well spent.
[tags]youth ministry, humiliation[/tags]
pam and my love for homemade salsa has taken a new turn. yesterday i decided to plant a container salsa garden on our back porch. i don’t really have all the ingredients planted (i skipped the garlic and the onion) but i have the main ones (roma tomatoes, serrano peppers, and cilantro). the main problem is that my back porch is shady and the plants need full sun light for much of the day. i’m going to spend the next week moving them around trying to find the best light. in about 70 days i should be able to make salsa from scratch just by walking onto my back porch. my grandparents would have been proud.
as a kid i remember my grandfather being so proud because he was growing a tomato-potato in his backyard garden. it grew tomatoes above ground and potatoes below ground. he got a huge kick out of it and loved telling people about it. i just thought it was strange.
just in case you are curious my salsa recipe is located here
here’s are a couple of free links just for the fun of it.
[tags]salsa garden, salsa, tomato-potato, bank robbery, cia agents[/tags]
pam and i just finished watching “blood diamond.” while the movie isn’t a true story, many of the details that the movie is based on are true. we live in a great big stupid world.
SIDE NOTE – because of my calf tear it’s been two weeks since i have last run. i really miss running.
[tags]blood diamond, movie, film[/tags]
pam and i have some great neightbors – or at least the ones we know are great because we have one neighbor that may be a vampire, but that’s a story for another time. next door ms. helen is a wonderful. she always has a kind word and is fun to talk with. across the street will and andre have always been people that we enjoy having over to our house and being at theirs.
that is until today.
this morning they began painting their house. i would be okay with them painting their house if it didn’t mean that we will now have to paint our house. miss helen painted hers two years ago and while salmon pink is not my favorite color it definitely looks freshly painted. the vampire lives on the other side of our house and since he is most probably undead his house is supposed to look the way it does (it’s a way of warning people that a vampire lives there – kind of like the bright colors on those poison arrow frogs). this left will and andre’s house to match our house. neither one of our houses are in bad shape but they are both showing the slight frays that say “i’m going to need a paint job soon.” i was depending on will and andre’s house as my excuse for not painting our house. but no they have to go and ruin everything by giving their house a fresh coat of paint.
the only options i see for solving this are:
option three seems to be the best one so i will start making the arrangements now
SIDE NOTE – my parents have been riding my back about not blogging enough and now that i have become a blogging fool again they haven’t said a word. for shame! 🙁
SIDE SIDE NOTE – it’s friday the 13th. yeah. friday the 13th’s hold a special place in my heart since noah, my youngest, was born on a friday the 13th. we probably should have named him jason because of that fact.
[tags]paint, housework, vampires[/tags]
i’m supposed to be working at this moment but i’m burnt out on what i am writing right now so i decided to waste a little time and try out twitter. it’s basically a public timeline – a way of showing everyone else what you are doing during the day. it’s probably a waste of time that i will give up in a week but right now i figure it will be fun to record my days for awhile. you can look me up at http://twitter.com/ratterrell.
i love all the social networking stuff on the web but i do find it ironic within myself that i hate giving out marketing research to companies but i will gladly give it away for free on the net when it is within social networking community. if you were a company trying to sell me something all you would have to do is look at twitter, flickr, last.fm, 43things, and allconsuming and you would know what type of products i would buy. i know it’s inconsistent but that’s what keeps me a mystery. 😉
speaking of being a mystery i discovered a CHRISTmas present today (4/12/2007) in the box on the outside of my study door. it was a gift card that had somehow stuck to a piece of paper that i had placed in the clear plastic folder holding box on the outside of my study door. it was a great surprise but then i felt pretty lousy for not thanking the gift giver until today (almost 5 months after the gift was given). at least i had actually given him a gift at CHRISTmas because it would have otherwise been a little too late to return the favor of the gift.
[tags]twitter, social networking, time logging[/tags]
there is some great stuff on some of the blogs i read. one of those blogs is len evans and he had the above video on his blog yesterday. the video is amazing. the video is from an article in the washington post on the world renown violinist joshua bell playing for 45 minutes as a street performer in a plaza. the whole thing was done to see how many people would recognize the beauty and talent that was along the path that they were desperately rushing through.
how much beauty did we walk past today without giving it a second look?
[tags]joshua bell, beauty, ignored, washing post[/tags]
i saw this illustration (to view the illustration you have to go to my blog – for some reason it is not showing up on rss aggregators such as bloglines or google reader) in an usa today article linked to by marko’s blog. the article is okay but the illustration is great.
basically the article says that teens involve themselves in risky behavior not because of a lack of knowledge (the mindset behind “let’s educate them more”) but because their brains haven’t developed to the point to put the brakes on certain dangerous situations. they can’t act like adults because they simply aren’t adults yet.
the summary of the article is found at the end:
“we’ve given them too much freedom,” he says. “we don’t monitor and supervise them carefully enough.”
now that’s a big surprise. 😉 it would be nice if we were okay letting kids be kids rather than trying to force them to be adults at too long of an age.
[tags]youth ministry, teens, development[/tags]
since i’ve combined my ministry blog with this (my random thoughts blog) you guys & girls from the random thoughts blog are going to have to put up with various ministry related things that i like, dislike, struggle with, or just want to remember. the above video is something i like.
it’s the welcome video from powell church in knoxville. i thought it was a different way of welcoming people to the service. i wasn’t there so i can’t say this for sure but it seems to me that if you walk into a service, the lights go out, and this pops up on the screen, i think whether you agree or disagree with the gospel story that you are probably going to at least think that something interesting is going to happen within that worship service. of course, i’ve been wrong before (allot). maybe some of my non-believing or non-church going friends could comment on that thought.
of course, i don’t have the technical know how of doing a video like this so don’t expect to see anything like it at parkview.
[tags]video, welcome[/tags]
