i'm a ninja! (or soon will be)


i’m very excited. i just bought myself a CHRISTmas present. i just purchased a few tiny tv remotes (which sounds cooler but is $10 more under it’s other name “ninja remote“). it’s a cool little universal television remote that i can use to take control of any tv at a restaurant, waiting room, or (most fun of all) my father-in-law’s house. last year i used my then functioning pocket pc to “possess” my father-in-law’s “pride and joy” television. last CHRISTmas jim (my brother-in-law), jill (his wife), my dad, and i spent 15 minutes entertaining ourselves by randomly switching channels, turning the volume up & down, and turning off my father-n-law’s t.v., while he freaked out about how he was going to have to return the thing for service because it definitely wasn’t supposed to be acting like that. pam completely freaked out about the whole situation but the rest of us had a blast.

since, i bought three of these things, if my brother and brother-in-law are nice i might just send them one each.

saint or blood hound?

it’s really pretty amazing what santa can do. i mean, we travel to baton rouge and mobile for the week of CHRISTmas and santa tracks us dow3n and brings my kids gifts with him. we know it’s him because my youngest son made sure that there wee no santa gifts in the van before we left. still santa was able to track us down and there were gifts this morning. his a crafty one.

SIDE NOTE – my parents got my youngest son the air havoc battle heli set (remote controlled mini helicopters that fight each other). – i have no idea what i have done to my parents that caused them to hate me so much.

revolution

one of the books i just finished reading is george barna’s book “revolution.” it’s pretty interesting. i’m not sure i agree with all of his main points but i do what what he has to say very interesting. if nothing else i completely agree with him that the modern church has been way to focused on itself. we have focused our money on building bigger and nicer buildings and arenas, concentrating our efforts on getting more people into our programs and activities, spending more time and money just trying to get as many people as possible into a one hour service while calling that church, and we haven’t really been about living out the kingdom of heaven. in “jim and casper go to church” casper, and avowed aethist, asks jim “is this what JESUS told you guys to do?” i think it’s a great question to ask and one that i believe we should consider. i wonder how different many of our decisions would be if we seriously asked that questions before anything we did.

br

we’re back in mobilbe now after spending the weekend in baton rouge. pam graduated (woohoo), we saw people we love, and we hung out at a few places we love (mainly eating establishments). it was a great weekend and pam and i are both so thankful for our friends that we got to spend time with and wish we had been able to spend time with many others that we love.

i was able to finish “under the banner of heaven” and it was pretty cool.

i’m watching an hbo documentary called “hard as nails.” it’s … ummmm … interesting. i guess.

btw, happy CHRISTmas adam.

driving straight

there was a time in my life when i could drive straight through the night on a 17 hour journey without any effect upon myself. that time has passed me by.

last night the fam and i drove straight through the night from plover, wisconsin to saraland, alabama. it was 17 hours and therefore quite long. lots of sunflower seeds and audiobooks are the only way i am able to stay awake. the good side is that we are now at my parents house and we have the day to rest before heading over to baton rouge for pam’s graduation. we’ll spend a few days over in baton rouge seeing friends and then head back to saraland/mobile/daphne, alabama for CHRISTmas.

ah, the fun of holiday travel. one of the things that made last night’s journey more bearable was an audio book that i downloaded off itunes. it’s john krakauer’sunder heaven’s banner.” i really like krakauer’s writing style and i have enjoyed the audiobook thus far. it’s basically a detailing of a vicious double muder in utah and how mormon plural marriage lead to it. i have disagreed with a few of his assumptions of concerning faith. krakauer has made several statements to the fact that he apparently believe that faith is the suspension of reason. i would strongly disagree with this. while, i would never say that reason can prove faith, because faith always implies trust and trust implies a lack of visible finitude, i do believe with anslem in a mindset of “faith seeking understanding.” this does not imply a suspension of reason but admits that ultimately we come down to a “leap of faith” or an “act of trust.” still krakauer’s book is very entertaining though not very positive of any of the over 200 branches of the lds faith.

unfortunately i’m almost through with krakauer’s audio book (1/5 left to listen to). the positive side is that after i finish “under the banner of heaven” i have an abridged version of stephen colbert’si am america (and so can you).” pam and i can’t wait to listen to that. i just wish it was unabridged.

curling report & how not to plant a church

i curled tonight and once again we won. our record is 6 – 1. woohoo!

i wasn’t the greatest church planter today at walmart. i was trying to find a parking spot when these too “thugish” guys came walking down the middle of the lane. i drove up the lane a little bit and they kept walking up the middle of the lane. they walked right in the middle of the lane all the way of to my car. i have to tell you that i absolutely hate it when someone acts in such away that everyone else must accommodate them. it drives me crazy. so i said out loud in my car, “get off of the road”, where they could see it. that’s when they flipped me off.

i’ve always thought the appropriate response to someone shooting the bird at you was the blow a kiss at them. in my experience it just ticks people off. so i blew a kiss at the guys.

i was right it ticked the guys off.

one of them hit my car with his hand. i’m not real cool with that. i stopped my car, rolled down my window, and shouted “you better not have hurt my car” (which is pretty funny because my car is 1998 626 with 160,000 miles on it – there’s not much you could do to hurt it). his response was “pedestrians have the right of way ***hole.” i shouted back, “not when you walk down the middle of the road but i am impressed that you know a 4 syllable word.”

i guess that caught them off guard because they paused shouted “merry ******* CHRISTmas” and left.

probably not the best way to win friends and influence people but it drives me crazy when people acts like the whole world revolves around them.

home is where the robert is

follow the glowing object
i’m back from my weekend in chicago. it was a good weekend on a whole. i enjoyed spending time with the pierces and seeing matt’s show. other than that i pretty much just spent the weekend traveling back and forth on the “L“. the “blue line” was under reconstruction and that slowed everything down.

the surprise when i got home was that noah had been able to get his wii. my youngest son started saving up awhile back to buy a wii. a few weeks ago he finally had enough money but since the wii is now the “must have” CHRISTmas gift it was impossible for us to find a wii that noah could buy with his own money. i don’t really go for the whole driving around and stalking the “must have” CHRISTmas gift thing. I kind of think the whole thing is absurd. the difference here was that noah had been saving money for 6 months to get this thing. my boy had done his work and pam and i wanted to help him get it. while i was gone one of our neighbors who was in a similar situation called pam and said target had some wii’s come in. pam and noah rushed over to target and the child was rewards for his saving. it’s been a ton of fun. i can’t wait to take it to alabama with us and get the rest of the family to play.