i finally found a style of cooking that fits me. for CHRISTmas pam received a creme brulee set. i’m not entirely sure what creme brulee is but i know that it has a caramelized crust on the top of it. this means that you take brown sugar and burn it until it melts and forms a rich brown crust on top of the dessert. in order to do this the set comes with a small “cooking torch” which is just a smaller version of a regular old propane blow torch. i don’t really know much about cooking indoors (cooking around a fire is my domain), but i know a fair amount about blow torches, so i told pam i would handle the caramelizing. it was my first attempt at doing this but it worked fine. it would appear that i am a natural at cooking with a blow torch. whoever thought of using a propane blow torch in cooking was a genius.
disciplenow plans
i’m pretty excited because today i received confirmation that the band i really wanted to join us for our disciplenow will be with us. the robbie seay band will be leading us in worship through music during the disciplenow (march 19-21). this is not meant to be as much of an advertisement for the disciplenow as it is a comment on how i like it when GOD works things out. rsb has been helping me out with some of their songs for about two years now. that’s why i wanted to get them involved. but, i was pretty sure that we would not be able to cover their costs for joining us for our disciplenow. turns out that it within their schedule and travel and that means we can get them. i can’t wait.
if you are curious about who they are then go to their website http://www.robbieseayband.com/. i really like them.
on a sad note, pam and i gave into today and bought noah an o.u. jersey (with his birthday money). we tried to talk him out of it but he has been converted and it didn’t feel right saying “no you can’t buy a non-l.s.u. jersey” when football isn’t really that important to us.
you people are pigs
i just finished taking down all the stuff we set up in the student center for the view last night and i was amazed at the mess that a group of 80 teens can cause. each of you should be ashamed of yourself. did your mother raise you in a barn?
just kidding.
i had a flash back to what my mother used to say to me and neither adam, my almost 10 year old, nor noah, my 7 year old, are around for me to pick at so i had to use ya’ll. see this is what you get to look forward to one day. you’ll probably get married, have to work real hard at having a great marriage (a little hint here – the marriages that stink are the ones in which both parties
don’t work at it all the time), then probably have kids and then you get the joy of blaming them for everything that breaks (and knowing that you are probably right). ah, the joys of parenthood.
yesterday noah decided to swap from being an l.s.u. fan to being an oklahoma fan. neither pam nor i can find out why he swapped. he says he was coloring a snowman in l.s.u. colors and half way through the snow man “it just happened” and he swapped to being an o.u. fan. he describes it like it was a mystical experience. it’s as though the big sooner mascot in the sky unveiled the heavens and spoke to noah – “noah, be a sooner fan!” anyhow, noah brought the snow man home to prove to us that “it just happened” and sure enough it is half l.s.u. colors and then immediately swaps to o.u. colors. apparently my youngest son had a mystical n.c.a.a. football experience. who knew?
i resolve to
this year i decided to make resolutions that i can actually keep. you see each year i make a list of goals that i want to accomplish during the year. they vary from the serious to the not so serious. i want to memorize a certain number of verses, i want to learn to play the penny whistle, etc. usually i finish about 80% of these goals. this year i have decided that i would pick different goals from normal and i would make sure and accomplish them. one of the goals is that i want to stop playing racquetball twice a week. the only problem with this resolution is that presently i don’t play racquetball at all. therefore, it is impossible for me to quite playing it twice a week since i don’t actually play at all right now. i figure by making this goal i have a pretty good chance of succeeding and if i fail, then i will at least get in better shape while not accomplishing my goal.
so, today i went to play racquetball for the first time this week, figuring that i could then play thursday also and be able to quite the next week. this would accomplish one of my resolutions for the year very quickly and be a good start for the year. the only problem is that after playing today i am presently very sore and i’m not sure that i will be able to play thursday (this means i wouldn’t be able to reach my goal of quitting next week and that is very upsetting). my legs are sore from running all over the court, my right arm is sore from swinging the racquet continually, and my left arm hurts for some unknown reason ( i believe it is from sympathetic pain just from being drug all over the court by the rest of my body). this stinks. who would have ever thought that i would have to kill myself just to get to the point that i could then quite my work-outs. yet i’m dedicated to accomplishing my goals. i will play twice this week so that i can then quite and be an example of how to reach your goals.
i hope you all can learn form my example and the pain it is costing me to accomplish my goals.
woha
i don’t base my life around football or for that matter any sport but it was still cool to see the l.s.u. tigers when the national championship and experience how baton rouge has responded. i was driving home after watching the game with about 30 people at church and everyone is honking and shouting stupid stuff. just for a whim i droe over to academy sporting goods. they opened up after the game to sell national champsionship t-shirts and hats. they had a line coming out of the bulding reaching all the way to the road. it’s really impressive to see people who are so fanatical about something that they will stay up till one to pay too much for a really cheap t-shirt. you have to love people with that type of non-rationale enthusiasm. 🙂
sculpture
i have a pretty boring life – i like it boring but i have to admit that it is boring. after raking my yard, sanding down an interior door, and wrestling with my kids the highlight of my day was reading 5 separate articles (about 40 pages or so) concerning the techniques and methods of creating psuedo-live rock for a marine aquarium out of cement. this is exciting stuff. because of this reading i now have the knowldge to create my own live rock that i can then “seed” with organisms from other live rock and thereby have brightly color algaes growing on my psuedo-live rock when my marine aquarium is set up. of course, i now have to make the molds for the live rock and actually mix everything together but i’ll do that next week. then i have to cure and “seed” the stuff so it will be about three months before i actually have my aquarium set up.
on the fun side, i discovered through my reading that one of the best ways to cure the cement psuedo-live rock and get rid of the nasty ph raising stuff that it releases for a short while, is to place the chunks of psuedo-live rock into the resevior of your toliet. this way the water “curing” the cement will change everytime the john is flushed. since, i have to make about 70 pounds of this stuff i will be spreading the psuedo-live rock out amonst a bunch of johns. so if you use the bathroom at my house, the church, or the student center there is a pretty good chance that you will be helping to “cure” my pseudo-live rock and get it ready for the marine aquarium. so if you are at one of those spots then go to the bathroom as often as you can. i appreciate your help in the matter.
my new desks
just thought i would say that i haven’t been updating the blog recently because i have been working in our study. my father made us two mission style tables to replace our laminated computer desk and trashy table that we had our computers sitting on. before everything looked pretty trashy and just thrown together, now we are computerizing in high style. thanks dad.
of course, the reason i haven’t blogged is because of the fact that i had to remove the old computer desk and swap the computers to the mission style tables. it all looks great now – very mission like, whatever that means. now, i have a nice clean space in which to blog, and anyone who knows anything about me knows that i can’t blog in a non-clean blogging space. it essential to the creative process.
it works!
i took the boys and the potato cannon out for it’s initial trial run. this was the first time that my boys had experienced the joys of flying a spud over 350 feet. you should have seen their faces. there is just something about seeing a tuber travel through the air around 400 feet. when i told them what was going to happen you could see they’re disbeief. they were thinking “sure! i bet this potato is going to fly that far.” when i told them that the power for the experiment was going to come from a two second spray of hairspray their lack of faith in my common sense only increased. yet, all that changed when they pressed the ignition switch. when that potato flew my sons belief in me increased dramatically. they loved it and i had a blast introducing them to it.
happy new year
i’m just hoping you have a great 2005.
thus far my new year has been full of a sick wife, an oldest boy who is sick enough that we are having to do breathing treatments every 4 hours and and youngest son who is coughing up a lung. it’s been a whole lot of fun thus far.
the dead housewives’
saturday i took pam to see “mona lisa smile”. i wasn’t really forced to go to this film because i’m not really one of those guys who absolutely refuses to go to a “chick flick.” as a matter of fact, i have actually enjoyed a few movies in my life time that many people refer to as “chick flicks” (i’ll never admit to which films these were though). of course, when we got in the theater it was a good guess that some of the guys there had been forced by their female companions to come to the movie. pam turned to me and asked “i wonder exactly how many of the guys here were forced to come to the movie by their dates.”
now, i view the role of a husband as being the protector and provider. therefore, when pam brought up the question it became obvious to me that my role in our relationship was to find out the answer to that question. i decided to ask the guys in the room “how many of the guys in the room have been forced to come by their woman?” it was a risky question because the women in the room could turn on me, but being the provider and protector in tails a bit of risk. so i took up my role and asked the question. immediately several male hands in the room went up and almost as fast several female hands popped, slapped, and hit their dates. truth has it’s consequences. thankfully the other men in the room, rather than me, had to pay the price for their truthful answers.
anyhow, “mona lisa smile” was pretty good though it was a direct rip off of “the dead poet’s society”. of course, “dps” was still much better than “mls”.