Author: Robert

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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.

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ouch #2

this afternoon i learned of another natural symbiotic relationship that yellow jackets have (for the first symbiotic relationship see the entry from [url=http://www.parkviewyouth.org/blog/?postid=5] August 23rd[/url]). today noah’s tiger cub den had a field trip to the bluebonnet swamp reserve to observe nature and to do a service project. the service project was picking up trash around the reserve. the observing of nature was watching the mass of yellow jackets swarm out of the area in which we were picking up trash.

we were walking around the pavement picking up small pieces of trash and trying to make the reserve look better. what we didn’t know is that yellow jackets have apparently not only made a bargain with bushes to protect them but they have also cut some type of deal with random pieces of trash. i’m not sure if the deal works for every piece or trash or not but i am sure that is works for tootsie roll wrappers. one of the kids there saw the wrapper and bent down to pick it up. at first i didn’t see what she was picking up, because if i had i would have screamed for her to stop. i have vast personal experience with yellow jackets and i am familiar with all the symbiotic relationships they have. therefore, i knew about the little known yellow jacket / tootsie roll wrapper deal. unfortunately she didn’t so she picked up the wrapper.

yellow jackets apparently really believe in keeping their promises because the second she picked up the wrapper they began to attack every breathing thing within 100 feet of the disturbed tootsie roll wrapper. if you think the thought of a 35 year old man running from yellow jackets is funny, just imagine six tiger cubs running away from the little beasts. it was chaos.

of course, the midst of all the action only two people were stung – 1) the girl who disturbed the tootsie roll wrapper, 2) me – the knower of all things yellow jacket. oh, i hate the little pests. i think i will begin killing all the yellow jackets i see. they can have a symbiotic relationship with my fly swatter.

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holiday inn

i bet by now the two people who actually read my blog think that i have given up on doing this. well don’t worry mom and dad (the only two who read this thing) i have not given up on it. i just took a small sabbatical from typing up the events of life (translation nothing funny was happening).

i’m through with my typing respite now and i have an entry that relates to a holiday inn express television commercial and a friend of mine�jim wallace, the parkview associate pastor of education. two sundays ago “the ring” (parkview’s college worship service) had a cd release for “the junkyard taboo,” the band for “the ring.” as a part of the whole release-fellowship thingy the waco hit sunday school class decided to give free food to the college students. it was a cool idea and all the students loved it.

after the fellowship was through the class began to clean up the chairs and tables used during the event. steve, one of the class members was moving a stack of chairs when it suddenly fell on top of his left leg. i’m not sure if you’ve ever had a stack of chairs fall on your leg but from the sounds made by steve as a result of the chairs landing i would have to tell you that i would not recommend it. the result of the crash was the dislocation of steve�s left knee. not a pretty picture. lots of people rushed over to help him. one of those helpers was jim wallace. jim used to be a basketball coach and upon seeing steve�s dislocated knee he reached down and “popped” it back into place. of course, steve still needed medical treatment but at least his knee was no longer 6 inches away from being in the right spot. an ambulance was called to take steve to the hospital.

when the ambulance got to parkview steve told them what had happened and that jim had put his leg back into place. the paramedics turned to jim and asked “sir, are you a doctor?” without a second�s hesitation jim responded “no, but i did sleep in a holiday inn express last night.” 🙂

p.s. if you haven�t laughed at the humor of this you need to watch more commercials.

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dare to be stupid

How To Fly
� by Douglas Adams

There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, [The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy] suggests, and try it.

The first part is easy. All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it’s going to hurt.

That is, it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground. Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard.

Clearly, it is the second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.

One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally. It’s no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won’t. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else when you’re halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about how much it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss it.

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the test of fire

nothing funny today but a verse of scripture that has been stuck in my head for awhile.

12Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, 13each man�s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man�s work. 14If any man�s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. 15If any man�s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. 1 Corinthians 3:12-15

have you done anything today that will survive being tested by fire? not sure about you but the have been quite a few days in which i’m not sure that i’ve done anything that would lst and be considered worthwhile. just want to encourage you, while i am also encouraging myself, to try to do something each day that will stand the test of fire.