Author: Robert

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grrr

i got to pet a tiger today! seriously. for some reason a guy brought a 12 week old female bengal tiger by the church building today. he is sometype of educator or something (honestly i didn’t really listen to him very much, i was too busy looking at the tiger). and takes this bengal around to schools to show the kids and teach them about tigers. apparently he was trying to see about bringing the tiger to the school at the church. anyhow, he sat there talking about the tiger and i finally asked “can i pet her?” nobody else had asked but after he said “yes” everybody jumped in and stole my idea (i always hate that – it’s kind of like ordering the same thing at a resturant that the person in front of you ordered – don’t steal people’s ideas, pick your own meal and make sure it is different from the person who ordered in front of you). it was pretty cool to be able to pet a tiger.

of course, after i was through petting the tiger i thought it would be cool to tell some other people so they could have the experience also. i tried telling a few of the students and teachers as they went by. i shouted out “hey, there’s a tiger in the white building.” for some reason they wouldn’t believe me. why would someone think i was lying about a tiger in the white building? have they had someone lie to them about tigers in the past? have they had a “boy called tiger too often” experience before and therefore they made a vow to never believe anyone again when they said “hey there’s a tiger”? just doesn’t make any sense to me. who would lie about a tiger? an elephant or an ardvarck i could see lying about but not a tiger. the moral of the story is you should always trust a guy when he says “hey there’s a tiger in the white building. if you do then you may get the chance to pet a tiger. if not, then you’ll probably miss out.

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a taste of cool

today was the day (actually you can probably say that about any day – for example “yesterday was the day” – it’s a just a given that any word that describes an actual day, today, yesterday, sunday, is the day but that’s really neither here nor there – another saying which doesn’t make much sense – what does geography or proximity have to do with anything?). this afternoon was the day in which pam and i were opening adam’s room back up to him. i told ya’ll a couple of weeks ago that we were going to redo adam’s room and that he said he didn’t tust us. what i didn’t tell you was that we were doing this whole thing alla “trading spaces”.

most likely you’ve heard of this show but i’ll describe it for you just in case you haven’t. “trading spaces” is put on by “the learning channel” (which should be renamed “the let’s take not-so-reality t.v. and base all our programming on it channel) and it involves interior decorators coming into two neighbors houses and completely trashing everything in 48 hours, only to leave the neighbors to hate each other afterwards (this is where the real show should be – they should make a show about the neighborhood wars and battles between the two couples that start just after the cameras are turned off ove4r the fact that one of their living rooms was painted with leopard print – that’s educational television). the only rule seems to be that you can’t actually see what happens to your house (there are actually other rules but they break these all the time). this is done so that you can be embarrassed and have it caught on cable television.

well, it’s sad to admit but we watch this show (i’m not really a volunteer in this process and usually just skip it all together). pam and my boys love the show. so they came up with the idea of doing each other’s room “trading spaces” style. they’re actually too young to do any of the work so “trading spaces” style for a 9 and 6 year old means when it is their turn getting kicked out of their room until their room is finished. so we kicked adam out of his room thursday and started on the road to redoing everything. it took until last night to finish it but after much blood, sweat, and tears everything was done and after school today it was time to unveil adam’s room.

we brought him into the room and the kid who told his loving parents that he didn’t trust them went bezerk. he loves his room. his general remark on the whole thing was “i didn’t think ya’ll had a ‘taste of cool’ at all but apparently you do.” powerful words from a 9 year old – at least i think they are – i’m not really sure what “a taste of cool” is. i hope it’s not like the monkeypox or anything. i’ll post a picture or something later (if i can figure out how to do that) for now i’m going to take me and my taste of cool to bed…i think i feel a fever coming on or something.

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less morbid this time

while true my last entry just wasn’t much fun. therefore to make up for this i decided i would post a couple of cool links. they are:

http://www.electronicorphanage.com/neen/demo/clinger.swf – a really freaky floating dude – he just follows your mouse around. for some reason he reminds me of a 70’s, multicolored jason.
http://www.starterupsteve.com/swf/wireframe.html – kind of a slumped-over medical puppet. imagine a sad skeleton with movable wires attached to it’s (notice the politically correct gendar nuetral reference) skeletal structure.

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tommy

i leave in a few minutes to go do the funeral of tommy (the man I mentioned a few entries back). He’s been dying for the past two weeks and wednesday morning he past away. he died with his wife holding his hand an a good friend right besides him. within 30 minutes after his death their house was swarmed with relatives and friends, i know because I made it over there while many of them were there. they were given two weeks in which to say “good-bye”, tell old stories, and comfort each other by remembering tommy’s life. while i don’t really want to die as young as tommy did (he was in his late fifties) i do think that if you have to go that�s the way to go.

of course, his death is much easier for them to handle because they know it’s not the end of the road. i’ve been around the deaths of enough non-believers to know that pain and frustration. the worry about what’s next. i’ve been asked “where is he” and all i�ve been able to say is that those who trust JESUS CHRIST as their LORD are with HIM. of course, in those situations i was fairly sure that JESUS was not the deceased LORD, but i wasn�t going to tell them that. I just stated the facts and let them take care of the rest. i hate funerals like that. of course, tommy’s will be different. i know where he stands and he stands with JESUS.

scripture says . . .

Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord�s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words. 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

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buyer’s remorse

why is it that there are always plenty of good reasons to buy something before you buy it and then once you have paid good money for the item and walked out of the store all those reasons disappear?

this morning i had to go to that most hallowed store “best buy” to purchase some minidisks for recording the view on wednesday nights. while i was there i decided i would look for a usb drive. now for the non-computer literate in the audience a usb drive is a 2 to 3 inch long device that you plug into your computer, transfer files to, and then use the drive to take those files to another computer. i actually have a need for one of these devices. while i was looking at the simple, cheap 128 megabyte usb drives my eye caught the fancy packaging of a creative labs nomad mp3 player/usb drive. this device is a godsend that will transform the world. it slices, dices, and will start your car on cold mornings so that it will be warm and toasty for you when you get into it. actually it is just a usb drive that will play mp3 files into headphones as well as transfer files from one computer to the next. oh yeah, there is one more thing that the nomad does that a simple usb drive doesn’t . . . it costs the buyer a lot more money to purchase.

anyhow, the packaging on the nomad was bright and cheery while the usb drive’s box was gray. the box of the nomad made great promises of how the nomad would not only play my mp3 files but would also change my life. the usb drive box just said it would hold 128 megabytes of info. the nomad’s package had a really cool looking guy on the cover, whose image shouted out to me “if you have a nomad you will be spiffy!” (and i want to be “spiffy”) the usb drive�s box said “pny” (who would name their company “pny”?).

suddenly the cost of the nomad didn’t matter anymore. i was convinced that the nomad would change all that i do at church, transform my family life, and maybe even fix the clicking cv joints on my 1993 mazda protege. i would be multimedia enhanced. no longer would i simply transfer files from one computer to another. no, i would do it with a soundtrack playing in the background. youth would look at me and want to follow JESUS all because i have a nomad. this was a “must have” device and i was a “gonna get it” buyer.

of course, all the reasons disappeared after i walked out the front door of the store. now i’m simply convinced that i paid too much u.s. currency for a usb drive with a fancy case and earphones that get all tangled up. i wonder how stores do that to people? it convinces me that we live in a society that is sick with consumerism and that i need to struggle against the sickness within my own life. pardon me now, i’ve got to untangle the earphones again.

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bird’s of a feather

sunday morning bright and early i was driving to church to get ready for the our normal sunday services. i took my usual route, which brings me to the stop of confederate and tiger bend. i had to stay there for a little while because surprisingly the traffic was actually bad at 7:20 a.m. while i was waiting there i saw a blur out of the corner of my right eye. before i could see what the movement of color was i heard a loud, metalic boink and realized that the front passenger side door of the mazda had just been hit by something about the size of a baseball. i pulled up my emergency brake and bent over the center console to see what had hit my car. on the side of the road beside my protege i saw an adult dove drunk from the impact of it’s flight into my auto. it stood there dazed and wobblely but apparently not permanently harmed from the incident.

the weird thing is that he hit my bright red door, not the window. i’ve seen birds fly into windows before. their little brains can’t comprehend that there might be something hard in the clear space of a window frame. i’ve also seen birds fly into moving cars, mistakenly thinking that the space were they were flying would remain empty of other objects. this bird however flew into the door of my bright, red, stopped car. there’s no way it could have thought there was nothing there and i didn’t drive into it. i looked all around and i couldn’t find anything that might have been chasing the bird and caused it to mistakenly fly into a stopped vehicle. so the only theories i can come up with for this happening are:

1. this dove was a weird genetic cross between a bull and a dove. this would result in a dove that likes to ram it�s head into things and is enraged by the color red. thus charging my car.

2. this dove was blind. it probably flew around with a small cane trying to detect what was in front of it. it merely got going to fast and couldn�t stop when it found my vehicle with it’s cane.

3. this dove hates foreign cars. it’s probably been charging into every mazda, honda, and toyota it can find.

4. the dove made some bad financial decisions on wall street, lost everything on wall street, and was trying to end it’s life. a permanent solution to very temporary problems. not a good choice, but then again neither is speeding when you are blind.

5. this dove is just plain stupid and will probably be cat food before the week is finished.

unfortunately i didn’t think to stop and do tests on the punch drunk bird. if i had i probably could have narrowed these theories down to the correct one.

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no

a couple of months ago pam placed us on the louisiana and federal “no-call” lists. this means that telemarketers are suppose to have been notified that we’re not interested in receiving phone calls from them. it’s worked pretty well. in fact today i received a telemarketing phone call and it was the first i had received in a couple of weeks. since i was waiting for paint to dry on some molding when the call came i decided to let the salesman run through her whole spill. i figured this would be as good a way to waste time as any. i placed one ground rule upon myself, after i said “hello” and identified myself i would only say the word “no.” i would not respond with any other words. of course, the sales woman didn’t really want me to say anything until her spill was through. she started her spill and went on for 5 minutes. at the end of it she asked if i would be interested in this extra insurance.

i said “no.”

she said she was sorry to hear that and surely i didn’t realize how good this insurance was. she re-described it for 3 more minutes (i was timing all this just to see how long it would go on). at the end of the 3 minutes she asked if i might be interested now.

i said “no.”

this time she was very concerned that i simply didn’t understand how much money paying extra for their insurance would say me. so she decided to walking me through the benefits. she did this for 7 minutes and then asked if maybe now i would consider the insurance that would cost me nothing for the first 30 days.

i said “no.”

we had now had a 15 minute very one sided telephone conversation (albeit with me having a mere one word vocabulary). for some odd reason i was really beginning to enjoy this game. i was really hoping that it would go on and eventually lead to her asking questionings that were not of the “yes/no” variety. i was looking forward to her asking open ended questions that i could then respond to with “no.�”

“what type of work do you do, mr. terrell?�”

“no”

“excuse me?”

“no”

i started laughing to myself and then i realized that i might reach the holy grial of the “no” game and get her to ask, “can you say anything other than �no�, mr. terrell?”

alas, my goal was not to be, because she simply continued to push on with her sales routine. she talked for nine more minutes total (bringing the telephone call up to a total time of 24 minutes) and i was able to issue 4 more “no”s. my second to last one was in response to the question, “mr. terrell, is there any way i can convince you to try this insurance?” of course, my answer was already determined before hand and therefore the conversation was ended. i did get one last “no” in when she said “good bye.” i think the last “no” actually confused her.

on the good side after 24 minutes my paint was dry and i was back to work.

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i can’t believe i get paid for this

i absolutely love the fact that i get paid to be a minister. this afternoon i was given the name of a church member who i haven’t met before (it’s a large church) who was at home with her husband watching him slowly pass away. five days ago he was told that because of liver damage he would have about 4 to 6 months to live before his body would give out. since, the doctor said that he has gone down hill incredibly fast. yesterday he slipped out of consciousness and this morning the doctor came to their house and told his wife that he would probably die at any second. i was the minister who received the opportunity to go to their house. there is not much that you can say that a woman who is soon to be a widow and knows it. there aren�t many words that will do for a time like that. so i simply sat with her and her husband for an hour. GOD was already in that room. the LORD was already there taking care of her. my only purpose there was to remind he of the GOD who cares about her and her husband. so for an hour i sat there and held his hand and listened while she told me about his love for fishing, building his pond, his stubborn nature, and love for reading. i left her with the only words I knew that would make any difference �GOD is here for you and HE says that HE will comfort those who mourn and are in pain.� it is easy to see the difference that JESUS makes in life when you watch someone as they are dying. this family knows CHRIST and that makes all the difference.

it was an honor to be there with them. i can’t believe doing that type of stuff is actually considered a part of my job. i love my job.

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please hold for a phone call from GOD

tonight my cell phone started to ring and i grabbed it ready to answer it. as is my custom i looked at the screen on the front of the phone to see what the caller id would tell me about the phone call. usually if it is from someone who is in my phone book it says “(person’s name) is calling” and then i know for answering purposes who is on the line. tonight when it rang and i looked at the front screen it said “GOD is calling.” i’m dead serious that is what it said. it really threw me off. i mean i didn’ know that i had GOD’s personal line listed in the phonebook of my cell. of course, being GOD HE could make sure it was in there. the problem was even though i spend alot of time talking with and listening to GOD in prayer i’ve never really had a phone conversation with HIM. it seems like the etiquette for a phone call with GOD would somehow be different than that of prayer. how do you answer the phone when it’s GOD? “hey bud” just doesn’t seem right for the CREATOR’s phone call. i was so engulfed in this question that i simply kept letting the phone ring. but then i paniced because it seems even worse to leave GOD hanging on the line. it�s one thing to answer GOD�s call wrong, but it is quite another to simply ignore GOD�s call. this was becoming a serious dilemma. i’m a minister for goodness sake, you would think i would have been trained in handling something like this. there should have been some professor during all my education telling me how to respond when GOD calls my cell phone. but no! that’s to practical for 3 years of graduate education and 4 years of undergraduate. well allot of good that education has done me. i can’t even answer the phone properly to speak to the ALMIGHTY. save your money kids, if college can’t tell you how to answer GOD�s call correctly then what good is the algebra, composition, counseling and other stuff they teach you?

eventually i remember that bill pruitt, our pastor, was the last one to have my phone and he must have changed his name in the phonebook to say GOD (thinks allot of himself apparently). while, i might not know how to answer the phone when GOD is calling i certainly did know how to answer bill’s phone call after all the confusion he had caused me. here’s the point of my story…be prepared for any phone call, it could be GOD calling you (or it could just be a pastor who likes to play jokes on people).

btw, i am now taking suggestions on how to get bill back for causing me to have such a crisis of faith.

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bill gates is the anti-christ

i really don’t like microsoft. i’m not real sure why but i know that i don’t. i think it is the fact that software-wise microsoft owns everything. they are such a corporate giant that they simply swallow up new things as they come about. they are the roman empire of the programing world. i fairly sure that i wouldn’t have liked the romans if i had lived in the 1st century and i know that i don’t like their 21st century equivalent.

what saddens me is that i have microsoft stuff on my computer. ahhhhhh! i feel like such a hypocrit. i would swap to linux but that would confuse pam and i don’t want to do that. i have to use microsoft at the church because that what our systems guy uses. now i’ve gotten so use to microsoft junk that i have trouble doing things for other platforms. i started using mozilla as my browser as an attempt to get away from explorer and now i’ve found that i didn’t code the student ministry page right for anything other than ie. i hate microsoft. i think i am going to purposefully start avoiding everything microsoft again. this might tear down my work for awhile but i think i would feel better.