Category: random thoughts

freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.

mahatma gandhi

for about 4 years pam and i have been driving by a yard that we both love. we liked the house when we first started driving by it six years ago but we fell in love with it four years ago when the owners decided to change their landscaping. it’s wonderful. it’s pretty on it own but the best part is that is fits the house perfectly. the colors go well together, the shapes fit the structure perfectly, and the textures are spot on. every time i drive by the house (which is basically every day) i think to myself “dang, they did that right.”

today we had to get out of our house for yet another showing. this is a good thing. the only bad part of the whole situation was that the whole process went long. we disappeared from the house for an hour, as we were asked to, but when we go back the realtor and her client were still there (hopefully this is a good thing). so we drive around for a little while. after 15 minutes and our second trip by the house we decided to take a longer route. this longer route took us by the previously mentioned house. since we had to waste some time pam and i talked about stopping by and telling these random people how much we liked their landscaping. so we did. i walked up to these stranger’s home that live about a mile away from us and said “you don’t know me but i have been meaning to stop and tell you how much i like your landscaping for about four years. i just wanted to tell you that you did a great job on it.”

the homeowner was as surprised as you would think she was. she began to tell me how hard her husband had worked on the landscaping and how thankful she was that i stopped by to say that. it was all pretty fun.

two days ago some hit my blog from yahoo by typing in the following search

irs sends out 8 billion pages of forms and instructions every year, laid end to end these forms would stretch around the earth 28 times

i doesn’t seem that funny now that i have typed it out but it made me laugh pretty hard when i first saw it on the site’s statistical report.

my left wrist hate watches.

i like watches. i enjoy having one around for purposes of knowing what time it is and timing things. it’s a good thing to be able to time how long it takes a waiter to bring our food or to be able to bother people who are stuck up about time, because i make sure my watch is set to the time on the atomic clock.

yet my wrist hates watches.

i know this because ever since i first started wearing a watch (which is another story about a fascinating, humid august day when i was 16 but this isn’t the place for that story) my wrist has been slowly destroying them. i’m convinced that my wrist is able to release some watch dissolving acid that was developed through the genetic combinations of my dad drinking cheap beer, my mother reading too many cooking books, and my inherent dna-linked love for pork rinds. of course, modern science doesn’t have a test for “watching dissolving acids” yet so i will have to wait to prove this theory.

all i know for sure is that up until recently i have never been able to keep a watch working for more than six months. it doesn’t seem to matter of what quality the watch is. my wrist is an equal opportunity watch destroyer. it has killed watches ranging from seiko’s to dime store digitals. it doesn’t matter if the watch is gold or plastic my wrist hates it and will destroy it. the expensive, cheap, pretty, ugly, sturdy, and fragile all end up as trophies of destruction to my left wrist’s hatred of time devices.

this was all true until i acquired my present watch. it’s a timex expedition and it has lasted for one and a half years. this is remarkable. i was so please because tuesday i actually had to go and get another battery placed in the watch. that’s never happened before. my wrist always kills the watch before it ever makes it to needing a battery replacement. i don’t know what is so special about this timex because my wrist has demolished many other timex’s before this one. all i do know is that i am very thankful to have found a superhero watch that can stand up to the watch destroying acid that my wrist releases and put my wrist in it’s place. long live the timex expedition watch!

kottke posted an interesting article on the advantage of the “beginner’s mind” that young entrepreneurs have over older ones. the basic idea is that the lack of experience that a noob suffers from when things are normal suddenly becomes an asset when things are no longer normal (there is nothing to unlearn). the older more experienced person understands “the way things are” and that works well until things no longer are that way. it takes the more experienced person longer to realize that things are not the same, while the noob just assumes that the way things are is the way they are supposed to be. it was an interesting article on entrepreneurial behavior. now i am wondering how we can have the best of both worlds within the church. how do you constantly encourage a “beginner’s mind” within our older churches. how do we give a strong voice to the noobs among us? of course, i’m not really going to have to worry about this because come september i’m a noob and i will be a part of a church of noobs. our problem will be trying to find experience.

WOOHOO – the “24” season finale is going on right now!

j.t has an interesting post on some of the marketing for the next batman movie (the dark knight) and a first look at heath ledger as the joker (he looks pretty freaky – reminds me of a thin, deformed, john wayne gacy).

my neighbors made me laugh earlier this month. one of our friends down the street hopped into the shower only to receive a slithery surprise. when she shut the shower door she saw what looked like a piece of loose of foam. she reached over to put it back in place and was shocked when the foam suddenly struck at her. when she shut the door she had accidentally caught a garter snake in the shower door. she responded in the only manner she could think of – she screamed VERY LOUDLY. her husband came running to the rescue and when he saw the problem he immediately left. she thought he had gone to get something to catch the snake with but instead it turned out he had gotten his phone and was calling friends and telling them to listen to her scream. she kept screaming until her daughter came in. when the teenage daughter came in she immediately left again only to return with a video camera. the daughter began to video the whole scene – mom screaming and dad calling friends. unfortunately the video is rated “r” and therefore you will not be seeing it any time soon. after making all his phone calls the husband came in and killed the snake. the whole thing made for a great story to share around a soccer party. i love my neighbors.

here’s a statistical analysis of the world’s religions.

here’s an interesting set of questions asked of shane claiborne of the simple way by rachel stanton of “compassion and justice“. the questions were posted as an article on the ooze. as usual claiborne says some great stuff.

[tags]the simple way, shane claiborne[/tags]

stevens point, wisconsin is number seven on this year’s list of the one hundred best places to live in the u.s. of a.

how cool is that?

when i was in high school dothan, alabama (my hometown) was declared one of ran mcnally’s fifty worst places to live in the u.s.

i have now gone full circle.

SIDE NOTE – my salsa came in second within the competition. they said it was good but it was too hot. i would have to agree that this batch was a little warmer than normal.

you may not know this but i cut the cheese better than anybody else in my immediate family. it’s true. it comes naturally to me because my father was also an excellent cutter of the cheese. i don’t really know my biological grandfather so i can’t really say if he cut the cheese well or not but i do know that my step-grandfather (who was my real grandfather) was one of the best cheese cutters i have ever heard of (this of course lends more credence to nurture versus nature). so i come from a long line of excellent cheese cutters and because of this lineage i was able to make my youngest son proud in his class today.

you see today was noah’s oral report on the state of wisconsin. he has been working on the written version of this report for three weeks or so. pam and i knew that the oral report was coming soon so while we were in wisconsin last week we bought noah a wheel of cheese to pass out during his report. i brought it to class today and it was one of the best moments of my life. first, because i was able to use the talent that my family has passed down to me, and secondly because when noah’s teacher said to me “and mr. terrell what are you here to do?” i was able to answer “well, i am here to cut the cheese!”

it doesn’t get much better than saying that line in a room full of 4th graders. today my cheese wheel and i were the elementary school equivalents of george carlin.

[tags]cutting the cheese, cheese wheel, cheese[/tags]

it’s 2:01 a.m. and pam and i got back from our teAMerica church planting assessment about 10 minutes ago (more on this later – it was great). never ever go on a trip with pam and i. we always seems to have something happen that messes the transportation up. tonight the final leg of our transportation was delayed because of a thunderstorm. we sat in the plane on the tarmac for 4 hours! it was awful. actually we only sat in the plane due to the storm for the two hours. our first hour on the tarmac was due to the runway having to be checked and rechecked due to a prior plane having hit a bird during takeoff. the final hour was due to the fact that our plane had run out of fuel sitting on the tarmac waiting for the bird carcasses to be cleared off and the storm to go away. the good side of the wait is that i finished my third book of the week.

if you’re a “lost” fan and have emailed me (i.e. debbie) please don’t be offended if i don’t answer your email until later. pam and i haven’t watched this week’s episode yet and i’m scared to open those emails because i am afraid they will give something away. i hope it was a good one.