Category: random thoughts

i just thought i would let all of you know that after the first weekend of the ncaa tourney i am kicking everyone’s butts. of course,, by bragging like this i have asurded myself that i wll now lose, but it’s a small price to pay to be able to briefly saying i am winning.

according to my parents (about the only two people who read this blog) i am not posting enough (ironically they are not posting at all but i’m not supposed to discuss that). so i guess i am going to start posting more.

is anyone interested in doing a basketball bracket for the ncaa basketball tournament? i’ll take the winner out for lunch at any restaurant that he/she wants to eat at that costs less than $20 for entrees. if you live outside of baton rouge and want to participate i’ll send you a gift card to the restaurant you desire. i always do one through cbs sportsline and therefore you would have to have a free account there to do a bracket.

the bracket would be located here if we do it.
any takers?

yes i know it’s been awhile since i posted and i can’t promise that i will begin posting regularly (but i do hope to) but still i’m posting right now and that counts for something. here are the few things that i wanted to post:

• if you are interested in running in the march 10th “race for the cure” 5k let me know by friday and it might be free for you. we have a church member that wants to sponsor a group of people. it’s $25 to register but free if you hurry. i most know by friday.
• many of you know that we are using si smith’s “40” during lent. it’s quite cool stuff. who would have thought that cartoon drawings could be so devotional?
• the famine was great this past weekend and i am very thankful for everyone that made it happen. all of the involved churches are meeting this coming week to discuss beginning to do more things together. it seemed like everyone connected very well and therefore we want to continue encouraging that.

i guess that’s about it for now. i’ll try to start posting regularly again. pam’s gone to iowa on ph.d stuff and i’m bored and missing her.

i’m just sitting here hoping indy will kill chicago.

technology has advanced too far and it is now causing me problems. the past few days i have been working on one of our computers. after trying desperately to discover why that fine piece of quality workmanship known as micro$oft xp was continually crashing on my system i was finally able to discover that xp doesn’t like the version of awardbios that i have on this particular desktop computer. the answer for fixing the poor relationship between micro$ft and awardbios was to get an upgrade for my bios. when i downloaded the bios upgrade and read the directions i discovered that i needed to create a bootdisk from a 3.5″ floopy disk. the problem is that i didn’t know where any floopy disks where. i searched all over the house to find an old, stray one.

zip. nada. nothing.

i would have considered burning a bootable cd with the necessary files on it but i didn’t have any cd’s around either.

have we progressed too far? i think we may have.

my run for the day
distance – 6.0 miles
time – 58:10
pace – 9:41/mile

i’m sure all of y’all have experienced moments in your life where one theme seems to come up over and over. everything you look at, everything you listen to, and everything you read seems to always come back to the same thing. I am in one of those moments right now. everything i read or experience seems to have something to do with people changing their names and what happens to their lives after doing so. here are some of the influences that have impacted me on this moment:

• the biblical story of jacob becoming israel – every since i first read this story i have felt an overwhelming connection to it. there is just something about GOD coming down in response to jacob’s prayer for safety and answering that prayer by popping jacob in the mouth. it was exactly what jacob needed but i would imagine it was quite far from the answer that jacob was expecting. once again i am at a point in my life where this narrative draws me in.
• alexander supertramp – i’m presently listening to john krakauer’s book “into the wild” about the young man chris mccanless. he went out to find a lifetimes worth of adventure (which ultimately cost him his life because of a lack of common sense). the start of this search for adventure began with him shedding his past life by taking on a new name. i don’t agree with much of what he did but i am fascinated by his resolve and convictions.
• makalu gau – the taiwanese climber gau ming ho claimed the name “makalu gau” after his fifth attempt at summitting the makalu mountain. from that ascent on he went by “makalu gau” as a reminder of what he saw as a changed life. of course, if you read other people’s versions of his ascents he didn’t really live up to that moniker. apparently “makalu gau” was a pretty lousy climber that always got into trouble and wasted other people’s resources in having to be rescued on almost every climb he went on. he didn’t really live up to his claimed name.
• buster butterfly mcleod – i read this guys 43 things list a few weeks ago. he wanted to change his name for one year to “test” how much a his personality was connected with his name. he chose a rather odd name and has legally changed his name to it for one year. after that year is up he will apparently change his name back to whatever it was before.

don’t worry mom i’m not planning on changing my name. i rather like my name. still i do find all of these stories interesting. it’s intriguing to consider how much of who we are is wrapped up in our names. while, i’m not really into changing my name i do want to make sure that the name i have stands for that which i believe is important. when people thing of my name i want them to have strong images occur within their mind. i hope they think of a person who …

• is passionate about his faith & LORD
• is a good husband and father
• loves his family and friends because he realizes that the most important things are things
• may be late often but will try with every ounce of discipline he has to not let someone down when a commitment has been made
• is open to new ideas, people, and experiences
• is amazed by beauty and trying to experience more of it
• is not afraid to take big risks even after he has failed

i hope that’s what people think. if it’s not then you can just start calling me fred cause i’m starting over.

my run for the day
distance – 5.0 miles
time – 48.44
pace – 9:44/mile

the weirdest thing has occurred today – well actually it isn’t really the weirdest thing, that would be me singing on and winning american idol, but this thing is at least a little odd. it has been two days since i ran the first light half marathon and i finally have the first part of my body that hurts. it’s my … shoulder that hurts. i don’t have any idea why my shoulder would hurt so bad but it is definitely painful. i don’t remember running on my hands but perhaps i did. that would at least explain why my shoulder hurts so bad. i think next time i will run on my hands and maybe my leg will hurt instead.

SIDE NOTE – who dat?

SIDE NOTE – on my runs i am presently listening to john krakauer’s “into the wild” about the death of christopher mccandless in the wilderness of alaska. mccanless was a young man you wanted to live out a jack london/henry thoreau/leo tolstoy lifestyle that pushed him to some pretty far extremes. it’s a fascinating book thus far.

my run for the day
distance – 5.1 miles
time – 53:02
pace – 10:23/mile

i’m presently listening to aldous huxley’s “brave new world” while running. i love this book. i didn’t read it in high school like most people because i didn’t really read much of anything when i was in high school. i read it for the first time when i hit college. i fell in love with it immediately. since then it’s been on my “re-read list” ever couple of years. today while running i hit the part in chapter 4 when mustapha mond, the western european controller started describing the thing that once existed called “CHRISTianity” (obviously in the fictional world of the book it no longer existed). mond’s problem with CHRISTianity was that it was opposed to the constant and meaningless consumption that was necessary for the world’s economy to continue to grow. mond believed that nothing could be allowed to exist unless it encouraged people to buy things. it all seemed rather ironic to me after going through the CHRISTmas season.

i sometimes wonder if mond’s description of CHRISTianity shouldn’t be closer to what the truth actually is. all you have to do is walk into a lifeway store to see that some portions of modern CHRISTianity think consumption is the greatest thing ever. i hate lifeway.

my run for the day
distance – 7.0 miles
time – 1:07:54
pace – 9:42/mile

i watched the pixar movie “cars today and as usual i thought pixar did a great job with it. it was a good kids’ movie, the animation was amazing as usual, and had a very good point to it’s overall theme.

on a side note tonight i began to wonder why it is that most of the people who speak the loudest when it public actually have the least to say. i was at blockbuster tonight returning the videos that we had gotten from blockbuster online. as a part of blockbuster online i receive a free in store movie for each mailed movie i return. while i was in the store i heard the movie ramblings of a couple across the store. it was easy to hear them because they were shouting to each other. they needed to speak so loudly because they were standing three feet away from each other. it can be really hard to hear each other when you are 36 inches from each other. the only redeeming pat of their shouting was that they were idiots. thuse their conversation was very entertaining. one of them kept shouting about how he had heard really good things about this movie “clark.” the female then said she hadn’t heard of the film, grabbed it from him, and declared that it was “clerks 2” not “clark.”