Category: random thoughts

in case you are wondering where santa is i figured i would post norad’s santa tracker. norad tracks santa so that we have some idea where he is. this is important to know because you have to plan your bed time around it. there always so much to do and so little time but you have to get to bed before the big guy gets to your house.

norad has tracked santa on his journey and given the world updates for the past fifty years. the address is www.noradsanta.org.

if you would like to know a basic history of CHRISTmas trees you can go to this link at www.historychannel.com. the article describes the historical development of of the CHRISTmas tree – both pre-CHRISTian and then CHRISTian.

i’ve been listening to 18 bullet holes by waterdeep alot this evening – one reason is that a friend and former youth of mine recently commented on it in his blog and the other reason is that it has fit the evening pretty well. i’ve spent most of the evening with two friends and former church members (they moved to oklahoma) mourning the lose of their daugther-in-law this morning and praying for the recovery of their son (both of whom are also friends and former church members) from an automobile accident this morning. i’ll explain more later (it’s 1:04 a.m. here – the blog clock is never right). for now i’ll paste the lyrics of “18 bullet holes” by waterdeep:

18 Bullet Holes
by Don Chaffer

18 bullet holes in the body of a priest
they say he was eating a hot dog when the ammunition was released.
they say he was always fat and lazy but he was an awfully nice guy.
that�s just one more death to show you you never know when you�re gonna die.
you might be facing the beast

sometimes, GOD, i feel like i�m living in a bone grinding mill
and every time i hear the sound i can barely stand still
it�s a thing i can�t quite make out sometimes but it seems to keep getting louder-
one more body from the valley of the dry bones getting ground up into powder
against YOUR holy will

oh, GOD, it hurts so bad to love anybody down here
why don�t YOU come and help me out?
cause i can�t even see clear

the funny thing about the way a girl gets destroyed
about the way that deal goes down
is that everybody pretty much sees it coming at the sister
from all the way across town
and she isn�t always blinded, she isn�t always far astray
she just might not be thinking, she might be having a bad day
but when you choose, you choose, and when you drown, you drown

last night i dreamed that YOU swallowed me into YOURSELF
and i was floating on the sea inside
when i landed on the shore, i saw all these people that i thought had died
i hadn�t seen some of them for ages
they had left without a single word
and when i said something to them, not a single one of them had heard

they were all looking right through everything like it wasn�t even there
some were full of anger, some full of fear
and then I recognized that something very sad
but very beautiful was happening right here
they were all caught outside standing alone in a very heavy rain
and when a raindrop landed on my tongue
i didn�t need YOU to explain
that these were YOUR tears

oh, GOD, it hurts so bad to love anybody down here
oh, that�s right, YOU know so well
one thorny crown, three nails, and a spear
one thorny crown, three nails, and a spear

i just thought i would tell everyone and anyone who reads this blog (basically my parents – hi mom! hi dad!) that fred, the explorer crossed the 100,000 mile threshold this evening while on a trip from baton rouge, louisiana to mobile, alabama. i took a picture of the moment but i’m not sure that it came out – i was using a VERY cheap digital camera without a flash while it was dark. the whole family celebrated for a moment or two and then moved on.

a side note – i had the most incredible shopping experience of my life today. i went to american key & locksmith today to have a few duplicates of keys made so that i would have spare of everything. when i entered the busy store – i love key stores because they are always so full of random things that have probably been in the same place for years – i was overwhelmed by the smell of freshly smoked meat. i looked to my right and noticed a banquet table of various meat products in the middle of the store. the locksmith who was helping me with my keys most have noticed that i was overtaken by the smell because he immediately told me that the food was for customers and therefore i could dig in. my time waiting for the keys to be made was spent joyfully eating two smoked turkey sandwiches. it was the best experience i have ever had in a store bar none. in fact, the only way it could have been better would have been for me to have a lazy boy recliner there to sit in while i ate my smoked turkey sandwiches.

why couldn’t walmart do something like that. shopping would be so much better if you got a free smoked turkey sandwich every where you went.

p.s. speaking of my ford explorer and keys made me think of the new mustang gt ’05 cornfield add. if you haven’t seen it or you just want to watch it again here it is.

i’m not the biggest fan of major league baseball but i do get interested in it when the playoffs arrive. if the detroit tigers aren’t in the play-offs (which they never are anymore) i usually just pull for the st. louis cardinals (whom i love from my time in missouri) or the team that i believe has the greatest chance of beating the atlanta braves, whom i despise (this has a lot to do with ted turner and the whole “america’s team” thing – who elected them?). i rarely care about the american league but that’s not true this year though because the red soxs have won me over. i can not believe they have come back in the alcs from three games behind. the past three games have been incredible, full of suspense and excitement. i mean really, tonight we even had police in riot gear on the field. if major league baseball was always this exciting everyone would watch it. i’m sure fox sports has loved this because i am sure that these games have helped their ratings.

i’m a journal freak. about three years ago i picked a journal, started writing in it, and i’ve been hooked since then. i don’t journal every day but i do make it about every other day. i write in these journals for myself since i don’t figure anyone will ever actually read any of the stuff i put to ink and paper (i mean let’s face it this blog is put on the world wide web and the only people who read it are my parents and a few “sicko’s” who don’t have a real life). everything that goes into my journal is there for my own enjoyment or memory. this makes it important to me to write down what happens during my days and then to keep these journals as they fill up. i’ve been working on my present journal since january.

that is i was working on my present journal. you see i lost my journal at the end of our nicaraguan mission trip. i wrote up some of the trip in the journal and i know i had it with me on the plane ride back, but once i got home it vanished. i’ve searched everywhere for it. i dug through my luggage from the trip, i searched through my clothes, and i tore through my closest. i found zip. i wasted alot of time and sweat for nothing.

so this meant i would need to buy another journal, but i didn’t want too. i convinced myself several times to go buy a new journal from barnes and noble. yet, i knew the second i bought a new journal i would find my old one. the old journal had to be around somewhere because i remembered writing in it on the plane trip back. i knew that my old journal was simply hiding from me and was ready to pounce into the open the second i walked back into the house with a new journal. maybe this whole thing was just a faithfulness test by my journal to see if i would hold true to it. i simply couldn’t let my old journal win. so each time i started to drive the 20 minutes to barnes and noble i went through this great mental struggle which ended with me turning back home and merely wasting gass. if only i hadn’t been raised by a superstitious mother – then i wouldn’t think through things like this.

this is when a friend of mine decided to solve the problem for me. he bought me a journal. this was great. after all, i had not bought the journal. surely this meant that my old journal wouldn’t just show up now. this had to mean the whole thing wasn’t just some cosmic joke trying to get me to spend money on an un-needy object. i was convinced i was in the journal-clear. i had remained faithful and had not bought a new journal. besides, i loved this new journal. it was exactly what i wanted. thus, i decided to start writing in the new journal.

three days into the new journal my old journal “jumped” out of a bag i had bought at the airport in el salvador.

now i have to decided which journal to finish first. i hate cosmic tricks.

fast pitch softball scares me. i used to play baseball – a long time ago – and i used to umpire baseball – not quite as long ago. i was never scared of a baseball zooming past me at faster speeds than a softball ever travels, but baseballs are small. softballs are large. it’s the size of the softball that freaks me out. it was never intended by the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY for anyone to stand still when an object as large as a softball was thrown towards them. it’s a reflex. you see a softball sized object coming towards you and you instinctually duck. it’s the way it should be. baseballs are below this reflex level. this is why baseball makes sense – the ball is small enough not to cause our natural human response of fear and trembling. this is only true for fast pitch softball, slow pitch is a different beast completely.

i went to watch woodlawn high school play softball today and the whole experience was scary for me. i kept on wanting to shout at the girls standing in the batters’ box “get out of the way! there’s a softball-sized object coming towards you!” for some reason i don’t understand they did not seem scared of the softballs. it appears as if i am the only human who knows about the anti-softball reflex.

i’m presently watching a professor in thermodynamics on “the late show” sit in ice water for 2 five minutes segments and discuss hypothermia. you wouldn’t think this was very funny, but for some reason it is. letterman is the greatest.

it has rain on-again-off-again through out the day. it’s now night time, i’m about to go to bed, and it is raining again. i hope that it rains long and hard all night. there is very little better than sleeping during a rain storm. i love it. if it can’t rain all night then i would be okay with it raining hard a few times and waking me up so i could experience it. the rainy season that we have in baton rouge is one of the best parts of living in bayou land. i especially love the “gully washers” we have when it rains so hard that the drainage system can’t handle it for a short time period and the water backs up. it’s the coolest thing when you look out and see water squirting out of the holes of a manhole cover.

i find that i even like driving during storms. there is nothing quite like driving when it is really pouring down, hitting puddles and sending spray for twenty feet is just plain cool. i love the rain.

lightning is another story completely. i don’t like lightning when i am at home because i keep on thinking that it will blow up the electronics in my home. when i am driving and away from home lightning is great – quite fun to watch – but not when i am home.