i love this woman’s attitude concerning an art student or student placing a sculpture in her yard.
the superbowl
most people who know me know that i pulled for the alabama crimson tide in college football (the preferred sport of choice) and the green bay packers in the nfl (the only team whose ownership i respect enough to want to see do well). i care about football and enjoy watching games but i don’t base my life on it. being raised in alabama i’ve seen people who care way too much about sporting events. still i really enjoy watching football and i certainly care about my teams winning.
so last night when the packers won the nfc championship game i was pretty pumped. i was only able to watch the first half of the game because i needed to leave home during the second half to setup for the normal sunday night tapestry gathering. while setting up adam, joel, and i listened to the game on the radio. listening to a football game is a wonderful experience. in some ways i prefer it to watching a game on the television. radio announcers really get into the game and its ok for them to be biased. t.v. announcers can’t pull for a specific team but radio announcers are blatant about the teams they want to win. it was amazing when we heard the radio play-by-play guy shout out that shields had made the game ending interception. joel and i screamed so loud that a washington school teacher who was down the hall heard us and came over to say we could watch the rest of the game with her. i think she felt sorry for us.
february 6th we will have the third annual tapestry superbowl gathering at our house. it has been a ton of fun the last two years watching the game with all of our friends from tapestry. it is going to be so much better this year.
GO PACK GO!
an experiment
i’ve seen other people video this but i wanted to try this for myself. it is presently -10° outside with a wind-chill that is significantly lower. the above video is what happens when you throwing boiling water into the air at this temp.
a modesty proposal
earlier today i read jonathan swift’s “a modest proposal” (the full title is “a modest proposal for preventing the children of poor people in ireland from being a burden to their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public” a long name that pretty much describes what the short story is being satirical about) for the first time since high school. it really is an amazing manner in which to address a situation. i love the extreme mockingly serious tone of swift’s writing in dealing with the poverty of his time.
i first read “a modest proposal” in mrs. hooks’ senior honors english class. of the four english teachers i had in high school only mrs. hooks was any good. i’m pretty pro teachers (pam family has several teachers in it) so you wouldn’t usually hear me complaining about teachers but my other english teachers were really bad. all i remember from my sophmore english teacher was her screaming “you better hush your mouth before i take this wig off my head and throw it at you.” she said that quite a few times. yet mrs. hooks was so amazing that she made up for the deficits of the other teachers – which is really saying something considering those deficits. i did not enjoy reading until mrs. hooks’ inspired me to. i think i read one book a year before her class. she so loved literature and that her passion for it caused me to love reading. she had a huge impact on my life.
while my grammar still sucks i do love reading. thanks mrs. hooks.
she’s taken my blogging title
i was talking with joe h last week while in nicaragua about blogging. he was talking about how he wanted to write some because he enjoyed reading some of the blogs by people in tapestry. he specifically mentioned pam, and then was nice enough to mention my blog also. i’m pretty sure he mentioned my blog just to be nice because he had that “”whoops, i left robert out” look on his face. i get that look a good bit.
you see pam is the blogging champ of the family now. i used to be the champ. i was the first terrell to start blogging and i used to blog a great deal. i don’t do it as much now – which is my own fault. pam writes better than i do, more often than i do, has better skills in grammar, and she is better looking than me (i’m not exactly sure how being better looking than me effects her blogging powers but i’m fairly sure it has some effect). therefore, she will remain the blogging shamp. all i can hope to do is to make a better show of it.
nicaragua
as most of you know a group of threads from tapestry are going to diriamaba, nicaraua sunday. we will be working with some of our nica friends to do this. i say “working with” because we are not going down there to build the house. a lot of groups go places to build things as though the residents in those places can’t build things. out goal is to work with our nica friends. they will take the lead and we will work along side. so why are we going? because the relationship that we have with our friends down there is important to both groups’ faiths in CHRIST and because it helps us to figure out how we can be of more assistance. you see the baltadonas (the family we work with down there) are real heroes. they love GOD and they believe that GOD wants to transform their community you can see this clearly when you watch how they love on the people of their community. being around them pushes me to be more involved in spreading GOD’s love in tangible ways in the point area. so we go down there to learn from and work with our nica friends. they are amazing.
anyhow, here are the threads that are going down this next week.
- joe hasenohrl
- amanda martin
- joseph metallo
- pete metallo
- robin metallo
- eileen newsome
- casey shadis
- joel stokdyk
- me
we also have one of my former students, eric landry, doing this thing with us. please remember all of us in prayer.
SIDE NOTE – at last count we raised around $1,400 of the $2,000 necessary for the house. of course, we’re still building the house and we’ll just take the remaining $600 out of church funds. if you want to contribute to the building of the house you still can. any money we receive at this point would go into putting those money that was missing back in the church funds and any extra would be put towards our next trip in august.
2011 resolutions
pam and i both consistently make new year’s resolutions. we’ve done it for years. we’re both pretty goal-oriented people and our resolutions serve as those goals. if you are curious you can find pam’s here. so here are some of the things that i am hoping to accomplish during 2011.
- love GOD in more demonstrable ways
- love others in more demonstrable ways
- take pamela, adam, and noah fishing 5 times each (this harder than you think because they are all busy and the canoe is meant for two)
- pray with at least 2 people each week
- go through the ransom fellowship bible reading program for slackers and shirkers
- plan and do at least two large surprise dates for pam (since she reads my blog it really won’t be too big of a surprise but i want this to be a priority and therefore it gets publicized)
- finish 40 books this year (i finished 36 this year)
- run 1,100 miles (i finished 1,000 this year)
- bike 800 miles (i rode 424 this year)
- help tapestry to grow even closer to being the church GOD wants her to be – this could be scary because i am already constantly amazed by how amazing the threads are.
- get a runners world t-shirt by getting a “letter to the editor” in the magazine
- 1 planned photo a week on flickr
- catch 4 muskies of any size this year
- play different practical jokes on 3 different people in the same day
- improve my marathon time by 30 minutes
- bring faith, hope, and love to as many people’s lives as possible in significant manners
- catch 1 muskie longer than 42”
- post to my blog at least 4 times a week
- participate in 1 fly swap
- refurbish the boys’ bathroom
these are my goals at this point.
SIDE NOTE – here is a fascinating map of the dialects within the us. it’s well worth a look at.
idiot with a tripod
a wonderful little short film made by a guy caught in the nyc snowpocalypse.
our CHRISTmas gifts
i am so proud of my boys for the gifts they gave this CHRISTmas. advent conspiracy has been a huge thing for helping us as a family celebrate the birth of JESUS in a proper way. it has redefined how we give gifts. this year the boys put an amazing amount of time, creativity, and love into gifts they gave. i could tell you some of them but i don’t think you would recognize how great they were because these gifts involved a great amount of intimate knowledge of the person receiving the gift. pam and i have great kids. i hope your gifts and your celebration of the birth of the SAVIOR was just as meaningful.
SIDE NOTE – we have raised around $1,000 for the house we are building in nicaragua. we don’t leave for nicaragua until the 9th so there is still time to give if you would like to. of course, if you want 2010 tax credit for your contribution you need to do so before january 1st.
SIDE SIDE NOTE – thanks to my recent discovery of our local library’s online audiobook website i am presently listening to “the blind side: evolution of a game” by michael lewis
movies and reading
it is CHRISTmas day. i’ve had a wonderful time with my family (my wife and boys are amazing). i was pumped by the very well thought out gifts that the whole family gave. it has been a wonderful day.
this is not really CHRISTmas related but i thought i would post about a couple of the movies and books i’ve read recently.
first the books
the hunger games: book 1
true grit
the movies (the family and i always see movies during the CHRISTmas break)
little fockers
true grit