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my continued flight problems

as many of you know all the major airlines hate pam and i. it is definitely a conspiracy because every time either of us fly something happens. well last night, six hours before i was to leave with our youth for nicragua, delta called and left a voicemail on the church emergency number that our flight for today had been canceled and we would be flying out sunday instead. great. i tried everything i could but i was unable to arrange anything and therefore our trip to nicaragua to work with our friends has been made one day shorter. hopefully this will be the only trouble we have flying. southwest arilines is now officially the only airlines i have flown with that i don’t despise.

SIDE NOTE – my wife hates me. well maybe hate is a little strong. as many of you know i love photography and i take pictures as often as possible. they’re not as great as many of your photos but they still keep me busy. i post these photos on flickr and i place a creative commons license on them so that they can be used by anyone who is not making a profit. well today i received the following flickr comment on a photo of pam.

A very nice photo!

A was happy to find a good photo of a facial mask. Didnt (sic) find that many with a creative commons licens (sic) here at Flickr.

I used it in an article about facial masks: Gör en egen ansiktsmask av frukt.

Its in swedish. “Ansiktsmask” being swedish for facial mask. Frukt = fruits.

Big thanks for using creative commons. Good luck with your photo!

/Hans

oh yes this is exactly what every woman wants … a picture of her in a facial mask place on an article. i am dead meat.

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the hampton inn & photos

pam and i stayed at a hampton inn in milwaukee this past weekend and i renewed my love affair with hampton inns. i’m not exactly sure why but i have loved hamptin inns since my junior year in college. i guess it is probably the fact that it was at a hampton inn that i first ran into the wonderful world of the free continental breakfast. ahhhhhh, free donuts. whatever the reason i have had a secret love affair with hampton inns for years. of course, being the son of floyd terrell i have a dominate cheap gene that keeps me from staying at hampton inns very often.

anyway, we stayed at one this past weekend and it reminded me of my great love for them. that love was increased by the fact that the hampton inns have apparently introduced tons of random black and white photos into their corporate culture. everywhere you look within the hotel you see another black and white photo. there are photos on the key cards, photos on the walls, photos on the room number plaques, and photos on the “do not disturb” sign. i loved it. i was please that there was at least one place without random photos on it. i was pleased that there were no photos on the toilet paper. that would have been disturbing.

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making an offer

for those of you who are interested i thought i would let you know that we made an offer on a house in stevens point, wisconsin. you can view it here. now we have to wait and see if the owners except the offer, make a counter offer, or simply laugh their rear ends off. of course, we also have to sell our house.

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i hate bush international airport

sunday was the worst experience i have ever had flying (and i’ve had at least a few bad experiences flying). we were flying back from wisconsin to baton rouge and left milwaukee early sunday morning. we arrived in houston at 8:30 a.m. on our continental plane and waited for our 10:30 a.m. flight home to baton rouge. here’s what happened:

  • 10:30 flight – our 10:30 flight was canceled due to storms over the gulf coast – this is understandable – we were put on stand by for a 12:10 p.m. flight and guaranteed spots on a 2:15 p.m. flight if the 12:10 p.m. stand by didn’t workout
  • 12:10 p.m. flight – we are waiting in line for our stand by flight and miracle of miracles they call our names to get on the plane. we hope on the plane and grab our seats. after sitting down in our chairs for 10 minutes the flight attendant came over and told us the pilot had determined that the airplane was to heavy and we would have to exit the plane (apparently i need to lose a little weight). the good news is that the ticket agent says that our 2:15 p.m. tickets are set and we have actual spots on the airplane.
  • 2:15 p.m. flight – we are in line to get onto the plane when i hear a ticket agent say “she has seat 4c also.” i tell him i also have seat 4c and that’s when we realize that they have triple booked pam and my seats. turns out that we don’t get to get on the plane. the good news is that we end up getting $300 ticket vouchers for continental’s mistake. we are rescheduled for a 7:30 p.m. flight.
  • 7:30 p.m. flight – our flight is canceled due to weather that no one seems to be experiencing on the gulf coast but continental swears is happening. we are reschedules for a 10:52 p.m. flight. we decided to see about renting a car to drive back to baton rouge. we spend the next hour trying to arrange a one way rental car. after all the effort we are able to discover that it will costs us almost $300 to rent the car and we will only beat our 10:52 p.m. flight by about 40 minutes. we decide 40 minutes is not worth $300 to us. we go back to wait for our plane.
  • 10:52 p.m. flight – the ticket agent announces that even though our flight attendant arrived at the airport since 8:55 p.m. she is now no where to be found. it takes them an hour to find a flight attendant and we can finally take off.
  • 1:30 a.m. – we arrive in baton rouge only to discover that continental has lost our luggage.

we arrived 13 hours later than we were supposed to. i know others have faced much worse in an airport but this was the worst i have ever experienced.

i think the lesson that we all should learn from my experience is that continental sucks.

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random quote – freedom

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

mahatma gandhi

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remember to pray for the austins

for those who know and love the austins i would like to make sure that you have read their latest blog entry. they are fine but they are asking for everyone’s prayers due to some social unrest that is happening within peru.

susie says…

i have been assured that all of this is normal third world country peruvian life and that we are very safe. please do not worry or call, just pray. pray that all is calm during these protests and that the grievances are handled in a civilized, peaceful and uneventful manner.

so please keep our friends the austins in your prayers throughout your day and maybe send them a note or something.

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wierd ministry day

today was a good & bad day that had allot of different ministry aspects within it.

  • i visited with the 15 year old grandson of a church member who has a malignant tumor in his brain. the visit was actually a time of celebration because they now know what’s wrong after two weeks of struggling with what could be wrong. for two weeks jonathan was passed from doctor to doctor and diagnosis to diagnosis until someone finally said “we have to get you to the hospital now.” the great news is that the tumor is very treatable and after four to six weeks of radiation the tumor should be gone and because of the type of cancer he should be perfectly fine. he will be going to st. jude’s within the next week to begin his treatment. his name is jonathan. please remember him in your prayers.
  • i’m the emergency minister for parkview for the week. tonight a lady who said her name was shirley (not her real name) called saying she was going to kill herself. after allot of discussion it came out that she is manic depressive and her medicine had stopped working (or she was off it). she is not in the baton rouge area and just randomly found the church’s number on the internet and called. she promised me that she would go to the emergency room but i have no way of checking up on her. please keep her in your prayers and ask that she will call back tomorrow like she promised she would.
  • i was able to leech off some great equipment for tapestry. i spoke with red (our minister of music) today to find out if parkview might have any sound equipment sitting around not being used that i could snag for tapestry. he talked to the right people and tapestry now has a barely used sound board, mic stands, and a good bit of other miscellaneous equipment. thank you parkview.
  • after two years of not taking my guitar to get it’s preamp fixed i finally brought it to a technician today. i had feared it would cost $200 or so to fix the preamp. it actually turns out that it was just a ground that was bad and it only cost me $15 to get it fixed.

my run for the day
distance – 1.56 miles
time – 17:30
pace – 11:13/miles

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random quote

if we have struggled to bring about a kingdom of heaven on earth, we have been willing to borrow our tools from the kingdom of hell

david a. hoekema, “aftereffects – the legacy of hiroshima and nagasaki“

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the trials of being a basset

saturday we took montana and roux to the brec dog park (located at forest park). it’s a great place for our dogs to run around and socialize with other dogs. montana and roux loved the place. the played with other dogs, sniffed everything imganible and and “marked.” the biggest problem was that roux and montana are short, large dogs. all the other large dogs were at least a foot taller than them. that’s how the problem happened.

roux decided to go act “tough” around a boxer that was there. roux had his hackles up and he had “puffed” his chest up to twice it’s normal size. he was as large as i have ever seen him and quite impressive looking. in fact, i thought he was a terror to behold. the boxer didn’t even notice him. instead the boxer just lifted his leg, “marked” roux and walked off like nothing had happened.

i guess that’s what happens when you’re a short dog.

since i didn’t have my camera with me at the time i decided to draw a recreation of the event.

marked