westboro baptist church is looney and this is possibly the best way of handling them that i’ve ever heard of.
zoorun
today i ran my second 5k and i loved it. the race was the baton rouge zoo’s “zoorun”. this means that we ran through the zoo for the race. that would have been really cool because i could have watched all the animals except for the fact that after the first half-mile i couldn’t focus on anything other than breathing. the animals might have been doing acrobatics in their cages and i wouldn’t have noticed. in fact, the monkies could have slung poo at me and i probably wouldn’t have cared. i was too busy panting. anyhow, i finished the race and improved my 5k personal best to 28:28.
the other fun part was that adam and noah enjoyed last week’s run so much that they decided that they wanted to be a part of it. so me and the boys ran the 1/2 mile fun run before the 5k. they were great and they are now talking about running longer races.
my next step is to try a 10k and then a half-marathon. the problem is that all the half-marathon’s in the area are coming up sooner than the 10ks. this means it will probably be january before i can run a 10k and then the next half-marathon after that is february 4th. i don’t believe i can be ready for a half-marathon that soon after training to reach the 10k comfortably.
btw, pam hates the gold shirt and green pants that i wore today. i didn’t know this before the race and in fact i thought she would probably like it because i would be easy to see. yet i was wrong. she said it made me look as if i was on some tasteless running teams, which i probably am without knowing it.
david & colbert
our friend david sangakoya got himself on the colbert report. don’t worry david you can be my friend.
david & colbert
one of my students sent his picture in to be stephen colbert his photo for colbert’s search for a new black friend. david, the student, made it onto the show. he’s the first one of the video below.
happy birthday & happy 5k
first, let me wish a happy, happy, birthday to alycia austin. even though you are in costa rica and soon to be peru please remember that you are very important to us (the same goes for your whole family). we miss you around here.
secondly, i figure i would tell y’all that i ran my first 5k race this evening. the twilight classic 5k was earlier tonight and yours truly was a part of it. tonight during the race i discovered that running a race is very different from just running around my neighborhood. the first reason for this is that there are lots of different people involved (my favorite are the “hey look at me i’m an impressive runner” guys – what posers). i’ve never run with people before so it took me a little while to get used to the idea of being passed by or passing someone else (there was probably more of the “being passed by” than the “passing” on my part). the second reason it is very different is that there is allot more adrenaline going through your body durig a race. these two things factored into me not running my regular pace. the fastest i had previously run three miles (a 5k is actually a little longer at 3.1 miles) was 29:53 (or 9:57/mile). by the time i had hit two miles it was only 17:00 which means i was running 8:30 miles. this was way to fast for me and my body decided it didn’t want to continue at this rate. so quickly my mind (who wanted to continue running 8:30 minute miles because it would look impressive to beat my previous personal best time) and my body (who wanted to run a much slower pace and didn’t care a lick if i beat my personal best time or not) had a debate. my mind called my body a whimp hoping to guilt my body into running and my body responded by agreeing and promptly shut down. debate over. my pace slowed down considerbly.
after knocking down a few elderly men and women to make sure that i wouldn’t be last to finish the race i ended up finishing the 5k with a total time of 28:58 (9:19/mile). if you look in the paper tomorrow you’ll be able to see it for yourself.
[tags]running, 5k, race[/tags]
one by one
i haven’t posted anything about the one campaign in awhile and just thought i would post a friendly reminder that your voice can be a part of helping our nation to do what it has already agreed to do. by doing this we can help eliminate extreme poverty within the world. if you want a quick summary of this thing watch this video.
jessica has left the building
okay guys and girls, i promise this will be the last post on jessica’s stay in the hospital. i say this will be the last because she has now been relased. she’s doing well. it turns out that the negative gram rod bacteria she had was salmonella poisoning. she probably picked it up off the lettuce she ate on a taco. it appears that it was a costly taco to eat.
[tags]jessica, salmonella, poisoning, nicaragua, tacos[/tags]
an update on jessica
as i posted yesterday jessica lawrence is presently in our lady of the lake hospital (room 545). yesterday it was thought that she had malaria but turns out that is not the case. instead jessica has a strain of gram negative rod bacteria. again she apparently picked this up in nicaragua. she is still going to be fine. her doctors have told her that they want to keep her in the hospital for a couple of days and pump her full of iv-antibiotics. she should be fine in a day or two. if you wanted to call her or visit her i know that she would love it because she is already feeling much better and bored from inactivity. i spoke with kendra demars today and it appears that rhett is doing well and thus he probably doesn’t have what jesica has. i’m sure they are both thankful for your prayers.
malaria
i figured y’all would want to know that jessica lawrence, my assistant and one of the 17 that went on the mission trip to diriamba, nicaragua, is in the hospital right now with the diagnosis of malaria. right now she feels like she has a really bad flu bug. the doctor’s say she will be fine and should be out of the hospital in 24 to 42 hours. i thought you would want to know so that you can begin to pray for her. you will probably want to pray for rhett demars also. rhett has similar symptoms but his test has not come back yet.
[Listening to: Know Your Rights – The Clash – Combat Rock (3:41)]
hospital visits
part of ministry that i really love is making visits … especially hospital visits. it always seems to happen that i get the chance to be involved within significant moments during my weekly (and sometime more often) visits to each of our baton rouge hospitals. i may not like the traffic getting to the hospitals but 95% of the time i love the visits.
todays visits were not hugely amazing but one was quite funny. i went to visits an elderly woman who could barely hear anything. of course, since her lacking of hearing is more age related than anything she has never consider the possibility of aquiring hearing aides. this means that my short visit with her consisted of my shouting, her responding that she couldn’t hear me, and then me shouting louder. the conversation went allot longer than the content conveyed within it would normally taken. i think all that the lady actually was able to make out from all that i said was “hi!.” of course, everyone else in the wing knew exactly what church i am a minister of and why this lady was on our prayer list.
you may not know this but they don’t really like you shouting in hospitals. thus when i left the lady’s room i was given tons of nasty looks and a couple of “shhhh’s”. i guess they hadn’t been any of the nurses taking care of the lady i visited.