Robert's Blog

i presently weight more than i have ever weighted in my life. i tip the scales right now at 199 pounds. weight is usually not a very important thing for me. i’m not real concerned with being skinny. i usually eat what i like and exercise when i feel like it. weight just isn’t that big of a deal for me, but buying clothes is. actually not buying clothes is a big deal to me. i hate buying clothes. i enjoy being slightly (and sometimes abundantly) out of style. i can’t stand the thought of wasting money on clothes that will only be in fashion for a little while. it also seems to me that clothes feel better the longer you wear them. usually i wear my clothes until they fall apart and then i get whatever is on sale.

about four weeks ago my weight became an issue because i was having a hard time fitting into my pants. i usually weight between 185 and 195 pounds. four weeks ago i tipped the scales at 211 pounds and my pants were showing and i was feeling it. i knew something had to give so i started exercising again (i have to admit that i haven’t really exercised since hurricane katrina) and eating lunch out less. in the past four weeks i have dropped 12 pounds and my pants fit better again (though still not perfect).

tonight i discovered that i have a choice to make. you see the pennington company is doing medical research on slightly overweight people and 211 pounds at my height is the minimum to be in their study. if you are a part of their study they will help you lose weight, give your free medical treatment, and pay you $2500 at the end of the 16 week study. so now i have to figure out if i should gain the weight back (and buy some new pants) or continue on my path to 185 pounds. 🙂

since pam and i have finally landscaped our front yard (though the north side of the house still needs to be completed) i am now at a point where i get to buy a garden gnome. i love garden gnome. i think they are cheesy and that’s basically the reason that i love them. now i need to make sure you know that i’m not a big fan of villages of garden gnomes. you won’t find gnomes swinging, or riding, or gathering in visible groups in my dream yeard. you see it’s really just the thought of a hidden gnome within the garden that i like.i think it’s funny.

so after convincing pam that i would hide him well i have finally bought my own garden gnome. the photo above is my gnome. he is from the same style family as the gnome i used two years ago as a part of a message series i did at the youth ministry’s worship service. he should be here in a week.

now i have to come up with a name for him and a good spot in the garden.

i was in a conversation a few days ago in which the upcoming da vinci code movie was mentioned. i’m looking forward to the movie because i figure some good discussion will come of it. i personally find it hilarious that dan brown has somehow been turned into some type of gnostic prophet. just look at his past books. he has written thriller after thriller. that’s what he does … he writes quick read thrillers like tom clancy or john grisham. it’s just so happens that his schtick is the whole knights of the templar thing. jon stewart pointed out on crossfire that we should never confuse his daily show with hard hitting news because it’s supposed to be a comedy (if you haven’t seen the video here it is). i think the same thing should be remembered about dan brown. HE’S A THRILLER AUTHOR!

anyway back to my conversation with these pastors. when the discussion swapped to the da vinci code movie one of the pastors said “that book is a strong attack from satan on the chruch.” it was at this point that i blurted out “then our enemy is an idiot because it’s not a very good book.” i read the da vinci code and personally found it pretty predictable. one of the other pastors then said “you and i may not agree with the book but it is an excellent work of fiction and a powerful story that will be flowed. i should know because i love good fiction every now and then.”

this statement was what blew me away. not the part about the da vinci code being powerful. it’s not. everybody talked about it when it first came out and then it died away (just like all quick reads do) and the same will happen with the movie. in my opinion it won’t have many lasting thoughts. afterall we don’t base our legal system on john grisham or our defense strategy off tom clancy why would we base our faith off dan brown? the statement that blew me away was that this pastor consider the da vinci code an “excellent work of fiction.” he then went on to mention other works of fiction that he enjoyed reading and they were all from the same genre. most of the pastors i know don’t read near enough fiction and they definitely don’t read anything worth while. there is fiction and then there is good fiction (also known as literature). some books change the way you think and challenge society. books like “to kill a mockingbird,” “catcher in the rye,” “a lesson before dying,” “crime and punishment.” and other books are quick reads that are full of cliche’s and simple plots like “the da vinci code.” some works of fiction should be read because they are full of more truth than some of the non-fiction books that pastors read. works such as “the lord of the flies,” “the grapes of wrath,” “the scarlet letter.” other books don’t teach people anything … books like “the da vinci code.”

i’m not sure why it somehow became noble for pastor’s to say “i don’t read fiction.” yet, i’m convinced if more pastors read good fiction then we would see “the da vinci dode” movie for what it is … a summer blockbuster that will be forgotten within 5 years rather than being convinced that it is the greatest attack on faith in CHRIST ever.

i haven’t blogged on this blog in quite sometime. it’s partially because i’ve been more excited about photography (i finally was able to get a nikon d50) and partially because i simply haven’t felt like blogging about ministry.

anyway that has been changing over the past few weeks and i finally decided it was time to post something. over the next three weeks i will be speaking at our mid-week worship service about living a life of simplicity. i meet each week with a group whose desire is to make each week’s worship service something experiential and special. while we were talking about the message series which i was calling “the simple way” (in an ode to some friends in philadelphia) one of the people within the group said “is that supposed to be making fun of the paris hilton/nicole richie show ‘the simple life’?” once we heard it everything was settled. we had to make a mock “the simple life” trailer. we decided to do one for each week that was focused on the point of each week’s message.

so here’s this weeks video dealing with the need within a simple lifestyle to be able to say “no” to things, even some things that are good.

i’ve lived a decent amount of time on this earth and until tonight i had never seen a hummingbird moth. i was on the back porch cooking some hamburgers and i saw the things zoom in on our flowering bushes. i thought it was a hummingbird at first and tried to get a closer look. it was dark outside so it was hard to see what these things were. when i figured out that they weren’t hummingbirds i got a little freaked out. i thought they might be some weird mutant strain of bees and everyone knows that weird mutant strains of bees absolutely hate people who are cooking beef (because cows are the natural symbiotic friends of weird mutant strains of bees). not wanting to be attacked as a beef cooker i grabbed my outdoor cooking tools and prepared to do battle if need be with the weird mutant bees.

standing there with my spatula in hand i waited. yet they didn’t attack and this scared me even more than before. weird mutant strains of bees are notorious for their devious attack strategies. i thought maybe the bees had called for their weird mutant friends to flank me and attack from behind. franticly i turned back and forth looking for bees everywhere. still there was no attack.

i decided to take a closer look at this weird strain of mutant bees and determine what danger i was facing. it was at this point that i saw that one of the weird mutant bees had a 6 inch long snout. relief flooded my body because everyone knows that weird mutant strains of bees never have 6 inch long snouts. feeling safe i finally figured out that my little visitor was some type of strange moth. i quickly went inside to look for information regarding the long snout wielding moth on the source that i always go to for useless information … the internet. after a few minutes of web surfing i discovered that my guest was a hummingbird moth and that they don’t attack people who cook beef. i was safe.

i feel better now.

for those who haven’t seen my glasses yet this is what i look like with them on.