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doody!

my youngest son, noah, had a “caddyshack” moment earlier today. his second grade class at parkview went swimming at the bocage racquet club today. the day was fun for a little while but then something happened. pam was talking with another mom at the event and suddenly noticed that a lifeguard was reaching with a long pole into the swimming pool and all the kids were forming a very wide circle around whatever the lifeguard was trying to capture with the pole. it would appear that one of the kids had really decided to “drop the kids off at the pool.” oh yes someone had “dropped a load” right in the middle of the bocage racquet club’s swimming pool. the employees chased out all the kids who had actually stayed in the pool and then super-shocked the pool. i sure hope someone shouted “DOODY!” when they found it.

i would have paid money for it to have merely been a baby ruth candy bar and for the pool guy to reach over and take a bite of it.

SIDE NOTE – i’m watching the season finale of “24” right now. woo hoo!

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del.ico.us

del.ico.us has been around for awhile as a bookmarking system but until today i really didn’t think much of it. basically it’s a website that allows you to “bookmark” websites that you like and then place “tags” on those “bookmarks.” “tags” are words that i assign to a bookmark that will help me remeber the website. they’re like electronic “sticky notes” that i can attach to a bookmark. until earlier today i really didn’t see any huge advantage to using it. i figured i could “bookmark” web sites within my browser. i thought the slight advantage that del.ico.us would give me was being able to have my “bookmarks” online and thus accessible from other computers. personally this didn’t seem like a huge advantage to me because i don’t swap computers much.

that was before today. today i realize that the “tags” i love on flickr were also on del.ico.us (stupid me – tags are the whole point of of del.ico.us). i try not to put a ton of things in the “bookmarks” directory of my browser (safari and firefox) because it becomes to hard to find the important ones when there are a ton of “bookmarks” within the folder. “tags” let me save everything i see. when i save a “bookmark” to del.ico.us i assign “tags” to it that i think i will help me remember the website. that way when i want to find the “bookmark” later all i have to do is search through the “tags.” this frees me up to “bookmark” any website that i find slightly interesting. all i have to do is assign “tags” to the website that describe it. then when i want to find that bookmark all i have to do is search for the “tag.” i search the web allot looking for ideas. del.ico.us is going to help allot in remembering those ideas.

another benefit of del.ico.us is that you can share your bookmarks with others via a web url. if you want to see what i have been bookmarking recently look at http://del.icio.us/ratterrell.

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garbage in, garbage out

i’m not sure what i have done to offend my garbage and recycling men but i know that i have done something. you see they hate me. i can tell that they hate me because they are constantly messing around with me. if i take my garbage and recycling out sunday night for our typical monday pick up (which i usually do) then they wait until around 8 p.m. to actually pick up the trash and recycling. of course, if i decide to take the trash out in the morning those evil garbage collectors come to our neighborhood at 4:30 a.m. when they come in the morning and i don’t have my garbage cans out they make a huge amount of noise just so that i know that they are outside and my garbage and recycling aren’t. i know they do it on purpose.

their evil plans are even more obvious when i only take half of my garbage/recycling load out. if the garbage is out early then only the recycling guy comes by in the morning and if the recycling is the only part i’ve put out at dawn then it’s merely the garbage guys who drive by my house while the sun is rising. the other guy always waits until late at night to come by and pick up their load. i’m sure that they are laughing when they drive by my house. they’re evil i tell you. evil!

i’m not sure what the purpose of their evil plan of ignoring my garbage and recycling is but that’s the genius of their plan – you’re not real sure what they are trying to accomplish. only an evil mastermind would come up with a plan so devious that you can’t tell what its goal is. that’s how evil they are.

i took the garbage out a little while ago so i guess i should move the recycling out now. i’m such a wimp for giving into their manipulation.

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potlucks

lunch @ deangelos
this afternoon has been a time of potluck ideas. first, i received the following email from one of our juniors:

Some of us were at cc’s tonight and Coleman asked what a pot luck was and that reminded me about our pot lucks that we have for Sunday school and I thought we haven’t had one of those in a while and maybe we could have one before the seniors leave! Its just an idea, I thought it might be kinda fun! Well im off to the land of studying! See you Sunday!!

then after reading that email (and smiling to myself) i read andrew jones’ post on pot lucks.

i love pot lucks. i think they are one of the greatest examples of community and hospitality within our CHRISTian faith. it’s not just a meal together but a journey together. we not only eat together but we all contribute to the meal. we’re in the whole thing together. that’s why i love pot lucks and one of the things i am most proud of that has happened within the youth ministry this year is the fact that i have introduced a group of 11th & 12th graders to pot lucks.

if all of us believers had a pot luck with other believers once a week our faith would be much stronger.

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a simple reading packet

when i went to church this morning i found a nice surprise in my mail box – the reading packet from “the simple way.” they sent the packet to prepare me for my time with them in october. the packet is composed of various articles that will help me to understand how to interpret what i will experience. here’s what is in the packet:

i’ve scanned over it all (and so has pam) and it has made me even more excited about going ti e hang out with the people of “the simple way.”

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finally

back on april 14th i confessed to y’all my dirty little secret – that i hide movies at blockbuster. this confession took place in regards to “hotel rwanda.” i hide a copy of it within blockbuster so that i could come back and get it later. of course, that was a month ago. i had meant to go back and rent the movie within a few days. unfortunately that did not happen. i didn’t actually watch the movie until last night. “hotel rwanda” has been out for quite sometime now and thus they had plenty of copies available for rent. all that hiding for nothing.

another genocide is taking place in the sudan. you can be a part of doing something about it so it won’t be another rwanda by going to darfur: a genocide we can stop. you can also write directly to president bush and urge him to do something by clicking here.

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audioblogger

so i was reading a post of ginkworld that mentioned audioblogging. audioblogging has been around for awhile but it’s always been on a paid service. personally i’m cheap and therefore i don’t want to directly pay for something that is basically a joke – i.e. audioblogging for me. when i listened to the audioblog it said that blogger was doing this. that got me to searching a little and low and behold i found audioblogger.com which will post on your blogger site for free. all you have to do is set up an account and then call the phone number and record your entry. for me it’s a long distance number (1 – 661- 716 – BLOG) but with my church cell phone now going nationwide that’s covered too. it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

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addicted

i have to confess that i am addicted to the anime cartoon “yugioh“. my kids found the dueling card game a couple of years ago and went from that to watching the television show on saturday mornings. of course, trying to be a good dad i decided to watch it with them. the problem is that i soon became addicted to the show. i know it’s a children’s cartoon but still i like it. i realized how bad it was a little while ago when i was watching the season finale with my kids and started getting irritated because me kids kept talking. how pathetic is that?