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excuse me

friday, i was at a class retreat for a local private school. as a part of the retreat there was a worship service and a within that there was a sermon. while the sermon was going on i went to sit in the group of kids. i figured that my mere presence (as intimidating as it is) would calm everyone down. the message had just started when suddenly i head “brrrrriipppp” about two people away from me. it was a loud, long, and vicious rip of personality that appeared to have come from the lower orifice of a person not three feet away from me. of course, his position was easily determined because of the fact that everyone in a nice little circle around him turned around and looked straight at him. everyone smirked and laughed but he kept on looking straight ahead. after all, what could he do?

i didn’t say anything to him because i figured there was no need to tell him not to fart during the message. after about 5 minutes of the message once again the sound came from the same guy. everyone started laughing again. it was an embarrassed sort of laughter. everyone was hurting for this kid. i still didn’t say anything to him because i simply wasn’t sure what to say. surely, he wasn’t doing this on purpose, so why tell him to keep it quiet. i simply assumed that he was trying to release a silent but deadly and it slipped out louder than he had expected. while pondering this another fart was released.

we were all really embarrassed for the kid but he just kept looking forward. i figured now i had to say something to him, but what would i say? how do you tell someone to keep the farting quiet? how do you tell someone not to have stomach problems?

while contemplating this i saw the kid’s foot movie and heard the fart sound again. turns out he had been making the noise with his foot the whole time. suddenlt it all made sense. it had seemed kind of wierd the whole time that i never smelled anything.

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just call me emeral

i finally found a style of cooking that fits me. for CHRISTmas pam received a creme brulee set. i’m not entirely sure what creme brulee is but i know that it has a caramelized crust on the top of it. this means that you take brown sugar and burn it until it melts and forms a rich brown crust on top of the dessert. in order to do this the set comes with a small “cooking torch” which is just a smaller version of a regular old propane blow torch. i don’t really know much about cooking indoors (cooking around a fire is my domain), but i know a fair amount about blow torches, so i told pam i would handle the caramelizing. it was my first attempt at doing this but it worked fine. it would appear that i am a natural at cooking with a blow torch. whoever thought of using a propane blow torch in cooking was a genius.

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disciplenow plans

i’m pretty excited because today i received confirmation that the band i really wanted to join us for our disciplenow will be with us. the robbie seay band will be leading us in worship through music during the disciplenow (march 19-21). this is not meant to be as much of an advertisement for the disciplenow as it is a comment on how i like it when GOD works things out. rsb has been helping me out with some of their songs for about two years now. that’s why i wanted to get them involved. but, i was pretty sure that we would not be able to cover their costs for joining us for our disciplenow. turns out that it within their schedule and travel and that means we can get them. i can’t wait.

if you are curious about who they are then go to their website http://www.robbieseayband.com/. i really like them.

on a sad note, pam and i gave into today and bought noah an o.u. jersey (with his birthday money). we tried to talk him out of it but he has been converted and it didn’t feel right saying “no you can’t buy a non-l.s.u. jersey” when football isn’t really that important to us.

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you people are pigs

i just finished taking down all the stuff we set up in the student center for the view last night and i was amazed at the mess that a group of 80 teens can cause. each of you should be ashamed of yourself. did your mother raise you in a barn?

just kidding.

i had a flash back to what my mother used to say to me and neither adam, my almost 10 year old, nor noah, my 7 year old, are around for me to pick at so i had to use ya’ll. see this is what you get to look forward to one day. you’ll probably get married, have to work real hard at having a great marriage (a little hint here – the marriages that stink are the ones in which both parties
don’t work at it all the time), then probably have kids and then you get the joy of blaming them for everything that breaks (and knowing that you are probably right). ah, the joys of parenthood.

yesterday noah decided to swap from being an l.s.u. fan to being an oklahoma fan. neither pam nor i can find out why he swapped. he says he was coloring a snowman in l.s.u. colors and half way through the snow man “it just happened” and he swapped to being an o.u. fan. he describes it like it was a mystical experience. it’s as though the big sooner mascot in the sky unveiled the heavens and spoke to noah – “noah, be a sooner fan!” anyhow, noah brought the snow man home to prove to us that “it just happened” and sure enough it is half l.s.u. colors and then immediately swaps to o.u. colors. apparently my youngest son had a mystical n.c.a.a. football experience. who knew?

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i resolve to

this year i decided to make resolutions that i can actually keep. you see each year i make a list of goals that i want to accomplish during the year. they vary from the serious to the not so serious. i want to memorize a certain number of verses, i want to learn to play the penny whistle, etc. usually i finish about 80% of these goals. this year i have decided that i would pick different goals from normal and i would make sure and accomplish them. one of the goals is that i want to stop playing racquetball twice a week. the only problem with this resolution is that presently i don’t play racquetball at all. therefore, it is impossible for me to quite playing it twice a week since i don’t actually play at all right now. i figure by making this goal i have a pretty good chance of succeeding and if i fail, then i will at least get in better shape while not accomplishing my goal.

so, today i went to play racquetball for the first time this week, figuring that i could then play thursday also and be able to quite the next week. this would accomplish one of my resolutions for the year very quickly and be a good start for the year. the only problem is that after playing today i am presently very sore and i’m not sure that i will be able to play thursday (this means i wouldn’t be able to reach my goal of quitting next week and that is very upsetting). my legs are sore from running all over the court, my right arm is sore from swinging the racquet continually, and my left arm hurts for some unknown reason ( i believe it is from sympathetic pain just from being drug all over the court by the rest of my body). this stinks. who would have ever thought that i would have to kill myself just to get to the point that i could then quite my work-outs. yet i’m dedicated to accomplishing my goals. i will play twice this week so that i can then quite and be an example of how to reach your goals.

i hope you all can learn form my example and the pain it is costing me to accomplish my goals.

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woha

i don’t base my life around football or for that matter any sport but it was still cool to see the l.s.u. tigers when the national championship and experience how baton rouge has responded. i was driving home after watching the game with about 30 people at church and everyone is honking and shouting stupid stuff. just for a whim i droe over to academy sporting goods. they opened up after the game to sell national champsionship t-shirts and hats. they had a line coming out of the bulding reaching all the way to the road. it’s really impressive to see people who are so fanatical about something that they will stay up till one to pay too much for a really cheap t-shirt. you have to love people with that type of non-rationale enthusiasm. 🙂

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sculpture

i have a pretty boring life – i like it boring but i have to admit that it is boring. after raking my yard, sanding down an interior door, and wrestling with my kids the highlight of my day was reading 5 separate articles (about 40 pages or so) concerning the techniques and methods of creating psuedo-live rock for a marine aquarium out of cement. this is exciting stuff. because of this reading i now have the knowldge to create my own live rock that i can then “seed” with organisms from other live rock and thereby have brightly color algaes growing on my psuedo-live rock when my marine aquarium is set up. of course, i now have to make the molds for the live rock and actually mix everything together but i’ll do that next week. then i have to cure and “seed” the stuff so it will be about three months before i actually have my aquarium set up.

on the fun side, i discovered through my reading that one of the best ways to cure the cement psuedo-live rock and get rid of the nasty ph raising stuff that it releases for a short while, is to place the chunks of psuedo-live rock into the resevior of your toliet. this way the water “curing” the cement will change everytime the john is flushed. since, i have to make about 70 pounds of this stuff i will be spreading the psuedo-live rock out amonst a bunch of johns. so if you use the bathroom at my house, the church, or the student center there is a pretty good chance that you will be helping to “cure” my pseudo-live rock and get it ready for the marine aquarium. so if you are at one of those spots then go to the bathroom as often as you can. i appreciate your help in the matter.

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my new desks

just thought i would say that i haven’t been updating the blog recently because i have been working in our study. my father made us two mission style tables to replace our laminated computer desk and trashy table that we had our computers sitting on. before everything looked pretty trashy and just thrown together, now we are computerizing in high style. thanks dad.

of course, the reason i haven’t blogged is because of the fact that i had to remove the old computer desk and swap the computers to the mission style tables. it all looks great now – very mission like, whatever that means. now, i have a nice clean space in which to blog, and anyone who knows anything about me knows that i can’t blog in a non-clean blogging space. it essential to the creative process.

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it works!

spud gun #1

i took the boys and the potato cannon out for it’s initial trial run. this was the first time that my boys had experienced the joys of flying a spud over 350 feet. you should have seen their faces. there is just something about seeing a tuber travel through the air around 400 feet. when i told them what was going to happen you could see they’re disbeief. they were thinking “sure! i bet this potato is going to fly that far.” when i told them that the power for the experiment was going to come from a two second spray of hairspray their lack of faith in my common sense only increased. yet, all that changed when they pressed the ignition switch. when that potato flew my sons belief in me increased dramatically. they loved it and i had a blast introducing them to it.

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happy new year

i’m just hoping you have a great 2005.

thus far my new year has been full of a sick wife, an oldest boy who is sick enough that we are having to do breathing treatments every 4 hours and and youngest son who is coughing up a lung. it’s been a whole lot of fun thus far.