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After a full day of bike riding (kinda – I got called to work about an hour into the ride), swimming (yes, the water was freezing but we did swim), and playing, Stephanie and I took Zander to see “Open Season” last night.  It’s a cartoon about a domesticated bear that saves a deer from being slaughtered by a hunter before open hunting season begins.  It started out great – it was funny and Zander was glued to the big screen.  Then out of nowhere, Stephanie and I both look at each other and say “Did he just say Orgy?” (more…)

OK – I don’t have long to post – I’m at work.  I rode my bike on Monday this week, but yesterday was our church’s big fall festival event so I drove to make sure I would be home in time to get to the church in time.  I drove today because I had a doctor appointment this morning.

I only rode the one day last week that I wrote the original post by the same name.  So, to recap – I’ve ridden my bike for roughly 75 miles in a week and a half.  I was riding about 100 miles a week before I so quickly ‘fell’ off the horse to begin with.

I’m hoping to get the ‘bod pod’ test done today – I know I’ve gained weight since my last ‘weekly update’ over a month ago.  I’ll post the results as soon as I have them…

Thank you for flooding my email box with concern about my lack of posting regarding weightloss – it was touching that you noticed my weekly update turned into monthly (er… not even) updates.  I was overwhelmed that you guys would not let me quit!… (cricket, cricket, cricket…)  (more…)

So, I’m in the car (I should have been on my bike, but I’ll save that for another post) and I’m listening to Christian radio.  There is a preacher on and although I didn’t catch what he was preaching on, I did hear him say:

“We must be consistent on a regular basis“

WHAT? I thought, sure – we really shouldn’t be consistent on an irregular basis.  This thought really tickled my funny bone until I stopped laughing long enough to consider what I was laughing about. 

Its late (about 1:15 in the morning) and I haven’t typed out all my thoughts on the state of Christian outreach.  I’ll assume the preacher on this station is a good man and that he simply had a ‘GWBush’ moment.  But the moment on the radio underscored my impression of our efforts to reach the ‘lost’.  We don’t sound intelligent, we don’t sound like we understand the message we preach. 

I hear TV preachers and radio preachers and it seems to me that most of the time dedicated to christian media outreaches is spent raising funds so we can be on TV or Radio.  We fundraise so we can continue to pay for our fundraising activities.  I know this has little to do with a preacher that misspoke on a radio program…

I knew I should have turned off my phone when I went to bed last night!  I was awaken at 2 am with the sound of my phone going off – I had a page – Three actually.  We have service level agreements that we have to meet.  If no one respondes to the first page, we get another 15 mins later.  If no one respondes to that one, we get another.  The page this morning is a Sev 2 ticket.  We have three severity levels.  Sev 1 tickets have to be responded to within 15 mins.  Sev 2’s give us something like four hours.

Anyway, here I am at 2:30 in the morning, working.  I should have turned off my phone…

We are having a blast with Jason and Heather and little Alora.  They flew in on Wednesday night and will be here until Tuesday morning.  We hung out at a local mall Thursday, went to Tombstone Friday (Stephanie and I had never been before either), enjoyed a lazy day on Saturday, went to church this morning and tonight decided on a movie night over heading to Flagstaff. (more…)

Well, I’m back from my North Carolina trip!  I got to see my wife and my son after ten days of being apart.  I hope to get all of my NC stories posted, but its 2:30 in the morning here so I am keeping it short.

I was out on my pastor’s boat for a couple of hours Monday morning, which was only possible because my working hours were still west coast time (9am for me was 12 Noon here).  Anyway, I was invited to go fishing with Pastor Mayberry, which I gladly excepted.  I don’t get to fish often and I was looking forward to it.  I stayed the night at Pastor’s house to get an early start that day.  We got up, hitched up the boat and headed for the store to gas up and buy some junk food breakfast.  I had a diet Sun Drop and a candy bar (remind me to post about Sun Drop soda for all you non-southerners).  Pastor has a similar combination of soda pop and candy breakfast.  We finished at the filling station and headed for the water.

Pulling up to the dock that morning was awesome!  The water was still and there was a chill in the air, so the water evaporated into a slow fog.  The fish were sure to be biting today!  We backed the boat to the water, I held the tow line, Pastor pulled the car up to the parking lot and we were ready to fish… except I noticed Pastor only had one fishing pole in the boat.  Surely he didn’t intend for us to share?

Me: “Pastor you only have one pole in the boat”
Pastor: “oh yeah, you ain’t got no fishing license”
Me: “Oh, so what does that mean?”
Pastor: “You can drive the boat”

🙂

Its been nine days.  I miss my wife.  I want to go home.  I miss my wife.

Ok — a friend of mine has a blog similar to mine but rarely posts anything. I would call him and say, “Com’on! Post something already!” but he would reply that although he had a lot of thoughts he would like to share, he didn’t have time to write them out in a manner he was willing to post for scrutiny. I remember thinking, you could spend forever reworking something to get it perfect and never post it. Well, I’m guilty… (more…)

Its time.  Tomorrow morning I get on a plane for NC.  Tomorrow night, I’ll be at an East Gaston High School Football game with several of my high school alumni.  I’m excited to go, and I look forward to seeing everyone, but the trip is bitter sweet.  I haven’t been away from my wife for nine days since before we were married.  The thought of not seeing her for nine days makes me question why I was willing to go on this trip without her.

I want to show off my wife and my son at the reunion.  I want them by my side at Michelle’s wedding.  I’m going to miss them a lot while I’m gone.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been way from Stephanie before – some travel with my last job, or men’s only events at my church.  But never for nine whole days.  I’m going to miss her a lot — I know we will be able to talk on the phone every night, but its not the same when you cannot cuddle up next to your wife to talk about your day, and listen about hers…

Pray for me 🙂