Thursday, December 20, 2007

Monday, November 12, 2007

Papa Steve and Mama G and Ethan

Could we be any more excited?



















I submit that we could not.

Thursday, November 08, 2007

Lil' E Busts a Rhyme





Wik-a wik-a wik-a,

My name is Lil’ E,
My hat is bigger than me,
I may not be too large,
But I’ll show you who’s in charge.

Word.


Peace. We Out.

Waco Today

I was on my way back to work after lunch today with several of my co-workers, and one of them was commenting on something in the "Waco Today" magazine. If you live in Waco you have probably seen this magazine, but if you live somewhere else you certainly have seen similar publications. It has short articles in it about relatively mundane things, recipes, and whatnot, but it is primarily used as a vehicle to promote various activities around town, and to allow people to have their pictures published, and to look and see if anyone that they know attended different events, and so on. In between the Symphony ads, the recipes, and other items, the "filler" consists of light articles about things in Waco and photo shoots of various Waco residents attired in seasonal clothing. This month the feature was about coats, and they decided to tie in that most human need to buy a new coat with the local charitable organization Caritas, which collects clothing and food for those less fortunate in our community, and with Thanksgiving coming we are all thinking about all that for which we are so thankful.

So, there are a dozen or so pictures of young ladies wearing coats priced in the $150 - $400 range posing on, in front of and cavorting around (I wish I were making this up, but I am not that imaginative), bales of used clothing, shelves full of generic mac and cheese and other foodstuffs donated for the hungry and needy in our community. The problem is, I don't think it was intended as irony.

I have no idea what to say about that except, that is Waco Today.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Tagged.

My mysterious friend on another continent tagged me with the following. I assume it would be the worst form of netiquette for me not to go along with this.


The Rules:
1. I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.
2. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog (about their 8 things) and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.



1. I was born left-handed, but as the youngest of three boys, with my oldest brother being only two and a half years older than me, my mom decided that my family could not afford to buy all new mitts, scissors, and whatnot, so she decided that she would train me to use my right hand for everything. You would think that this would make me slightly ambidextrous, but, in fact, I am pretty useless at everything, no matter which hand I use. This also contributed to the fact that I could not tie my shoes until relatively late, and I was born way before Velcro.



2. I have lived in Texas for almost 33 years, and yet, I don't think of myself as being a Texan.








3. I have remarkably thin wrists considering how wide the rest of me is. (This is not my wrist, by the way.)








4. My first swim lesson was in Long Island Sound. It consisted of a fat guy rowing me about 50 yards out in a boat, throwing me out, and telling me to swim back to shore. If you made it to the beach, you got your Red Cross Minnow card. I sank like a rock. Consequently I would not go above waist high in water until I was 11.


5. I don't like to take baths. Maybe because of the previous fact, but mostly because, like Lewis Grizzard, I do not want to wash my face in water that I have been sitting in.




6. In the entire time that we have been married I have held three jobs. Two of them have been for the last 25 years. I only mention this, because I have learned that longevity on any job is becoming a thing of the past.





7. Growing up we had two dogs, one a Pekingese, the other a Brittany Spaniel, both were named Joey. We loved dogs, we just weren't too good at coming up with names.












8. One of my mostest favoritest foods in the world is Bleu Cheese. I can eat this stuff right out of the package on a cracker, melted on a hamburger, in salad dressing, whatever. The sharper the flavor the better. Mama G just refuses to have anything to do with me after I eat it, until I go and brush my teeth.
If I now must tag other persons, then I would like to pick on, er, um, pick Tito (he can publish his list on Britty's Blog), Mark M., Alan B., and Cliffie.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

The importance of an answer to a question.




26 years ago today, a rather short man holding a book looked up at the two of us and asked Jan a question that fantastically changed my life for the better. Why she responded to that question by saying "I do" will forever remain one of life's greatest mysteries. But she did, we have, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Happy Anniversary to Momma G, my wife and best friend!

Saturday, June 02, 2007

Something that happened today.

I know that I am not the most ecologically with-it sort of person. I don't sort my refuse, have a compost pile in my backyard, or that sort of thing. But something happened today that really irritated me. Scott and I were on our way home after taking four tables to the church that we had borrowed for a garage sale that we had at our house today, when Scott commented that there was a new SUV ahead of us. He is at that age where he is always on the look out for a car that he might like for dad to buy him, and pointing out possibilities. (He turned 16 two months ago, and I think he is not enjoying sharing a truck with the old man.) Well, when I looked at the car in question, the driver tossed a bag of something, I assume the remains of a sandwich or whatnot, which unceremoniously plopped in the middle of the road. Not that it makes it any better or worse, but we were on a residential street, in front of a bunch of peoples houses, and I was left thinking, "what would this person think if people routinely just tossed their crappy garbage out of their windows on their street, or in their yard." I am sure a portion of my feelings are based on the fact that when Jan and I first got married we lived on 15th Street and Lyle, and had a large side yard that fronted a good stretch of Lyle, and I couldn't begin to describe the collection of trash that I would have to pick up every time I mowed, that people tossed out of their cars, but I will tell you that invariably there were diapers mixed in with whatever I found. I guess that experience made me realize that anywhere you drop your trash, you are just leaving it for someone else to pick up, and I can't imagine doing that, which causes me to be amazed when I see it happen. I should add, that we pulled up next to the littering car at the next light, and we just looked at the driver and passengers, with our best "what the heck is wrong with you" expression on our faces, but the returning look we received told us all that I needed to know. Some people still hold to the belief that they are the center of the universe, and the rest of us are here merely for their convenience.

Thanks for allowing me to rant.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Additional Post

This one is just so you don't have to look at Cliff anymore. You are welcome.

Why are you still looking at this blog?

Clearly this blogger has nothing to say. Otherwise he would comment more than once every two months or so.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

The definitive Cliff sighting.

B-Hood pointed out on her blog that you can see Cliff on the new Quizno's commercial, but I thought that it was incumbent upon me to point out that this is not the first time that Cliff has dabbled as an actor.


The movie is Moulin Rouge, and in order to keep this a family-friendly blog, I "corrected" the outfit that the statue lady is wearing. Cliff turned out to be quite a dancer as he hoofed it to the tune of "Like a Virgin". Ask him about the experience sometime.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Scripture of the Week

Judges 4:21 "But Jael, Heber's wife, picked up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to him while he lay fast asleep, exhausted. She drove the peg through his temple into the ground, and he died." NIV

And you thought that you were having a bad week.

I actually tried to get someone to recite that as their favorite scripture during the share time on the prison trip a couple of weeks ago, but Tito pointed out that one of the offenders might have shouted out, "Hey, that's why I'm in here!"

Friday, March 09, 2007

On Cupcaking and other things that happened in prison.

One of my frequent blog readers... Ok, my only blog reader, has asked me to explain what the expression "Cupcaking" means. Well, all I can say is that if you were on the CABC Choir Prison Trip a couple of weekends ago you would have seen a world-class example of cupcaking. There are several slang definitions for cupcaking, so to clarify I am referring to flirting. Some of the singers appeared to be looking a little too deeply into each others eyes during their number to be appropriate for a religious song. But enough about Cornerstone.

We had a great time, and you can read much more about it on Brit's blog.

But, if we had just parked a little bit closer to the prisons, we wouldn't had to have walked so far. (tee hee hee).

Monday, February 05, 2007

Important Legislation Update

Apparently there is a movement in California to legislate appropriate parenting. According to this article, if legislation is passed, it would be a misdemeanor punishable by a $1,000 fine or one year in jail to spank your child who is under the age of 4. The article quotes experts who seem to be of the opinion that only parents who allow things to get out of control ever resort to spanking, and suggests alternatives to spanking. It also indicates that spanking can have no long term ill effects on a child, but some children do suffer long term effects from the experience. Interesting to me is the poll that was attached, which, at the time I read the article indicated that 89% of nearly 10,000 people who have responded think that "There's nothing wrong with an occasional spank on the butt." One can only assume that most of those respondents were not this particular legislator's constituents.

UPDATE: This article talks about new legislation that is pending in New York that will make it a crime to listen to an Ipod or talk on the cell phone while crossing a street in NYC. The impetus for this legislation apparently was the death of two individuals in Brooklyn who stepped in front of moving vehicles while listening to their tunes. I think that is essentially a case of natural selection. If you don't have the ability to listen to music and walk and look out for cars or buses, (in the street, which is where you expect to find them), then chances are if you didn't get hit by the car you were destined to succumb to something else fairly quickly.

Saturday, February 03, 2007

New Post

Giving in to peer pressure, I am compelled to post something on my blog. Why the delay in posting anything to the blog, you ask? Because I had nothing to say. I still have nothing profound to say, but I am going to say it anyway. I had a great opportunity last week to go with the Adult Mission Trip to the Valley, specifically we were working on two churches. The first was a church in a small community called PeƱitas. We were only there for a day and a half, but we were able to get quite a bit done. This was a new church building, but there were a number of things that had not been completed. The last part of the week we worked at a small church in the town of La Grulla, which is further west on the way to Rio Grande City. Our plans were to put up siding that we had bought for the church all around the outside of the older parts of the church building, but it rained all week, and we were not able to do that. So we concentrated on what we could do on the inside. The church had an annex that they had built, and it was not completed. We got to work on that, and by the end of the week, the space was completed, and ready to be used. On Friday I talked to one of the ladies of the church, who told me that they had built this annex 4 years earlier and had not been able to use it that whole time. I realized, once again, how it does not matter what our plans are, even if they are well thought out and perfectly executed,
God's plans are so much better. If not for the rain He sent that week, they would have had a church that was pretty on the outside, but still not fully functional on the inside. My prayer for each of us is that we are open to allow God to do the work He needs to do on the inside, and stop spending our time worrying so much about the appearances of the outside.