I think Roy was surprised for his birthday party at Longhorn. Alot of people showed up for it. It was good to be a part of it.
I’ve noticed that Paoli Peaks is expecting to open the weekend of December 14th. This is the earliest I can remember them being opened. Usually they shoot for a Christmas opening since everyone will be on Christmas vacation.
Really not much else is going on. I’ve got to figure out if I’m going on this mission trip to El Salvador by Jan. 11, which by coincidence is when I’ll be skiing (weather permitting). I still don’t know if I’ll go. I wish there were more people who I knew better who were going. The people who are already going are already pretty tight knit and I’m not sure how they’d react with an extra person in the group. Why do some people go year after year while other people go just once? I haven’t figured that out.
Hanging of Every Word of the Sermon
To be quite honest I don’t hang on every word of every sermon. But who does really? Unless it is a really good preacher who I haven’t heard in a while. I found myself doing this mind wandering today. The subject was “Thanksgiving,” a subject which has probably been worn out over the past few days. Not that I’m not thankful for what I have. I am grateful for what I have.
Then again, both services…AM and PM…had me around families with small children….loud small children. Probably should have used the nursery or training room.
A friend and I have been having these ongoing discussions about people who don’t return emails. That is slightly annoying, especially when you know the email is valid…the person checks it frequently…and when you ask a specific question. You tend to take it personal when someone doesn’t bother responding. However I rarely use email to communicate anymore. It’s more IM with me. I’ve come to find out most people are really too busy to bother with email…unless they want to forward you some lame joke.
I suspect Tennessee will be going to the Peach Bowl, which is played on New Year’s Eve at 6:30PM. How this will play into the church’s New Year Eve’s party is unknown. Probably someone will request we show the game on the big screen. The Peach Bowl is cool. It’s been around for a while and most people have heard of it. It’s not like some stupid bowl like the Outback Bowl which just came about so the restaurant could throw their name around…and so 2 mediocre teams could play each other for the excitement of their locality.
Case of the Missing Church Directories
I left a huge stack (at least 10 or 15) youth directories in one of the classrooms at church. After class was over, all of them were gone. I know there wasn’t that many kids there who hadn’t gotten one. How did we loose so many directories? Did the teachers just throw directories out to EVERYONE including one time visitors who were there visiting relatives for Thanksgiving weekend? “Here, kid, have a directory which cost the church $3 each to print up. We know we’ll never see you again, but we want you to have this directory which you’ll toss in the trash as soon as you get home.”
I hate to see money go to waste. I guess I’ll have to hire armed guards for the next set of directories Kevin prints up.
Sibling Rivalry
Since I did Todd Burka’s webpage his older brother, Scott, has wanted me to help him with his webpage. Well it’s up now. I think I may have inspired some friendly competition between the brothers. Todd has a webpage, therefore Scott wants one too. Both webpages are a work in progress. Maybe we’ll be able to get something better over Christmas break.
Todd really should have been older than Scott. He’s got the determined personality of an older brother. Scott comes across as being timid…even a bit unsure of himself, or at least that’s how he was growing up. Scott may have changed since then.
Speaking of webpages, I stumbled across the webpage of an aquaintance from Lipscomb. Apparently he’s in a rural part of China teaching English. I’m sure he’ll have plenty of stories to tell when he gets back.
Mt. Juliet’s Christmas Parade
The Mt. Juliet Christmas parade is today. They usually schedule it depending when Lebanon’s Christmas parade is….which in turn schedule depending when Nashville’s parade is….which in turn schedule their parade according to if there’s a Titans home game. It was a bad day for a parade. UT is playing Kentucky at 11:30, while the parade was scheduled to start at noon. More people are likely to stay home and watch the game.
The Mt. Juliet High School band isn’t even participating in the parade. A friend of mine who is in the band said that there was not enough people to march. So they decided not to march. I guess many of them were visiting relatives for the Thanksgiving break….or working…. It might cause problems when trying to build community support for the band. Many community leaders could care less about the number of band contests the band goes to throughout the year. They only care about if they show up at the parade. MJ isn’t even going to Lebanon’s Christmas parade.
Thanksgiving: The Alternative Christmas
From what I understand, many people use Thanksgiving as an alternative Christmas. Visit the inlaws on Thanksgiving; visit the other side of the family for Christmas…or vice versa. While half of America is busying driving and flying around the country, Thanksgiving was never a big deal in my family. Many times we’d have our grandparents over who live just 20 minutes away. And that was it. Mom always goes shopping on the Friday afterwards. I choose to always stay home, not because of Buy Nothing Day. It’s because I don’t like crowds. Any sale which might save me a few dollars is not worth the hassel caused by actually trying to get to the retail establishment.
They were actually giving parking lot traffic reports on NewsChannel 5 today. Telling people where to park at the local malls.
The 2 digital pictures I took of the family’s thankgiving meal didn’t turn out that great, so I won’t be posting them here. I was disappointed too.
Why is White Bluff Church of Christ linking to the Drudge Report?
Greymatter
Nerdy Stuff:
Successfully installed Greymatter on the church website. Basically it is a utility which helps webmasters update their webpage easily. Kinda like blogger except the scripts are stored on your own server instead of Blogger.com. Hopefully this will be one step closer to getting the preacher to update the webpage himself instead of me doing it for him. I already maintain too many sites and turning it over to the people who actually “own” the sites will make it easier on everyone.
I’m surprised about how easy Greymatter was to install. I had things going within an hour. I *may* use it in lieu of Blogger on this site, depending if I can get CGIs working on this page.
Trio TV supposedly is running a 50+ hour marathon of old Dave Letterman shows this weekend. But alas, I do not have access to this wonderous television network of Trio TV. Maybe they will end up adding it to the extended basic cable lineup which seems to grow every few years. Interesting thought – when was the last time you heard of anyone wanting to see Leno reruns? It’s because you don’t. No one wants to watch Leno in reruns. Letterman reruns are still as funny as when they were first broadcasted.
Thanksgiving
When I was in China, my friend and I were standing on a street corner in Shanghai. A beggar came up to us and asked us to put money into his bowl. Without even giving it a second thought my friend gave the beggar the equivalent of ten cents. The beggar went on his way happily.
Even the poorest homeless person in America is still much better off that some people in 3rd world countries. We live in the greatest country on earth. We should be thankful, not only on this day of thanksgiving, but on everyday.
Things that I’m thankful for.
God, my country, family, friends….
Hot summer days, fireworks on the 4th….
Good health, memories, a roof over my head….
In America we seem to have everything mixed up. While we are sitting around eating turkey on Thanksgiving…feeling thankful for what we have….ironically we are asked to make out our Christmas lists so we can get more stuff. The two polar opposite ideologies seem to collide right around the end of November.
I see that David Shannon will be a keynote speaker at Evangelism University at Savannah Church of Christ in January.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Thanksgiving makes me want to rent Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Steve Martin. John Candy. By some odd twist of fate, this movie is nowhere to be found on the tv schedule during the next 4 days. In fact, I haven’t seen it on tv for quite a while. I’m surprised Comedy Central hasn’t gotten a hold of it and rerun it a billion times just like National Lampoon’s Vacation.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles has that Thanksgiving flavor to it. An odd couple find themselves together trying to get home for Thankgiving. Classic.
Many of us are wondering will UT get to a bowl game this year? Probably. UT has enough of a fan base willing and desiring to travel for a bowl game. It might be one of those bowl games you’ve never heard of…like the Outback Bowl or something stupid. But it will be something. Rest assured that UT will be at some bowl game over the Christmas Break.
Questions about this El Salvador Mission Trip
- Bathrooms When our group leader brought up the bathroom situation, someone in the meeting made some remark about how bad it smelled. They suggested we just dig our own hole. I’ve been around some bad bathrooms before. Last time I went down the Ocoee on a whitewater rafting trip, the toilet at the rental place was stopped up. Pretty nasty.
Then again, the bathrooms in El Salvador couldn’t be any worse than the best squatter bathrooms in China. As long as they have bowls…. - Logistics of packing We are told we can bring our own 2-man tent, but I don’t know how that will fit in a suitcase. Would I be sleeping outside or indoors? The previous year’s pictures I saw showed people sleeping outside in tents. Also we are told to grab the pillow from the airline. Those pillows are pretty small and I’m not sure it would be that comfortable. Although I’m sure working all day dishing out pills and doing head scrubs would make me tired enough to sleep on anything.
- Showers They use a camp shower with one gallon of water. I guess I’m not used to showering with such little water. I ought to try using just one gallon of water and see how long that lasts. Not that it’s a big deal anyways….
- Unbiased advice from others My brother-in-law went to El Salvador a couple of years ago and he recommended NOT doing it, at least based on the trip he was on. He said it was miserable at times with the sand storm. So now I’m not sure if these die-hard Latin American Missions people are just telling me part of the story just to get me to go. I don’t want to go if it is going to be extremely difficult.
I realize that things might not be wrapped up in a neat little package. It will be hard at times. Things will be inconvenient. I’m prepared for that. I just need to really take things into consideration before I make my decision.
Yesterday I helped Todd Burka setup his webpage. Initually he just wanted to host MP3s on there. I told him to ask around and see if there were any restrictions for him storing that type of stuff on his webpage. Somehow I don’t think UT deletes old webpages, since this one is still online a good 2 years after Jeremy graduated.