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| One of the gems, in my opinion, of the online experience is the videos of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report on Comedy Central's website. I find their take on politics and media to be refreshing. Of course I disagree with many of the "editorial stances" the programs take, but I find that my brain gets engaged while I'm laughing.
Anyway, one of the great joys of the Colbert Report is when a guest just doesn't get it. Take a look.
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| I just discovered that the Post Office is planning to change the rate structure for the mailing of periodicals and other such things. This is not all that much a surprise. However, the shock is that the rates are extremely unfavorable to small publications. This is bad news for academic publications and the like. So here's a petition and some details...
http://action.freepress.net/campaign/postal
The deadline is April 23, If you so choose....
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| Last night Amy and I went to a birthday party for some of the kids we babysit. It was a lot of fun. One of the boys in attendance was a little fireball. He was a little disrespectful to me telling me I was a girl bunny and such things. Then he told me that my goatee was on fire. I got a Forbsian twinkle in my eye...
"Oh really, could you tell me at what temperature hair burns?"
"Uuuhhhh, five billion seventy hundred six million...... [it was mostly gibberish]"
"Really, I didn't quite catch that, could you tell me again?"
"Uh, what were we talking about?"
"Hair, at what temperature it burns."
"Uh, what were we talking about?"
"I'll be nice, you can give your answer in degrees Celsius, Fahrenheit, or Kelvin"
"What ARE You!? Some kind of Robot?"
I busted out laughing. My vocabulary was so confusing for a boy of seven years old the only cognitive domain he had was a robot. Of course he knew I wasn't a robot, but it was funny nevertheless.
Later on that evening I wrestled four boys concurrently. It was a mixture between wresting and being pelted by random Nerf balls and other toys. I was expecting bruises in the morning but I am no worse for the wear.
I enjoy roughhousing, I didn't do much of it with my dad when I was little, but it was fun. There's something about wrestling against an adult when you have absolutely no chance. I remember this one time, my dad and I were waiting outside a Jo-ann Fabrics waiting for my mother. We started roughhousing in the back seat. When we were finished I started reading in the back seat and my dad sat up front. In a few minutes there was a rap on the window. It was a lady cop. Someone had called the police thinking my dad was abusing me!
The lesson? Little boys generally enjoy wresting, just don't do it in a parking lot where people can mistake it for something it's not.
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| Currently my job is as a painter. No, not an artist, but a painting contractor. The simplified version for the kids? "I paint houses" (I love their incredulity when I tell them it takes more than a day). Now, everyone knows that all houses are not created equal. I've done work in little cottages to legitimate mansions.
Tomorrow I will be in one of those legitimate mansions. This is a lakefront house under constructions. It is gargantuan. I don't even want to know how many square feet it has.
It has...
5 bedrooms each with a walk-in closets AND bathrooms for each bedroom.
A beautiful office overlooking the lake.
A crows nest at the top of the house with probably more square footage than our apartment and a jacuzzi is up there
three car garage
massive living room with a wall of windows overlooking the lake.
a theater room
You get the picture. I could go on and on about the many features of this house, but the one that takes the cake is that there will be a helipad in the backyard, oh did I mention that this person lives in the state capitol... this is his lake home/investment!
I confess, in houses like this it is very difficult to keep a correct attitude. My flesh wants luxury like these wealthy people are getting. But, when I stop to think about it, I don't like it. May I never retain so much money that I construct a house so big I can't live in it. Self-sufficiency is damaging to the Christian walk. I am to rely on God for everything. That's hard enough as a seminary student with his needs met. I can't imagine how hard it would be if I had that much.
Now I don't want to come off as holier-than-thou. I'm not better than this guy because I rent a one-bedroom apartment. Instead, I write this as a reminder that my life should be in service to God. When I say I'm living "The Life" it should be a reflection of my discipleship and obedience to Christ, not the American dream.
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| One of the hardest things of the first year of seminary and the first couple months of marriage was to have the social structure established in college fall away. Of course many of my friends were still in the area, but my change in location and the time and effort I was pouring into my relationship with Amy made it difficult. I don't regret any of it, but I really did miss a lot of my friends.
Now, we're figuring out how to have friends as a couple, and it's great. We've started a small group, and boy is it small. But on the flip side, it's easier to get involved with each other and go deeper. For example, only one guy could make it tonight to small group. We talked, got to tell him the story of our wedding day and honeymoon (as much as one can do in an abbreviated fashion). Also, we got to talk about a budding relationship of his. Amy and I got to dispense advice. It's not that we have loads of great wisdom (in fact our best advice was to get advice from someone older and more experienced), but it was a chance to share what we learned as we went through the whole courting phase through marriage.
If there ever was one true thing about all of the pre-marital counseling we received, there are just some things that you have to figure out on your own. How Amy and I relate to others as a couple is definitely one of them. We still have lots to learn but that process is a good one.
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