Random Thoughts

-- Glad this thing let me back on without changing my password since it's been so long since I've posted.

-- Nice outing from our "closer-in-training" Craig Hansen tonight: Came in the game and gave up a double, wild pitch, walk, three-run home run, another double and then got lifted. That guy scored after another single and a force out. Final line for Hansen: 0 innings pitched, 3 hits, 4 earned runs, 1 walk. Nice. Can't wait til next year.

-- The sunny side to this though is that it was the Twins doing the damage and I'm rooting for them now that my Sox are out of it.

-- Another upside: David Ortiz (Big Papi) hit his 50th home run of the year, which ties the Red Sox record for most in a season. He should break it later this week. Speaking of home run mashers, Ryan Howard has my other team, the Phillies, on the brink of the playoffs for the first time in 13 years. Here's hoping the Padres or Dodgers fold so we can get some October action.

-- In other sports news, I may be lucky with slots (roughly three encounters over the last 20 years and I'm up about $30 -- which is good for me) but I'm definitely NOT lucky in fantasy football. I lost one game because the officials missed Heath Miller stepping out of bounds and Nick Saban was a bit too tentative with the challenge flag and another game because, well, take your pick ... my margin of defeat was 0.16 points. Yeah, we use decimals. To translate that into yards, that would be less than 2. Painful. Utterly painful. Being well prepared and having good players doesn't matter if you're just plain unlucky.

-- Everyone together now: wah wah wah! (thank you for crying with me)

-- Speaking of crying ... got a wee bit weepy watching the Steve Irwin memorial service on Animal Planet tonight. I feel bad for his family, who will miss him most of all.

-- While watching footage of his exploits I felt sudden regret that I hadn't tried to wrestle one of the alligators we saw down in the Everglades earlier this summer.

-- Today was one of the best comp days I've ever had. I get a comp day when I work on the weekend, which was the case this past weekend when Naomi and I were visiting a church in Savannah. I spent all day Saturday meeting with people interested in missions, which was great fun, but meant that I didn't have much of a weekend. Got in around 11 Saturday night and then spent most of Sunday at church for a missions committee meeting.

Anyway ... I slept in an hour, had leftover waffles and bacon (yum; diet starts at lunch) and then went to meet my pastor to "brief" him on missions. He's speaking on missions topics the whole month of November and has invited me to give him ideas for messages. Banzai! Unfortunately, some kind of family crisis arose just a bit into our time so that got cut short. (You might take a sec to pray for him. No idea what about, but the Lord knows). So...

... prayed for him, then left and took advantage of the early end to our meeting to get my hair cut. Normally I don't like dropping $15-20 to have someone do something which I could easily do myself were my head not actually attached to my body, but every once in a while something compels me to go ahead and have it done. In some cases the shaggy, unkempt look is what compels me. In this case it was the hack job that I did on myself last week in an attempt to buy another week of financial freedom before giving in to the barber. Alas, I still have some measure of financial freedom in addition to a nice haircut all while still having my head squarely attached to my shoulders which, in the end, is a good thing.

... After this Naomi and I went out on a date. Recently we've been rolling in the chain restaurant gift cards. Got a $50 one with credit card points, another $50 one as a thank you from a friend who stayed with us and $20 in vouchers as a reward for Naomi giving blood yesterday. So we decided to cash some of these in today. Went to Olive Garden and totally gorged ourselves: All you can eat breadsticks, Zuppa Toscana and all-you-can-eat pasta (we each only managed one serving though -- tricky Olive Garden people), followed by some rich chocolate cake with vanilla sauce and sliced strawberries. It was all very yummy, but we were filled to near-bursting, which, had it happened, would have grossed out the other guests. (I guess the diet will start at dinner).

We had already planned to walk through Blanchard Park when we were done, but our Great Olive Garden Gorge turned the walk into something more like a waddle. Waddle a quarter mile, sit in the shade and rest. Waddle some more, rest some more. After roughly 2 miles in the 2 o'clock sun we were cursing ourselves. Conclusion: hooray for gift cards and Olive Garden; boo for lack of self-control. Should have ordered the salad.

An hour or two of digestion later I managed to get outside and cut the grass in our backyard, which is looking very healthy right now. I also cleaned mud off my boots -- mud left over from our South Dakota adventure (see previous blog entry), added pages to our scrapbook, filed missions papers from our church and finished off a library book about the history of ESPN (OK, I admit, I only skimmed it; but I still feel a sense of accomplishment).

I must confess that I did download my PIONEERS email today (I can't help it, I'm a company man!). And, even worse, I replied to one or two. (What can I say? I can't stop. I need group counseling). But nevertheless, I come to the end of the day feeling rested and relaxed and ready to go back to the office. I got stuff done, spent time outside, didn't waste much time with TV, spent quality time with the wife and have a shiny new haircut on my still-attached head. I'd say it was a good day.

Oh, and dinner was a bowl and a half of Honey Nut Cheerios. Does that qualify as starting my diet?

Oh, and one more thing ... Naomi was offered a job at Campus Crusade this afternoon! (But more about that later...)

One whacked weekend

OK, so it may be premature to write about the weekend when it's only 10:30 on Saturday night -- there may be more adventures yet to come. But even if there aren't, it's already been one whacked weekend. Right now, I'm not enjoying it because the most recent whackiness is that my nose is running like a faucet and I feel like there's a vice on my temples. I was fine until we stopped for dinner in Watertown, South Dakota. Put the car in park and all of a sudden, wham!, allergy city. And I've been stuffed up ever since. Not fun.

But that's not all the wackiness. Yesterday (Friday) I woke up in Minneapolis. We -- Naomi, me and Naomi's friend Catherine, who was her maid of honor -- hopped in our rental car (a 2006 Chevy Malibu) around 1pm and headed for Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We were on our way to the Life Light Fest -- a three day Christian music festival that's free. Free is good, so we hit the road. We could also meet up with some of our friends/supporters who live near there.

Well the weather was nice for us on our drive, but it rained a lot in Sioux Falls, so when we got there ... well.. the parking lot, which was a field, had turned into a bog. We managed to find some grass and parked there but the grounds where the concert was held was quite muddy. And it started raining again. Then it stopped. Then it started again. Do you remember Woodstock 94 -- the 25th anniversary show? It was like that.

So we stood in the rain watching Rick Warren, Rebecca St. James and Audio Adrenaline. But the real fun began when we left. Cars were stuck in the mud all over the place. Catherine and I helped one car get unstuck and tried but failed to get a big church van out of a rut. When it was our turn to try I tried to gun it across a field but soon realized this was not a good strategy. So Naomi hopped into the driver's seat and Catherine and I pushed. This worked, but a spinning wheel managed to get us rather spattered. By the time I got back in the car my boots and the bottom of my jeans were covered. The car was too. Turns out the wheels were especially bad.

Finally getting out on the freeway the car started to shake badly at about 55 mph. By this time it's about 11 or 11:30. We stopped at a gas station and managed to scrap some of the mud out of the wheel wells, but that didn't help much. So off we went down the interstate to where we staying the night ... at 55 mph.

Normally this wouldn't be such a bad thing, except that South Dakota is one of the few states I know of that has a 75 mph speed limit! It was painful having to go 55 in a 75 zone. I had to drive with my blinkers on so that the people behind me wouldn't run into me.

This painful pace turned a one hour trip into a much longer one -- and of course it was pouring too. Not fun. We finally arrived at our destination at about 1 in the morning. Got off the interstate in this town of 600. Story over, right? Nope.

Left at the end of the ramp, down the road into town, second right and then the blue lights started flashing behind me. The cop tells me I was doing 36 in a 25. Couldn't find the registration for the stupid rental car either. 10 minutes later he tells me my ticket would be $99 but he's letting me off with a warning. Never did find the car registration. We complete the block and a half to our friends' house at about 1:20, shed our mud-caked clothes and head for bed. Now we're done right? Nope.

Finally crawl into bed downstairs in their basement about 1:40, turn the light out and ... a cricket chirps. And chirps again. Then pauses just long enough for us to drift almost to sleep and starts going again. At about 2:30 in the morning we give up on the bed and move to couches in various rooms in the house. I eventually sleep on two different couches before waking up around 9:30.

So this morning we cleaned the car -- inside and out -- and scraped gobs and gobs of mud from inside the wheels (which was causing the car to vibrate so badly). I took it to a carwash too and discovered on the way home that the road into town goes from 45 to 25 very abruptly and that's where the yahoo cop must have clocked me. Can you say "speed trap"?

We hit the road today around 3pm for the journey up to Fargo, North Dakota, which is where I am now. The car's running fine. Unfortunately, so is my nose. So I'm going to bed. More adventures tomorrow I'm sure.