On a lighter note, Happy Birthday to “the Pretty One” who is celebrating a milestone birthday today.
I know better than to publish her age on a public forum, so let’s just say she is entering her 4th decade…
If you did the math, and discovered that she is 40, you are just stupid.
(Was that too harsh?)
Tonight, one of my Youth Group kids entered eternity.
As strong as I like to think my faith is. This one is hard to take.
I am grateful for the promise of a reunion, but tonight… it just hurts.
In one of my earliest blog posts, I talked about an experience of going to the local “Snob” grocery store. I won’t rehash it, just go ahead and look through my old blog entries if you want to find it.
Today, however, I went to a new “Snobbier” grocery store that opened up near our home. I was quite impressed at how classy the place looked. I felt quite bad that I was only there to pick up a frozen pizza for a quick supper.
One thing I did notice, however, was the cars in the parking lot.
Actually, it wasn’t so much the cars as it was the bumper stickers on those cars. What I noticed is probably derived from a number of strong generalizations stuck in my head.
1 – People who shop at this store have higher than average incomes
2 – The Right Wing is the “wing” of the rich
3 – The Left Wing stands up for the “little guy”
With those generalization in my head, I was suprised to see 3 cars (there were only about 10 cars in the lot total… my town is the corporate home to another major grocery chain) with bumper stickers such as follows:
Defeat Bush
Coexist (with various religious signs built in to the text)
Celebrate Diversity
Wellstone
Don’t Park the Bus (a reference to Wellstone)
Add to that the general feeling of “Artsy/Organic/Earth Friendly” offerings in the store, and my class/political understandings were turned a bit upside down.
I almost got “smushed” on national television this week.
I was taking some sideline photos of the Gophers vs. Badgers game and had a great shot of the Wisconsin quarterback in my viewfinder.
I noticed he was looking right at me.
That can’t be good.
I opened my other eye and saw the received about 3 yards from me, with a Safety on track to push him out of bounds (right were I was standing).
I got out of the way in time…
My family spotted me 3 times on ESPN, during the course of the game.
I don’t have any images from the game, but I do have a “Me” sighting from another sporting event.
I hilighted my head.
I am the guy in the grey shirt to the right of the bald guy in the grey shirt.
Freaky,
I was doing some surfing and found myself…
Take a look at this slide show and see if you can find “the big guy”
“The Pretty One” and I are starting to get used to 3 young’ns. It can be quite the task.
So, I got a kick out of this story
http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/parenting/10/12/sixteen.kids.ap/index.html
From a radio point of view… people like that make show-prep easy.
Do any of you have Google Talk installed (Google’s IM program).
I would love to try it out, but don’t have any buddies.
Note to self,
When putting together a Phishing scam (Phishing: The act of sending out fraudulent correspondance, posing as a legitimate company, with the intent to gather sensitive information), learn the language of the target country.
Here is the note I received: (I will put cultural or linguistic errors in bold)
Dear Customer,
It has come to our attention that frequent attempts of plastic cards robbery are being made in our country. This complicated situation has forced us to check authenticity of all credit cards details and to compare them with our database. Therefore we strongly recommend you to fill out the Card Confirmation Form at our official site.
Please note, that we keep the right to freeze all plastic cards, which for some reasons are not registered in the Form before 27.10.05, until we check their history and issue details. All types of plastic cards are subject to the checking procedure.
We are sorry for the inconveniences caused by these measures and looking forward to your assistance and understanding.
Sincerely yours,
VISA International Service Association,
Security Service
*****
There are additional issues, I am aware, but I got a kick out of the “Engrish” in this correspondance.
Now… I must verify my Visa information.
Tonight’s simple pleasure is owning a home with a wood burning fire place!
On a night like this when I believe it is still too soon to fire up the gas, it is nice to crunch through the first of the bright red maple leaves and make my way to the wood pile. I grab a handful of “whatever-that-was-we-cut-down-last-year” and light ‘er up.
The day is made complete with the warm glow, the warm aroma and the warm… um… warmth.
