I was at Fountain Head Church of Christ in Portland for their VBS tonight. It was good to see some old friends. I even saw a preacher friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in a while. It has been literally years….. I guess among church of Christ circles everyone’s path will usually cross at one time or another, so it was bound to happen sooner or later…
I was thinking about those church camp pictures on the church webpage. I have to remind myself to give everyone equal time…..ie not have too many pictures of certain people and not enough of others. I’ve noticed that I’ve got 3 pictures of Brian, our youth intern, and only one picture of Phil, our youth minister. So the display makes it falsely look like Phil didn’t do much. In reality Phil just wasn’t in the pictures that I’ve got on display. In any case I might need to redo them.
It is always surprising when friends tell me that they read this weblog everyday. I don’t have anything interesting to say. Why is this interesting to some people? I’ll never know. I don’t try to write interesting entries for friends to read. I’m writing for myself.

Comes from this discussion in the movie, the Breakfast Club:
Brian: “What is gonna happen to us on Monday? When we’re all together again? I mean I consider you guys my friends, I’m not wrong, am I?”
After spending a significant amount of time with other people you tend to wonder if supposed new friends will acknowledge you in real life situations afterwards. This can happen on vacations, camps, etc…. For the most part kids at church, who I got to know better at camp, seem to seek me out at church services to be friendly. During previous times, I have been ignored by people after returning, but seemlingly this time it is different. I guess I made myself known to the kids at camp. I had a personality, better than in other years.
Summer is pretty much over for me. Josh might end up having an end of summer boat party, but I sorta doubt that it will happen. So it’s just a couple of VBS’s this week and then I’ll declare the summer over with. I had a good one. The new friends I’ve made….the experiences I’ve shared….have all made me a better person. God has certainly blessed me.
I am looking forward to Fall activities. It’s just that there is so much less to do in the fall. Plus fallen leaves tend to get really messy when trying to rake them up. Fall is not my favorite time of year.
Finally got my car back. It was only after calling them a couple of times did I get any work done on it. Seems like no one could answer my questions as to if the car was ready for pickup.

A young friend of mine is in the hospital due to a head injury. I think he jumped from a moving trailer and hit his head. He cracked his skull and had a concussion. But it looks like he’ll be able to go home tomorrow. It’s always a bit frightening when someone young is seriously injured. I wanted to go to visit him today, but they said no visitors, so I stayed home.
My Concert review of the Better than Ezra and Cracker concert is online. While I was taking notes at the concert of the playlists and interesting parts of the song, people kept assuming that I was with the band or a newspaper. One lady asked if was with the Tennessean newspaper. Nope. I just write concert reviews for my website. It’s how I remember the concerts. Plus it provides a unique offering on my website for viewers like you.
Throughout the concert I was very much aware that I was alone. So I kept my eyes behind my shoulder at all times. It was probably being overly protective, but you never can tell. Buncha drunk people all over the place there. I still don’t understand why some people feel the need to drink themselves silly in order to have a good time.
Plus I did see some people who I knew were from Lipscomb. They were drinking of course. This made me remember why I hated certain things about Lipscomb. It was those hypocrites in chapel. Drink to get drunk on weekends, but still sing “Oh How I Love Jesus” on weekdays in chapel. Then again these people probably didn’t sing in chapel at all. However I always questioned why people like this would want to go to a Christian school which frowns on drinking.
My car is still in the shop. The replacement parts for the air vent and radio arrived today. But they didn’t have time to repair it today. So it’s been a week without my car.

The video of Baya singing at the wedding reception seems to be in high demand at church. Baya has always been so quiet no one believes that he got up and yelled into the microphone. The song? “Maybe I’m Amazed” by the Beatles.
We did have a camp meeting today after church. Basically I’ve got a couple of specific jobs to do at Mt. Juliet’s camp -Scavenger hunt on Tuesday night (I think that it is right night) and… bible school teacher one day for the little kids. I need to get the material/outlines for the lesson from our youth minister. I don’t intend to go into the lesson cold without even studied the lesson previously. These kids deserve better. I need sufficient amount of time to prepare my lesson. Sometimes on retreats I’ve been told to teach a class with only 10 minutes preparation time. I don’t intend to let that fiasco happen again.
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Baya and Erika’s wedding went well. Almost all the music played was the Beatles. They managed to work in one Elvis song and a Sade song. But all the rest was Beatles. Best wedding music I’ve heard. Usually wedding music is really sappy songs from Celin Dion and other nondesireables. But this one was different and better.
I was asked to video tape the wedding and reception. Everything seemed to go smoothly. I’ve got about an hour and a half of footage. The best part of the wedding was seeing Baya sing the Beatles at the reception. I never knew Baya could sing. He seemed so reserved and quiet at church.
I thought something was wrong when I heard R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” on the classic radio station. But then I found out the radio station had changed formats to “Rockin Hits,” whatever that means.
I went to camp knowing that I wanted to take pictures of the 4th of July fireworks. Last year I went, I had no thought of taking pictures of fireworks. I just did it on a whim. Last year’s pictures turned out decent, but you could tell I didn’t know what I was doing. This time I really wanted to take pictures of the fireworks. Ultimately the pictures turned out fine.
On the last night of camp, they showed a movie – “Snow Dogs.” During the movie I decided I had enough of it and went back to the cabin to lie down. The movie ended at around 12:30. Tim and I stayed up talking til about 1AM or later. I got up at 6:15 and got back home at around 8AM to get back to work. So the last day or so has been tiring.

I had planned on going to see “They Might Be Giants” in concert at Dancin’ in the District with some friends tonight. However that plan has fallen through. My friends have decided to go to Walt Disney World for the weekend instead. I have no desire to see TMBG or WDW. TMBG is the type of band that belongs on the Muppet Show. WDW is the Muppet Show. I’ve been there 4 times. It’s good for a while, but the whole Disney theme is run into the ground over there. I get tired of the theme music everywhere and the blatent niceness when all along you know they’re just getting paid to be nice to you. It just isn’t sincere anymore. If I want sincerity, I’ll go to church. If I want to pay gobs of money to be entertained, WDW is the place.
Baby Born at Wal-Mart….I think I’ve seen this before. The mother was trying to pick up a disposeable camera. Which brings to mind how lame those disposeable cameras are. Why pay 10 bucks for a camera to use once, while you can pay $20 for a camera to use over and over again?

My friends James, Miki, Beth and Josh just returned from Japan. James has placed some pictures up on the web. Not really the sure of the significance of taking pictures of Beth’s foot. But still some cool pics nonetheless.
Have you ever noticed how some people tend to take a large amount of pictures in airports? Personally I would save my film and not even bother with any airport pictures. Airports all look the same.
Question: Is there some type of city cleanup service that comes by and picks up flattened roadkill on Wilson County roadways? There is a flattened cat on the street directly in front of my house. I went to go check the mail today and almost became physically sick because of it. The cat itself is very much flattened. Must have been hit multiple times. I certainly don’t want to have to clean it up.
Also I’ve put in a new thing on the front page. It’s a Guestmap. Lets users put a pin wherever they are located and leave a message. So be sure and sign it.

I ran into Josh and Beth at Kmart yesterday. As it turns out they have bought a house back behind Kmart. Looks nice. I was surprised to find that they had decided to get a house. It has been months since we got together to do anything. Months since we even talked. Many times friends in general give the excuse of being too busy, but many times we just don’t put any effort into doing things together.
Mark Price? Well he might has well have fallen off the face of the earth. Living in Arizona and his lack of response to emails has not motivated me enough to try to track him down. Plus he goes to China seemlingly every other month.
It does help if friends make an effort to use instant messaging programs. This type of pseudo communcation is pretty easy to come by. It is a good substitute for the phone. I’ve been able to plan entire trips over instant messaging and emails.
Here’s something obvious: Pastors make the worst websites. Big gaudy animated crosses.
Melissa’s weblog is down. I’ve been trying to get her to fix it, but somehow I haven’t been able to make myself clear.
Do I really care if India and Pakistan have a nuclear war? Well it is somewhat on my mind. In a weird sort of way, maybe usage of nuclear weapons would remind people of the horrible destruction this can cause. India and Pakistan are like two kids fighting over a piece of candy. And Kashmir isn’t even that sweet. It would matter if Kashmir had a boatload of oil or something.

Happy Birthday, Melissa! My sister turned 30 today. We had a nice surprise party for her.
Seems like time has flown by. It’s becoming a reality more and more each day that I’m not as young as I used to be. It’s sad in a way, but a long time coming. When we’re young all we want to do is grow up. Once we’re grown we spend the rest of the time regretting that we never had enough fun while we were young.
So the prayer breakfast turned out good. The kids seem well prepared and not nervous at all. From growing up in a church environment, I can tell you it can be a very daunting task for a 12 year old to lead a prayer or read the bible in front of 300+ people. These type of opportunities give them a chance to feel comfortable in that type of environment.

During my layover in the Toronto airport, I met up with a friend of mine from Lipscomb. He was in Toronto with his job also. Small world isn’t it?
Tonight I went to Opry Mills to see a friend of mine perform in his band. It was great to see him before he moves to Seattle in a few weeks.
The weather here has been great so far…..a major difference from the weather in Ottawa.