Kevin Bass showed me some really good pictures he took of David Shannon preaching on Sunday morning. Kevin has an Olympus digital camera with zoom lense. He was able to take pictures from the balcony of David preaching without using a flash. Makes me wish I had a camera like that. Mine is a 3.3 megapixel, while this one is a 2.1 megapixel. I’m not sure if the zoom lense is worth the reduction in mexapixels.
I put my life into someone else’s hands when I got in the back of that pickup truck at the hayride Saturday night. We were going to the place where we’d scare the people on the hayride. I didn’t realize how unsafe this teenaged driver was. I don’t know who he was trying to impress. If he had hit a tree, I would have been seriously injured. In the middle of our night drive through a tobacco field, the headlights went out on the truck, so they had to drive according to the flickering of the left turn signal. This old Ford truck was a junky vehicle. No glass in the rear window. “It’s a farm truck,” was the excuse the kids gave.
Contest of Champions was this weekend. It is the superbowl of marching band competitions for Middle Tennessee. I only know about this because a friend of mine reminded me about it. All of the bands in the area look forward to this competition in hope that the will place in it (or at least make finals). It’s not what you play, it’s who you know. Near the stadium there is a sign that says “Through these gates march the best bands in the world.” There should have been an asterisk at the end that said “and a bunch of bands which don’t deserve to be here.” We lived very simple lives in high school. Our biggest goal was to make it to some meaningless contest. It felt good back then, but looking back on it, the whole thing reaks of pointlessness.
I played trombone in high school. I never practiced. I never really knew the music. In some ways I think our band director let me stay in band because my parents were heavily involved with the band boosters. He could have embarrassed me by asking me to play the entire halftime show in front of the entire band. But he didn’t.
I have been considering a mission trip to El Salvador with my church. They’ve actually got it on the calendar so that everyone (not just the select few) will make plans to take part. It’s in April. It would be alot easier to decide to go, if I knew if I’d have a job in April. It involves a medical mission trip plus a Gospel Meeting while we are down there. Who knows. I’ve still got a little time to decide. Even if I end up getting a job before then, there will probably be someone who would want to take my place. It happened last year with someone else. It can happen again.