a sprinkle of father’s day cheese

As father’s day is soon upon us…many websites recount the various classically great and not so great father’s day gifts. When I saw this article I must admit…I recognized some of the gifts pictured…mostly because I’ve given at least two on the list at one point or another hehe. I think my dad probably still has the “world’s greatest dad” mug from 4th grade stashed somewhere in the cupboard, and that “bowl” I made in first grade is now a paperclip cup on his desk. (btw I have a pair of the homer slippers and there’s NOTHING wrong with that!!)

Sadly, there are a few years where I can recall getting him something random just for the sake of giving him something. Sometimes it meant something, sometimes it didn’t. Thinking back on the years…I’ve never been sure if he knew how appreciative I am of my dad. To me, he’s been a pillar of patience and wisdom, and there’s really nobody I respect on the same level as him. It’s hard to put in words my appreciation of him, but he’s always been a clear presence in my life, providing both love and guidance in his own quirky way. :)

Thank you for putting your family first. Thank you for reading to me at night. Thank you for schlepping me to and from track practice, music lessons, and fellowship events. Thank you for switching shoes with me that time when mine gave me blisters. Thank you for teaching me manners and taking us to church on Sundays. Thanks for the endless love and support…regardless of whether I reciprocated or not. Thanks dad!

Happy Fathers Day!

what you won't see on espn...

This clip really makes you think sometimes…




When I first saw the movie Lord of War a few years ago, I walked in 5 min late and missed the intro. The rest of the movie was so intriguing I rented the movie a few days later just to watch the beginning. Most movies (including this one) are a figment of some creative mind’s imagination, but this movie does carry a sad truth.

This month the world’s attention will zero in on Africa for the world cup. South Africa will be putting its best foot forward, showing the world that Africa can indeed host an international event of such proportions. The sadness of it all is that while the world’s focus is on Africa, it will miss a glaring and ugly side of the continent: they’re killing each other. All across Africa, from Cote d’Ivoire to Sierra Leone to Somalia, civil wars and local feuds rage on, claiming millions of lives and pressing an entire generation of youth into armies and militias.

I wonder, when ESPN covers the world cup this year, how many minutes of airtime will even be spent mentioning this sad fact? When NBC covers the Olympics, they spend the bulk of the downtime between events talking about either athletes’ personal stories or the host country’s local culture. So how much of ESPN’s downtime will be devoted to talking about Africa’s darker side?

nooooo bessie!!

Ok…I know I probably shouldn’t have bought my lawnmower at walmart… and I know I should probably remember where I keep receipts for large purchases like these…but yeah…all those things may have been able to make today a whole lot easier. After getting a new cord at Ace I played around with the engine a bit until I restrung the mower and took it outside for a spin. I pulled on the cord and nothing happened.

Fail.

As it turns out the string was strung the wrong way…and the fail-switch was activated by the pull…not the engine. After half an hour, two tries, and quite a few head-scratches later, Bessie was all set to go.

vroom vroom… :)

ok so maybe it’s not exactly as powerful an engine as I imagined hehe but still…good to hear it’s back in working shape. This whole thing made me thing about the Ephesians passage I read for a devo a few weeks ago. It talked about just how broken each of us are. How much of a mess we are…submersed in sin and without much hope. Sometimes I wonder why God even bothers to fix us back up…He could easily just start from scratch…but He doesn’t. He works on us one at a time…fixing us with love and care.

Pretty amazing huh?

it is by grace you have been saved…For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2)

autobahn at night?

On Friday night I was driving down I-80 at 12:30am going slightly faster than the speed limit towards Davis. Up ahead about 800m away I suddenly see flashes of red and blue as a fellow motorist gets taken down by the sometimes elusive CHP. I immediately slow down a bit and drive by, feeling a slight tinge of guilt as I realize that that poor bloke will be paying the price for a faux-pas that both he and I shared. After passing the scene, I started thinking, this late at night, when the motorway is clear (seriously we were the only three cars on the road), why should we adhere to the same speed limit as rush hour traffic when there are way more cars on the road?

The roadways in Germany have, contrary to popular belief, speed limits in the more densely populate areas during peak times. The speed restrictions are lifted during off-peak hours, so one can drive however fast they prefer to go. This seems a more practical approach, where we can have a tiered speed system that allows for safe driving during the hours where there are more people on the roads, and much more relaxed speed guidelines during hours (esp. in the wee hours of the morning) when few cars, if any, are on the road. This would, of course, apply to local roads in addition to freeways. The concerns we use for limiting our speeds on the roads don’t necessarily apply late at night or early in the morning. If there are children playing on the street at 2am, then I’d be inclined to say that my driving is sort of the least of their worries. There’s no need to maintain a 65mph speed limit after hours, especially with barely anyone on the motorways.

teach'em how to read...

This morning I was at common grounds getting a cup of coffee while running some errands. I sat down to wait for my order when I overheard a father at the table behind me teaching his son how to read headlines, using the sac bee. Here's what happened:

Dad: Reading is very simple. Just say the words letter by letter like it sounds. This is called reading phonetically.

Son: ok..."taheee..." "tiheee..." (he was obviously struggling with a word that I figured was Tahiti...)

Dad: That's it...just sound it out.

Son: "tiheee..." Is that right?

Dad: (Looks at the page)... "No...the word is 'the'."

hehe i wonder how i'll teach my kids in the future...

cherries crawfish and callous

After a long week at work and some pockets of treasured time spent with friends, it’s time for a nice, long, lazy Saturday. After some light yardwork to start the morning, I picked some fresh cherries, plucked at the parkwood for a bit and settled down to catch up on some reading that I vowed to have done for quite some time. About 25 pages into Francis Chan’s Forgotten God, I got a bit restless and remembered that Vandy had given me some crawfish that his friend brought back from a trip.

Yeah…never had crawfish before…

I didn’t even know how to cook it…do I steam it? Do I boil it? Who knows?? After a two minute phone call and a quick visit to Wikipedia…I was on my way. What’s the worse that could happen?

hehehe…

After putting the water on the boil, I went upstairs cradling a bowl of cherries and the book I’m supposed to be reading, trying yet again to get some quiet time to read. 20 pages later the water was boiling and the little creatures went into the pot. After another three minutes of boiling they went over to the other side of the stove to start the cool off process. At this point I stepped out to get some more cherries and when I came back inside…I noticed something amiss.

What in the world is that stench??!!

I guess what my friend has perhaps forgotten to tell me is that crawfish has a distinct odor. After eating it your hands will smell like shellfish for the next few days…even as I’m typing this I’m rubbing crawfish juices all over my keyboard (kidding. No juices just smell). As I picked up the first one…I had no clue what to do…do I bite into it? Do I peel it and eat? What do I do with the head? After a few trials I got the hang of it…there really wasn’t much to eat…just picking at stuff really. Now that I’m done I’ve come to realize that cherries and crawfish may not have been the best combination.

That’s ok…it’s good learning experience on a slow Saturday.

the undo button

Yesterday, I was talking to CTG on Sametime and we were talking about the undo button (I know…weird topic). The question that naturally followed …is there anything in life that I would undo? Without thinking that much (or really at all), I blurted out “of course there is!” This of course led to the follow-up question, what would you undo?

Well, that really stumped me. At first I was so ready to count out the stupid stuff I’ve done over the last 20+ years, but as I sat there and thought about it…was there really anything that I regretted doing? Was there anything that I’d take back or undo? Funny thing is, I’m a firm believer that God has planned everything that happens to me in my life, from the grand scale “what am I going to do with my life?” all the way down to the seemingly inconsequential “what am I going to get for lunch?” Psalms 139 spells out that even when I was unformed, my days were carefully fashioned. If I were to regret or want to undo anything…does that mean that I’d want to undo something God’s done?

All of this was going through my head as the Sametime window was blinking on my screen. Shoot…I have to respond… Quickly (and ever so cleverly), I cracked a joke and made a funny and the conversation took a turn onto something else. Ahh…situation avoided… Then as the day wore on and I had some time between work tasks…the thought reappeared in my mind, would I want to undo anything? Since my friend had left for the day…it gave me even more time to mull. Again my thoughts turned to the Psalm. Hmm…even though the topic had long passed yesterday…I think I’m going to reply to the question today…

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. Psalms 139:13-16