I thought I’d try to get in an update post here before I’m gone for a few days. My kids are on spring break this week, and I’m only working through noon today. I’m taking off the rest of the week, starting with taking my daughter to lunch. She’s asked for just the two of us to go out to lunch, so we’re doing that today. The rest of the week is not completely planned, but mostly just some time to spend together as a family, and for me, not working!

We all went to see Horton Hears A Who this weekend. It was pretty good. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did several Pixar movies, but it was still fun. I usually find Jim Carrey to be annoying to some degree, but he wasn’t too bad here. I’ve had Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee (HBO) on my DVR for months now, and I’m hoping to find time to watch it this week during my time off.

My eMusic downloads refreshed this past weekend. I’ve not decided what else I’ll be getting yet, but I finally pulled the trigger on John Fogerty’s double-live album The Long Road Home - In Concert, which I’ve had on my list for many months now. It’s part solo, part CCR, and it’s all good. It includes one song I was unfamiliar with, apparently from an album of his a few years ago. It’s called “Déjà Vu (All Over Again)”, where Fogerty expresses his opinion of the Iraq war, suggesting it’s another Vietnam. Check it out.

I finished A.J. Jacob’s book The Year of Living Biblically yesterday. I enjoyed it a lot. First, it was hilarious. Jacobs is pretty funny. But, I also found it thought provoking at times. How seriously do I take the Bible? How do I, at times, interpret it to fit what I want it to say instead of taking it for what it says? My one complaint is that it probably could have been a bit shorter. He tended to include plenty of accounts that really didn’t add anything to the story. But still, I’d definitely recommend it.

I’m currently reading Erwin McManus’ The Barbarian Way. I read this about two and a half years ago, but as I think I mentioned before, I’m a part of a book club with a couple of ministers from my church, and that’s our book for March. I’m about halfway through.

In other books, I’ll start reading Lewis’ Mere Christianity over the next few days. Our small group at church is beginning a study of it this week. I’ve had this book for probably 15 years, and have yet to read it. So, finally, I will. Also, I picked up Shane Claiborne’s new book, Jesus For President, a couple of days ago. I plan to start it next week, after I’m finished with McManus.

I was somewhat sad to see the series finale of Jericho last night. I guess we won’t get to see America’s next civil war, although I understand the producers are still hoping to land it somewhere else after CBS showed them the door. A fair amount of it was beyond belief, but I still enjoyed it while it lasted.

If you don’t read Greg Boyd’s blog, go check it out. He’s had some great stuff over the last month. Start with his Feburary 28th post and read up to the present.

I’ll probably have a tournament update next week, but until then, here’s #3:

I’ve always avoided showing any pictures of myself or my family here, or mentioned much personal info about them. That may or may not be necessary, but it’s the choice I’ve made to this point. However, since it’s three years old now and he’s changed quite a bit since then, I did want to share this.

On his fourth Halloween tonight, my son has chosen to be “Batman”. But his first costume - the one I got to choose for him - is still my favorite (not surprisingly.)

Beautiful, isn’t it? That is us at our church’s 2004 “Trunk or Treat” in Huntsville, Alabama, where we lived until the following summer. He didn’t really understand it at the time, but I’m sure some day he’ll look back and thank me.

And maybe in another 15 years or so, he’ll be dressing up like this.

Shortly after I posted Thursday I called my wife to check on my daughter. She was home sick that day, after having developed a cough the seemed to be growing worse each day. So, she was heading to the doctor, and I called home to check. No answer, so I called her cell. She was still at the doctor, waiting for a nurse to reappear and give my daughter a shot. The reason? She had pneumonia.

Four days later, after the shot and antibiotics, she seems to be doing fine. The doctor said that they’d seen a lot of it recently. My daughter’s friend was just in the hospital with it a month or so ago. Fortunately, the medicine, fluids and rest seemed to have done the trick. She returned to school today, which the doctor said she’s be able to do, and so hopefully she’ll remain well.

Unfortunately, this has limited some Halloween related activities for us. We were planning to visit “Boo at the Zoo” here at the Little Rock zoo last Wedensday night, but she’d come home from school running fever. “Boo” lasts through Halloween, and we may still try to make it tomorrow night, if possible, since it’s a bit warmer here this week. But last Wednesday was members night (we are members and wanted to go on that night), and it gets more crowded the closer you get to Halloween. It will probably depend on how my daughter does over the next two days.

More movies… I watched a couple of movies this week that I’d never seen. Being the season of Halloween, there have been plenty of “horror” films on cable. I caught the original Saw last week and figured I’d see what it was all about. I’m not much into “horror” movies, mainly because they usually suck - just a bunch of gratuitous violence and little else. I kind of enjoyed Saw because there was a little more to it than that, although it’s still not exactly my kind of entertainment. I later came across Saw II, which, unfortunately, I would have to rate well below the original film. It was more along the lines of a Friday the 13th where a bunch of people are killed over the course of the movie. Just not that interesting, and basically a waste of time. You knew, too, after having seen the first one, that there’d be a twist at the end and it was pretty predictable. So, I think I’ve watched my last Saw film.

Over the weekend I also finished Al Franken’s Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair And Balanced Look At The Right. It’s a few years old now, but I “mooched” a copy and thought I’d check it out. I’ve always thought Franken was pretty funny, and this book was no exception. My wife began to find my laughing out loud annoying at times. There was a lot of interesting info in the book, and while I’m not willing to take everything Franken said as gospel, I suspect much of it is on target. Seems unlikely you’d write a book about so-called liars without making sure your facts aren’t pretty solid. Of course, he has a (left-leaning) perspective unlike those he criticizes, so no doubt there are those on the right who would see some of his facts and interpretations in a different light. I even felt some could be viewed as saying more or less than they did as Franken presented them. Still, the book was a lot of fun, and the story of him taking his “son” on a visit to Bob Jones University (as if he was searching for a college) was hilarious. You can read that online here.

I found this morning (via Mark Elrod and Political Cartel) that athiest Hemant Mehta spoke at my alma mater, Harding University, last night. I read Mehta’s book, I Sold My Soul On eBay, just a couple of months ago and enjoyed it. His is an interesting story. I’m glad he was invited and would like to have been there to hear him myself. However, I found it interesting that an athiest was allowed to speak at HU, where folks like Mike Cope would be denied.

Well, I think we’ve pissed off the Methodists. Here’s the story:

We wanted to put my son in a preschool type program this year, just as we’d done with my daughter when she turned three. My daughter went to the program at the Madison Church of Christ, which was literally right around the corner from where we lived at the time in Madison, Alabama. Their property was adjacent to our subdivision, so it was more convenient than the one at our own church (which was in SE Huntsville and about 20 minutes away), and from what we’d heard, a better program. She loved it and so did we. She learned a lot during her time there and was very prepared for kindergarten when that time came. Therefore, we were hoping for something similar for our son.

My wife, after some research and also based on reports from friends who had children there, had determined that a particular Presbyterian church here in town was the right choice. It seemed most similar to where our daughter had attended. Unfortunately, when she got him on the waiting list, he was 22nd on the list. It didn’t appear he’d get a spot. So, we looked a couple of other places, and ended up putting him on the waiting list at a local Methodist church’s program as well. Their program was fine, although, obviously, it was not our first choice. But, we’d pretty much given up on our first choice. It was the week before the preschool started, and it appeared there was no hope of getting in for this year.

They both started last week and we were still on the waiting lists. Well, the call came last week - the Methodist program had an open spot for two days a week. We discussed it briefly and decided to go ahead and enroll him. It wasn’t choice #1, but it was still a good opportunity for him. Today would be his first day. He began talking about “going to school” and was excited. We took him up this morning and dropped him off.

When my wife returned home, she had received a phone call. You guessed it - the Presbyterian church had called and they now had an opening as well - for three days a week.

She called me - “what should we do?”. Basically, it came down to this - it was our first choice, where we wanted him to be, and, on top of that, it is, all tuition and fees considered, around $10/month cheaper and he goes an extra day each week. So, $10/month cheaper, plus 4-5 extra days per month, plus it’s the program we wanted him in and he also has friends who attend there as well, we thought it was the right call.

My wife called them and informed them before going to pick him up that his first day would also be his last. Evidently, the lady who runs the program was not quite as friendly when my wife picked him up as she was when we dropped him off today, which I can understand, of course. One good thing is that, since they still have people on the waiting list, they’ll most likely fill his spot right away.

And, of course, we both felt pretty bad about making the change, pulling him out after less than a day. Had yesterday not been a holiday, we probably would have heard from them yesterday and been able to make the change without him actually attending a day first. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the way it happened.

So, Thursday we’ll go through it all again - new school, new teachers, new kids Fortunately, that should be the last time.

Seems like every time I read about someone doing a Wordpress upgrade, it’s never a good experience. Perhaps that’s because nobody posts about upgrades that go smooth. Well, that’s what happened for me. I’d never upgraded, and decided to do so recently. It went fine, with the only issue being that a plugin or two no longer worked.

I’d been wanting to change templates anyway and add/modify/remove various plugins, so I decided to just keep this site down for a while until I found something new and modified it to my liking. It’s not the ideal, and it’s not even significantly different from my last one (I had to stay with 3-columns), but it will do. If I really had the time, I’d like to create one from scratch, but I don’t have the time and am probably not creative enough to do so anyway. So, this is what it will be for a while. I’m still making a few changes here and there, including still evaluating some plugins and doing something about the image at the top (either replacing it or removing it), but it’s in decent enough shape to open back up, so to speak.

School started back up for my daughter last Wednesday. She’s now in third grade, which just doesn’t seem possible. Resuming our school schedule means a number of things for our family, but the most unfortunate for me is rising early again. I’ve enjoyed sleeping in as much as an extra hour some days and going in to work a little later. No more, as I drive my daughter each morning. This morning was the first Monday, and it actually went better than I thought. Although, I didn’t sleep well last night and I started feeling the effects mid-afternoon.

That reminds me: an update on my summer reading - I’ve done a miserable job. I posted a few months ago regarding the books I hoped to read over the summer. Unfortunately, work has picked up for me significantly during the last few months as I began working on a couple of big projects, and so extra hours and just general mental fatigue curbed my desire to read as often. Of the nine books I had on the list, I’ve only finished three of them, and those were the ones I was partially through at the time I posted. I did, however, read one additional book (Hemant Mehta’s I Sold My Soul On eBay : Viewing Faith through an Atheist’s Eyes), and plan to comment on that in the near future. The lack of time has also contributed to less frequent posting here, and that will likely be the norm at least until the end of the year.

Instead of reading, I’ve been finding myself more inclined to watch a little television when I have a few minutes at home. I have been digging the USA Network this summer. The new episodes of Monk have been entertaining as usual, but as much as I love the show, I feel it has probably run it’s course. I still like watching it, but it doesn’t seem like there’s much more they can do. I’ve also enjoyed watching the second season of Psych as well, which airs after Monk on Fridays. I didn’t watch much of it last year, but have really loved it this year. I’ll have to check out season one. And, of course, as I mentioned before, I really like Jeffrey Donovan’s new series, Burn Notice. Apparently, it’s been renewed for a second season, so I was glad to see that.

These days I’m also spending some time learning new music as well. My wife and I began singing with our church’s worship team the past two weeks. We had done so for a number of years at previous churches, but it was Fall 2004 when I last sang with our worship team in Huntsville. I decided to take a break for a while, and then not long after that I started looking for a job and ended up back here in Arkansas and at an instrumental church. So, I have really enjoyed the acappella worship team experience again, after having a three year break.

And, speaking of music, I’m ecstatic that the new Josh Ritter disc - The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter - is due out tomorrow. Get it.

My 8-year-old daughter is attempting to permanently take over our home computer. Webkinz must be destroyed.

She’s also moved on from the likes of “Dora The Explorer” and such, and now watches Disney programs like “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody” and the one with Billy Ray Cyrus and his daughter.

My 3-year-old son often does whatever she does, so he’s been watching them, too. He can sing the “Suite Life” theme song. And last night he said to me, “Dad, I love Hannah Montana.”

I don’t know what that means, but I hope it’s a good thing.

Anyway, one thing I’ve been planning to write about recently was our decision to leave our church home for another, although I’m not sure this is going to be exactly what I initially intended it to be.

In short, we were not happy there, and despite our initial feelings, we felt that ourselves and this church were just not a good fit. One of the problems both my wife and I had was size - around 5,000 members, 10x our previous church in Alabama as well as our church before that here in Little Rock - which just made it difficult to really feel like part of a family. Another was the decision to build a new campus, which was going to end up costing in the 10’s of millions of dollars. Is it a wise use to spend that kind of money on yourselves? That’s a question many would debate. I was never comfortable with it, and it’s hard to feel at home when you’re uncomfortable.

There are a handful of other reasons we chose to part ways which I won’t detail here. One other motivation for the change, however, had to do with our heritage. Having spent the first 38+ years of my life in Churches of Christ, it certainly felt a little strange to be attending a church that was not of that background. We missed things like weekly communion and, despite my love of music, we missed four-part acappella singing from time to time as well.

This isn’t a perfect analogy, but it was similar to how we felt living in Alabama. There was a lot to like, but eventually we wanted to come back to Arkansas, which will always be home.

Granted, I do not want to be a part of the kind of Churches of Christ I knew growing up. I am glad I was where I was, and I came to faith in those churches. The folks in the church I grew up in were good people who loved the Lord and each other, and I’m thankful for so many of them who helped me grow spiritually in my younger years. But it was also rigid and legalistic in some ways, and at this point in my life I no longer am, nor do I want my children growing up in such an environment.

Still, there is much more that was good in where I’ve come from, and there are churches in my own tradition where I would feel at home. One of those is our new church (where my brother happens to be a shepherd.) We have been visiting them for the last couple of months, and we informed them just this week that we would like to become a part of the family there. We look forward the future and the plans God has for this group of believers. We know many of the people there already - some from having attended other CoC’s with them when we lived here before, others from having visited this same church two years ago when we first moved back, and a few from some other avenue of our lives. And, it’s significantly smaller - probably around 95% smaller - than where we’ve been recently.

But, perhaps more than anything, we wanted to truly feel like we were part of a family, and I don’t think we’ve truly felt that since we left Alabama two years ago this month.

So, that’s a short summary of our move. It’s not the Church of Christ I grew up in, but still it feels like we’re home again, where we belong.

And, I should point out that the people in the pictures on the church’s home page are actual members of the church, not professional models.

I never posted yesterday, but I did have a wonderful Valentine’s Day. I enjoyed a lunch with my daughter at the Dixie Cafe across from her school. The entire 2nd grade was able to invite one of their parents to have a Valentine’s lunch with them, all arranged by their teachers. Mostly, the boys brought their moms and the girl’s brought their dads. I gave my daughter a rose and box of candy as I arrived at her school, which she absolutely loved. She told everyone in sight about it. We and around 40 or 50 other children and their invited parent had a great time.

Last night was a pleasant evening at home. We seem to rarely go out to eat actually on Valentine’s Day anymore, but are planning to go out this weekend instead. We enjoyed some good food and time as a family at home instead.

This morning when I arrived at work there was a mail in my inbox regarding the Weekend To Remember marriage conference. I am now in my second year here at my current job, and my company offers an opportunity to attend one of these conferences at no cost. The conference is provided by FamilyLife Ministries, a parachurch organization based here in Little Rock that, among other things, offers marriage and parenting conferences around the country throughout the year. It is the ministry of Dennis Rainey and his wife Barbara.

And you read that right - the company pays for you to go to a Christian marriage conference (including accommodations). That’s a pretty good deal. We didn’t go last year because it was my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary weekend and we had family plans for that. We are planning to go this year. We’ve never been to anything like this, but some co-workers have spoken pretty highly of it, so I’ll look forward to it. The conference here in Little Rock is scheduled in March.

There is one thing I don’t understand. For the second year in a row (and perhaps other years before that), FamilyLife has scheduled the Little Rock conference not just in March, but on the weekend of the NCAA basketball Final Four. That just seems like odd scheduling. I figure it’s hard enough for some wives to get their husbands to go to an event like this to begin with, but to try to get them there on a major weekend in the sports calendar seems like it’s just adding to the level of difficulty. Perhaps they can schedule a parenting conference on Super Bowl weekend next year.

I speak in jest, of course. Regardless of date and time, I’m excited about attending this year and having a great time with my wife. (And, if they solicit comments regarding the conference, perhaps I’ll bring up the scheduling issue.)

The most amazing woman in the world - that would be my wife - was born on this day. Happy birthday, baby! I am, of course, the luckiest man in the world because, as George Costanza once said, “You coulda done a lot better than him.” Very true, but I’m grateful she chose me instead.

The Third Day/David Crowder Band concert last night was excellent. I will post a review of sorts later today or tomorrow.

Check out the following posts over at Scott Freeman’s blog. There’s some really good discussion going on in the comments as well.

• Thoughts on Non-Violence: Part One
• Thoughts on Non-Violence, Part Two: Jesus as Starting Place

I was checking out Relevant magazine online, reading through the “slices”, and noticed these:

A Japanese man has set the new world record for reciting pi, an astounding 100,000 decimal places all from memory. It took the 60-year-old mental health counselor 16 hours to accomplish the feat, shattering the former record of 42,195 decimal places.

That’s pretty impressive. I remember being proud of memorizing the 23rd Psalm and the preamble to the Constitution as a child. Not sure how useful it is to have 100,000 decimal places of pi memorized. Do you ever need it right off the top of your head? Conan O’Brien said last night that the only number he doesn’t have memorized is a woman’s phone number.

A recent episode of the conservative talk show The O’Reilly Factor featured a story about former Republican Congressman Mark Foley, who is facing an investigation after he sent dirty emails to several teenage male pages. The show accidentally labeled Foley a democrat in the early broadcast of the Fox News show. The error was fixed for The Factor’s late-night rerun.

Perhaps they’re so used to painting Democrats in a bad light, that they just assume any negative political story is associated with the Democrats. At least O’Reilly corrected it. Hannity would have probably argued that he really was a Democrat, participating in a conspiracy to disparage the good name of Republicans.

A mother in Georgia is attempting to convince county officials to ban the Harry Potter books from public school libraries. She called the books “evil” and said that they indoctrinate children in Wicca religion. A lawyer for the Board of Education said that if schools followed that logic, then classics such as Macbeth and Cinderella would also be banned.

She needs to have them remove any children’s books that include talking animals. If that’s not witchcraft, I don’t know what is. What an idiot.

Physicists in Denmark have made a breakthrough in teleportation through “quantum communication.” A team of scientists teleported particles of matter using light over a short distance. The bad news is that “beaming people up,” human “quantum leaps” and any sort of DeLorean-aided time travel may be years away.

Well, at least we’re making progess. If they can perfect this, maybe we can avoid future wars in the Middle East.
In the “strange search terms” category, someone found my site by searching for “Greg Naked Photo.” Let me just state that, as far as I know, there is no naked photo of myself circulating the internet. You can stop searching. And even if there was, you wouldn’t want to find it. Trust me.

Once again, we are cat people. My daughter’s birthday is tomorrow and she has wanted a kitten for a couple of years now. We finally decided it was time, and she picked up her new cat yesterday afternoon. My wife took her to our vet and she found a cat to her liking. Mom found one, too, so we have a couple of kittens running around the house now.

When I met my wife, she had a cat, but she was living with a friend who was allergic to cats, so her cat was living somewhere else at the time. For a while, I was unaware of the cats existence. She moved shortly after we began dating, and the cat came home. Now, this was not great news to me. I was not a cat person. She grew up with cats as pets. I came from a dog family. It’s not exactly the Capulets and the Montagues, but it was different to be a dog person and now have a cat around. I didn’t like cats and thought they were stupid animals. However, over time - sometime after we were married - I learned to like the cat. It actually was a pretty smart cat, which surprised me. Later, we added a second cat. This cat - a kitten at the time - took a liking to me, but was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. But I grew to like both of the cats a lot. When we were moving from Little Rock to Huntsville, Alabama, about 5 years ago, we gave the cats a way, and I admit, I was a little sad.

So, after 5 years of cat-free living, the house is now full of the sounds of meowing and purring. We’re looking forward to having fun with our two new kittens for years to come. That is, of course, if they can survive my 2-year-old son.

Today was the last day of school for my daugther. I visited chapel again this morning, as the last day is also “Awards Day.” She recieved the “Reading Award” for her class. I was very proud of her. She just finished first grade and is reading at nearly a third grade level. And, as one who loves to read, I am glad that she is doing so well in that area. I hope that she will continue to value reading much more than I did while growing up, and that she will always be a reader. I avoided reading anything that was not necessary as a child and student. I even bought the occasional CliffsNotes in college literature classes. I would usually do whatever I could to read less.

I can only recall really enjoying reading two books during my high school years (I don’t recall any from my college years.) One was George Orwell’s book, Animal Farm, which we read in my senior English class in high school. I actually remember very little about it 21 years later, but I do remember I liked it at the time. The other book, which I was also required to read in that class, became my favorite fiction book of all time - Harper Lee’s classic, To Kill A Mockingbird. (We also watched the movie that year, starring Gregory Peck, and it is one of my favorite movies as well. I think Peck’s portrayal of Atticus Finch is one of the greatest performances in all of cinematic history. He was just oustanding.) Due to my love of the movie as well, I’ve never actually read the book a second time. I own a copy and have wanted to for years, but never have. It’s easier to find a couple of hours to watch a movie than it is to find the time to read the book.

It would be a while, however, before I would find more to read and enjoy. As I said, I tried to avoid reading more than necessary in my literature classes in college. It wasn’t until I was out of college and on my own that I actually began to read regularly. I had begun listening to a lot of “contemporary Christian music” as I ended my college career, and so I began visiting Christian book stores more often in search of new music. This led to also checking out the books on occasion and various titles would catch my eye. Since then I’ve read many books, and found many authors who I love to read - people like Philip Yancey, Ken Gire, Brennan Manning, Frank Peretti, Ted Dekker, and, more recently, Don Miller and Erwin McManus. I have many more books that I want to read - shelves full, in fact. It seems these days it gets harder and harder to find the time, but I’ve still got a long list I’m looking to get to as soon as I can.

I hope to find a little extra time here and there this summer to do more reading, and continue to encourage my daughter to do the same. Her school sent home a “summer reading challenge” in which her teacher encouraged her to participate. She will need to read a certain number of books over the summer to complete the challenge. She was not terribly excited about it at first - I think the idea of having “homework” over the summer was not appealing. But I anticipate she’ll do great and enjoy it as the weeks go by. I’m challening myself, as well, to finish a book every two weeks. I love to read, but read too slow at times, and I’m trying to pick up the pace (and felt a book per week was too much to ask of myself). So, we’ll see if I can meet my own challenge as well. Maybe I’ll even find time to squeeze in To Kill A Mockingbird along the way.