Cry, Laugh, Whatever

Christie sent me this video that her friend Tammy sent, and I had to share it. You can cry or laugh or whatever at it. Just know that it's a little disturbing if you care at all about the future of our country.

Relevant article on CSM

Many of you know that I used to work for a great ministry called the Center for Student Missions (see link at the right). There was just a really good article written in Relevant magazine about the disparity in Washington, DC, and CSM's own Mark Harmon is quoted extensively in it.

Thought it might be worth a read for you!

Vacationing Down South

Even though we live in Florida, Christie and I don't really live in "the" South. However, Georgia definitely qualifies as the South and that is where we found ourselves last week for a vacation. Some highlights:

--A visit to Christie's alma mater, LaGrange College.
--Seeing Callaway Gardens, a beautiful park at which Christie used to work. We did it by bike--which amounted to about 11 miles or so. We had a blast!
--My first visit to Turner Field in Atlanta to catch a Braves game. Besides being a great baseball game and watching Bobby Cox earn his record-setting 132nd ejection, I was able to notch up the 14th major league baseball park in which I've seen a game--I'm almost halfway to seeing all of them. (The game ended on a walk-off double by Chipper Jones...like I said, it was a great game!)
--A trip to Trader Joe's, everyone's favorite grocery store. This time, with no airline weight restrictions limiting us, we stocked up--including a cooler we snagged from Christie's parents. Nothing beats TJ's hummus, and Christie really likes some of their healthy snack food. I think this was the best part of the trip for her!
--Relaxing for the last half of the week a B&B for missionaries near Athens.
--The food was incredible, and classic for the South: Waffle House, soul food (including an all-you-can-eat buffet for only $8.50), BBQ, and sweet tea by the gallon for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Though it was a long drive, the trip was well worth it. We hadn't seen much of each other in the previous month because of the day camp which Christie was running, so we spent a lot of quality time together. I'll try to post pictures as soon as I can.

I Can Swim!

Several of you have written to me wondering how swim lessons went. In short, the class was fun and successful. It was supposed to be a two-week class, but the the three students and our teacher got along so well--and were making such good progress--that we decided to keep going for another two weeks!

By the end, we were all much more comfortable in the water, able to tread water (still not as efficiently as I would like, but good enough for the time being), swim using several different strokes, and float three different ways. Most importantly, the three of us now have the skills necessary to save ourselves if anything unfortunate should happen in the water.

Thanks for the prayers. And if there's ever a pool around the next time we're together, ask me to show off my new skills!

SF Mayoral Election

I love San Francisco. In what other city--okay there might be one or two others in the world--would the list of candidates running for mayor look like this? Note the occupations of each:


Harold Brown, retired teacher and blogger

George Davis, nudist activist

Tony Hall, former supervisor

Lonnie Holmes, San Francisco Juvenile Probation Department manager

Harold Hoogasian, flower shop owner

Grasshopper Kaplan, taxi driver

Quintin Mecke, program director for the nonprofit Safety Network Partnership

Gavin Newsom, incumbent

Wilma Pang, music teacher

Michael Powers, owner of Power Exchange sex club

Chicken John Rinaldi, showman

Billy Bob Whitmer, educator

Josh Wolf, blogger