The Big 1–0

I remember seeing a sermon series once titled “Marriage: Closest Thing To Heaven, Closest Thing To Hell.” Brilliant title.

Ten years ago at this time I had just finished hiding my car from my groomsmen to prevent any untoward pranks and was at First Assembly of God in Lafayette, LA getting ready to be married under the auspices of Eric Treuil (who was using the authority invested in him by God and the state of Louisiana).

Three quick memories:

  • Paula was very beautiful in her bridal dress.
  • I began fidgeting with my ring while still in the sanctuary, a habit I’ve continued to this day. I don’t know why, but whenever I’m thinkig about something I’ll either spin it around on my finger or take it off and put it back on a few times. Whatever the cause, you can see me doing it on the wedding tape as we recess out of the sanctuary.
  • I had a pile of eclairs as my grooms cake courtesy of high school buddy George Byron Noel. He’s a really good chef and my cake was delicious (as my brother can attest, since he ate approximately half of it 🙂 ).

We headed out on a honeymoon that included a stop in New Orleans and culminated in a stay at Southern SALT (now known as the Uprising) where I will be preaching in just a few days. It’s funny how things seem to come full-circle sometimes.

10 years. Much closer to heaven than hell by my reckoning.

Happy anniversary, Paula. I’d marry you again in a heartbeat.

Revamped Website — RSS funkiness ensued

I just reworked the way this website is structured pretty radically.

I’ve been using WordPress as my blogging tool for quite a while, and I love it. But it was getting harder and harder to do all that I wanted to through it. I’ve got lots of different things happening on this site and trying to show them all through WordPress using various plugins and hacks just wasn’t working well.

So I needed to change, but I didn’t want to give up WordPress.

So instead I decided to use Planet as the central engine for this website — it integrates all the different sub-applications I use (WordPress, Gallery, my quotes database, delicious).

The big downside is that my RSS feeds just got changed (and thereby became funky). If you’re a reader by syndication (this includes all of you in Facebook land) I apologize for the sudden influx of old content marked new.

I’ll be tweaking with the site for the next few days, but there shouldn’t be a big change in the feeds like that again.

Humility Smackdown

Curt Harlow just found out that I have publicly called myself the world’s #1 speaker on the subject of humility.

In case you were unaware, that’s Curt’s tagline. He probably even has it tattooed in an indelicate place.

So he called me up, “Glen, you are not the world’s number one speaker on the subject of humility and you know it. That’s my schtick.”

I believe my reply can best be summarized as “neener-neener.”

So we have four options:
1) We can each humbly agree that the other person is right. This option is appealing, but I just can’t see Curt going for it.
2) I can apologize for stealing his joke and print up business cards for him proclaiming his humble status. I’m sure Curt would prefer this solution, but he really set himself up to be knocked when he started the joke. Jokes are made to be expanded, refracted, and revised.
3) We can rumble. Curt’s bigger than me, so I don’t plan to pursue this course of action.
4) I can call myself the world’s number two speaker on the subject of humility in a tone of voice that implies I know that makes me more humble than the number one guy.

And so I choose option number 4. I am clearly the world’s number TWO speaker on the subject of humility and I am humble enough to be content with that ranking.