Category: Personal News

Paula and I went to see the doc­tor today, and we’re going to have labor induced this Thurs­day.

Pret­ty strange to think about, that we can sched­ule that. There is the chance that she’ll come ear­ly, but the doc­tor did­n’t seem to expect it.

Expect some good news and a pho­to soon!

Let’s just hope the poem is wrong…

Mon­day’s Child is fair of face
Tues­day’s Child is full of grace
Wednes­day’s Child is full of woe
Thurs­day’s Child has far to go
Fri­day’s Child is lov­ing and giv­ing
Sat­ur­day’s Child works hard for a liv­ing
But the child that is born on the Sab­bath day
Is bon­ny and blithe and good and gay.

Then again, I’m not sure what that means. Thurs­day’s Child has far to go in order to reach what des­ti­na­tion?

Could be worse, I suppose–we could have induced on Wednes­day.

On a com­plete­ly unre­lat­ed note, I was very dis­ap­point­ed ear­li­er today. John Ort­berg is the teach­ing pas­tor at Men­lo Park Pres­by­ter­ian Church, which is about two blocks from my apart­ment. He’s also con­sid­ered one of the best preach­ers in Amer­i­ca.

Well, I’m always try­ing become a bet­ter preach­er, so I emailed him and asked to inter­view him about the ser­mon prepa­ra­tion and deliv­ery process (which I was plan­ning to encode in MP3 for­mat and upload to a web­site, prob­a­bly Reach The U).

After a few days he emailed me back and declined, cit­ing a busy teach­ing sched­ule. I was pret­ty bummed. I sup­pose I half expect­ed it–for all he knows I’m some whacko–but it’s still dis­ap­point­ing. I con­sid­er him a pro­fes­sion­al role mod­el, and so it would have been nice to meet him and fig­ure out how he does what he does.

Maybe it will work out some­day. I used to have a lot of suc­cess at meet­ing peo­ple I esteemed (or was just curi­ous about), but my last few attempts have bombed (Doug Fields, Dan Bet­zer, Dan Kim­ball, and now John Ort­berg).

First, no baby yet. You’ll know when baby Davis arrives. Relax.

Sec­ond, I was talk­ing with a church staffer yes­ter­day and he said, “One of the things that drew me to Chi Alpha was that you guys got the gid­dy.”

That’s a cool phrase–we got the gid­dy.

Just a quick update. The won­der­ful folks at Inter­na­tion­al Assem­bly of God up in Burlingame threw a baby show­er for us Sat­ur­day evening. We got some amaz­ing gifts and were tru­ly blessed by their gen­eros­i­ty. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I had to attend with­out Paula, as she was still on bed rest.

I did my best. I got real­ly excit­ed about the col­or pink and I did­n’t throw away any bows. I think that’s what you’re sup­posed to do at a show­er…

And my in-laws arrived for a month-long vis­it yes­ter­day. They’ve already begun pam­per­ing Paula to death, but I think she likes it.

One more comment–I just learned that Supreme Court Jus­tice San­dra Day O’Con­nor is going to be this year’s com­mence­ment speak­er. Wow.

Side note–I just learned that she was in the same class as Chief Jus­tice William Rhen­quist. I bet the profs who taught that year are feel­ing pret­ty good about them­selves.

So Paula had anoth­er doc­tor’s appoint­ment today, and the doc­tor has put her on total bed rest. “I’d real­ly pre­fer to wait at least two weeks for the baby to be born,” she explained.

And so Paula asked if the expect­ed date was still April 3rd and the doc­tor replied, “Your baby isn’t com­ing in April.”

Drum roll, please.…

Yes­ter­day we went to see the doc­tor for one of those reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled preg­nan­cy check­ups.

It went real­ly well, but it was kind of fun­ny at the end. The doc­tor had fin­ished explain­ing what to watch out for and Paula said, “By the way–what’s this feel­ing on my bel­ly right now?”

The doc­tor felt it and said, “That’s a con­trac­tion.”

“Oh, I’ve had three of those since we’ve been here.”

And the doc­tor gave Paula some med­i­cine to slow the process down. Time to pack the bags and get every­body’s num­ber in my cell phone…

Hap­py Valen­tine’s Day, Paula!

I want­ed to get you the uni­verse’s largest known dia­mond, but since it’s 2,500 miles across the ring would prob­a­bly be a bit awk­ward. Still, a 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 carat dia­mond would be quite the acces­so­ry.

side note: at first I assumed this was some sort of bizarre typo in the paper, but then I did some addi­tion­al research. Just google for BPM 37093 to find many more links. Thanks to OxBlog for the orig­i­nal link.

Last night’s episode of the West Wing was the first one in a while that was­n’t com­plete­ly lame. The end­ing was a bit con­trived, but I liked the flow of the episode.

That, how­ev­er, is nei­ther here nor there.

Also, I noticed that a Stan­ford grad joined Cirque de Soleil while at the same time becom­ing Ms. Fit­ness USA. I swear, those stu­dents can be such over­achiev­ers… I bet her mom has some fun­ny con­ver­sa­tions, though. “So your daugh­ter has a grad degree from Stanford–what does she do?” “She’s per­forms in the cir­cus.”

That also is nei­ther here nor there (but I note that you’re still read­ing, and so it was at least inter­est­ing).

Paula is doing well–she’s got just under two months to go until she gives birth to our first child. The biggest item on our to-do list now is buy­ing dia­pers. Lots of dia­pers.

Things are going well with Chi Alpha, espe­cial­ly on a dis­trict (statewide) lev­el.

Speak­ing of the dis­trict lev­el, my dis­trict super­in­ten­dent is retir­ing this April. This led Tim Smith, who leads Chi Alpha at Sacra­men­to State to have some fun:

From: Tim Smith
Sent: Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 04, 2004 1:24 PM
To: Glen Cole
Sub­ject: Chi Alpha

Dear Bro. Cole–

I don’t want you to leave your cur­rent office, but as talk­ing you out of it at this point seems unlike­ly, I am writ­ing today to offer you a new job as an Asso­ciate Cam­pus Pas­tor with me here in Chi Alpha-Sacra­men­to.

The perks of this job include:
–unlim­it­ed time off for “Plus One” con­certs and/or tours.
–a more relaxed dress code when on cam­pus.
–the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have direct involve­ment in shap­ing the imme­di­ate future of our world’s lead­er­ship, both domes­tic and for­eign, on a dai­ly basis.

I’m pret­ty sure I can get Chi Alpha and AGHM to waive the year-long Cam­pus Mis­sion­ary Intern­ship and Bere­an require­ments, so we could have you on cam­pus imme­di­ate­ly after rais­ing your bud­get. Also, if Mrs. Cole goes to work, they will count her income toward 20% of your bud­get, so that could help.

Any­way, you think about it, let me know if you’re inter­est­ed, and we’ll sched­ule an inter­view over piz­za and Coke.
Have a great day!
Tim Smith

To which the amused Glen Cole replied:

Dear Tim:

I knew God would speak to me about my future. Yours is the first offer, so we will be in prayer­ful con­sid­er­a­tion about this.

Bless­ings!

GDC

That’s a lot fun­nier if you know Glen Cole at all. Or if you know any­thing about how Chi Alpha ranks on the inter­nal AG peck­ing order.

I’m coor­di­nat­ing the dis­trict col­lege win­ter retreat this week­end, so Paula and I are head­ing up today to start get­ting stuff set up.

I’m pret­ty excited–our atten­dance is up by about 60% over last year and so it feels like we have a lot of momen­tum going into it.

On a more per­son­al note, around half of our Stan­ford Chi Alpha group will be head­ing up. Paula and I are deeply excit­ed about that. In our expe­ri­ence, few things cause a group to bond as much as a road trip to and from retreat along with all the fun things that hap­pen while there.

Paula and I got back from our hol­i­day trav­els yes­ter­day. We’ve been busy lit­tle bees.

We vis­it­ed San Diego with Bri­an and Cecilee Orme (they lead Chi Alpha in Salt Lake City) and had a blast! We were actu­al­ly work­ing (inspect­ing poten­tial con­fer­ence sites), but it was a lot of fun.

Then we got home, fin­ished our Christ­mas shop­ping, and hopped on a plane to New Orleans Christ­mas Eve. We had a great time with our fam­i­lies (and they had a good time exam­in­ing Paula’s preg­nant bel­ly), and then turned around and came home.

If you’ve emailed me in the last two weeks, rest assured that I’ll get back to you. I have a few hun­dred mes­sages to plow through, so it may take a lit­tle while.

Hap­py New Year!

Sor­ry it’s been so long since I’ve post­ed any­thing to the site–I feel as though I’ve bare­ly had time to check my email late­ly, much less update the site.

In any event, Paula and I are set­tling in to our new place. Stuff is actu­al­ly get­ting hung on the walls and the few box­es that remain dwin­dle dai­ly.

Things have Stan­ford have been pret­ty good–as always some bits are encour­ag­ing and some bits are dis­cour­ag­ing. Our small groups are the real high­light for me this quar­ter.

On anoth­er encour­ag­ing note, I just got an email from Josh Wong (one of our alum­ni from last year) and it con­tained this excit­ing lit­tle snip­pet: Ming Fai has also gone to Myan­mar! He said that I encour­aged him to go there, so I am glad to hear that. He is now dri­ving the pro­duc­tion of a movie-CD about Myan­mar to pro­mote aware­ness and to raise funds for the orphans and mis­sion­ar­ies there. I am help­ing him on that.

That was very neat to hear!