Category: Personal News

Fore!

I don’t normally participate in these meme things, but Scott Aughtmon tagged me publicly at lunch yesterday and so I feel obliged to throw my four cents in.

Four Jobs I’ve Had:
* Lifeguard
* Police Officer
* Computer Services (in a hospital)
* Minister

Four movies I can watch over and over:
* Monty Python & the Holy Grail
* Rat Race
* The Princess Bride
* Arsenic and Old Lace

Four places I have lived:
* Lafayette, LA
* Natchitoches, LA
* Springfield, MO
* Palo Alto, CA

Four shows I like to watch:
* Mythbusters
* Inside the Actor’s Studio
* Battlestar Galactica
* Whose Line Is It, Anyway?

Four foods that I like:
* Chocolate Chip Cookies
* Fried Rice
* BBQ Chicken Pizza
* Hamburgers

Four websites I visit daily:
* reddit.com
* getreligion.org
* Cool Tools
* The Web Comic List

Four things I want to do before I die:
* earn a doctorate
* learn a living language
* write a book
* see Dana succeed in life

Four people I’m tagging: (Paula has been implicitly tagged since this is GlenAndPaula.com)
* Lindsey Hawley
* Earl Creps (he hasn’t ppsted lately and needs a kick to get him started again)
* Will Phillips (ditto)
* Greg Davis

Turning A Phrase

Our neighbor is applying for a job as a professor and part of her job interview will involve lecturing to a class, so last night a bunch of us got together and listened to her practice her Salem Witch Hunt lecture (her expertise is in colonial history). It was quite good. She’s got a lot of knowledge and presents it well.

At one point she mentioned how the confessing witches described in lurid detail their covenant with the Devil which, along with several other intriguing details, involved kissing his butt. Literally. To make a deal with the Evil One they believed you had to apply your lips to his posterior.

And they described this in lurid detail. Lurid.

Being a lover of words, I immediately began to think of ways to allude to the act of kissing demon tush that would fall short of lurid but would nonetheless be evocative. I came up with three:

  • giving the Enemy of All Flesh a hiney hickey
  • kissing the heinous anus
  • smooching the sulfurous sphincter (alternate ending: Satanic sphincter)

Coming soon to a sermon near you…

update: my neighbor has blogged about the evening as well. With a photo. And yes, I am the one who remains nameless. Also, I edited one of my wordplays because I felt a verb that I had chosen for variety was stronger than I had intended to be. There’s a distinction between humor and vulgarity, and I think my original verb was too crass.

More Holiday Happenings

After I posted last night’s entry I was filled with even more memories of the holidays.

  • Home cooking. Home Cajun cooking.
  • Eating at the Steamboat for our anniversary. Tasty beyond belief.
  • Teaching my nephew Rick why you should never lose at Tic-Tac-Toe. Also, reducing niece Rebecca to whining because I wouldn’t “go easy on her” while demonstrating my mad Tic-Tac-Toe skillz to a suitably impressed Rick.
  • Reading Soldier, Ask Not as an adult and realizing the hero is someone other than I thought it was when I first read it as a kid.
  • Being a missionary table host for the students from FSU Chi Alpha when the assigned discussion topic was sexual purity. There was so much boisterous laughter at our table that we got a dirty look from one table and a snide comment from another, “Do you see how that table is laughing over there? They don’t take sex seriously.” To which my reply was, “I find humor in everything I value greatly–laughter is one way of delighting in something precious. Besides, if you can’t laugh at something as ridiculous as sex you are seriously humor-challenged.” In the other table’s defense, however, we were having a disruptively good time.
  • Finding out that many of my former RUi students really enjoyed my sessions and remembered them in surprising detail.
  • Seeing how many Chi Alphas are spreading into the elite schools. One couple I helped disciple is heading to establish a ministry at Cornell and I met another chap heading to Brown (his brilliant support-raising motto: “What can you do for Brown?”). Of America’s extremely prestigious schools, that makes staff-supported chapters at Stanford, Georgetown, MIT, Brown, Yale and Cornell. We’re making major progress on that front.
  • Chatting with Gene Breitenbach about the recent intelligent design court case (he’s a huge fan of the way the case was decided).
  • Realizing how stark the imbalance is between Chi Alpha Xanga users and the more enlightened Chi Alpha WordPress crowd. I may have to post an article on that someday (but only if I want to endure a good-natured web fight, especially since my wife is a Xangan).
  • Dana screaming “Home!” with delight when we stepped back through the door of our apartment.

Holiday Highlights

As always, we spent Christmas in Lousiana. In addition, I got to spend around 14 hours in a car driving from Lafayette, LA to Louisville, KY for The World Missions Summit. Nearly 4,000 college students from Chi Alpha groups across America gathered to consider their role in God’s global plan. And then I got to spend 14 hours driving back again.
Some highlights from the trip:

  • Getting loot for Christmas, including Munchkin.
  • Having Dana decide that daddy was her favorite for a little while.
  • Watching my parents finally get broadband internet service. Also, fixing computers for both my parents and my in-laws.
  • Discovering that Steve Barke has a snore that would cause a dead person to search for ear plugs. Also, purchasing ear plugs.
  • Listening to J. Rufus Fears talk about Winston Churchill for 12 hours. I’ve long admired Churchill based on what little I knew about him–now that I know more I’m astounded. He was among the greatest of all time.
  • Hanging out with Greg for 14 hours in a car.
  • Discovering that there are whole stretches of road in the South which only receive country and/or rap stations.
  • Chatting with Lindsey and Nicholette about their upcoming moves to join us. They’re both such great people–Paula and I can’t wait for them to be here!
  • Meeting Will Phillips. He was every bit as entertaining in person as I had hoped he would be. For some reason he thinks he out-geeks me. Someday I may have to disabuse him of that notion (I contribute to Wikipedia, for crying out loud).
  • Seeing my old bud Randy Jumper again. We were classmates at AGTS and have kept in touch digitally since. Nice to have a face-to-face again.
  • Discovering that Stanford frosh John Sillcox can focus out of each eye separately. Freaky.
  • Way cool worship in the morning. In an odd turn of events, the morning services were consistently 5 to 7 times better than the evening services.
  • Seeing over 650 students make a one-year committment to missions with the option for a lifetime extension. Woohoo! And they weren’t just signing up for the easy places, either. A lot of closed countries are in for a big surprise.
  • Watching the amazing level of panache with which the Ascent (a Chi Alpha staff event) was pulled off. Knowing that Belkas Lehmann and I had planned the whole thing made it extra-special.
  • Getting a free copy of Full Gospel, Fractured Minds. I’m enjoying it so far, and I’ll post a review when I’m done. Big thanks to Jerry Gibson for hooking me up.
  • Randomly walking around Louisville at dark looking for food (which I finally discovered at a gas station).
  • Finally watching The Magnificent Seven.
  • Watching The Fantastic Four and finally realizing that they’re the four elements.
  • Having Dana behave on both flights.

Overwhelming Generosity

Paula and I loved our first microwave. It had this awesome dial that did everything. You didn’t need to punch a number–you just turned the dial and magic happened.

One sad day our microwave died. Food stopped warming yet the microwave kept churning, leading us to surmise that radiation was seeping into our chromosomes.

So we got a replacement microwave from a friend. It was great, but the light didn’t work and the food didn’t rotate. And we often suspected that radiation was still seeping into our chromosomes (but only half of them owing to the lack of rotation).

And that’s just one reason we’re so grateful for last night: many of the Assemblies of God churches in the South Bay threw a Christmas party to celebrate AG US Missionaries. We and the Harlows were the recipients of outrageous generosity. Dana got books, stuffed animals, a play tea set, a stroller, some garb, and an enormous ladybug pillow (with matching sheets and cover).

And we got a fully functional microwave. No more radiation-steeped DNA, no more inexplicable tans, just hot tasty food on demand.

And the icing on the cake? Not too long ago an alumnus of our ministry gave me a PSP (a completely unexpected and much appreciated gift).

We are blessed beyond measure. Say what you will about the hierarchy of the Assemblies of God, the tremendous generosity of our laypeople is unmatched.

The Genius of McDonald’s

I am shocked at the staggering success that is McDonald’s marketing.

Dana doesn’t watch television yet. To my knowledge, she’s never seen a McDonald’s commercial on television.

We’ve been precisely three times.

Once at a drive-through. Dana got some french fries. She loved them.

Last week after church we took her to a play land with the pastor’s kids. She kept yelling, “french fries!” all the way over.

Last week on a rainy day Paula mentioned that perhaps we should take Dana to McDonald’s to play since the ground was moist. Dana bolted from her seat and yelled, “McDonald’s!”

I think they put heroin in the ketchup.

So Dana Is Using Two Word Sentences…

Dana has started using two word sentences occassionally.

Usually it’s just a stock phrase, like “get down” (please put me on the ground) or “all done” or “thank you” or “hold you” (I’d like a hug, please) or even “wuv you.”

Every once in a while, though, she’ll come up with an original sentence. Like “wipe fluffles” (my stuffed lamb has gone poop and needs a diaper change) or “goose honk.”

But a few days ago she came up with a zinger. I was being my usual goofy self and she looked me straight in the eye and said, “Daddy silly.”

Ouch. So young and yet so perceptive.

Our Dog Died

I’ve held off on posting this for a few days because I’ve been on the busy side. As my brother mentioned, our family dog died last week back in Louisiana. Her name was Missy, and she was one of the best dogs ever.

She was a pretty funny dog. For instance, she used to try to herd my parents as though they were sheep. Quite comical.

It sounds as though she died very peacefully, but I know it’s a hard blow to my parents. They both loved her very much. I did, too, but I’ve been living a few thousand miles away from her and so it lessened the blow.

My dad says he doesn’t want another dog, but he’s a big softie. Some pathetic looking animal will turn up on his doorstep sooner or later, and he’ll adopt it.

But it will never replace Missy.

With Visions of Wild Geese Honking in Her Head

Dana is a source of unenending amazement to me. This morning when she woke up we had the following conversation:

Me: “Dana, did you have any dreams last night?”
Dana (in a little 19-month-old just-woke-up voice): “Dream?”
Me: “Dreams are the pictures you see when you’re sleeping and your eyes are closed.”
Dana: “Goose.”
Me: “You had a dream about a goose?”
Dana: “Ya.”
Me: “What did the goose do in your dream?”
Dana: “Honk honk.”

I was melting.

I had been trying to get her to understand the concept of dreams off and on for a few weeks now, and while she’s always seemed interested she’s never actually answered my question with anything other than “ya”.

In case you’re skeptical, I’m pretty sure she understood my question and did actually have a dream about a goose. She hasn’t seen a goose in weeks (not even in her picture books). If one was on her mind it arrived there somehow other than a recent real-world experience.

Besides which, she told mommy the same story, “Dream. Goose. Honk honk.” when we went to get mommy up a few minutes later.

When Ratty Comes Marching Home Again

Grandparents are rat magnets. At least, that is the conclusion I am rapidly coming to. As faithful readers no doubt recall, we had rat problems when my in-laws last visited (crisis, climax, ambiguous conclusion).

Anyway, back to the present: my mother is visiting and we have another rat to contend with. We saw evidence about a week ago but we set out some poison in a child-inaccessible location and the rat consumed a lot of it. We assumed it was dead, but today we saw its tail while preparing lunch.

We were minding our own business when my mother noticed a humongous rat tail sticking out from beneath the dishwasher. It was larger than a very large worm and smaller than a small snake. Probably about 7 inches long. Assuming it wasn’t mooning us I’ll assume a tail length of around 8 or 9 inches total.

Paula is less than pleased. I think she views it as a personal insult to her homemaking skills. I prefer to think of it as part of a larger ecological issue involving our apartment complex, the weather, and the impossibility of creating a hermetically sealed apartment.

But Paula is on the warpath. To delve further into cliche, it’s on.

updated 11/7/2005 to soothe the savage beast that is family