Here’s a great quote from Mitch McConnell concerning Tim Russert: “I’m sure I speak for all elected officials when I say he always asked the question we hoped he wouldn’t.”
Some miscellaneous blogworthy thoughts:
Anchor is taking part in the OnePrayer.com emphasis. Pastor Tim got us started last week with his prayer for Anchor: Lord, Make Us Courageous. This week we watched Craig Groeschel, the impetus behind OnePrayer, preach on, “Lord, Make Us One.” It’s the first time Anchor has tried a video sermon, and it seemed to me that people responded well.
In planning music for today, we talked about songs having to do with oneness. We thought of two, but both can be sung in a very downer way (and usually are): “They’ll Know We are Christians,” and “We are One in the Bond of Love.” We told Tim we could jazz up “They’ll Know We are Christians,” and he told us to run with it.
And boy, did we jazz it up. Rock it up, I mean. It was a great rock and roll version, with superb guitar work (on the keyboard, I felt a bit superfluous).
During a transition time, between the video message and what we call our Sermon Sequel, I played two upbeat hymns on the grand, “Since Jesus Came Into my Heart” and “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder.” People applauded when I finished. That always surprises me. I don’t know if they just liked those hymns, or if they liked rollicking gospel piano. Or maybe it was just that Joanna started clapping and hooting, and dragged everyone along with her.
Pam’s Dad died exactly six months ago. This is the six-month anniversary. He lay in a coma for a week, and on the 14th of December, they removed life support and he very soon was pronounced dead. So this is a day with meaning for my wife.
Pam and her sister, Jodie, spent the day together. They went to the grave, took pictures, went to Wal-Mart and Meiers and who knows where else, went to Chuck’s condo (which still hasn’t sold, and they are highly motivated sellers), sent in some ads to the local free classified paper, and just hung out at the house.
I gave the grill a thorough cleaning, inside and out. Then, for supper, I grilled T-bones for Pam and Jodie. Stir-fried some veggies in olive oil, too. The steaks had been marinating in Dr. Pete’s Burgandy Marinade, the best marinade I’ve tried so far. Since I grew up in a total-abstention denomination, using a “burgandy” marinade makes me feel a little bit naughty. Please don’t comfort me (as Jodie tried to do) by saying that cooking makes the alcohol evaporate. I want to feel a tad rebellious, like I’m getting away with something. (Though, obviously, God is watching.)
I only grilled T-bones for Pam and Jodie. We get them in two-packs from W&W Locker in Huntington, and I didn’t want to split a second pack. I just made a hamburger for myself. Of course, that made Pam and Jodie feel guilty. And of course, I knew that would be the case.
Got my semi-annual letter from InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, with a check for $5.61. That’s about what’s it’s been for several years now. It’s nice being able to depend on a steady income.
It’s a royalty check from InterVarsity Press. My three Murphy’s Law books are long since out of print in the United States, but two of them are still available from Brendow, a secular publisher in Germany: Murphy’s Laws of Parenting, and Murphy’s Laws of Marriage. You can get them on Amazon/Germany. In fact, if you order some, you’ll ensure that I continue rolling in das gut German dough.
I don’t know how many ways the profits are split at this point. With IVPress, cartoonist Rob Suggs and I split 15% of the profits (after our advance was covered). With the German publisher, it gets split four ways: InterVarsity gets half of whatever tiny percentage of the royalties Brendow contracted to fork over in licensing publication rights. Rob and I split the other half. These things are obviously selling like hotcakes in Germany, hence my monstrously generous royalty check. It could be that Germans don’t particularly care for hotcakes.
Has anyone else noticed all the blondes in ridiculously short skirts on Fox News? Yes, in fact, many people have noticed. Just Google “Fox News blondes.” Lots of chatter on this subject.
I don’t watch Fox News, normally, but I regularly flip through it (channel 82) on my journey from CNN (80) to MSNBC (84). And quite often, what you see is a blonde in a very short skirt. The morning Fox & Friends show, in particular, showcases a fabric-deficient blonde sitting between two bimbos of the testosterone persuasion.
Another is E. D. Hill, whose journalist acumen deduced that Barack and Michelle Obama’s fist-jab was actually a diabolical terrorist signal of some kind. I understand that Fox News responded today by canceling her show, which opens another slot for the teeming multitude of unemployed blonde goddesses.
Now, I’m not criticizing blondes. I’m sure that all of these stunning women carry impeccable journalistic credentials and can correctly identify a cold air mass moving across the Plains States. I’m just saying.
Ashley Furniture delivered our new living room furniture yesterday afternoon. Our former couch and loveseat, a matching set from Kittles, were carted away to the Mustard Seed Furniture Bank last Wednesday. After 15 years, there wasn’t much padding left. Not comfortable at all for Sunday afternoon naps, because you could feel the boards down there pressing against your ribs.
We’ve been talking about getting new furniture for several years, but we refuse to go in debt over anything except house and cars (we’ve been paying off our credit cards every month for at least ten years). And there were always costs in line ahead of furniture. Until now.
This white couch, I swear, is the most comfortable couch in known recorded history. Each side has a recliner. When extended, it’s like a bed. You sink into it and want to go to sleep. We sat in a lot of couches in a lot of stores, but none came close to this one comfort-wise. The trick will be keeping Molly from drooling over the white fabric (the only color available).
Fortunately, Molly seems to have taken to the other couch, the brown one.
Lots of talk on ESPN this morning about the retirement of Michael Strayhan from the New York Giants. All of which prompted these thoughts:
What a book! I’m talking about Jon Evans’ Dark Places, published under the Dark Alley imprint. The protagonist is an adventure traveler, a top-notch but distracted computer programmer whose first love is backpacking across remote areas of the world. In Nepal, he discovers a hiker who has been murdered in the same way his girlfriend was murdered in Cameroon. That sets in motion a hunt which takes us to Indonesia, West Africa, San Francisco, London, and the darkest recesses of the internet in an effort to track down this serial killer.
Jon Evans himself is an adventure traveler, which is the only way he could write this book with so much local texture. But the internet stuff, with cryptic communications with the killer, and more than you may want to know about the ways we leave digital footprints, really made the book for me.
This was an utterly fascinating book, one of the few in a long time that I absolutely couldn’t put down. Evans has several other novels out there. They’ve jumped immediately to the top of my must-read list.
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