From Despair.com:

There are no stupid questions,
But there are a LOT of inquisitive idiots.

I stole this one from PvP. Have you ever heard parents complain about all the stuff they have to do for their kids? Soccer practice, piano lessons, fund raisers, band concerts; and that doesn’t even touch the surface of the added headaches of the holidays. Well, good ol’ Brent Sienna, PVP’s perpetual bachelor, had the best retort I’ve heard for all this bawling.

That’s what you get for reproducing!

Nice!

Wow… Where to begin…

Nine days ago, Sunday before last, I headed out on a camping trip with some of the guys from the church youth group for a retreat. We were planning to go to Pedernales Falls State Park near Austin, but it had been raining the whole week before and the forecast was for more rain. We decided to stay closer to home and opted for Mineral Wells.

It did rain every day we were there. It was soggy, but we all still had a good time. We got some good hiking time in and the guys got to spend a lot of time with the Lord.

I got home Tuesday afternoon cleaned up and hung my tent and sleeping bag up to dry. I took my wonderful wife out to eat and then got a phone call from my sister, Sabra. Sabra and her fam were going to be driving through the next day on their way to my folk’s ranch in La Grange and offered to save me the gas of driving down myself. I took her up on it.

They pulled in to Arlington at about 3:30 on Wednesday and I hoped in. (Tammy flew to Amarillo on Thursday morning to spend Thanksgiving with her family. Long story, but it was a good decision.)

My dad was having some survey work done on the ranch which required cutting some paths through the dense woods along the perimeter of the property. These paths revealed other, smaller trials through the woods created by the horses and wild deer. This gave him the idea to buy some cheap paintball guns from Wal-Mart. Thanksgiving was great. We had paintball wars in the woods every day. Oh, and the food was good too. (Thanks, Mom!)

I got back from La Grange around lunch time on Sunday. I met Tammy at the church and we did some counseling with one of “our kids” who’s having some personal problems. We got home in time to catch the 3:00 football game. Then we started packing.

“Packing?” you ask. Yes, packing. The apartment next door to ours is an end unit, thus no neighbors on the bedroom side, thus much quieter. It also has a bigger balcony that’s screened in and new appliances. It’s been vacant for a couple of months now and we decided to move. This is certainly our easiest move ever. Our living room couch is moving literally about a foot, even though we have to carry it out one door and in the other.

Last night (Monday) we started moving and got about half way done by 9:30. We both tuckered out and called it a night. Today we should have 90% of our stuff in the new place. Since we’re not really packing most of it, there’s no unpacking to do. Just take and arm load off this shelf and put it on the exact same shelf next door. We do still get the benefit of moving in that we are going to get rid of LOTS of junk we don’t really need.

Once we’re done moving and cleaning up the old place, we’ve got our usual busy weekend ahead, and next week is going to be the craziest of all. As I inherited the church’s Christmas play, and it is STILL behind schedule, I’ll be at the church EVERY NIGHT next week for tech set up, que rehearsals, dress rehearsals, final run throughs, and finally, three performances on Saturday and Sunday (Dec. 11th and 12th).

So, now you will understand and hopefully forgive my lack of posting the last week or so and for the next two weeks. Hey, at least we’re not bored!

I went on a “Young Men’s Retreat” this week. To you lay people out there, that means I went camping with a bunch of teen age boys with a bunch of penned up energy. There were many, many, many very funning quips flying through the night air in those rainy woods and I hope I can remember them all long enough to use them as White Board Quips.

It’s like Goonies for grown ups!

Ahh youth.

I’ll be gone all this week. The first half, I’ll be camping with the guys from the youth group. The plan is to go to Pedernales State Park, down by Austin. But with the weather map being green from Nebraska to Mexico, we may choose plan B, which is to go to Mineral Wells. If we going to get rained on, might as well be closer to home.

After the camping trip, I’ll be back in DFW just in time to put Tammy on a plane to Amarillo, change out the clothes in my bag, and head down to La Grange. Tammy’s doing Thanksgiving with her family, to lend support to her sister who is getting divorced. I’m going down to our traditional Ladd family Thanksgiving on the ranch. There has been talk of paintball wars in the woods, and I plan to bring my “game face”.

So, please forgive me if your comments don’t get approved for a few days this week.

Now, go and be thankful! God think’s you’re special and He loves you very much!

Society has labeled me yet again. First I was Gen X (read angst-ridden yet apathetic). Then, I was a victim of the Dot-Com Bubble (read laid-off). Then I was part of the 9-11 Fallout (read laid-off AGAIN). But now I’ve been placed in a new social classification. Problem is, this one is the truest of all.

I am part of the Tech Support Generation. Geek is sheik, google is a verb, I read more blogs than “media” news, and life is all about owning games that push my video card and owning a video card that can keep up with my games.

The true litmus test of Gen Tech is explained in this article.

…the Thanksgiving holidays. We’ll sit with our families in warm, candle-lit dining rooms eating stuffed turkey, reminiscing over old photographs, preparing holiday shopping lists and … Please. Let’s be frank. We are going home to fix our parent’s computers.

Yes, we all know it’s true. No sense hiding from the facts.

And just to make myself perfectly clear, I own that shirt, and wear it often, but no one seems to care. They ask, and I end up fixing their computer anyway.

It’s official. A New England Journal of Medicine study proves shows that talking on a cell phone while driving is just as bad as driving drunk.

The use of cellular telephones in motor vehicles is associated with a quadrupling of the risk of a collision during the brief period of a call.

That is to say, if you’re talking on a cell phone while driving you are four times more likely to cause an accident. The study also found that “hands free” devices do not make you any safer. The problem is not where you hands are. The problem is where your brain is.

FOUR TIMES more likely to cause an accident! That’s the same rate for someone with a 0.8 blood alcohol level.

Hey, people! STOP IT!

WBQotW #6 comes to us from an article at ananova (linked from Apropos). Madona has been listed as one of the Most Influential Jewish Americans. That’s funny enough. But dig this quote from the editor of the list:

“…she’s practicing Judaism for Christ’s sake! Well, not really for Christ’s sake…”

HA! That’s priceless.

I have a couple of email addresses that I use whenever I’m required to enter such information on a web form. I also have a nasty habit of putting my favorite stage name and old mailing addresses in these forms. My imaginary web surfing fellow is named JoBob Humperdink and he lives in Amarillo at the address I inhabited back in 1993.

I don’t know why everyone and their dog wants your email address before they let you see their news article or post a comment on their blog. Regardless, I call these my spam accounts. Inevitablly, someone will sell their collection of email addresses to the scummy underbelly of the internet and that address will begin receiving hundreds of spam messages. Thank the Lord for spam filters. On these two email addresses, the spam folders are always full.

But what’s so funny about that?

Well, I have come to enjoy spending a few minutes perusing my spam folders to see the oh so clever ways that the scummy underbelly tries to get my attention. Allow me to share a few subject lines from this weeks compost heap.

Jobob: Forget About Those Garage Bills

Your confirmation Jobob Humperdink …

Jobob Humperdink 11/10/2004-2:13:05 PM (This one is from the “IRS”. Gee that sounds important… not.)

Shop in AMARILLO

Jobob: Re-finance Today & Save

Confirmation for Jobob Humperdink

Egyptian Peanuts (Wha…?)

RE :Jobob Humperdink 1:10:19 AM 11/14/200… (Oh, now your getting clever… *roll eyes*)

Just do her! (Ah, yes. The subtlties of romance in the age of Viagra.)

Are You Overwhelmed With Credit Card Debt (Why, yes, I am. Thanks for asking. Why don’t you pour some lemon juice on my paper cut while your at it.)

Private urgent message from SunTrust Bank (Please oh please, my gentle readers, do not fall for these things!)

Oh, yeah. I just found a new toy with which to torture my body.

Freebord has got to be the coolest thing Ehhh-Vahhhhrr. It’s basically a long-board style skate board engineered to ride like a snowboard, except on pavement. Schweeeeeet.

You can see their whole web site, which is pretty cool, or just check out the video to see just how real the feel is on this thing.