The Final Countdown....

It is only 9 days away until Kimmy and I leave for our cruise aboard the Pacific Catalyst! I am really excited. The captain of the ship is a fellow forumite over at YMX and ever since the days on the Youth Specialties forums, I have dreamed of going on a cruise aboard Bill's boat. And that day is only a little over a week away. There has been a few hurdles we had to jump to get everything in place, but it is all set. I have my passport, so we can fly into Canada, which will make it a little bit easier to get to Friday Harbor, which is where we will catch the Pacific Catalyst. The other countdown is for 17 February 2009. Without looking it up, does anyone know what is so significant about that date?

Getting the Train Back on the Tracks

It looks like Michigan is getting things back on track after their first two disappointing losses. Of course not playing a team that deploys the spread offense has helped. But they do look like they have gotten some of their defensive problems worked out. And the offense is looking pretty good even with a freshman quarterback in there. And let me add that with the way Ryan Mallett is playing, the future of Michigan football looks pretty good. He is a big kid at 6'7" and 252 pounds. I would hate to be a defensive player trying to take him down. Next two weeks should be fairly easy games and then it will be Purdue and since they play pretty much a spread offense, I am a bit nervous. But hopefully Michigan can do it. For now I am happy though. Let's just hope that tomorrow the Detroit Lions can make a large portion of the state of Pennsylvania sad. If the Lions go 3-0 that will be the first time since Billy Sims was the Lions running back.

Softball Fun Update

Last week I posted about my softball accident where I had taken a softball off of the knee while pitching. Well, I wanted to give an update. The picture I had originally posted was taken about an hour after I had gotten hit. Here is the one from the next day.... As you can see it looked much nastier a day later. My mom told me to start taking arnica, which is supposed to help with the bruising and as you can tell from the picture I took today that it is working pretty darn good. I did not pitch this past Monday, because I did not want to take the chance of getting it hit again. And I am glad that I made that choice because this team was hitting several up the middle. And my brother, who pitched in my place got a bruised thumb and bicep, along with catching one ball right in front of his face. And that was on two successive plays. YIKES! I doubt that I will be pitching anytime soon, but when I do I have a knee pad that I will be wearing to protect that area. And because of the injury I also have not been doing much more leg-wise than riding the bike when I go to the gym. No weight lifting with my legs, but I have been doing upper body with the weights. But this week I decided to up the intensity on my bike riding and my legs are sore! But the good kind of sore.

:-) is 25 Years Old

Today at 11:44a the electronic smile :-) and all emoticons was born 25 years ago. And the world has never smiled the same since. So today I sent out a whole bunch of text messages letting them know and giving them a :-) in honor of the man who started it all. Story Here So why don't you send a :-) onto someone today.

9/11 Tribute

I made this video for the church that I was a youth pastor at back on the one year anniversary of 9/11 and finally got around to uploading it to YouTube. I hope you enjoy it as you reflect on and remember what happened a little over 6 years ago on that tragic day.

MICHIGAN WINS!!! MICHIGAN WINS!!! MICHIGAN WINS!!!

The University of Michigan won a game today! And now I get a free slurpee from my friend Ron. And I also got to watch the game with a friend from over at YMX, who is a Notre Dame fan, Adam. It was really hard to sit there and watch a grown man cry like that. But I did laugh at him, because we all know that it takes a big man to cry, but it takes an even bigger man to laugh at that man. Just kidding, Adam. Thanks for having us over and feeding me and my family. Now I am watching the "Brain Bowl". Duke vs. Northwestern. I love having the Big Ten Network. Oh yeah, and this is my 300th post.

Extremely Random Thoughts

So many thoughts in my head today.... First one, of course, is whether or not Michigan an win a football game today after starting this season 0-2. Fortunately, we are playing a team that is having a worst time than we are. Notre Dame has not scored an offensive touchdown yet and has scored a total of 13 points this season, whereas Michigan has at least scored 39. So hopefully that will bode well for the team in maize and blue today. Starting the season 0-3 would not be good. I do not believe that Lloyd Carr's job is in jeopardy at all, nor do I believe that it should be. If you look at his history as a head coach he has one of the top winning percentages of active head coaches, he has a higher winning percentage than the Wolverines have overall, and in all his year's as a head coach he has never had a scandal or problem. Lloyd has kept up the Michigan tradition of making Michigan Men. He deserves the respect of the university and the fans to choose to retire, if that is what he wants to do and I think he will at the end of this season, which I think he has planned all along. Some of my other thoughts are in regards to politics and religion.... The USA Today has had a couple of articles talking about it and it has got me thinking a couple of things that I commonly hear from Christians. The first thought I had was is it possible for a "real" Christian to vote for a democrat? Seriously, I have heard twice recently from people about this, because of this post I had someone ask my wife if we were going to vote for a democrat now. The funny thing is that if you look at the comments on that post you will see two different people that have said they felt that my list was leaning more like a democrat and another that said it was leaning more like a republican. Then I had another friend, who saw me taking some recyclables out to my car from work, ask me why I was putting trash in my car and I told him that it was not trash, but recyclables. I then kiddingly said that I was just doing my part to leave more space in our Michigan landfills for all of that Canadian trash we are importing. (For those of you who do not know, there is a big controversy because we are importing Canadian trash into our state.) And then I added seriously that I was just doing my part as a Christ-follower to make sure that we took care of our environment, which I believe every Christ-follower should do. He then said to me, "the next thing your going to tell me is that you are going to now be a democrat". (insert a note of disdain in his voice) Seriously, why do Christians think that Jesus would only ever vote for a democrat? I used to think this way, but I have seriously begun to wonder about this. The other thought that I have had that is tied to this, is can a person who calls themselves a Christian vote for someone who does not have a pro-life stance politically? What if they had a list that they went into the voting booth and they voted for the person who best met that list. Wouldn't that make sense? But it seems like most churches and Christians believe that that list should only consist of one or possibly two things. Do not get me wrong, I believe that abortion is wrong and horrible. But I do not believe that that is the only issue, nor do I believe that gay marriage should be the only thing either, especially when you see so much injustice in the world and many other issues that I believe are just as close to God's heart. So feel free to comment and leave me your thoughts.

Softball Fun!

I am playing in a fall league for softball. I love playing softball it is so much fun! The only problem is that I am a pitcher and often times the pitcher can get some serious line drives hit back at him. Especially since I am the closest to the batter. Well, today I took a shot off of the thigh in the first inning from the third batter, so needless to say it made for an interesting rest of the game. I could feel it tightening up and swelling throughout the game. The guy who hit me did come up and apologize and he also got out because I threw the ball to third to try and get that guy out (he was safe) and then the guy whop hit me tried for second and he got out. So there was some vindication. But now I have the nice bruise that you see below.

The Bad and The Good....

So my boys in blue got their butts handed to them by those stupid Ducks. Which when you think about it is a really dumb name for a football team, not as dumb as choosing a nut for your mascot, but almost as dumb. I have no idea what is happening over in Ann Arbor, but I hope they get it figured out for this weekend because those stinkin' Irish are coming to town. But it is nice knowing that they are playing just as bad as we are, so it should make for an extremely boring game between to nobody teams that though they sit atop the records for winningest programs they sure can't seem to find a win this season. GO BLUE!!! But on a positive note.... THE LIONS ARE UNDEFEATED! We are headed to the Super Bowl now, bab..... Awww, who am I kidding?

What A Start To College Football!

Many of those of you that know me know that I am an avid University of Michigan fan. And after this past Saturday I can honestly say that I am still a big fan of UofM. Appalachian (App-a-la-chin) State University is one heck of a football team and has pulled off what is being called one of the greatest upsets in college football history and as much as I agree, I think that that takes away from a great football team. ASU deserves credit for being a great team that has won two national championships in a row and to think of them as a sub par team pulling off an upset on a vastly greater team. Instead of a great football team playing much better than another great team. So please, give credit to ASU's football team as a great team. And UofM fans don't worry, it is a long seasona nd our boys will come back and learn from this. But more importantly, don't worry because we will beat those Buckeyes this year!