Vacation!

Last week, was vacation week. We went to my son and daughter-in-law's place in Chicago. Our daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter met us there. The Chicago Air Show was that weekend. We didn't officially attend, but the USAF Thunderbirds came roaring over my son's apartment with regularity, sending me running to the window every time.








From Chicago, Jason, Caren, and Maizie accompanied us to a cabin on Lake Superior at Paradise in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. (Alan and Sheila had already planned their first anniversary trip to the same locale, but for a week later.) Highlights included Mackinac Island, Tahquamenon Falls, the Soo Locks, and lunch at the Bavarian Inn in Frankenmuth on the way home. But the biggest highlight was spending time with ten-month-old Maizie!

Any Suggestions?

This summer, I've developed a routine that I've grown to love. At least once a week, usually on my day off, I ride my bike to one of several regional parks that are 10-12 miles from home. I take a backpack with my lunch, plenty of water, my Bible, a pad of paper and sometimes a book or two. I find a picnic table in the shade, usually next to the Huron River or Lake Erie, and spend a couple of unhurried hours in study, prayer, meditation, and relaxation.

But...summer in Michigan doesn't last forever. It will be cold before I know it. I want to continue this routine in some form, but don't know how that will work in the cold weather months. Any suggestions out there? The criteria are: peaceful, relaxing atmosphere; freedom from normal interruptions; low or no cost; with bonus points if it incorporates physical exercise also.

No prize for the winning entry other than my undying gratitude.

Way Too Cute!

You have to click this link and watch the video. Trust me! Yes, it stars my granddaughter Maizie, and yes, all babies have their irresistibly cute moments. But this is one of Maizie's moments. Unless you hate babies, puppies, and cute little bunny rabbits, you'll like this.

Full Disclosure, Please!

At some random moment, a dialog box appears on your computer:

An update is available for Windows MultiMixer Codec Homogenizer for Microsoft Office Depot 2.4. Would you like to install it now? YES NO CANCEL

Now, what I'd like to see would be full disclosure, which would involve a slightly longer message in the dialog box:

An update is available for Windows MultiMixer Codec Homogenizer for Microsoft Office Depot 2.4. This update addresses issues that you will never ever encounter, unless you're running a single-pole mutated asynchronous wireless network in a rarified environment--like say, the moon--while failing to address real issues that we've known about for years: issues that have driven you crazy since the first day you bought this computer--like giving you the "blue screen of death" whenever you're in a huge hurry to get one little tidbit of info off the computer before you rush out the door for an important meeting that you have just enough time to get to. If you choose to install this update, you will immediately surrender control of your computer to the update program for the rest of the day. While it is theoretically possible to keep working on other tasks while the computer updates, let's be real for a moment. Your computer will run slower than cast-iron pantyhose, meaning that you would be more productive to leave your office, drive to Kinko's, do your work there, then take the rest of the day off. If you choose to watch the installation process, a series of green blocks will crawl across your screen, leading you to believe that when they reach the other side, the update will be complete, when in fact that's only phase 1 out of 28, and that took an hour and seventeen minutes, only we're not telling you how many phases there are up front because if we did, you'd hire a hit man to bump off Bill Gates and then come take you out of your misery. At the end of the process, you will be asked to reboot your computer, not once or twice, but once for every year that you didn't donate $2 to the presidential campaign fund on your IRS Form 1040 (don't ask us how we know how many that is; believe us, you wouldn't like the answer). On your next-to-last reboot, you'll get another dialog that tells you that the update failed to install properly and that you should try starting the process again, at which point, your computer will freeze, refusing to respond even to the Ctrl-Alt-Delete command. You will have to unplug the computer and then restart it, causing it to display a nasty message about shutting down Windows properly, and because you didn't, it's going to destroy random pieces of your data, and even at that, for eight weeks, your work will be interrupted every two minutes by a pop-up that asks if you'd like to reboot your computer now. So...you've got to ask yourself a question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk? YES NO CANCEL

My Favorite Awards - 2007 Results Are In!

For get the Oscars, the Grammys, the Emmys, and the Tonys. Forget the Heisman Trophy and all MVP awards. My favorite is the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, in which entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. It's named in memory of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, who opened his 1830 novel, Paul Clifford, with the immortal line, "It was a dark and stormy night."

This year's winner is Jim Gleeson, of Madison, Wisconsin. His winning entry:

Gerald began--but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them "permanently" meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash--to pee.

Catch all the winners at the Bulwer-Lytton Contest's official web site.

Humbling Moments, part 349

So I'm sitting at my desk, preparing Sunday's sermon. I'm surrounded by stacks of books, all filled with profound, if sometimes ponderous, insights. It's 2:00 p.m. on a hot, sticky day and I'm having trouble staying awake. I decide to take a break and go to the gas station next door for a soda. Then it hits me: why should we preachers get upset with our people for sleeping during our sermons when we fall asleep preparing them?