parades, predictions, and paradise

  • 4 8 15 16 23 42 – it begins again tonight. LOST is here to stay (for 6 weeks anyway) and I’m pretty stoked. I downloaded the Season 2 finale for free recently and listened/watched it the other day while doing some work. I had forgotten just how amazing this show is in every aspect. Possibly the most underrated scene of the whole season being when Desmond and Locke each describe the moment when they had almost lost all hope, but then hope was restored. For John, it was the bright light coming out of the hatch brought upon by his knocking. And for Desmond, it was the knocking on the hatch by John, which caused him to turn on the light. Brilliantly written and perfectly executed, it’s reason number 719 why this show is the best thing on TV.
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  • tonight Kylie will be dancing on a float in the annual New Holland Parade with her dance class. I’ll be honest, i’m not a fan of parades at all. I am however, a huge fan of my family, so I’ll be there having a good time with them.
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  • I was asked last-minute to contribute to a prediction piece on the baseball playoffs last week, and i gladly obliged. Since the eZine publishes on the first and the fifteenth of each month, my contribution went to press a few edits short of a happy meal and with some incorrect matchups. Nonetheless, I have the Dodgers beating the A’s in the World Series. You can read the article here (my paragraphs are about halfway through).
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  • For those of you not from Pennsylvania, wondering just how close i live to the tragedy that happened this week, the answer is about 10 minutes. It’s pretty scary to see datelines for this story from “Paradise, PA” when my 5-year old daughter goes to Paradise Elementary School. What if that guy’s house was a few miles closer to her school than to the amish school (although, the doors to Paradise Elementary are always locked we are told). What can you do as a parent? Not too much i guess. You can homeschool your child, I suppose, but even then you can’t protect them from everything. As Erica and I contemplated the fact that some of these parents might have prayed for the safety of their daughters the night before the shootings like they did every night, we came face to face with a sobering thought. We are not promised tomorrow and neither are our children. Saying a prayer for them the night before isn’t a magic antidote to danger that ensures no harm will come to them. While we believe that God hears and considers our prayers, and that they can be effective, we also remember Job, who lost just about everything but his relationship with his creator and still found ways to be thankful and faithful to God through the pain. We will continue to pray for our kids. For not only their safety, but also that they experience God’s love in a way that will help them deal with the tragedies of life when they come.
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  • i just picked up a new toy on Ebay, an M-Audio USB Audio Interface, so that i can fool around doing some recording in GarageBand. I actually got a decent deal on it considering it comes with a microphone and cables as well. I can already see this cutting into my sleep schedule if I’m not careful.
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  • Speaking of Ebay, there’s nothing more gratifying than knowing someone is going to try and outbid you in the closing seconds of an auction, and still winning it anyway because you properly utilized the “maximum bid” function. I love that.
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  • I’ve gone 7-7 and 8-6 in my NFL picks since my 14-2 Crystal Ball Smashing performance in Week 2. Nothing to email home about for sure, but it has kept me in first place over the other 32 prognosticators for 3 weeks straight. Look for that streak to end this week.
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  • got a funny picture from the Caedmon’s show last week that I’ll have to post. Well, i guess it’s not that funny, but the local radio station wanted a group picture on a couch and Cliff pulled me in to be in the picture so I’m sitting there on the couch with the band while the photographer has this “i don’t remember seeing him on stage” look on her face. I was amused, anyway. Cliff also ran out to the parking lot to give me a huge placard for the band’s trip to Israel this winter because it was just cancelled. He also sent fans over to me who had questions regarding the songs and discography of the band, which of course i was able to answer. And he gave us a quick tour of the tour bus, aka “the pine box”, which was interesting. all in all it was a fun night.
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  • finally, a belated birthday woot-woot to geof “that second F is my middle initial” morris, who is much closer to 30 than he realizes. hope it was a good one.