today’s the last day of May, and I’m pretty excited to welcome in June and July. Here’s the stuff we’ve got on tap (Lord willing) in no particular order:

1. Hot days at the swimming pool at Nana’s.

2. Erica and I will spend 4 days in Florida not being parents…can’t wait.

3. Heritage Days in Intercourse, PA right down the street…3 days of great food, fireworks, and watching amish kids play volleyball.

4. 12 softball games to be played.

5. my bro Jordan will be here for a week for a friend’s wedding.

6. my sisters and mom will be here for a few days of hanging out.

7. might be going to a cool concert that i’ll tell you about later

8. i’ll be spending consecutive weekends in Massachusetts with the kids. The first of which Erica will be in PA hanging with some girlfriends, the second of which Erica will be in MA with us.

9. That week in between my MA weekends, Erica and I will be home for a few days without the kids. Looking forward to some quiet nights, some golf, and such.

10. I’ll be taking Parker to his first Red Sox game at Fenway with Uncle Josh, Uncle Jordan, and Aunt Karyn.

11. 3 golf outings on the calendar now, and hopefully a few more rounds to come.

12. Looking forward to finishing the 2 books I’m reading now and reading another couple more in the queue.

13. Looking forward to collaborating with the new writers on my sports/faith blog, Prayers For Blowouts. (Jason Boyett, Jesse Carey, Chad Gibbs, Jordan Green,  Jim Palmer, and Larry Shallenberger.)

14. a new season of Big Brother this season? Yeah, we’ll be watching.

15. and yeah, getting a lit bit of a tan would be nice too.

My friend Jason Boyett is running a contest on his blog, and I need your vote to win.

Among the many things that Jason does, he owns fakebandshirts.com, a site where you can order a t-shirt for a band that doesn’t exist. Brilliant, no? (Jason also dresses like a clown for elderly bachelor parties and gives juggling lessons to dyslexic farmhands.)

Jason recently accepted submissions for a new band name to adorn a t-shirt, with the only rules being that the name of the band had to come directly from text from the Bible.

Being that i love creating fake band and album names, I was all over it. I loaded up the Bible Gateway on my Interwebs browser and searched long and hard through obscure KJV texts in order to come up with a great band name. (man, i gotta tell you, that KJV sure does read funny. i’ll take a modern translation any day.)

Here were the names I submitted:

Nor Thine Ox
(Deut 5:14)

Captain of Fifty
(2 Kings 1:9)

Slaughter of the Kings
(Hebrews 7:1)

Zenas the lawyer
(Titus 3:13)

By Reason of the Fire
(Deut 5:5)

Of Pomegranates
(Numbers 20:5)

No King but Caesar
(John 19:15)

There was Corn in Egypt
(Acts 7:12)

My personal favorite was “Of Pomegranates”, but Jason chose “There Was Corn in Egypt” as one of the 6 Finalists. So, how can you help?

Go over to Jason’s blog and vote for There Was Corn in Egypt as your favorite fake band name.

If I win, I think i get a t-shirt with the band name on it or something.

(and while you’re at Jason’s site, you might want to consider buying his book “Pocket Guide to the Bible” for $6.99. That’s pretty cheap, especially considering he’ll autograph it for you…with his own blood! don’t worry, he has his blood in a pen, it’s not like he would cut off his finger and use the bleeding end of it to sign the book. that would be gross.)

I think I’ve said this here before, but my mood is totally affected by the weather. Not in huge mood swings or anything crazy like that. I just find myself a bit more cheery if the sun is shining. which it is today, and supposedly all weekend.

we’re headed over to erica’s parents house today to celebrate my niece Sierra’s 4th birthday. My mother-in-law is opening up her pool today, which includes heated water, so for our family, Summer has officially arrived.

Hope you all have a good weekend doing whatever it is you’ve been doing.

I’ll leave you with this picture of Erica with our new pet, Max. His friend Jack is not pictured. They are rats. Our rats.

I’m in Reston, Virginia today for the WhiteBoard Sessions conference. It’s a 1-day, 8-speaker, 30-minutes per speaker conference.

Chad, Jake, and I drove down at 5am this morning, and we’ll head back to PA this evening. I plan on doing some networking for PFB, and being challenged and inspired by the speakers.

Should make for a long, but fun day.