I took her in to see the surgeons at High Desert Medical Group, they checked it out and determined it was NOT orthopaedic, and we scheduled with the reconstructive surgeon there. Dr. Manning did a WONDERFUL job in the relatively quick surgery, and Ily is healing very nicely. She was on nothing more than Tylenol, regularly scheduled for five days after the surgery. She's out of the bandage and back at school, playing with friends, etc. Quality pix forthcoming (though not necessarily for the squeamish), and grainy photos in the interim.
So the Lakers game ended about 20 minutes ago and Sportscenter started. Now, JUST now, they are moving away from their NFL draft coverage to actual sports results. You know, two NBA playoff games decided by a single point each, Pedro going 5-0... all of that meaningless gibberish.
(P.S. If Kobe had played this way during the regular season, he might not have scored 81, but he would have been the unanimous league MVP playing for a 70-win Lakers team.)
Is it me, or is the NFL draft the new World Series of Poker? Hopefully it will fade out next year, just like the WSoP did the past year.
Another horrible thing about ESPN right now: this one Under Armour (I know, I know) commercial. It features primals grunts and rhythmic clapping and testosterone-laden yelling... all on a bus full of (apparently) junior high students. That's no biggie, but then it zooms in on this kid who has got to be 170 pounds of pure muscle, ripped arms and all. I mean he looks like a 5' 4" version of Terrell Owens or something - it's oddly disturbing. They play it over and over, and I really wish they'd stop.
My favorite part of MySpace is how people can be duplicitous - providing a persona (out of view of their parents, "RL" friends, church family, etc.) that completely clashes with their "public" face. I've seen this long before MySpace, where people were able to be complete jerks online, but didn't have the intestinal fortitude to step up and act the same way in person. MySpace just makes it that much easier.
My second favorite part of MySpace is how people use membership of their friends list. When you're nice, you can be on someone's friends list. Yay - we're friends! But ooh, I better not make you grumpy cause you can punish me! You'll remove me from your friends list! Boo - we're not friends. But of course, you can't TELL me directly - as per point one above, you don't have the guts to say something to me.
All in all, I "love" MySpace because it reminds me of that place we all want to live for the rest of our lives: high school. All of the games, all of the gossip, all of the false importance, all of the facades. Thanks, MySpace - you're the best!
Someone once said that "managing BIND servers is like trying to herd cats". If you don't get the technical humor behind, just rest assured that managing BIND servers is just really hard and frustrating and unpredictable at times - just like trying to get a cat to do something you want from it.
I would like to submit a slight change to the saying: "Managing *people* is like trying to herd cats, only the cats will listen to you on occasion."
As I've probably told many of you individually, Vanessa and I have begun leading the worship service at our church. It came at a critical time, when the previous leader had left and no clear leader was stepping forward. The church was poised for great growth, the congregation was ready to move forward, but there was waning passion in the worship service itself. Vanessa had put the service together before, and I had been singing on the team for a little while, so we threw our hats in the ring. That was in September, and we've been doing it ever since.
It has been a tremendous blessing, both for ourselves and for the congregation! We have introduced about seven new songs, all of which we culled from recent worship CDs and from the radio. Our goal was to bring this 55-year-old church into a more modern mode of worship, introducing them to great songs that they could hear on the radio. For members that listen to the local Christian radio station, we wanted to give them the opportunity to worship to songs they already kinda know and sing in their cars. For members that DON'T listen to Christian music, we wanted to give them reasons to do so by introducing really solid songs. (That second point was what brought me around after YEARS of hating Christian music. There's still a lot out there that's trite and substandard, but heck, listen to ANY Top-40 station and tell me Christian music is unique in its spotty quality.)
To counterbalance all of the fun we've been having, we've also run into bizarre acts of resistance that really shed light on where the Christian church is at in the US. There has been the predictable bit of fear of the new songs, of course. We saw that coming and now perform any new songs as specials one week, then with congregational the following week. That seems to have given people the opportunity to feel more comfortable sitting and listening a few times through, rather than feeling completely lost, embarrassed and disconnected. But that bit of fear hasn't been anywhere near the biggest hurdles we've faced.
Perhaps the most shockingly significant hurdle we've faced was at the beginning, when we instituted a mid-week practice session. The previous music guy just had people show up Sunday morning two hours early and run through the songs then. After all was said and done, that made for about four hours of singing, playing, worshiping, etc. on a given Sunday morning. I applaud those of you who can do that, and perhaps I'll be able to as my voice and musical skills sharpen. However, for our group it was really rough. In response, we started a modest, 90-minute (later pared to one-hour) Thursday night practice... and that's when all hell broke loose.
We had a wide variety of objections:
I'll keep writing about some of the fun we're having as our church's worship leaders. And make no mistake about it: regardless of the bumps, scheduling snafus, and general craziness, it's terribly fun and enriching.