Month: December 2007

  • The Elves Are Coming

    Elves are coming!Apparently the people of Romeo have never seen grown men dressed like elves before. Until today. As Jimmy and I were stopping to take pictures and waving in their cars and generally enjoying the sight.

    I have to say Jimmy looked pretty good as an elf. Let’s just say I have a lot of junk in the trunk so my tights were a little tight. I’m sure we were a sight to behold.

    I’m going to hold the videos until Sunday morning. So if you want to see them, check out our debut. (There are scheduled to be two “commercials” during the service with elves.)

  • Batman isn’t Gay

    Since I’m on an 80s kick anyway. Here’s an 80s based comic.

    HT to Dave

  • Yowsers…

    That’s pretty much how I felt about last night’s MainStreet. In one night we had some of our best stuff and some things we’ll put under our cap as lessons learned.

    The kids who came were way more fired up than I’d ever seen. (Obviously this is good from a kid perspective and scary from an adult one.) I think the cold weather had something to do with this as they were running around the auditorium like bees outside the hive. The room was filled with energy before we even began.
    Then we got them really excited. I said in the pre-event meeting that my goal was to get everyone engaged and excited in the first five minutes.  So imagine the bee hive… and then stirring them up with dancing, loud music, and silliness.

    Then we got them too excited.  About half way through the night we did a skit that was insane with a twist. During the scene I dumped a lot of packing peanuts on the stage (55 gallons) and then at the end of the scene I grabbed a leaf blower and blew about half of those into the audience. It was crazy hilarious, unexpected, and the kids loved it. Unfortunately… this got them a little too excited right at the half way point. The ADD kicked in and it was absolutely nuts from there! (Can you believe we ended the night with a crazy game and cookies?)

    The rest of the night was pretty good, just not our best. After every event we do I instantly think of things we did right, things we did wrong, and ways to improve. My mind races for hours through all the details of it. And last nights MainStreet is like that… there were things that were great and things that need to be better.

    As this post reveals, my mind is still racing about it and it ended almost 12 hours ago. Yowsers…

  • Children of the 80s Unite, part 3

    What, you thought I’d leave out music videos? From the 80s? Are you nuts? Watch out for parachute pants and big hair.

  • Vanity’s Pain

    There isn’t really any way to intro this video. Let’s just say that there was a lady who paid $5500 for some butt cheek implants and the results weren’t what she desired. Make sure you catch the anchors attitude about the story. Priceless!

    http://view.break.com/409510 – Watch more free videos

  • Don’t Watch the Weather

    winter weatherI am continually surprised to see people pre-decide that the weather is too bad for an activity. They watch the weather on the local news and believe the hype that we’re going to have a blizzard or that it’s going to be bad out there… so they pre-decide tonot go to work, school, or church.

    You hear them say “It’s going to be bad out there.”  Then they stay home.

    This leads to a two-part thing that I don’t like about living in Michigan.

    1. People born and raised in Michigan are wimps about winter weather. They live in a state surrounded by water and Canada on 3 directions and are surprised to see winter weather.  Instead of being like Wisconsin or Minnesota or Northern New York and taking  “bring it on, nothing will stop us” attitude they wimp out and pretend to be surprised when winter weather comes.
    2. People born and raised in Michigan tend to lack the hardiness to overcome weather adversity. I think it took us moving to the West Coast to really see this. There are people who won’t let anything stand in the way of their going to work, school, or church and then there are people who just look for an excuse to not come. We had people in California tell us they skipped church because it was below 40 F and might freeze. Some Michigan people are the same way. They look for any excuse to call out to work, school, or church. It’s not worth the trouble they say.

    A lot of people want to blame the governor or the auto industry for the poor economic state of things in Michigan. I think residents would be wise to examine their work ethic. If something as simple as a snow storm or even a rumor of a winter storm is enough to negatively impact our economy… I think we need to examine these cultural things. (After all, this is reality we are talking about. We’re talking about attitudes.)

    You know it’s coming. Adam’s annual rant about dirt roads is coming. 

  • Children of the 80s Unite, part 2

    This one is the commercials we all grew up on.

  • Google Vernacular

    MeganMy daughter is 6. She’s pretty smart. I don’t know if she is the smartest kid in her class but I tell her she is all the time.

    Tonight she and I were talking and she told me something very cool.

    “When you want to find something on the computer, you google it.“

    I don’t know if a lot of people realize it, but Google has become so much more than a company we use to search the internet. When a company has gotten to the point in its brand identification that it is no longer a company, it’s a part of your vernacular… you’ve reached a plain reserved for a few companies in the world.

    Coke. Play-Doh. Frisbee. Ping Pong. Things like this are not just brands… they are nouns.

    Imagine this. Today’s 1st graders were born after 9-11-2001, may have never seen a house phone, and never used a computer without WiFi. And you don’t hear them say things like “Let’s see it on Yahoo.” or “Check it out on MSN.”

    It’s really all about Google. Pretty soon we will say “The Goog” just like Ted Nugent fans say “The Nuge.” Well, maybe not that far.

    We’ve come a long way from my first computer. It was a laptop, the Kaypro 2, and weighed about 90 pounds.  I was pretty young when my mom’s boyfriend hooked this thing up. I remember it had a state of the art 1200 baud dial-up external modem and we dialed into the bulletin boards at Notre Dame. (Not sure why) So, you can see I’ve had my hands in computers for a long time. I hope/pray that my kids grow up with the opportunity to embrace technology through play like I did.

  • Project I Need Ideas On

    Man, I hope people don’t come here looking for ideas on everything under the sun.

    Here’s what I am working on as one of my mini-projects. I could really use some input. If there are people that have seen very creative and effective answers to some of these project goals I would be happy.

    Yeah… greeters ministry. It’s something that is vitally important for a growing church like ours and I have no idea how to make it better.

    – Set goals for team
    – Create a structure that makes sense
    – Sort out the food thing (quality/quantity)
    – First time visitors, create a reason for them to go to the Resource Center

  • Relient K Christmas Album: Quick Review

    Relient KThis will be the simplest and fastest review I have ever given.

    I’ve only even listened to this album once but I don’t want to waste any more of your Christmas-time. You need this album for your families listening pleasure this Christmas season.

    Let’s put it this way. I don’t even like Relient K’s music and I don’t like Christmas music and yet I am recommending that go out and buy this album right now.

    As I told Amy last night, “This is the first Relient K album I would really listen to.”

    Two links to buy it now in time for Christmas
    Let It Snow Baby… Let It Reindeer (Amazon)


    Relient k - Let It Snow Baby... Let It Reindeer