Well, a couple of weeks ago I bought stock in a small oil drilling firm out of Texas called Grey Wolf. I made my taget today and cashed out. Of course I didn’t get the aboslute highest I could have, but being disciplined and cashing out at my target locked in a profit.

I’m still in “the house of pain” with Intel having a bad few months… but all in all I am still making money in the market. I’ll be shopping for a new play. More on that later.

There are a lot of places in my life right now that I am having discipline issues.

The kids That’s right, my perfect children can be a royal pain in the neck. Now these are really good kids, don’t get me wrong… But sometimes a 4 year old and a 2 year old will drive you nuts. Take this morning for example. Kristen and I were looking for the keys [see the next story!] to the car and Megan and Paul were at each others throats. Megan was mad that Paul touched her toy. So we told Paul to wait his turn. Then she was mad that Paul touched her toy ring. When I told Megan that Paul could play with the ring until you let him have the puzzle… She went nuclear. So in the midst of looking for the keys, I had to take Megan upstairs to her room. Good way to start a day!

Dogs and cats Our beloved dog Stoney and our beloved cat Violet still aren’t getting along. The big problem is our dog Stoney. Apparently, we aren’t giving him enough attention and he has been acting out bigtime. Over the weekend he managed to dig two bog holes in the yard, eat a grill cover and all our grill utensils, dig out all my landscaping lights, and eat the hose. Not bad. Yesterday and Monday he was fine as I paid him lots of attention. But this morning while I was taking a shower and Kristen was getting the kids dressed… He decided to eat Kristen’s purse. Now he didn’t destroy everything, he just pulled everything out and hid it different places. So… 30 minutes later when I was getting ready to leave the house… We couldn’t find the keys. It took us about 20 minutes but we finally found them in his bed. On the cat side… Violet is staying inside a lot more these days and she is getting into everything. How much longer until Spring?

Ministry stuff I know, I have the most perfectest ministry situation in the world. At least that is what I tell myself. But it is messy because it works with people… And lately I’ve been getting messy trying to keep it all sorted. I’ve had typical Drama Queen problems lately, though they are resolving themselves more and more quickly and with less and less pain. But one person does take up too much of my time and the net result is a loss to everyone else and that is frustrating.

Operation C update: The gang in on the case. They are praying more and more for this case. But at the same time they are having a hard time even tracking C and getting to talk. The good news is that all of my “operatives” saw C yesterday and are learning C’s habits. Sometimes the shepherd has got to get to know the sheep before he can find them.

Some good news: One of our sophomore girls has advanced to the State Finals this weekend in Jackson. She finished 9th overall in her regional competition. That is very exciting! I hope she does well at State this weekend and I wish I could go. Maybe I’ll find a way to do it?

I’ll be spending the next few hours at my favorite coffee joint preparing for tonight’s talk. Luke 4… tempation… sounds like a good one.

Saw this posted somewhere and thought it was worth sharing… oh my!

Texas pastor electrocuted during baptism
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WACO, Texas — A pastor performing a baptism was electrocuted inside his church Sunday morning after adjusting a nearby microphone while standing in water, a church employee said.
The Rev. Kyle Lake, 33, was stepping into the baptistery as he reached out for the microphone, which produced an electric shock, said University Baptist Church community pastor Ben Dudley.
Water in a baptistery usually reaches above the waist, said Byron Weathersbee, interim university chaplain at Baylor University.

Lake was pronounced dead at Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center, nursing supervisor Pat Mahl said. The woman being baptized apparently had not stepped into the water and was not seriously injured.

Not to be crass, but I think we’ll be using wireless mics for baptisms from now on. Yikes. I mean, our sound system has 3000 watts of juice. Multiply that in water… yeah… we’ll be using wireless from now on.

We returned last night from our annual college visit pilgrimage last night. We didn’t get home particularly late, but it sure felt late with all the sickness in the van and the change to daylight savings time. All in all it was a nice trip. Both seniors saw the schools they had applied to and got to ask all the right questions.

This day off of mine. Despite the fact that my head feels about 800 pounds, I still have some things to do today. We need to rake the leaves to the curb. Give the front yard one last go round. Do the dog scooping in the backyard. Buy more dog food. Buy 3-4 bags of salt for the water softener since it ran out while we were gone. And buy some of the pieces I never picked up for the conduit I ran last Monday.

You can’t go home again. It’s been 4 years since we left Calvary and Oak Park. It’s a weird thing when you go back “home.” You always expect everything to be the same. It’s stupid, but you do it. It’s also weird that a place where you grew so much spiritually seems to be on the hurt. Ray has been gone about a month and it just feels like a hurting church. You could feel that the congregation was in a funk. Worship was just worship instead of worship. The preaching was good [go Darin Weil, the Jr. High Pastor!] and yet the whole service felt flat. I know this feeling well, Romeo was there for a long time and is only now coming out of the other side of it.

I am feeling pretty good about… my fantasy football team is now 5-3. (Not technically until after MNF, but it’s almost a lock right now.) What makes that record so good is that I’ve won 5 in a row after opening 0-3. Scary thing is, I might be as high as 3rd place. I think I’ll land somewhere around 5th though.

This weekend, I am in the Chicago area with some upperclassmen visiting Moody Bible Institute and Trinity International University. For LF, this is an annual thing. Yes, it’s become tradition. And there are lots of little traditions that go along with it.

Such as, we take them to Irazu in Bucktown for an oatmeal shake. Then we have to go to Johnnies in Elmwood Park for some greasy Italian beef sandwiches. This is thin beef, cooked in some beefy oil, and served up with peppers, hot or sweet. It’s a whole in the wall… But holy cow is it good. This weekend is all about spoiling my upperclassmen… So far so good. Last night I took them to “what Oak parking” eat. We started at Flat Top Grill and followed that up with some high quality ice cream over at Oberweis on Oak Park Avenue.

The crazy thing about this trip! What is insane about this trip is that for the entire weekend we crash at my cousin’s house. Maria is like a sister to me… Unfortunately that can be both bad and good. (As in, I abuse her hospitality sometimes by crashing 9 people in her house for a weekend every once in a while.) She always says the same thing, “Mi casa es su casa.” I think that after this year she might be thinking “mi casa NOT su casa.” But so far so good.

In other news. I am officially sick with whatever is going around. Sore throat, nauseous, dizziness…. A real great time! I was awake a lot last night…. Not good timing. Megan just got over this and Paul and Kristen are just getting it too. Another funny thing… I just learned that our webhost for the church is dumping us. So while I liked the local guy… It looks like our growing site will be moving to godaddy.com.