So....Lori and I both had Friday off so we decided to eat lunch out at one of our favorite places, Jimmy Johns. We usually go the the one located on Main Street in Mishawaka but today we opted for the on the corner of Ironwood and South Bend Avenue because we wanted to stop in and see our oldest son who works at the Martin's Supermarket accross the street after we ate.
Not only does Jimmy Johns have great sandwiches for a resonable price, but they have the best kettle cooked chips I've ever ate. So of course I always 'combo' my meal. Gotta have those chips and Diet Coke. Bad thing about caffienated diet pop is that, for me anyway, about as quickly as it goes in it wants out. And of course with free refills on pop, I get usually get my moneys worth.
We wrapped up our lunch date and headed out to the car to drive over to Martins. When we got back to the produce area where our son works it hit me. I had to go to the bathroom, NOW! One of the other store clerks was trying to locate our son so I told Lori that I was going to go use the bathroom while they were looking.
This is not a small store when you have to go to the bathroom really bad. The public restrooms were way up in the front of the store and the store was packed with people. So here I am trying to get to front of the store weaving and bobbing around people as best as I can without knocking them down. Of course, I'm detatained about every 10 paces by these 'foodies' who are oblivious of my far more important issue of needing relief.
I finally reach the front of the store and see the the sign for the restrooms. I quickly push open the first door I saw only thinking of how badly I needed to go to the bathroom. As I entered I thought it was odd that the mens room didnt have a urinal but shrugged it off and went into the second stall as the first was occupied. When I finshed my business and walked out to wash my hands there it was as big as life, the MAXIPAD MACHINE. You ever see one of those cartoons where the cartoon characters eyes bug out of its head and you hear the 'aahhhoooga' horn sound. Well thats what went off in my head. I'm in the womens room!!!! I freaked!
Just about then I heard a noise and my eyes turned to the latch on the occupied stall. Life went into slo-mo! The latch turned on the occupied stall was turning. In a slow and slurred manner the words "IT'S OPENING..OOOOOOOHHHHH NO! were screaming in my brain. My mind quickly reverted from slo-mo to realtime and I bolted from the 'womens' room not knowing if they saw me or not.
After I was in the clear and about 1/2 way back to where I left Lori I bent over and just started cracking up. I couldn't believe I had just used the womens restroom and didnt even know I was in there.
When I got back to Lori I said you won't believe what I just did. She guessed a couple of obscure things but I told her she was wrong. I told her I just used the womens rest room and didnt even know I was in there until I saw the maxi pad machine. Her jaw hit the floor and she cracked up.
We spent the afternoon shopping and of course whenever we ran into someone we knew Lori would be sure to have them ask me about the bathrooms in the Martins Supermarket. The more that I told the story the funnier it got.
As we were driving home after dinner, Lori turned to me and said "Think about the next woman who must have went into that stall at Martins and wondered why on earth the lid was up!"
Friday, September 29, 2006
Monday, September 11, 2006
Cell Phone Violations in Church
I've never quite understood why people don't turn their cell phones off when they go to church. I can't remember a weekend that's gone by that I haven't heard at least one cell phone go off during the middle of a service at GCC. It seems like they never ring at a good time either. They either go off at a very poignant moment or during a prayer. Cell phone violations in church, what 'cha gonna do!
There is often a reminder on the announcements that scroll on the side screens as people enter the auditorium at GCC reminding them, as a courtesy, to turn off their cell phones. Yet it doesn't seem to happen. I think our announcements are very dynamic and creative. Does that mean they're not getting read?
What's even more frusting to me is the phone that rings and rings and rings. Is this person thinking that if they ignore it maybe it will stop? Or is it just buried so deep in a purse that it can't be retrieved. Guess that sounded a little sexist. Let me rephrase and say....or maybe it's buried so deep in a purse or pocket that it can't be retrieved. There, hopefully I've redeemed myself.
Little did I know that this past weekend I would become a cell phone violator in the 5:30 service at GCC. Usually I don't even take my phone with me to church. I figure thats one hour of my life that I can miss a call. I don't know why, but my phone was hooked to my pocket when I walked into GCC this day, so I just turned the volume down to vibrate and shoved it back on my pocket.
We met some friends and sat with them near the back of the auditorium for service. Mark's message was captivating as usual and the offering song special had just finished. The house lights came back up and Mark ascended the stairs to the stage to pray and dismiss us. All of a sudden I'm hearing something that sounds like Christmas music. I think I'm losing it. Then I realize its coming from none other than my own pocket! How could this be? My phone was on vibrate.
"March of the Sugar Plum Faeries" from the Nutcracker was blaring from my pocket. I was absolultely mortified! I reach down to my pocket and the phone clip is hooked on something and I can't get the phone out of my pocket. I've got a ballet going on in my pocket and I cant get the main dancer out. Finally I get the phone out and for a moment my mind went blank as to how to get it to stop. My wife and our friends are looking at me and just cracking up. I was just staring at the phone and the music just kept blaring away. Finally I came to my senses and opened and shut the phone to turn it off, hanging up on whoever was calling. I had become one of my own pet peeves, a cell phone violator in church!
When service finished, I held my head low so as to not be recognized as the one who's cell phone was ringing during the ending prayer, and made my way out to the atrium. Where are those dark glasses when you need them! I flipped open my phone and found the recent received calls to see who I'd hung up on. It was a friend of ours whom we were suppose to meet between services to talk about our picnic arrangements for the baptism on Sunday. Yes, they knew we would be at the first service! I pressed re-dial and when they answered the first thing they said was "you hung up on me!" I replied "because we were still in service!" I told them how I was freaking out and recounted the whole embarassing story. We laughed so hard.
Its Tuesday and I still don't understand what happened and why my phone rang. My regular ring tone is the theme song to "I Love Lucy" and if anything we should have heard that little jingle. Oh Yeah, I have my holiday ring tones, doesn't everybody, but they definitely were programd to be on now. And furthermore my phone was on vibrate, it shouldn't have made a peep.
I think I now have a little more compassion for the person who's cell phone goes off in church. I doubt that everyone who's cell phone goes off in church experiences what the trauma I did, but I now firmly believe that its very possible that when cell phones go off it is beyond our control! But believe me...I'm not relying on the vibrate setting on my phone anymore....OFF or left in the car is the only answer.
Cell phone violators in church, what 'cha gonna do!
There is often a reminder on the announcements that scroll on the side screens as people enter the auditorium at GCC reminding them, as a courtesy, to turn off their cell phones. Yet it doesn't seem to happen. I think our announcements are very dynamic and creative. Does that mean they're not getting read?
What's even more frusting to me is the phone that rings and rings and rings. Is this person thinking that if they ignore it maybe it will stop? Or is it just buried so deep in a purse that it can't be retrieved. Guess that sounded a little sexist. Let me rephrase and say....or maybe it's buried so deep in a purse or pocket that it can't be retrieved. There, hopefully I've redeemed myself.
Little did I know that this past weekend I would become a cell phone violator in the 5:30 service at GCC. Usually I don't even take my phone with me to church. I figure thats one hour of my life that I can miss a call. I don't know why, but my phone was hooked to my pocket when I walked into GCC this day, so I just turned the volume down to vibrate and shoved it back on my pocket.
We met some friends and sat with them near the back of the auditorium for service. Mark's message was captivating as usual and the offering song special had just finished. The house lights came back up and Mark ascended the stairs to the stage to pray and dismiss us. All of a sudden I'm hearing something that sounds like Christmas music. I think I'm losing it. Then I realize its coming from none other than my own pocket! How could this be? My phone was on vibrate.
"March of the Sugar Plum Faeries" from the Nutcracker was blaring from my pocket. I was absolultely mortified! I reach down to my pocket and the phone clip is hooked on something and I can't get the phone out of my pocket. I've got a ballet going on in my pocket and I cant get the main dancer out. Finally I get the phone out and for a moment my mind went blank as to how to get it to stop. My wife and our friends are looking at me and just cracking up. I was just staring at the phone and the music just kept blaring away. Finally I came to my senses and opened and shut the phone to turn it off, hanging up on whoever was calling. I had become one of my own pet peeves, a cell phone violator in church!
When service finished, I held my head low so as to not be recognized as the one who's cell phone was ringing during the ending prayer, and made my way out to the atrium. Where are those dark glasses when you need them! I flipped open my phone and found the recent received calls to see who I'd hung up on. It was a friend of ours whom we were suppose to meet between services to talk about our picnic arrangements for the baptism on Sunday. Yes, they knew we would be at the first service! I pressed re-dial and when they answered the first thing they said was "you hung up on me!" I replied "because we were still in service!" I told them how I was freaking out and recounted the whole embarassing story. We laughed so hard.
Its Tuesday and I still don't understand what happened and why my phone rang. My regular ring tone is the theme song to "I Love Lucy" and if anything we should have heard that little jingle. Oh Yeah, I have my holiday ring tones, doesn't everybody, but they definitely were programd to be on now. And furthermore my phone was on vibrate, it shouldn't have made a peep.
I think I now have a little more compassion for the person who's cell phone goes off in church. I doubt that everyone who's cell phone goes off in church experiences what the trauma I did, but I now firmly believe that its very possible that when cell phones go off it is beyond our control! But believe me...I'm not relying on the vibrate setting on my phone anymore....OFF or left in the car is the only answer.
Cell phone violators in church, what 'cha gonna do!
Friday, September 08, 2006
A "How to" on prayer
Our midweek, New Community church service was a continuation of the “Mastering the Art of Living” series that is currently being taught. Corey Mann stepped up to the plate and hit it out of the park with an incredible message on how God wants us to pray last night as described in Matthew 6.
Corey began with a discussion of the things that we don’t think we can do well.
Unfortunately I cannot remember anything from his list (honesty can be brutal). But I do know that I’m not a big risk taker. I like the ‘sure’ thing. There are so many things that I know probably I shy away from because I feel ill-equipped to do them. Corey's litany of ‘incapable things’ ended with prayer. His premise being that we don’t pray because we don’t know how or we don’t have the time.
Corey broke the up the scripture in Matthew 6:5-15, where God instructs us how to pray, in to consumable nuggets. He illustrated each verse with applicable life situations that allowed us to digest what we were being taught. His overall theme for the evening was “go to your room and close the door…’ from verse 6.
In the next segment of his message, Corey reaffirmed verse 7 ‘And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words,’ with Hollywood and real life applications.
In a movie clip from “Meet the Parents” the epitome of babbling on is found in the scene in which the boyfriend is asked to bless the meal at the dinner table. It’s a very funny clip and really nailed Corey’s statement about not knowing how to pray. The guy just goes on an on trying to be impressive in his words, but really not knowing what or how to say his prayer. Then, from a story from his own personal life Corey recounted how at one point in his life he determined that following a prayer with ‘yesssss!!!’ or a gutteral sound would confirm the importance of his prayer. Each of these examples proving that many words or impressive sounds a good prayer does not make.
Throughout his allotted message time, Corey made reference after reference to verse 6, ‘But when you pray, go into your room and close the door.’ At one point he even had everyone repeating that outloud in the auditorium. However ‘go to your room’ wasn’t to be translated literally but figuratively. It means to escape all of the distractions that would take your full attention away from God. We need to disengage from our cell phones, our tv, our computer, our family, our Blackberry….etc. and focus totally on God.
One of the hardest things we have facing us today is time. Time management is a top priority everyday, not only in work but personal life as well. At work we have deadlines to meet, meetings to attend, and calls to make among the abundance of other responsibilities. At home we have family time, mowing the lawn, doing the laundry, cleaning the house, and the list goes on. When do we possibly have time to ‘go to our rooms?’
The next portion of his message was two-fold. He expounded on an illustration on being intentional in our lives and using that in connection with 'going to our rooms...'
In January Corey set some exercise goals for himself in which he incorporated a daily regimen of walking. He had a goal to walk so many miles by a certain date and he was intentional about his goal. He faithfully rose early in the morning, sometimes as early as 5am to fulfill his goal. His premise being that we have to be intentional about the things we want to accomplish in life. We have to be intentional about making time to pray.
Not only was Corey’s walking illustration about being intentional, it was about ‘going to our room.’ Earlier I mentioned that we need to take this ‘going to your room’ statement figuratively. While Corey was walking early in the morning, he discovered that there were no distractions. No cell phone, no TV, no other people, he was virtually alone with God. He had gone to his room and shut the door without even realizing it. He was alone with God without lifes distractions and he seized the opportunity. We don’t have to literally go to our room to be alone with God. We can create situations in which we put ourselves in a place where there are no distractions, such as walking early in the morning, and we have basically gone to our rooms and closed the door.
So there you have my synopsis of an outstanding message on how God wants us to pray.
Thursday night New Community. WOW! So life enriching! Why would you want to miss it?
Corey began with a discussion of the things that we don’t think we can do well.
Unfortunately I cannot remember anything from his list (honesty can be brutal). But I do know that I’m not a big risk taker. I like the ‘sure’ thing. There are so many things that I know probably I shy away from because I feel ill-equipped to do them. Corey's litany of ‘incapable things’ ended with prayer. His premise being that we don’t pray because we don’t know how or we don’t have the time.
Corey broke the up the scripture in Matthew 6:5-15, where God instructs us how to pray, in to consumable nuggets. He illustrated each verse with applicable life situations that allowed us to digest what we were being taught. His overall theme for the evening was “go to your room and close the door…’ from verse 6.
In the next segment of his message, Corey reaffirmed verse 7 ‘And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words,’ with Hollywood and real life applications.
In a movie clip from “Meet the Parents” the epitome of babbling on is found in the scene in which the boyfriend is asked to bless the meal at the dinner table. It’s a very funny clip and really nailed Corey’s statement about not knowing how to pray. The guy just goes on an on trying to be impressive in his words, but really not knowing what or how to say his prayer. Then, from a story from his own personal life Corey recounted how at one point in his life he determined that following a prayer with ‘yesssss!!!’ or a gutteral sound would confirm the importance of his prayer. Each of these examples proving that many words or impressive sounds a good prayer does not make.
Throughout his allotted message time, Corey made reference after reference to verse 6, ‘But when you pray, go into your room and close the door.’ At one point he even had everyone repeating that outloud in the auditorium. However ‘go to your room’ wasn’t to be translated literally but figuratively. It means to escape all of the distractions that would take your full attention away from God. We need to disengage from our cell phones, our tv, our computer, our family, our Blackberry….etc. and focus totally on God.
One of the hardest things we have facing us today is time. Time management is a top priority everyday, not only in work but personal life as well. At work we have deadlines to meet, meetings to attend, and calls to make among the abundance of other responsibilities. At home we have family time, mowing the lawn, doing the laundry, cleaning the house, and the list goes on. When do we possibly have time to ‘go to our rooms?’
The next portion of his message was two-fold. He expounded on an illustration on being intentional in our lives and using that in connection with 'going to our rooms...'
In January Corey set some exercise goals for himself in which he incorporated a daily regimen of walking. He had a goal to walk so many miles by a certain date and he was intentional about his goal. He faithfully rose early in the morning, sometimes as early as 5am to fulfill his goal. His premise being that we have to be intentional about the things we want to accomplish in life. We have to be intentional about making time to pray.
Not only was Corey’s walking illustration about being intentional, it was about ‘going to our room.’ Earlier I mentioned that we need to take this ‘going to your room’ statement figuratively. While Corey was walking early in the morning, he discovered that there were no distractions. No cell phone, no TV, no other people, he was virtually alone with God. He had gone to his room and shut the door without even realizing it. He was alone with God without lifes distractions and he seized the opportunity. We don’t have to literally go to our room to be alone with God. We can create situations in which we put ourselves in a place where there are no distractions, such as walking early in the morning, and we have basically gone to our rooms and closed the door.
So there you have my synopsis of an outstanding message on how God wants us to pray.
Thursday night New Community. WOW! So life enriching! Why would you want to miss it?
Thursday, September 07, 2006
To Flush or not to flush...
What's up with the price to get your septic system pumped out? As preventative matenance, I have our system pumped out every year because the alternative, a new septic system, would cost far more, or so I thought.
We've built our home about 8 years ago and at about year 5 I started having the septic pumped out once a year. I was motivated to do this because 3 of our neighbors had to have their systems replaced and I didn't want to have to pay that astronomical price.
I think last year was the most I'd ever paid and that was just over $100 to get the poop sucked out. Today I called 3 places for quotes and was blown away by the increase in cost. The first place I called quoted me $155 to $175 depending on the size of the tank. I asked if there had been a price increase and they attributed some of the cost to the price of gas. Ironic huh...."septic pumping prices increase because of gas"...I can see the headlines now.
On top of the charge to "pump out the poop" would be an additional charge of up to $55 charge to dig down to the lid if I didn't do that myself. Can you believe $55 to dig a circle 5 inches deep and a foot in diameter! Whats up with that!
Of course, last year (as all prior years that I've had this done) I opted to dig down to the lid myself. However, my frugal-ness added some additional stress to this process. In previous years I used a trowel to find the location of the lid under the ground and then would dig with a shovel or spade. Last year I figured I've done this enough, I know where the lid is and I'll just start with the shovel. Not such a smart move. As the second stab of the shovel went into the ground I hit something that didnt feel right. I pulled the shovel out and dropped to the ground to see what I'd hit. It was the cable for cable TV. And it was severed complete into two pieces.
I have some experience with splicing cable so I thought to myself, I can fix this. Not so much!
I hopped in the car and drove up to the local radio shack and bought a splicer and the connectors I thought I'd need. By the time I returned it was dark out but I was on a mission. My wife held the a flashlight why I attempted to perform 'cable surgery.' Good thing I'm not a doctor cuz the cable didn't live and we were without cable TV until the company could come out and repair it.
Like anything else that needs to be done, I'm at the mercy of those who are qualified to perform the task. I think I'll peruse the yellow pages and get a few more estimates before I commit. I never imagined a flush could cost so much....but a back up would be far worse! The joys of home ownership.
We've built our home about 8 years ago and at about year 5 I started having the septic pumped out once a year. I was motivated to do this because 3 of our neighbors had to have their systems replaced and I didn't want to have to pay that astronomical price.
I think last year was the most I'd ever paid and that was just over $100 to get the poop sucked out. Today I called 3 places for quotes and was blown away by the increase in cost. The first place I called quoted me $155 to $175 depending on the size of the tank. I asked if there had been a price increase and they attributed some of the cost to the price of gas. Ironic huh...."septic pumping prices increase because of gas"...I can see the headlines now.
On top of the charge to "pump out the poop" would be an additional charge of up to $55 charge to dig down to the lid if I didn't do that myself. Can you believe $55 to dig a circle 5 inches deep and a foot in diameter! Whats up with that!
Of course, last year (as all prior years that I've had this done) I opted to dig down to the lid myself. However, my frugal-ness added some additional stress to this process. In previous years I used a trowel to find the location of the lid under the ground and then would dig with a shovel or spade. Last year I figured I've done this enough, I know where the lid is and I'll just start with the shovel. Not such a smart move. As the second stab of the shovel went into the ground I hit something that didnt feel right. I pulled the shovel out and dropped to the ground to see what I'd hit. It was the cable for cable TV. And it was severed complete into two pieces.
I have some experience with splicing cable so I thought to myself, I can fix this. Not so much!
I hopped in the car and drove up to the local radio shack and bought a splicer and the connectors I thought I'd need. By the time I returned it was dark out but I was on a mission. My wife held the a flashlight why I attempted to perform 'cable surgery.' Good thing I'm not a doctor cuz the cable didn't live and we were without cable TV until the company could come out and repair it.
Like anything else that needs to be done, I'm at the mercy of those who are qualified to perform the task. I think I'll peruse the yellow pages and get a few more estimates before I commit. I never imagined a flush could cost so much....but a back up would be far worse! The joys of home ownership.
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