Jeff and Cheryl

(2/5/2007 - The link below has been corrected!)

My brother Jeff recently got married to Cheryl in Mexico in a small ceremony on the beach. Pretty much none of you reading this will know them, but I needed to post something on my blog and I thought these pictures would do the trick!

By the way ... the song is "I Could Not Ask For More" by Edwin McCain.

Disturb us, Lord

I read this for the first time today and wanted to pass it along:

Disturb us, Lord,
When we are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord,
When with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord,
To dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push back the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

This we ask in the name of our Captain,
Who is Jesus Christ.

Sir Francis Drake
December 1577

Unbelievable

This is unbelievable to me ...

I met up with a friend of mine whom I've known since 3rd grade. He decided to quit his job after being there for nearly 15 years, so I wanted to catch up with him to see what was going on.

I asked if he would mind running by the post office while we were nearby. I wanted to check the status of a package I had mailed, and hoped they could give me an update on it.

When I gave the postal clerk my name, she looked me up in their system. My package had not arrived at its destination yet. But, surprisingly, they had some packages for me that I wasn't even expecting! Rather sheepishly, the postal clerk acknowledged that they found some packages that had never been delivered.

She went in the back and wheeled them out on a cart -- about 8 or 10 packages of different shapes and sizes, several showing the bumps and dents one might expect from a package that lost its way.

There was one from my Aunt Betty Lou, from whom I have never received a package. There was one from George Foreman, presumably one of his grills. (The fact that I may have ordered a grill and not noticed that I hadn't received it was somewhat troubling!) The rest of the packages were from sources I didn't recognize or didn't care about. No telling what I was going to find!

My friend's car was too small to hold the boxes, so we decided to take me home so I could get my car and come back for the load.

The whole time this was unfolding, I kept thinking to myself, "This has GOT to go on my blog! Nobody will ever believe this, but I've got to tell the story!"

Just then ... I woke up.

That's right. It was a dream. And I'm posting it here because I had to share that even within the context of a dream, I was thinking about blogging a story from my life.

Is that messed up or what?

Caption Contest

I am now accepting entries for possible captions for the following picture. The winning entry will be based on the following criteria:

• Overall hilariousness and wit
• Appropriateness for use on t-shirts, mousepads, magnets, and other give-away items
• Correct spelling and grammar

Entries must be submitted here on this blog, and must be received before the winner is selected. Prizes for honorable mention will also be given. Such prizes will be in the form of a "high five" from the judge.

That's why we have mirrors

This e-mail is from a friend of mine, but she did not send it to me directly. Therefore, I do not feel at liberty to out her here. (Look at me with the discretion!) But, here's what she said. I hope it's funny even though you don't know who it is. I promise that if you DID know who it is AND you knew her personally, it would be DARN funny.

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I DIDN'T NOTICE THIS WHEN I GOT DRESSED THIS MORNING, BUT I LOOKED DOWN EARLIER AND NOTICED I LOOK LIKE THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST TODAY!

Pics ... or Picked Off?

2007 is still so young, its age can be referred to in hours. In fact, its only 39 hours and 38 minutes old as I type this.

But, in this instant-gratification world we live in, those 39 hours and 38 minutes seem like an eternity when you're waiting to see pics from a New Year's Eve party. And since I don't have a digital camera of my own, I'm at the mercy of those folks who had one with them at the party.

My biggest fear is that the usual photojournalists in our midst have already uploaded their pics and sent out links to their friends -- and I just didn't make the cut on their distribution lists. So now, I'm starting off 2007 without any pics of the friends I used to have. (Cue the violins!)

Pics, anyone? Hello?