I have not posted all week--haven't had much to say. Oh well.

Yesterday was wild--we baby sat for a couple of hours during the middle of the day, then Michelle and I took her regular kids to the museum. 2 different gigs in one day is kinda weird, but everyone had a blast.

Wednesday, I was hanging out at Grinder's, and Hoptown Hal from Eagle 94.3came in. He and his sidekick were taking pictures for their website. When I indentified myself as the guy on their "college of rock and roll knowledge" commerical, they immediately starting laughing crazily. They have been using my voice on their commercial for several months now, and Hal said that everyone at the station loves it. He said I should be getting royalties. LOL.

Today, we start our 30 hour famine. Going 30 hours without food, so we can get an idea of what poor people go through every day. I think most of the youth are excited--although a couple of them have backed out. That's unfortunate. Most of the kids doing it this year did it last year, so they have an idea of what to expect. Some of them, however, have never done it, so it will be new to them.

We have all kinds of activities lined up to do during the 30 hours. We will be doing some community service, random acts of kindness, and also playing some games and having fun. 29,000 kids die every day from hunger and its related problems, so we are going to do handprints on the walls of our youth room--we are aiming to get 29,000 fingers. That will be way cool.

I hope everyone has a great weekend. Peace...

OK, another weekend of madness is in the books. I will try to recap.

Friday, I had a doubleheader at Trevecca in Nashville. Michelle came with me, and we made a day of it. It was great to be back on the field, with a game that really counts. The games themselves were atrocious, as Trevecca won the first game 19-0, and the second game 9-1. Jeez, that other team was bad. In the first inning of the first game, the visiting team's starting pitcher was losing 4-0, with the bases loaded. The crazy thing was that he still had a no-hitter going. That's because he walked the first SEVEN batters of the game. Brutal.

Anyway, Michelle happened to sit on the visiting team's side, and she made friends with some people from Ohio who had come to watch their son play. Michelle was cold, and they offered her a blanket; that was really nice of them. Michelle made sure no one gave me a hard time...LOL.

After the games, we went to Panera's by Vanderbilt, and enjoyed some great sandwiches. When we got done, we went back to her dorm and hung out for a while.

Saturday, we were up with the sun, as we had a meeting in Nashville. The meeting was short, which was a good thing. I inherited my distaste for meetings from my dad. After the meeting, we went to Mt. Denson, because we had planned a community service project for the youth group. We had lunch, and then went to do our work. Michelle stayed at the church, getting things ready for Sunday.

Sunday after church, the youth served a chili lunch. It went great--we raised about $700. We are going to be sending most of that money to World Vision, as part of our upcoming30 Hour Famine. We will be doing the famine this Friday and Saturday, going 30 hours without food. We did the famine last year, and it was great. The kids all really had a great experience, and we hope it will be similar this time.

After the lunch, we went to a small bridal show in Springfield. I quickly found a chair to sit in, and tried not to look bored. Michelle went around and visited all the stations, and entered a drawing. She was notified this morning that she had won a nice gift basket. In fact, she has won something at every bridal show she has gone to. Unfortunately, these bridal shows do not give away tickets to the World Series, or anything else that I would be interested in, so Michelle gets to keep all of her bounty. LOL.

Today, we are just hanging out at Grinder's. We will probably run some errands later, but for now, we are just relaxing. I also need to start working on two different sermons. I will be preaching at Mt. Denson on March 6, and I will be preaching at least once, and maybe twice, at the spring youth retreat the following weekend. So, needless to say, I have a lot of work to do.

Instead of actually doing some productive work, I played some Zork II this morning. I still have not gotten very far with it. Jeez, it is hard. No wonder everyone I have talked to gave up on it. I am not sure if my parents ever finished it or not, but everyone else I know quit without finishing. Jeez.

I hope everyone has a wonderful day. Peace...

I came home tonight and immediately started to have major computer problems. BSOD all over the place. I got some help from my brother Steve, and in our research we found that a lot of people have this problem with the model of wireless card I have. Unfortunately, no one seems to have a real solution. So I will continute to keep my system held together with duct tape and speaker wire...LOL.

Tomorrow is my first baseball game of the season. I am so jacked, I know I will not be able to sleep. Michelle is coming with me, and I think we are going to go eat after I am done. Baseball is HERE! SWEET!!

One of Jessi's friends explained the ending of "Vanilla Sky" to me. That was nice, since I really like the movie, but never completely understood the ending. I need to buy that movie.

I hope everyone has a wonderful evening. Peace...

Michelle and I have been hanging out at Grinder's this morning. She did some work for her online classes, and I have played Zork II. I got the better end of that deal, I would say. Although, Zork II is much more difficult than the original, so I have not gotten very far at all with it. I have 15 points out of 400. Jeez.

I also took a look at my calendar for the rest of the time until the wedding. I decided what days I am going to work, and what days to take off. I have not officially turned in my resignation yet, but I guess I have plenty of time to do that. The senior pastor and I have talked about my official date of leaving a few times, but he said it is up to me.

Michelle found a neat clock that she is going to buy. It displays the time left remaining until the wedding. It looks really cool.

Later, I am going to change the oil in my truck, and put in some new spark plugs, too. I may also clean up the inside a little.

I hope everyone has a wonderful day. Peace...

The family that Michelle nannies for has been having some computer problems, so when I was there this afternoon, I had a look at it. Ad-aware found 494 critical objects, and Norton found 19 more. Unfortunately, Norton was unable to eradicate 9 of them. The PC's OS is Windows ME, maybe the most horrid excuse for an OS ever. Jeez, it was bad. Anyway, I am going out there tomorrow to see if I can do anything more. I sort of doubt it, since I break computers with much more skill that I fix them.

Speaking of which, last night my laptop started going to blue screen after booting up. It would then re-boot, then blue screen again, in an endless cycle. I thought at first the problem was coming from my IM software, Trillian. I uninstalled the 3.1 beta version I was running, and then installed 3.0. That seemed to fix it until today, when I started having the same problem. I now think it is in my wireless card, since if the card is not in its slot when I boot up, everything is fine. If I boot up with the card in the slot, then I have the problem. Strange.

I poked around at Zork II a little today, and it was cool. I don't remember much at all about it. I have already started making maps and copious amounts of notes.

I hope everyone has a wonderful evening. Peace...

Steve and I often talk about old video games, and old computer systems. Last week, we started talking about Zork, and ancient game that we had on the old Commodore 64 when we were kids. I Googled Zork I, and in no time I found a download. So, I installed it and have been playing it furiously for the past week or so. Earlier today, I finished the game. It was really exciting. I was glad that Steve was there (we were hanging out at Grinders) to share the moment.

Steve told a story that somehow I had never heard. When Zork I was released, the computer store my parents frequented sponsored a contest where the first person to finish the game with the maximum number of points received a free copy of Zork II. I never knew that my parents won this contest. All I remember is that they were indeed totally consumed with the game for probably about a year. I remember maps and maps and more maps, strewn all about the house. Zork dominated all conversation in the house and late-night gaming sessions were de rigueur. Steve said that after they finished the game, they went to the computer shop to show that they had finished. As they were leaving, another guy came in to show that he had finished it, too. He was just a few minutes too late. Steve and I had a great laugh.

I never finished Zork II, and never played Zork III. I am going to download II tonight and start on it soon.

It has been a while since I posted, so I will try to recap the transpirings of the past several days.

Last Friday, Michelle, two of her bridesmaids and I met her mother and some other people in Nashville so the women could look at bridesmaids' dresses. That did not interest me at all, so I went next door to Best Buy so I could look at toys. I did not take me long to find something cool. I got a new wireless router/card combo--it was normally $120, but it was on sale or $80 with a $60 rebate, so I was unable to resist. After about an hour or so of just wandering around the store, I went over to the bridal store to see how things were going. I was really hungry (it was now close to 7 PM), so I was hoping they would be wrapping things up. Michelle came out from the dressing area, obviously not in a good mood. Next, her mother stormed out and blew right by me without much acknowledgement, chasing Michelle. Suffice it to say that for some reason, tensions were running high. The other girls came out a few minutes later, and now it was obvious that no one was happy. I don't know what goes on in women's dressing rooms, and I don't really want to know either.

Michelle's mom and the other people with her headed out, and our group went to TGI Friday's. We had a good time, and everyone got back into good spirits. We headed home after a while, all of us really tired.

Saturday, Vanderbilt had an intra-squad, so I umpired it. I worked 4.5 innings behind the plate, one inning at third, and a few at first. It was good to get back on the field. I was supposed to go to APSU today to work some, but they decided not to pitch. So, I may call one of the high schools in town to see if I could work some Thursday. My first game is Friday at Trevecca, so I would like to get in some more work before then.

Sunday, The Clarksville Umpires Association had our annual meeting. We spent a lot of time talking about the new middle school league, and I think we got everything worked out. Michelle made chocolate chip cookies for the guys, and they were all appreciative of her efforts. I headed back to Springfield for youth group, and that went well. We talked about our upcoming activities and finalized things for this Sunday's chili luncheon.

This morning, instead of going to the gym, I decided to do some vehicle maintenance. My wipers have not been working for quite a while, and my previous efforts to fix them had been fruitless. So, I got my mojo working and decided to tackle it head-on. I went Advance Auto to see if they had the part I needed (wiper arm linkage), although I doubted if they would. Indeed, they didn't, so I went to the dealer and got one. I wanted one for each side, but they only had one for the passenger side. I figured the plastic piece that had deteriorated on the passenger side would soon do the same on the other side, so I ordered one.

It took me about an hour or so to install it, and much to my surprise, when I put everything back together, it worked fine. COOL!! I did a little celebration dance in the yard. My neighbors were probably shuddering in fear. LOL. Anyway, I got it fixed, so now I am hoping some rain will come soon. Just not on Friday.

Last night for Valentine's, we re-created our first date. All except the "walking through the park in a bizzrd part". That would have been hard to do since it was almost 70 degrees outside yesterday. We went to Demos' for dinner, then to Books a Million. Last year, we each bought the other a book, and wrote sweet-nothings on the inside cover. This year, we each just got some magazines. Which was cool, because we each got some that we liked. Plus, I have been doing some heavy-duty reading and writing lately, so it will be nice to relax with some lighter stuff for a little while.

Afterward, we went back to campus to hang out for a while. There was a free concert, but we decided not to go. We had a really nice time. I hope everyone had a great Valentine's.

I hope everyone is doing well. Peace...

I just realized that I have posted twice today, so I decided I would post again just for fun. I remember back in the day when I would post multiple times a day on a regular basis. I don't have the stamina to return to that pace, but it's been fun today. Peace...

Steve and I hooked up a while ago, with the intent of going to the new R/C hobby shop at the corner of Riverside and Main. He got there before I did, and called me to say that it wasn't worth much. So, we decided to cruise over to the new Grinder's location and see if they were open yet. I was delighted to find that, indeed, they are now open. The health inspector has not come yet, so they are not allowed to sell anything yet. However, they can give away as much stuff as they like, so that is what they are doing. Hence, Steve and I are enjoying complimetary beverages. Steve is also enjoying some vegetable soup. Cool.

Later, Michelle and I are going to Nashville with her bridesmaids. I think they are going to drop me off at Hickory Hollow Mall while they look for bridesmaids' dresses at one of the local shops. Joy.

I got a message ealier from the pitching coach at Vanderbilt saying that he is not sure if they are going to scrimmage tomorrow. I hope they do, since I need to see some pitches before my first game, and I had already made plans to go there. I know I could go to MTSU Saturday, but I do not want to drive that far to work for free.

I hope everyone is having a great Friday. Peace...

Yesterday was interesting, to say the least.

We had agreed to meet at the gym in the morning, so I got there and started working on the elliptical machine. I was going pretty well when Michelle came in, and told me that she needed to go to the doctor. She had been having pains in her side all week, but she felt she could fight through it. Now, she was ready to get some medical advice. So, we went to the doctor, and it appears that she had a kidney stone. When they did the CT scan, they never saw one, so they think she had already passed it. She got a couple of prescriptions and we were on our way. She was still having nausea last night, but she should be better soon.

Needless to say, we missed our valentine's party last night. Not really a big deal, since her health is the most important thing. We should still make it to the party tomorrow night, so we can have fun then.

Today, I am going to get all my baseball gear in order. Vanderbilt is scrimmaging tomorrow, and I am going to be working a few innings. I finally received my new uniform jacket a couple of days ago. I was getting worried a bit, so I was relieved when it came. My new hats had already arrived a couple of weeks ago, so that was no problem. I am now fully uniformed, and ready for the season. YAY!! My first real game is a week from today, so I am getting excited.

I hope everyone has a wonderful day. Peace...

It's been a great day so far, minor technical difficulties notwithstanding.

I finally finished typing my letter for Prison Pete. Jeez, that due can write. Just not well.

I started getting a strange message this morning. Whenever Outlook is open, I occasionally get a message saying that a program is trying to access my address book. I of course believeed this to be malicious, so I denied it access. Steve found a patch for me, so I installed it.

We will be heading to church in a while. Ash Wednesday is a great reminder of our Savior's sacrifice. I am really excited.

I hope everyone has a great day. Peace...

OK, the weekend of insanity has finally come to a close. I will try to re-cap, but please forgive me if I leave out a thing or 3.

Friday afternoon, we went to the house where Michelle nannies, and hooked up with the kids. Mom and dad were on their way out the door, headed to Connecticut. We hung out there for a while, and then left for Nashville to go to the Valentine's party. I thought the party started at 6:00, but it started at 6:30, so we were way early. This wasn't too bad, because I was able to talk with the musician (one-man jazz act) for a while. He was really cool. He played a huge Epiphone 6-string electric, similar to the axe Brian Setzer of the Stray Cats plays.

We enjoyed a decent meal, and some great company, and the party. Unfortunately, Michelle did not enjoy herself as much as she could have, because she was really worried about the kids. We had left them with their older brother, and we weren't real sure of how that was going to work out. We stayed for about 30 minutes after dinner, and then left. It was sort of weird being the first there, and the first to leave. I gave the musician a wave as we exited, and he tried to wave back, but was in the middle of a song, so it kind of messed him up. I got a kick out of that. He plays regularly at a club in Nashville, although I forgot the name of it. I remember he said it is behind Jim Reed Chevrolet on Broadway, so it should not be too hard to find. We will have to check it out. A friend at the party said that club has the best veal in the city, which is kind of weird, because if you remember from Godfather I, the restaurant where Michael Corleone killed the police captain was reputed to have the best veal in the city as well. I found it strange my friend, who is a minister, would say the same thing about this jazz club. Hmmm.

Anyway, we got back home to find everything was OK. We put the kids to bed, and tried to relax a bit.

Saturday found me up before the rooster. I had a meeting in Nashville at 9:00, and I had to meet one of my youth at the church to pick her up. Fortunately, she and I were both early, so we got off to a good start. We stopped for coffee, and she combined her cappuccino with a bag of Cheetos. Very strange. It was kind of neat to be able to see the sun rise as I was leaving Clarksville. There was a time in my life when I saw plenty of sunrises, but unfortunately I was usually coming home from a night of heavy drinking so I was not able to fully appreciate them.

The meeting was rather long, but we got a lot done, so I guess it was productive. We were planning the spring youth retreat for this March. I will be giving the message on Friday night. It will kind of nice to get the bulk of my work out of the way early, so I can better enjoy the weekend. On the Saturday during recreation time, I will be coordinating a ping-pong tournament. That should be a lot of fun. There is also a craft project during that time, and I think Michelle may end up helping with that.

After the meeting, then lunch, I came back home. Michelle was not feeling well, so I hung out with the kids while she took a nap. I squelched a couple of arguments, and we all had fun during the afternoon. The cable guy showed up to install high speed internet, and he was sort of a goof-ball. He got it installed, but only after eating half the cookies Michelle and the kids had made earlier. LOL.

Saturday night, we went to Toys R Us, then Chuck E. Cheese's. James (one of the kids) had been named "Star of the Week" at his school, so we promised him some special treats. He and his sister got some stuff at TRU, including a set of Star Wars light sabers. Needless to say, there have been some epic battles in the past couple of days. We also had tons of fun at Chuck's. We parlayed our tickets into two whoopee cushions. One of them developed a hole before we got home, but the other one is still blowing, if you get my drift. LOL.

Sunday, we took all three kids to church, and they were great. Unfortunately, these kids do not attend church regularly, so it was nice to be able to do that for them. Elizabeth had an important question for the minister after the service. She asked "If God made everybody, and everything else, WHO MADE GOD"? I thought that was really neat since last summer at Junior Camp (4th-6th graders), a kid asked the same question. Elizabeth is in Kindergarten. WOW. Anyway, I told her that before God made everything, he made himself. She said that didn't make any sense, and wanted to know what really happened. I told her that I wasn't smart enough o figure that out, and that since she is smarter than me, she could work on it. She liked that idea, and then went to play on the playground. LOL. The kids had a great experience, so that was nice. It turns out that Parker, the oldest kid, (16 years old) is hanging out with some of the kids from the Clarksville church. It was cool to discover that. I think he is going to come to the retreat, so that is awesome.

Overall, I felt the commercials were collectively among the worst ever. There were only a few that I actually liked, and several that made me want to puke. Sir Paul's halftime entertainmet was excellent, if not a bit understated. I think the NFL severely over-reacted to Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction. The commericals and Paul's show were as sterile as a hospital room. I think the NFL has missed the boat, and I think the fact that the viewership being down about 5% from last year is proof of that. People want to be entertained, and they do not want some group from on-high to tell them what do and do not want to see.

After church, we had dinner on the grounds, as our denomination celebrated its 195th birthday on 2-4-05. The meal was nice, and afterwards we headed home.

I tried to relax a bit before the game, but that was impossible. Phil Mickelson was in the lead of the golf tournament, and since Tiger wasn't in the field, I wanted Lefty to win. He is Kent's favorite golfer. He won the tournament by 5 strokes, so that was cool.

I grilled some steaks (not without some technical assistance from my dad) for dinner. I had never used a gas grill, and I had never grilled filets before either. Everything turned out fine, and with the vegetable medley Michelle whipped up, we had a great dinner. We watched the game, and I almost predicted the score correctly. I was glad the Pats won. They are a tremendous team. The team of the decade so far, without question. It's funny how football has had teams of the decade, going all the way back to at to least the 50's.

40s: Bears (4 championships)
50s: Lions and Browns (3 championships each)
60s: Packers (1 championship and 2 Super Bowl wins)
70s: Steelers (4 Super Bowl wins)
80s: 49ers (4 Super Bowl wins) (with the Redskins close behind with 3 SB wins)
90s: Cowboys (3 Super Bowl wins)
Oughts: Patriots (3 Super Bowl wins)

In the hub-bub Sunday, we forgot that our engagement announcement was in Sunday's newspaper. My mother told me that several people at her church had clipped the picture, and that was touching. We stopped by the paper's office today to see if they had some extra copies of yesterday's paper. When we were at the front desk, it didn't look like we were going to get anywhere with the secretary until Ruth Stryjewski came by. She worked in my dad's area for a long time, and she introduced me to the secretary as "Mike Winn's son". As soon as she said that, the secretary changed her tune, and all of a sudden it was closer to "What may I do for you today?", and suddenly there were about 5 copies of yesterday's paper in front of me. LOL. I don't think I was going to drop my dad's name, so I was glad that Ruth did it for me. LOL. Anyway, we got five copies of the paper to distribute to those who may have missed it.

Today, we ate lunch at the Front Page Deli. I had won a certificate worth $20 on the radio, so we ordered nice food like it was considerably cheaper food. We had a good time nonetheless.

After lunch, we me the kids at home, and helped them with their homework. James went to Sylvan later, and he must have done well, because he won a prize. We celebrated afterward with Michael's pizza. As we were eating, the parents got home. Everyone was glad to see them. After we briefed them of the weekend's events, we went home to recover. It is safe to say that we are both physically and mentally exhausted. LOL. Please shed a tear for us...LOL.

Tomorrow, we are going to the gym to work out some stress.

I hope everyone has a wonderful evening. Peace...

I heard this morning that long-time character actor John Vernon, who played Dean Wormer in "Animal House", has died. Animal House is one of my favorite movies of all time. He also played Fletcher in "The Outlaw Josey Wales", which on many days I would say is my FAVORITE movie of all time. He also did the voice for Big Brother in "1984". He will be missed.

Michelle and I are going to a Valentine's party tonight in Nashville. It should be a lot of fun. This is the first of three parties we are attending. I never knew we were such socialites. It always feels nice to be invited to things.

I am going to the gym in a while. Michelle decided not to go, so she is going to do some school work instead. Good for her.

I hope everyone has a wonderful day. Peace...

I met Michelle at the gym this morning, and we had a good workout. Tomorrow, we are going to take an aerobics class. JOY!!

If you have noticed the link to Prison Pete's blog in the left margin, you may be interested to know that I am going to be helping his editor occasionally. Basically, Pete does not have access to a computer, so he writes letters to a friend. His friend is going to scan then into a PDF file, and a few loyal readers are going to type them into Word documents, so the editor can pate them into the blog. I enjoy reading about Pete's day-to-day life in the NY State Prison system, so I was glad to help out a bit.

The parents of the kids that Michelle nannies for are going out of town this weekend, so she has the kids all weekend. Normally, this would not be so much of a problem, but this weekend was going to be crazy already. I have a meeting in Nashville Saturday morning, and Michelle has tutoring that morning as well. Michelle, her mother, and some of the bridesmaids had planned on going to Nashville Saturday afternoon for some dress-shopping as well. Sunday is the Super Bowl, and we had planned on going to Kent and Daphne's to watch the game. Daphne was a little reserved about having two small kids running around the house, so I don't know for sure what we are going to do. I am sure it will work out somehow. Wish us luck!!

My official prediction on the Super Bowl is Patriots 31-Eagles 17.

I walked the dog earlier, and she was glad to be outside. The last two days, it has been raining non-stop, so we didn't go out.

I am going to do some reading and probably some more writing. I wrote for a while yesterday, but I have not decided if I am going to post it on the blog or not. I just don't know yet.

Tonight, Michelle's dorm is having a board game party, so that should be fun. Plus, free food is included, so that is way cool.

I hope everyone has a wonderful day. Peace...

When Michelle and I got back from the theatre Saturday, she sent an incendiary e-mail to the corporate offices of Regal Cinema. She got a response tonight that said they will be sending some free passes for our trouble. Cool.

We were at a bookstore this afternoon (it isn't hard to imagine that), and I saw a magazine that features Bob Dylan on the cover. The lead article is an in-depth look at the making of his epic "Blood on the Tracks" album, the release of which occurred in January 1975 (30 years ago). This is my fav Dylan album of all time, so I had to have the magazine. The mag also came with a free CD of several artists covering some of Dylan's best work. Cool.

I read several of the essays in my first Passion book today. The most interesting to me was one that discussed how it appears that Jews and Christians can watch the film, and come away with opinions that suggested they had watched two completely different films. It reminded me of a conversation I had in a Bible study that was led by my Greek professor. We were talking about how each of us has our own sense of reality. I stated that I would never know why some women see the need to own 72 pairs of shoes, and how most women will never understand how some men can watch football for 18 hours on a Saturday or Sunday. My professor responded, "Isn't that why we read, so that we can understand someone else's position?" I stated that I could read all the books in the world by African-American authors, yet I would still never KNOW what it is like to be black. Maybe I could empathize more, but not know.

It's the same way with the Passion. No one I have spoken with came away from that movie blaming Jews for anything, yet many Jews in the media felt they were being blamed for Christ's death. I will never know what it is like to be Jewish, so I try to understand their plight, although I cannot appreciate it fully.

Tomorrow, I plan on doing some cleaning, and some more reading.

I saw a TV ad earlier for a brokerage house that featured the Airplane song, "Volunteers." I got to thinking about how that brokerage firm is likely run by a CEO who is a wealthy middle-aged white man, the same kind of person who likely was listening to that song while marching against the Vietnam War, and speaking subversive about corporate America. Interesting paradox, I think. As uncle Bob once said, "The times, they are a-changing." Maybe they already have. Maybe they always are.

Have you heard about the University of Colorado professor, Ward Churchill, who is in a major firestorm for writing an essay in which he likened the victims of 9-11 to German Nazis, and suggesting they got what they deserved? He had a speaking engagement at a small college in upstate NY cancelled, and has resigned the chairmanship of his department at UC. Many people are calling for his job, but I think now matter how insane someone's opinion may be, freedom of speech is more important than PC. I do think that he should be censured by the University, because as a state employee, he should not be able to use his job as a platform for such nonsense. Here is an article written by a fellow professor about the controversy.

I hope everyone has a wonderful evening. Peace...