Later this afternoon, we have a meeting with our social worker. We will be discussing what we need to do in the coming weeks, as we get ready for our home study. I keep forgetting I need to hide my meth lab...LOL.

Tonight, I have my first football meeting of the season. Many people who do not officiate sports do not realize how much time we officials spend in meetings and training camps. People quite often ask bluntly, "How much do you get paid for these games" (in what other profession does this happen?) and think it's a gold mine when they find out. They do not realize the level of commitment that is required. Which is understandable I guess, since they are not directly involved in it. These are probably the same folks who think teaching school is a pretty easy gig since teachers (allegedly) get off work at 3:00 or so.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I am going to celebrate by skipping Spanish class and sleeping in for a bit. I have a quiz in ethics, so I have got to do that. However, the rest of the day is mine, and I think we are going to lounge at the Smiths' pool in the afternoon. That will be fun :)

I hope everyone is doing well. Peace...

OK, I have finished my Spanish homework, I have done my writing assignment on Hotel Rwanda, and have read the chapter from my ethics textbook. All I have remaining is to read the first 6 chapters of "Dead Man Walking", which I have read before, so that will be a breeze. I think Michelle and I are going out for a while to do some stuff, which will turn into eating an early dinner, then repairing back home so I can read my stuff. Then, it will be celebration time, complete with champagne and year-old wedding cake. COOL!!

Peace...

I just finished my Spanish homework, so I started thinking about my Hotel Rwanda response. That brought me back to a video I recently found on Youtube.com, one of Craig David performing the Beatles' "Come Together" at the Concert for New York that Yoko One put on as a tribute to the victims of 9-11. I remember watching the concert live, and being particularly mesmerized by David's rendition of one of my favorite Beatles songs. I have embedded a player below. The quality is quite grainy (it looks as if it was recorded on VHS), but it is not too bad. Peace...

Michelle and I were supposed to meet Mike and Dana in Jackson last night, but neither Michelle nor Dana was feeling well yesterday morning, so we decided to try another time. I worked until about 5, then came home and took a shower. We decided to go to a restaurant that we had never before visited, Rooks Corner. It was really nice. Even better, after everyone found out we were celebrating our first anniversary, we got the royal treatment. The manager and the executive chef came out to greet us, and one of our meals was free. Both desserts were free, too. Way cool!

Today is going to be a busy day. I have got to write a short response to the film "Hotel Rwanda", which we saw in Ethics class Friday. I have also got to read the first six chapters of "Dead Man Walking" and a chapter from another book. Tonight, we might go out again.

I have been thinking of all the superlatives that would describe this last year, my first of being married. Here is the short list:

Fastest

Most intense

Best

Most difficult

Most rewarding

Busiest



I hope everyone is doing well. Peace...

As we left church Wednesday, a rainbow appeared :)

Post #252...

It was great having my parents in town on Monday afternoon. They brought the top section of the wedding cake, and Michelle and I plan to eat it Sunday night. Whilst mis padres estaban aqui, we went to eat at Whole Hog Cafe. It was much fun until Michelle made the point of letting my mom know I did not eat the meatloaf Michelle had prepared the night before. I had forgotten how much I despise meatloaf, and just could not force it down. Oh well. I just asked Michelle what kind of flowers she would like, and made some chicken wings after she fell asleep.

Tomorrow, I have a test in Spanish. Joy. Then, in ethics, we are watching "Hotel Rwanda". After class, there will only be two more weeks in the summer session. YAY!!

Saturday we are meeting Mike and Dana Clark in Jackson to watch a game at Pringles Park, which is supposed to be one of the best minor league parks in the country. It will be great to see Mike and Dana.

Monday afternoon, we have a meeting with our social worker. We will be talking about our home study requirements and the upcoming paperwork. Later that night, I have my first football meeting of the year. For a guy who cannot stand meetings, I sure have a lot of them coming up. Oh well.

I hope everyone is doing well. Peace...

I watched every shot of the final round of the Open Championship this morning, and it was great to see my man Tiger Woods win his 11th professional major, 14th overall. The thing that struck me the most is that after he putted out and sealed the win, he collapsed into the arms of his caddy, and cried on his shoulder for several minutes. Normally, his dad is always there to give him a big bear hug. But, as you may know, his father passed away earlier this year. Tiger got big bear hugs from his caddy, his coach, and his wife, but he said later that it was at this point that he realized his dad would never be there to see him win again, to give him that bear hug. I made a note to give my own father a big bear hug the next time I see him. Which, conveniently enough, will be tomorrow...LOL.

My parents are coming into town for the afternoon tomorrow, and it will be wonderful to see them. I remember in the days leading up to the wedding that mother was concerned about who would keep the top of the cake. Apparently, there is a custom that it be saved, for the couple to share on their first anniversary. So, my mom kept it and is going to bring it when they come. Eating year-old cake is not something Michelle and I are overly excited about, but it should be fun.

I have a short essay due tomorrow that I am going to write tonight, and a 5 page essay due Tuesday that I am going to do tomorrow night after my parents leave. Nothing like waiting to the last minute. Rusty influenced me in so many ways...LOL.

I hope everyone is doing well. Peace...

Michelle got a phone call today from a High School principal, and it seems she was offered a job. I think his exact words were, "Do you want the job?". Usually, that bodes well...LOL. She has a meeting scheduled next week to meet him and tour the school. We are extremely excited!! As a bonus, the school is just a mile or so away from where we live. Cool!!

Michelle and I have been discussing selling my truck, in order to buy something with air conditioning. We do not think the baby will be able to ride in a vehicle with no A/C. Still, it is quite an emotional thing for me to even think about selling my truck. I think the plan is for Michelle to get the new (gonna be used) vehicle, and I will inherit her Explorer.

My team won our debate in ethics class today, so that was cool. I have no idea how, since if I had been a judge, I would have scored the other team much higher. I think the judges took pity on us since two of our members (one of whom was supposed to give an important argument) failed to show up. I ended up giving an argument in her place, in addition to my rebuttal duties. I also gave the closing remarks. Everyone who showed up stepped up and did as well as they could.

I hope everyone is doing well. Peace...

Today has not been a productive day. Somehow, I made it both of my classes, but beyond that, I have not gotten much done. Tomorrow will certainly be better.

In fact, I have a debate in my ethics class tomorrow. My team will be arguing in favor of embryonic stem cell research. I will be helping with my team's defense (providing counter-arguments), and giving the closing remarks. It should be a lot of fun.

I also have a paper due in ethics class next Tuesday. Need to get started on that. Not to mention the exam this Friday in Spanish. Joy.


I have also been working on my seminary application. Still.

My sister has successfully moved to Nashville (click on the link to her blog for her account of that). I am excited that she is beginning her career. I am sure that she will do great!

I find myself thinking every day about how our son has yet to be born. Somewhere in Vietnam, there is a young woman, with no support system, who is pregnant and scared. She likely is poor and alone, wondering what to do. It blows me away that God will place the child she bears into our care. Only with our prayers and His guidance will Michael grow up to be the best he can be. This just blows my mind.

I hope everyone is doing well. Peace...

Michelle and I continue to toss around ideas on names for the baby. Last night, out of nowhere, she asked me, "What do you think of the name 'Emerson'"? Without hesitation, I said, "Well, along with Lake and Palmer, it makes a pretty good band."...LOL. Michelle seems to like Emerson, Noah, Elijah, and Ethan, Michael and Cage. I know this because she "accidentally" left a last where I would see it...LOL.

I may have invented a new category of moral theory. My ethics professor likes to assign us what she calls "blitz" writings, where we are given a topic and we have 5 minutes to write a paragraph or two about the subject. Earlier this week, we were talking about euthanasia (assisted suicide), and we were assigned one such writing. In ethics, we use terms such as "obligatory", "permissible", "forbidden", and "morally worse" to describe moral acts. In my blitz writing, I got myself in a vocabulary bind, and could not find the right word. And since I only had a few minutes, I could not start over. So, I said that passive euthanasia may be morally "not as bad" as active euthanasia. Passive euthanasia can be thought of as letting someone expire without taking extreme measures to save the person's life (an example would be a "do not resuscitate" order), while active euthanasia is the act of causing someone to expire sooner than he/she would otherwise. Had I started from the other direction, I could have said that active euthanasia may be "morally worse" than the passive kind. Anyway, my professor got a big kick out of it, making a big note of it on my paper, and kidding my in front of the class. It was all quite funny.

Yesterday, I bought tickets to see Eric Clapton October 18 in Birmingham. My brother Tim and I are super-excited about the show. Michelle and I are planning on seeing Bruce Hornsby here in Memphis August 16. We are really excited to see Bruce as well.

I hope everyone is doing well. Peace...

I am sad to have learned that Syd Barrett--founding member, lead guitarist, lead singer, and chief songwriter my favorite band Pink Floyd--recently died from complications of diabetes. Truly one of the great "could-have-beens" his talent was never fully realized after his mental breakdown in 1967. So sad. I have been listening to "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" and "Wish You Were Here", two songs the band wrote in direct tribute to him.

Earlier today, I was asked to speak at the Clarksville church on September 3. It's really spooky how last week I felt led to write a sermon about 9-11, and then I get asked to speak the week before the anniversary. I am going to use that sermon, and a special version of The Eagles' "New York Minute". It is a 9-11 edit, which my friends and I in Houston created in the days after the terrorist attacks. It features the Eagles song, interspersed with various audio clips from media broadcasts about the events of 9-11.

Classes started today fro Summer Session II. I have Spanish at 7 AM every morning, then and ethics class immediately following. I have the same professor in ethics as I had in my other ethics class back in the spring. The difference between the two classes is that in the class last spring, we studied several (about 9, I think) different ethical systems, and did not get into too much depth about specific situations. In the current class (which is called Contemporary Moral Problems), we will deal with several very specific moral problems, such as genetic and reproductive biothechnologies, world hunger/poverty (and the ethics of human intervention), the death penalty and treatment of animals and the environment. These are exactly the kinds of things that interest me the most. This kind of ethics (dealing with very specific issues) is called Applied Normative Ethics, and is what I specialize in. I am so excited!!

I hope everyone is doing well. Peace...

My brother Tim called me today to tell me that Pam Walker, a woman we had gone to high school with, committed suicide last week. This was quite shocking and disturbing to me. In fact, I spent the rest of the afternoon in a bit of a funk. I was supposed to make some progress in my seminary application progress, and I did make a little headway, but not nearly as much as I had wanted to.

I remember having a class with Pam. She was a year ahead of me (she graduated with Tim). In our class together (physical science), she sat next to me on the right. She was always a lot of fun to talk with. I understand that she had a child, about 9 years of age. So sad.

One of the problems we have with this type of tragedy is we are unsure what the bible teaches about suicide. Some believe that if someone takes his/her own life they will not go to heaven. This leaves friends and family in serious doubt and pain. I had a World Religion class at Austin Peay, and one of the assignments was to write a short essay on whether or not I believe that suicide is a mortal (unforgivable). I came to the conclusion that it can be, under certain circumstances.

I use the scripture John 3:16 and Romans 3:28 as the basis of my argument. It seems that across the vast majority of Christianity, most would agree that these verses are a large part of the core of our beliefs. These two verses, where John proclaims that Jesus' crucifixion gives everlasting life to ALL believers, and where Paul asserts that we are saved by our faith alone, and not our actions, seem to absolve a suicidist from persecution. If we are to say that Jesus died in order to pardon all believers for their sins, and if we are to argue that it is our faith in Christ, and not our actions, that enable us to receive mercy, it would seem illogical to me to say that God would condemn a believer. So, I would argue that a person who has accepted Christ as his/her savior would still receive mercy upon the act of suicide.

One counter-argument to my argument might be that in order for a person to be forgiven for his/her sins, that person must repent and ask for forgiveness. Obviously, a dead person would not be able to do this. I would argue, however, that one who has professed a belief in Christ as the savior is forgiven at the moment of the sin. Accepting Christ as the redeemer of one's sins (all sins) seems to preclude the need for redemption of any one sin. I may be wrong here (and I am sure many people would say that I am), but this is what I believe at this time. Just my opinion.

Anyway, I hope everyone is doing well. Peace...

I enjoyed watching the World Cup Final between France and Italy this afternoon. In fact, I watched more of this World Cup than any previous World Cup, by a large margin. It was weird, though, that until today, whatever team I rooted for had always lost, with the one exception being Trinidad and Tobago winning their first match in group play (was that a run-on sentence?). For no reason in particular, I rooted for Italy today, so it was nice to see them win. Michelle and I have talked a little about maybe retiring to Italy, so maybe that was why I was cheering for them. I dunno.

We ate dinner at a local Pizza Hut tonight, and it was really good. Funny thing was, the young son of one of the employees was hanging out inside, with his skateboard. I could not resist the temptation to jump aboard, although I did not do any tricks. Robert Frost tells us that one could be worse than a swinger of birches. True indeed.

I bought a couple of new albums from iTunes yesterday. First, I bought the Goo Goo Dolls (relatively) new album, "Let Love In", which came out last year. Then, I bought K.T. Tunstall's current CD, "Eye to the Telescope". There are still about 10 CD's and/or DVD's out that I would like to have, but I will hold off for now. Michelle and I joke about the days of yore when, if I saw a book/CD/DVD that I liked, I bought it and no one gave any flack. Now, I have to consider that their will soon be three mouths in this house, so my purchasing decisions take much longer. LOL.

Unfortunately, Michelle cannot stand K.T. Tunstall's big hit, "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree", so I am limited to one listen per day. Darn. Memo to self: Gotta find my headphones.

I hope everyone is doing well. Peace...

This morning, we went to a seminar at Babies R US, where we first learned about how to spend several thousand dollars decorating the baby's room. In the second session, we learned how to baby-proof the house, which was much more helpful to us.

I hope everyone is doing well. Peace...

You may have noticed that I changed the look of the blog. I chose this template because 1) It is considerably brighter than the previous one, thereby reflecting my general disposition these days, and 2) It seemed like a nice way to come back to the world of blogging.

The other day, I started thinking about the movie "Almost Famous", in particular the bus scene that features Elton John's "Tiny Dancer". I remembered that the Patrick Fugit character said the Kate Hudson character "I have to go home". She, in turn, said, "You ARE home". And he got this quizzical look on his face as if just realized that amidst all of the chaos that is a rock-and roll tour, indeed that was now his true home.

So, I got inspired to write a sermon. It is basically about how amidst the chaos of our lives, we can always find refuge in God...that if we allow Him to be our true home, we can always find comfort. My original Scriptural basis was the prodigal son story, but I have decided to use something else--although I haven't decided exactly what.

I found the movie scene on Youtube.com, and embedded a player below.

I have been reading and doing research all morning. It feels good to get some stuff done. One day last week, I was inspired to write a sermon. I have no speaking engagement scheduled, so it was kind of weird. Nonetheless, I ran with it, and wrote what I think is a pretty good sermon.

After lunch, I am going to read some more. I have bought several textbooks online in recent days, and I am still waiting for them to arrive, but I have plenty on hand to keep me busy.

Last night, we went to the Redbirds game to see them play the Nashville Sounds. What we did not know, however, was that there would be 100 people from 42 countries who were receiving their U.S. citizenship. They had completed all the necessary steps, and the ceremony was held after the game, on the field behind home plate. The crowd was enthusiastic, and gave several standing ovations. It was incredible to see these folks become Americans. When we adopt our son next year, we will have already completed to requisite paperwork, and when we bring him back, the moment the plane lands he will become an American citizen. That will be awesome.

It feels good to be blogging again, if not for the act itself at least for the fact that I have time to sit down occasionally and collect my thoughts. During my hiatus, I was not able to read the blogs that I normally do, so it has been nice to "catch up" with them. I also found out that Mike and Dana Clark have a blog, and I posted a link to it in the left column.

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. Peace...

I have been watching the Women's US Open 18-hole playoff this morning, which has kind of been a blowout. Annika Sorenstam has been in complete control.

Later today, I am umpiring a double-header at a park that is close to home. One of the major differences between my umpiring here, and when I was in Clarksville, is that now I rarely have to travel more than 15-20 minutes away from home. I remember driving over an hour to Hendersonville, Gallatin, Murfreesboro, et. al., for games. It's nice to go just a few miles down the road.

Tonight, we are going downtown to see the city's fireworks show on the river. It should be nice. Last night, we went to a huge Baptist churches for their picnic/concert/fireworks show. It was really great. We had some Corky's BBQ and watermelon for supper. We enjoyed the concert, and the fireworks were awesome. It was much fun.

I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday. Peace...

Michelle and I have spent the better part of the day relaxing, lounging and reading the newspaper. Later, we are going to a picnic/concert/fireworks show. That should be fun.

Speaking of concerts, we have been trying to decide whether we want to see Journey/Def Leppard in Nashville, or Bruce Hornsby here in Memphis. Tough decision...lol.

I am umpiring a couple of games tomorrow afternoon, then at night we are going downtown to see the fireworks. Tuesday, we are going to the Redbirds game (AAA affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals). Funny thing is, they are playing Nashville, who we used to go see regularly when we were in Middle Tennessee. After the game, there will be a fireworks show. So, we should have our fill of fireworks for this year.

I am getting ready for classes to start a week from tomorrow. I am planning on working a little less in order to be able to do well in my classes. The Summer II term will be 5 weeks, then I have a one week break before the fall semester starts. It blows me away when I think about how this will be my last semester as an undergrad.

I hope everyone in doing well. Peace...