Blake Thompson daht NetI'm just saying….

• Travel with podcasts is great: It really helps when you’re driving at night or for stretches on the Natchez Trace. I listened to both Matt Chandler and Rob Bell. And a variety of music, but some of the long stretches were helped by The Postal Service and The Album Leaf.
• When the number of people in a family gathering increases, so does the propensity to laugh at things that are not funny…at all.
• Two year olds ride in cars much more quietly when they have dry clothes on.
• Christmas lights and traditional decorations: GOOD. Big blow up creations of Scooby Doo in a Santa hat and animated Grinches: NOT SO GOOD.
• Lasagna and fudge at my grandmothers is hard to beat.
• Books are good gifts to give me. I got 3 good ones. This one, this one, and this one.
• Rest is a commodity that is not easily measured. I’m not sure how to measure it. But it’s not measured in hours.
• I’m starting to really like 24. I’m in the middle of Season Two. I’ll have to play catch up for quite a while. Season Six starts in a couple of weeks.
• I’ve gotten really behind in my blog reading.
• Christmas isn’t the same as it used to be. But I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.
• Driving on the Natchez Trace is either peaceful or boring. I’m not sure which.
• Watching your kids open presents is better than opening your own.
• Domino’s Pizza is a good Christmas Eve dinner tradition. And I guess heated up Domino’s leftovers on Christmas night is too.

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I love Google Reader. It lets me read all my fave blogs all in one place. Quite often I still click to go to the original site to see somethings, but it’s a great catch all. I tried it when it first came out. It was okay but a bit slow. I left it for Newshutch, but I’ve been back now for a few months after they performed an overhaul for it.

But I usually have much more there to read than I think I have time for. But I was able today to get it all down to 3 posts to read and comment on later. That’s three out of a few hundred. Yes, I rapidly skimmed a lot of it. And some I just clicked to “mark all as read” because I knew that there was some fluff I didn’t need.

But the beast has been beaten down…until tomorrow.

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I’m sitting at my dad’s house visiting for Christmas. The TV has been on CNN for a while now. And it seems the most important thing going on in the world is the feud between Rosie O’Donnell and Donald Trump. It’s humorous. I think they’re both mouthy on this.

 Donald Trump allowed the winner of Miss USA retain her crown after acting out in some parties. Rosie said Donald should not be the moral compass for 20 year olds in the country and attacked his failed marriages. Donald returned w/ Rosie has failed over and over, looks terrible on the outside, and is even more rotten on the inside.

And over the last two hours, this story has been on at least four times.

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Somehow MSU got two quality quaterback commitments w/in the span of a few days. They had a good high school player and a good Juco player. Both have great potential at the QB spot. We’ll see how well our coaches can work with them.

Surprisingly our coaches have continued to recruit fairly well despite limited W’s on the field. But next year is the year to prove it all.

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For the next few days we’re kidless

Yesterday we met up w/ The Mother-In-Law and dropped them with her. And now they’re with my mom. That means for the next three days we’re kidless. That will be really weird. In a way I relish the total “me time”. But in the other I’m already missing them…but we’ll see them soon.

But in the next three or so days we’ll get some last minute shopping done, be able to be flexible enough to leave the house to run a personal errand when the other isn’t here to stay w/ the girls. I can watch 24 during the afternoon w/o worrying what little eyes might be watching it too. And I can sleep as late as I want to w/o having to get up and take a two year old to the potty… Not really. Still gotta get up and go to work. And I enjoy taking care of them.

But sometimes a short break is a good thing

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The other night The Wife and I watched United 93. It started out w/ scattered people in the airport and the regular office goings on of air traffic control people, security people, Air Force studs and the like. But after things started going heywire, I was hooked. And I have to assume the events were accurate in how everything unfolded.

I began to get attatched to what was going on w/ the “characters” in the plane. In the back of my head I knew they were real…but I was watching a movie. When they heard news of the other planes, and the crashes into the towers, things got busy. The passengers on United 93 decided they had to do something. And I began rooting for them.

As they hatched their plan and decided to do something about it, things were really rolling. I was on the edge of my seat. They were about to rush the cockpit and try to take over control of the plane. And then it hit me.

This won’t end well. I already knew the ending. Death to them all. In a heroic act….death to them all. So the last 5 min of the movie was a real downer. But I was still engrossed. But after 9/11, I doubt things get very far in a hijacking situation anymore. No more, “I’ll just sit here, make it to where I’m going and let these guys get their $$.” I bet people take matters into their own hands much quicker.

I can’t imagine being a part of a hijack…..it’s unimaginable.

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I’ve always been one to want to be on the go. I was fine to go on a trip, come home, and spend just enough time to get some clean underwear and hit the road again. I never really did a lot of travelling growing up except to go visit my dads house…and it was just in Memphis. Church youth trips were always fun because I got away. And I can remember waking up the next morning after returning home…and for the first few moments forgetting I was home and expecting to still be “out” somewhere.

My senior year I got to go to Mexico w/ a school trip. Up to that time it was the most fun I’d ever had in my life. Just because of the friends I was with and the memories made. Since then I’ve been a few places in the US and to Costa Rica twice. Maybe I should count my blessings and be thankful for the litlte travel I’ve done.

But I’m realizing more and more that I have a big inner desire to travel. To go to big places (or little) here in the States, but also around the globe. And quite possibly to even go and live in a different country. From my two trips to Costa Rica, I could see me living there. But maybe to go to England or New Zealand or Australia. Man, that would be out of this world!

There was a time when The Wife and I thought that we’d have to have a specific directive from God to ever let us know if we were to move way off to a place like that. But now I think we’re both of the opinion that God can use us wherever we are…and He’s looking for willing vessels everywhere to pour Himself into…so why not be one of them WHEREVER!

I’m not expecting to move anytime soon. But you never know what God has planned.

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Hmmm… Last week I tried to post a video from YouTube right here on the blog. That way you could just click on it and away you go. It seemed to work at first. But then on any Mozilla based browser it wouldn’t work. In fact, it royally jacked up all the formatting to where things were not in their proper place.

It took me a bit to realize it was the YouTube code that messed everything up. To the point where I’d uploaded almost all of the WordPress files again.

So does anyone know any easy solution to this?

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Most of the times a baptism in church can be really special. But sometimes it is special for different reasons. Check this one out!

Baptism Video

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Tonight I used iChat combined w/ iSight to do the first video chat for me ever. Talked to Brian up at (cough cough) Ole Miss. Worked pretty well. I can see some amazing pluses to it to check out later. Now I want to figure out how to do an interview and record it over iChat or something like that.

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