Blake Thompson daht NetI'm just saying….

It’s time for another bullet list:

• Yesterday I was trying to decide whether to go swimming. And then it rained. Decision made.
• We needed the rain BADLY. Our backyard had yellow grass.
• We shopped for school supplies last night. How is it that WalMart was basically out of pencils?
• I like the way my new Canon 40D feels in my hands. But I have no lens. The catalytic converter is jacked up on my Tahoe. Which comes first?
• If you’ve not see The Dark Night by now, then you’re jacked up too.
• I think FoxTrot might be my favorite comic strip ever. Too bad Bill Amend only does it on a weekend basis now.
• I’m really starting to dig Last.fm again. Lots of good music out there.
• Things are about to shift gears in a fairly large way I think at church. Looking forward to the (hot) fall semester.
• The Wife and I are blazing through The Office. I think she laughs more than I do now.
• Netflix has a distro center in Memphis. That means I can get a 2 day turn around on The Office DVD’s. Suh-weet!
• The Olympics are near. Very near. I’m excited. And China has a home field advantage. We must prevail.
• If the U.S. didn’t win. I’d want Costa Rica or Australia to win I think.
• College Football is very near too. I’d probably watch college football over The Olympics. Tough call depending on the game and the event.

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If you work with fonts much and recognize their names, this is quite funny!

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Not sure how legit this is. But quite interesting.

Don’t watch if you’ve not seen S4 of LOST.

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For the last two years our oldest has been homeschooled for Kindergarden and First Grade. It has been a good experience for both her and my wife. Addison has grown to be a passionate reader during this time. While still in Clinton she went to a school on Fridays that was specifically for homeschooled kids. She loved it. She’s such a social bug.

In the transition from Clinton to Oxford, there was the five month stop in New Albany that was just a crazy time for us. So she continued her home schooling there. But now that we are in Oxford, we have been chewing on the possibilities of Addison going to school each day. We’ve checked into a local private school and also the public school that is in our district.

Now we don’t have the notion that all public schools are quagmires of debauchery and evil. On the contrary. But it had been important for us in the early years to do some intentional teaching and development of our children. And it looks like Addison will be attending public school starting next month. We’ve heard great things about the school system, and I’ve met with the principal a couple of times. Addison got to meet her too and take a tour of the school and meet a few teachers.

She is pumped! We excited for her. But it will also mean some adjustments for us as we’ll have to be making sure she’s up and ready for school (and whoever is taking her to school as well) each morning. Do we make lunch or eat the caf food? Make sure we go to bed earlier. All the things that most home probably do already.

But as the final decisions are made, keep us in your prayers. Change can be good.

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The 40 Day Fast is a collaborative effort of 80 bloggers to equip and inspire other to take action on behalf of those in need. Today Stephen and I are the two bloggers for July 21st. Be sure to visit him as well.

Today for my entry into the 40 Day Fast I wanted to highlight Charity :: Water. I’d posted about them earlier around Christmas time.

I first heard of Charity when my wife was looking through a magazine and asked me if I’d heard of Charity: Water. I’d not. But she thought it would be a nice idea to give as a gift. She said we’d pay $20 for a bottle of water and have it sent to friends and family. At first I thought, “Twenty bucks? For a bottle of water?!?”

But as I began to read and research, I was hooked on them. Their site is very well done and tells the story of what they do and why they do it. And 100% of all money donated goes towards building a well. They have separate donors who buy the water. So that means if you pay $20 for a bottle of water, all $20 goes to well building. We bought a handful of bottles of water for Christmas, and plan to continue to do so in the future.

Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of all sickness and disease, and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Many people in the developing world, usually women and children, walk more than three hours every day to fetch water that is likely to make them sick. Those hours are crucial, preventing many from working or attending school. Additionally, collecting water puts them at greater risk of sexual harassment and assault. Children are especially vulnerable to the consequences of unsafe water.  Of the 42,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and a lack of basic sanitation, 90% are children under 5 years old.

Scott Harrison began Charity: Water after working in the club promotion scene in New York. But he realized that there was more to life. That all the excess and “fun times” really didn’t bring fulfillment. So he remembered where the Bible tells us to server the poor. So he found out where the poorest people in the world were at the time and sought out a way to server them. He was going to give a year of his life.

So he ended up applying to be a photographer with Mercy Ships, a humanitarian organization which offered free medical care in the worlds poorest nations. Scott took photos to document the experiences as a photojournalist. He saw the lack of water and the effects it was having on the health and welfare of the people in Africa.

And from what Scott saw and experienced as a photojournalist with Mercy Ships changed him. When he returned to New York and went to the same parties, he realized that the money spent on a bottle of bubbly in NYC would provide life changing water to hundreds of people.

So he threw a fund raiser, invited all his friends and contacts, and Chairty: Water was born.

In 18 months Charity: Water has raised over $3 Million Dollars and funded over 600 water projects. View the wells by country. You can view the wells on Google Earth too.

In many places in this world, Jesus is waiting for His mom to come back from her long walk and wait at the well to bring back some dirty water. We can make a difference in helping make sure that clean water is available for all people on Earth. I know that there are many different organizations and ministries that are working towards that goal. And I firmly believe that Charity: Water is making a huge difference in hundreds of thousands of lives.

Are you willing to donate as well?

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This Saturday was when the $200 instant rebate ended on the Canon 40D. I had been looking at it over and over and over…and pulled the trigger. It will be in sometime this week. I’m both excited and nervous. I sometimes have a hard time making decisions on purchases like this.

But I think I”m going to be more than happy after I learn my way around the controls. Now it’s time to get a lens.

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YouTube – Fringe Trailer.

Holy Cow.

I HEART JJ Abrams

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Here are some general observations I made on vacation:

• For some reason I don’t shower as much as I usually do when I’m at home. I guess since I spent so much time in the clorinated pool it seemed to suffice.
• Sometimes I think getting a tattoo might be cool. But then I see a lot of bad examples of tattoos, and I rethink things.
• Just because a restaurant has a lot of cars in the parking lot doesn’t mean it is good. We at at Hazel’s the first night. I’d rather eat rice cakes than go back there.
• Even when you’re gone for a while, it seems there are things you don’t get done.
• Movies seen on vacation seem to be more special.
• I still don’t sleep late on vacation. But I didn’t want to anyhow.
• Driving down the entire state with three kids isn’t that bad if you leave late enough for them to sleep most of the way. I was tempted to give them Benadryl, but it wasn’t needed.
• Internet access on vacation seems wrong to some. It’s comfy to me.
• You will go with out a lot of clothes in front of extended family at the beach and it’s not awkward. There is no way I’d walk into a Thanksiving dinner or Memorial Day cookout dressed only in nylon shorts and dripping wet and have normal conversations w/ my wife’s aunts. But on the beach? Straight from the pool? Who cares?
• You can get burned quickly at the beach.
• If you go to the pool about twice a day for five days, you’ll see some really interesting people there and think you know a lot about them.
• Outdoor pools usually trump indoor pools.
• Ground floor condos trump upper level condos. Sure, there’s not quite the view. But the access to everything makes such the difference.
• I might could live in a beach town.

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Early this morning we roll back into town. We’ve been gone on vacation for the last 5 or 6 days. Orange Beach, AL!  So I’ve got a few stories to tell. A few observations. And tons of pics. It was good.

I absolutely loved crawling into my own bed in the very dark hours of night/morning. But when I work up this morning I missed being able to look out of my bedroom and see the pool and the ocean.

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