The Wife’s mom called us last week about a desk. Wondered if we wanted a new one. Seems that there’s a house that’s been repossessed by her work place. The people who it belonged to left lots of stuff in it. Some junk, some no so much junk. One thing was a big desk. My current desk is small and crowded. This one is big and L shaped to fit and wrap around a corner. I finally made it up there to get it and began to look around some of the other stuff. Of course, lots of things were claimed already. But I was able to grab a few other things too.

I got a aqua foot massager (have to clean it out good…don’t want anyone’s athlete’s foot), computer speakers w/ a big subwoofer, a lawn fertilizer spreader (big one that probably cost more than I’d ever pay), some Harry Potter books (never read them, heard they’re good, heard they’re of the devil, heard they’re harmless..we’ll see), some old cassette tapes (recorded tapes of Human League’s Greatest Hits, and U2’s Joshua Tree and one or two more I can’t remember right now. I’ll probably throw them away soon), and last but not least, a big Dancing Bear painting taken from above their mantle.

It’s not that great of a painting. Would probably never buy it for myself. But it looked expensive and I can give it as a gift later and someone will think I think a lot of them. After putting it into the truck, I saw that it originally sold for $225! Wow. Something that non-pretty sold for that much. Part of me wants to just put it up in my house because I can.

The desk itself was a booger to take apart. It’s now in about 25 pieces in my car port. The task of removing stuff from my den and rebuilding the desk comes later this week.

Getting things ready to walk out of the door and go rafting on the Chatooga River over in the GA/SC area.

A friend has been asking the last few days about going to play golf with him. He called just before I got home yesterday and I knew what he was going to ask. But The Wife was at work and I was home with The Kid. We were going to get some good Halo action going on.

But he talked me into it and bringing her along. I wasn’t so sure how it would work out. She might like it or get tired of it pretty quickly. We met him at the old golf club, got a cart and a Gatorade and took off. Ended up playing a 2 man scramble with some friends of his. The Kid liked to ride in the cart and chase me around as I looked for my balls and swung at them. She was content to follow along and ride the cart for the first 6 holes. Then she wanted to hit the balls on her own.

It was cool. I gave her a club that was bigger than she was and a ball and she’d chop at it over by the cart while I dug holes in the turf w/ my irons. I’d not swung a golf club in 2 years. It shows. And I can probably count the times I’ve actually played on a real course with only two hands of fingers.

But it’s pretty fun. But it’s not the cheapest thing in the world either. And The Kid is proud too because she thinks she’s good at it now. As for me, I gotta learn not to chop down at the ball and hit it cleaner. All with time…all with time.

I’d asked days ago about Halo. Was it okay to play it in a church youth setting or not. Yes, it does have an M rating. When I’d posted previously, I’d only played it once a few months ago for about 20 minutes and didn’t remember much at all about it. When I got back from Florida I had one waiting on my in my mailbox. Seems I’d won an eBay action for $15. Yea for me! It costs $29 at Walmart.

So I’ve played it a little since then. It’s a good game. And I’m trying to remain objective here, but I don’t think it’s a game that gets an M rating. You’re a robot dude running around shooting aliens with a little bit of blue blood leaking out. Not squirting out. Not gushing or exploding or whatever. And there are some Marines that cuss now and then. But if you watch Friends or ER or CSI or anything like that, you hear worse.

Personally, I think it’s not bad. But no matter, I can see the letter M on the outside of the box getting in the way of some people’s thinking. Especially parents. But I figured with Halo2 coming out in November I’d have to brush up on Halo some before diving into the new one.

Now I gotta get NCAA Football 2005 when it comes out on Thursday

It was a great trip. Sunny. Hot. Sandy. Sea Weedy.

It was a great experience. God was there. Great worship. Great teaching. Great environment. Great kids.

Have some things to share about it, but the alarm will go off in about 5 or so hours. So I must lay in bed for a while so I can fall asleep.

Glad to be back. The entries will resume w/ much vigor. Lots of things in the old noggin..just have to get them out.

It’s 6:30 and I’m tired. I was up too late talking to some people from MissSportsTalk.com. There was one person goofing around and flaming someone else. It was a joke, but not a good one. I was having to put out a few small fires. But then I got to talking to one member of the forums. He and I were discussing the board and it’s future and potential.

I’ve been waiting for Invision Power Board to release version 2.0 so I can get a new skin on the site and put some banner ads and all up. But now their saying their free stuff is really just a “Limited Trial”. But they never define the limits. But you get no support for your forums if you don’t pay for it. But it’s a dollar less than $200 to purchase a liscense. On the other hand, vBulletin is probably recognized as the King of Forums. It has been a “for pay” software for quite a while and has a longer track record that IPB. And it is only $160.

But do I need to pay at all? Can I get by on just the free version of IPB? If I ended up needing support and all, I’d have to pay. And if I were going to pay, I’d go ahead and get vB, right? IPB is younger, but caught up with vB, so say a lot of people. Some think they’ll pass and leave vB in the dust. Others think vB is and will remain king.

Either way, I think there’s a vast amount of untapped potential in my forums. The Wife agrees. She’s just ready for me to quit being a wall flower and get out there and dance!

But I’m really tired right now. I need to make sure I get good rest tomorrow because I’ll have a long drive ahead of me with a packed van of teenagers.

Pray for us as we go…

We’ve been doing a lot of painting upstairs in the youth rooms. We’re going to be gone next week so things will be on hold for a bit. But we’re making progress. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. We’re going to put an XBox or two up there as well.

The question now is to which games to stock it with. Of course, we need to have sports games. NCAA Football ’05 comes out next week or two and it will be purchased. But what else. Here’s a question. Should we get Halo? It’s been hailed as one of the best XBox games ever. Strangely enough, it was the first ever XBox game too. Loads and loads of people play it and love it. Aliens have attacked the planet and you and a team go after them and shoot them up.

First Baptist one block away plays it all the time at their youth meetings. They get a few teams of guys all going at it at once. The issue is that it’s a bit violent. It actually got an M rating. But from what I’ve seen and been told, it’s not really worthy of an M rating, just that it was the first XBox game out there. But is that an issue that would/should keep it out of the youth room? I already know I’m going to get the “But we play it all the time at home/friend’s homes all the time,” and, “Well they play it at First Baptist til 2 in the morning sometimes.”

Well, I’m married with a kid and a kid on the way. Doubt I can have any XBox parties past midnight anytime soon (right, Honey?).

But if you read this and have a slight opinion, throw your hat in the ring here. Would you play Halo with your youth group? Why/why not? And suggest some other games you’d play instead of or in addition to. Games that are not only fun, but can have a group of people playing them at once.

These little things are goofy, but what the heck…

Appetizer
Name a board game you enjoy playing (Scrabble? Monopoly? Trivial Pursuit?) What’s fun about it? Do you change the rules or go by the book?
RISK. It seems to be a “guy game”, but it’s all about total world domination. You can take a handful of guys, start them playing at 9pm. And the thing might last til 1am or so. I go by the rules. That’s the only way!

Soup
How’s the weather been in your area lately? Hot and dry? Wet and muggy? Stormy? Beautiful?
Wet, wet and wet. Rainy everyday. Sun shines some. But then it rains right after it. So it’s either hot and muggy or rainy.

Salad
Do you consider yourself an emotional person? What types of emotions do you experience most often?
I think I’m emotional, but I keep them under wraps for the most part.

Main Course
List 3 songs you’ve been listening to recently. Are these songs from a different category of music than you usually choose, or are you devoted to a certain type of tunes?
Can’t really name three songs themselves. I usually listen to cd’s as a whole. But David Crowder’s newest, Illuminate is still in heavy rotation. I did throw some Third Eye Blind in the other day.

Dessert
What’s on your refrigerator door? Magnets? Your child’s drawings? Photos? Calendars?
A few pictures. One of me and my dad. One of The Kid when she was in the paper kissing a goat. And then tons of Ann Estelle magnets so she can change her outfit and all.

Lawrence Roberts goals for the 04-05 Basketball season:
“Take the team to the Final Four and win every personal award possible.”

Here’s a great article from SI about him.

ESPN Story on it…

Wouldn’t that be crazy.