No Phone for work

Gee, more fun. It seems that the company I work for has forgotten to pay my cell phone bill.

Absurd

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the snow that we had on Easter weekend. When that happened, the words "wrong" and "disgusting" kept popping through my mind, like a record skipping (What's a record? It's kind of like a CD, only instead of a laser, we used a needle, and the sound was stored as analog grooves in plastic, rather then bits.) I guess it's just an odd frame of mind. When I got the call regarding Colleen's niece, the word echoing through my brain was "tragic", as in "How tragic!"

(Drum Roll)

I got another phone call this evening.

Yes, I hear the moans from the audience out there (What, you didn't think that I could here you?). Well, while I am not at liberty to discuss the matter, I just want to that the new thought floating through my mind is "absurd". When I got off of the phone, I was laughing for almost five minutes. My wife was even a little worried. She thought I was having a nervous breakdown.

Even now, thirty minutes later, I still hear it rattling around up there. "Absurd." Once in a while the word will bounce out of a corner just right, and I'll get a smile again

Playground

I woke up early this morning in order to help my church build a playground. For the entire time that I have gone there, we have had a fenced in area for the children to play in. There was one Little Tykes slide in that area, and the whole of the area sloped down to the back, where we have a creek running through the property.

As part of the preparation, we had to have an old dead tree chopped down, and we had planned on leveling the slope of the yard. The tree was removed about two months ago, but the stump still exists in the yard. As for the leveling, we could not afford to have it done, and so the design of the playground equipment had to take this into account.

Crews have been working for the last two days to get some preparation done. Some holes were dug, while in some places, fencing was removed in order to make room for a Bobcat, and a tractor's from end.The large base structure for the slide was built and put in place. Today, we had more the 80 people show up to dig, hammer, screw, bolt, paint, and whatever other construction activity that you can think of. We built planters, benches, musical instrument stands, stepping stools, a tire crawl, a stage, and finished out the slide.

Many times it did not look like we would finish. In truth, there is a second coat UV protection that could be applied in places, and there is some extra mulch that we could bring back to level out more of the yard, but we finished it this evening. And the kids played on it, and they were having a ball. I had trouble getting my two young ones to leave for dinner.

I'll upload pictures tomorrow. I was too tired to think of the taking a picture of the finished product for the blog. I might even be able to get a hold of a picture of my wife sitting on my shoulders in order to paint protectant on the top half of the slide platform. But until then, I think I will go to bed and rest.

Update (2007-04-30 11:37 PM): So I finally got around to taking the pics yesterday, and just got them uploaded now. I figured it was some way my phone could be useful while the service was out.

Ça va?

About eight or nine years ago, I was an usher in a wedding. Both the bride, Colleen, and groom had been in my bridal party. This wedding was the first time that I met the Colleen's sister. She was in the Air Force. Colleen had spoken about her many times in the years that I had known her, and she has continued to do the same in the years since. I've heard of her working in the Pentagon. Of her meeting the man she was to marry. I've heard about the family he already had from a previous marriage. I've even heard a few stories laced with shock from Colleen about how "domestic" her sister was getting to be. Even though I don't know her very well, I would keep these memories of her life to help fill in the storyline when my wife and Colleen would be catching up.

I heard the latest in Colleen's sister's life about three hours ago. Her eldest step-daughter was in her French class Monday morning. In Norris Hall. At Virginia Tech.

Pour la soeur de Colleen, ça va mal.

Snow

I have this thing about snow. I think it looks nice... if I'm in the northern half of the US, where it can snow enough to cover the ground. Where the weather is predictable enough in it's seasons for you to expect snow at a certain time of yeah. As it is, I live in southwest Fort Worth. Living here, you might expect it to snow once, with a greater likelihood that it will sleet, or we will have freezing rain.

What you don't expect is for it to snow on Easter weekend. I got a call from my wife who had just finished the Susan G. Komen 5K run/walk with my daughter (I was supposed to participate too, but who knew they held those things so early in the morning?). She told me to look out the window. I was expecting rain. I was not expecting to see a flurry. It wasn't sticking to the ground, but there were some rather large flakes, and they we occasionally falling pretty hard.

As I looked out that window, I had just two thoughts. "That's disgusting!", and "This is just wrong!" If I hadn't had to help my son get ready for his Gymnasticas class, I would have done my best to emulate a groundhog by looking down at my shadow and going to bed again for six weeks.

The Circle

Quietly we step
From between the trees
To the asphalt clearing.

As we circle the cauldron
Fire leaps, and dances
Pushing back night air.

Silently we sit,
Contemplating. Meditating.
On the disappointments in our hands.

Loves scorned,
Trials lost,
Tasks as yet unbegun.

These we eagerly feed
To fiery lips
In silent, sincere supplication.

The fire consumes
The fire crackles
And our disappointments flee our circle.

And quietly we retreat
To the shelter of the trees
With the strengths we have gained.

Radio Lab

Back around New Years, as my Tammy and I began a trip to Houston, I caught a radio program called Radio Lab on KERA, 90.1. The episode was titled "Where am I". It discussed brain-body communications in things like phantom limbs, proprioception (sense of body), and emotions induced and influenced by the body. It was an interesting story, but I haven't heard any more episodes, because I just happened to catch it on my way out of town, and the regular time when I am getting the kids dinner. The good news is that the episodes are available online, something I just found out recently. I have been listening to the old episodes. There are only 10, covering two seasons.

Rally

I was originally planning on posting a detailed history of the 2007 North Texas YRUU Rally. Now that the rally has moved a bit into the past, I don't feel the urge to go into much detail.

This was my first youth rally. The closest that I have been is to two lock-ins (to plan for this rally) and a Leadership Development Conference(LDC). The LDC is a much higher ratio of adults to youth, close to 1-to-1. At the North Texas Rally, we had about 130 attendees, of which about 100-110 were youth.

We had a Social Action project. Our project was to put together food bags for children in need at a neighborhood school. The program is run by the Tarrant County Food bank. Children who qualify for free meals through the school, would have bags containing ramen, peanut butter, fruit cups, juice boxes, and the like placed into their backpacks by their teachers while they are out at recess. This would allow the food distribution to be discrete.

The youth also held a worship, a talent show, a dance, organized a motivational speaker, and ran various workshops. They arranged meals, created a "mug book", and cleaned up. This was their event. Mostly, we were there to provide adult backup in the event that it was needed.

I must say, the rally was really cool. I regret that I cannot go to the next one in Oklahoma City. I will be out of town for my nephew's high school graduation.