since my last post…

I spent 4 days in Elkhart, Indiana on a work trip.  Felt amazement at the vast expanse of corn fields along the interstate.  And partook of an almost live pig while there.

Went on a “stay-cation” in Pigeon Forge with Erin & Eli in early August for 4 days.

Took a 2 day golfing trip to Richmond, Kentucky with a great friend of mine who I had not seen in three years.

Saw Eli off to his first days of Kindergarten.  He’s doing rather well, I think.  Most days, his favorite part of the day is getting to choose what he wants to eat for lunch.  The choice is the key.  When I was growing up, they served what they served.  But he gets to choose between two main dishes, and can pick 3 of 5 side items.  Heaven for a 5 year old who loves eating.

Began shaving my head again.  I can’t help it.  It’s who I am.  I like it this way.

Saw our first ever sunflowers grow to be 6 – 12 feet tall.  Soon after, they got too top heavy for their own good and began to fall over.

Went tubing down the Pigeon River twice, once with 3 guys from small group, and once with Erin and our great friends Reid and Sarah.  I nearly broke my finger swinging from an old rickety rope swing on the side of the river.

Joined my first ever fantasy sports league of any kind.  And won my first matchup.

Celebrated my 5-year anniversary with Threds (today, in fact).  The longest I’ve ever been at one job in my life.

Saw my guys small group nearly double to at least 16 guys, maybe 18.  Sadly – and happily – we’ll soon be “reproducing” into two separate groups.

Heard the loudest singing from our community at Crossings that I’ve ever heard in my over-2 years of being there.  Tear jerking.

Rearranged my office at work.  Come visit me sometime.  You can see.

Spent 3 days in Charlotte, NC at the annual Salsarita’s franchisee convention.

Went camping for 2 1/2 days in Cades Cove with my good friend Chris.  My first time camping in about 10 years.  We saw 4 deer walking through the campground, saw 3 bears while driving the Cades Cove loop, did a 5 mile round trip hike to Abrams Falls, ate 4 fire roasted hot dogs each, and went through an entire bag of marshmallows.

Helped a new friend from small group move to a new apartment just days after he had a terrible motorcycle accident, broke his pelvis, busted his hip, and tore his leg up pretty good.  I’m so grateful to be in community with guys who are ready and willing to help.

Was thrilled to see my wife, Erin, be awarded the Golden BVD award at the last Crossings Leadership Community.  Congrats, honey!

Have thought often about the future direction of this blog.  I’ll get into that more at another time.  For now, please enjoy a sampling of pictures that help encapsulate some things I’ve just mentioned in this post.

creeper trail

Two weekends ago, for our anniversary, Erin & I spent a 2 day weekend in Abingdon & Damascus, Virginia for a visit to the Creeper Trail.  The Creeper is a 34 mile hiking / biking trails that runs through some amazing nature scenery and is VERY easy to ride.  The most popular section (which we did) is a 17 mile ride that runs down a mountain side.  You literally coast about 3/4 of the the time, and only have to pedal for about 3-4 miles or so.  And the majority of the trail runs alongside an awesome, rushing, mountain creek with great places to stop, small waterfall drops, and several bridges that take you over the creek.  Really spectacular to see.

We drove up on a Saturday morning, rented bikes and a shuttle ride from a local service, did the trail, stayed at a local Inn, chilled, ate dinner out, and drove back to Knoxville on Sunday.  Can’t say I’d necessarily recommend staying the night there to anyone, since there’s little to do or see other than the trail.  It’s probably much easier to make a day trip out of it.

HGTV – Change the World Tee

Threds recently partnered with HGTV to do a promotion for their “Change the World” campaign. We designed some t-shirts with different “green” themes, opened up a voting site  that was linked to HGTV’s website, and then changed the site over to an ordering site for the shirt with the most votes. Here’s the shirt that won:

It’s an Anvil organic tee, available in both men’s and women’s sizing.  You can order this shirt by going to www.hgtvchangetheworldstore.com.  It’s $18.95 with free UPS Ground shipping, and a portion of the proceeds goes to support national HGTV partners.  Also, if you enter the code HGTV in the coupon box at checkout, you’ll also get a free HGTV Flower & Gardening book.

deer

A little over a week ago, we headed to Cades Cove in the Smoky Mountains for a relaxing Saturday afternoon.  Eli and I love throwing rocks in the creeks, climbing on fallen trees, and we all like the relaxing drive, the old cabins, and the nature in general. 

During our 3 hour trip through the cove, we saw a minimum of 25 deer.  Yes, 25.  At one stop, we were able to close enough – about 20 feet away – to two of them, that Erin was able to take the following picture:

Pretty amazing.

FUN STUFF – JUMPING, BOWLING, SLEDDING!!

This is an exciting post for me…mainly because on Monday of this week, Knoxville received the most snow that I can remember seeing in the last 6-7 years.  So I wanted to share some fun stuffthat Eli (and I) have done lately, highlighted by a couple of incredible snow days.

First, Eli loves to jump from the ottoman to the couch.  Slowly but surely, he pushes the ottoman farther and farther back to test his (and our) limits.  Recently, he had me take a bunch of pictures of him jumping…here’s one of the better ones:

Next, our family recently went bowling for the very first time.  Our friend Chris joined us, and Eli muscled his way through two complete games.  It’s not easy to roll an 8 pound ball when you can’t hold it with your fingers. 

Saving the best for last….SNOW.  I’m so pumped we got snow this week.  Last winter, we received not one single snowfall that was enough to break the sled out.  But on Monday, all hell broke loose.  It snowed heavily all morning.  Threds (where I work) actually anounced at 12:30pm that anyone who felt the need to go home for safety reasons was free to go.  Needless to say, I took advantage.  I already had Tuesday off anyway, so it was perfect.  Picked Eli up from school, went home, and proceeded to get in about 3 hours of sledding time over the next day and a half.  On Monday, we used the yard across the street from our townhouse.  Eli kindly rang the doorbell and asked the lady who lives there if we could sled in her yard.  We sledded for about an hour, took a warm up break, waited for mom to get home, then went for another hour.

Then, on Tuesday afternoon, I actually took Eli to a much larger hill at the outskirts of our subdivision for some serious riding.  Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures of this one.  The hill ranges from 20 yards to 50 yards long, depending on where you go down, and also varies in steepness.  The snow was hard packed and icy from the overnight low temps, so it was fast, furious, and quite bumpy.  Some other kids that were there let Eli borrow their much cooler sled, which went faster and farther than ours.  It was great.  Eli typically doesn’t have a large threshold for pain or adventure, but he was unstoppable on this day.  Forwards, backwards, on his rear end or stomach, small and big slopes, it was great.  So many times I would stand on top of the hill laughing as I heard him go down, yelling, “ouch, ouch, that hurt, ahh, watch the fence, woo hoo!”   I just can’t describe how happy I am that it actually snowed and I got to take my son sledding…when we went a couple of years ago, he was still a little timid with it and mainly rode in my lap.  Now he’s loving it completely on his own, more daring than I expected, and is already asking about when we can do it again.  Thanks God for the snow!!

 

 

Green?

Sports Thoughts and Other Tidbits

Who among anyone living picked the Tennessee Titans to win 10 or more games this year?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?

Chad Pennington and the Dolphins (1-15 last season) are actually battling Brett Favre (retired, unretired, took Pennington’s job) and the New York Jets for the division lead/title.  I love it.

Misty May Treanor is the best volleyball player maybe ever.  Indoor or outdoor.  Incredible instincts, fast, smart, soft touch, good placement.  Plays many dozens of beach volleyballs matches a year.  Fought through the Olympics with her playing partner and won the gold medal…..then goes on a freaking dancing show and tears her achillis tendon.  That’s just not fair, man.  Not fair at all.

I enjoy keeping up with NASCAR.  There’s a lot of good intrigue, some fights, arguments, great characters, funny advertising.  I appreciate what they do and the risk they take.  But I swear I cannot watch more than 7 laps of action without just lapsing (pun intended) into complete boredom. 

I love it when new people join the Saturday Night Live cast.  Literally, just last week, two new women were introduced as “featured” players on the show.  And in the entire episode I think they garnered 8 seconds of screen time and spoke 9 words.  How funny is that?!  It’s fun to watch the newbies because you know they’re nervous, fighting for a job, hoping to be the next Will Ferrell or Molly Shannon.  I’ve seen some newbies I thought would be the next big thing and turned out to be disappointing (aka Fred Armisen).  I’ve seen other newbies who I didn’t care much for who’ve ended up being great (aka Seth Meyers, but only because of Weekend Update).  And…who’s with me here…how in the world is Keenan Thompson still on SNL?  This is his FIFTH season.  AAAHHHH.  Please, please, please, get a new black guy.  I’m begging you.

Greg Oden needs a good nickname.  I have some suggestion.  “Limpy”, “Crow Mag Num Man”, “Papaw”, “Greg the Leg Oden”, “The Tortoise”, “Needacane?”, “Sam Bowie, Jr”

A guy more diminutive than me just won the NL Cy Young Award.  Mr. Tim Lincecum ladies and gentleman, all 5′11″ and 170 lbs of him.  Unfortunately, because he plays for San Franciso, it’s possible you’ve never watched him pitch.  You’re loss.  It’s amazing.  It’s sort of like when you wind a pencil around and around a rubber band until you can’t wind it anymore, and then let ‘er fly. 

We’ve been into watching TV series that are out of DVD for about 4 months.  First it was Weeds.  Then Dexter.  Now we’re in the middle of both Six Feet Under and Madmen.  Man, this is the way to watch a tv series.  The waiting a week crap stinks.  Two Sundays ago, Erin and I watched FIVE episodes of Six Feet Under in one afternoon/evening.  It was incredible.  Up for future consideration, once we’re done with these….Flight of the Conchords, The Closer, The Shield, Entourage, and Arrested Development.

The last 3-4 weeks of fall have been the most beautiful I think I’ve ever seen.  And now it’s gone.  The orange, auburn, red, and yellow have pretty much all turned to brown.  The trees are beginning to look bare.  Low 60’s have been replaced by mid 40’s to lower 50’s.  Every year, I have to remind myself to really breathe in the beauty of fall.  It’s so amazing, but goes by so fast.  Luckily, now we’ve entered another 3-4 period of time in the year….the period in which I eat enough pumpkin pie to last until next year.  Loaded with Cool Whip.  Oh man, I’m so pumped.

glorious creation

it’s 1:17pm on Thursday afternoon.  We’re driving through the mountains just about 20 miles to the south east of Asheville, NC.  The trees are as bright and as colorful as you could possibly ever imagine them being.  Red, auburn, orange, brown, green, yellow, sienna…absolutely, wonderfully, amazing.  It is in a setting like this that I am most often reminded of the glorious greatness of God.  Of how spectacular, creative, and wonderous He is, and how fortunate I am to be able to live a tiny bit of a life in the earth He created.  For the last 20 minutes (my boss Keith is driving right now) all I can do is crane my neck around to see all the views…and it will be another hour or so before we finally get through it all, so I’ve much more to see and take in.  I absolutely have to find a way to get to the mountains with Erin and Eli this weekend to take this all in before the leaves fall and winter ensues.  It’s just too beautiful to miss.

Farm Pics

Okay, I figured it out. WordPress does not support Shockwave embed files. Some kind of security thing. Which means I can’t post video from NBC.com and I can’t post slideshows from Picture Trail, Flickr, Picasa, etc. I guess it’s a burden I’ll have to live with. And I’ll just have to keep asking you to actually click on a link to see these types of things.

So, for a brief look at some Edelen Family Farm pics from this past weekend….

 

CLICK HERE FOR EDELEN FAMILY FARM PICS

The Edelen Family Farm

Tomorrow after work, Erin/Eli and I will be heading to Kentucky.  It’s a pretty special, exciting, and sad weekend.  On Saturday, the Edelen family will be having a get together at my grandparents farm for the very last time.  It’s been about 15 years since we gathered there together, which makes it even more special. 

My grandparents – my dad’s parents - bought a 270 acre farm in Springfield, Ky sometime back in 1955, when my dad was just a baby.  My dad is the 4th of 8 kids – 3 girls, 4 boys – who all pretty much spent their entire lives growing up on, and working on this farm.  I’ve taken a Google satellite image – it’s as close as I could zoom in before the image was lost – and cirlced the plot of land that makes up this farm.  See the letter “A” designating a road?  That’s Edelen Lane….the 1 mile long driveway that leads to and dead ends at the farm.  Across the road from Edelen Lane is a very very old Catholic chuch that my dad has attended his whole life.  He went to school there as a child.  So when my dad talks about getting up at 5am, milking the cows, and then walking a mile to school up and down hills in the cold, the snow, and the rain….well, he actually means it. 

Most of my greatest childhood memories are from this farm.  I have two cousins, Todd & Matt, who are pretty much the same age as me.  Every year at family get togethers for Easter, Thanksgiving, or Christmas, we would make this 270 acre yard into our personal playhouse.  4 barns, 4 ponds, an awesome creek that dissects and borders the outside of the farm, open fields, forested area, hay bail forts, jumping into corn bins, playing basketball in the upper level of one barn, shooting bb guns, swinging from ropes, skipping rocks, finding old animal bones and using them as swords, chasing after pigs, you name it.  If there is any fun to be had on a farm, we had it. 

Back around 1992 or 1993, after all the 8 children had finally grown up, left home, and started lives of their own, my grandparents decided to build a home closer to town, to semi-retire in.  The farmhouse was getting old, they had NEVER had air conditioning and relied only on wood burning stove heat, had no washer/dryer, and utilized a pretty old plumbing system.  (yes, there is an outhouse, and i’ve used it many times)  They didn’t sell the farm, because my papaw is a lifetime farmer and needed to continue to do the work, but it ended the era of family get togethers at the farm.  I actually have felt sorry for my younger siblings since then, knowing they did not really have the same opportunity as I did to enjoy our get togethers out there, to know the farm, to explore it, to love it.

My papaw – now 83 if I remember correctly - had continued to run the farm up until this year.  Mowing, hay, raising cattle, all of it.  I know my dad and his brothers have helped him out with stuff here and there as needed, but for the last 20 years it’s pretty much been papaw’s farm to work.  In the last 8 years, I’ve only visited the farm on 2 occassions, both pretty short visits, just to see how things looked. 

Then, just a couple of months ago, our entire family received an email from my dad.  The first line of the email simply read, “The farm has been sold.”  I think I speak for most of the family when I say it was like a punch in the gut.  For as long I can remember, the farm has been bordered on one side by a local rock quarry.  Apparently, they’ve been interested in buying the land for years, and finally made an offer that was too good to pass up.  Combined with the my grandparents age, and the future difficulty of selling the land had they passed away and left it to 8 children, it was definitely the right thing to do. 

So, in two days, the entire Edelen family – roughly 45-50 of us including the grandparents, 8 children, all the grandchildren, the grandchildren’s wives or husbands, and the great grandchildren – will gather together at the farm one last time.  The weather is forecasted to be sunny and in the lower 60’s, which is perfect.  I am INCREDIBLY excited at the opportunity to take Eli there for his first and only time, to explore the farm with him, go in the barns, ride the tractor, walk through the fields, and stroll along the creek.  I’m sure I’ll enjoy it more than he will, but that’s okay. 

I feel sad and happy at the same time.  I know on Saturday I’ll do a lot of smiling, and probably even shed a few tears.  It feels sort of like I’m losing a friend.  But the memories will live on…memories of popsicles, outhouses, good cooking, a warm stove, lots of family, endless adventures, and knowing that a family worked hard just to have food to eat and a place to sleep.  And these memories will always be good.

How’s this for a forecast?

Knoxville’s forecast for the next 9 days:

The Electric Car

This one is for all my environmentally friends out there. And there are many of you. I want to recommend a documentary. I would actually consider it a must see.

Who Killed the Electric Car? Seen it? Heard of it? You need to. It’s pretty amazing. Back in the mid 1990’s, partly out of pressure from the California State Government, the electric car hit the streets.  Most of us here in the southeast or midwest may have never seen one.  Many of us probably never even heard of it.  But it existed.  And it worked.  And the cars were amazing.  Many were owned by celebrities….you know, all the ones that now drive Prius’s, ride bikes, speak out against smog, and live in homes that cost $1000.00 each month just to heat and cool?  Yep, those celebrities.  Without giving away the plot, the electric car effort came to a screeching halt, back around 2000 or 2001. 

However, back then, in the $1.50/gallon days, no one could have forseen $4.00/gallon gas just 7 years down the road.  So, after a short hiatus, in which most of the population has probably forgotten the electric car ever existed…..they’re making their way back.  For real.  You can check it out.  Here.  Or here. 

And whether you’ve seen them or not, electric cars are on the road.  Their just few and far between.  Want proof?  A couple of weeks ago, I was in the Barnes and Noble parking lot on Kingston Pike at about 8:00pm.  Was heading there to do some reading before meeting some friends to play tennis.  When, what did my eyes behold?  This…

That’s right.  An electric car.  And not only that, but one with some BAD ASS wheels baby!  Notice the picture on the left.  I really liked how the car was parked right in front of a $50,000 Porsche Boxster.  Awesome. 

So, cross your fingers.  I say it’s very possible that, within the next 10 years, electric cars could be a true reality.  And not just 100 of them scattered across the nation, but mass produced and parked in yours or my garage.  Well, I don’t have a garage, but that’s not the point.  It’s real.  It’s coming.  And I’m terribly excited about it.

One Thing Eli Loves About Summer That I HATE…

Bugs.  Yep.  Bugs.

Is this really my kid?  He loves bugs.  He loves letting caterpillars crawl onto his hand.  He likes getting really close to the ground and watching ants.  A couple of weeks ago, Erin went to pick him up at daycare.  The kids were outside playing in the back yard playground area.  Eli’s hands were cusped together as he ran to Erin saying, “Mommy, mommy, look what I got for you.”  Erin had an idea it was probably a bug.  Maybe a caterpillar.  He opens his hands, and there are roughly 5-6 long slimy worms bunched up in his hands!  AHHH!!  GROSS!!  It freaked Erin out, as it would have for me. 

Why bugs, son?  Why bugs?  Soon he’ll be bringing frogs into our home, releasing moths into his bedroom, and housing lizards in his dresser drawers.  Not long after that he’ll begin disecting them.  Studying their organs.  Analyzing their bone structure.  Going to college and learning their domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species (impressive, huh?).  We’ll visit his dorm and find beetle colonies under the bed.  He’ll start using words like bugaboo, bugger, debugged, humbug, buggy, and bugle.  He’ll wear ecologically friendly praying mantis colored t-shirts.  He’ll invite us over for dinner and offer us a wide selection of cholocate covered junebugs, fricaseed slugs, and grasshopper soup. 

And because I’m his dad, I’ll love every minute of it. 

Pros & Cons of Summer

Things I Like About Summer…

1. Driving with the windows down and listening to slighly more rap/hiphop music than I do during the rest of the year.  For some reason, when the windows are down, I just enjoy a little hip hop….the last couple of weeks it’s been Kanye West, but I’ll pop in some Will Smith, LL Cool J, Eminem, Dr Dre, Fu Schnikens, Run DMC, Beastie Boys, and a couple of others as the summer goes on.
2. Never going home at night.  We’re bad at this, but it’s fun.  Erin & I never want to just go home from work during summer.  It’s always which park we can take Eli to, where to get something cheap to eat, where to go for a walk, etc.  Anything but home.  This makes laundry a bit of an issue.
3. Frisbee.  Let me just say this loud and clear….I absolutely love throwing Frisbee.  I always have.  Problem is, I’ve never really known too many people who love it equally.  I can go out into an open area with someone and throw Frisbee for an hour and never get tired of it.  I also love Ultimate Frisbee, but haven’t played it in about 5 years.  Again, just don’t know who/when/where anyone is playing it.
4. Water play.  This summer we have season passes to Splash Country (a gift from Erin’s family).  We’ve already been there 3 times.  There are at least 7 or 8 areas/parks around town that have the water spouts and fountains that shoot up out of the ground.  Eli really enjoys these, it’s really a blast. 
5. Less traffic going to work.  I live 23 miles from work.  It normally takes me about 45-50 minutes to leave home, take Eli to daycare, and then drive all the way to work.  In the summer, because of the lack of school/teacher traffic, that morning commute get cut by about 10 minutes.
6. The U.S. Open, The British Open, and the PGA Championship.  Those are golf tournaments, for those who don’t know.  3 of the 4 major championships in golf take place over a 3 month period of time. 
7. Church camp….granted, I haven’t attended a week of camp, either as a camper or faculty, in over 8 years.  But church camp is very nostalgic for me.  During the summer, I think back often on my camper days growing up, with very fond memories.  I miss my home camp, Camp Calvary.  I had so many incredible times there.  (Want something fun to do?  Visit the Camp Calvary link, click on “camp photos”, and see if you can find me in any archived photos from the 1985 – 1997 era.  I’ll even give you one to start with…1994, Junior High II.  From 1994 to 1996, I think I’m in 11 different photos.)
8. Waking up to sunlight.  I’m not an early bird by any means.  But it’s much much easier to wake up at 6:30am in the summer when the light is already coming through the windows.  As opposed to winter, when it’s 7:15am and still almost pitch dark. 

Things I Do NOT Like About Summer…

1. It’s insufferably hot in the Knoxville area.  The average high temperature from June – August is roughly 88 degrees…and even that seems low, considering how many upper 90’s days there seems to be.  And it’s stinking HUMID.  Frankly, it’s pretty hard to appreciate being outside sometimes when all you can think about is how hot you are, how much you’re sweating, and how much you cannot wait to take a cold shower. 
2. Too much to do, too little money to spend.  We have all these ideas of things we’d love to do during the summer….weekend trips, zoo, day trips, camping, etc….but all the ideas cost money, and we’re on a very tight budget!
3. Crappy Air Conditioning.  The townhouse where we live has a hard time staying cool.  We’ve had it worked on 3-4 different times.  Often we’ll set the temperature at 69 degrees while we’re at work, and when we come home it’s 76 degrees inside the place.  And we never seem to be cool enough at night.  We try to be conserative with out temperature setting to save money, so that’s a factor as well.
4. The lack of a variety of sports to watch.  I like baseball in general, but I do not enjoy watching it.  That leaves golf.  And my wife does NOT like to watch golf, so I catch bits and pieces when I can.  But that’s it.  No football.  No basketball.  The Olympics will be okay, but there are 1000 events going on and they only air about 4 of them, so you have to get lucky to see what you want.  Also, you have to know that we only pay about $12.00 a month for 15 channel cable, so my sports options are limited in that respect too.
5. Yard work.  Luckily, we don’t really have a yard.  And we don’t have to mow the tiny bit we do have.  But I’ll occasionally be called upon to help with some yard work, mainly for my father in law, and it’s just brutal during the summer.  I’m always glad to help and do something productive, but man, you just sweat and sweat and sweat, the grass sticks to your sweat, you smell terrible….
6. Getting into my car.  If it’s 95 degrees outside, it’s roughly 114 inside my car.  For the first 2 minutes, it’s hard to breath.  And my little Mazda doesn’t have the most potent AC, so that takes a while as well. 
7. The lack of rain.  I enjoy rain.  Obviously, like anyone, I don’t enjoy rain if it ruins my plans in some way, but overall I find rain wonderful, refreshing, and just another awesome reminder of God’s wonder.  But I often wish it would rain a bit more during the summer, when you might actually be able to be outside IN the rain, enjoying it, needing it to cool you off, you know? 
8. BUGS.  I really really do not like bugs.  Of any kind.  Ants, flies, grasshoppers, roaches, spiders, gnats, mosquitos, you name it.  And in the summer, they’re everywhere.  It’s impossible to hide from them. 

Either way, summer is here.  I hope you enjoy yours.  Just watch out for bugs.

PETA Guy

Not too long ago, I went just over 6 weeks without eating meat.  It was a pretty neat experience, and I learned a lot about vegetarianism, cooking options, healthy eating, tofu, meat production, and so forth.  You can read some of my vegetarian thoughts by clicking here.

So, when I saw the PETA Guy this past weekend, while standing on the top of Clingman’s Dome tower (the highest elevated point in the state of TN) in the middle of the Smoky Mountains, I just had to get my picture taken with him.  Didn’t even ask his name.  Just for a picture.  Unfortunately, the BVD was back in the car.  The 1/2 mile walk up to the Clingman’s tower is incredibly steep and exhausting, and I just couldn’t bring myself to haul the undies up with me.

If you see the darker peak in between our shoulders, that’s where Cherokee, NC is located.  From the Clingman’s Dome tower, at just over 6600 feet in elevation, on a clear day, you can see for up to 100 miles in any direction.  And just in case you can’t read it clearly, his shirt says “People for the Eating of Tasty Animals.”  I’d heard that before, just never saw it on a shirt.  Thanks PETA Guy.

Smart Fix 40

Smart Fix 40?  Now there’s an oxymoron, a paradox, a minimalization, and a misnomer all rolled into one. 

Here are some more appropriate names:  “We Keep Fixing 40″, “We Never Built 40 The Right Way To Begin With”, “Eternally Detouring Around 40″, “Making You Late to Work for 40 Years”, “40 Ways to Repair a Highway in One Decade”, “Build Roads, Not Schools”, “Can 40 Really Be Fixed”, or “The, Hey, Out of Town Passerby-er, Do You Happen to Keep Excedrin in Your Glovebox Because You’re About to Try to Drive Through Knoxville and You’re Never Going to Want to See Us Again, Smart Fix 40 Project.” 

I have an idea.  How about “Let’s Build 400 Miles of Bike Paths So People Can Exercise, Be Environmentally Friendly, and Save Gas Money at the Same Time Without Worrying About Being Mauled by a Hummer”.  Is anyone lobbying for that project during the governmental budget meetings? 

thank you, jake

I feel very honored today. A fellow blogger in Las Vegas – a friend/brother of friends we have here in Knoxville – submitted a recent post based on my personal request.

You can see it here. Thanks, Jake.

crap, darn, shoot, &@%#!!!

Yesterday afternoon in Knoxville produced one of the hardest, heaviest, scariest storms I’ve seen around here in a while. It only lasted about 15 minutes, but some of my co-workers were really freaking out, thinking we may need to take shelter in a bathroom or something. The rain was coming down sideways. The tin roof of our facility of creaking and sounded like it may rip off. Water was coming in every door of the building, wetting the floors and carpets. Pretty much everyone here was huddled at a window or a door or in the distribution center looking out of the open bay door. It was wild.

And the sunroof on my car was open. $%&#@!!!

Planet Earth

The only time I’ve ever had cable tv in my life was in college…and that’s because my roomate’s mom paid for it. Never had it before, never since. We currently enjoy “10 channel cable” at our home, which costs about $11.00 a month. As such, I miss out on some great stuff like the History Channel, FX, ESPN, and The Discovery Channel. Lucky for us, Erin’s mom was enthralled with the recent “Planet Earth” series on Discovery Channel, and bought the entire DVD set.

Last night, we watched the first two episodes, entitled “Pole to Pole” and “Mountains.”

Freaking Amazing.

Seriously – somebody should use these DVD’s as an evangelistic outreach tool. The Earth is truly unbelievable. The hand of God created it. The Bible even says that if you have seen creation, you have seen God and have full evidence to believe in Him.

We still have roughly 9 hours of watching left to do, and I cannot begin to describe how awestruck I was at what we saw. The perfection of the Earth’s location in relation to the Sun. Mating habits of rare tropical birds. African hunting dogs that show incredible tactical abilities in hunting their prey. The northern lights. More than 1 million caribou migrating in a single herd across northern Canada.

If you can, you must see this series. Your faith will be strengthened. If you have doubts about God and His power, your eyes may be opened.