Good Sport

As the football season comes to a close this weekend, thankfully we in America get to comfort ourselves with a our unofficial national pastime: The Political Candidate Gaffe Derby (PCGD for those of you in InterVarsity). It's a great game, and, by the way, what a beautiful word "gaffe" is. The game goes like this: we line up all these presidential hopefuls (TIME this week listed like 15-20 of them) and we wait. What are we waiting for?!? We wait for the inevitable gaffe, the remark that disqualifies. And now with youtube, it is sure to be recorded and distributed.

Chalk up our first gaffe today, with Sen. Biden. You win Joe! PCGD medal for you! Who's next?!?

Broomball

We had a broomball social last night. Our biggest social ever. Good times, with students (and staff) falling all over the ice. I rocked my old school Cal Poly hockey jersey.

The only downside...I can't feel my legs this morning...

New blog

For those of you jonesing for more pictures of the ninos, we're going to try to give you your fix at the new blog.

Maturity or Callousness? I'll take maturity!

I was a part of an intense meeting today where we processed through some painful feelings on the way to starting a discussion about philosophy of ministry. Hard stuff, as in, "you betrayed me and I am exceedingly sad bordering on rage." And the kicker was that I had instigated much of it through a paper I had written.

Processes and conversations like that used to absolutely paralyze me. As in a "fetal position in the corner chanting 'happy place, happy place'" kind of paralysis. But God's grace to me in recent years is an ability to respond better to my emotions, and to abide in the midst of relational drama/difficulties. And so today, as I delivered hard truth and had even more delivered to me, I was able to walk away not only functional, but glad for the experience, friends with the people and hopeful for the future.

Being Tom Brady

So let's see...

You make more money than every IV Staff I know added together.
You've won 3 Super Bowls in 5 years and you play this weekend for a shot at number 4.
Everyone regards you, with admiration, as the "all American man".
Supermodel Gisele Bundchen wants to date you.

And yet, even with all of that...

YOU STILL HAVE A BUTT CHIN!!!

Tehachafreezing

Greetings from the sprawling metropolis of Tehachapi. Wondering where it is? Here's a map. We're here for a Staff interest event. Get to know Tehachapi. Here are five fun (and random) facts:

1. Median home value is $90K
2. Population (as of 2005) is 69% male
3. The fine Correctional Institution in town serves 5,563 individuals
4. The late actor Jack Palance (City Slickers) lived here.
5. Oh, and the projected overnight low tonight is 16 degrees.

Really, it's a sign that they care.

Here are some photos of what can only be described as an "occupational hazard" for those of us ministering with and to young adults. It was cold at 7am when I was trying to clean it up...

Enough with the co-pays!

We went again to the pediatrician today. That's four visits in 3 weeks. And, surprise, we found out that Gracie has an ear infection...again. In fact, this would be her third ear infection in those three weeks. We are now starting her on her second variety of antibiotics and she's also on Dimetap and Motrin.

And Grace isn't the only one. Lucy has had two ear infections in these last weeks; she finishes her antibiotics treatment on the 13th. Josh has one ear infected and he will finish his course on the 15th. And then there is Amy. Yes, the bulwark, the pillar of our household, had an ear infection over this last weekend and was, get this, just now in the bathroom draining her ear (ewww). For those of you keeping score at home, yes, that's 7 ear infections in three weeks. Currently, we're running a small pharmaceutical industry out of our kitchen...

Now you know why I've been holding my breath for the last three weeks, slamming vitamin C supplements and living out in the garage...

Free Hold 'em Advice

You gotta, you have to, raise pre-flop with a good hand. Someone remind me of this next time we're playing...

11 years and 207 games later...

...the mighty Caltech Beavers (why Beavers, by the way?!?) finally won an NCAA Division III men's basketball game. Props to the techies!

Latest Online Time Waster

Go to netives.com and try out the marbles game...

"Your little girl has a very high threshold for pain."

That's the word from the nurse practitioner today after an appointment revealed not one but two ear infections for Lucy, one of which was so bad that the "eardrum was about ready to burst."

Good to know that she takes after her dad, um, er, well, make that her, mom.

Gerald Ford

In (irreverent) memoriam...