An open letter to a thief

Dear Thief,
The chairs you stole from our front porch weren’t heirlooms. They were silly little canvas beach chairs purchased at Tarzhay for around $20 each. (see below)

And so it begins

I was one of about 30-plus guys who began the ordination process Thursday, at a district convention service with all the officialness, pomp and regalia one would expect.
I went into it with a little bit of trepidation. There remains something of a bohemian hedonist in me that shuns the notion of being a company man. [...]

Wow. Wow, wow, wow.

I’m sure all of you know about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia University. What you might not know is the underground blog presence in Iran. The Iranian blogosphere was a blur of activity, with most of the opinions anonymously lampooning the oft-reviled and misunderstood leader.
The New York Times published excerpts from Iranian bloggers, [...]

Monkeying around with the camera

The Missus has been after me to take some photos of the view from our front porch and dining room. My camera batteries (both sets) are losing their ability to charge and I’ve been busy taming The Paper That Ate Manhattan. Finally, today, after spending a half-hour in the yard and catching up with dear, [...]

Who you gonna call?

Martin Schongauer, St Anthony tormented by Daemons (1480 engraving)
We kicked out an unwelcome guest in our home Sunday evening.
We’re in a new house and getting used to the acoustics. We’re finding that my usual detached mumbling is insufficient for communicating in the house. Or so my wife would have me believe.
So, I was in the [...]

From the Pew Forum: Hispanic Churches Add English Services

Editor’s note: the link for the full story is no longer active. Newsvine has the article, which you may access here.
This little gem arrived Aug. 28 from my Pew Forum feed. It deals with a lot of topics found in my congregation. As we grow and take on more English-speaking members, we are learning how [...]

The happy homeowners

Today, we celebrate. We thank the good Lord for his incredible generosity in providing a home for us. In our present housing market slump in which mortgage companies are closing from one day to the next, we are extremely grateful for the resources to purchase a home. As the crisis in Darfur worsens, as bodies [...]

Coffee wars

Courtesy www.icanhascheezburger.com
Have I mentioned to you, dear reader, that I am sick of living out of boxes? It’s a quarter past seven in the morning over here in blazing HOT Stockton, CA — It was 104 degrees Sunday, 99 degrees Monday and hallelujah!, a manageable 90 degrees today — and I am surrounded by [...]

Tio’s timeshare

The missus and I are still trying to navigate the seemingly hopeless waters of purchasing a home. Things came to a head Friday when our loan didn’t fund on time. This meant that our loan wasn’t recorded on time, meaning Friday. This had a number of ramifications.

We didn’t get the keys to our place. We [...]