The Big OT

I have been highly offended by the Chevrolet commercials I have seen for the last year or so. "This is our country." A bunch of white farmboys returning home from war for the last hundred years. Who is "us" in "our country?" White people? Rural Americans? Soldiers? At least the new Chevy commercial I saw today has 3 or 4 black people out of 30-40 people shown in the commercial. Sure, I don't think I've ever seen an Asian-American driving a truck, but these commercials seem to go past market-driven advertisement. Maybe the next Chevy commercial will be filmed with some good ole boys on the Trail of Tears, the Birmingham Bridge, along the Rio de Janeiro, or in Chinatown. Or driving in the Middle East.

That reminds me. Like mother, like daughter apparently. America broke out of colonialism only to start our own overseas. Manifest Destiny meets Monroe Doctrine meets Alexandrian Empire.

Surpassing the Energizer Bunny

This week has been incredibly busy. Last week was the end of the first quarter of school. That meant getting everything in order with students so no one was failing any classes. I had something every night at church except Friday. Friday was field trip day at school, with three groups going to three places. My group included ALL of the boys and one father. We went to a nearby airplane museum. Saturday included hanging out with our friends Nate and Natalie and their 4 year-old Abby and their 4 month-old Eli. During this time, I got some phone calls from Caribou saying I was supposed to be at work, which I didn't know. So, I missed a shift. In my conversation with my boss, wherein she was apologizing to me about the shift, I made the final step of ending my job at Caribou. She was sad to hear I was leaving, but it put the store in a better situation since I was more of an inconvenience (I was only working once every six weeks). Sunday, I helped lead worship at church. It was the first time in close to ten years that I had played guitar without singing and that I had played in someone else's worship team. I came home from church to find out that the NFL on TV is only going down hill. This year, if it is not the Vikings game, neither Fox nor CBS will air the game, even though we live less than 30 miles from WI. This only added to my frustration from the week before when Katy and I had planned our Monday around watching the Packer game, only to realize (for the second year in a row) that ESPN has stolen football away from the common man. Monday was filled with grading every class and filling out report cards. Tuesday, we started parent-teacher conferences in the morning and after school. Then, we led worship Tuesday night and I spoke and our Young Adults Ministry. Our Young Adults pastors went to the hospital at midnight that night as she was going into labor with their first child. Luke Daniel Dorn was born 7lbs.6oz. at 3:16pm on November 7. Wednesday was more conferences and finishing up some work for our school Book Clubs on Thursday. Thursday was more conferences, our gym being filled with tables and chairs that we had to take down and set up during our gym class just in order to play, and doing some shopping for our science class on Friday. Friday was, in comparison, much less stressful. We even had time to watch Transformers last night before bed. Today, we are leading worship for a RAIN lunch meeting (RAIN is Resurrection Apostolic International Network, the international ministry that our pastors oversee and of which our church is the flagship). We have guest speaker Harold Eberle in for the weekend. So, as staff at the church, we also get to go to a dinner meeting with him tonight as well as a time of impartation. Tomorrow, we are probably teaching our leadership class before church, since our pastors are sruviving their first days at home with Luke. Things will finally slow down tomorrow afternoon, when the Packers find a way (somehow) to shut down Adrian Peterson and jumpstart their own running game. It's nice to know you can be dead last in the league in rushing and still be one of the top five teams overall. thank you, Brett Favre.