Stupid Things

We recently bought Mrs. Grass Extra Noodles soup as opposed to Mrs. Grass Noodle Soup. I would like to publicly point out that there are NO extra noodles. It's a scam! They simply tell you to put in less water, thus making it more noodles PER SERVING. Don't buy it!

Our favorite fish, Spike, has died. I found him being eaten by the catfish this morning even though he wasn't fully dead. So we put him out of his misery and flushed him. There was a time of mourning and the tank doesn't look the same without him. Katy always said she wouldn't talk to me if anything ever happened to Spike, but we're still talking.

Like a Spiritual Scavenger Hunt

Sometimes life is like a spiritual scavenger hunt. You get a clue on what to do and then you don't get your next clue until you've completed it. Or maybe it's like driving someone home for the first time when they are not paying attention; you just keep driving down a road until at the last second the person says, "Turn here."

At the beginning of November, Katy and I realized that God is calling us out of our current ministry situation. We have started everything in motion towards that end at the church. We will no longer be at the church as of January 1. However, all that we've known so far is that we are being called out of this church, the day that we were to start everything in motion, and the time we are to leave. We do not know where God is leading us next, where we will work, where we will live, or how else God will provide; we simply know that God will provide. We will most likely stay at our current apartment at least until our lease is up in August. Our best leads so far will be that Katy will be dressed in an apron supplying people's fix and that I will be dressed in red and khaki adjusting endcaps and mini-seasonal sections.

Please be praying for us in this season. Also let us know of any job opportunities for us.

Lazy Life of Fish

Life has been a little traumatic for our fish recently. In late October, the filter on our top tank stopped working. Due to a lack of money free to invest in a new filter, we had to go au natural in the top tank. We feared that our bigger fish in the top tank would die, so we moved them to the bottom tank where the filter still worked. That overstocked the bottom tank, but was our best chances of fish surviving. The nitrate levels in both tanks skyrocketed, but no fish died in the top tank (God preserves the sparrows). Recently, Trevor (our first Gourami) died in the bottom tank. We set aside some money to get a new filter for the top tank. Once the new filter was bought and ran for a day or so, we moved Spike (our largest Angelfish) back up to the top tank. Most recently, Katy bought me a new Gourami named Hope. Hope is larger than Bronch and they seem to get along better than Bronch and Itis and Trevor. I think Hope is a male and the rest were females. Soon T will be moved back to the top tank, too.

We have Katy's dad's old 30 gallon tank now as well. Once we get a stand for it, we can start the process of preparing it for fish. This may be a while, though.

Miscellanies

The Mexico mission trip is too daunting of a task to discuss here, but I would definitely recommend looking into Tapestries Of Life Ministries.

At Davanni's Pizza, they have advertisements about how they have been a leader in pizza for 25 years. On the top of their table tents, they have a quote from Nelson Mandela about how its reassuring to return to something and see that it hasn't changed. I'm pretty sure that his quote is sarcastic, but I don't think Davanni's realizes that.

Last night, we were THAT couple. We needed two carts at the grocery store. The 5lb bag of potatos and the 8pack of paper towels aided in this feat, but we would have probably needed it anyway.

While trying to figure out what we should get people for Christmas this year, we tried to realize whether we are as difficult to buy for as some of the people that we are getting gifts for. The jury is still out.

Now that Illinois has doubled the cost of its tolls for anyone not using an I-pass, it makes "taking the scenic route" a much more appealing option, but we would waste so much time going out of the way to avoid losing our laundry money.

That's it for now.

Drug-induced Relational-faithfulness

With two episodes left in the second season of Gilmore Girls, Katy and I decided to rank our top five characters. Now that we have watched the last two episodes and have shared our top five lists with others, our lists may have changed slightly. However, I will post what my top five list was when first created:

Top Five Gilmore Girls Characters (Tom):
5. Dean
4. Emily Gilmore
3. Luke Danes
2. Lorelai (sp?) Gilmore
1. Rory Gilmore

Top Five Gilmore Girls Charachters (Katy):
5. Jess
4. Emily
3. Lorelai
2. Luke
1. Rory

There has been much arguing about whether Dean or Jess is better. I argue that Dean, though very average and therefore boring, brings out the best in each of my other 4 characters. Katy argues that Jess is much more interesting and a better intellectual fit for Rory. We will let the critics decide. Oh wait, we are the critics.

P.S. Kevin and Abby, we will be returning from a week-long mission trip to Mexico with our church/youth and will NEED the third season the day we get back (Oct 22).

P.P.S. After watching City Slickers last night, I too tried to think of my best day ever and worst day ever. Because of my horrible lack of memory and my lack of every attempting this ranking before, I did not try it yet. However, I would be interested in anyone else's best and worst days if already determined.

A-Trophy Brain

We miss school. Not just school itself, but everything that comes with it. Like meaningful, intellectual conversation. We have very little in our world now that pushes us to think, especially to think about anything outside of ministry. When we have conversations with people, it's about 80% us complaining about the crappy things in our life and about 20% finding out about other people's lives. Very seldomly do we have discussions about issues, about philosophies, about something we had never thought about before. This means our conversations seem to be very repetetive. Likewise, we get bored with things that used to be fun because there is nothing new and stimulating about them. When we were at school (in the Good Ole Days where the grass is greener), either we were in contact with something stimulating in class, someone we talked to was in contact with something stimulating in class, or we were reading things that were stimulating and could relate to others on that level.

As a subpoint, I miss philosophy. I use the tools I gained by studying philosophy almost every day, but I rarely, if ever, get to deal through the philosophical arguments or schools that interested me so much through all of college. I find myself using my history degree much more often, since I focused on ancient history and Sunday School right now is on the history of the Judges. Biblical Greek I've used three or four times since graduation, but I feel that this is mmore representative of the needs in this specific ministry than it is in ministry as a whole.

As a result of the atrphying of my(our) brain(s), my blog has been like one of those magnified vanity mirrors; it only points out to me every time I want to blog that I have little interesting to talk about. This blog will now become my Medical Alert System ("I've fallen and I can't get up"). If I have nothing interesting to say for another month, please realize the severity of the situation, come and kick in our door, and start talking about Heraclitus or Roman conquest of North Africa or that Jesus "was resurrected" (passive) not "resurrected himself" (active).

I have even started losing interest in listening to our hip-hop cds and have fallen into the stupor of Christian acoustic rock. Maybe the situation is more grim than I had previously thought . . .

We're past the point of boredom . . .

Katy has been sick for about three weeks now. Last week she was diagnosed with Bronchitis, so we were not able to go visit my parents while my dad is still recovering from quintuple bypass surgery. I went out and got her two new fish (Bronch and Itis). They are Dwarf Gouramis just like the one our friends bought for us Labor Day weekend. Their plan was to buy us a fish and start a tradition of any friend staying with us feeling like they too should buy us a fish. The friend who came over the next weekend didn't seem to get it. Needless to say, Itis already seems to be dying, which is kind of foreboding since it was named after Katy's illness. I too have gotten sick; it is some virus going around. I have to take some nasty-tasting, codeine-laced robitussin that doesn't work nearly as well as Nyquil.

We've spent our days watching Gilmore Girls. We finished the first season of 21 episodes in 6 days (you do the math). We are about halfway through the second season after 4 days. We've slowed it down a little. We only watched one last night, and the night before we had the horrible idea of watching La Nina Santa (The Holy Girl) instead of Gilmore Girls. It was the first movie in a long time that we even thought of stopping halfway through because it was so incredibly boring. We've been incredibly stir crazy.

It's been almost a month and a half since Normal. We miss Normal. But by the time Normal shows his face again, we will be flung into the holiday season and won't see Normal again until the dreary part of the end of January. Always an optimist.