A couple of years ago, our church staff had a little “Biggest Loser” style competition to lose weight.  Says alot about Baptists that it was an easy competition for us to buy into.  In other words, we’re fat.

So, I did really well and ended up continuing to lose weight well past the competition.  About 6 mos. in, I went to the Southern Baptist Convention and tried to continue to exercise and eat well while there.

While I was there, Marty Duren and I ate together several times and at one point, he chose Tony Romas.  It was the beginning of the end of my diet.  It’s all Marty’s fault.

Anyway, I’m starting back.  Just thought I’d say so, since I may be twittering things about it and posting things about it here on the blog.

Oh, and it’s not a fad diet thing.  Just counting calories.  I know how Lean Cuisine, Healthy Choice and all those “diet” dinners help you lose weight.  It’s fairly obvious once you cook one up for the first time.  They starve you to death.

It’s good food.  Just about two teaspoons full.

Your prayers, as always, are appreciated.

Sorry for the long wait on Phriday Fotos.  I’ve been negligent with my camera, much to my own chagrine.  Nevertheless, here are some pictures from our Ski Trip with Bonnie’s family over the Christmas break.

You can see these and more at my photoblog or my flickr.

All pictures taken with my camera phone, click on a thumbnail to enlarge.

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If you enjoy these, then be sure to check out my other pictures at my Photoblog or at Flickr.

These are of my daughter marching in the Christmas Parade.  Can you guess which is mine?  Next week, I’ll show you how to do this with a free program like Photoshop (not free, very expensive) called Gimp.  Feel free to download and start playing, if ya want.  Available for Mac or Windows.

Click on a thumbnail to see a bigger picture.

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Forgive the self indulgence of this post.  I’m feeling a little nostalgic and maybe a wee bit presumptuous.  Just a few observations – some general and some personally specific.

Ice Cream is my all time favorite indulgence and Peppermint has taken over for Mint Chocolate Chip, Rocky Road and Tin Roof Sundae as my number one choice of frozen and delicious sugar packed way of making myself fatter.

I missed photography for about 20 years.  I grew up with a dark room in my house and a professional photographer as a Mom, but quit for a long time.  I’m glad I’m doing it again.

Having fun in life is my choice and mine alone.  Failing to take responsibility for that gives power over my life to other people and I likely will not have much fun with them in charge.

Also, God is not against an enjoyable life.  I have no idea where this thought came from, but it needs to go back.

Golf is a game that reveals someone’s character.  If you really want to know someone, play 18 holes with them.  If you want to know them better than their spouse does, do it regularly.

Leadership primarily means that you have to do the confrontation stuff nobody wants to do.  If you do it well, people will think you are a great leader.  If you do it poorly, you won’t be a leader for very long.

They said that when I turned 40, my body would start to fall apart.  I didn’t know that someone had a switch that they flipped two years ago today.

It’s never wrong to be gracious.

My wife is possibly the funniest person I know.

Mistakes made are lessons learned.  No sense beating yourself up over something stupid you did or said when you were young and foolish, even if it was yesterday.

Love can never be earned.  Approval is not love.  Those who withhold approval reveal that they don’t love themselves and that they may be incapable of real love.

East Coast Bar-B-Que is this shredded pork roast (that has been BAKED) with vinegar based sauce and is not good.  Also, they put slaw AND chili on their hamburgers, along with the other stuff like lettuce, pickles, etc.  That just ain’t right.

That God loves me says something amazing about God.  I’m grateful.

Though most people say they are excited to get an extra hour’s sleep when we “fall back,” it’s been my experience that they use the hour to stay up later…

“It’s really only 10!”

I wonder how many people actually get less sleep than a normal Saturday night?

So, my Dad still lives in Houston where Hurricane Ike has made its way through in the last day.

They have no power, but cell phones still work and everyone is safe.  He even had tv and the internet until late last night so he was able to send several updates until late last night.  Whereupon he made the observation that he was unsure about those who worked for the government and television.

It seems a reporter was on screen saying that the entire island of Galveston was going to be underwater and that anyone not having evacuated “faced certain death.”

He then signed off from… Galveston.

From whence he would be reporting.

All night long.

*sigh*

I’m at a family reunion at Heber Springs, AR. If you are looking for a good getaway, you should check out Lindsey’s Resort. They are a Christian family with a family run environment on the Little Red River, which is fed out of a dam, making the water temperature about 50 degrees. Native fish can’t really thrive in that cold temperature, so they stock the river with Rainbow Trout, and it’s good.

Anyway, here are some pictures from this morning. If you like these, you can check out my photoblog for more.

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“I like to call it ‘grajimication,’” said my love, showing her sense of humor that is heavily dosed with silly, but only when you get to know her.

My lovely and talented wife “grajimcates” tonight with a Master’s Degree in School Administration. No, she still has a semester to go in the class taking arena, but they parade across the stage with caps and gowns (that just arrived at the bookstore the day prior, no less) and they do it tonight. I mean, if you are 3/4 of the way through your Master’s Degree, why not get the thing anyway? Right? Surely, you’ll finish.

Well, we can all guess that the only thing she’ll get tonight is a folder where a degree might one day reside, but the honors go out early.

She is finishing this degree at the Tulsa location of the University of Oklahoma, where she had always intended to attend as a young lady growing up in Clinton, OK. That she attended the school loathed by almost every Sooner fan, Oklahoma State in Stillwater, is a mystery. While the Orange and Black still has something for her, the Crimson and Cream has risen to the top and OU paraphernalia is showing up around the house.

Of course, not as much as the “Jenks wear” that everyone has. I think she keeps the Trojan Shop in business over in Jenks, where she now works. That is, she works at one of the schools in one of the top rated school systems in the state, not the Trojan Shop.

Although, if she got a part time job there, she might get some discounts on some of the clothing… Never mind. She buys enough there already that she gets a bulk discount. :)

What can we say? She’s proud of her school.

Well, here’s to the near matriculation of my love. Congrajifizations.

For my beautiful and loving wife, the Math nerd.

[edit – Actually, my wife, said math nerd, checked him and he did miss two of the three digit numbers. It takes a math nerd to want to check the mathemagician. She says, while sitting next to me, “Accuracy is important in math.” Of course it is. That’s why she’s the best.

Pardon the interruption of the Better Blogging series, but I need some discussion here.

My wife got into a spiritual conversation with some co-workers and one asked this question: “Why didn’t Jesus write the New Testament?” Her co-worker said that it would have been easier for him to trust the Bible’s accuracy and weight if he knew that Christ had written the New Testament, rather than having it left to people to remember what He said and record it.

Bonnie’s response, off the top of her head, was that the people didn’t understand Jesus and His mission until after the resurrection, which gave validity to the claim of Godhood. Before that, His writings might not have had the weight that even the Apostle’s writings had after the the resurrection.

I thought that was not bad.

Another co-worker speculated that He might not have been able to write, as the son of a carpenter.

I told Bonnie when she related the story to me that I thought that the Bible would lead us to believe that He was educated, unlike the delineation for Peter and John in Acts 4.

My simple answer is that we don’t know “why” God does anything, but that answer doesn’t always satisfy the curiosity of those seeking. In fact, we can never fully satisfy a seeker, but the Holy Spirit must convict and draw them to the conclusion.

Still, I think this is a great discussion. So how would you answer this question from an earnest seeker of truth?