Calvinists poking fun at themselves.  Who says that the Sovereign Grace crowd has no sense of humor?

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.

If you enjoy these pictures, you can check out more at my photoblog or flickr.

These are of a spider I found suspended on a bridge of his (or her?) own making above the floor of the woods whilst hiking the other day.  Though I think I disconcerted him (or her?) somewhat at first, he (or she?) seemed to get used to me pretty quickly.

Click on a thumbnail to enlarge the picture.

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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?

If you want to see more, be sure to check out my photoblog or flickr.

Been a while since I posted pics on Friday.  Sorry about that.  I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t even had time to take pictures, must less download and process them.  Which is all a shame, too, since I had just saved up to buy that 10-20 mm Sigma wide angle lens that I love so much.

So a couple of weeks ago, I went on vacation with my bride to a cabin in Beaver’s Bend State Park, in Southeast Oklahoma.  Got enough pictures to last until next year, if I choose.

Here’s a set from the porch of our cabin taken of the night sky with use of a tripod.  The first picture is taken at 1600 iso and was an 8 second exposure.  The next was was at 400 iso for 8 mins and the last was at 400 iso for 30 mins.  All were taken at f/4.0.

Click on a thumbnail to see the full picture.

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Couple of things to note…

You can see the North Star through the trees and all of the other stars seem to rotate around it.

The Milky Way (our galaxy) can be seen in all three pictures.

If you go to Flickr and look at the really big sized versions of the pictures that show motion, when you zoom in really close, there are billions of stars that don’t appear to move at all, though faint and very far away.

If you used to like Candid Camera, here is some of Japan’s version…

One of the benefits of not looking like (read: dressing like, talking like) the stereotypical Southern Baptist Pastor is that sales people who drop in the church walk right by me.

Like two this morning.  :)

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*