Note to self:

Self, if you ever get a hankerin' to move to the South...be sure to remember this.

Well that now makes it two days in a row that I have consumed huge bags of trail mix in the place of a well-balanced lunch.

Lots of Wheat Chex.
Lots of nuts.
Lots of dried fruits.


I'm pretty much doomed aren't I?

Ugh, well it looks like repair costs for my car are going to be at least $500. The inner locking assembly is shot and needs to be replaced along with the cylinder and the inside door handle. Making matters worse is the fact that they still don't know how they are going to get the door open in order to replace these things. Thankfully, my work just kicked in $1,100 for tuition assistance (they pay up to $5,000 a year for college) and we can use that to help pay for the repairs. It would've been nice to invest it, but at least now we wouldn't have to put it on the ol' Mastercard. God truly provides!

Looks like I'll be returning the Nissan to the rental place today. I'm kinda bummed, it was nice to drive a car whose windows and doors actually worked . All good things must end however, and at $50 a day (gotta have the insurance y'know) it wasn't what you would call "a steal".

Oh and looks like I have a job interview on Monday for an underwriting position in the Auto Lease Division. Pray for me, as I don't exactly interview well. I have tendencies to either get tongue-tied at tough questions or ramble on and on like an idiot to questions that I know I can answer. Not smooth at all.

Here's an interesting article about Jack Chick. I still remember going round and round with people, trying to explain why the Christian bookstore that I used to work for wouldn't carry any of his tracts. They were absolutely perplexed as to why we wouldn't carry the pure gospel of "This Was Your Life". After ten minutes or so of going round and round with these folk, the temptation to blurt out "Because Sir/Madam, we are Gay, Catholic Freemasons with a Communist bent. We also enjoy freebasing drugs on Halloween with Wiccans" was quite considerable.

But that wouldn't of been very charitable now would it?

We directed them instead (with a lump in our throats), to the Four Spiritual Laws. Being a predominantly Reformed bookstore, we also had a huge stock of Mt. Zion Bible Tracts, but strangely nobody wanted them. Apparently, a four page dissertation on 'Gospel Fear' written by a Puritan in a .5 font wasn't exactly knocking them dead out in the street witnessing camps.

Strolling through the Highlands Study Center, I found this article which made me squirm.

The article is about the a group of men living in a compound of sorts. These men are being discipled (groomed?) to eventually take leadership positions in American society. All of this is sponsored by the Family, an "invisible organization", as author Jeffrey Sharlet puts it, which has existed since the '30's. The Family is made up mostly America's power elite, senators and businessmen, all of them "believers in Jesus", but not "Christians" (a term that in their view promotes negative images, such as, religion). These guys are kind of like the Free Will, Arminian Baptists' answer to Theonomy.

Even though I could smell the author's negative bias from miles away, I still found myself grimacing through much of the article. For one, it brought back a flood of memories. It reminded me of the many conversations that I had with other men during my time at an Arminian, Baptist Bible college. For example, this snippet of conversation taken during an informal Bible study:

" Bengt told Gannon to read our text for that morning, Psalm 139: "'O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.'"..."'Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.'"

Bengt raised a hand. "That's great, dude. Let's talk about that." The room fell silent as Bengt stared into his Bible, running his finger up and down the gilded edge of the page. "Guys," he said. "What—how does that make you feel?"

"Known," said Gannon, almost in a whisper.

Bengt nodded..."What does it make you think of?"

"Jesus?" said Beau.

Bengt stroked his chin. "Yeah . . . Let me read you a little more." He read in a monotone, accelerating as he went, as if he could persuade us through a sheer heap of words. "'For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb,'" he concluded... "Man! I mean, that's intense, right? 'In my mother's womb'—God's right in there with you..."It's like," he said, "it's like, you can't run. Doesn't matter where you turn, 'cause Jesus is gonna be there, just waiting for you."

Beau's eyes cleared and Gannon nodded. "Yeah, brother," Bengt said, an eyebrow arched. "Jesus is smart. He's gonna get you."

Gannon shook his head. "Oh, he's already got me."

"Me, too," Beau chimed, and then each man clasped his hands into one fist and pressed it against his forehead or his chin and prayed, eyes closed and Jesus all over his skin."

Revoke Michael Moore's Oscar!!

This is very funny. Its hard to argue with their logic though.

Talk about hitting rock bottom.

"A man who had people on Clearwater Beach believing they were socializing with the lead guitarist of the rock band Creed is under arrest after police say he used his claim to fame for hotel charges and to steal a woman's credit card.

Over the past few weeks, a man staying at beach hotels claiming to be Mark Tremonti, the lead guitarist of the rock band Creed, has handed out and autographed copies of publicity photos and attracted crowds of fans at beach bars.

Frustrating Weekend

Well, it at long last it has happened. The outside handle of my car door finally broke. Now I should mention that the inside door handle has been gone for some time, but I have put off fixing it because of laziness. So, for the past year, I have had to roll down my window and open the door from the outside handle everytime I wanted to get out of my car. Annoying? Yup, especially when it rained! But it was a tolerable problem and thus I ignored it.

I spent the first three hours of my Saturday morning driving around to various repair shops trying to get an estimate. The first repair shop was closed for the weekend. I then went to another shop, where I found the shop manager sitting outside of the office, waiting for the repairman to bring the key to open the office. This was a half hour after it opened...ummm, no thanks slackers, I'll find another place.

In desperation, I combed the streets of Bellflower, looking for someone, anyone to take my busniess. I finally ended up at a small repair shop run by a beefy, older gentleman who had a penchant for belting out old Rod Stewart tunes as he inspected my car. He seemed on the up and up, but honestly by that time I didn't care.

So, we were car-less for much of Saturday, then my sis rushed in to the rescue by offering her car to us for the next few days. Hoo-boy that was a life-saver. We're really going to have to look into getting another car within the next few months as my Honda is about ready to sing a requiem (130,000 miles). I think the writing is on the wall: MINI-VAN TIME *cue horrified shrieks*, and any semblence of cool is about to go out the window.

Not that I had any kind of claim to "coolness" though in the first place.