Saturday, November 26, 2011

Thanksgiving Moved To Today

Late night Wednesday/wee hours Thursday, Mrs. Scott and I both came down with the stomach flu, and were to host the family Thanksgiving meal this year.  Needless to say, we ended up having 7-Up and a wee bit of chicken noodle soup later in the day.  So, we've rescheduled for today.  Most people are done, but we're just getting started.  Mrs. Scott just did a basting round and the bird looks good in the oven.  Hopefully we'll be able to eat well.  Bon Apetit!

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Why Arthur and I Love Blogging

Arthur Sido at The Voice Of One Crying Out In Suburbia writes about one of the major reasons I love blogging and reading other blogs:

It is true that the blogging world can often be banal and silly, sometimes even scandalous and a stumbling block to the Gospel. It is also true that done properly it provides a heretofore nonexistent medium for worldwide discussion, taking important conversations out of the world of academia and theological journals and making them available to every Christian. It used to be that you wrote a book, published it and waited for the reviews but now the review process is interactive and alive, allowing readers to ask questions and authors to sharpen their thinking in ways that perhaps they didn’t think of before.

Without a medium such as blogging I wonder what I would believe today.  The same thing I believed in 1995?  Maybe so.  And I'm glad that didn't happen.

Friday, November 11, 2011

Happy Anniversary, Mrs. Scott!

We didn't realize it until somebody pointed it out after we set our wedding date, as we simply wanted a Saturday in the fall.  "Did you realize that your 11th anniversary will be on 11/11/11?"

Well, no, but we'll certainly be looking forward to it!

And today is here.  So, I want to say happy anniversary to Mrs. Scott!  I love you and the first 11 were wonderful.

Sunday, November 06, 2011

Weekend Potpourri

Ending the FNP drought:
  • Played football with my boys out in the street today.  Nice chilly day, fall.  My arm hurts a bit after throwing for just a short time.  Must be getting old, but my boys are so full of energy because they're young. 
  • My cell phone apparently doesn't adjust automatically for Daylight Savings Time even though it is set to "automatic" for date and time.  Mrs. Scott has the same phone model and discovered that the phone must be turned off then on again for it to switch between daylight time and standard time.  Kinda defeats the purpose.  My clock radio did just fine.
  • Some friends brought dinner over a few nights ago because we were busy with an important matter.  One of the dishes was a green bean casserole with onion rings on top.  It was one of those childhood memories of mom's green bean casserole.
  • Next Iron Chef is doing a competition in the bleachers at Petco Park in San Diego.  We were there just last year!
  • It's good to feel the rain and cool weather of the last week.  That rain-on-the-pavement smell, too.
  • My favorite pickings out of the leftover Halloween candy were the Hershey's chocolates and the Reece's peanut butter cups.
  • obladioblada

Friday, November 04, 2011

Faith That Transcends Efficiency

So you're moving into a new place.  You're also a good cook.  You don't have the finances to hire professional movers, so you do what many others do: you get a dozen or so friends and maybe a U-Haul or bunch of pickup trucks and have a moving party.  Once all the boxes and furniture are moved into your new place, you do what is culturally acceptable: you feed your help.  So you prepare a nice home-cooked meal in your new kitchen.  Right?
Of course not.  All your kitchen stuff is still in boxes, yet to be unpacked.  Your kitchen efficiency is zero.  So you order pizza!

It is only after all the boxes are unpacked and things put away that any efficiency begins to take shape.  Then you need to get used to your new place, where to store supplies, etc.  So it is with the rest of life.  The first and last days of work at a job are the least efficient.  You're an important player that will make or break the company to the tune of millions, but your first day is a tour by an HR rep showing you where the paper clips and post-it notes are.  Infants are notoriously inefficient on a family and don't start contributing until well later in life.  A new software program contains an untold number of bugs until they are fished out by its users.  A new pair of shoes hurts your feet until broken in.  You get the picture I'm trying to paint here.

Our religion demands efficiency from us.  Training our children, redeeming the time, practicing righteousness.  Maturity vs. being tossed to and fro like children.  But the world has been changing.  People are having large portions of their lives torn down to be rebuilt from scratch.  Many areas of their lives simultaneously.  Major inefficiency is the result.  For now.  For these people, will there be a faith that transcends all the inefficiency?  Will their lives result in a glorious rebuilding with a new efficiency, or will they result in failure?  Time will tell, but I'm willing to wager that both will happen in large numbers.