I'm Back (My wife also used this title)

The 21 day Daniel fast is done.The dietary restriction were difficult, but manageable. I really missed not being on the Internet for 3 weeks. Also, being a big sports fan, I didn't get to see a single down of the NFL playoffs. I listened to the banter at work to figure out who won. I didn't let anyone at work know that I was doing any kind of fast at all. That was really hard when a co-worker offered me a cream filled donut about two weeks into the fast.

Here are a couple of funny stories during the fast. While feeding Sparky The Wonder Dragon, I caught a whiff of his canned food. It smelled really good. I looked at the label. "Sirloin flavor". The dog was eating better than I was. Another time I was really craving a cookie. I ate some Ritz crackers instead. Ritz crackers are poor substitute for cookies. I also wanted a hamburger in the worst way, so I had a veggie burger. It was what I wanted. A hamburger in the worst way.

What did I do during the fast? I read 6 1/2 books from our Christian library at home. No fluff reading here. I counted yesterday and I am 37 days ahead on my Bible reading chart. We also met at the church every night at 7PM to pray for a minimum of 21 minutes (one for each day of the fast). I also agreed to mentor a young man who is moving here from Wooster. Please pray for me in this endeavor.

In checking up on the sites that I frequent, I discovered that I made the front page of the site "Learn From My Fail". I submitted "When moving the stepladder you are working with, always remove the tools on top of it first. Hammers hurt." The story behind that was that I was hanging some new lights in the hall and had to nail some supports into the wall. Seeing that we have 10' high ceilings, they needed to be high up, hence the stepladder. Fortunately the hammer landed on my shoulder and not my head.

While we were away the following things happened (in no particular order): "The Girl" turned 2 and had a grand time playing with the dollhouse that we got her. We met "The Lemons" down at the Newport Aquarium to see the fishies. The 2011 Bible Quizzing season started off with the first tournament being held here locally.

It's good to be back. I will be reading up and commenting on your posts shortly.

See You In 21 Days

Seeing that I am a faithful member of my church, and I do as my Pastor asks, I will be "off the airwaves" for 21 days. Why am I doing this? My Pastor has called a "Daniel Fast".

In Daniel chapter 10, Daniel had a vision but didn't fully understand it. He, for three full weeks, ate no pleasant bread, had flesh or wine in his mouth, nor anointed himself, to get closer to God. At the end of three weeks he is visited by an angel who tells him that his prayers were heard the first day, but was withstood by evil spiritual influences for 21 days. Daniel's fasting gave him the answer he was searching for.

So how does that relate to us? We all use a little more drawing close to God. Our Pastor "tweaked" Daniel's fast for today, so we can concentrate on drawing nigh to God. The pleasant bread will refer to desserts. Flesh, of course, is meat. Since we don't drink wine anyway, it will be replaced with soda pop, coffee & tea (aka no caffeine). The anointing was something pleasant to Daniel, so something pleasant for us must take it's place. For three weeks, there will be no TV, video, MP3, Internet, or other media.

I like my dessert as much as anyone else, sometimes more (are you going to finish that?). This will be rough. I am defiantly not a vegan, so no meat will be tough. I gave up caffeine over a year ago (by doctor's orders), so that's no problem. No Internet, to quote Bugs Bunny, "OOOHHH, I'm dying!". That will be the hardest of all.

Since I'm not going to be here for three weeks, I leave you with some funnies to look at, my "Stuff" page at The Cheezburger Network. These are all the pictures that I have captioned. It should keep you occupied for a while. I'm SirNottaguy-Imadad there too. If you see something, and you find it humorous, please put a vote in for it. The more votes, the better chance I have to making it to the front page. The newest ones come up first.

Flashback Friday #121

Co-Education

Greeting my friends and any wayfaring strangers who have wandered into this patch of cyberspace. It's time again for another edition of Flashback Friday. In today's edition, we deal with the dreaded three letter word that starts with "S" and ends with "X"(sort of).

Near the end of my final year in Jr. High (that would be 8th grade), we upperclassmen of said school began a headlong rush into the wonderful world of the opposite s-x. Prior to this time, all gym & Health classes were segregated. During the last four weeks, the classes were intermixed as the school began it's "S-x Education classes. (If you are wondering why I don't spell out s-x, it's to keep this post off the search engines for said word. It's the Internet, people are searching everywhere for it, even in blogposts).

But I digress. S-x education is awkward enough when it is done in a same gender class. It really gets awkward when you have mixed genders in the throws of puberty. We were walking containers of hormones, ready to explode. Hence the school felt it was in our best interest to let us know what was going on in our bodies.

The most awkward was the puberty movies. There was snickering from both sides during the opposite presentation. Maybe they thought that there would be less giggles & comments in a mixed crowd. Whatever the reasoning, it was uncomfortable to a young teen, regardless of gender.

As much as we didn't like the co-ed s-x education courses, we had no problem with the co-ed gym class. We had heard that the girls took gym, and even occasionally found a stray gym outfit, but nobody had ever seen them because we were cloistered in the "Health class trailer" during their gym. Now we got to see them with our own eyes, wearing shorts (shorts were not in the dress code for our school). Those weren't the shorts of today, that come to the knee. Nope, these were the shorts of the late 70's. I don't know how the girls felt about it, but every guy liked it.

Since it was May, if it wasn't raining, we were outside playing flag football, soccer or kickball. If it was rainy, we played basketball, volleyball or dodgeball in the gym. Needless to say, we were on our best behavior because nobody wanted to sit in the office during this class (At least nobody of the male gender).

When you are 13 or 14, this is a weird time of your life. The girl who had cooties just a year or two ago has become an object of admiration. I even grew to the point where I actually liked cooties (and still do).

Goodbye Rich. We'll Miss You

The Team Up North today fired head coach Rich Rodriguez. I for one am sad. My beloved Buckeyes never lost to him while he coached at U of M, so it's sad to see him leave. After getting blown out of the Gator Bowl by the score of 52-14, his firing was inevitable.

Rodriguez had an overall record of 15-22, but only 6-18 in the Big Ten. OSU coach Jim Tressel has more Big Ten wins in Michigan's home stadium than Rodriguez had (4 to 3). U of M is hoping to hire alum Jim Harbaugh (currently at Stanford) but I can't see that happening. I wonder what Lloyd Carr is doing?

(On a related note, When I deleted the picture of Rodriguez from my blog pics, I was asked by the computer "Are you sure you want to move Rich Rodriguez to the recycle bin?". I wonder if that's how M's athletic director got the idea. LOL)