Since Jessica and the girls left with my mother-in-law to go see Jess’ grandpa who is going to be with the Lord soon I’ve been alone. Well, only sort of. I’ve spent very little time at home the last 24 hours because I don’t deal well with being alone. However, our church body rocks because I’ve had to turn people down for lunch and fellowship after church. People knowing that I’m flying solo have gone out of their way to make sure I don’t get too lonely. It pretty much makes me feel like I’m not a total loser 🙂 However, Monday I leave to go to Texas for a couple days to work with one of my clients. As much as this is hard for me to be away from my bride and beautiful girls, it is a good thing, I’m excited to be able to go meet some fantastic folks that I hope to blog about in the upcoming days.
Category Archives: News
Prayer Request
One of the elders at our church, Hal, has just been diagnosed with acute leukemia. The doctors are predicting that if it goes untreated he may have aproximately one month to live. What is somewhat warming is the fact that Hal has spent so much time teaching others at the church about how God uses trials and suffering for our growth. I keep thinking, “Lord, I haven’t gotten to learn from Hal all that he knows so that I can pass it on.” Except that the doctors haven’t given him a treatment plan yet, so it could all turn around and be a non-issue if the cancer goes into remission.
Thanks everyone.
Randy (and the rest of the Petermans)
Randy Talks Trash Week One
Well, yesterday morning I taught the first of two weeks on biblical sexuality verses the modern American culture’s views on sexuality. In front of my parents. That was a little awkward. It was also awkward to have almost no comments during the class. No questions. I asked a few simple questions to see if that would prime the pump, but I’m pretty sure that most people were not going to open up and pour out their thoughts on the subject. In the end, it was a pretty safe PG class and I did get to use a few clean jokes. Is “clean sex jokes” an oxymoron?
Comings and Goings
Our friends the Whites are moving to North Carolina (which rhymes with “Don’t Move to China”) and so this last Wednesday I helped pack them up. Sad. I’ll miss them a lot. However, today my mother-in-law moved in and will be finding a place of her own eventually. She’ll be in the area so that will mean at least one trip a year that we can make to go visit others, hopefully. I can say that there will be lots of change around here since she brought her dog, Kicker, with her. warning! Randy is tired while writing the following: For those of you wondering how Kicker got his name it was me being a smarty pants. You know, the whole coming home after a bad day at work and kicking the dog sort of thing? Its different from that but along the same lines. Yes, it was a mistake in my youth – I wouldn’t name a dog Kicker or Deuteronomy. But others have, and I was not there to stop them, I probably encouraged them to name their dogs things like “Stupid Mutt”, “Horsey”, and “Lake Chichoe”. I was wrong, and I admit it.
Double Your Pleasure
Well, last night, after a gruelling day of whatever we went to dinner. We went to a restaurant called Mimi’s Cafe. Ironically there was one not too far from us in Texas that we never went to in Texas, but once we moved to Colorado we still didn’t go there. Then, we went to Texas last Summer and met our friends the Henebury’s there for lunch and really enjoyed it because they have a New Orleans flare with a diverse menu. So we go to our local branch periodically.
Well, the reason our pleasure there was doubled was this: Two (count ’em) people came up as they were leaving and told us that our girls were well behaved. Nothing makes you feel like you might possibly not be a bad, evil, incapable parent like having other parents approach you and say your kids are well behaved. And of course Evie smiled a lot, which is fun 🙂
Pressing Coffee Le France Way
No, I don’t have a clue if the title of this post even remotely represents “The French” in French. However, I have a ‘French Press’ coffee maker now as of this weekend. I Love it! My buddy Brian has mentioned his several times when we discuss coffee (am I a nut to discuss coffee?). While we both agree that black Starbucks coffee is from the devil, we now also both agree that a French press makes some darn good coffee.
It is slightly more complex than drip coffee because
1) You have to be there to push the water through the coffee
2) You hvae to have a coarse ground
3) You have to be able to put up with a wee bit of mud at the bottom of the cup
But whoa, this is great coffee. A little bit of sugar, some milk/cream and it takes no effort to pass by the Starbucks. Wait, it took no effort for me to pass the Starbucks before.
Being a Christian Does Not Mean Being Self Righteous
Reading this article “Foes, soldier’s mother counter protesters at funeral” made me sick. As a Christian I find the actions of some who call themselves Christians (and undoubtedly some of them are, grace covers all sins, even those yucky ones you don’t want to talk about or that offend others) to be repulsive. If they think that God is striking this country down because it politically tolerates homosexuality then they can move to another, more righteous, country! But instead they insist that they will turn it around through mockery, insults and what could never be described as evangelism. Speaking of which Evangelism means ‘spreading the good news.’ How on earth do they present the good news at a funeral wherein they insult the decesed, the mother and all those attending? “Jesus doesn’t love you,” seems the wrong message to me.
So, I’m glad to say that the truth of the Christian message is that we all sin, but that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. Even those of the homosexuals, those of the sickos who drag His name through the dirt at funerals, those who speed 5 miles an hour over the speed limit and those who rape murder and steel. Christ came to love – these people need to learn that.
The HD Boycott Begins Now
I’m not a huge fan of TV, I don’t like the content that’s often shown (which makes Personal Video Recorders handy because I can record shows on at all hours of the night). Recent announcements show that High Definition Television (HDTV) will include massive Digital Rights Management (DRM) features that will prevent people from manipulating the content on their devices or moving them to other devices. Please read: The HD Boycott Begins Now
My Car Must Be Doing Drugs
Our windshield was cracked yesterday afternoon when we exited the restaurant that we went to with some friends from church. There is a crack that runs all the way across the bottom of the wind screen! I can’t see a cause, it wasn’t there when we left the church (at least to our knowledge), and the only theory I have that seems probable (other than the wrath of the Flying Spaghetti Monster) is that there was such an extreme temperature change when my big old bag of hot air got in the car and opened its mouth (I’m referring to me and not my wife or daughters in case that doesn’t come across, I don’t want to be accused of insulting my family). Seriously, I have no other damage to my car in case someone is thinking that maybe I got hit by another car.
Signed,
No clues and not wanting to buy a new windshield/screen.
Such is life.
Phoneme
Jessica and I got new cell phones last night. We’re dumping our land line shortly (I’ve got to switch to cable for ISP) and I’m thrilled that I should be able to get much better service from cable for speed (I need speed for work something fierce), so this should be good. We’ll have more minutes than we know what to do with due to the fact that much of our extended family is on Cingular (there are a few not on Cingular, but we’ve got more hours in this plan than I ever want to be on the phone for). My old phone would work with one bar in the basement… sometimes. The new phones work well in the basement so we shouldn’t run into any issues with reception. Yes. One more step in breaking free from Qwest and we get to operate like we’re in the 2000’s 😉
Oh, and yes, I’m aware that phonemes are the smallest syllable in a language that the language speakers can recognize 🙂