I have been having weird dreams lately. One included my friends’ in the closet of my youth on wifi enabled laptops. I’d go into more details, but you’d either want to shoot me, or I’d have to shoot you. Either way, awake feels safer than asleep lest I have more weird dreams.
testing from my BlackBerry
I am writing this from the brand new WordPress app for the BlackBerry. It works pretty similarly to the iPhone app. Not that I’ll blog more often 🙂
the glass is half full
And So It Begins
Jessica is in the other room doing school with Evie. The 4 year old is now becoming an educated little girl. May the learning never end, little girl, may you find yourself always in wonder of the new things to know in life.
Kicker – 1995-2010
Kicker
Originally uploaded by RandyPeterman.
Last night my in-law’s dog Kicker died on the way home from the vet. As much as my sour attitude lent itself to the name Kicker, he was a great dog and it will be weird to go to their place and not have him running around and barking at pretty much anything that moved outside.
One of my all time favorite memories with Kicker was when I used to tickle Jessica when we were dating and her laughter would lead him to bark at me and try to jump up to get me to stop. He was a loving dog and he was much loved. We will miss him.
They’re Playing Our Song…
American Idol had a clip from House of Pain’s Jump in the background. A song that came up on the honey moon trip of Jessica and I. A song we didn’t pick, but one that we couldn’t remember the name of. I woke Jessica up late that night to tell her I had thought of the song’s name. It is NOT our song, but it does make me laugh every time I hear it.
Logic Problems
The four year old just shared this bit of logical gymnastics:
Sharks are fish. So you could call all fish sharks.
I’m going to pass on doing that. I’m also not going to bother her with the explanation of why that is not logically consistent.
The Toothbrushing Story
So, if you happen to notice that I happen to get chided by several relatives in California about oral health care (particularly tooth brushing) then you’re undoubtedly curious as to why this it. Actually, you probably could give a rip. I’m going to explain it anyway. Nobody is holding you in front of the screen showing you this, so you can stop reading now if graphic description of tooth decay, tooth brushing, or OCD behaviors upset you.
Who: Me
When: 1991-ish
Where: Philo, CA
What: Tooth brushing insanity
Why: There’s this story.
About the time I estimated above I was in California for a long summer stay at my grandparent’s and aunt and uncle’s place. There was this odd feeling on one of my teeth that I was sure was the cavity of all cavities. It sat there on the top of one of my molars calling out to me that I was a moron and didn’t brush enough. My tongue would brush it over and over again in a nervous tick that wanted to see if it had gone away over night while sleep fixed my tooth. Why does sleep fix teeth? It doesn’t, but I was hopeful.
There was a long, thin crack running across the top of the molar that might as well have been the grand canyon in miniature. My parents were going to be ticked because of the $5,000 in dental work this crack was going to cost them. So to help prevent other multi-billion dollar molar repairs I began brushing. Regularly. For 5 minutes or so. Several times a day. Between meals. Between my teeth. Flossing irregularly compared to brushing but obsessing on the massive gap, wider than David Letterman’s front tooth gap, in my rear right molar. I was prepared for some motorcycling stuntman to want to jump the massive span. Must brush.
And so for weeks I brushed my teeth with a religious zealotry that could only be matched by fervent televangelists who just needed a few more million dollars to complete that mansion that “god wanted them to have.” I was pretty sure God wanted me to have my teeth. So I brushed them more. All while being in California with my relatives.
A while later I went to the dentist with GREAT fear. Worried that the cavity was going to be much worse than my estimated $5,000.00. The hygienist looked at my teeth, cleaned them, made me swish fluoride around in my mouth – and then went to get the dentist. I had an empty stomach, but had I not I think that my Jr. High bowels would have evacuated with fear of the impending doom. Bring on the judge and jury to sentence my mouth to needles, Novocain, and numbness.
Alas, I had a plastic composite that had been used as a temporary stop-gap because I had a low spot in my molar. By a dentist some time before. It had warn out and was just ready to be replaced. I had no cavity. Zero dollars in repairs.
I didn’t brush my teeth for a week.
Just kidding, I brush my teeth daily whether they need it or not.
I Married Young…
My wife goes to doctor.
My wife tells doctor that she’s been married 11+ years.
Doctor looks shocked that my wife would marry at 13.
Doctor calms down when she looks at the chart that shows my wife is actually 31 and not 24.
I married young, but not that young.
Hoosier Rabbi?
I’m writing this post ahead of time. Go figure. I’m writing this while having been studying for a Bible study lesson I will have taught by the time you read this. The thing I’m covering, as the title of this post suggests, involves rabbis. Without going into the hefty religious connotations of Christ being a rabbi, I want to give you some quick summary information and then ask you a question or three. Even if you’re not a Christian, this post has some relevance, so stick with me.
What’s a rabbi? Here is a short bit of text I wrote for my handout (it is by no means thorough):
Rabbis would have been teachers of the Old Testament, but primarily the Law or Pentateuch. Typically a student would approach a rabbi and ask if he may follow the rabbi, if the rabbi rejected him, he would then go off to a trade. The student of the rabbi was called a talmidim. If you’ve ever heard of the talmud, it is the a Judaic book that outlines traditional rabbinical teachings. Christ operated contrary to this and sought out His disciples and told them to follow Him. Furthermore the disciples were at least in part already involved in trades – so they would have to walk away from their careers and lives as they had expected them to be and instead joined themselves to Christ.
A rabbi was expected to have a physically following disciple or disciples, and Elijah and Elisha were an important example of this concept in the Old Testament [I Kings 19:19-21]. Time was to be spent together and a lifestyle that represented the teacher was to be lived in front of the following disciple. Discipleship meant being seen with the rabbi so that others would begin to see what the rabbi taught as see the fruit of the teachings worked out in the lives of the disciples.
What I have been thinking about is this question: Who are today’s rabbis? Who do people follow and identify themselves with? Historically it was a life devoted to a teacher and their teachings. In modern first world America, do we have time for this rabbi/disciple concept? Today we follow people on twitter, television, the Internet, and of course in our cars to the store, but do we really follow teachers and devote ourselves to their teachings?
Are rabbis Richard Dawkins, Rush Limbaugh, or Barry Obama? Of those three one is anti-religion but religious about his anti-religion, one is a right-wing-loud mouth, and one is a president with big words and many promises but single handedly incapable of delivering on what he wants to promise. Do we follow them? I personally wouldn’t follow them. I wouldn’t follow Oral Roberts, Bill Gates, or Joel Osteen.
Who is your rabbi?
Birthday Songs
I have written a few birthday songs for my co-workers over the last couple years (OK, over 30, starting with this one). They’re not great songs in the grand scheme of things, but they’re songs, and they’re for my co-workers. The one thing that I have heard over & over is that people are just glad for the songs because nobody’s every written them a song. This sits with me kinda funny because as a song writer some of my earliest songs were for people. One of the first ones was for my ex-sister-in-law (before she was my sister-in-law, and well before she was my ex-sister-in-law). She was having a down time and so I wrote her a song. I’ve written songs for lots of folks, most of which have never been played in public, I haven’t even shared them with the people I wrote them for in most cases.
What I want to know from you is this: when someone writes you a letter, by hand, stamps it, mails it, and sends you a message, is it personally more significant than an email, even if it isn’t different in content? Is it like a song where it strikes you as personal and powerful compared to a simpler happy birthday wish?