Recovering Baptist

I don’t know how they do it, but Hollywood reports its weekend results around mid-evening Saturday. Tonight I’m following their lead. It’s been a pretty damned good weekend.

For starters, Thursday and Friday were good on the job front. No breaking news, but I’ve got more leads than I’ve had to now. OK, that’s enough of that. No more job discussion, allright?

Friday morning marked the end of our kids’ VBS at Chamblee Methodist. They do a great job there, and even the end-of-week program was bearable. Even better, the boys went straight home with my folks, leaving us free for 20 or so hours. Ahhhh.

Later that night my wife and I set up for a concert in one of the coolest office spaces in town. The challenge is that a cool office space with concrete floors and metal ceilings usually doesn’t make for a good club feel. But, if I do say so myself, we made it sound pretty good. Oh yeah, the fact that Ming Dynasty and Lil’ Jen gave me good stuff to work with helped a bit, too.

Saturday morning my parents dropped by the house and picked me up. The five of us headed out to the family farm, leaving my wife at home to work on cabinet doors. The weather was a bit threatening, but the rain held off until after we left the farm. The boys spent most of the day fishing with my dad while my mom and I gathered blackberries. I’m covered with scratches, and my fingers are purple, but it’s awesome.

And now I’m blogging from the kitchen where I have 20 cups worth of blackberries cooking with 15 cups of sugar. I’m attempting to make something of a cross between a jelly and a jam or preserve. Hopefully I’ll have enough to satisfy my needs and share just a bit. And yes, I did leave enough to make a cobbler, too.

So yes, I can already say that this was a great weekend. buy cialisbuy cialisbuy levitrabuy levitrabuy propeciabuy propeciabuy somabuy somabuy levitrabuy cialisbuy propeciabuy levitrabuy somabuy cialisbuy propeciabuy levitrabuy somabuy cialisbuy levitrabuy propeciabuy soma

I had an awesome post ready to go and wordpress ate it. Let’s try this again.

You know you spend too much time in front of the computer when you get the jitters because your home network was down for an hour.

How many different songs has Randy Jackson called “one of my favorites?” With all the hypercompulsive people on the world wide web, surely someone has gone through all 6 plus seasons of American Idol and cataloged them. If you happen to know where such a page is, please point me to it.

My math says Randy has identified at least 150 different favorite songs.

I bet Simon has said that about fewer then ten.

What is it with private school presidents in our city? First the president of my alma-mater takes a dive out a hotel window, and now the president or Marist just keels over. I noticed yesterday that they were draping the fancy new bricked entrance to Marist with black, but I had no idea as to why; now I do.

Us private school types share a sort of comradery, so my heart goes out to the kids and faculty on Ashford Dunwoody, even if they did manage to beat us in almost every football game (9th grade, JV, and Varsity) each of the four years I studied in College Park.

When doing business in a place, it’s always important to get an understanding of the customs and persuasions of your clients. Proper attire is critical to success. So if you don’t want to look like a malihini, then here are two fashion tips.

Do wear Hawaiian shirts. The kama’aina do not wear golf shirts or button downs, not even for business. And they certainly never wear a suit or a blazer!

Avoid most Hawaiian shirts. It may come as a surprise, but while the natives may be comfortable with the near nudity that surrounds them at times, they prefer conservative attire. Muted colors with patterns from nature, or possibly surf boards are favorites. But if you want the locals to snicker, then pick the brightest shirt you can find, and plaster it with cars, motorcycles, and hula girls.

I’ve had great luck on my flights from Atlanta to Honolulu. The first time I had a bulkhead seat and sat next to a disgruntled platinum medallion member who had countless free drink coupons to hand out. This time one of the flight attendants happened to be my neighbor, so I basically had all I could drink on the way out and was presented with even more on my way out of the plane. But once I got here things started to go downhill.

As I was unpacking last night I realized that I left the power supply to my laptop at home. As it turns out, the super powerful, extra special HP/Compaq 8510 laptop that my company ordered to replace my Thinkpad also requires a super special and very powerful power supply. I found this out after driving all over the island looking for something to power my pc. Despite the fact that I was enjoying the tropical rain, I decided to head out to try more stores, and that’s when I found out that I left the lights on. What kind of company rents cars that don’t automatically turn off the lights??? And since when did Chevy start building cars that won’t let go of the keys when the battery is drained???

I wasted an hour and a half waiting for a jumpstart, and as soon asI pulled out of the deck I knew something was wrong. As I drove around trying to charge the battery, something wasn’t right - the transmission just felt completely wrong. So it was back to the airport to swap cars, and that led me into construction traffic on H1. Five miles an hour would have been fast on the H1 today.

Let’s hope that the rest of this trip is an improvement, because so far things on island haven’t gone that great.

The one good thing is that LSU made its way into the Championship game. My relationships out here have made me interested in Hawaii football anyway, but now I can enthusiastically say Go Warriors and to Hell with Georgia!!!

It was about bedtime Monday night when I told the boys to each pick out a story. I read Fox in Socks at the behest of our younger one and then asked our older boy what book he had. “Are you my mother?” he replied. For kicks I told him to read it to me. He’s four, and I figured there was no way he would get through the whole thing.

I was wrong.

It’s amazing to watch how he’s learning, even when he’s not being explicitly taught. His school is just now getting to the alphabet, and he lost interest in learning how to read from us. Apparently that’s because he plans to teach himself.

Heck, if the kid’s going to learn how to do things on his own, maybe I can interest him in doing my taxes next…

Jetlag sucks, but it’s great to be back home. Some bosses might complain when someone falls asleep on the job, but that’s one of the great things about working at home - who has to know??? Goodnight…

It’s been fourteen months in the making, but I’m finally returning to the Aloha State. My flight is in a few hours and I’m still not packed. I’ve got the boys to myself while I get everything ready, this should be fun, but it’s all downhill after that.

My job’s taking me to Hawaii. Twice. You know you want to be me right now.

Aloha!