...thoughts expressed here are not necessarily final.
January 1, 2006 New Year, New Day, New Chance!
I don't have all I need to blog from
here, so pardon my formatting problems till next week!
Earnie and I stayed up last night to see the New Year in. Our dear friends,
the Bridges drove all the way from Collinsville, Illinois to spend the
day with us Saturday and left Sunday morning to head back home. We all
thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Jerry and Paulita brought a couple of pieces
of furniture to us- a quilt rack Earnie's uncle made for her and Great
Aunt Nora's rocking chair, along with a couple of plants we left at their
house. We did a little shopping, ate at Bahama Breeze, and took in the
Yield House Christmas store. We went to Macaroni Grill for dinner. Then
we returned home and enjoyed Polar Express together before J &P headed
off to bed. Ma Smith had already retired, so we stayed up and prayed
for our friends in Dallas and Illinois and shared our memories for the
past year and articulated hopes for the one to come. This was a watershed
year for the Fosters with newness every morning. Yet God's faithfulness
is also new every morning!
Dick Clark, God Bless him, sounded awful. Don't know whether he is brave
or craving the spotlight.
We woke up, kicked off the New Year with a hearty if unhealthy breakfast
before our friends headed back to Illinois. What a blessing to wallow
in love.
Then it was off to church at Northside where we were blessed to hear the
Word lifted up. I expect we will join here soon. There has been so much
travel throughout the holidays since we moved that I'd like to string
together a few more consecutive messages before commiting.
 |
I finally found my annual Nativity scene I try to add to our collection each year. This one is acrylic and lit with blue and gold lights. I might just leave it up to enjoy for a while. |
January 5, 2006
Why I hate traveling: It's been a long two days. I left for San
Francisco Tuesday at 11:30 AM, dropped the car at the Park and Fly, checked
the bags and waited for departure'and waited, and waited. It looked obvious
that I would miss my connecting flight in Chicago, but that flight was
delayed even longer than the one out of Indy.
The flight itself was lousy- I was in a center seat of a 767 with two
gay buddies gushing all over each other with their seats reclined
into my lap, a Britney
Spears look-alike sneezing on me to my left and a fidgetter to the right.
In the cramped quarters I had a charley-horse in the ball of my
foot. I did think I was going to enjoy the in-flight movie, Dreamer,
but the audio had Spanish overdubs bleeding through due to a tracking
problem.
After arriving in San Francisco a good two hours after anticipated, I
just had time to catch the last shuttle to the hotel- sans baggage. I
was not the only one- American lost the bags for our departure flight.
At least it was not as bad as what United passengers apparently suffered
yesterday- a global meltdown of the baggage computer systems worldwide.
As of this writing, I still have no bags. I called four times with no
results, so I made a trip to Macy's down the street and bought a change
of clothing. By the time I took care of business- (my performance evaluation
data didn't go through last week), bought the clothes, had lunch, and
registered, it was well into the afternoon session. I did meet some sales
reps and we talked- one was actually from St. Louis.
This whole scenario sucks. I'll start in tomorrow fresh since I have not
heard from my cohorts here.
Reality check:
When I got in last night, there was jubilation over the news that the
miners in West Virginia were alive. By the time I retired just after midnight
here on the west coast, jubilation had turned to devastation. I can only
pray for the loss and the circumstances surrounding it. I will also pray
the folks will come to praise God in their loss as they were doing in
their celebration. This is the hardest, and I think, most blessed thing
we humans are capable of In Christ.
Rats. MacWorld begins the day I am flying out. Can't even see the
exhibit halls even though I am a few blocks away. I do hope to get over
to the SF MOMA tomorrow evening though. I did get to go to the Apple store
here and saw the entire line of cool electronics and sat in on an iMovie
session and learned a few things I didn't know.
A lawsuit says Jesus doesn't exist and never did.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/01/04/italy.jesus.reut/index.html
An Italian court is tackling Jesus -- and whether the Roman Catholic Church
may be breaking the law by teaching that he existed 2,000 years ago.
Narnia revisited...Seems we were right in thinking Narnia would
top the "blockbuster" list for the season. After making a move
to a new location and job, I am trying to catch up with the rich posts
at the Motley Fool Narnia board which my friend Larry maintains and creates
content for. It has been a while since I have last perused the board.
The community has developed nicely...My loss, it seems.I look forward
to hearing Larry's teaching on the CON and Lewis he will be offering at
PCPC in Dallas soon. The preliminary syllabus looks very good.
Larry has recently been tracking the increase in sales of Lewis' other
books since Narnia has been in the news. I think collateral interest in
Lewis' other works certainly may have peaked, but I expect that peak to
accompany the release of the future movies as well, though perhaps in
shorter ripples. As a lover of all Lewis' works, I am happy that his "rediscovery"
goes on. Perhaps the most influential Christian author of the 20th century
will be the most influential of the first half of the 21st. Though I hope
we have a new Lewis for successive generations. Do you think that is possible,
or was Lewis writing in an unique milieu in which the Christian message
was captured in a way that is not likely to be seen again?
Oops- that was a bit nonsensical.
Blockbusters and Custom Content
I was reading somewhere this week about blockbusters as a waning format.
The author's take was that blockbusters are created to appeal to the masses
and the wave of the future is highly specialized and customized content
geared to individual tastes.
For instance he could not imagine King Kong being remade again 30 years
from now in some new format like holography or some such.
I say good stories make a blockbuster, and even though great stories appeal
to the masses, they also appeal to individual tastes. So there will always
be remakes. There are few really great stories and much of the rest is
a permutation or degradation of the great ones.More thoughts on the LWW
movie...
I have posted comments on the movie previously and though they did not constitute a review, I was pretty hard on the overall effort.
I saw LWW again tonight and it gets better with multiple
viewings. I hereby officially repent of saying William Moseley is a weak
actor- in fact he did a fairly credible job with just a few strained looks
along the way.
I still think the musical score was weak- it lacked a grand theme that
stayed with you.
A couple of things I noticed:
Did anyone else notice that on the movie poster, and I THINK in the movie,
Jadis starts out with three polar bears drawing her chariot and loses
one along the way in the battle scenes? I haven't seen that one on any
blooper site.