This past weekend was “Christmas in July” with Lyndsay’s family. They all get together a couple of times each year, and this is one of them. It was a lot of fun. We woke up early, drove up to Graham, KY, and had a HUGE lunch. I took some pictures, so I thought I’d post one here. After all, one of the things we discussed is that they actually do read my blog! Always nice to have someone pat you on the back and let you know they care…even if it is your mom(-in-law). We reminisced about Lyndsay driving her car into walls and parked cars.

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From left to right: Cheryl, James, (known more commonly as “Granddaddy”) Mollie, and Rose.

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Shirley (known more commonly as “Grandmother”), Charlie, and Mollie

It was a great day with family!

I was reading today’s entry in “My Utmost for His Highest,” which is a totally awesome day by day devotional book. (And by today I mean July 25th. Because even though it’s only been July 25th for 14 minutes right now, I am on the cutting edge of devotion.)

It signed off with this sentence: “The Sermon on the Mount is not a set of rules and regulations: it is a statement of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is getting His way with us.”

So I decided to read the Beattitudes for what seems like the ???th time of my life. But I decided to try out the version of the Bible called “The Message”…and I was pretty impressed by down-to-earth the writing style was:

“You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule. “You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you. “You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are–no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought. “You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.  “You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being “carefull,’ you find yourselves cared for. “You’re blessed when you get your inside world–your mind and heart–put right. Then you can see God in the outside world. “You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family. “You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom. “Not only that–count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens–give a cheer, even!-for though they don’t like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.

Lyndsay, my lovely wife, doesn’t like feet. And by “doesn’t like,” I mean “despises and is repulsed by.” I don’t understand why. I spent some time thinking about it today…and the more I think about it, the less it makes sense.

First…she’s a nurse. She tells stories about people bringing her their fingers in a bag. And she laughs while she tells them. It’s disgusting! But how different are messed up hands and messed up feet? I don’t see much of a difference. Especially not enough of a difference where it is okay to laughingly recall memories of detached fingers while not wanting to be within three yards of a perfectly healthy foot.

Putting the nurse thing aside, I know that she’s not the only person on earth with this “foot-phobia.” I’ve met other people before who echo her ill will towards feet. She is not alone.

But here is the greatest mystery of all: She has no aversion whatsover to the ground. She walks on it. I’ve seen her bend over and touch it every now and then. I’ve even seen her sit on it. Once I even watched her roll down a big grassy hill inside Samford’s football stadium (though that was mostly because the cardboard box she was attempting to ride stuck to the ground at the top and catapulted her forward).

So let’s recap: Okay with the ground…okay with people, above the ankle…what is wrong with feet?

That’s my boy!

Originally uploaded by ScottCrews

That’s my boy! I love compassion international.

Today I found the list of Starbucks stores that are going to be closing nationwide. Since the announcement a couple weeks ago, I’ve been on pins and needles in fear that my local Starbucks was going to be one of them. For those of you who haven’t been to my house (yet)…I have a Starbucks about 300 yards from my house. It’s pretty awesome. When we moved here I hadn’t yet discovered the wonder of drinking coffee (another post for another day), so I didn’t care as much.

In the last few months as I’ve begun drinking coffee, I’ve come to love my Starbucks. First, it’s a nice place to meet people that I don’t want to let in my house. Second…it enjoy all the different beans that I can buy to make my own coffee. It’s a bit overwhelming, but two of the three times that I’ve stood there staring at the assortment of coffee beans, a barista has come out from behind the counter and walked me through the selection, giving me their explanations and recommendations. Excellent customer service at my Starbucks.

Which…besides resale value…is a large reason I didn’t want it to go out of business. When I heard about the 600 closing I said to myself, “nah…that’s like what…less than a 1 in 10 chance? I’ll be fine.”

But then they announced that 1 in 5 stores opened since January 1 of 2006 would be closing. That’s when I quitely freaked out. After all, I live in a developing area of town. There aren’t a lot of people here yet, which probably makes our numbers for the last year or so a bit lower than they will be in the future when stuff finishes being built. It’s obvious when you drive around the area, but not as obvious when you look at numbers on paper at a corporate office on the other side of the country.

But then today I saw the list here. You can download the list of all the stores. There were a few in Birmingham, and a couple in Murfreesboro where I go to school…but that was it. No store closing for me! There weren’t even any in the Nashville area.

I will sleep better tonight for sure. Well…maybe not. Because I just had a big ole’ cup of coffee to get me through class tonight and I’m a little bit jittery still.

Today is Cow Appreciation Day at Chick-fil-A. If you dress up as a cow, you get free Chick-fil-A. How awesome is that? I was going to do it, but I totally forgot. That, and I’m all out of cow apparel.

It does make me reflect fondly on my high school days. While in high school, I worked at Chick-fil-A. I worked there from the summer after my freshman year through the middle of my senior year. In hindsight, it was a great work environment and a great learning opportunity for me as a kid.

During my time at Chick-fil-A, our store started a “Kid’s Night” promotion. It advertised that “The Cow” would be present. I talked my manager in to letting me be the cow.

This wasn’t an easy task.

Just a couple weeks prior I had gotten my first big opportunity as the cow at a child’s birthday party. I brought out the cake and went to take my obligatory picture with the birthday child…except she didn’t want to be in the picture. No problem, I thought…I’ll just bend down and squat with the kid. So I do. They take the Polaroid…and when I went to get up, I forgot about the humongous cow head strapped to my shoulders and I lose my balance and fall backward.

…right into the birthday child’s stack of presents. I fell pretty hard. And then I scrambled to get up. I don’t remember much after that, except the mom saying “No, honey, I don’t think it’s broken.” and holding a Disney princess umbrella that was bent crooked at about a 35 degree angle in the middle. I ran about as fast as I could back into the kitchen, totally embarrassed.

Needless to say, getting this Kids Night gig wasn’t an easy thing. I got it though (possibly because no one else wanted it).

The first night…I was on. I’m not sure how or why I was so good at it, but I really enjoyed it and the managers could see that the kids did too. So I got to keep on doing it. It went on, 3 hours a week for about a year. Most of the fun came in thinking up new things to do in a cow suit. And seeing how close I could get to being in trouble without actually getting in trouble. My top three almost in trouble instances:

3) Someone left a campaign sign for George W out by the busy road our street was on, adjacent to our store’s property. I picked it up and ran up and down our busy road with the sign (this was in 2000). I got called out by a manager because the cow is not allowed to endorse a political candidate.

2) I got in trouble for riding through the drive thru in some random stranger’s truck bed. I didn’t consider myself in any danger at all. He was a nice guy. I was going to get out before he got his food.

1) I climbed on top of the fire truck while the firemen weren’t looking. They were SO mad! It was hilarious. The truck came to do a community thing there at the store for Kids night. While they were inside talking about something with the managers, I scampered up the back ladder and when they came back up, there I stood, frozen, on top of the truck. It was quite a sight to see. The first thought through my head was, “If I get stuck on top of this thing, who comes to get me down? ANOTHER fire truck?!” And it was considerably harder to get down the truck than it was to get up.

Happy Cow Appreciation Day!

I was going through the closet the other day when I discovered my old Canon A-1 Camera. This was my primary camera through high school and college until I got a digital one. It’s an awesome camera. And it’s the official camera of the 1980 olympics! I have some great memories of taking pictures with this thing, so I decided that, in honor of it’s 30th birthday (yup, it was made in 1978), I’d get it back out and take some pictures to see if it could still do its thing.

And what I learned is that while it probably still can do it’s thing, I have completely forgotten how to take pictures with it.

I grabbed one good one–the first picture I took at all, actually–that I was pretty pleased with. The rest…well, I think it gets progressively worse. Could I blame Walmart for that? Probably not.

As most of you know, I spend most of my days behind a computer screen crunching numbers so that folks like Brock Gill, Tim Byrne or Boarders for Christ can be out on the road doing what God has called them to do. We work for a handful of groups and events. It’s an awesome job.

Occasionally we’ll meet folks who are doing what our folks are doing. Recently we met a guy named Dan Meyer, from Hartselle, AL. He’s a sword swallower. Crazy, huh? I’ve worked with illusionists for so long (Brock and Jim) that I never take entertainment for what it is anymore. But I’ll tell you what. This guy is the real deal. In fact, if you look on Dan’s website, www.cuttingedgeinnertainment.com, you can actually see X-rays of him swallowing swords!

But the coolest things are happening for Dan. Have you turned your TV on to NBC today? You might have seen Dan. He was on the Today show live this morning, and was featured tonight on the show ”America’s Got Talent.” I’ve never seen him perform in person, so this was my first time to watch him do it.

If you haven’t seen it, I won’t ruin it for you. There was actually an interview with Piers Morgan, one of the judges from the show a few weeks ago and they ran the clips of Dan. Here’s the interview…

 Pretty neat, eh? I’ve never watched “America’s Got Talent” before, but I think I will now. I gotta say though, I almost went through my tv and strangled David Hasslehoff when hit his buzzer for no reason and Dan almost choked.

Go Dan go!!

To quote Dan’s myspace page: For booking and management information, contact Gresham Hill Management at (615) 258-4141 or e-mail info@greshamhill.com.

A few weeks ago Lyndsay and I went to Atlanta to watch our friends Chris and Jennie get married. It was a great wedding. We had a great time and got to catch up with a bunch of wonderful people from Samford we hadn’t seen in a long time. 

One particularly funny moment came after the wedding when they were taking pictures. I was lucky enough to catch most of it on video. Here’s the clip. (”I’m sorry! I enjoy Whoppers!”)