Psalm 51

1 Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are proved right when you speak
and justified when you judge.
5 Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
6 Surely you desire truth in the inner parts;
you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.
7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins
and blot out all my iniquity.
10 Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
and sinners will turn back to you.
14 Save me from bloodguilt, O God,
the God who saves me,
and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.
15 O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart,
O God, you will not despise.
18 In your good pleasure make Zion prosper;
build up the walls of Jerusalem.
19 Then there will be righteous sacrifices,
whole burnt offerings to delight you;
then bulls will be offered on your altar.

Charity turf wars

I took a later bus than usual to work this morning because I had a breakfast meeting. The route I ride actually runs a couple different ways depending on what time of day it is (this is posted, not drivers improvising, mind you), and then bus I took this morning goes through Lemoyne and over the Market Street bridge, rather than picking up 83 directly out of New Cumberland.

Anyhow, as a result of that, I noticed something I'd never seen before. There was what I presume to be a Salvation Army clothing and shoes drop station in the parking lot of a local business in Lemoyne. What caught my eye was the message on the station: Donate clothing and shoes only (emphasis mine) to Salvation Army. the "most trusted" charity in America: Doing the most good.

Now, I tend not to see or pay attention to too many advertisements, so it's quite possible that this particular slogan/pitch has been out there very publically for quite a while and I've never noticed it. Regardless, it really puts me off, and disturbs me. I understand free market, and capitalism, and all of that, but have we really "advanced" to the point where we've got charities that feel the need to say "My charity is better than your charity", and in such a public manner? I have nothing against the Salvation Army, and believe they do great work, but can't they find away to promote themselves without the implied slight to other very noble, hard-working charities?

Think about what's being said here. Donate ONLY to us. Why? Because we're the most trusted charity. Implication: Can you really trust any other charity with your old clothes and shoes? Doing the most good. Implication: We can do more good with your old clothes and shoes than any other charity. Really? Are you somehow going to use my old shirt to clothe two people instead of one? Because if that's the case, I've got a much better idea for your ad campaign...

I get that in some ways, charities really are in competition with each other. If you give money to one charity, you can't give that money to another, and there's a cost of doing business as a charity, so if the bills can't be paid, the charity can't exist. But seriously, can we at least keep the "my charity is better than your charity" stuff out of the marketing campaign? And maybe, just maybe, they should focus on energy on trying to generate donations from people who aren't donating anywhere, rather than trying to sabotage the good work another group is doing. Feeding and clothing the poor doesn't seem like an appropriate arena for a turf war, but maybe that's just me.

UPDATE - Okay, so I'm an idiot. Jeff has made an excellent point via comment about what the first line was actually intended to mean. And of course, he's right. I do think it would have been more clear to have said "Donate only clothing...", and I still don't like the comparative nature of the rest of the language (especially "Doing the most good"), which is probably what led me to misinterpret the first line. However, describing what was going on as a "turf war" does seem a bit strong at this point, and I thank Jeff for injecting some sanity to my rant.

Death to preachy bumpy stickers!

Okay, I'm going to apologize right now if you find yourself in the line of the fire of this entry, and tell you that if I loved you before finding out you were a culprit of this great offense, I shall still love you afterwards, and only ask that you never show the rear of your vehicle to me ever again.

Anyhow, as you might guess from the title, I'm announcing my complete and utter hatred of preachy bumper stickers, in all shapes, sizes, forms, and creeds. If you want to give me some insight into your favorite radio station, fine. If you want to show which candidate you support in the next major election, I'm down - although please, take the thing off sometime within the first year after the election, especially if your guy loses. Have a sticker with an attractive design or picture, good for you. Proud of your alma mater? I can live with that. The little Christian fishes are cute and non-threatening, the American flag is fair game, and those various colored ribbons to indicate support for the troops, I can deal with. LiveStrong? It's toeing the line, but I'm okay. Even a quick little joke is fine. However, the second your bumper sticker starts to string words together in an effort to educate, provoke, enlighten, persuade, etc, you've crossed a line and incurred my wrath.

Let me be absolutely clear on this single point - there is NOTHING that is truly worth saying that can be contained on a bumper sticker that can be clearly read at a safe distance. Did you hear me? NOTHING!

That's right. As much as I love Jesus, I will NOT honk to make you aware of that fact, nor should anyone else. The horn has a purpose, that is not it. I'm sure your kid is wonderful, but I don't know him or her, so the fact that he/she is an honor student really doesn't impact me. I care slightly more is your kid is a deliquent that goes around beating up honor students, but really, that's still best kept to yourself. As fascinated as you may be by how much gas cost at the time President Bush took office, I was fine not knowing. If I cared what Barack Obama's middle name was, I'm pretty sure I would have known it BEFORE pulling up behind you at a red light. My attitude on war and/or peace is not so whimsical that it can be influenced one way or the other by your little witty catchphrase. You know, I'm pretty sure a tree died to make that sticker carrying your pro-forest message. Your stance, pro or con, regarding the killing of animals for food will have no bearing on whether I pull in and get a burger at that next fast food restaurant. That's right, your bumper sticker is NOT the boss of me, whatever it says.

Bear in mind, that if you would like, I'd gladly sit down with you and discuss any of these topics, and more, with you in a calm, intelligent fashion. You see, in such a forum, we get to exchange our ideas, rather than having you shout them at me from the back of your car, leaving me no way to avoid and/or respond to your point of view, a point of view which is neither completely or intelligently expressed in bumper sticker form.

So please, please, keep the educating, provoking, persuading and the like to it's proper forum, and leave your rear bumper to do the job it was meant to do - that of keeping proper distance between you and my front bumper... and maybe trying to win some contest from your favorite radio station.

I've become that which I hate!

It's true, and I'm not happy about it.

I live in a townhome community, and like many such communities, we do not have individual mailboxes at our units. Rather, there is a central station where all the mailboxes for the neighborhood are housed. I don't live right next to the mailboxes, so I try to avoid having to walk to it very often. This is done relatively easily, by simply driving up to the station and getting my mail each day when I come home from work. Many other people seem to take the same strategy, because I very often have other people show up while I'm out getting my mail.

So, here's the thing. Every unit has 2 dedicated parking spaces in the lot that are numbered, and then there are visitor spaces scattered throughout the lot. 5 of the visitor spaces are adjacent to the mailboxes, and typically no more than 1 or 2 (if that) are occupied in the late afternoon, early evening. So, my typical routine is to pull into the closest parking space, hop out and get my mail, and then return to my car.

Such a routine, however, is evidently not quick enough for certain of my neighbors. They prefer to pull up right beside the mailbox station, and temporarily park there, still in the road. I can't stand this, for a number of reasons. First of all, the road at that point is barely wide enough for two lanes even without someone parked there. So, if I come up to the mailboxes as someone is parked there, it can get to be a mess if someone is coming the other way. Secondly, if I'm already at the mailboxes and parked in the first visitor spot, someone sitting in that spot blocks my standard path for backing out to leave. And finally, they also block my view of any other vehicle that might be coming around them as I try to back out. It's not legal, and seems a rather unsafe way to go about saving the 5 seconds it might take to pull into and then out of one of the spaces.

On Thursday, when I came home, the contractors installing the fiber optic lines had hijacked a couple of the spots, and there were people parked in the other 2. So, horror of horrors, I "had" to park alongside the mailboxes, like so many people that I have grumbled at before. The internet outage almost prevented me from bringing this story to you, but then the situation repeated itself today when I returned home from a tubing trip with some other young adult from my church.

So, I'm very frustrated about this. I do comfort myself knowing that mine is a "crime" of necessity (sort of), but still, it grates at me each time I have to engage in this practice. Here's hoping the contractors move on along with their stuff very soon!

Verizon is evil, part 2 (Sort of)

So, did you miss me?

No, you probably didn't. In fact, you probably didn't really even notice I was gone. A couple days without a post isn't that uncommon on this blog, and has been even much more common this summer than in the past. However, the lack of posting was not a part of my design. In fact, I came into the house on Thursday afternoon after work perpared with a great post topic, which I'll still be writing later anyhow. Unfortunately, my internet connection was not going to cooperate with such a desire, and is only now willing to comply.

So, here's the story. I came home and took care of some errands, after which I came down here and set at the computer, ready to type away. No internet. I head over to the DSL modem/wireless router to restart it (which usually takes care of any such problem), but the DSL light was blinking, which meant the modem was not connecting back to Verizon. I unplugged the phone cable and plugged it directly into the box outside, still nothing. I pondered for a second, and then it hit me.

Verizon has contractors running underground fiber optic cable to support their FiOS internet and TV in our area. Driving by the back of the house on my way home, I had noticed they'd finally started making the runs up into the development. And, despite the fact that everything was marked, that struck me as a potential recipe for disaster. So, I walk down across the yard towards the line they dug up between the buildings, and what do I see, but a severed phone wire sticking up out of the freshly churned dirt. Lovely. Incidently, there was also a cable wire that had been destroyed as well. So, I know why the internet is out, but unfortunately, the story doesn't end there.

Shortly after I came back into the house, the lights blinked, and I thought I heard a noise outside at the same time. I ran outside, didn't see anything, and the lights stayed on, so I just went back in and settled into my evening. I was all set to watch some Olympic action, when, shortly after NBC's coverage came on, there was a definite "boom", and the lights went off. They blinked back on, another boom. This cycle repeated a couple more times, before finally the lights stayed off. I ran outside, and down in the brush area where the main transformer for our neighborhood is, there was a fire. 911 was called, the fire department came in (the fire was mostly out by the time they got here), and then the electrical company showed up to fix the problem. I'm not sure what actually happened, but they were still working on it when I left for work around 7 the next morning, so we had no power through the night. Fortunately, after being woefully unprepared for the extended blackout we had after an ice storm back during the winter, I had stocked up on candles, flashlight batteries, etc. I'm also exceedingly happy I have a gas water heater that just predates electric ignitions, so I had hot water in the morning despite the blackout. Would it surprise anyone to know that it was clear the contractors had been digging in the vicinity of our transformer?

The reason for the "sort of" in the post title is that these workers were contractors, and not actually Verizon. This time, when I called technical support, the guy was quite helpful. He believed my story and thus we skipped all but the absolute minimum troubleshooting step, and quickly got a dispatch setup. The technician made a point of moving my appointment ahead of some other work where customers didn't need to present this morning, and so things were resolved pretty quickly. And, he was quite friendly and very competant. Fortunately he didn't need much from me, because Chaser snuck out of the house behind me at one point and I had to spend 10 minutes following him around the neighborhood before he finally tired enough that I could corral him. But anyhow as, far as the actual company of Verizon on this matter, they get highmarks, other than for the contractors they chose, and to be honest, I don't expect much different from that kind of work these days, which is sad.

A word of protest

It seems that most of my loyal readers have discovered Google Reader within the last month or so, which means they only come by when there's something new actually posted. My traffic numbers have gone way down, but as far as I can tell, all my regulars are still such.

So, I plead with you, shun the new fangled techonology and go back to the old trusty method of stopping by my blog anytime you hop on the computer. It's much better for my ego that way ;-)

Moving on...

I'm not really sure what to do with myself today. There's no softball games for like 6 months, and unlike a couple of the last few nights since the softball season ended, I don't need a long nap to make up for staying up way too late watching the Olympics the night before (and planning on doing the same thing again that night). The end of swimming has seemed to signal the end of live Olympic coverage after 10 pm, which sucks from the perspective of a sports fan, but is good for my sleeping patterns.

Anyhow, so, as I promised, it's back to more frequent blogging, and more reading. Unfortunately for today's post, my life for the last week or so has been revolving around the Olympics, so I don't really have much in the way of topics that don't belong over on Peanut Vendors. I'm even reading a sports book right now. So, for today anyhow, I'll just stop in and *wave*.

Look for something more interesting soon....

A "new" way of doing business

"First you pray, first you pray, the second you see a problem come your way. Most of the time it's last on your mind but first, you need to pray."

Those words are the chorus of the song "First You Pray", from the children's musical Fat, Fat Jehoshaphat, which I performed in twice during my children's choir days back at the church where I grew up. I'm pretty sure I was 11 the 2nd time we did it, and the first time was several years earlier, so I was probably about 7. I'm sure my mom could tell me how old I actually was, because, well, moms remember that sort of thing.

Anyhow, I'm becoming more and more convinced that I learned all the really big, fundamental lessons of faith by the time I was 10, and the rest of my life has just been a process of forgetting them and then re-learning them the hard way. As much as that may sound like a harsh assessment, I'm not sure that it's really that far from the truth. And I'm pretty sure it's not that different for most people, at least for people who grew up in the church.

The lesson of the song I started with is one of those lessons, and I've really been in the process of re-learning it lately. And it's given me a new and more personal understanding of what Jesus was talking about when he said we needed to become like little children to enter the kingdom of God. When I was at the age when I was performing this song, I was so much more likely to live out its message than I have been as I've gotten older. And it isn't because I was too young to anything different back then. I was too young to BELIEVE that I knew different. Children are under no illusion regarding their size relative to the size of their problems - they KNOW they aren't big enough to deal with them. As I've gotten older, I'm not really convinced that I've become much better equipped to deal with my problems, or at least to do so successfully, but I do know that I'm much more likely to think I can deal with them. "I can handle that, no need to bother God with this one." I can think of a couple fairly significant things, both personal and with other situations, that I've been dealing with over the last several months, and when I stack up the time I've spent worrying, talking, being frustrated, etc about them with the time I've spent praying about them, it's pretty sad.

This has really come home to me in my dealings in leadership at CrossWalk. As I've alluded to recently, we've been going through some struggles. And, along with the rest of the leadership team, I set out to solve the problems. Our leadership team meets on a monthly basis, and our normal meeting would look as such: We'd have one person pray for us as we opened, then we'd spend a good two hours or more talking about problems and plans and strategies, and then we'd close with one person praying, and then we'd be done. When I came back from Thailand, I was convinced that we needed to make seeking God through prayer a more significant part of our meetings, so at our last meeting, I called a hard stop 20 minutes before our usual ending time for us to pray. However, at the leader's meeting I mentioned last Friday, I became convicted of the fact that that order was backwards, and that we needed to start by seeking God. This morning was our first meeting since then, and that's what we did.

The result was the best "business meeting" I've ever been involved in. We started (15 minutes late, mind you) with an extended prayer time, which I'm not sure ever officially ended. But we did spend about 15-20 minutes in uninterrupted prayer, and then it was like we just did our business in the midst of the prayer time, talking for a while and then winding back up in prayer, and then repeating the process. Pretty wild. We got done 15 minutes early, and I felt like we'd accomplished more than normal. And the reality is that we probably did.

So, I'm liking the early returns on this "new" way of doing business, and I'm looking forward to moving forward with it.

And so it ends

Well, the weather held off long enough for us to get our championship game in last night, which made me happy. As I've said, I've been ready for the season to end, and so the only unacceptable thing to happen yesterday would have been for the game to be rained out. Unfortunately, we were unable to recapture the magic of Tuesday night, and lost, finishing a more than respectable second in our first season playing with the big boys of the A division.

However, in doing so, we violated one of my most sacred tenants of double elimination tournamnet play, which is simply this: If you're the team with one loss entering the finals (we were) and you win the first game (we did), you had better win the second (we didn't). You may ask why this is such an important thing for me. Well, it's simple, really - efficiency. If the team with one loss wins the first game and loses the second, it takes 2 games to get the exact same result as it would have taken 1 game to get had said team just lost right away. Really, all we accomplished by winning the first game Tuesday night was to waste everyone's time, ourselves included. Shame on us. Or, conversely, shame on the other team for not winning the first game on Tuesday. It's all circular like that, which is the truly enjoyable part of this.

This stance was formed by years of Bible quizzing, in which the wish, assuming you had no other rooting interests, was to see the tournament end as quickly as possible once your team was eliminated. Since I've become a tournament director who prides himself on getting tournaments done on or ahead of schedule, this position has only been further galvanized. In fact, we had the most terrible violation of this tenant at the tournament I run this year. Not only did the team with one loss win the first quiz and lose the 2nd, they did so with BOTH quizzes going into overtime. Shameful, I say.

This policy is also quite versatile, as it can easily translate to sports like volleyball and tennis, which have matches that are best of 3 or 5 games/sets. The general principle still applies - if your aren't going to comeback all the way, don't waste our time! Of course, all of this only applies where there are no actual rooting interests involved.

Anyhow, the softball season is over, and I'm grateful for the break. Time to lick my wounds (somehow I managed to scrape up the exact same spot on the same shin on seperate plays in each of the last 2 games, the 2nd one REALLY hurt as a result), rest up, and then dive back into my other pursuits that have been neglected for the last several weeks, like reading, blogging, and poker.

Not quite done yet...

I know I said I was ready for softball to be over, and I am, but McBIC refuses today, and we advanced to the championship tonight with a solid win over the #2 seed, and then torched the #4 seed in the first championship game. I say first, because since we had a loss and they were 2-0, we have to play one more time on Thursday for all the marbles.

I have to say that, given the less than ideal amount of sleep I've been getting lately due to late-night Olympic coverage, the idea of having Thursday night free to nap was rather appealing, but my competetive nature is certainly looking forward to a chance to win it all at the highest levels of our church league (how high that actually is, I can't really say). I'd feel much better about it if we weren't missing a couple key guys on Thursday, and if I personally wasn't banged up after an unfortunate incident late in the game. There was a hard ground ball hit between me (at 2nd) and the 1st baseman. I was moving over to get it, probably could have gotten it, but he came too and got his glove on it, which tipped it right up into my right shoulder and knocked me off balance, so I went down and scraped up my right shin. So, I need to finish typing this and get some ice on it before I go to bed.

I really am looking forward to having the softball season out of the way for a while, so I can devote more time to reading and writing during the week, and hopefully re-up my posting frequency, both here and on Peanut Vendors.

By the way...

I know most of you aren't really sports fans, so I don't expect a ton of activity over on my new venture from you all, but I also know that there are many people who are not generally sports fans that become sports fans for 2 weeks during the Olympics, so I thought I'd make a point of directing you over there, as the posting has be quite Olympic-centric.

My post today focuses on the thrilling 4x100 meter freestyle relay that took place late last night.

Okay, so maybe...

we aren't "that" team. I think we lost to the real "that" team tonight. And I'm not suggesting anything sinister about that, I think they were in a more severe situation as far as not being able to get players together during the regular season than we were, actually forfeiting games here and there. And anyhow, we managed to lose 3 of our 4 meetings to them before they became "that" team, so we don't have much to complain about.

'So, as you can perhaps deduce, tonight's playoffs did not go altogether well. Things started well enough, with us as the 3 seed rallying late and ultimately defeating the 2 seed by 8 runs. Things looked really good as "that" team defeated the dominant #1 seed, who somehow only managed to have 8 guys available for the playoffs. But we just couldn't hit in our second game, so we lost, and now will play the #2 seed (who knocked the #1 seed out in their 2nd game) tomorrow for a shot to get into the championship. While I'm excited and hoping we get the job done, to be honest, I'm mainly just eager to have the season over with. I enjoy playing and hanging out with the guys, but softball takes up a lot of time through the week during the summer, and since I'm also in charge, I have those extra responsibilities, and so by season's end, I'm always ready to hang it up. I've stated that I'll play softball until I'm 30 (I'll play the season I turn 30), and then I'm going to retire from the diamond and play more golf. We'll see how that goes.

21

I detailed my struggles in getting the movie 21 from Redbox last weekend. Well, I was persistent in trying to get it again this weekend, and it paid off this afternoon, so I sat down and watched it during the wee morning hours - in Beijing, that is, when there's nothing going on at the Olympics.

I'm not a big movie person, so it's rare for me to really make a point of seeing a particular movie. The reason I was keenly interested in this particular one is that the movie is based on Bringing Down The House, which I read and reviewed several months ago - actually right about the time the movie was playing in the theatres.

As I've mentioned previously, up until last fall, I wasn't much of a reader, so this was the first time in quite some time (in fact, I'm not sure that I remember another time) that I had seen a movie after having read the book it was based on. People always say that the book is better, and it makes sense. Books are hundreds of pages, which gives ample time for character and plot development, and tons of detail. If a movie hits 2 hours (as 21 did, just barely), it's getting on the long side. So, I certainly didn't doubt those kinds of observation, but I was interested to observe it for myself.

Man, was it accurate in this case. While the premise and the meat of the story was taken from the book, the plot lines and character development were chopped pretty badly, almost to the point of being beyond recognition. I guess I just never realized how much you'd have to cut from a 300 page book to get it into a 2 hour movie. Where the book's story was involved, layered, and full of intrigue, the movie stayed very much on the surface, and the storyline around the ending was completely re-done for a more "movie friendly" ending.

I really wish I could have had the ability to compartmentalize the movie and view it without the natural connection to the book, because I feel like I would have found it to be a very good movie prior to reading the book. However, that's pretty much impossible, so this will always, in my mind, be a movie that failed pretty badly to live up to a great book.

Another brush with God

First off, I have to start by saying that I can only pray it is as beautiful in whatever part of the world you might find yourself reading this blog from as it is here today. It feels like mid-Spring rather than mid-late summer here, and I'm loving every minute of it. High 70s, low humidity, sunny, and breezy - perfect weather in my book. My Dad and I went out golfing this afternoon, and I'm just not sure you can have a better day for it than we had.

And now, onto my story, which takes place last evening. I'm on the core leadership team at CrossWalk, the satellite congregation that McBIC launched almost 3 years ago. Recently, we've gotten into the practice of having meetings every 3 months where we gather together a larger group of leaders from CrossWalk for a time of fellowship, sharing, and also dreaming and visioning for CrossWalk. We had one of those meetings last night in the form of a cookout at one of our other core team member's homes. (And yes, it was an almost perfect night for that as well, although it was almost too chilly for the pool.

The last 6 to 9 months have been rather trying for CrossWalk on a number of levels. Attendance has dipped notably, along with giving. Now, we're not looking at those metrics as a be-all, end all, but they do represent some points for concern. In addition, we've been absolutely bombarded with a number of serious "people issues", the kind of things we tend to run into at CrossWalk all the time, because we're more of a front line ministry and are often connecting with people who aren't your typical "church people". Of course, that's not to say that "church people" don't have issues, but we are definitely better at keeping them hidden.

Anyhow, we've kind of been going through a "state of the ministry" assessment, and this was what we were laying out to the larger leadership group last night. One of the things we've really been impressed to do is make a commitment to dramatically increase the amount of prayer, both individually and corporately, that happens on behalf of CrossWalk. So after we had laid out the "state of the ministry" with our leaders, we got down to the business of prayer. We originally had broken up in smaller groups to pray together, but shortly into that time, this otherwise gorgeous evening was interrupted by a sudden downpour, which brought us all together under the one awning in the lawn. We joined together, with the core team as an inner circle and the rest of the group with hands on us, and prayed.

I think the sense that many of us immediately got was that this was God showing up, showing what He wants to do at CrossWalk. Rain and water are a key symbol for God's spirit throughout Scripture, and so we just prayed that way. If there was any real doubt in my mind that this was a God thing, it was removed when, after we finished praying, as soon we started making hurried preparations to take everything inside, and as soon as one person stepped out from under the canopy, the downpour slowed dramatically, and was completely stopped within 30 seconds to a minute.

Now, could it have all been a coincidence? Yeah, I'm sure it could have been. We've had a number of these little squalls in and around the area the last couple of days (we'd had one at my house right before I left for the meeting). However, as part of this "re-wiring" I talked about that took place with me in Thailand, I've found myself much less willing to "explain away" what initially strikes me as a God thing. From my vantage point, God showed up in our midst last night, and I look forward to Him doing that again and again as we truly begin to seek Him.

On being "that" team

Well, it's playoff time for the Twin Shores Church Softball league. This is my 4th year playing in the league, and every year, the playoffs have been marked by the presence of "that" team. When I refer to "that" team, I'm talking about the team that didn't have a particularly stellar record, and is thus of a lower playoff seed that shows up in a big way. What further distinguishes that team is that they have their opponents (well, us I guess, because I can't speak for the rest of the teams in the league) saying "Man, they weren't that good when we played them the first time" and "I don't remember those guys from the regular season." The implication of that being that said team had a few guys show up "just" for the playoffs. And the fact is, this would be essentially permissible in our league. The only requirement for playoff eligiblity is that your name appear on the roster by mid-season (and that you meet the requirements for participation in the league to begin with, obviously). There is no minimum number of games to be played in the regular season, none of that. So, the playoff "ringer", while certainly not something that would be looked on with the most favor, is pretty much legit in our league.

The reality is that this perception is generally mostly a reaction to a defeat against a team you expected to beat (which was probably part of the problem to begin with). Last year, after losing to "that" team in our first playoff game, people were talking about it. No so much when we can back around and beat them in the championship. And to be honest, after the competitive fires fade away in the postgame, there's never been a team that I've seriously suspected of abusing the rules. There have been teams that have made me wonder, however.

I have a fresh perspective on that now, however, because in the 2008 "A" divsion playoffs, McBIC is "that" team. We were the B champions last year, we came up to A and scuffled our way to an 18-18 record, which left us 6th out of 10 teams. The top 2 teams in the regular season got a bye into the double elimination "final four", leaving the remaining 8 to duke it out in single elimination for the last two spots. That gave us the 4th seed for the single elimination portion. We show up last night and handle the #5 seed 13-7, and then tonight we absolutely throttled the #2 seed, 14-2 in 6 innings. With the team we've run out there thus far, and expect to have for the remainder of the playoffs, we look like a clear favorite to play for the championship, and with a legit shot to win it. I'm sure our opponents (and especially tonight's opponent - during the season we beat them by 1 run on two occasions, lost to them by a run on another, and they beat us by like 15 in the 4th game) have been thinking "Man, they weren't that good before" and "Did we see that guy before?"

And on the first point, they'd be right, we didn't play this well much of the season. They'd probably also be right on the second point, as I'm sure we were missing a few of the guys that played the last two nights every time we played them. But, as has now been driven home to me with the role reversal, that doesn't mean that we brought guys in for the playoffs - it means that we have all our best players at once, which, despite all of them being pretty regular, was a rare occurance in the regular season. We played 36 regular season games, and checking our stats, we had one guy who only played 15 and another who only played 16 in our 11 man lineup the last two nights. Everyone else played 20 or more, and many played 30 or more. It just seems that on most nights, we were missing one or two key guys who help make us click at peak efficiency. And also, during the regular season, I was always doing my best to make sure everyone who showed up got a fair amount of playing time, so even if we had our best, or close to our best, there, they weren't always in the game. We proved our capabilities in the regular season, however. Underneath our .500 overall record, we were 3-1 against the #2 and #3 regular season teams. It just so happened we caught them on some our best personnel nights.

Really, the point had mostly been driven home to me throughout the season. We played each team 2 nights this year, as opposed to just one in the past. As a result, on more than one occasion we saw two very different versions of a particular team on the different nights we played them, and we were definitely very different from night to night against certain teams. However, finally being on the other side of the coin cemented my understanding.

So, I want to apologize to all of "those" teams that I and my team might have previously had bad attitudes about, but who were really just in the same kind of very legitimate situation that we are this year. But, on the chance that there were any of "those" teams who had actual ringers, well, you just suck.

Redbox's fatal flaw

If you're on the cutting edge of movie rentals, you have probably heard of Redbox. Even if you haven't necessarily heard of them, there's a fair chance you've seen the big red machines in a local grocery store, McDonald's, or any of many other places they have them setup. If you're not familiar with them, the concept is simple. These are basically DVD vending machines. You can either reserve a movie from a machine ahead of time, or pick one out on the spot. Either way, you swipe your credit card and the movie is dispensed in a thin plastic case, without all the glitz and glamour of the standard packaging, and you're on your way. Redbox also eliminates the standard rental periods, and charges you a dollar a day for your rentals. So, if like me, you generally get a movie and watch it right away, you can get away with only a dollar (plus tax) for the rental. When you're done, you can return the DVD to any Redbox location. I think it's a pretty nice setup, really, and it may be the only realistic model in which traditional rental of DVDs will continue to be viable in the era of Netflix.

However, it does have one fatal design flaw, one which has cost Redbox my business two nights running. There is a phenomenon that accompanies renting movies on impulse, and I'm guessing you've all been a part of it. Actually, it's not so much of a phenomenon as a critical mistake people make - deciding to rent a movie, but not having a plan for which one. I'm sure you've all been there back in the days before Netflix. What is the end result of this poor decision? You wander into the store, are bombarded by all the many options, suffer from sensory overload, and spend an inordinate amount of time in the store making your pick. This is compounded when there is more than one person involved in the decision.

In your average Blockbuster, this isn't that big of a deal. The stores are large and open, you can wander them freely and not bother anyone else. You're just wasting your own time. Not so with Redbox. There's only one machine at a given location, and only one person can use it at a time. So, your indecision in this case not only wastes your time, but it either wastes the time of the people waiting, or causes them to give up, as I have the last two nights. Redbox does limit this possibility to some degree, because there are relatively few choices in a machine when compared to the average video store, but people still can spend a good bit of time flipping through the lists, more than enough to make the process seem decidedly less convenient.

When you couple the people that get caught up in this trap with those who are overwhelmed with the technology itself and stare at it blankly for a while trying to figure out how to work it, I find myself praying that there's no one in front of the machine any time I have a mind to rent a movie. The last two nights, I've been disappointed, and thus my viewing of 21 will have to wait.

Announcing a new venture

So, if you've been around this blog for a while, you may have noticed a relative lack of sports posts lately, relative to the earlier days of the blog. The reasons for this are essentially two-fold. The first one is that my current inability to get AM radio (and thus sports talk radio) at work has left me with somewhat less inspiration. The second, and probably more important, was the ongoing realization that this is really my personal blog, and that, for the most part, my regular readers are much more interested in what's going on with me than they are in my opinions about sports, so I've been pretty consciously favoring posting about stuff that's going on with me, and my takes on life in general.

Anyhow, my good friend, and former roommate of 5 years, Jeff evidently had been undergoing the same conflict, and he recently launched a separate blog for his sports musings. I saw that and thought it was a great idea, but also knew that I had zero chance of keeping a meaningful level of activity on 2 blogs by myself for any extended period of time. I felt like Jeff had similar concerns, so I approached him about joining up with his blog. I liked that idea for a number of reasons, but primarily because it takes the pressure off of either one of us to fill up a blog, and because I think the two of us will prove a rather entertaining combination as we post and play off of each other's styles, and thus this blog might one day be worthy of an audience that is wider than just our own friends and family.

So, allow me to introduce you to We are the Peanut Vendors. From here on out, Peanut Vendors will be my venue for my sport takes and my reviews of sports-related books. I may occasionally link to a story on that blog if I find it noteworthy, but the only sports related material you're likely to find in this space would be personal stories (like my softball adventures and rants), or posts related to Messiah College athletics. So, if you're interested in my sports takes, I invite you to jump on over to Peanut Vendors from time to time. And if you aren't, fear not, for this space will still stay active with my musings on everything outside the world of sports.

A "minor" miracle

Okay, so here's the additional story from last Saturday's Thai team "reunion" that I held off on sharing. You're not going to get the whole story here, because it involves some personal stuff from someone other than me, but I think I can share enough to make this worth writing about.

Anyhow, one of our team member's had shown up at the prayer gathering on crutches for a pretty badly sprained ankle. As the story goes, she had had a pretty significant ankle injury as a child that never got proper attention, and from time to time she has re-activated it. The most recent time had been a week prior to our meeting, but she hadn't realized ithat's what she had done t right away and had walked on it for 3 days, while it got worse and worse.

So, we went through our prayer gathering and our dinner meeting, and as we were wrapping up, she was sharing with Kris the story of her injury, and Kris said "Before we go, we need to pray for that." To which I was like, "Seriously, yeah, we should do that." It hit me that it never really occurred to me to do that, and I shared that feeling. Kris shared how in Thailand, she wouldn't hesitate to stop and pray for that, but that we just don't do that in the States, so she has to make a point of catching herself. It's that re-wiring I talked about a few days ago, and having to remember that it does apply here as well. Here in the States, for something like a sprained ankle, we pretty much tend to just say "Yeah, that stinks, I hope it gets better soon", and leave it at that, basically deciding that it's not something to bother God with. It's like it has to be something that we don't think we're capable of dealing with before we take it to God. I remember when I was in Thailand, I had a stomach issue later in the trip that had woken me up a couple nights and left me feeling unsettled. It was basically just a nuisance, but in no way debilitationg. I dealt with it for 2 days, and when I shared it with Lynn, he immediately wanted to pray for me (and did, despite my initial "oh, it's fine"), and wouldn't you know, I didn't have any more trouble with it. Again, in my mind, I had decided it wasn't important enough to take to God.

So anyhow, after we finished our meeting we went outside of the Hoss's, and the other 3 of us laid hands on her ankle and prayed for her. There's a longer story here which involves the personal details I don't feel comfortable sharing, but the short story is that when we were done, she removed the wrap she had on her ankle, and she walked to her car carrying her crutches, without the slightest limp. I saw her again today and she said that one day this week when she was on it all day, it had gotten a bit achy, but other than that, the pain had been completely gone.

I'm not sure that I remember ever being present at an immediate healing like that, but it was pretty amazing. I use the term "minor" miracle to describe it in the title because this was something so basic and simple that, as I said, most of the time we wouldn't even bother praying for healing for it. That's an attitude I'm re-evaluating at this point, by the way. And yet, in the truest sense, there's no such thing as a minor miracle, hence the quotes. When Kris shared with CrossWalk the Sunday before we left for Thailand, she shared a number of "minor" miracles that they have experienced in the village, and followed that by saying that if God can do those things, why can't he do those "major" things we're asking for? And I totally see that attitude and understanding firsthand.

You know, I've not been a "name it, claim it" guy, or someone who says that healing is only a matter of faith because God wants to heal everyone. And I'm still not - I think that God's ways are not our ways, and that physical healing is not in His design for every situation. However, that doesn't mean we can't ask in every situation, and ask with an expectation that He can and will answer. And, we can rest assured that, no matter how "minor" the ailment, He does care, regardless of whether His answer in the particular situation is an act of physical healing.

Oh, the humanity!

I shall start this post with one of my traditional disclaimers. I write this post to be as much a reminder to myself as it is a critique of the behavior I witnessed today. As much as I would like to, I can't believe that I'm "above" this kind of attitude/action in all situations.

Anyhow, my bus was 5 minutes late this morning, and in response to that statement, all of you are probably thinking "So?" Exactly. While it's not exactly fun standing an extra 5 minutes at the bus stop, it's hardly a big deal. In fact, I just recently changed my hours and am taking a later bus these days. Whereas the early bus I used to take would almost always run early, the later bus, which is more subject to the whims of commuting traffic, generally is on time to a minute or so late. I actually prefer this, because I missed the early bus once or twice because it came even earlier than normal. I like knowing that if I show up as directed on the schedule, I don't miss the bus.

Anyhow, those are my feelings about the bus running 5 minutes late. I imagine that the troubles I had at the very beginning of my time riding the bus has tempered my impatience as well, because I don't necessarily take for granted that the bus is going to show up at all. My feelings were not shared by a lady who is a regular at my stop in the morning, however. Prior to the bus arriving, she was grumbling to the 3rd stop regular. Evidently she had seen the bus on it's way through town as she was coming to the stop (the bus comes out from Harrisburg down to the New Cumberland army base and then loops back through to head back into the city) and knew that the regular bus driver was not driving this morning, and made some remarks about how when the regular bus driver isn't there, they don't seem to know what time they are supposed to show up.

That would have been annoying enough to listen to, but then when the bus finally showed up (again, a whopping 5 minutes late), she made a rather rude remark to the busdriver as we were getting on. Now, maybe the busdriver did get a late start, but here's the thing - the route the busdriver is running has taken her about 10 miles at this point, after 7 am, through Harrisburg and what can a rather busy little town in New Cumberland. I can think of any number of ways to lose 5 minutes on that route, most of which are completely out of control of the busdriver. When I got to work and had the radio on, I learned there was a fesitival closing off Market Street between 2nd and Front, that alone could have caused a 5 minute delay. And to top it off, one of the very first days I road this bus, the regular bus driver was more than 5 minutes late, and she spent the whole time talking about how he was almost always on time, and he must have gotten stuck down at the Depot, like happens some times. Interesting.

Anyhow, I was just thinking how pointless snapping at the busdriver was in this situation, and how unfair, on a number of levels, and then how easy it is to take out our frustrations in manners that are completely non-constructive. I also found it exceedingly interesting the effect that context has on the reactions here. The regular busdriver is late, the assumption is the delay wasn't his fault, but the replacement doesn't get such consideration.

So, I just hope the next time I'm as frustrated as this woman was today, I might take a moment to consider whether the object of my frustration actually deserves to be the object of my frustration.