Yes, we have a weekend coming up. Unfortunately, we’ll be heading into the weekend with a house full of sickies – Becky, both girls, and I are all fighting colds, coughs, and sore throats. Ick. So, here’s my list of guesses of things we’ll do this weekend.

• We’ll want to sleep in tomorrow morning, but won’t really get to, since the girls pretty much are up at 7:00 regardless of what day it is.
• We’ll rent another DVD or two from the store and catch up on a bit of our movie watching. Maybe Wall-E or Hancock.
• We’ll hit CiCi’s for cheap-o pizza.
• We won’t get to church, given that we’re all feeling icky.
• We’ll visit the library sometime… probably Saturday.
• We’ll watch some college football… most definitely the Florida/Alabama game.
• I won’t post anything more interesting than this to the blog.

There’s my profound list for Friday. I’ll check back in on Monday to see what kind of score I get.

Is it egotistical to drink coffee from a mug that says “I (heart) my Music Minister” when, up until last week or so, I was the music minister?

I’ve quite enjoyed playing with the new Genius playlist feature in iTunes 8.0, but found out yesterday that it makes some interesting choices when it’s limited by the subset of music I have on my 8GB iPod touch.

(To make sense of this for my mom and others who might read this who have no idea what the Genius playlist is – basically you give it one song, and it generates a playlist of “similar” songs from whatever you have on your iPod. It works really well with my full music library.)

Case in point: I asked it to generate a 25-song playlist based on Simon and Garfunkel’s classic Mrs. Robinson.

Near the middle of the playlist: John Williams’ Imperial March from The Empire Strikes Back.

I don’t even wanna know how it made that leap. (Well, I sorta do…. but not really… but yeah.)

A week without a blog update + lack of creativity = desperate measures. Hence, the bullet points.

• This past weekend felt far more like autumn than summer; this morning when I woke up it was 53°F outside and 63°F in the house. Beautiful sleeping weather. It’s gonna warm up a bit this week, but nothing too bad.
• I thought it felt like I ran into a strand of web as I walked into the dining room this morning. A few minutes later I felt something on my neck. Becky, you can thank me later for killing that spider.
• My sermon on Saturday night went pretty well. I intended to link to it here but didn’t get it uploaded last night. It’ll have to wait.
• Now I need to get my backside in gear for my next sermon, only two weeks hence. How do I focus all I want to say about worship into 30 minutes?
• Next week I’m headed to Denver for some training and a conference. I think it’ll probably be warmer in Denver than it will be at home while I’m gone.
• Nick & Allie led worship Saturday night at Imago and did a fantastic job. Allie wrote a new tune for the hymn Under His Wings that has been stuck in my head all weekend. Thanks a lot, Allie.
• My poor backyard is being overtaken by crabgrass. Gotta do something about that.

Well, now, that was random, eh?

I have a couple other posts floating around in my head, but need to gather some thoughts (and pictures) before writing them. So… a little this’n'that, aka bullet points for a Tuesday morning.

• Softball last night was fantastic. Beautiful weather, good competitive game. Oh, and we won.
• Not my favorite: opposing pitchers who whine about us taking walks when they are unable to throw a strike.
• Definitely my favorite: Becky, who struck out (looking!) said whiny pitcher to start the seventh inning.
• My list of projects is getting long. I’ve accomplished some, but others are going to slide right into June without me even touching them.
• Next week: headed to Montreal. Looking forward to it.
• Also next week: Becky’s folks come to visit. This will be two years in a row that they’ve come to visit the week that I’ve been on travel. Hmmm… wonder what I should infer from that?
• These Fractal Drawers might be one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen… at least this week. (Saw them on Boing Boing, then Daniel shared them, too… thanks Dan!)

• It was an amazingly beautiful weekend. Fortunately the beautiful weather is sticking around for today so we can play softball.
• Oh, and I’m going to ump the second game of the night. I don’t remember if I’ve said it before, but I enjoy umping games almost more than I enjoy playing them.
• Got a bunch of projects completed on the house this weekend.
• New carpet put down in basement: complete.
• Nasty mold scrubbed from laundry room wall: complete.
• Pegboard hung in laundry room to organize tools: complete.
• Tools organized: not so complete.
• Crock Pot cord repaired: complete.
• Music leading both Saturday night and Sunday morning: yep.
• Double-edged sword: if I had the Versus channel I could’ve watched the Dallas Stars play last night. On the other hand, had I stayed up to watch, I would’ve had to watch until the fourth OT to see them win.
• Go Stars! Bring on those Red Wings.
• If the Stars win the Stanley Cup this year I’m gonna buy that Mike Modano jersey I’ve always wanted.
• Enough with the bullets already.

So back in my Caedmon’s concert post, Daniel commented that he found the length of that road trip to see a concert “insane”. Being the nerd that I am, I decided an “equation of insanity” would be appropriate. (Geof’s equation of motivation was an additional piece of inspiration.)

So, without further ado, the equation:

I = (d+t)/qL

Where

I = relative insanity of the trip
d = distance traveled to the concert
t = time that trip took
q = quality of the artist you are going to see
L = length of the concert.

Of course the tricky thing here is that the q value will vary between persons, so just because you think my trip is insane doesn’t mean that I will agree with you. Also, by including not only the distance of the trip but also its’ duration, trips like Geof’s planned flight to Philly aren’t as insane as if he were to, say, drive to Philly.

There’s also the issue of theoretical insanity versus actual insanity. For instance, my trip to see Andy O’s The Morning release show theoretically should be much more insane because of the distance to Nashville, but in actuality the concert was so awesome that the real insanity level was much lower.

Note to Becky, my Mom, etc: Yes, this really just means that I am a huge nerd. Not exactly a revelation.

Becky and I were wandering the toy shelves at our local Target store recently, finishing up some Christmas shopping for the girls. On one shelf I saw this little set of dolls:

A couple of thoughts came to mind: first, how quaint! This reminds me of something out of the early 20th century, all nicely culturally stereotyped in ethnic garb. I am surprised that the PC police haven’t come down on it. But then I looked a little closer, and noticed this particular doll, which you can still make out even with the fuzzy picture quality from my camera phone:

Notice anything wrong? Yep, the doll is supposed to represent England, but she’s wearing Scottish plaid. If I were from England, I’d be unhappy. Obviously, somebody from Target (or whoever in China designs their toys) doesn’t realize that Scotland /= England. Ah well, a geography lesson for another day.

Should you arrive for a visit at our house, you will find this guy greeting you:

[As always, I am grateful to Daniel for this very useful format.]

• Addie didn’t sleep well last night. She’s getting a tight-ish cough, stuffy nose, ick. No fun.
• There’s been an owl somewhere near our bedroom window for the past few nights. That rascal hooted nearly all night.
• Read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road in one long take last night. Chilling and bleak. Images that stick in your head.
• Result of all of the above: sleepy this morning. Very sleepy.
• It also may have something to do with all the CiCi’s Pizza I ate yesterday. I think I ate a piece too much.
• A long-ish day at work today.
• Tonight we’re going to see David Wilcox in concert here in CR. We’re going with some new friends of ours. Should be fun. Hope I stay awake.