The timeline of how we see other people's Christmas decorations

• From the day after Thanksgiving to Dec 25: "Those Christmas lights are great!"
• Dec 26-31: silence
• Jan 1-7: "Guess it's time to take the lights down buddy."
• Jan 8-14: "Seriously, they still have their lights up?"
• Jan 15-21: "Hey you weirdos - Christmas was LAST YEAR!!"
• Jan 22-31: "There should be a city ordinance and fees for people like that!"
• Feb & March: Stunned silence. Burst of laughter or slow shaking back and forth of head. Possibly includes a phone pic sent to your friends accompanied by "Can you believe this?!?"
• April to Sept: "What - are you just leaving them up so you don't have to do any work next year? Ghheezz...the laziness of some people"
• Oct: Silently to yourself, "Maybe leaving them up was a good idea"
• Nov 1 till Thanksgiving: "One holiday at a time people!"

Rinse and repeat

It should be noted that the "silence" of Dec 26-31 represents those who are taking down their decorations during that time.

It's the end of the world as we know it...

...and I feel fine. 

Of course I do. And for the most part slept like a baby last night or at the least like an exhausted, slightly overworked kid-at-heart. And once it arrives in the mail I'll proudly wear my new t-shirt:

Take that Mayans!

And I'm sure R.E.M. wants to thank you for the increased bump in their royalties check this month:

“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. " Matthew 24:36-37, 42-44

Spider-man and my hilarious daughter

Tonight Baylee and I went to Target so she could pick out a birthday present for Jaxon. Of course we get to the point while walking the toy aisles that I realize she isn't behind me anymore. My assumption is that she got distracted at the Brave endcap. 

"Baylee, come here!" 

The shouted reply, "I can't - I'm stuck in a web!!!" 

"Baylee, please come by me. I don't want to lose you."

Mind you that we're having this conversation from across aisles, she comes back a little louder, "I can't dad! I'm stuck in a web!"

As I'm coming around the corner to see what in the world she's talking about this is what I find:

Did you fall for yesterday's Back to the Future scam?

Oh Back To The Future.

You are up there with Ferris, the Breakfast Club and Ghostbusters as movies that inspired my generation's mindset (probably explains a lot about my weirdness). You also inspired us to skateboard more than Tony Hawk ever could and to play guitar before we ever heard of Guitar Hero. And though hardly any of us had ever seen or heard of a DeLorean before you (just admit it), nothing can take your place in our minds when that word is by chance uttered.

So yesterday was a big day.

It started slow but then grew like wildfire on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Yesterday was the day that Doc set the time machine to in Back to the Future II:

Obviously anyone who grew up with these movies would get instantly excited and then share the big news. I did. It was like an instant reaction: BOOM! RETWEET! RESHARE! REPIN!

Thing is...it was a scam.

A literal version of "Take On Me" by A-Ha

Sharing a good laugh for this Monday morning. 

 

Last week while pumping gas A-Ha's "Take On Me" was playing, one of the greatest 80's songs ever in my opinion. 

After mentioning this on a social network a friend sent the below to me. I couldn't stop laughing:

The humor of Gmail going down today

My Gmail wasn't working earlier today. Getting the send error led to getting an "oops...not able to connect to servers" error. What in the world is going on? 

So I went to Twitter to ask the world what was up. There were a ton of responses back from the simple search of "Gmail Down." There was first confirmation that the service was indeed not working for many people. A large amount of people actually. Not being the only person affected by the outage, my Twitter search also brought a lot of responses from people "sharing" about the outage. 

Some of the responses were just stating the growing obvious - the service wasn't working. Some were disgruntled users acting like bratty 4yr olds. But there were also a ton of humorous comments. I got to the point where screen shots started to get taken as I laughed more and more through them:

City Living Quiz: What's wrong with this picture?

This is looking across the street from our condo:

Let's test people's knowledge of city living. What is wrong with that picture? 

Answer posted later tonight.

Never been to Canada? Here's pics to show what the weather in February is like

As an American, my preconceived idea of Canada is that it is cold 365 days of the year. Supposedly it's not, but February isn't the best time for someone to try and convince me otherwise. When I found out in the fall that I'd be coming to Winnipeg this February my host told me over the phone, "You're basically coming to the coldest place in Canada during the coldest time of the year."

Yay!

It's super cold here! I've been through intense Chicago winters, and this is colder!!!

Never been here? Don't believe me? I took these pics of downtown Winnipeg to show how cold it is here in February: 

Baylee didn't know she was being filmed

Sharing a laugh here. On our flight back home yesterday Baylee and I were playing with Photobooth on the Mac. Her favorite picture effect is the Mirror. She didn't realize as she was being goofy with it that I'd switched the app from image to video:

Jack Donaghy VS Ron Swanson: who would you bet on?

My friend Michael from church posted this on his Facebook page, and I couldn't resist reposting:

If you haven't ever watched 30 Rock or Parks and Recreation, then this makes no sense to you.

But if you do watch two of the funniest shows on TV: who would you bet on? 

I'm in the Ron corner. Really hard decision. Jack is a near equal character in authoritative awesomeness. But Ron just has an intensity that would intimidate Jack to tears. 

Ron isn't interested in fun.

Ron would never own a cookie jar collection. 

Ron hates government. 

Ron files his toes nails, because clippers can't handle it.

Ron!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ron for president!!!

Mon AM Laugh: Hulk Vs. Ewok

This would make for a pretty funny video game.

But regardless, the video is hilarious in and of it self:

Me & Baylee at 39,000 feet

A blog post while in midflight (thank you Southwest). 

Baylee and I are entertaining ourselves on the plane with Photobooth:

What Siri says - funniest help I've had in awhile

Last Friday I upgraded my iPhone 3GS to the 4S. Going from what I had to the new version is a pretty substantial change, and I must say I love this new phone! The camera is phenomenal, the speed is substantially better than the 3GS, and I'm starting to really get into the new iCloud as well.

But one of the coolest additions is the virtual Assistant feature, called Siri. She will help with pretty much anything. The way Siri works is that you hold down the iPhone's home button and then say whatever you need help with. "Call my wife," "Type up an email to Matt, "Find restaurants near me," "Send a text to Kevin," "Remind me to send a fax when I get to the office," and a ton of other things I'm still learning about. Basically, most things you'd want to do with the smart phone Siri will assist to make it happen.

Siri is also pretty funny. Somethings what you ask her is answered with rather humorous responses. Below are some of my exchanges. A few I did just messing around, others I've been told about and had to see for myself. They bring a good chuckle:

Week in review #13

Lucky number 13. Here is:

It's worth your time to check these blogs out

Supposedly, there are 152 million blogs on the internet. "What in the world is a blog?" you might ask (please don't ask what the internet is). It is basically a way to share information. That's a pretty short, unsexy definition, but it works.  

Blogs can be a way for people to record their daily ongoings and feelings, or they can be a means for corporations to share about their products and vision. There's pretty much a blog out there for any area of life, and any nuance is passionately detailed and received by those who care. 

I follow about 135+ different blogs. Some are written by people that I know, most by people I've heard of. Some have to do with ministry, some with culture, some with techie news, and some are just for fun. Here's a breakdown of some of the blogs I follow that would be worth your time to check them out: 

How denominations see one another

My friend Pete shared this with me and it brought much laughter to my afternoon. 

Had to bring others into the chuckles (click on the image to enlarge it):

The worst Christmas program ever...

...includes what?

Hard to believe that Christmas is right around the corner. So I'm looking for some input from whomever will offer it: 

When you think of Christmas programs/services that churches put on - what makes them just plain bad?

What doesn't make for a good Christmas program? 

As I'm thinking through things for Christmas this year - I'm really curious what people will share. Please be honest - and please don't bash/critique someone's opinion. =)

Leave a comment below. Thanks!

Week in review #11

Just woke up from getting over 9 hours of sleep last night. Can't remember the last time that happened. But based on the past week, the extra sleep was needed:

Praying for NASCAR

My cousin Rachel put this on my Facebook wall yesterday, and I haven't stopped laughing about it since. This is a pastor's opening prayer before a NASCAR event. He quotes 1 Thes 5:18, "In all things give thanks," and then goes on to do just that:

In the midst of my laughter, a big part of me is saying, "This is so messed up." But there's also a small part of me that says, "Maybe there's a little something right there." I go back and forth. Similar to what my cousin said to me, "at what point is producent placement taking it a bit far?" Then again, it is the culture he is part of.  Though I tend to lean more toward "eh" on this one, I'm not 100% sure. Thoughts?

Regardless, I do feel very strongly about the fact that I have a smokin' hot wife. But I will be thanking God for that fact privately, not publicly.

She would kill me.  =)

That's just ugly!

The Aspire Pastor's Conference is going on right now in Phoenix AZ, and I'm here with some guys from the Logos team.  Last night we heard Bob Pitman speak on everything the pastor does being about Jesus; pastors aren't to ever proclaim themselves, we are proclaiming Jesus.  Sometimes the most basic truths are the ones we need reminded of, and they also make for the most powerful sermons.

Toward the end he was talking about genuine and fake humility when he said this:

Some of the ladies in our churches have their blouse sleeves down to their wrist, their skirts down to their ankles.  They have large bee-hive hairdos that tower over the congregation.  I asked one such lady why she does that, to which she said, "I'm just trying to have humility."  Come on lady - that's not humility, that's just ugly!"

6000 people in attendance, and you could probably hear me laugh above them all.  Even this morning I'm laughing as I type out the recounting.

Then he said this: "Humility is not an outward expression, it is an inward reality."  

Now that's powerful.

Always good to get a humility check.  Always good when it comes along with a pretty hilarious story.

"I won a button for being humble once, but they took it away from me because I wore it." - Mike Warnke