So is the new umm.

In high school and college, teachers and professors were constantly telling us students to avoid saying "umm" during speeches, discussions and in asking questions. It's that reaction we do naturally during uncomfortable times when our mouth is open and people are paying attention to us. I think the entire nation got good at steering clear of "umm," you really don't hear much of it anymore.

But you hear a lot of "so." That word added to the end of a seeminly fine sentence leaves us listeners hanging. The "so" ending is a clear indication to the listener that you're not confortable or not sold yourself on what you're saying. Let's get away from the "so" ending and get back to simply communicating well.

Next door neighbor was diagnosed with breast cancer last week. She's young, has young children at home, fairly healthy. It can strike anyone. Another neighbor mentioned that it seems breast cancer and all forms of cancer seem to be so much more common now. Scientifically I don't know if that's true, but it does seem that way. But we shouldn't be surprised.

The Bible is emphatic in Revelation and a bit in a couple of the Old Testament books that years building to the end times will be wrought with human strife, wars, rise in natural calamities and illness. One could argue we've seen many more natural disasters in the last decade. That could be a product of better news coverage, better communication abilities in outlying areas, or the truth. I read an article yesterday from a locally respected Christian apologist crediting the devil for natural disasters. The biblical evidence he gave was quite convincing including passages in Job where God gave Satan power over the weather to create the disasters that took Job's family, servants and cattle away.

Some argue the perceived global warming is evidence of movement to the end times. Technically, every second is a movement to the end times, but global warming could be part and parcel a signal that the end is coming.

Wars may be less violent and prevalent now than they used to be, but they certainly hold the potential now to be more catastrophic--especially in a short period of time--whereas wars in the past took many battles to arrive at astronomical counts of casualties.

I think the lesson this teaches us if any is not to forget the end times are coming and we are to be prepared. If Jesus comes back tonight, is he taking you or leaving you behind? And be praying that if the times are coming soon, that through your life either directly or indirectly, yo are bringing others to be saved by Him. May God come, and may he be injust enough to take me despite all my weaknesses.

Many would call me insensitive, but this flooding in southern Minnesota of the past week is a far greater disaster than the 35W bridge collapse. While fewer people died, thousands more livelihoods are being affected by this flooding. There are now thousands of displaced residents of flood stricken towns. These towns are going to lose businesses as a result. They are going to lose residents, and in some cases, will lose in part their identities. This flooding is far worse than the bridge collapse. I still do say however, that for those directly affected by the bridge collapse, it is tremendously tragic...Despite that, I don't fault TV for covering to a much further extent the bridge collapse over the flooding. The bridge collapse is something that doesn't happen--it was such an anomally. And humans love to find fault in other people and the bridge collapse is far greater a human error event than flooding is...Water is an incredible thing. It's one of the few elements in existence that most of life needs to stay alive. It has the greatest presence of any substance in the world. Yet it can reek the greatest havoc in the world from flooding, to encouraging mold growth in homes, to leaking through roofs, to being fairly absent in about 1/3 of the populated areas in the world.

Had our first real and not-good experience with peer influence this week. Our three year-old was crying after we put him to bed and when I went in to see what was the matter, he exclaimed that the bad guys were outside his room trying to shoot him. After a series of many questions I determined that one of the kids at daycare fed him the scenario. Unfortunately, Tanner looks up to this kid and likes this kid, and he's really not a good model for him to follow. Wow, didn't think I'd get to that stage of life for quite a while, but apparently it starts really early!

Our digital camera broke down this weekend, so we found ourselves "emergency" shopping for a new one. I bring this up for two reasons:
1) It's amazing how large a part our digital camera has played in our family's life. We bring it everywhere, take thousands of pictures, log and save many of the photos. You can see our life fairly completely by looking at our pictures over the past four years. It's really great.
2) We shopped at both Best Buy and National Camera Exchange. While our experience after the wait at Best Buy was good, it was nothing compared to National Camera. The place was "packed," but I still got helped right away. The person helping me knew so much about all different cameras, ended up showing me the same camera that the guy at Best Buy settled on as the best camera for us, but she gave us information as to why that particular camera is pushed at places like Best Buy and why it's no better than cameras $100 less than it. I was so impressed. Heather noticed that most everybody leaving that place had purchased something--as did we.

We went officially 24 hours without a digital camera--whew, that was a close one!


I know this isn't going to be popular, but the bridge collapse last week is going to go down as a not-so-big disaster by history standards. I say this because other than the 5 to 13 people who died, and the 70 or so that were injured, this disaster didn't affect the livelihood of those most intimately involved. That's not to minimize the bridge's affect on those people and their families, but for the community, it's not a catastrophic disaster. In fact, I would argue a large apartment fire holds more damaging affects to families' livelihoods than this bridge collapse did.

The unfortunate part of the collapse long term is going to be traffic. Not that we needed any help in that regard.

I think we're fooling ourselves if we think we can have the bridge built in less than two years. We still have to clean up the bridge, we still have to determine what went wrong, we still have to come up with a structural and aesthetic design, we still have to come up with a transit/road design, and we're going to have to make this a memorial bridge--all of which lead me to believe we'll be lucky if we get it built in 5 years! MnDot has a formidable task to undertake, as do our legislators and other federal leadership.

Even though I couldn't care less about Bonds and his chase of Aaron's HR record, I can think of one scenario that would be absolutely hilarious because I also think Bud Selig is an oof. It's been in the sports news now for months discussion around "Will Bud be there when Bonds breaks the record." It has finally come out that he plans--as he should--to be there. But wouldn't it be hilarious if Bonds, knowing Selig doesn't really want to be there, takes dozens of games to break the record! Bud would have to go to many games, logging many miles, staying a lot of nights in hotels. It'd be great!...Rather than use Google or Yahoo for your web searches, use GoodSearch.com. Each search contributes money to a charity you choose. I of course would encourage you choose The Salvation Army, but we've also selected Habitat for Humanity...