A Nasty Memory

Last year I took a trip to Burkina Faso and Mali, West Africa. I was there to retell stories on video to show at our life conference this summer (www.life2007.com). I was just reminded of a story that I think I had tried to suppress. Some friends were just there for a visit and they were told this story and passed it on to me.

So the story…

We were at an outdoor “restaurant” out in the bush and we had ordered some sort of steak and fries. I was really hungry and it tasted very good! Karen, one of the missionaries, said hers was very tough and she didn’t eat it. I loved mine. I was still hungry so I snuck the rest of Karen’s steak. I knew she wasn’t going to finish it. I then told her that it didn’t taste so tough to me.

Three days later Larry, Karen’s husband, let me in on a little secret. Karen had chewed her steak as much as she could and got the juices out. I guess she chewed the whole thing and then I chewed it and finished it. She saw me eat it and felt really bad and didn’t want to tell me.

They told my friends this story when they went over there and now everyone has had a god laugh at my nasty experience!!!

Deal or No Deal

This Wednesday and Saturday I am going to play the part of Howie in an event at our church "Deal or No Deal." They will be having a bunch of commercials and fun give-aways. They will be doing the lucky case winner part and give prizes to different sections in the audience.

Now they won't be giving away $1,000,000, but they will have $250 up for winning. It should be pretty cool. I am working on my Howie impressions and got the pound the knuckles, no handshake down so far.

I got a bald wig on its way. I think I will look something like this...


Hmmm...am I really that good looking? haha.

I thought I'd drop in the game here too. Enjoy!
I'll let you know how it goes. I will also post some pics and maybe some video.

Deal or no Deal

Powered by: The Flu


..gotta get a cool shirt...

Cat takes care of herself

Our cat, Kenya, did something this morning I couldn't believe. She is an inside/outside cat. Comes in and out as she pleases. She is house trained and has a litterbox in the house, but stays outside mostly. Well, she got stuck in the garage last night and we didn't know she was there till this morning.

We walked out into the garage and she had dumped the bag of kitty litter and done her business in the spill on the floor!!! Where did this cat come from? That's crazy! Anyhow, thought it was kinda cool.

Free Ipod Nano? No way!!!

A couple of weekends ago I went to a Youth Workers Convention. The first session started at 7PM. I was scheduled to land at 6PM. I figured after getting my rental car, checking in and walking to the convention center, I should get there right on time. I was really excited...

Then came the delay. Grrrr. My flight got in at 7:37PM. By the time I got in there were about 20 minutes left. I was pretty frustrated. At the end, before they started the Building 429 "concert" the program guys got out in the audience with mics and roving cameras and gave away some prizes. The first one went to a guy who answered some basketball trivia. He won Pacers tickets for the next night.

Then they asked who arrived the latest. First they had everyone who arrived after 4PM to stand up. A whole bunch. Then 5PM, then 6PM, then 7PM. There were three of us. The first guy said he arrived at 7:20PM, I said 7:37PM, the other guy said 7:38PM. He laughed and said he was just kidding. I was the last one there. I won an iPod Nano!!! Can you believe it? I was soooo pumped.



Now I already have an iPod (no, I am not giving it away...sorry) so I am going to bring it in to Best Buy for credit. If I win this youtube video contest I get $500 in Best Buy credit. Then I am well on my way to getting a flat screen HDTV!!! Want to help me win the youtube contest? Click on this video and watch it a few times. Maybe you want to embed it on your myspace page or your blog. The more views and embedding the better.



you can go here to get the embed codes if you are interested.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfQE5kEILT0

Boston...Fenway!!!

I was recently in New Hampshire at a camp. I went there with my buddy Paul. I discovered that Boston was less than 2 hours away and my brother was just over 2 hours away. So obviously you know what I had to do...
I met my brother at Fenway Park. Ahhh...one day I will see a game there. We walked around the stadium in below freezing temperatures. It was soooo cold, but I was at FENWAY!!! We walked into the "souvenir" shop. Holy cow! There was sooooo much Red Sox stuff in there. It was overwhelming. I seriously couldn't take it all in.

It was a cool, yet crazy weekend. We passed a horse with Patriots painting all over it crushing a car with a colts sign on it. We ate at some seafood place and then headed back to the camp. It was good to see Rune...and Fenway. Paul got pulled over just a few miles shy of the camp. Bummer. If only he had listened to me. haha.

When we headed for the airport, we didn't have the tickets (e-tickets are great to an extent). I looked on my phone for departure times on Delta from Manchester to Portland. It said 4:50PM. Had we looked on our itinerary we would've seen that we were supposed to leave at 5:35PM on Northwest, not Delta. No wonder I had it wrong. Turns out that when we got to the counter at 3:30PM or so, they handed us each 3 tickets and we were to leave at 4:16PM. What? We also thought we were going through Atlanta. They said, no, Minnesota. Well, when we got to the counter it said Detroit. We went up and tried to get it all straightened out.

Turns out they had what is called a misconnect. The original flight that was to leave at 5:35PM was cancelled. They are supposed to notify us, but they never did. So we got out on an earlier flight. Here comes the problem, we land in Detroit and see our flight is delayed (we went to the counter we were told to go when we landed) so we got some food. We passed another counter with Minneapolis as the destination (that was our next stop) and it was leaving 30 minutes before ours. I told Paul it was best to just stick with the plan. So we ate.

(sidenote: While we were in the airport we found a vending machine that you can buy IPODS and IPOD GEAR from!!! Holy cow! I can't believe it!)


We got to the line and they told us we were not booked on that flight. We were booked on the other one and there was no more space on this plane. WHAT!?!?!?!? So I begged and pleaded with the lady and she saw that there were 2 people who had checked in at the front but were not there yet. It didn't look good. Then the plane was even supposed to leave and the people still hadn't shown up. She made us wait 10 more minutes and finally let us on.

We got to Minneapolis and were told that we were not getting a free hotel. I know what you are thinking. "Why would you need a hotel? Oh, did u miss your next flight because you took the later one from Detroit?" Nope. We were scheduled to arrive at 8:11PM. Then we were to take the flight from Minneapolis at 5:00PM to PDX. That's right. You read it correctly. That was the misconnect part. It was all messed up.

So I went to the 1st class ticket counter and talked to one of the people there. I presented my story and he began to tell me the reasons why he was going to put us up in a hotel. WHAT? YESSSS!!! It worked. A smile, a little charm and a desperate story (paul's wife is due any day.) and we were in. And in the residence inn...very nice place. Oh, and we got $13 each for dinner vouchers and $5 for breakfast. The cool part was there was a restaurant that delivered and took the vouchers. Paul was too sleepy so he went to bed and I ordered $26 worth in food...at MIDNIGHT!!! mmmm. We got out the next morning and finally home to our families.

Ahhh....

Snowbikes?!?!

A few years ago we were up on Hoodoo snowboarding and they had a showcase of snowbikes and airboards. We thought, it's free, it looks cool, let's do it. So we took a free lesson and got our licences. I haven't thought about it much since (except to pull out my "license" every once in a while when asked for ID. Yes, I am funny)

So I went up with our youth group on Monday and we decided we would try it again. We rented 4 bikes and away we went. The second half of the day we did nothing but snowbikes! It was AWEsome! We went a little crazy and decided it would be fun to race down to the bottom of the mountain. And I was right. It was fun. And a little scary. We came flyng down the last part of the mountain and it was a very steep section. I tried to apply the brakes (my feet) and could not stop it. I then spun around backwards, while fish came down past me on his butt while still holding on to his bike. Then Josh came down just like Fish. I was laughing so hard. Fish hit the bottom and got back on his bike, but I was still half way up and turned my bike around and went for it. It was pretty close, but I would say I smoked him!

We also went up on the snowpark section where they have jumps and rails and whatnot. No rails for us, but we did try the big jump. The bikes are very front heavy and we went over and the front end went down first. I thought I would bite it, but the flex in the front made it work and I landed it. Then I had to get dumber, of course, and I went on my knees and almost bought the farm. IT hurt, but I went back for more. Josh and I decided to go at the same time. That was really cool. It was a good day. Great conversations and excellent snowbiking!

Let it Snow!

We woke up today to a small blanket of snow on the ground. That was fun as we only had a little from last week left in a few spots in the grass and we rarely get snow here. It soon began to rain and I figured the snow would be gone in an hour.
Then we heard that school was closed and it began to snow again. A lot. Well, a lot is relative. Where I grew up people would mock me for saying what we got was a lot. We have maybe 3 inches on the ground.

But, there are very few snow plows, etc. here. We had 2 snow plows for every family in NY, so it is VERY different out here. Plus, no one has any clue as to how to drive in this stuff out here. So I am afraid of other drivers. I did however, go out and use the ole e-brake and have some fun.

We also had to jump in the hot tub while it was snowing. That was pretty cool. A snowball fight quickly ensued. Ahhh...I love this weather!


If only we could get more. I guess I could just take a short drive to the mountains ANY DAY OF THE YEAR!!! I really like that. I went snowboarding a few years ago on August 31! It was 75 degrees out that day and I didn't wear a shirt. We live in a pretty cool place of the world!