I had one of the wonderful “5 hour window” appointments today with the people to try to fix my TV stuff. My window was from 12-5. I came straight home from Bible study and proceeded to wait until 4:30. Around then they called and said it was going to be after 5 … did I want to wait or re-schedule? After waiting all afternoon of course I was going to continue to wait … no way I’m rescheduling.

They showed up about 5:45 and stayed for almost an hour … and … are you ready for this … I still don’t have TV service. From what I understand the receiver I have is no longer used. They still have some, but the company I’m with no longer uses them and so I will have to upgrade … or change everything. So now I have to make a decision about what to change … to bundle or not to bundle … to just forget it. I’m leaning towards forgetting it. I’ve about decided I could save money by just subscribing to NETFLIX and  watching all my shows by season instead of one episode a week. I’m not sure what I’ll go with, but I feel a reimbursement of some sort is in order here. Should I pay for TV service that I haven’t been able to watch for two weeks … I think not.

So I guess it’s not the technology gods on this one … just the stupid people that feel we have to change everything and make it newer every two months. Most of my stuff is outdated before I figure out how to use it. I’m getting old. The fact that I’m even considering going without tv proves this … eek.

One benefit from all of this … I’m finally listening to all the songs on my ipod!!!

I ask because if they exist … they must hate me. Over the last few months I seem to have had several problems with electrical items and various technologies.

First, my oven started beeping because it needed a sensor or something replaced. This was month’s ago and I’m still waiting to find out about the part. The only way to keep it from beeping is to turn off the breaker … which I’ve done this whole time.

Then, my Dish receiver hard drive crashed causing me to lose over 294 hours of wonderful shows I had recorded and planned to watch sometime soon. They sent me a new one and it worked for about two weeks and then crashed. Only this time it’s not the hard drive … it’s the whole unit … so I can only watch things on the DVD player right now.

I had bought a new computer desk for the desktop computer I had upstairs. Just a short time after I bought the desk, that computer crashed for good.

A few weeks ago, my personal laptop crashed and I had to buy a new one. While I was waiting for the new one I just used my school issued laptop. That is, until last weekend when it got infected with a horrible virus that rendered it unusable.

I’m also in charge of doing the podcasts for The Open. Due to all of these technology failures the programs I use to do these have been lost and so there’s lots of frustration involved in that right now.

My cell phone is due for an upgrade November 20th. If I make it that long I will be surprised … it is hanging on by one little screw.

My tires on my car … which is only 9 months old … have started going flat … at random. Luckily there’s a sensor that tells me when this happens so that I can fill them up. It has happened 4 times in the last month. One tire had to be fixed, but the others have stayed aired up once I fill them.

When I finally got my new laptop the man who ordered it for me said, “Be careful when you sync your iPod the first time because I’ve had people completely erase them. WHAT?! How do you “be careful”? Do you plug it in very slowly? Maybe tip-toe towards the computer? I had no idea, but expected to erase it, the way my month is going. So far … it didn’t erase and it’s working fine.

Maybe things are turning around for the better …

Please technology Gods … if you do exist … leave me alone for a while … : (

Okay, I’m updating this on 11-2. They are definitely out to get me. I just received my new Dish receiver. This will be the second one in about 3 weeks. It didn’t start up like it normally does when you plug it in. So I went ahead and called tech support because I didn’t want to touch anything. The first thing the guy says is, “Press the Home button on the box.” You won’t believe this … when I pushed it … it stayed stuck in there. I coudn’t believe it. Then he said, “Try restarting it.” Yep … you guessed it … my luck continues … that button got stuck as well. Sheesh … someone help me … how do you remove a technology curse? At this point I’ll eat cat paw soup, or drink spider leg tea if it will just cure me of this technology curse.

Another Story of the Day:

“Can I count on you to be there, no matter what?” she said. 

 I said, “No.”  

She said, “What kind of friend are you?”

 I said,  ”The kind who won’t lie to you any time you want.”

I think she kept me around as a curiosity after that.

This made me laugh. Honesty really does make you a “curiosity”. I remember one time I went to Home Depot and bought some work gloves. I thought I was buying a pack of about 20 pair. Turns out it was a bag of gloves that needed to be hung up on the shelf. So they were priced individually. When the woman scanned it the price came up to $4.98. This was for a whole bag of work gloves. When I got home I realized that she had made a mistake. When I took them back they looked at me like I was a circus freak.

How ’bout you? Ever gotten that “you must be crazy” look for being honest?

“If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s – - – we’d grab ours back.”

Today I went through a car wash. As I was sitting in the middle of the wash I see the brake lights of the car two feet in front of me come on and off. I had a momentary thought to hit my brakes as well, but luckily I resisted. Instead I sat there waiting to hear the twisting metal of my car hitting theirs. It never happened and we both came out of the wash fine.

But it made me smile. I had this thought … how many times do I struggle with “trusting” and say I just don’t know how to trust? Hello?! EverydayI trust things. Igo through a car wash … trusting it will wash my car and not kill me in the process. I drive down the street … trusting that the car coming toward me will stay on their side of the yellow line. I walk into a building … trusting that it won’t collapse upon me at any moment.  I don’t worry that the building will collapse, I don’t worry that the car will kareen across the 2 inch paint line in the middle of the road and hit me. Why not?

Because I’ve done these things safely over and over again. I’ve seen others do the same things over and over again … safely.

So why can’t I do the same with God? Why can’t I trust the examples around me … the examples from the Bible … the promises from the all powerful supreme God that created it all? I’ll trust the man-made car wash that’s named after a duck sound … but God … nah, I’ll have to think about that one.

Think about this for a bit … what are some things in your everyday life that you trust?

Today I saw a boy wearing a pair of jeans that had tiger eyes on each back pocket. The rest of the tiger’s head went down his legs so that if you were looking at him from behind … it looked like a tiger was looking back at you. What is that about?!

I guess I no longer have to look out the window to experience the freakiness … it’s now right there in the room with me. EEK!

Every morning after the first bell the announcements come on at school. We do the American Flag pledge, Texas pledge (which no one can say correctly … ever) and then we have a moment of silence. Last week I noticed that once in a while instead of starting, “I pledge allegiance …” I would start to say, “Lubbock Teachers Federal Credit Union.” Very strange. Well today I did it again and realized that it’s only when I’m standing behind my desk. If I’m not behind the desk I can say the pledge fine. What’s that about?

How’s that for a title? Hopefully it hooked you in and has gotten you interested.

So the other day I was discussing the word sandwich with my students. We were discussing how words can have multiple meanings. We wrote several meanings for sandwich: “two pieces of bread with something in the middle”, “to stick something in between two objects (I sandwiched the book between the cd’s)”, and “the football players made a Quarter Back sandwich out of him”.

At this point I asked the students if they knew any other ways we use the word sandwich. One of them said, “It could be a name.” I said, “For a person?” He said, “Yes, my cousin is named Sandwich.” I laughed and looked at my assistant like, “Oh these kids are crazy.” We moved on and I basically ignored him.

Well today … I stand corrected. The person that invented the sandwich was actually named Sandwich. He was the Earl of Sandwich so it wasn’t actually his name, but still. I should have given ol’ cousin Sandwich the benefit of the doubt.

I had two circumstances this week that offered up some natural consequences that really made me laugh out loud.

First … I had a student that kept refusing to stay after school to finish his work. He’s off task often and just isn’t trying to do it. He told me that he couldn’t stay after school because he had a football game. I left him alone for the rest of the class. He ended up falling into a very deep sleep. So deep that when the bell rang, he never woke up. I wanted to leave him there until he woke up on his own, but I didn’t want to stay that late. So I called his mom and left her a message then woke him up after about 15 minutes. I thought it was hilarious … he ended up staying after school all right and didn’t even get credit for it, because he still didn’t finish those assignments.

Then today I was going down the aisles quickly grading a little quiz. One of the students saw me grade the paper beside him and noticed he had missed one. He changed it before I got to him. My assistant saw him and told him that he shouldn’t change that … he needed to take the grade he earned. Well after grading all the quizzes I went over the answers out loud so everyone could make sure I graded correctly. Well, I hadn’t. I had actually graded the paper (the one the boy was cheating off of) incorrectly. So because he changed his answer he ended up missing it. He would have had it right if he would have left it alone. We all laughed … probably not a nice thing to do … but it was so perfect.

In true form, he then accused me of doing it all on purpose. Like I planned ahead of time to incorrectly grade a paper, hoping he would see it and change his answer. Sheesh! They make me laugh.

Here’s the Story of the Day: Original Drawing #1710-Boxed Book Set I held out my hands & asked where I could help & somebody grabbed me & pointed me towards the future & said, You’ve got your work cut out for you & I said, isn’t there anything easier? & he laughed & said you could dig around in the past, but it’s just busywork & that made perfect sense so I shrugged & started right where I was, along with everyone else

Here’s another Story of the Day. I like this one. It’s actually pretty wise … and a good reminder to stay in today … it’s easier than living in the past or the future.