The Long Drive

This coming Thursday, we’ll head out way too early in the morning to drive to my folks home in Flagstaff, AZ. The goal is to do the trip in one long drive… looking at it on the map, I’m starting to feel like I may need to have my head examined. Preparations were a little larger than the normal family trip given that the first item on the check-list was to buy a minivan. What a great time to buy a used car, though. Prices have really come down significantly in the past few months. We found the right vehicle just over a week ago. Though it had a good bit more mileage on it than we were targeting, the price was terrific. Being inherently distrustful of previous owners, I had it serviced (oil, alignment, check the belts/filters/coolant/etc.) this past weekend and it is now ready for the road. My brother has loaned me their portable TV/VCR, and we are putting every Veggie Tale and Winnie the Pooh video we have on few 6-hour VHS tapes. We figure continuous, mind-numbing entertainment is our best bet at helping Jonathan (11 months old) and Abigail (not quite 3 years old) make the trip.

Rice crushes Tulsa

Rice resurrects bowl hopes with rout of Tulsa. This is a Very Big Deal. Keep in mind Rice is the smallest Division 1-A school in the nation, not to mention that they actually have academic standards of some sort for the football team. The year before I showed up at Rice (1989), the team won a single game in the season. The team was gradually improved until it could post an occasional winning season (the 6-5 variety). But this year, things have finally started to gel. Here’s the highlights:

Tulsa (1-8, 0-6) was helpless against the Owls’ offense, which amassed a school-record 653 yards of offense and averaged 9.3 yards per play. Rice scored on its first six possessions and led 38-13 at the half.
The 498 yards rushing were the second-most in Rice history (505 vs. Arkansas in 1953), and the 59 points were the most the Owls have scored in a conference game. Tulsa, which lost its eighth straight game, finished with 506 yards of offense.

Wow! That rushing performance should hopefully ensure we finish second in the nation behind Nebraska in rushing offense… very cool! Stop by here to revel in all things Rice football.

The Beauty of Truth

I sometimes feel that some people believe an argument from scripture is more likely to be true if the result is, well, ugly. Within the reformed tradition, this approach seems to find particular resonance in discussions of worship. We know that God desires true worshippers, those who will worship him in spirit and in truth. But I feel some are biased toward reading spirit and truth as antithetical to beauty.

Continue reading “The Beauty of Truth”

Switching to dotcomments

I am switching to dotcomments for my feedback. It stores the comments locally, so even if it doesn’t provide an elegant interface, at least I will have some control over the comments. Seems prudent. However, it will probably be a short time until I work out the kinks. Right now, it insists on claiming their are 22 comments against any post that has no comments.