April 21st, 2008 -
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Last night the unthinkable happened. The unimaginable happened. That unacceptable horror of horrors which ranks near the top of “Daddy’s List of Things That Cannot be Endured” happened.
Levi threw up all over the inside of the van.
We had just come home after a busy day and were in the very act of exiting the vehicle, when Levi, who sits in the back, suddenly stopped and braced himself between the two middle chairs. “Come on Levi, let’s go,” I said. In reply, he made a little burping noise and released a volley of puke all over the upholstery. A moment of stunned silence prevailed, with Lisa and I looking on in muted horror. Then came a second, even more productive heave, as Levi began hosing half-digested foodstuffs like he was Linda Blair. By the third heave I became aware of a desperate and pleading voice crying, “No! No! Noooooooooo!!”, and by the fourth heave I realized that the voice was my own.
Lisa and I spent about two hours last night conducting a hazmat cleanup of the van after the boys were asleep. We removed all 3 carseats, 4 of the chairs, and about 4 bags of belongings, and then scrubbed down and sanitized everything.
This morning the van still smelled like vomit. We went through a second round of scrubbing, but with less hope for a completely restored vehicle.
At this point I’m thinking that our family car has a lot of evergreen-scented air fresheners in its future.
April 15th, 2008 -
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Father God, you are the creator of all things, and the sustainer of all life. Thank you for giving me the gift of life, and thank you for this new day that will be full of opportunities to hear your voice and to walk with you.
I pray that you would cleanse my heart this morning from the failures of yesterday, and that you would restore me to a close fellowship with you. Help me to honor you in all of my decisions today, and grant me victory over the struggles that I return to time after time.
Lord, where my heart is hard this morning, I pray that you would soften it so that I can be shaped by you. Where my heart is shallow, I pray that you would help me grow deeper roots so that I won’t give up when things look like they’re falling apart. And where my heart is crowded, I pray that you would show me how to clear out space for you, so that our relationship doesn’t get lost in the clutter.
Father, grant me a heart today that will be sensitive to the leading of your Holy Spirit, and that will be fruitful for you. I want to hear your voice and understand it. Strengthen me to follow you wherever you lead.
I pray these things in the name of your son, Jesus.
Amen.
March 25th, 2008 -
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This just in: Shepard has sent out three new clues sharing the title “Tim’s #3 (For Fri)”. They were sent out on Saturday, March 22, to three new prospective participants: his friends Gary and Paris, and our mutual cousin, Sara. This time I was included in the CC field of each clue to ensure that it would get published. I’ve just added the new clues and participants to the clue page.
To recap for anyone just joining us, Shepard is conducting some kind of mystery game and I’m trying to facillitate discussion by blogging about the whole thing. You can read part 1 here, part 2 here, and you can reference all of the clues here.
One note about the new clues: They all shared the same footer, which read “You are invited to visit ‘Clintonium.com’ and help solve the mystery!” As with the “say hello to the folks for me” footer, I decided that this wasn’t part of the clue itself, so I stripped it off.
Other than that, the first thing I noticed about these new clues is that the same set of lowercase letters make yet another appearance, this time in the order “ather” and repeating in the duplicated text of each clue instead of spread across all three.
I had a new thought about these letters over the weekend. Aunt Joan had pointed out that there was a fourth english word you could form out of the letters: rathe. That word seemed somehow familiar to me, but I couldn’t immediately place it. Then on Sunday it came to me: Rathe was the name of the villain in Young Sherlock Holmes. He was the likable professor who turned out to be the evil cult leader, Ehtar (and eventually Moriarty himself, if you watched through the closing credits).
John Watson: Amazing, Holmes. Simply amazing. Of course, you did forget one very important clue.
Sherlock Holmes: Oh? Please enlighten me.
John Watson: Well, “Rathe” is “Ehtar” spelled backwards.
Sherlock Holmes: Very clever, Watson. Well, I’m certain I would have arrived at that conclusion sooner or later.
John Watson: [smiling] Sooner or later.
I’m a big fan of the movie (it’s in my top 100 list), and I’m pretty confident that Shepard is a fan too. The Sherlock Holmes angle ties in well to a mystery game, and the Rathe/Ehtar cypher could be looked at in a few different ways. So this feels more like a solid lead than anything else that has occurred to me so far. But even if it is the intended inference, and not complete nonsense, it’s still only a clue that leads to another clue. And I’m again left wondering if there is any meaning to discover at the bottom of all this…
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008
About a month ago my friend Phil Long asked me to design the cover for his upcoming book, Spirit is Deeper than Flesh. Phil is a fantastic author, and I knew from reading his first book, One Trick Pony, that this new book was going to challenge and inspire people and be used by God to impact their lives.
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008
After spending a few days wondering whether I really wanted to pester some of the straight-laced older folks in the group about something as frivolous and odd as a mystery game, I decided to step up to the plate.
Thursday, February 28th, 2008
I’ve heard it said that serving in the military during wartime involves long hours of boredom punctuated by moments of stark terror. Well, you can probably chalk this one up to those long hours of boredom.
