Don't forget to pray....

for the residents of Fargo, North Dakota and surrounding areas.

for the President of the United States and his family.

for the Treasury Secretary and his family.

for our troops.

for Christians in other parts of the world.

for anything and everything else that comes to mind.

Quick Catch-up

In no particular order:

1. I went to hear the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra this weekend.
2. I also saw a performance of Riverdance.
3. Spring is not coming fast enough.
4. We're starting a community garden at church. And I'm involved.
5. I'm taking some time off of work this week.
6. I finished reading Perelandra and liked it more than I thought I would.
7. My NCAA bracket is shot
8. Umbro revealed the new home kit for the England national team. It looks good.

Free Ice Cream

Maggie Moo's is giving away free ice cream on April 15th in honor of tax day. Details here.

Scripture for the week

This passage was the topic of Phil's message yesterday:

Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;
O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared.
I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.
My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.
O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is unfailing love and with him is full redemption.
He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins.
Psalm 130

Spring is Here!!

Woo-hoo!!

Snakes on a plane

I was on a plane today for seven hours. I know you're asking yourself, "to what sort of exotic destination were you headed?"

Charlotte, North Carolina

It took seven hours and change to fly from Harrisburg, PA to Charlotte, NC. This included a roughly four-hour diversion to Greenville, SC. This flight is normally only a 90 minute flight. The passengers were not happy. As you can guess, most folks were feeling pretty hostile. I pretty much kept my mouth shut to keep myself out of trouble. But I was still thinking things. Thinking about the people who were voicing their opinions and thinking about how rude they were. And why they couldn't be like me and just suck it up.

I'm a sinner, with a long way to go. While I didn't voice any opinions, I was still thinking bad things about my fellow passengers. I need to work on that.

It's kind of hard to not have negative thoughts sometimes. Dontcha' think?

And so it begins....

Every once in a while, I look for a challenge. I can't recall if I've mentioned this challenge thing before. I know I haven't mentioned this new challenge.

I'm going to run a half-marathon.

Several years back, I had a thought that it would be fun to go run the half-marathon at Disney World. That's supposed to be a fun one because you run through several different parks before they're open to general public. But I had a hard time reconciling running 13 miles for fun.

I still have a hard time gettin' that through my head. But my sister has decided to run this half-marathon, and she invited me along........for the fun. So I took her up on the inviration. I took the first step yesterday. I drove down to Fleet Feet Sports to get properly fitted for some running shoes. If you're ever looking to get hooked up with some shoes, they do a bang-up job. They measure your feet two different ways and examine your gait to figure out the best type of shoe for you. Once I had tried on the shoes, they let me go outside and take a run on the sidewalk. Good stuff! I found a shoe I really like, but I don't have the money for them at the moment.

So I'm tentatively planning on starting my training in June, for a September race. Most of the training schedules I've seen are about 12 weeks long, so that's the plan I'm going with. This will definitely make for good blog fodder, so I'll blog about this more in the future.

Opera Redux

Friday night, I went back to the opera. This time I saw "Don Giovanni." And while it was a little different this around, I still enjoyed it.

The biggest difference was that the only musical accompaniment was the piano. So I missed the fullness of an orchestra, but the piano seemed to hold it's own just fine. The vocalists all did a fine job, and I recognized a few of them from "La Boheme" in the fall. And, I discovered something new....

Some people bring English translations of the italian lyrics to follow along. What a brilliant idea! I mean, I think the Italian language is beautiful, but there's something to be said about understanding what the people are saying. I was doing some research on a possible trip to NYC and I discovered that the Metropolitan Opera actually has monitors in the seatbacks which provide English translation of what is being sung. I'm becoming interested enough in the opera that I would actually be interested in seeing a performance at the Met.

A note to Spring

Dear Spring:

Please hurry up and get here.

Kind Regards,
MTG