Very Proud...

Macy and I left the house at 6:30am yesterday heading up to Lakeland, Florida. Why Lakeland? This was the site of the 2008 Florida Baptist Convention and our senior pastor was preaching the Convention Sermon on Tuesday morning. We also thought it would be fun to pick up Pamela Bigham in Sarasota and take her along with us on what we were calling a "field trip." We had an awesome time with Pamela. She and her husband Jeremy recently moved from Fort Myers to Sarasota for Jeremy to attend Medical School.

Okay, back to the trip. Not only was our senior pastor preaching, but he also was nominated for the convention presidency. He lost the presidency by 12 votes. The time slot for the convention sermon was right after the announcement of the election results. This made for a slightly awkward situation, but he handled it with class and dignity and then proceeded to preach the lights out. Very proud of my pastor yesterday.

And I'm also very proud of Pamela. The girl is growing in her faith and has such a heart for the things of God. It is so cool to hear how God is using her in her new assignment in Sarasota. Macy and I really enjoyed our time with you yesterday!

I won

Penn State loses today to Iowa. LSU loses to #1 Alabama. And I won a really nice electric toothbrush today at our church’s Business Expo. Pretty cool! Thank you Dr Craig Mayer for this very nice doorprize.

I also had the privilege of officiating my friend and bother, Ed Schenck’s memorial service today. What an awesome man. He was a servant-leader and left an incredible legacy behind. It was an honor to be around his family today and see and hear the impact he made on them and so many others.

Update: Texas Tech just rolled over OSU. What a fun season!

C'mon Man

Why is Circuit City opening a brand new store over on Six Mile Cypress in Fort Myers when they are reportedly closing 155 store nationwide before the end of the year? C'mon man!

Voting Completed

It was exactly one hour from the time I arrived at my polling location until I had finished voting and was pulling out of the parking lot. Not bad. The process went smoothly for me once inside, but it is not speedy. I felt really sorry for the hundreds of people in line outside when I left. They would be there a while.

FYI: Starbucks is giving away a free cup of their regular coffee today if you tell them you voted.

Interesting observation...When I arrived at McGregor this morning (another election polling place) there was NO line to vote outside. I could not believe it! They ought to let you have the option to vote at a polling place that is close to where you work. Just a thought. Go vote.

Voting

I'm in line right now to vote. I got here at 6:15am. There are 15 people in front of me. It 6:35 now and the line behind me is getting real long. Glad I got here early. I'm also glad I brought something to read.

I hope you have, or wll be, voting today.

Feel the Weather

It started with a dramatic change of temperature last week. I went from running in a suana to actually being a little chilly when I fininshed my runs. How refreshing! The cooler, drier air is such a treat for those of us who live here in SW Florida, where it stays pretty warm all year round (we actually had several record lows for October!).

This is especially nice for anyone who exercises outside. The weather almost begs for you to come outside and do something. For those of you who live here in SW Florida, take advantage of this time of the year and decide to start that exercise program you know you need to. I promise you'll feel better!

  

Picasa 3

Google continues it's march toward world domination. Well, maybe not world domination, but they do have a new version of Picasa out. It's still in beta, but that's not stopping me from giving it a try. I've been using Picasa 3 now for several weeks and my my initial reaction: I really like it. Picasa is Google's free photo software that is simple to use and takes care of all basic photo editing chores you might have. Picasa 3 is not a revolutionary upgrade, but does add several useful new features (see link below for details). If you're not using Picasa yet, I highly recommend it. If you're using Picasa 2, I would encourage you to upgrade if you don't mind running a beta version. See link below for download site.

http://picasa.google.com/

Info on new features in version 3

High School Football

Last night, Macy and I went to a local high school football game - ECS was playing host to Moorehaven. Our nephew, Tyler Leach, plays for ECS and we've been wanting to get to a game to watch him play. We picked a good one - it was homecoming for ECS. Unfortunately, it rained most of the game. But we stuck it out, almost to the very end. It was actually a pretty exciting game, with lots of offense. ECS won with a final score of 50-38. I guess if you're going to sit in the rain watching a high school football game, you at least want some excitement. Congrats to ECS for the victory. And in spite of all the rain, Macy and I had a great time.