From the Inside Out

Rehearsals are underway for our 2009 comedy show, Saturday Night Life, at Abundant Life Church. We have a great line-up of sketches this year and a fantastic cast. Tonight’s practice focused on blocking for all of the sketches in Act II. In addition to blocking, we started to work on some characterizations, and I’m really liking what I’m seeing so far. I think many of the characters will blossom into comedic masterpieces in the next few weeks.

We’ll be filming most of our SNL videos on Saturday. This year’s line-up includes a commercial, digital short, boy band music video, and the intro cast video. I’m excited about all of these. They are hilarious and should be lots of fun to tape.

Here are a couple of pictures from tonight’s rehearsal…enjoy!

Gary provides some direction to the DJ Mellow cast

Larry Luke, our motivational speaker is back!

This pic is from last week’s rehearsal, but the annoying 10 year old is back too!

Okay, I haven’t updated the blog in a couple of days, but I have a really good excuse. Gary and I made a quick trip out of town to pick up my new car this weekend. It was an exciting trip, but by the end of the day I was too tired to record my thoughts in the blog. So…tonight I’m providing a weekend summary of the adventure.

After work on Friday, we jumped in the car and headed North. The car I wanted to purchase was located in Springfield, MO. It is a bit rare — there aren’t that many for sale right now, and the interior two-tone grey/black is even harder to find. There were a few SLK 55 AMGs in Dallas, but none had the color combinations I wanted. Thus, the reason for the road trip.

Springfield is a little over 6 hours away, so we decided to drive for about four hours, spend the night in a hotel, and get up early on Saturday to drive the rest of the way. We stopped Friday night in Pryor, a tiny town in Oklahoma. There are no five star hotels in that area of the country, but we found a new Holiday Inn Express that was surprisingly decent. Furnishings were contemporary, they had flat screen tvs, good sized rooms, in-room microwave and refrigerator, and marble bathroom vanity — not bad for a little roadside hotel. If you’re ever in the area, check it out.

In the morning, we got up early and hit the road again. After only a couple of hours, we arrived. The car was out front waiting for us. We inspected it, took a test drive, and then handed over the check. Fast and easy! Just the way I like it.

On the way home, we ran across an interesting sight. At first glance, we thought it was a bridge over the highway, but as we got closer, we realized that it was a McDonalds. Someone built a McDonalds fast food restaurant over the road! It was hilarious, so we just had to stop. We grabbed some ice cream, sat over the road, and watched the cars pass underneath. So funny!

Since we were passing through Muskogee on our way home, we made arrangements to visit some of my family who live in the area. We stopped at my Aunt and Uncle’s home around 6 pm. My cousin and his family joined us for a few “test drives” in the new car, and then we all went inside for a fabulous dinner. It was a short visit, but we had a good time. Since I hardly get to see them, it was a really nice treat.

Back on the road, we still had a few hours of driving to do before reaching Dallas, but I wasn’t complaining. I was enjoying the new car and the opportunity to drive it. The road trip gave me the opportunity to test everything and get very comfortable with the car. When we arrived home, I didn’t really want to quick driving. It was so much fun!

Today was a blur of activity, but I’ll give you the major highlights:

• went to church early so Gary’s parents could give the new car a quick test drive before service started.
• had another great service at ALC this morning — God is doing some fabulous things at our church. I’m excited about where He is taking us. It’s so cool!
• Ate lunch at Macaroni Grill and caught the latest Tarantino flick
• Met up with the family to celebrate Kevin’s 40th birthday! Wow, what a milestone!
• More test drives of the new car — it never gets old. Haha!
• Got home late, did a little work, checked facebook, and wrote this blog!

Wow, I don’t think I could have packed anything else into this weekend! It was crazy busy, but full of fun and excitement. Plus, I got to spend time with my family — those near and far…priceless!

Have a great week, everyone!

My lovely Mercedes C-Class has a new owner. Part of me is sad to see it go because it was (and still is) such a great car — in excellent condition with low mileage. In the five years that I owned it, I only put 13,000 miles on it! The cool thing is that we sold it to a friend so I know it’s going to a good home where it will be appreciated.

Now it’s time to put the past behind me and look ahead to the future. If all goes well, I’ll be picking up the new car on Saturday. I haven’t seen it in person yet, so I want to check it out and do a quick test drive. If I like it, it’s mine! The car I want is a silver Mercedes SLK 55 AMG, a powerful little roadster with a 362-horsepower, 5.5-liter V8 engine. Can you say 0-60 in about 5 seconds? Way cool!

Here are a few pictures of the car that’s waiting patiently for me to pick it up:

I’m so in love with the interior — black and ash leather, a rare combo in this car.

Can’t wait for Saturday!

There’s nothing worse than losing your wallet. Not only do you forfeit the cash that was inside, but you also have to replace all of your credit cards and id cards. It’s a slow and painful process that most people try to avoid at all costs.

Now there’s a way to increase your odds of getting your wallet back, according to Dr. Richard Wiseman (author of Quirkology). He recently conducted a psychology study to identify what would make a person more likely to return a wallet to its owner. Hundreds of wallets were scattered around the streets of Edinburgh, Scotland. Most of the wallets included personal items: some included pictures of elderly people, a cute puppy, family portrait or a cute baby. Other wallets contained charity donation receipts, and a few contained no personal items.

What they discovered — surprisingly enough — is that the picture of a baby drove most people to return the wallet. Nine in 10 of the strangers who retrieved the wallets with a baby picture returned them. Whereas only 53 percent returned the wallet including pictures of a puppy. The other images fared even worse, and only one in seven returned the wallets with no photographs.

According to the article on Gimundo, “the success of the baby photograph speaks to a human compassion for the young that’s been passed down through the ages. To ensure our species’ survival, scientists claim that we must feel empathy and compassion for our young. Scientists say that this study supports the argument that we won’t feel compassion only for our own babies, but for any that we see—hence, the overwhelming desire a stranger would feel to return a wallet to the baby’s parent.”

Regardless of the reason why, it seems that the best way to get your lost wallet back is to get the cutest baby pictures you can find and put them inside. Those images just might be your best insurance policy if it’s ever lost.

Now I just need to go find some cute photos of babies since I don’t have any of my own. If you’re willing to donate (the pictures, not the babies), send a them my way!

Sometimes I wish God gave everyone a blueprint for life when they were born. No, I don’t want every tiny detail planned out for me in advance. I enjoy the adventure of choosing my path and discovering what the future holds, but at the same time, I think a high level guide wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

You always hear people say that God has a plan for your life, that he is “birthing” something new and you just have to wait for it. The problem for me is that I want to know what the plan is right now. I’ve never been good at being patient and allowing others to do things for me. Maybe that’s what He’s trying to teach me, but it’s not an easy lesson to learn. It would make life so much easier if I simply had a blueprint to assure me that I was on the right path, making the right decisions, giving the correct answer to the plaguing questions in my life. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for an opportunity to have five minutes face-to-face with God to get a few quick answers!

Sure, you can pray about these things. I believe God can guide you to the correct decision, but sometimes I still question whether it’s God leading me down a certain path or my whether the decision has been sullied by my own personal desires and need for a quick answer. At times, it’s really difficult to distinguish between the two.

It’s certainly a struggle, and that’s where the blueprint would come in handy. Until then, I guess I just have to be patient…to wait on Him until I know the plan, until things become clear again. I hate waiting, but I heard from someone today that it’s a process — and we all know that processes take time. They can’t be rushed, and God won’t be rushed. He does things in His way in His own time. It may not make sense to me right now, but it does to Him.

Perhaps, in this case, it’s His way of telling me to slow down…stop…listen. I’m always moving so fast. I don’t want to wait for an answer. I’d rather figure it out myself and keep going, but the more I try to figure it out on my own, the more frustrated I become. I think it’s time for me to stop trying to figure it all out. It’s time to stop everything for a while and simply focus on Him.

I’m slowly learning to wait, learning to be patient, learning to trust….but there’s a sizeable part of me that still just wants to get a glimpse of the blueprint.