Link-a-palooza

You'll find a bunch of new links to the right. A lot of them are to sites powered by members of Just Starting Out, our Bible class at Memorial Road.

If I could only live in Springfield ...

(By Erik)

It took me several tries, but I finally got an idea of what I would look like if I moved to the mythical town of Springfield.

Not too bad, if I do say so myself. And, as you can see, they nailed the wardrobe!

Take a photo of yourself and try it at simpsonizeme.com. (There's a lot of traffic ont he site right now, though.)

I'm still trying to get a photo of Jeanie to work on the site. I'll post it if and when.

I'm definitely looking forward to The Simpsons Movie this weekend.

This cracked me up

(By Erik)

Since it looks like I'm going to be a dad sometime early next year (or later this year, if the kid comes early) I thought this opinion piece from The Onion was particularly funny. (Apologies if you see any off-color content in other Onion stories if you follow this link. There's a bad word that appears in an ad that pops up on the right next to this story — but only on occasion. The actual opinion piece itself is "clean" — and really funny near the end.)

Adults Have Misclassified Me As A Handful

Quick baby update

Jeanie got a quick look at the "young-un" recently. Still can't tell if it's a boy or girl, but she's pretty much confirmed that we have a thumb-sucker. (Jeanie was a chronic thumb-sucker when she was little.)

To quote James Brown …

(By Erik)

Actually, I’ll get to that in a minute.

This story begins back in May, when my lovely wife handed me a home pregnancy test. She was convinced it was positive.

Here’s what I saw.


Now, come on, that looks like a sideways minus sign, right? Sure, if you squint you can make out a horizontal line, but that’s hardly a plus sign.

Unfortunately, we had thrown out the instruction sheet. (It was one half of a two-pack of pregnancy tests I bought a few years back — and that time it was undeniably negative.) So Jeanie got online and consulted the manufacturer’s Web site. I took a look at it and felt my heart jump up to the back of my throat.

That vertical line … it’s the “I’m pregnant” line. The horizontal line is the control line.

My pulse racing, I tried to rationalize. “That thing still looks like a minus sign to me. How do we know it’s a plus sign? When was this thing on the Internet written, anyway? What if someone in the factory put the thing in sideways?”

So, off to Wal-Mart to buy another test. Looking nervously over our shoulders to make sure we didn’t recognize anyone in the pharmacy section, we bought a three-pack of tests. These have two parallel lines, so I figured there would be less confusion.

We returned to the house and, after some prompting on my behalf (“Do you have to go again? Here, have some water! What about now?”) this was the result:


Still inconclusive, in my book. That one line looks awfully faint. Perhaps she’s just a little bit pregnant. There has to be a way to tell for sure.

So, finally, I took drastic measures. Unless these things are completely faulty (or I’ve somehow defied medical science, a la Gov. Schwarzenegger in “Junior”) we should have a clear indication of a what a negative reading looks like.


After seeing this, all I could think of to ask was, "Pink or blue?"

So, as James Brown would say, “Baby baby baby, baby baby baby, baby baby baby, I got that feelin.’”

That was a whole trimester ago. We’re 14 weeks along and, aside from the nausea and weird food cravings, we’re feeling fine. (Jeanie’s doing OK, too.)

Nonetheless, we’re both really squeamish about blogging about this in case something bad happens. But so far everything looks good.

I always thought I wanted a boy, but the second this happened, I didn’t care about that any more. It’s weird. Actually, I’m convinced we’re having a girl. Jeanie’s guessing boy.

Jan 17, 2008, is our anticipated big day. Please pray with us for a happy, healthy baby.

Big news coming ...

(Pending spousal approval. Keep watching this space for more details.)

Some photos from Puerto Rico

(By Erik)

This is cool. I usually don't have Internet access in the places I visit, but the San Juan Holiday Inn is helping me out. So here are some shots from my first day in Puerto Rico.


Not too shabby, huh?

But here's one just so you'll know I've been working.


Here's a photo of a couple of ministers I met today. Leroy Smith, left, is minister for the Park Gardens Church of Christ. Jose Cheo Colon is minster for the Los Angeles Church of Christ. Both of the churches are in San Juan.


More later.

Mmmmm ... hot links

(By Erik)

We've added some new links on the right-hand side of our blog. Feel free to check them out. Some are people that Jeanie knows from college. She was checking their blogs a lot, following links through other people's blogs, so I'm saving her a step.

A few other links are people I know from college. Amy helped me link up with them.

Cyberspace is just one big alumni association, ain't it?