Here it is, two days before Halloween and we don't even have the site all decked out for the holiday yet. Sorry to disappoint, and you're welcome, Mom.

Last weekend we went to a play called The Swallow Song at the Getty, which was about the coming of age in ancient Greece. We wouldn't have gone due our lack of time except that we'd planned it a long time ago. Afterward we saw as much as we could around the museum before closing time, since we were already there. We just can't bear to waste a trip.

Lucky me, I didn't get picked to serve in any cases. In fact, no one did, since no cases went to court at the courthouse I was assigned to. Yippy. However, I did get plenty of time to read and watch People's Court with the sound off. And some kids came through for a field trip and stared at us. They seemed excited to see the wheels of justice in action, as a room full of potential jurors sat waiting in what resembled an airport terminal. I'm sure they're looking forward to the day when they can serve their community by sitting there all day, too.

I have jury duty on Tuesday. When I got the notice in the mail, I thought about that OC Supertones song, "Jury Duty," but realized the lyrics didn't apply to my situation. For one, I never forget my sister's birthday. Especially not now, since it's the day after our anniversary. Secondly, I don't have jury duty in Santa Ana. I got assigned to the Fullerton location because of the location of our postoffice box. I knew there had to be a reason we needed to move our postoffice box. However, Brandon has the address stamped into many of his books. You see the dilemma. And last of all, as Sean (my lil - er - younger brother inlaw) pointed out, I haven't recently finished a C.S. Lewis book. The last book I read was called Stiff and it was about cadavers. I have good taste. :)

So it's actually been kind of chilly lately due to the rain. And what could be better than sippin' a pumpkin spice latte on a cold day? However, silly Brandon still ordered a frappucino from Starbucks on a day like this. He's just wasting it.

Daniel asked me about the little message that said, "This should work just fine for you non-IE users" that was at the top of the page. Let me be frank, I don't like IE, but I used to. So when I made the blog a couple of years ago I liked IE, but for the past six months I've been using Firefox. The truth of the matter is that (a) I am lazy and did not change the message, and (b) there is no browser that even does most of what I would like it to do, and (c) it gave me an excuse to put some Latin as a treat for those non-IE users.

Since I usually let you kids know waaaay ahead of time, I'll make my yearly announcement:

Brandon and I will be in Alabama from December 25th - January 5th. Let me know if you want to make plans to hang out or go to Walmart or shoot deer or something. It's gonna be a down-home kinda holiday. Yeehaw. :-D

It's early. It's Saturday. If this isn't the apocalyptic telos, then I don't know what is.

So as you read below, yesterday was my birthday. I was gracious enough to share it with Paulo, who blogged his goals of five years past and goals for the next five years. So I figured why not do the same, since, as we all learned from business class, setting goals is good for some reason.

2004: The next 5 years
1. Completely finish my education.
2. Become a proud homeowner (rather than a shameful homeowner or apathetic apartment leaser).
And, should I accomplish #2,
3. Get a cat. Dare I get my hopes up?

Well, I think that's enough for now. This should be fun.

In case anyone needed to know why it is necessary to read the New Testament in Greek, here is one reason—id satis est.

If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning anthrax on his head. — Rom 12.20

Yes, the war against terror was being waged in full swing back in the first century AD.

On to more important news:

Happy 22nd Birthday to my wonderful, dearest wife!

I recently learned to shoot a rubber band. I never knew how much fun it was, or that I could be a pretty okay shot at it. Unfortunately, this has resulted in more rubber band wars than I'd counted on. Live targets are just so much more fun.

How southern am I? One of my elementary school memories is of a field trip during which everyone on the bus sang the beautiful and classic Garth Brookes song, "Friends in Low Places."

I'll leave you with that, which surely left you in complete awe.

I am currently reading through the pseudepigraphal work known as 1 (Ethiopic Apocalypse of) Enoch. Much of this pseudonymous work deals with the judgment of angels. One angel, in particular, committed a rather strange crime. The error of Pinem'e was that he taught people how to write with ink and paper. The response by the author is this: "For human beings are not created for such purposes to take up their beliefs with pen and ink" (1 Enoch 69:10). This of course didn't stop the author from writing down his own beliefs with the very aforementioned media.

I mainly dislike computers. About a year and a half ago I reformatted our computer at home and re-installed Windows 98 SE. There was one slight problem, however, which surfaced when we wanted to play music—the computer wouldn't do audio. To this day I still don't know why it wouldn't work properly, but after installing Windows XP the audio works great and Wendy isn't mad at me anymore. I'd like to thank all the people that helped me on the way in this endeavor (FSRJR and Nathan). Thanks guys.

Those commercials for learning centers are so funny. They advertise that they help kids who are "struggling" and those who are "not being challenged" in school. It's really the same thing, though. The honest parent would say "my kid is struggling in math" while the parent with big dreams for their offspring says he is "not being challenged in math class." Righto, challenged. Like Brandon just said, "They need to be challenged with stupider things."

Yippy, October's here. It's a good month. It's got my birthday (thirteen more days!), Halloween... And Reformation Day. And what's nice is that for the last two days it's actually felt like fall. When I get out of class at night it's kind of nippy. But then, I've been wussified by California's fair weather. Most would probably wear shorts in weather that causes me to shiver.

It's so much easier to write about random things than to say what your mind is actually preoccupied with. Probably makes for lower quality writing, too. Oh well.