Worst moment ever II

Poor guy - no belt

Poor guy.
Ezekiel was helping me move some stuff. However, he wasn't wearing a belt and his pants dropped to the ground. With his hands full. Sylvia and I had to stop and take a picture, with his permission of course.
Zeke is awesome.

Possibly worse than the previous worst moment ever!

Spoiler Alert

There are no spoilers in this blog - I don't believe in them. I'm not stupid, I know they exist, I'm just not going to be someone who creates a spoiler. I think it's just common courtesy. A certain movie theater on the other-hand was not so courteous.

I went to see Cloverfield with Sylvia and Ezekiel.
The theater in question has started a little, what I like to call, "customer service moment" after the trailers, but before the feature. It's bad enough that I've had to adjust my arrival time to the theater such that I miss the genuine commercials, but still catch the trailers. Now they send a kid who fancies himself a thespian out to tell us how wonderful DLP technology is. Then they play the DLP trailer, and then the movie.

This time the kid came out and did not mention the millions of colors, the sparkling clarity nor even the marvelous contrast ratio provided by the DLP experience. Nay, he stepped out into the role of the film critic.

I should point out that I don't like to know too much about movies before I go to them I want to enjoy the experience and be surprised. Some movies, if you've seen the trailer, you've seen the movie. Those are annoying. I had managed to shield myself from most things about the movie before I got there. I knew from the trailer that something happened, everyone was scared, and we might see some of it through a hand-held home video camera.

So, when the kid stepped out to talk about DLP and instead started talking about the movie, he revealed certain truths about the movie that I did not know before that moment.

sigh...

I'm not going to tell you anything about it other than what I thought of the movie. Ready? If you don't want to know what I thought, don't read any more. In fact, I'm placing this image here again so that you won't go any further if you don't want to.




It
Was
AWESOME!!!
If you see one movie this month - go see that. It's got everything a great summer blockbuster needs, except the summer.
WOW!!!
Whew!
Great movie...
Yeah!

Go to the mattresses

The time has come to buy a new bed. It was time to go to the mattresses.

I visited a number of furniture stores and carefully avoided a particular chain of furniture stores. Hint - the sales staff descend on shoppers like a horde of locusts, and they advertise... a lot! And the initials of the store are "Art" "Van". However, on a limited budget, I eventually walked through the doors.
I made a B-line for the mattresses and carefully avoided any eye contact that might encourage the sales-folk to pounce. I think they can smell you when you come in, or maybe they have chips installed in their heads that ping when the doors open. In any case, I wasn't going to give them the opportunity to jump me.

After about 30 seconds in the mattresses, walking past the $3500 Tempurpedics and down to the other end, Jon showed up. I put on my "polite, but just looking" face and returned his greeting. He said,

"If you have any questions, I'll be right over there,"

pointing to a kiosk across the way a bit.

I was shocked to say the least. No pitch, no fake friendliness. Where was I?

I found a mattress I wanted, the price was good, and I was ready to make a purchase. I looked up to see if Jon was around. There he was, right where he said he'd be. He hadn't come around to check on me or anything. He did just what he said he would do. Weird.

He rang up my sale including a new mattress pad, which he carried out to my car for me. Then he thanked me for my business. Weird.

I felt that I needed to say something. I thanked him for his time and told him that I really appreciated the way he gave me the space I needed to make a purchase. Jon kinda smiled and said,

"Yeah, we know what the reputation is out there, and some of us are trying to change that."

It's working.

When I started this story, you might have had a visceral reaction to the words "Art Van". You might have thought to yourself - No Way. I'm here to tell you that at least one person over there gets it and is trying to do the right thing. So, now I'm an Art Van evangelist?

I found the whole shebang to be a big metaphor for Christianity. My own experience was that I was really turned off to the hypocrites I knew. People who claimed to be Christians - all that love junk - but didn't behave consistently with their talk. Then I met just a couple of people who were trying really hard to live the way they talked and their deep desire was to see me connect with the creator of the universe.

Weird

One person's genuine faith and love made all the difference to me. There's a new book out there called unChristian. For Christians it's a wake up call that Christianity has an image problem. Young Americans see Christians kind of the way I thought about the Art Van sales staff. If you don't know what our reputation is, pick up the book and read it.

We know what the reputation is out there, and some of us are trying to change that. It's time to go to the mattresses.

Weird

my whiteboard

From time to time I write something on my whiteboard that stays up there for a while.
I've usually borrowed them from somewhere.
Sometimes they are clever like this Haiku:

Haikus are easy
but sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator

Sometimes they are relatively profound:

If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time.

Sometimes they are wacky, like this one my boss said a few weeks ago:

"My mom thinks she's having some dementia. She's not, but she thinks she is."

Thanks Robby.