Still formulating my "full review" of the Rick Springfield concert, but here is a snippet of the night to tide you over.

I know that all of you were anxiously awaiting an update on my new shoes, sorry for the delay.

I didn't like them.  They didn't feel right, and kept slipping off as I was driving.  I think I need shoes with some heel coverage.

I will continue my search for a new pair, and update you as the drama unfolds.

Random browsing can yield some strange sights (pun intended).

The 1 Second Film

One Red Paperclip

Stay tuned for a very special all-Rick Springfield entry.

Right now, I'm enjoying my favorite dessert, chocolate pudding with whipped cream.

In the past shift and a half I've worked with my 3 favorite nurses (I spend 12 hours a day locked in a room with a nurse, tough job hey).

I've been able to make a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference today.

The Twins have won 2 in a row.

Later today, I'll be at a Rick Springfield concert.

If I didn't consider the lottery a tax for stupid people, I'd buy a ticket today, because this is shaping up as a perfect day.

http://msn.foxsports.com/other/story/5674698?FSO1&ATT=HCP&GT1=8393

If you know me for any length of time, two things that you quickly learn about me are:

1. I'm very frugal.  I like my dollar to stretch a long way.  I always shop for deals, using coupons, rebates, sales, and sometimes all three at once to get the best deal I feel possible.  I rarely buy name brands, but get the store brand or dollar store variety when possible.  The only things I don't skimp on are safety, and toilet paper, but I'll save more discussion on this fascinating aspect of my personality to another entry.


2. I like to hold on to my past.  I save a lot of stuff just for the sentimental or historical value.  I have my yearbook from the 6th grade on up.  I have the movie stub from the first movie that I went on with each of my 14 or so girlfriends.  I have pictures that my niece drew for me.  I have the falling apart footlocker that my grandfather brought over from Wales back around 1915.

Combining these two aspects of my personality, above are a pair of shoes that I have had since high school, or maybe even junior high school.  They are so old that my parents bought them for me.  I think they are called docksiders, but I am so far removed from the fashionably conscious that I should be considered brain dead.

I used to wear them to my second ever job, McDonalds.  I could wear sneakers to my brief first job, but I remember McDonalds requiring footwear beyond the tennis variety.  Maybe it was only because I started out working in the back, cooking (someday you'll read of how I prepared the first McDLT in Northern Virginia).  If you look closely at the second picture, you can see the grease stains.  I can remember getting grease on them as I closed the grill at night, carrying bug buckets of grease to the back of the store, where I presume it was somehow regenerated into fresh grease to use the next day, as I never saw them actually throw it away.

So I've had these shoes for over 20 years, and while they were never really used daily as my shoe of choice, I have worn them regularly since the day my parents got them for me.  They have pretty much been the only pair of sockless shoes I've ever owned, I've never been a sandals sort of guy.  But when I just want to run to the mailbox, or the recycling area down the block, or to the grocery store, I often just slip these shoes on.  Michelle [/sarcasm on] loves [/sarcasm off] it when I wear these grease crusted shoes.

They've been slowly falling falling apart over the years.  The laces are hardened and difficult to keep laced, and you can see how the inside is falling apart.

So today, I did something foreign and shocking.  I have replaced these shoes, these longtime faithful partners of mine, even though they are still incredibly useful and meaningful to me.  I was in Target today, shopping for shoelaces for another pair of shoes, and found the below.  So out with the old, and in with the new!  Please allow me to introduce you to my "docksiders" for the next 20+ years.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present Kirk Johnson.

http://rottenassembly.blogspot.com/

Read from the bottom up.

You need to make time to reflect to make faith grow.  For faith to develop, we need contemplative time.  Doubts can take over when we keep ourselves so busy that we don't make time to spend time with God alone.

This might be why some people are more active in their walks during times of low stress and more free time, like childhood and retirement; but more distant from God during the years that they let themselves be distracted by kids and careers.

The above stolen/paraphrased from a section of the below book by Lee Strobel.

Twice in the last week or so, God has put on an amazing display of lightning in my neighborhood.  I won't mind missing the fireworks today, because I've already seen some spectacular pyrotechnics.  I didn't get out my camera in time in a probable fruitless attempt to get pictures, so here are a couple of googled pics that do a pretty good job of showing how impressive it was.

At the time of the storms, we were all calling it heat lightning.  I always thought that heat lightning was a different type of lightning, one that produced less thunder than normal, and that traveled in random directions.  I did some research, and was disappointed to find out that heat lightning does not really exist.

"Nontechnically, the luminosity observed from ordinary lightning too far away for its thunder to be heard. Since such observations have often been made with clear skies overhead, and since hot summer evenings particularly favor this type of observation,  there has arisen a popular misconception that the presence of diffuse flashes in the apparent absence of thunderclouds implies that lightning is somehow occurring in the atmosphere merely as a result of excessive heat."

I liked it better when I didn't know the above.  I also read that sometimes you don't hear the lightning because of temperature layers in the atmosphere.  If the lightning is contained in one upper layer, and there is a lower layer with air of a significantly different temperature, it makes the thunder more difficult to hear.  Very interesting, at least IMHO.

Happy Independence Day everyone.