Die hard sports loyalty at its best…

okay…texas sports fanaticism reach a new high tonight at our young adult bible study.

there was a group of us sitting around watching the browns-steelers game after the study, and the conversation turned to sports headlines and the requisite trash-talking that always ensues.  it wasn’t bad.  pretty normal.

cammy was at bible study tonight.  for those of you that don’t know cammy, she is one of the most gifted and talented young people i have ever had come through my youth ministry.  she is a focused and passionate disciple of jesus…a senior student leader at abilene christian uiversity…and deeply committed to the kingdom.

she is also one of the most biased, narrow-minded, trash-talking, all-teams-texas, homer i know of.  cammy has never entered a sports talk competition that she didn’t think could win.  she’s that impressive.

but cammy outdid herself tonight!  here’s how it unfolded…

we were talking texas longhorn and dallas cowboy football.  the topic turned to the nfl draft and specifically about the longhorns star quarterback, colt mccoy and his star wide receiver and best friend, jordan shipley.

cammy has turned on the cowboys great hope, tony romolicious, and she wants the cowboys to draft colt mccoy as their next quarterback.   that’s another post for another time.  but the next part of the dialogue was pure sports greatness.

she proceeded to say that cowboys should then draft shipley, because mccoy and shipley are best friends and they have some kind of cosmic football connection that would ensure epic success and bring the cowboys back to their rightful spot as america’s team (my words, but her sentiment).

i pointed out to her that shipley has already declared that he is not going to play professional football, but that he is going to be a missionary…his lifelong goal as a disciple of jesus.  admirable, to say the least.

without even a hesitation (or a prayer of forgiveness), cammy put texas-sports-homer loyalty into perspective:

“missionary?  he doesn’t need to be a missionary.  i go to a school that’s full of people studying to be missionaries.  let them go and do it.  he needs to come and play for the cowboys!”

have i told you recently that i love living in texas?

Finally making the transition…

it’s taken nearly fifteen years, but it’s finally happening.

after spending our first forty years on the left coast…eating sprouts and avocados…saving whales…hugging trees…voting for actors posing as politicians…enjoying the surf and snow…befriending illegals…and riding out the aftershocks of earthquakes…i think we are finally becoming texans.

how do i know?  i may be ready to buy a gun.  let me explain…

for the past six months, we have been harassed by mice and rats at the farra cabana.  first it was this summer.  thought we had tackled the problem, but somehow…before they died…they must have contacted their cousins and told them we were pretty easy targets, being from california and all.

so the extended family moved in about a month ago.

being the ungracious hosts that we are, we began putting out poison cubes (which we are convinced they just carted off and used for furniture in their little rodent family rooms) and a big honkin’ trap.

a few days ago, the trap caught a big one by the nose and, after it had drug it’s sorry little body around our kitchen floor for a while during the night, it finally gave up the ghost.

now here’s the part that made me fall more madly in love with wanda than i ever thought possible.  instead of waking me up in the morning to do the dirty work of picking it up and tossing it in the trash…she did it all on her own!  then she cleaned up the blood and washed the floor and when she told me about it, i asked her if she was okay with dealing so closely with the death of one of god’s creations?

“nope.  it got what it deserved.”  no remorse.  no sadness.  pretty much pure bloodlust.

this morning, i caught another one…with a pot.  i snuck up on it (though i think it was a little punch drunk from eating the poison…it moved as slow as i do most mornings), put the pot over the top of it,  slid a piece of cardboard under the pot, dumped the rat in in a plastic grocery bag, tied the top and layed it on the garage floor.

i was watching the bag move around when it happened.  my inner, tranquil, ex-hippie peace and love demeanor was taken over.  a cosmic compulsion grabbed my ecologically correct, california heart.  without hesitation, without conscience, without compassion…i reached for my shovel leaning against the corner of my garage…and with a swift, calculated, determined explosion, i totally lumberjacked that bag, and it’s contents, into a perfectly flat pancake.

with what looked  like a cherry-raspberry syrup oozing from inside the bag.

and with that “yeah, i’m bad…i just hit a walk-off homerun in the bottom of the ninth” arrogance, i bent over picked up the bag and threw it in the trash can.

no remorse.  no bad feelings.  no guilt.  no bad dreams tonight.  just the pure satisfaction of a man who has protected his house and his woman from the evil intruder.

i live in texas now, dad gummit!  i’m a man.  i’m wild at heart.  i can kill things.  i think i need a gun.

i wonder if walmart has any of those “super power soakers” in stock?

 

Friday is Top Five Day

i got up this morning thinking about how long i have lived in texas.  don’t ask me why.  i just did.

there are many things i love about living in texas.  a future top five day will be devoted to those reasons.  but for today, i want to list my top five names of cities or towns i have visited in the great state.   i love these names!

5.   Purves – need i say more?  this is a little town southeast of dublin (home of the amazing dublin dr. pepper)

4.  Uncertain – this is a little hot spot on caddo lake in east texas.  to be honest, i’m a little uncertain of most of east texas…

3.   Cut and Shoot - between conroe and the thriving metropolis of cleveland…a suburb of lizzy’s rockin’ hometown of tarkington.  you just gotta go there.

2.   Ding Dong – just south of kileen and copperas cove.  really…who would think of naming their town “ding dong”?  i guess you have to be one to know one.

1.   Pflugerville – not sure why, but i always start laughing every time we pass through here on our way home from austin.  it always makes me ask, “what’s a pfluger?”

so how about you?  do you have any favorite texas towns that have names you just can’t forget?

A little justice in the world…

just read tonight that san diego (you know, that little beach town on the left coast) is in their second day of a record-setting heat wave.  honestly, i don’t wish suffering on anyone…but 100 degree plus temps in my beloved home town is just a little taste of texas home cookin’…