a beautiful hermeneutic [hur-muh-noo-tik]

I took Annie skydiving on Saturday for her birthday. Rather then trying to explain the experience, you can watch it here: Saturday we kicked it old school with a small group slumber party. A little Balderdash, a few Saved By The Bell episodes, lots of candy and cake, and a few rip roarin games of Pit. It was like we were in junior high again, except with a few less zits. I will post some pics from that another day.

Yesterday was the big day of the Huntsville sprint triathalon. This years experience was much better then last year, largely due to the fact that we had a team of 12 from Summit doing the race with us! The heat and humidity were enough to drop a cow to it's knees, but not us! I did think that Paul was going to die in the pool, but we all managed to finish with respectable times. Afterward, a few of us went to ihop where we immediately gained back the weight that we had lost during the tri. We already got a few more recruits for next years team, probably due to how cool we all looked sporting our Summit Crossing Trathalon Team t-shirts this morning at church :-) Below are a few pics from the race. The rest can be found here.

This headline from Drudge says it all: Alabama hits 100+ degrees for the 11th straight day; smashes previous record of 7 days...

After a 3 hour delay in Cinci, I am back home in Alabama (otherwise known as Africa). The Milwaukie experience was a good one, although we weren't able to completely solve the problem we were sent up there to investigate. I was, however, able to go through 2 large Duncan Donuts coffee's! We don't have those down here, so I had to take it when I could get it. I also got myself a Usingers Polish Sausage while in town. You have to get something that an area is famous for and Milwaukee is famous for sausage (and beer). After our first day of tedious testing and troubleshooting, Russ and I were ready to kick back and have a little fun. We hopped in the Camry and headed down to the river walk. I think we were both shocked with how safe and clean downtown Milwaukie was. There were a lot of young people out and about going to and from their downtown condos. We had a significant number of restaurants to choose from in the downtoan area. When doing some research online, I found an in...

Today I awake to the dreary cool (68) that is brew town. Everytime I hear the word "Milwaukee" I think of that scene from Wayne's world where Alice Cooper explains it's origin. A little nostalgia shall we? Wayne Campbell : So, do you... come to Milwaukee often? Alice Cooper : Well, I'm a regular visitor here, but Milwaukee has certainly had its share of visitors. The French missionaries and explorers began visiting here in the late 16th century. Pete : Hey, isn't "Milwaukee" an Indian name? Alice Cooper : Yes, Pete, it is. In fact , it's pronounced "mill-e-wah-que" which is Algonquin for "the good land." Wayne Campbell : I was not aware of that. :-) Well, time to get to go find some crosstalk.

The following is from John Piper's Blog last week regarding the Minneapolis bridge collapse. His church is right down the street. He offers some sobering thoughts about our perspective during tragedy. Putting My Daughter to Bed Two Hours After the Bridge Collapsed At about 6 PM tonight the bridge of Interstate 35W over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed. I am writing this about three hours after the bridge fell. The bridge is located within sight of Bethlehem Baptist Church. Most of us who minister at the church cross this bridge several times a week. At this point I don’t know if any staff was on the bridge. Desiring God offices are about a mile from the bridge. There are no firm facts at this point about the total number of injuries and fatalities. When we crossed the bridge Tuesday on our way out of town, there was extensive repair work happening on the surface of the bridge with single lane traffic. One speculates about the unusual stresses on the bridge with ...