1.  Oklahoma State running back Kendall Hunter currently leads the nation in rushing. He only played 2 quarters of football.  Dang. (and yes, I realize it was against Washington State. Still.)

2.  If you’re not following the Compassion Bloggers in Guatemala, do.  Now.  If nothing else, read this from Ann Voskamp.  Grab a Kleenex first.  Or an entire box of them.

3.  It’s scary that Terry Jones is the pastor of a church, but scarier that people actually attend his church.

4.  If I am ever in the market for a mobile home, I am going to call Cullman Liquidation. Or maybe I won’t.  They won’t care. (Thanks Matt for this gem)

5. I’m a Ray Lewis fan (other than that whole murder accusation thing), but this is awful.  Just awful.

Bonus:
I know it’s the Friday Five, but I have to include this bit of glory:

Happy Friday boys and girls.

                          

On to Luke 16.  Solid stuff from Dewey this morning.  Here we go:

1.  Our life is a God-given stewardship.  We are to be shrewd with it.  Resourceful with it.  Generous with it.

2.  Character is established in the little things.

3.  It isn’t “if” money fails, it’s “when” money fails.  Intense.  Divided loyalty is unacceptable.

4. 143 million orphans in the world.  236 million American “Christians.”  If 6% of those adopted a child, there would be no more orphans in Africa.  No more kids at risk of HIV, Malaria, malnutrition.  That isn’t ok.

5.  Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding in things in life that don’t really matter. – Francis Chan in Crazy Love

Solid Sunday.  How was yours?

                          

Boone Pickens Stadium.  Kendall Hunter.  Brandon Weeden.

Cowboy Football. Gameday. Orange Power.

                          

1.  Barry Sanders’ son plays HS football in OKC.  His school was on TV last night.  121yds rushing on 13 carries.  A 73yd punt return.  An 86yd kick-off return for a TD.  If he doesn’t go to Oklahoma State, I’m quitting.

2.  This is one of the funniest things I’ve seen: If historical events had Facebook statuses

3.  God is a ridiculous artist.  Don’t believe me?  Go look at some of these pictures of OKC after last night’s storm. Breathtaking stuff.

4.  I watched this video with Francis Chan and Mark Driscoll (and some other guy).  I’m convinced more and more every day that Chan has it figured out.  Love what he’s doing.

5.  Come Thou Fount.  Mumford & Sons.  Beautiful.

Go enjoy yourself some college football this weekend!

                          

So my predictions for my beloved Oklahoma State Cowboys are this:

I think we start off 3-0.  Let’s be honest, if we don’t start off 3-0, panic and severe depression will set in.  Week 4 brings Texas A&M.  I think A&M is highly overrated, though they have a legit QB.  I think we beat A&M, in Stillwater.  Next up are Louisiana-Lafayette and Texas Tech.  Both wins.  I’m sorry, but if you think Tommy Tuberville is going to come in and do what Mike Leach did, in year one, sorry.  Not going to happen.  That leaves us 6-0 heading into Nebraska – another team I think is highly overrated.  You lost Suh, who was an absolute monster.  And I might as well be starting at QB with my 18 month old son starting at WR.  They will have a solid D, but I think we dominate them in Stillwater, followed by Ws over K State and Baylor.  The Texas game?  Should be our first L of the season.  Yes they are reloading, but it’s Texas.  9-1.  Kansas is a win and, as much as I hate to say it, we will probably lose to OU, finishing up at 10-2, 3rd in the Big XII South.  Ambitious?  Maybe.  The only games I think we could slip up would be the A&M game and maybe, maybe the Nebraska game.

I think our offense is going to be solid.  As long as the WRs can catch the ball, we’ll be good.  Weeden will have no problem finding open receivers and getting the ball to them.  With Holgorsen at the helm, this offense could be everything we thought it could be under Gundy a few years back…and more.  Defense should continue to improve and be quite a bit faster than previous years.  That’s not saying it will be a top 20 defense, but it should do enough to contain our opponents while we hang 35+ a game on them.  Kendall Hunter will be a machine – and a heisman candidate.  Brandon Weeden will be Big XII Newcomer of the Year – if that even is an award.

So there’s my pick.  10-2.  I’ll be disappointed with anything under 8 wins.

Who is your team?  What are your predictions for the year?

                          

1.  Being a Cardinals fan is not fun right now. Back to back losses to the Pirates (yes, they still have a team), followed up by a loss to the Nationals?  It’s August, boys.  Effing play like it.

2.  Less than a week before college football kicks off.  Holy motherload.

3.  Seth Godin is a genius.  But he’s also Seth Godin.  Too many people are going to try to be like him.  And fail.

4.  Seriously?

5.  I question the validity of this, but I don’t question it’s awesomeness.

Happy Friday, kids.

                          

I hate that this letter needs to be written, but there’s something going on.  Something horrible.  I started noticing it a few years back, but it seems to be gaining ground.  And before it gets too late, I have to write you an apology.  Not for my crimes, but for the crimes of my brothers and sisters.  You see, they are leaving you out.  Abandoning you.  Moving on without you.  Replacing you with none other than your keyboard-neighbor P.  I know, it hurts.  It makes no sense.  But it’s everywhere.  Statements like:

I just got pwned by my inbox.

I’m about to pwn this bike ride.

Man, I’m so out of shape.  Got pwned at my soccer game tonight.

At first I thought they were typos.  I mean, you and P are right next to each other on the standard QWERTY keyboard.  Innocent mistake, I thought.  Then it happened again.  And again.  And again.  And I threw up a little.  Now, I cringe every time I see it.  Really, I do.  And I feel sorry for you, O.  I’ve looked for your crime and found nothing.  It’s one thing to occasionally throw out an LOL, ROFL, or shortcut the word “for” with the number 4 when trying to fit an exceptional message into 140 short characters.  Those are natural.  Nobody sees “If u care about the devastation in Haiti, do something. 4 donations, go to this website. Tell ur friends. Oh, & hide ur kids, hide ur wife” and wonders to themself, “ur?  Is that Greek? I took Spanish. Everybody took Spanish!! Greek wasn’t even an option!”  Seriously though, your to “ur” isn’t bad.  But own to “pwn” doesn’t jive. Where did this come from?

I did some research.  By research I mean the interwebs.  By interwebs I mean WikiPedia.  The origin?  Online gaming.  Specifically, some game called Counter-Strike.  Apparently, after killing your opponent, somebody thought it was intimidating to tell them that they “just got pwned!”  Scary, I know.  Look O, I’m all for gaming, so I can’t hate.  Personally, I’m always up for a game of Madden or Tiger Woods.  Mario Kart Wii?  Let’s do this thing.  But let’s not get out of control to the point where we create our own language and try to spread it across the world, alienating 20% of the vowels.

Don’t worry, O.  I’m here for you.
I won’t let you get replaced.
I won’t let you be forgotten.
I won’t let P own you.

Sincerely

Kevin
Fan of the letter O

                          

There comes a time every year where things change.  The weather begins to go from “center of the Earth” hot to “man, I might not even have to shower today” hot.  Wait, you don’t skip showers on days under 85 degrees?  Me either.  No really, trust me.  Back to football.  That’s right, football.  College football kicks off in 9 days.  9.  That’s the holy number 7 plus 2.  Then in a few more weeks, the NFL.  And what comes with the NFL?  Millionaire’s that fail miserably.  And Sunday afternoon laziness.  Brett Favre being indecisive.  And fantasy football.  As David Crowder so eloquently put it, “the glory of it all.”  He was talking about fantasy football, right?  I’m sure of it.

Fantasy football is a beautiful game that enables men to know the lifetime stats of the Cleveland Browns 3rd string wideout, which gets them exactly nowhere in life.  But it sure adds some much needed excitement to that week 3 Browns/Lions matchup.  This year I am in 3 leagues (down from my normal 7).  Last night we had draft number 1.  I have draft #2 on Wednesday and draft #3 on Sunday.  Sort of a busy week.  I think last night went pretty successfull for team Vick In a Box.  Here’s my breakdown (I ended up with draft position #2, in an 8 team league):

Maurice Jones-Drew (RB)
Tom Brady (QB) – for the record, this kills me. can’t stand Brady.
Calvin Johnson (WR)
DeAngelo Williams (RB)
Brandon Marshall (WR)
Jahvid Best (RB)
Michael Crabtree (WR)
Visanthe Shiancoe (TE)
49ers (Def)
Eli Manning (QB)
Mason Crosby (K)
Laurence Maroney (RB)
Hakeem Nicks (WR)
Golden Tate (WR)
Monterio Hardesty (RB)

Thoughts?  Do you play fantasy football?  If so, how many leagues are you in?

                          

I wasn’t kidding.

This, this is some of the row of bouncy chair things.  On the right, some dude with a crazy stache.  He didn’t move for 30 minutes.  Hellish.

Truthfully, it’s amazing.  You sell stuff (making money) and buy stuff at stupidly cheap prices (saving money).  These sales happen twice a year, so we are able to get 2 seasons worth of clothes for Gabe at each sale, for dirt cheap.  I’m talking $500 worth of stuff for $125.  Believe it.  And if you volunteer to work X amount of hours at the sale, you get in early, gaining access to the best of the goods.  On Friday, with Megan out of town, I played husband of the year and went to drop off the items we would be selling.  We didn’t have much this year (just a laundry basket-full), so it wasn’t so horrible.  Some people roll in with 2 full clothing racks and a trunk load of other crap.  The check-in ladies were impressed that I didn’t have the deer in the headlights look.  I hide my fear well.

As a non-volunterring consignor, you still get early access (not extra extra early, but early).  Megan, calling from Dallas before boarding her plane, reminded me to bring the consignor pass, as we would be going straight from the airport to JBF.  We what?!?  I froze.  Panicked.  In a warehouse with 2000 women, many of them pregnant, is not where I want to be.  Ever.  But I had no choice.  With temps over 100 degrees, we arrived and got in line.  The line wrapped around the entire building and snaked into the parking lot.  Easily over 1500 people.  I’m not exaggerating.  Gabe and I made up 30% of the male line population.

We finally made it in, and I chased Gabe around for about an hour and a half while Megan shopped.  Thankfully, there were approximately 486 basketball goals he could play with, 297 horses he could ride, 856 chairs he could sit in and 1,241 fire trucks he could push around.  Maybe the craziest part about this deal, other than that I made it out alive, is that once you fill up your 550 gallon Ikea bag with clothes, you sit down (anywhere) and spread them all out (all over the floor) to figure out which ones you want.  So you fill a bag with clothes you “might” want, then throw them all over the floor to make sure, then put them back in the bag?  Imagine my shock, when I assumed that the clothes in the bag were the ones we wanted.  (side note: this is not the place to argue about the obvious inefficiencies in the process. Your marriage can thank me later.)

Here’s Megan flying through clothes.  And some random lady, in the middle of the floor, performing this mind-boggling “sorting” action I just described.  She was rather tame with it.

So Megan sorts and re-bags.  And we get in line.  A line that was longer than the one we stood in to get in.  I recorded video as I walked from the front to the back of the line.  I stopped recording about halfway through the line…a 36 second walk.  Thankfully the line moved quickly, and after 2 hours that seemed like 2 decades, we were on our way home.  And I could breathe again.

I still am not sure exactly what happened during this 2 hours.  It’s all a blur, and I think I’m ok with that.

                          

Still hanging out in Luke 15.  Solid stuff this morning from Greg Dewey, focusing on the older brother.  Here are some notes/thoughts:

1.  We like to play the role of the older brother, condemning the actions of the “squandering” younger brother.  Entitled.  Prideful.  Pharisee.

2.  Funny to think that Jesus was describing the Pharisees, to the Pharisees.  Doubtful that they even got it.  Or cared.

3.  Jesus came for the older brother too.  Devoid of joy, full of resentment, forgetful of his true identity.  Still loved.

4.  With the younger brother wandering around lost, it was the older brother’s job (the first-born) to go out and find him.  To locate the lost and bring him home safely.  Clearly, he failed at his job, believing that his brother had brought this fate upon himself.  I treat people like that way too often.

5.  Jesus didn’t fail at his job as first-born.