It’s been quite the day already here on the usual “quiet” Warsaw Wesleyan Wednesday…

Had lunch with my buddy Steve Zerbe today – they’ve got some prospective job opportunities that they’re following up on in the next few days and weeks. Exciting & nervous in the Zerbe household I’m sure. We ate at our favorite China Palace where we BOTH behaved ourselves with more conversing than eating – both keeping it to a one-plate limit!

Now if I could just give up the late-night Oreo binges I might actually lose some weight.

When I got back to the office I had a chance to converse with a guy who dropped by the church looking for some “help”. We provide groceries one day a week for needy families, and that’s on Thursdays, so I referred him to that ministry tomorrow, but had a good chance to talk to him about life, his amazingly artistic tattoos, and the last 20 years he spent in prison! Can you imagine 20-years in prison? I found out from him today something pretty interesting: when you’re in prison, the first 4 years seem to go by pretty quickly and then monotony REALLY sets in and things get pretty bad. That’s when you put in a request to “move” to a different prison! Then you spend 4 more years in a different place, different people, different guards, etc. And you do a 4-year rotation-based prison-stent!

Another great “prison insight” this week. Hopefully the Lord’s not trying to “up” my prison knowledge for any specific purpose…

I’m looking forward to theBOX tonight – we’ve been breaking up into small groups over the last couple of weeks and will continue to do that over the summer months. Discussion really happens on a different level when small-groups are formed. I like that.

One more bit of information that I must share with the web-world. My wife, Jess, was guaranteed a position at Harrison Elementary next year! We were praying that everything would come together for that to happen, and God has come through once again!

Drove to Columbia City this afternoon for a spontaneous lunch with my buddy Glen Robinson – solo pastor @ the Etna Avenue Wesleyan Church in Huntington, and is also the same age as me.

We grabbed some Pizza Hut buffet action and enjoyed some conversations about the hi’s and low’s of local church ministry. I learned some good “church history” stuff, as I usually do and once again it was good to hang with a ministry brother who consistantly uplifts me in Christian brotherhood.

It’s good to have friends like Glen.

Thank you, brother, for the spontaneous lunch today!

I co-created a new game not too long ago.

It started out as “regular” frisbee, but that quickly lost it’s fun.

So, we began throwing INTO the wind and playing a new form of the familiar game: FRISBEE-DODGE

The game is simple: throw the frisbee at such an angle into the wind that it will speed up on its way back down and nearly rip your head off.

It is only when you’ve mastered this “angle” that you are a “frisbee-dodge master”.

Once you’ve tried to “catch” this frisbee and received a few “ouchies”, it is time to move on to “frisbee-dodge maniac”. This is a level of Frisbee-Dodge that few will achieve. This “level” requires that instead of “catching” said frisbee, you must “take one for the team”. Head shots are worth double, minor appendages like hands and legs count for very little. A “turn-around-back-side-hit” is worth approximately 14.5 points. Taking one to the nose, eye, or teeth makes you an instant success and your name is put upon a brass plaque.

(the brass plaque part is a little “over the top”…)

Yesterday evening we had our annual Church Dinner and Church Conference. I decided to give my new camera a good workout and snap photo after photo during the dinner as I would visit with those who ate.

In the morning, during announcements, I announced that I would out-eat ANYONE in black olives (church dinners ALWAYS have an abundance of black olives – why is that?) I was challenged by Dan Freeman to an olive-eating-contest. Final score: Dan 30, Stevan 33. (I didn’t sleep too well last night!)

Before we ate supper, we had a prayer time for the meal and as I snapped photos of “praying heads”, I noticed one who was acting very similarly to a young Stevan. Bailey is quite the character!

It was a great time with our church family. Jess and I ended the evening with the Freemans, Irvines, and Bethany & Thomas @ Hacienda for a “before Survivor” snack!

Okay, so there was no “blank” vote, but I was correct in figuring the last 3, then 2, then Tom as the $1,000,000 winner!

Now on to how we ended up watching the finale..

We got home last night after 9:30PM. We had DVD-R’ed the finale 2-hour special (as advertised all week long on CBS) from 7-9.

At about 10 till 10 we turned on the television, fired up the DVD player and began to watch the finale.

Note to self: the “Surivor Finale” is approximately 3 HOURS long NOT just 2 HOURS.

The DVD “chapter” ended with the jury voting on the remaining Survivors and we had NO IDEA who had actually won the MILLION (we both hoped it was Tom, but didn’t have the confirmation)

My poor wife and I both had a hard time accepting the fact that we missed the entire LIVE reunion show, and especially the announcement of who won Surivor. Jess said, “get on the internet” – then we realized that I left my laptop at the church and my desktop is still “under the weather”, so I fired up the Dell Axim PDA and surfed the slow internet on a palm-top only to realize that in California, the live show hasn’t been aired, so the internet is NOT going to tell us.

At about 20 minutes till 12 (CST) we made a decision to call – even wake up if necessary – my folks in South Carolina.

Mom and Dad graciously stayed on the line until well after 1AM their time to give us the rundown of how things went on the finale!

It was QUITE the stressful evening!