Journal

Ugh. I feel like a big jerk.

We have a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses who come around every few weeks. We generally try to be nice to them and listen politely. For the most part they're pretty nice people.

But I don't know why...today...they just annoyed me. Usually our conversations end up being me defending some tenant of the Christian faith that isn't held by the JW's (the Trinity is a big one). And that's fine. I do my best to listen to their arguments and give reasonable, thought-out answers.

But today. Well...I lost my head a bit. I'm not sure why. I think I just finally felt like they weren't listening at all to the points I was trying to make. I would quote a scripture, or toss in a point about what he was saying, and he would just ignore it, or pass it off as unbiblical (which really drove me crazy, since I was giving scripture to back up most of what I was saying).

So, I ended up just playing the devil's advocate with everything. I wouldn't let him get an easy point in no matter what the cost. And let me tell you...I argued some pretty ridiculous things. I think the worst was when he brought up the story of the prodigal son, trying to say that the God was a good father, and we are like the prodigal son who goes and makes bad decisions against God's will. Pretty reasonable, right? Yeah, I didn't let him have it, though. I argued that the father in the story was really a bad father and would have been arrested for neglecting his son in any modern, reasonable society. Oh..yeah...and when the JW brought Satan into the picture saying that God taught us how to do good but Satan tempts us to do otherwise. Well...I said the most ridiculous thing ever: I compared Satan to an evil uncle and asked it you wouldn't hold the father responsible for allowing his son to go away under the influence of the evil uncle. Oh man. Just ridiculous.

So, I feel pretty much like a jerk now. It's one thing to debate and argue over things you actually believe. It's quite another just to throw ridiculous things into the argument because you're tired of not being listened to. That's just not good for anyone.

I am bound and determined to apologize the next time they come by.

Here's something I like:

Cheap chocolate-striped shortbread cookies dipped into cheap Earl Grey tea. The chocolate melts oh-so-deliciously, and the tea is made oh-so-daintily sweet. Oh yum!

This has been something I like.
What do you like?

Right. So, I am currently doing my absolute best to get down a rap. Oh my. I am so sorry, world. Brian White was never meant to rap, let me tell you.

So, why am I attempting to rap? Well, it was one of those things where I got asked to help with a children's sermon without exactly knowing what was wanted of me. And yes, indeed, the "sermon" came from one of those books that tries to be cool and "relate" to the kids. And so, naturally, that means rap.

And, yes, it's bad and cheesy.

But, I'm doing my best with it. Hardest problem so far: finding some reasonable beat track to go with it. I kind of wanted a 90s bad-cowboy Kid Rock sort of thing. Yeah...kind of hard to find for free (legal) off of the net. I found some nice creative commons stuff, but it's all really hard and heavy...not quite right for a children's sermon rap.

But, who am I kidding? The tunez are the last thing I need to be worrying about!

UPDATE: Well, it went much better than I thought. Not that I will be getting a hot record deal anytime soon, but the kids seemed to enjoy it, and that's what counts. :)

Well, farming was still the main item on the agenda today. We finished the wheat harvest, and started plowing up the wheat fields. (This keeps any volunteer wheat from coming up.) We'll let it sit like that for several months until we plant the wheat again in the late summer/early fall.

However, it's not really the wheat fields that we're worried about right now. David wanted to start planting the milo several days ago. Unfortunately, the drill that we use for that was broken. So, for the past several days we've been working on repairing the drill (planter). I think we finally got the last pieces tacked back on, so we'll be able to start planting tomorrow. We'd better hurry, too...for insurance reasons, we have to have everything planted before July 1, which isn't too far away!

One of the things I absolutely love about living out on the plains is being able to watch the thunderstorms off in the distance.

So many summer memories...

It's harvest time out here in the Panhandle. Well...what little harvest there is, anyway. We just started cutting our wheat yesterday. One field made a little over one truck load. That's...pitiful. There just wasn't enough rain this year. In total, we're going to make about 2.5 truck loads, I would guess. We planted 3 fields last winter. 1 didn't make at all, and the other 2 are probably between 8-10 bushels per acre. An average year is about 25 bushels per acre. A good year is 30-40 bushels per acre, to give you an idea.

Good news is I took some nice pictures of the wheat, which will be going up on skiasma after the Japan photoseries is over. :)

My general goal out here on the farm is to be as helpful as possible. Today I utterly failed. Utterly.

Oh, best of intentions...how dangerous you can be!

I love you, Dad!