Fred Zing! Catapult Spoon

ZING! launch your lunch Everyone knows you shouldn’t play with your food. But hey - sometimes you have to defend your dinner! Now there’s a new weapon in your homeland security arsenal - load up a particularly mushy pea or corn niblet, aim, pull back the spring-loaded handle, and watch your food take flight. ZING! It’s WAY more fun than a war of words.

Condolences to the Steven Curtis Chapman family… if this story doesn’t make you slow down and take some time to enjoy the fleeting moments in life that we so often take for granted, I don’t know what will.

Musician Steven Curtis Chapman’s daughter killed in accident

“I was trying to give my little girls a bath and rushing and hurrying through it,” Chapman told The Press in an interview last fall. “And I got convicted over how much I rush through moments trying to get to the next one, and God telling me to stop and take the moments as he gives then, and see what he’s trying to teach me.”

*sigh*

First Ethan falls in love with soccer… and now Gabe brings home this from Kindergarten…

I’d be in big trouble when October rolls around… (found via Kottke)

“Toy Story” films headed back to theaters in 3-D

The Walt Disney Studios plans to debut digital 3-D versions of Disney-Pixar’s “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2.”

“Toy Story” is slated to open October 2, 2009, followed by “Toy Story 2″ on February 12, 2010. Both films would be released in advance of Disney-Pixar’s “Toy Story 3,” which is being produced as a 3-D motion picture and is slated to open June 18, 2010. Veteran Pixar filmmaker Lee Unkrich (co-director of “Toy Story 2″) is directing the third installment.

As exciting as it was to read that in converting “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2″, the technical team is retrieving all of the original digital elements and rebuilding them in 3-D, I have to say, I’m kinda with Kottke on this one… 3-D has never done anything special for me. Of course, that won’t stop me from taking the entire family to see the third installment when it opens!

I haven’t written anything here in FOREVER!!! To anybody that was actually reading… sorry. To anybody just now stopping by… uhm, what dry spell? Seriously though, I noticed a few friends and family members ( Nate, Mooney, & Hopper) were actually linking to me from their blogs, so I was thinking maybe I should actually spend a few minutes now and then and update mine.

OK. Done.

I dreamt that I went to Heaven and an angel was showing me around.We walked side-by-side inside a large workroom filled with angels.

My angel guide stopped in front of the first section and said, “This is the Receiving Section Here, all petitions to God said in prayer are received.”

I looked around in this area, and it was terribly busy with so many angels sorting out petitions written on voluminous paper sheets and scraps from people all over the world.

Then we moved on down a long corridor until we reached the second section.

The angel then said to me, “This is the Packaging and Delivery Section. Here, the graces and blessings the people asked for are processed and delivered to the living persons who asked for them.”

I noticed again how busy it was there. There were many angels working hard at that station, since so many blessings had been requested and were being packaged for delivery to Earth.

Finally at the farthest end of the long corridor we stopped at the door of a very small station. To my great surprise, only one angel was seated there, idly doing nothing. “This is the Acknowledgment Section,” my angel friend quietly admitted to me. He seemed embarrassed “How is it that there is no work going on here?” I asked.

“So sad,” the angel sighed. “After people receive the blessings that they asked for, very few send back acknowledgments.”

“How does one acknowledge God’s blessings?” I asked.

“Simple,” the angel answered. Just say, “Thank you, Lord.”

“What blessings should they acknowledge?” I asked.

“If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep you are richer than 75% of this world. If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish, you are among the top 8% of the worlds wealthy.”

“And if you get this on your own computer, you are part of the 1% in the world who has that opportunity.”

Also “If you woke up this morning with more health than illness …you are more blessed than the many who will not even survive this day.”

“If you have never experienced the fear in battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation…you are ahead of 700 million people in the world.”

“If you can attend a church without the fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death you are envied by, and more blessed than, three billion people in the world.”

“If your parents are still alive and still married… you are very rare.”

“If you can hold your head up and smile, you are not the norm, you’re unique to all those in doubt and despair.”

Last night we packed up the whole family in the minivan, including my still-nursing-a-broken-leg-fresh-outta-knee-surgery wife and my two foster kids… Mykaila and Darien, and cruised on out to the closing night of Dying 2 Live in Watertown. I totally forgot about Day of Fire playing Friday night, but my kids wouldn’t let me forget about ‘my name is KJ AKA KJ-52‘ on Saturday.

We went early so Trisha could help out at the KJ-52 merchandise table. Everybody was talking about how great Day of Fire, and 33Miles were the night before. I SHOULD’VE GONE!!! I caught the end of Mike Guzzardo, heard a little bit of Infusion (from right here in Beaver Falls, NY) and then listened to “DC Gump” in between chasing the boys around the place.

There was a pretty good crowd of kids there and “five-tweezy” had everybody with their hands in the air… wavin’ em like they just don’t…. *sigh* I can’t stop it now, keep it goin’ now… Anyway, KJ did a bunch of old school stuff to kick it off and get the place movin’. Ha threw in some new tracks from “The Yearbook” and a freestyle jam about 3 random objects picked from the crowd (an empty Tootsie Roll wrapper, a cell phone, and Bill Jepma’s football), the band had the place laughin’ went they went into a rendition of “Jump” by Van Halen, which got them “fired” by KJ, then later they let loose with “Who Let The Dogs Out”, and started some Backstreet Boys before KJ cut ‘em off. Everybody had a blast. Even Gabe was standing on his chair bouncin’ to the beat. Later on after the Pillar concert (which ROCKED… LOUD by the way) KJ hung out and signed anything and everything my kids could get their hands on.

“Whose idea was this, a Christian Floridian rappin’ white kid
whoever did must’ve flipped they lid, he’s bugged out and dances like Taylor Hicks”

Who cares KJ… just keep doin’ yo thang!