Some Thursday Overcast Updates

Mood: dandy
Listening to: WCPO Podcast of yesterday's Noon News
Reading: Site Meter statistics for this blog
Eating: Ham and egg breakfast sandwich (homemade by Jennie - I *HEART* Her!)
Watching: The dense fog and changing colors of leaves outside our window

A few of updates on tap for today, for which I'd love your feedback:

SITE STATISTICS

I'm thinking about resetting the site meter counter to zero. It currently shows over 25,000 hits, but that's since January 2002. I think that I started it with an arbitrary number, and the number of hits seems meaningless now. I'm more interested in where people are visiting from and what they're looking at.

PODCASTING

I've got JIMM 18 - Cloudy Overcast Hodgepodge recorded and mixed from Monday. After listening to it, Jennie has recommended I leave a small snippet out - I understand where she's coming from. I've got the show notes just about done, and I'll probably post it here sometime tomorrow.

As for the next podcast, I'd like to do one with Jennie about some music we like, a kind of sappy podcast. We could also talk about our history together. I've been over to the Podsafe Music Network and downloaded a bunch of songs in different genres, and that's helping to give me some ideas. Podsafe blues music, for example. Dance music, too. I could go on and on.

CABLE-READY

Time Warner Cincinnati is coming today to install basic cable and Roadrunner. So we'll have cable for the first time ever, and I'll be able to stay connected without "hi-jacking" a neighbor's unreliable wireless network when I'm at home.

KEISHA'S SCHOOL

Jennie's volunteering at Keisha's school this morning. We're considering making some changes to her IEP (Individual Education Plan). For those that are unfamiliar, an IEP is developed to help children with special needs have everything they need to get a good education.

CHILDREN'S MINISTRY FUN

Jennie and I have been serving in the children's ministry during midweeks this month. A lot of kids are involved in a Christmas production, and the ones ages 4 and up who are not are spending time with us. Midweeks are not as long as the services on Sunday mornings, and we did something pretty cool.

The 4, 5, and Kindergartners have been learning lessons from the book of Daniel, and most recently, they learned about the writing on the wall (Daniel 5). For a craft, we had the kids trace their hands on some construction paper and cut them out. We had made some copies of a drawing of a brick wall, and I wrote with a white crayon, the following: "Daniel trusted God". Then the kids glued their walls on another piece of construction paper.

Now for the cool part of the craft: the kids did some watercolor painting on the wall, and, as they painted over the white crayon, the words appeared, similar to what happened in the Bible. Afterward they glued their hands to the paper. Pretty neat stuff, huh?

After we'd cleaned up, we had some time, and, since I'd brought my guitar, we played musical chairs with some worship songs. Two versions of the game - One is the traditional, someone gets out every round; another, my favorite, is where no one gets out, and everyone has to sit in the remaining chairs. That last version is hilarious!