bairn (child)July 3, 2009 5:17 pm
the all Weston Show - kiss that frog
weston having fun in his new redneck pool. out in the front yard and everything!
i am soooo pumped! check this out…my son, Weston, is a natural! i have said it before and will say it again. watch out Tiger, Phil, & World! look at this…
i promise you that he naturally put his hands in this position with NO help! now i have seen the pictures of Tiger Woods when he was this age and the grip he had at 10 months and let me tell ya, Dubya’s is just as good! i was hoping to post the pic of Tiger’s grip at 10 months but can’t find it. if you find it, send it to me so i can post it.
keep it in the short grass!
this morning was a sultry eerie spring morning when i stepped outside and it brought back the memory of one of the greatest fishing adventures i have ever had. a trip where an old buddy of mine and i spent an irreplaceable time together.
the year was ’96 and i was a bachelor then. not a care in the world other than, where i was going fishing next and who was going with me. back then i had all the toys a single man could want which included a bass boat.
the boat on this trip was my first bass boat, a 17′ bayliner trophy with a 125 hp force outboard engine.
that boat was ok, but the boat of my dreams and the boat that followed shortly after this one was the now defunct astro 18’ bass boat with a 150hp mercury or as we call it down here, a “merc”.
sorry, that’s the best picture i could find. that story is another blog, another day. i got that bad boy up to 83 miles an hour one time with just me in it and a little wind behind me. you might be askin’ why on earth would you want to go that fast on the water and it’s simple, i’m a man! we like power! it wasn’t real hard to find a partner to play hooky and get out on the water with this baby. it had every whipped creamed injector and hydraulic lift you could imagine! i had one rule for my guest; i provide the boat and gas, you provide the samiches and drinks and two beers for the take out. the two beers were to be iced cold and not to be consumed until after take out and load up. this is my favorite time of the trip believe it or not b/c this is when me and my partner for the day would kick back and talk about the day, tell lies, and go deep. if the convo led to it. i mean the whole day we would be yakin’ it up and jokin’ around and all. but the 19th hole, as i call it, is where the true fellowship would be.
anyway, a buddy of mine and i, we’ll call him scott b/c that is his name, decided to high tale it down to west point lake. that morning was in late february and a storm had just rolled through our area. the water temperature was still in the 50’s but with the warm spring rain some runoffs were warming some parts of the creeks to 70* almost instantaneously causing a reaction us rednecks from newnan, ga like to call hog callin’. this phenomena happens when the king of all bass species, the largemouth bass, chase shad and bait fish up the creeks to warmer waters and bust them literally out of the water to fill their big ole belly’s and we (the fishermen) would be sitting there callin’ them up! we say stuff like; “come on big boy, one time!” “what are you waitin’ on, a formal invitation?” “it doesn’t get to look any better than that; i mean i put it on a silver platter for ya!” you get the point!
ok, so scott and i put in at 6am and were on our first hole by 6:30. i pulled out (which happened to be a lucky guess) a chartreuse and white tandem blade spinner bait and wouldn’t change to another lure for the rest of the morning. first cast, seriously, BOOM! 3 pounder! second or third cast for scott, BOOM! a 5 pounder! this undisclosed creek we were in (we don’t share specifics when we have a honey hole)is no less than 5 or 6 miles long but we pulled up on this spot that was an elbow in the creek, the wind was blowing straight up against the bank, and runoff from a georgia red clay bank was pouring into the lake. someone had come along at some point and dumped christmas trees in about 15 foot of water and we were literally catching bass every 1 or 2 cast. we caught so many bass that morning that i thought my arm was going to fall off. this went on for 5 or 6 hours and never once did scott or i even take a break to urinate! we caught more bass that morning than quaker has oats. the only reason we stopped was because we ran out of battery life on the trolling motor!
that was a great day on the water! even if it hadn’t of been, it beat workin’! at the 19th hole, we carried on for what seemed like a couple hours. the conversation turned more personal at the end, as it often does, and scott shared with me and i shared with him. oh what a great day! so scott ole buddy, if you’re out there reading this, remember that day, and our time together because it was one of the greatest memories of my life for this fishin’ fool!
well i just had a brilliant thought. i declare may 1st, 2009 a day of HALVES! in case you didn’t get that, today is the day that you may find that it is ok for you to do everything HALF as much! indulge me…
looking at the calendar, today is HALF moon day. this is great b/c we are HALF way to a full moon which is my favorite in may. that is when the bream go on the beds and you can catch those one and a HALF pound shellcrackers/redears/stumpknockers/govment bream.
so today is the time to get out the ultra light fishing gear and or fly rods and get them ready for some good ole HALF day fishin’!
you also have my permission to make today a HALF day of work. it’s friday, the market is in the crapper, its spring, it’s a beautiful day, go ahead, work a HALF day and call it the weekend. you might have the opportunity to go eat a HALF sandwich/HALF soup at the atlanta bread company. you might go to CandS Oyster Bar and get some oysters on the HALF shell.
because it is a day of HALVES, spend the morning serious about work and the afternoon serious about family and or friends. go play 9 holes at the local munie instead of 18 because that’s HALF a round of golf. watch HALF the nba playoff game tonight b/c the first HALF is irrelevant in basketball.
all this HALF talk reminds me of a joke…
a man is walking down the beach when he comes across an old rusty/dirty bottle. he picks it up and starts dusting it off when out pops a genie. the genie says to him, “hello master, because you have summoned the great and most generous genie, i grant you three wishes but you must know that whatever you wish for, you get HALF and your wife gets the full amount”. the man says “fair enough!” he spends a few moments drawing in the sand and says, “ok, my first wish is for 20 million dollars to set me up for the rest of my life!” the genie replies, “wish granted, your wife gets twenty million and you get ten million!” then the man says, “for my second wish i would like a 2,000 acre estate so i can hunt, fish, grow gardens, and enjoy for the rest of my life!” again, the genie replies “granted, you get 1,000 acres and your wife gets 2,000. “and for my third and final wish…” the genie interrupts and say’s, “remember, this is your last wish! so make it a good one and don’t forget, your wife gets the full amount and you get HALF!” the man takes a deep breath and really studies the thoughts going through his head and says, “ok, for my third and final wish, i would really appreciate it if you would pick up that broken oar lying over there in the sand and beat me HALF to death!”
enjoy your HALF day!
slapdashApril 24, 2009 5:13 pm
change, change could do you good
“well i don’t know why we do it that way, it’s just the way we’ve alwayst done it!” how many times have you heard this? it doesn’t matter where you are. you can be at your place of work, your child’s school, a place of worship, or heck even at your on home. you might even heard these words come out of your own mouth! well i gotta tell ya, i can’t stand those words! if there are any group of words grouped together and are mumbled in the same breath that i despise, those are they!
i like to think of myself as an out of the box, forward thinker kind of guy. check this out…
the other day i was arranging a meeting with a client in which he asked me to come to his office. i returned his email (which i also can’t stand but that is another rant) with a question: “when was the last time you got out of your office at 9:30am? how ’bout we meet at St_______(not plugging the coffee shop here b/c they don’t have free wifi internet access!) across the street from your building? let me buy you a cup of coffee and a scrone and let’s just chat.” the dude was like calling me in no time flat! he says something like, “do you know you are the only vendor that has ever asked me that? i mean, plenty of them call and want to take me to lunch or out to play golf but no one has ever asked me to break up my morning flow of work for coffee! i don’t know whether to thank you or whether to be offended but heck yea! let’s do it!” boom!!!
i asked a group of men at a former place of worship one time if we could change the “Annual Men’s Bar-B-Que” from the second weekend in november to the first weekend? my reasoning was that because, that was the weekend that the annual UGA vs. AU football game was and we could probably get more folks to help AND get better turn out which in turn would increase sales! well this one “old timer” stood up and said, and i quote, “over my dead body! hell, (we were in the church building, ha!) we been doing it on this same saturday for 35 years! we ain’t a changin’ it! i don’t know why we do it then but that’s when we do it!” ok so we didn’t do it that year but guess what…he died the next year and we changed it over his “dead body”! i mean God rest his soul but c’mon, what could he do? turn over in his grave? have you ever known anyone to turn over in their grave? that year we had more volunteers help than EVER and we doubled our sales! we RAN OUT of Bar-B-Que!
now don’t get me wrong, i am not ALWAYS right! i know i know, that’s hard to believe! there are times that some things do not need changing. like the date of the masters golf tournament. always held on the first full week following the sunday of “day light savings time”. (which used to fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the first day of spring. check it! i am not wrong! now some of you are saying, “but nuhuhhh, not this year!” well that’s b/c the gov’t changed it the last two years to help save on energy costs.) or Christmas! i don’t think anyone would argue with that one! and Powers Crossroads, always held Labor Day weekend. you would have to be the biggest idiot in the universe to change that one!
change is good! change is what keeps us alive! change is what keeps it interesting! if i told you that change is the secret to staying young and healthy you might disagree! if i told you that in order to stay fresh and relevant to the everchanging world you must break tradition, you might not like it very much! but ask yourself this…why is it that you don’t want to change? what are your motives for keeping things the same?
let me invite you to shake off the unknowingness of change. be willing to embrace it! be willing to be the leader that stands up for change! perry noble says; “One of the greatest mistakes I’ve ever made as a leader is trying to get everyone to like me…it just isn’t possible…and I am OK with it!” he also says this about leaders and change; “An idiot can point out a problem…a leader is willing to do something about it!”
are you willing to change things that 8-10 years ago you thought were a good idea? are you going to change things in 8-10 years from now that you think are a good idea now?
do it! it could do you good!
well the masters of ‘09 is over and i have the post masters blues. i’m not going to bore all 5 people that read my blog with the details of what happened but will bore you with what should have happened. that’s right! should have happened!
first of all, i should have been invited by someone to the masters! in today’s multi media/technology driven world where i can literally reach thousands of people in the matter of minutes (and believe me, i tried), not one person returned my request for a badge to the masters (they don’t call ‘em tickets at the masters. they call ‘em badges). i sent emails, i twittered, i facebooked, myspaced, myfaced, twifaced and mailfaced!!! get the point? and not one stinking invite! that hoovers!
next, the powers that be (masters committee and chairman billy payne) should let allow the world see the friggin tournament on tv, 24 hours a day! no one can get a badge anymore and no one can get in to see a practice round anymore. most of us have to work, so we can’t watch online coverage when the network is not on air. we have lives billy! we have jobs billy! we have kids and wives billy! we need 24 hour coverage! some of us can’t even afford cable anymore in this obama economy (another blog, another day)! soooooooo, show the doggone masters golf tournament on tv, 24 hours a day by gosh!
cbs. get us pumped up about the final round coverage of the masters! can you imagine the number of people that would throw “masters” parties and get interested in golf if the coverage of the masters was better? the yearly uga/fla football game has “the largest outdoor cocktail party” and “college game day“. the kentucky derby has “churchill downs and the pageantry of the kentucky derby“. for the super bowl you get 6 hours of hipe before the actual game is played. daytona 500, you get to hear darrell waltrip go on for an hour about restrictor plates, lug nuts, hydraulic lifts and whipped cream injectors. but no!!! for the masters, we get to watch how great seve ballesteros was in the 70’s and the 80’s? i mean don’t get me wrong, i feel for the guy and have compassion that he is battling his life with a brain tumor and cancer and i’m sorry. but i’m trying to get pumped up to see the best players on the planet play the greatest golf course on the planet! show seve’s story after the tournament is over when the 10’s of people that want to watch it, will watch it.
what about interviews? unless you camp out on your pc all night or have the golf channel, you don’t get to see what the players are saying! would it hurt you (cbs) to show the highlights of the press tent interviews during coverage at the beginning of the telecast? instead of seve’s story that ends with “he is at home in spain trying to win his greatest test ever, brain cancer”. i mean c’mon, is that going to get you fired up to watch the greatest major of the year? huh? you’ve got to be kidding me! create some drama! create some hype! create some controversy! be creative you bunch of suck ups!
gary player should have had his final tournament at the masters 7 years ago. period.
nick faldo should be playing. nick i don’t care how bad you think you are now. if the previous mentioned guy is playing and 71, you should be teeing it up at 51. nick, your fans want you. i would much rather see you hitting it in the heather and making biurrrrrdies than watching gary player hit his driver only 210 and stabbing at putts for quadruple bogeys!
greg norman should have drank from the fountain of youth and summoned up some 1980/90’s golf heroics. except this time, instead of choking like a ’72 dodge dart on the back nine at augusta, he wins in triumph over all, turns to the tall georgia pines as if calling out the golf gods and yells “you don’t exist you spawn of satan and demons of the deep! i beseech you!”. then as the camera zooms in closer, christine marie evert-lloyd-mills-norman runs out on the 18th green in her wimbledon tennis skirt and leaps into his arms. then, they kiss as the setting georgia sun sets in the west. if you listen closely you can hear the soft clap of bobby jones’ and his spirit lingering in the dusky air as a soft gentle breeze appears. as the credits begin to role and as if you were all caught up in emotion as if watching “an affair to remember”, you hear jim nantz capture the most perfect moment by saying, “the empire state building may be the closest thing to heaven in new york, but here in georgia, as we have witnessed today by the extraordinarily amazing golf and love story for the ages, augusta national and the masters tournament is as close to heaven as you can get. congratulations greg norman! we are so thankful that we get to see you again next year. good night everybody!”
well back in December our connection theVine brought a cool cat; Jason Sebren, on board as our Outreach Pastor. now this dude is for real! not only does he preach it, he lives it! check this out…one of the many things that jason does is minister to homeless women and children at theGarden by loving on them and discipling them. i invite you to check out his blog and read about his and his wife Nikki’s calling to adopt a 9 month old little boy named Deonte. now before you check out, hear this, the boy had been living with his biological mother on the streets of Atlanta. He was HOMELESS! i can’t help but think of this reading from the Word and be thankful for Jason and Nikki and their inspiration!
ok, if you were to consumed with time to check out the link to Jason, here is the video he just put out of the “family dance party”.
Family Dance Party from sebren on Vimeo.
well i took a moment over the weekend to make a compilation video of Weston. the clips aren’t in any particular order so i hope that doesn’t confuse anyone. the very first clip in the video is the latest shot and they kind of go back in time to around thanksgiving. sorry for the amateur editing job. i hope you enjoy…
i can’t do everything. i mean, if i did everything that i wanted to do, there would be no sleep. keith with no sleep is NOT good! ask my wife! here are the things i used to do and would like to still be doing preWeston.
1. blogging: i found a new love last year through blogging. no, not of the flesh but of the soul. when i was a kid i use to write…ALOT. there is something spiritual about putting your thoughts down on paper well on a computer in this case . it’s like the soul comes alive and takes on a whole other dimension. i’ve had more epiphonies through putting my thoughts down that i remember and that is cool! however right now my blogging has taken a back seat.
2. serving at theVine: i like to think that i have a servants heart. i haven’t always, but in the last six years God has really changed me on the inside. when i use to ask, what was in it for me? or say i would rather go fishin’ or huntin’…i now yearn for opportunities to serve. theVine is a church that breeds servants and there are some of the most amazing servants in the world who serve there. however, right now my service is to my family first and what i can fit in otherwise.
3. work out: July11, 2008 was my last work out. i was down to a buck fitty and leaning up! my stamina had increased, my cholestorol was down, my connection to the soul was at an all time high and my wife could put her arms ALL the way around me. ok she can still do that but the difference is that now she has something to hold on to. i heart being in shape. God heart’s me being in shape. maybe when this season passes, i will regain my former massive lean physiqueness. is that a word or did i spell it right? maybe that is the french spelling. idk?
bottom line is this. there are things that i would really like to be doing with my time. there are things that i have put on the back burner. there are things that i might not get back to for a long time. there are things i might get back to in a short time. point is this, i WILL get back to them. Ecclesiastes 3 starts off by saying: “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens…” this chapter speaks to me. heck, it spoke to john lennon so much he put it to music! i have to keep reminding myself of this passage and remember, my number one mission field is my family. my desires come second to His desires for me. and one day when life does get back to the way it was for me preWeston, i just bet that i will be blogging about how life was “preWeston Moving Out”!
be content, be thankful, be encouraged!
Grab a box of Kleenex and watch. when you are done watching, go here to make a difference. Matthew 25:40; “assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my bretheren, you did it to Me”
