My View on Money

Have you ever played Risk, the game of world conquest? For those of you who are unfamiliar with this classic game, here are the basics. You have an army. Your friends have armies. You build your armies by conquering and maintaining territories. The more you have the more you accumulate. Risk is about taking calculated risks. Taking on another army could mean great loss or great gain.

Money, I've come to realize that my perspective on money varies greatly from most peoples. When I look at my bank statements I see little Risk soldiers. It's a game that I'm trying to win. Sometimes I will look and see that my army has grown in size. Other times I will see that a 1000 soldiers are MIA. Where did they go? A bill, that means that the enemy has killed some of my soldiers. Hopefully not too many. I do realize that some soldiers have to die to maintain control. An investment, that means that my soldiers are temporarily separated from the main army but will hopefully be back soon with reinforcements. I'm continually moving sections of my army from place to place, fighting, trying to gain more soldiers. Now even though I realize that this game is impossible to win I still enjoy playing it.

Insight from Saturday Night

Insight from Saturday Night

- I don't know how old I look but I didn't get IDed at the bar.

- The later it gets, the drunker people get, the better they dance.
*correction, the more they dance

- I can't dance. If you take be by the arm I will come with you and move slightly but it hardly qualifies as dancing.

- I saw a group of about dozen girls wearing pink wigs. Is this considered normal behavior in Kentucky?

- If I drank (which I don't)I would probably dance more because I would fail to know how terrible I am.

- A girl named Britney and her boyfriend sat down next to me. Britney was a bit inebriated. She kept introducing me to her friends. I shook hands with one girl and she told me that I needed a firmer handshake or as she put it, "do it like a man." Burn. Drunk chick one Dan zero.

- There was a biker guy who thought he knew me. I think he was wrong.

- Daniele does not like me to cross my arms or cough on my hands. I coughing on your arm really the proper way to do it?

- Out of the hundreds of people that I saw I was the only person wearing a yellow t-shirt and I was only one of two people wearing the color yellow. What do people have against the color yellow?

- If you are a decent cover band who regularly plays at a popular local bar you will get groupie chicks. They won't all be good looking and they won't all be sober but they will be your groupies none the less.

- Most German girls are mean. (This is not my theory it's just what I was told)

- Water is free.

Doing Nothing

I don't do well with doing nothing. It is my preference to always have a rather full schedule. Sometimes I get so busy that I think that it would be nice to have a week free of teaching. Those are moments of temporary insanity. I am on day five of the first week in probably over six months in which I am not teaching or leading any classes. I don't have material to write, handouts to make, games to plan, and quite frankly I'm bored. Last week I broke a personal best by teaching/leading five classes in six days, three elementary, one 5th and 6th and one adult class. I wasn't planning on breaking a personal record, I was just blessed to have all of the opportunities fall in one weeks time. It was a lot of work, a lot of planning, it took a lot of time, and I loved it. In all honesty I'm probably just writing this blog because I'm bored. Just sitting around at home by myself drives me nuts. Just four more days and I get to teach again. Easter weekend, it's going to be awesome.

Status Updates by Ben Lane

WARNING: This Blog is rated PG-13

So my friend Ben sits around all day thinking of dumb (and sometimes brilliant) things to write as his status updates on facebook. Most of them are far to dirty to be published on my blog (90%). Here are a few that weren't filthy:

Just finished my first book yesterday.709 pages.................... Dang that was a lot of coloring!

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Men with words are like women with makeup,we either make ourselves look good or end up looking like clowns

What do you do if you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant?

I just want to say being in a fake mafia is fine with me, having a fake farm is okay with me, even a fake zoo and fish aquarium.......... But when I keep getting invites that say "Here is 200 slices of key lime pie" or "tony whipped up extra fried chicken and wants you to have some" or "have some banana pudding". it pisses me off because I am fat and really want to eat all of that.

Please don't call me insane i prefer the term hilariously unique it makes me sound smarter!

Did you ever wonder if aliens secretly film people having sex, then make them into boring nature shows to show their kids on the Human Planet channel?

Never get into a food fight with cannibals

Apparently global warming will eventually kill over 6 million ppl. On a more serious note my snowman has just melted

The only time I have a problem with alcohol is when I spill it.

Why do they put designs on toilet paper?? Honestly, while someone is taking a c**p are they gonna look at the toilet paper and say OMG its a butterfly!?

The Money Box

Believe it or not, before this last Saturday, I had never bought something from an antique mall. I've always found their prices to be inflated and most of their merchandise ordinary. When I saw this piece I just couldn't resist. It was neither expensive ($65) nor was it ordinary (I can't find any record of it's equal).

This is a church money box. It measures 12 inches tall, 8 inches wide and weighs a whopping 40lbs. It's built like a safe. Whoever built this thing was serious about the church not being robbed. The walls of the box are 1/4in of solid steel. The door is 1/2in thick and has two locks. Additionally this box was made to be screwed to the churches wall. That's some serious security.

What Are You Going to Pump With That

I buy and I sell, that's what I do. It's fun and I make decent money doing it. I've bought and sold just about everything. Dental equipment, pantyhose, blinking doll eyes, a Rolling Stones pinball machine, gold coins, an antique javlin and about 2000 other items. There is, however one item that I have never bought and sold. I see them listed on craigslist frequently but have never even ventured to check on their resale value. You see, whenever I buy something from someone they win undoubtedly ask me, "So, what are you going to do with that." I always try to beat around the bush to avoid telling them that I'm going to sell it for a lot more than I just paid them. But still, that is that one item. What would I say? Even if there is money to be maid, I'm just too embarrassed to buy and sell breast pumps.

The Crush

If your on facebook for a long enough period of time you will undoubtedly stumble upon people that you forgot existed. I currently know a lot of people, hundreds for sure, perhaps thousands. But, how many people did I used to know? How many people have I forgotten about. Facebook is a good place for rediscovering those people. I have one friend who enjoys having old acquaintances send her friend request so that she can hit deny. I'm not quite that mean. Although that is funny.

Ok, ok, short story shorter. I was browsing an old friends pictures when I saw a comment by another person. The name sounded familiar so I mumbled it a few times to myself. When that didn't work I went to her profile. After staring at her face for a good two minutes I remembered. I went to church with this girl 18 years ago (give or take). Not only did I got to church with her I had a serious crush on her little sister. I have vivid memories of this. This was probably my first crush. So, I looked on facebook and found said girls profile and then I remembered. I remembered what it was like to be a little kid with a crush. I had totally forgotten what that feels like. It was so wonderfully terrifying. Of course I never told anyone that I had a crush on her. In fact if you are reading this than you are among the first to hear my confession. It must be fun to be a kid.

Pulling a Car with My Hair (Again)

So I pulled a car with my hair again. This is probably the last time I will ever do this unless I get paid. This time my friend Paul recorded it and the video is 100 times better than the last one that I had shot 5 years ago.

Man Pulls Car with Hair from Dan Thoms on Vimeo.

The Scary Dream

Last night I had a dream and it was strange. Many of them are but this one was exceptionally strange and borderline horror movie. Unfortunately I do not remember all of the details but here is what I do remember. There were stone mouths on the sides of some walls. Imagine if you will a four foot tall vampire slash monster mouth, wide open and formed out of concrete. If you touched the mouths you were doomed to transform into a mouth. It took a few minutes but after you touched them you would disappeared and a mouth would appear. I remember seeing a wall with at least three of them, one above the other, and as I watched another mouth appeared. Now there was one cure, a solution. If you did in fact touch one of these gaping mouths you could go into this one particular house. The key to the cure was dirt. You needed to be in a place were there was at least six feet of dirt under you. And that is all I remember.

...and my number one favorite thing about this Valentines Day is

Valentines Day

My favorite thing about Valentines day is getting to buy those great Frisches kids meal coupons. I bought 24. That means I can take 24 kids out to eat, for free. Not all at once though. Even I can't handle that. My van isn't big enough. I also bought 96 bags of those little valentine candy hearts to give out in kids church. Other than those two things, I could care less.

You see, I'm single. If you ask me if I'm married, engaged or dating anyone I will say no. Most of my friends are married and most of them have kids. I want to be married and I want to have kids. The thing is though, I'm not all that worried about it. I rarely think about the fact that I'm single. My mind is occupied by too many other things, important things like ministry, spending time with friends and family, and of course finding ways to make more money. Sometimes I wonder if perhaps I should be more aggressive in my pursuit of the opposite sex. I have friends who are constantly looking for and constantly getting dates. To me that just sound expensive and time consuming. I'm not opposed to dating but I'm also not particularly interested in dating a different girl every month. That just sound stressful. Yea, I guess it could be fun but I have fun all the times. I don't need a date to do that. There's a fine line here. On the one hand, yes I guess I do need to be more aggressive and meet more single ladies. On the other hand I can't make that my number one priority. Will I ever be married, perhaps. Only time will tell. Until then though, happy valentines day to all of you in the blogger world.

There Was But now There Isn't

Every once in a while I will see someone that I haven't seen in years. Sometimes it's on facebook other times its at the grocery store or at some other random location. Today, however, it was in the news. If I had to guess I would say that it's probably been 12 years since I've seen Nicole. I probably wouldn't have recognized her if I saw her walking down the street. When we were all young, her and her brothers were in the same youth group as me. It's weird because in my mind she is still 13. People don't age unless you see them get older, right? But now, now she's dead. She died on I-74 in a traffic accident yesterday. It's always weird to realize that you will never see someone again. Sure, it's been 12 years but I ran into her brother just last year. There was always that chance. There was but now there isn't. This makes me sad, 27 us too young.