I've been initiated...

When I arrived at the office this morning, I noticed that my door was locked. Because it is an inner office, I don't normally lock my door so I was somewhat surprised by this. When I unlocked it, I was greeted by 1,000 cups, dixie and solo, full of water on the floor. Accompanying the water was toilet paper and plastic army men scattered about. And, of course, a few signs welcoming me into my new ministry and making mockery in various ways. This is a picture of what things looked like when I opened the door:

When I was finally able to get to my computer, internet explorer was opened to google image search for "pranks". Apparently the pranksters got the idea from their search and proceeded to make it happen. They selected this image and make it the background on my desktop. Now to find all the participants and...

We had our last big event for Fall kickoff -- that 2 week period at the beginning of the semester when ministries go nuts with events-- and the last event was a Hoedown at the Hangar. One of the members of our church has a huge farm out in the country complete with his own runway (a grass one) and small airplane hangar. Not too hard to get college students from Tennessee to dress up like rednecks and act crazy. FWIW, to fit the redneck part I wore a "University of Alabama" baseball cap and a Columbia Mule Day t-shirt.

For all the heroic stories we're hearing and seeing around the Gulf coast, I was saddened to hear 2 stories this morning. One was about the church van of the South Baton Rouge Church of Christ being stolen in NO. The van was their offering aid... food and supplies... it was found later trashed and minus all the windows. The other was about a truck driver with a tractor trailer full of bottled water which he took to NO. When he got there, he was dragged (drug?) out of his vehicle and beaten. Needless to say, the people who commit these crimes are not only hurting the givers, they are hurting all the people who need that aid. These thugs are certainly a small minority of the people, but they are simply making an already bad situation worse for all the innocent people still suffering. Things like this just reinforce my belief in the existence of the evil one.

I was also bumfuzzled by the response BK received from the prez. of his university, the University of Florida. This guy is obviously a class act. I hope the news media lets the folks down there know what a jerk they have for a leader.

More locally, I was mad to see:

Gouging... One gas station here in Murfreesboro was charging $3.69 per gallon for the cheapest on Saturday... everyone else in town was either $2.99 or $3.25. Wal-Mart has been $2.95 for several days ($2.92 with a gift card). The $3.69 was completely unjustified because there is no way the station paid anything near that for the gas. Most stations add a nickel or so per gallon for their profit... they tend to make most of their money off of the stuff they sell inside the store. But this place, which I will find the name of, has lost my business forever. I don't care if they give gas away, I won't take it. Folks are starting to realize that you can report possible gas price gouging at http://gaswatch.energy.gov/. Small wonder that the same gas station was charging $3.19 per gallon the next day, and many of the stations are under $3.00 again.

In the good monetary news category, we got our first month's electricity bill the other day, $101. This is for cooling 2 stories, around 2200 s.f. with 2 a.c. units during the hottest month of the year. I was expecting the bill to be in the $250 range... so I was pleasantly surprised (last August we paid around $130 to cool less than half that space in Alabama). And in a similar vein, we're paying $13 a month for basic phone service through BellSouth. This is without all the bells and whistles and no long distance (we use a calling card or cell phone for that). The thing is that we paid $26 a month for the same phone plan in Alabama. What gives? Either way, we're thankful to actually pay less than we expected for a change. More money to give away.

Big event tonight... burgers and volleyball at the MTSU Rec Center. They nixed our band though... haven't quite figured out why. We'll have to get Eric Vinson to come to something else.