Yo yo Johan

So as we all know by now, Johan Santana is a Met.

The Mets more than replaced their loss of Tom Glavine. This, IMO, seperates the Mets from the other two NL East contenders.

But what is even more frustrating to me is that the Braves gave up more for Teixeira than the Mets gave up for Santana, although they must work out a pretty heavy contract now. The Mets still have their best hitting prospect, F-Mart. They still have their best pitching prospect, Mike Pelfrey. They didn't even give up a star currently on their roster like Reyes or Wright or Beltran.

There is a motto that says, "If you want to trade for talent, you've got to give up talent." The Mets received way more talent than they gave up. It's ashamed that the penny pinching Braves don't have the cash to give him an extension, we could have easily matched that offer.

There's a chance that Johan is due for some arm troubles pretty soon. You figure something is up if you look at those 1st half/2nd half splits from last year.

I'll say this though. I know this was a great trade for the Mets, but I can't help but wait in anticipation for those Smoltz vs. Santana matchups. Those will be some exciting times...and if you need me during one of those games, I'll be in front of my TV.

Or perhaps at the Ted?

5758 Shasta Pines Way - Week 11

I haven't been posting these because progress has been a bit slow lately. They are at the slowest part of any house construction...the trim. Builder said that always takes awhile to trim the whole house, and put up the crown molding. But once it gets up the paint usually goes on quick...as shown below.





We're set to close the last week of February. Not much more to do, just flooring and misc items (light switches, ceiling fans, etc).

Free refinancing of the almost financed house...am I allowed to use the prefix RE?

I know the post title sounds awkward. Believe me, it is pretty weird to experience, as it is something I'm doing this week.

As most of you know, Jenny and I are building a house (or at least, we hired other people to do it). Some of you may also know about how the housing economy has been doing lately. Answer: Not good. The feds just slashed rates again.

Jenny and I are refinancing a house that hasn't been completed yet. Weird huh? Question: Am I allowed to call it REfinancing if I haven't even made a payment yet?

Jenny I were contracted to be at 5.18%. But I have been on the phone a lot with my banker, who also attends Central with us and helped ease the loan process for us. Since we hadn't made a payment yet, we can refinance for no charge (or something like that. I forget the details but the point is it's free). We are now going to be locked in at what is estimated to be about 4.55% (for 15 years, it's higher if we go 30, which we most likely won't).

The real estate market is in panic mode...and when money people panic, something good usually happens for the buyer...so I'm taking advantage.

drat

well, Selig gets an extension through 2012. While no doubt he has done much for baseball since the strike, I'm still not very pleased with his term overall.

Zimbalist's book, In the best interest of baseball, handles very fairly the major events of Selig's term and analyzes them. Selig has helped baseball recover from the strike, but as Zimbalist argues, these fixes are good for the short term but bad for the long term.

You should pick up a copy of the book, it's well worth the read.

Meanwhile...we have a longer countdown till the Selig era ends.

You got told!

I absolutely love Tent Pegs. It is one of my favorite blogs on the subject of church, spirituality, and the Bible. Patrick Meade is a fantastic speaker amongst the Church of Christ whom I have heard a couple of times and I highly recommend you add his blog to your feeds.

He is currently doing a Q & A series. Questions you'd ask God...what will you ask God when you get to heaven?

In a question raised by one of his readers regarding Romans 14 and 15 and "disputable matters"...Patrick brings up an example from a past experience of his...


Questioner: you are right. Romans 14 and 15 apply in all situations. An "opening prayer" or a "closing prayer" are ideas not found in scripture. Let me give you an example of how warped this "worship service" idea makes everything else. We did a three year study at Rochester on the role of women. I was proud of our elders as they brought in experts in language, scripture, history, linguistics, etc. and read many books along with memorizing tons of scripture. The short version is that we believe women are allowed to do much, much more than our tradition has usually allowed them to do so we presented that to our congregation.

Predictably, many rejoiced and almost as many were upset. Some left us but others stayed and gently remind us to move slowly so that we don’t leave them and others behind. One lady was anything but gentle. She called me and reamed me out over the phone. Her language was… uh… spicy and she didn’t take a breath for the first five minutes or so. I held the phone away from my ear and waited my turn. Her treatise was that we had gone liberal and were Bible-trashers for letting women speak "in the church."

I asked… "Then why are you calling me? Aren’t YOU in the church? If you believe women are to keep silent in the church, why are you calling me and correcting me; in fact, usurping my authority?" She replied — very loudly — "I’m not in the church right now!"

Ooooooo. That, my friend, is a tragic misunderstanding of what it means to be in the church!

OK, I don't want to end up quoting his whole post (but more is to come) but Patrick is handling Romans 14-15 very well. I've studied this section a lot myself. It has some tough phrases to wrestle with, even excluding the part dealt with above.

I can relate. I once saw somebody wearing a shirt that said "Don't go to church" along the front.

"What!?" I couldn't believe it. Why would somebody (especially someone like this, a good Christian person) wear a shirt like that? As I was getting steamed i watched the person continue walking. I then noticed the back of the shirt finished the phrase with "be the church".

Oh, yeah...uh...I knew that. Don't GO to church, BE the church.

Over the past 50 years or so we have caused a lot of harm by using the phrases such as "Are we going to church" or "let's go to church" or "hey, mom, when is church".

In the Bible, church is not an event. It is the bride of Christ. Why would Christ marry an event? I fear that because language such as "going to church" has been used so much that it has completely altered our understanding of what church really is, thus causing difficulties of interpretation in passages such as Rom 14-15.

For the Christian, there is no difference between public and private ethics, attitudes, or conduct. We are to be Christian 24/7. Let me make the other side angry here and state, once again, that I do not think "everything we do is worship." Nope. When I mow the lawn, I am not worshiping. You might very well be but I hate outdoor chores. I am more likely to be quoting Emily Dickinson or Edgar Allen Poe than I am singing "Blue Skies and Rainbows" as I slog around the backyard with my portable grass mauling, global warming machine.

But when I mow the lawn, I had better belong to Jesus and be available for him. And when I worship with my brothers and sisters I am there to worship God and help them. I am not allowed to let anything come from my mouth towards them unless it builds them up. I cannot speak to them of disputable matters much less enter into debate with them. Raise hands or not. Clap or not. Sway or not. I couldn’t care less. What I care about is that we are together as we worship our Lord. THAT is beautiful.

Patrick's blog is a blessing to me. Thank you, Patrick. and no, i didn't quote his ENTIRE post...

Postseason Analysis: Giants verses who?

Well, it's been awhile since I've done one of these. Coincidentally, it'll be my last for quite awhile since we lost.

I watched a good chunk of the game...but I couldn't figure out who it was the the Giants were playing. It certainly wasn't the Dallas Cowboys that I know. It was sloppy. Let's look at both sides of the ball.

Offense:
For the next several months you're going to hear all about Romo's little Mexican getaway, and how it took the focus away from football and factored into the loss.

I, however, think that the majority of the blame is to be passed to three other factors, to be discussed in a bit. Romo wasn't that bad...it was all of those wretched dropped passes (factor #1). I can think of three specific instances (and I know there are probably more than that) when a pass went right through the hands of the receiver which would have been a Dallas first down, had it been caught. Two were the fault of the player, the other is Patrick Crayton. Crayton's was the worse, (dare I say that had Crayton caught that pass then Dallas would be victorious?). Witten was the receptions king this game, catching 7 passes for 81 yards. Romo's only TD pass went to the player.

For those of you who argue that MB3 is the better back, you had your chance to see the first part of that experiment. He compiled 129 yards, but only 28 in the second half. Perhaps we should have stuck with our two back attack, as clearly MB3 was worn out and/or didn't have the same fire in his feet. JuJo had only 3 attempts for 8 yards.

Defense:
We had 3 sacks. That's about the only good thing I see. On the first drive, we couldn't stop the run if it was a donut rolling down the field. One of Toomer's TDs was just the result of Dallas defenders trying to tackle with their arms (factor #2).

Poor tackling. Put your bodies into it for crying out loud!

Yup. The defenders were where they were supposed to be, but Toomer was breaking through their arms like 5th graders playing red rover.

We struggled with pass defense, which has been our kryptonite all season.


That third factor was the penalties. 84 yards of penalties. If that 15 yard facemask was avoided at the end of the 2nd quarter then the Cowboys go into the half with the lead, instead of a tie game.


Credit must be given to the Giants, before I close. You'll hear all offseason about how the Cowboys lost, but the Giants won just as much as the Cowboys lost...if that makes sense.

After the post season (who knows, perhaps even before that time) I'll do a post on what the cowboys should do this offseason. I think we're in good shape, we'll be losing some people but there aren't any losses that will be incredibly harmful.

Provided we take the right steps, we can be an even greater threat to the NFC.

gut instincts?

should I go with my gut instincts?

I know that it isn't probable for ALL home teams to win their playoff game this week, but I really don't see any of the visitors leaving town with a victory.

Thats my gut instinct, even though I know it most likely won't happen. Should I go with it? I think I will

5758 Shasta Pines Way

It's great to be back in V-Town.

Ceiling is put in and walls are ready for paint.





I've got a lot on my mind about ministry, Clemens, the BCS Nat'l champ game, and other misc things. Maybe I'll dedicate a post to some of those items.