I just looked at my site counter.

Last I knew, it was hovering around 1500. What the heck happened?

That’s quite the jump, isn’t it?

Thank you, all of you visitors, who happen to be stopping by. I appreciate every one of you, and pray God’s blessing on each and every one of you.

If you haven’t joined the pool yet, get in while the gettin’s good.

Fast version:

My wife is due with our first child on December 25, 2006. Join BlogMad (or, if you are already a member, go there now) and transfer five credits to my account with your best guess as to the day and hour the baby girl will join us.

Currently, the main prize is worth 297 BlogMad credits, and the consolation prize (second best guess, split if two guesses are exactly equally wrong) is worth 68 BlogMad credits.

If you join BlogMad as a new member, the referral credits I get from you joining will be split into the two prize pools. I’m not in this for the credits, I want everyone to have fun!

God bless, and tell your friends!

Sunday, September 24, 2006, 13:45

ring
“This is Cary.”

“Hey, brother, it’s Pastor M. How are you doing today?“

(danger_radar=ON)

“Doing well, Pastor. How about you and yours?”

“Oh, we’re all blessed, enjoying a Sunday morning.“

(warning_bells=ON)

“Glad to hear it. What’s up?”

“Well, I called to ask how you felt about the song “My Jesus” that we practiced last night?“

(warning_volume=MAX)

“Uhm, pretty good. It’s a great song, and I think we could do it really well if -“

“How about if just the praise band does it, you know, my guitar, your bass, and J on the drum kit, and then you and I would do the vocals, without the Praise Team?“

(danger_will_robinson_subroutine=ON)

“Oh, yea, that would work, and the Praise Team wouldn’t feel like they were just standing up there we should try to-“

(get_as_many_words_in_as_possible=ON)

“Good, let’s plan on doing it for special music today, OK?“

(you_are_on_your_own_i_tried_to_warn_you=ON)

“Uhm, well, I suppose it would be OK, but I would feel better if we had more time-“

(i_give_up_you_are_hopeless_and_i_will_never_try_to_warn_you_again=ON)

“OK, see you at church.” [click]

*sigh*

TMBWitW and I had just sat down to lunch, after registering at Babies “R” Us, and we were going to go register at a couple of other stores. The operative word here is “were” – now my plan became go home, type up the words in letters big enough to see from the music stand, and hope that I could get way better at the whole singing-while-you-are-playing thing. I can play tolerably well, I can sing better than I play. However, I firmly beleive that those who can play and sing at the same time, and do it well, are few and far between. Most of them have recording contracts. Pastor M illustrates my point quite well – and he doesn’t have a recording contract, if you get my drift.

I have to leave now. I have to go run the shuttle, and then the service starts at 5:30. Pary God’s blessing for the results.

In the meantime, God bless you all.

Go here. Buy a shirt. While you are at it, grab the logo above and freely spread it around while pointing people to the web site.

Today, I went with the ultra-cool “Patriot.”

Have a good weekend, and God bless you all!

UPDATE: Thank you for stopping by. Our daughter was born on December 30, 2006, and is a very healthy and very happy little girl. Please check out the other posts labeled “Baby Pool.”

Here’s the scoop:

My wife (The Most Beautiful Woman in the World) is pregnant with our first child. It’s going to be a girl, and the projected due date is December 25th, 2006. As of Monday, September 18, 2006, she was 27 weeks along.

(Note: click here for simplified instructions, thanks to prodding from Ebyjo)

I have started a Great Big Wonderful Baby Pool Contest for the day and hour that our little bundle of joy will join us. I have a number of BlogMad credits that was given to me by prying1, and I can’t think of a better way to use them. The prize pool starts at 250 BlogMad credits, and will increase with each entry. There is a small catch – you need to be registered with BlogMad to join the pool. Here’s a nifty part – just by registering with BlogMad, you will receive twenty five BlogMad credits – however, you must be a member for more than seven days, and you may not transfer if the transfer will leave you with less than 25 credits – so you’ll have to do some blog surfing first.

Each entry will cost you five BlogMad credits. Out of each entry “fee”, three BlogMad credits will be added to the first place prize, and two BlogMad credits will be added to the consolation prize. The person who comes closest to the actual day and hour will win the first place prize credits, and the person(s) who comes second closest will receive the consolation prize. In the event of two consolation prize winners, the consolation prize will be split. (I was going to say “as evenly as possible” but then my miniature mathmetician woke up and pointed out the obvious)

To enter, transfer five BlogMad credits to my BlogMad account. Send me a note indicating your choice of day and hour for the birth. Please note that an hour begins and ends at the actual hour mark, so if you enter for 1300 hours on December 24th, you will win if the birth occurs anywhere from the start of 1300 hours but before 1400 hours. Yes, the entries will be in military or twenty-four hour time to eliminate confusion at noon and midnight; and the official birth time will be recorded in Arizona time, which does not have Daylight Savings time. If the time you would like to enter is already taken, I will send you a note indicating such, with the four closest times (two before and two after) available around that time frame. You will have 24 hours to resond with a new time entry, or I will refund your BlogMad credits, for the contested entry only, in full.

I don’t know how to show the amount of BlogMad credits in my account, so you will have to take my word for it. You could ask prying1 if he did, indeed, transfer a large number of BlogMad credits to my account a while back, and while I have used some of them I assure you at least 250 remain to be the basis of the first place prize. I will match each transfer with the e-mail (or accompanying note, if that is possible) to ensure a fair and accurate entry list. Time-date stamp on the transfer will rule on who gets a time slot in the event of two or more people wanting the same time slot.

I will be keeping track of the entries in a spreadsheet. I don’t know how to link to this spreadsheet from my blog, or how to post the spreadsheet to the blog (is that even possible?) but if anyone can show me how to do it I will be more than happy to include the spreadsheet for public viewing. If you want a copy for yourself, please let me know and I will e-mail you a copy of the most up-to-date listing at the time I reply to your e-mail. Obviously, only my copy here on my PC will be used to determine the winner; if you like you can ask for as many copies as you care to, but only one copy will be sent to each e-mail address per day. If you request forty seven seperate times in one day, then I will send you one copy. No sense clogging up the bandwidth.

Ready? I will accept your entry as soon as you finish reading this blog.

God bless you all, thank you for reading, and may the best guesser win!

Update: It seems there is a slight side effect to you being referred by me to BlogMad – I get referral credits – 45 of them! Here’s what I’m going to do, so it’s not an overly mercenary attempt to get more credits for myself: I will add thirty five credits to the first place prize and ten credits to the consolation pool for every referral I get through this setup, OK? That way, someone wins real big, and it won’t be me, because I want you guys to have fun with this. I’m not in this for the BlogMad credits.