Not Greenville - they never will be. The Day of Prayer was canceled on the off-chance that perhaps it might be bad tomorrow morning. The thought was that town students would look out the window as they rolled over in bed and went back to sleep, because let’s face it - when snow or ice is in the forecast, better safe than sorry, right? I mean, suppose you make it the harrowing quarter mile to school…now imagine having to stay there a whole twenty minutes more because of congestion caused by worried drivers, panicking at the sight of a single drop of cold (never mind freezing) precipitation! The horrors! I saw a bumper sticker on a town student’s car: “I don’t care how you do things up North!” Obviously, or you might actually prepare for winter weather (which does not include buying milk and bread).
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This Quartet trip has ended up being one of the most interesting I’ve taken in a very long time. Before I left campus, I called Terry to check where he was and to make sure everything was going peachy. They weren’t. In fact at 11:30a he was still in his driveway (he wanted to leave at 6:30a). But he assures me that he can get up and running and suggests I meet Barry (his brother and our fill-in baritone for the weekend) at the airport, fly in, go to the evening service (that we were supposed to sing in) and meet Terry and Mark when they came up later that night.
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The Quartet will be in Memphis this weekend…but I couldn’t take time from class at the start of the school year to join them on the road up there Thursday morning. Long story short (the details are kinda funny but can be summed up in one word: procrastination) they ended up renting me a car to drive down to Atlanta and catch a late flight up to Memphis. Actually cost less (in dollars) to do that then fly out of GSP. In any case, the car is nice. Very nice. It’s an ‘06 Solara; in fact it looks exactly like this one, right down to the color. Oy. I wish I had that thing for a few more days. It’s a “semi-auto” (or auto/stick) transmission - 5-speed, and either I or the car can choose when the transmissions moves. I’ll get pictures somehow and post them if I can. But, yeah, it’s a very nice set of wheels. I think I’ll enjoy the 2.5 hour ride to ATL tomorrow afternoon.

Oh, and check out this article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The Quartet has connections to the family mentioned in this article. I’ve had some strange “coincidental” gut feelings that things were going to turn out bad, but this really makes my experiences pale. Praise the Lord for the Kocejas’ safety…and next time you get a gut feeling about something bad, pay attention.

This, oddly enough, is post 500. I just now noticed this as I logged in to add juxtaposition, the official blog of Beth Murschell (BJU and, again oddly enough, UBCS alum), to the list. Congrats, Beth, on being the occasion of my 500th post!

Now I gotta go find a party hat for Groovin’ Guy (c)…

I’ve made some changes this weekend. The biggest is that I’m now running WP 2.1 Release Candidate 2. It’s interesting and all that - mostly I just try to keep up with the most recent releases. If you notice any quirks let me know.

Speaking of quirks, some of you may have noticed that occasionally this site looks like all the text has been piled on top of itself. I know it does this in 2.0.x releases of Firefox on Windows XP; if you see it on any other OS/browser, let me know. At the moment I’m calling it a Firefox bug, but just because I haven’t seen it elsewhere doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Thanks.

A friend at lunch told me about two excellent articles over at The Escapist that soundtrack lovers, gamers, and symphonic classical buffs alike should really read. The first article (the one he sent me) is entitled Sephiroth Saves the Symphony - you Final Fantasy geeks out there might pick up on that name; for the rest of us who didn’t immediately recognize it (yes, I said “us”), Sephiroth is (one of?) the main antagonist(s) in FF VII; for more info, feel free to educate yourselves on Wikipedia. Click for more…

One good thing about subscribing to boring news feeds like the one for Wordpress.org is that you find out quickly when a new update has been released. Wordpress 2.0.7 is out and features a few extra security patches. The upgrade from 2.0.6 to 2.0.7 was painfully easy - I only had to replace six files. As far as I can tell everything works correctly.

In other WP news, Wordpress 2.1 RC 1 is out for testing. If you’re the kind of person (like me) that likes playing around with release clients, you may want to download the RC and give it a whirl. I probably will sometime just to see what it’s like. I’ve seen screenshots, and I think I’m impressed. The list of new features is impressive, but then geeks are easily impressed by lists of new features. Time will tell.

How did Philly embarrass themselves against the Saints tonight? Let’s look…
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Concerning “meatloaf:”

A. Meat does not come in loafs; it comes in chunks.
B. “Meatloaf” is by definition either meat or loaf.
C. “Meatloaf” is in the shape of a loaf.
D. Since meat does not come in loafs, and since “meatloaf” is either meat or loaf, and since “meatloaf” looks more like a loaf, “meatloaf” is therefore not meat.

I’m getting three or four new members a week using Cashette.com as their email domain. Since no one actually posts or subscribes using those accounts, I’m just going to start deleting them. I may even block the domain. If you happen to have an account with those folks and legitimately want to sign up, comment here. Also, if you used to have an account at mounty’s corner, but don’t anymore, and you think I deleted you for looking suspicious, comment here too and I’ll apologize or something.

The first round is done and over with, and all the pretenders have been sent home empty-handed. Granted, the NFC pretenders both had victory in sight, but both managed to live up to their respective underwhelming seasons and lose (as they should have).
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For a while now a great deal of my background music listening has come from movie soundtracks. When you think about it, this kinda makes sense. After all, soundtracks were composed with the specific intent of being background music for a film, so it makes sense that it would be good background music for other things, too. Shifting gears: one of the things I enjoy most about grad school is the flexibility I get when choosing assignments and lines of study. Undergrad was a lot of “write about this, research that, etc.”, whereas grad school is more “give me something that vaguely has to do with Romantic-era music.” One of my courses last semester might as well have been entitled “Intro to Musicology” - it’s real title was “Research and Writing in Music” - and was structured to teach us grad students how to properly research, format, and present a music critique in front of a scholarly audience. (Insert gratuitous link to Dial “M” for Musicology here, where you can read the mind of real live musicologists.)
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I’ve got two ministries that have been added to the list. First off, the BJU Music Ministry Team has a blog and photo gallery up - check out the homepage for the Sacred Sounds Ministry Team, run by Joey Hoelscher and the gang, and hosted alongside my site by me and Jared Sutton. BTW, we’ve had some additional sites come to our door, so if you’re thinking of breaking out into the blog world, now would be a great time to do it! </end_shameless_plug> The other site that just came to my attention is run by Brian M. Lievens and is for deaf Christians. The site’s called Edifying Deaf Christians, and the URL takes its cue from Colossians 1:10 [+/-] so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.. So by all means add these sites to your “must-read” list for 2007, and as always, happy blogging!

At the risk of sounding unoriginal and cliche, the first sixteen weeks were the preseason. Next week kicks off the real season in the NFL. Since I’m still on a buzz from Sunday’s action, and since I need to usher in 2007 properly, here are my thoughts on the picture:
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