I was so sick yesterday I didn’t even go near the computer or anywhere else.  I will say that I had a very nasty stomach virus and let it go at that.  Thus I didn’t get to see the baby at all yesterday and probably won’t get to today.

Isabel wound up with blood clots in her lungs and was back in the emergency room.  They have since admitted her to the hospital where the baby is.

This baby is feisty.  One thing the nurses all agree on is that she is a fighter and they are all amazed at how she fights everything, even though she is sedated.

They took her off the ventilator yesterday and her lungs are working on their own pretty much.  They are still giving her oxygen.  She appears to have a good sucking/swallowing reflex, but they are going to leave that tube down her throat for a while yet.  They don’t want to do anything too fast.

I apologize to you all for the disjointedness of this mess but I am trying to repeat all of the stuff I heard while I was sick yesterday.  When I wasn’t in the bathroom I was sleeping and so I didn’t get to hear everything that transpired.

One of the coolest things is that Ben might get to hold her for a few minutes today!!!  Okay, I’ve got to go.  I’m really still sick, I just wanted to share all the news with you that I could remember.  Now I will go read everyone’s blogs and try to answer e-mails and then go back to bed.  I will be working on the poll when I have time, it’s not as much of a priority right now.

Remember, as the good book says, "If they can only drink Gatorade and eat Jell-o, don’t try to give them chicken soup."

Isabel is out of the hospital and is doing fine.  Fine being a relative term for a person who underwent major surgery and is out of the hospital 2 days later.  She had to get out of Penrose so she could get over to Memorial and be with Savannah.

Savannah had an EKG yesterday and her heart is good.  She is very strong.  I have a good feeling about her.  As I was praying for her last night, I just had this overwhelming feeling of peace come over me.  You know, any of us only have one day at a time and we have to appreciate each day we get, no matter what comes.  Wow!  That sounds pretty upbeat and positive to come out of me.  I guess it’s because I trust God.  He knows. We did get one update.  The baby’s tube-feeding now includes momma’s milk!  Yea!

You guys remember when I did the blog entry about the word "blog" http://herbthiel.blogdrive.com/archive/16.html  (10/20/2004)?  Well, apparently I wasn’t using the right references, because I found this article on Reuters Odd News page today.  http://reuters.myway.com/article/20041201/2004-12-01T140806Z_01_N30477941_RTRIDST_0_ODD-LIFE-WORDS-DC.html saying that the word "blog" was one of the most looked-up words http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/04words.htm .  I hadn’t used Merriam-Webster because it was a pay service, but I’m glad to see I wasn’t the only one.

Okay, my picture updates at http://herbthiel.blogdrive.com/galleries have been called Savannah Day 1, Savannah Day 2, etc.  Well, the updated pictures will be slower in coming since, (AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!) my stupid digital camera broke!  They still will come, just a little slower.  Anyway, about the dating of them, I have a question, I think I will put in a poll.  By the way, thanks to all of you who voted in the Carter Blog http://carterking.blogspot.com/ poll.

Savannah was born at 9:22 a.m. on Sunday, November, 28, 2004.  I say she was 1 day old at the same time on the 29th, which would make the 29th Day 1.  Margaret says that that is actually Day 2, because the first 24 hours she was alive was her first day.  I say that was day 0.  Of course, I said that the new millennium started January 1, 2001, not 2000 because the year 1 A.D. would have been after the year 0.  Although I guess the argument could be made that there was no year 0, but I am not really interested in all that.  I just wanted to make an interesting poll and see if anyone answers.  I think the polls are fun and they are part of the same deal that .

While I was trying to get Margaret to her first client, steam started to pour out from under the hood.  I turned off the heater, even though it was -6 with the wind chill.  Pulled into the 7-11 and found a leaky heater hose while Margaret tried the new flavored coffee called "Bananas Foster" which she will rave to you about because it tastes like banana cream pie and coffee.  She adds steamed milk.  I still really like just the plain old black coffee.  7-11 has superior coffee to any of the other C-Store chains around here.  I bypassed the heater core because where the leak in the hose was I couldn’t cut it off and put it back on.  I found out later that it is a special elbow hose that also holds the heater control valve in place.  We made our rounds without heat until I could get to a parts store and buy what I thought I needed, a length of 5/8 inch heater hose.  The "Heater Control Valve" in a ’93 Dodge Grand Caravan is a special plastic piece that is held in place by the elbow hose.  If you try to put a regular piece of hose on it and the valve falls down it can break.  Why do they use plastic?  Why, oh why?!?  My car is now in the shop and we couldn’t get up to take any pictures and I walked home from the shop.

The shop is 8 miles away from the house and it was getting dark and cold.  Fortunately, I have a nice goose-down jacket that Margaret got for me last year.  The route is along 2 busy highways and the bridges have no shoulder and Fort Carson is getting off work and some of those people drive like...like...a bunch of GI’s.  I just marched myself home, singing old Army cadences and making up new verses for them.

Anyway, I am really sorry there are no new pics.  We will be using disposable cameras and have to put a few days on each one until I can either get my digital working or replaced.  I hope to have more info for you all though in a few days.

We had some dipping veggies left over from Thanksgiving that needed to be used, so I had them chop them up and I made omelettes.  Cheese, Black Olives, Peppers, Green Onions, Tomatoes, Mushrooms and, for those who wanted, broccoli and celery.  I make them to order and they are delicious.  Now I am really tired from having the belly full.  I guess that will end this convoluted little blurb.

Remember, as the good book says, "If quitters never win, and winners never quit, who came up with, "Quit while you're ahead"?"

Okay.  Finally got the pix uploaded.  If you bookmark http://herbthiel.blogdrive.com/galleries this is my main gallery page.  My stupid camera broke and i have to use film cameras, so it may take a little extra time.

Isabel is in one hospital and the baby is in another so we are taking the daily pix for her.  We may cut back and my blog get back to as normal as it ever is in a short time.  I don’t know.

I may also wind up having to delete Professor Googleheimer’s pix if storage space gets short, but I don’t know.

By the time she was 48 hours old, she had lost only half an ounce of weight.  She has developed a slight case of jaundice which is common at these altitudes and is being treated in the standard way, with the Black Lights.

So far she is doing well, thanks to the prayers of so many people in so many places praying for her.  Thank you all.

Sorry I haven’t written any e-mails back or haven’t blogged the last couple of days but we have a new member of the family, Savannah Melody Thiel, 1 pound, 12 ounces, 13 inches long delivered at 29 weeks gestation!

Ben and Isabel had been at our house on Thanksgiving, Ben Making the turkey and Isabel making her wonderful, glorious, delicious, tasty, (did i say wonderful?) spinach dip.  Ben has been making the turkey since he was a little boy and it is so moist and delicious i started salivating like Pavlov’s dog just thinking about it.  Of course I salivate like Pavlov’s dog without...oops, too much info...sorry.  Seriously, if you have ever had Ben’s turkey, you would never want to have turkey anywhere else.  I doubt that even deep-fried Texas would compare, and I don’t say that lightly, knowing how many Texans read this.  You add Isabel’s spinach dip to the table, and, well, I had planned to try my hand at making up a "Grampaw Jones" type of poem, but don’t have the time now.

Anyway, they came over Saturday evening to graze leftovers and Isabel didn’t feel good and hadn’t felt the baby move for about 24 hours.  This was unusual in itself because the baby had been constantly moving around and almost generally making her sick.  We called the hospital and they said she should drink some orange juice and if they still didn’t feel any movement, bring her in.  Twenty minutes went by and we all decided that it couldn’t hurt anything for Ben to take her and have her checked out.  That was about, oh, maybe 7 O’clock.  I’m not sure.  Someone will correct me if I have the times wrong.  We got a call almost immediately saying that they had heard the baby’s heartbeat and it sounded healthy, but Isabel was having other problems that they couldn’t figure out for sure and they decided they would keep her there.

The symptoms were sounding like preeclampsia and by 6 O’clock in the morning, it was decided that the baby would have to be taken by Caesarian.  They would move her from the hospital she was at, Penrose Community Birthing Center here in Colorado Springs, which is an excellent facility for any kind of birth that is even close to using the word "normal" in it, but the baby was 29 weeks gestation and only 26 weeks in size.  The doctors thought the best place for this birth would be at Memorial Hospital, also in The Springs.  Memorial has a reputation for having the finest Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in the state, rivaling even Denver’s Children’s Hospital and in the top such care units in the nation!  Before they could get her moved, however, more problems arose and Ben got a call saying they were going to operate at 9 O’clock right there at Penrose.  Apparently, conditions had worsened.  Well, Ben raced over there and we dropped off Grandma and the girls at church and drove at speeds that were, I admit, somewhat in excess of the limit.  In fact, I probably would have made Susan B proud and probably would have beaten even her.

We got there and met the rest of Isabel’s family that we hadn’t met before and we waited.  Penrose had called in a team from Memorial to assist.  At 9:22 the baby was born.  Ben said she came out fighting and fussing like crazy.  It took them all day to get her condition stabilized with a couple of dramatic, potentially sad moments, but they stabilized her.  Without the C-Section, neither mom nor baby stood a chance of surviving, and now they had raised their chances to above 70%.  When they got the baby stabilized, they moved her to Memorial in a mobile ICU!  A full ICU crew staffs this ambulance.  The baby was so stable by now (now being around 2 O’clock) that when they left they didn’t even use sirens or lights.  Therefore, the baby is at Memorial, the mom is at Penrose, and both are doing wonderfully.

Savannah Melody Thiel.  1 lb, 12 oz, 13 in.  She’s a beauty, what you can see of her beyond the tubes and wires and such.  I am going to try to take some digital pics with some sort of frame of reference for her size.

Today is Thanksgiving day.  This is a day that was set aside by the earliest settlers here to give thanks to God.  It was later proclaimed by President Washington to be a national day to give thanks to God on 10/03/1789.  President Lincoln proclaimed it a national holiday on the last Thursday of November.  I am including the text of Washington’s proclamation, but I would recommend you study the holiday for yourself in-depth and teach your children and any other children about it.  You had better study as many of the documents of our founding fathers as you can since, as I was starting to type this, a report came over Sean Hannity’s radio show that a teacher in Los Angeles has been ordered by his principal that he cannot distribute materials that refer to God or Christianity.  It does not matter that the document in question is THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE!  That is right, folks.  Fifth-Graders are not supposed to read it, according to this principle.  I found a link to a Reuters Story http://www.reuters.com/printerFriendlyPopup.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6911883 on http://www.drudgereport.com/ and the actual legal document on www.thesmokinggun.com the link to the story and document is http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1124041declar1.html

Hmmm, I wonder which side the ACLU will take?  Anyway, I will tell you all about the feast our family will have in a couple of days, after I get done digesting.

George Washington’s 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation

Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their  joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:"

Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted' for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have show kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand, at the city of New York, the 3d dy of October, A.D. 1789.

(signed) G. Washington

The pics are here at Herb's Galleries

We have several get-togethers each year now that we have a fellowship hall.  It used to be our old sanctuary, which we have outgrown.  Our beautiful new building will seat a thousand people and is built adjacent to the old one.  It still seems weird to eat food in it, but let me tell you, we eat food in it!  Sometimes the ladies will have a fund-raiser and sell hot dogs or sloppy joes, but my all-time favorite is the good old American Potluck dinner.

What happens is each family brings a main dish and a side or salad and a dessert, making at least as much as would normally feed your own family.  Then it is all put out on a long table full of food and with 500+ people there you can always find a great variety.  Especially our church because we have people from all backgrounds and walks of life and from all different regions of the country and from some other countries as well.  With a church as big as ours, you cannot always do the polite thing and try some of everyone’s, but I sure do try!  I take 2 big plates with me, a little plate, a bowl and get started.

To answer what my favorite is is kind of impossible.  I like the fried chicken, the casseroles are good, the beans, the enchiladas, the unidentifiable somethings or others (one time there were pierogies!), the salads, hmmm...okay, my favorite part is the desserts.  One of the big plates is just for desserts.  Homemade layer cakes, pies, cobblers, unidentifiable somethings or others...  There used to be a show called Hee-Haw where they did a skit that had Grampa Jones come out and all the people in the audience would say, "Hey Grampaw!  What’s for supper?"  He would break into a poem listing off all of these different southern dishes and at the end, everyone would say real loud, "YUMM-YUMMM!"  That’s how you feel.  I wanted to write one of those poems, but was afraid that i wouldn’t get this entry even started, so maybe you will hear it a different time.

After that we have some skits.  One of them was where a trio of men are trying to learn to sing amazing grace and one of the guys messes it up real bad and the other two take him around "backstage" and bang on some pots and pans as though they were beating him up.  It happens a second time with a different guy.  Finally they decide it is the music director who is the problem.  Our music director is a small-framed young lady that is in charge of the music for our whole church and just loves to have a good time.  Her husband is good, solid Wisconsin stock who looks like a Sackett when he walks into a room.  Anyway, they all three take her back there, and there is a wild ruckus and when it is all done, this petite girl comes skipping out with her hands clasped in victory.

Then there was the incredible amazing enlarging machine.  I played my character, Professor Fritz Von Googleheimer.  He has a white lab coat, a goofy tie that has its own story, a Pendleton wool Tam O’Shanter, a cane and glasses.  He has this thick, obviously fake German accent and glasses.  The glasses are the important part of the costume because they are those reading glasses you buy at the grocery store and are a 3.50 magnification.  I can’t see anything through them unless I squint and get right up next to something, so it makes me have to walk funny and look at people all strange.
Since I am going to try to use the photo gallery for the first time, i don’t know how this will all turn out.

In the first picture, you see my colleague, played by Sis. Pittenger, whose character’s name I don’t have.  Professor Von Googleheimer is a character I use in Sunday School, so I know him.  He "uses ze zientifical messod of zienterrifical observationizating" in a variety of ways.

Next we have the introduction of the Enlarging Machine.  The pictures were taken by Abigail, who usually does a good job, but she couldn’t get through the crowd too easily.  But we don’t have pictures of every scene.

All the little kids were seated up front.  The first time we tried the machine, I put in a giant Hershey’s kiss and (Brother Andrew was behind the machine, throwing things out) it spewed out a bunch of little kisses into the crowd.

In the next picture, we see a little bouncy ball go in and in the next, the ball that came out.

Then we put in a mustard seed and out came a bottle of French’s.  Sister pittenger wanted spicy, so I threw back the mustard and out came the spicy.

Not shown in the pictures, the other professor pretends to spit into the machine and I am doused with water thrown out of the machine with relish!  Then we put in a baby doll and a little girl pops out.

Then we put in a stuffed monkey.  I pretended to hesitate to push the button but (the whole skit was hammed up all the way along of course "Mit der prrrofeshor dishcushing und ekshplaining sings") was persuaded to finally do it by the screaming kids, who are in a frenzy by now.

I push the button!  It makes its noise and suddenly out jumps Andrew in a gorilla costume with a half-eaten banana in his hand.  The crowd goes wild, and he runs over to his wife and pretends to try to kiss her.  This is the end and he takes off his head because he is burning up inside there and everyone applauds.

The last picture is a close-up of the professor.  He has to squint because of the strength of the glasses.

After the eating and entertaining, Brother Johnny Burgess spoke for a short while about the scriptural idea of common feasts and told several humorous anecdotes and we were done.  One of the stories he told is on the humor blog ( http://herbshumor.blogdrive.com/ ) as the entry for 11/24/2004.  If you weren’t able to be there, you missed a great time!

Remember, The Good Book says, "Enjoy life while you’re alive because when you’re dead, you won’t be able to."

Sorry gang, our phone line was acting up yesterday.  Oh, yes, I still have a dialup connection.  Isn’t that so last century.  *laughs*

Anyway, I was planning to tell you all about the great Harvest Feast we had and show you pictures of the inimitable Professor Fritz Von Googleheimer and the amazing enlargement machine.  I probably still will but 1 day’s worth of e-mail bogged me down.  That and I try to read everyone’s blogs as well.  Sometimes that takes a while.  It took some extra time to do because I had a couple more to read!

I had started reading Sam’s at http://samsam.blogdrive.com/ a couple of days ago.  He’s the fellow from Singapore that wrote me a note to say he reads my blog and he had an interesting letter from his friend who is an exchange student here in the States.  That was interesting to me because it was a different perspective, but it was 3 parts.

Woo-Hoo!  Please allow me to introduce 2 new bloggers!  Yes, our little drive to get Carter to start blogging has paid off, folks.  Carter’s blog is at http://carterking.blogspot.com/  and is called Carter’s Rants.  To see every entry I had to click on the link marked "November Archives" then I saw 2 entries.  To leave a comment I had to sign up with them like I did with Xanga.com, though.  I just set up the blog and put a link to this blog.  I don’t want to have to post to all of them and I think it would just be confusing to people.

The 2’nd one is Nicole’s!  Yeah, she finally started one also.  Because of the limited time she has she will only do it once in a while, but i think it will turn out nice as long as she is herself.  Hers is http://nicoler.blogdrive.com/

Links to all will be forthcoming.  I guess i can take my survey down, now.  I’ll have another one in a few days.

Remember, the Good Book says, "Opportunity only knocks once, but Temptation stands on the doorbell."

I just came in from shoveling snow.  I hate shoveling snow here in Colorado Springs.  People hear about Colorado getting 18 inches of snow in one day and they freak out.  Truth is, that is up in the mountains.  The city of Colorado Springs is situated at the base of Pikes Peak and surrounded by hills and mountain passes so our weather is uniquely mild, even when the whole rest of the state is going crazy.

One of the most frustrating things about shoveling here is the fact that even though we might have 3 or 4 inches of snow on the ground and the temperature is 10 above, in 2 days it will be 60 or 70!  That, plus being a military town, you have drivers of every skill and experience level on the road at the same time.  Drivers from southern places where snow is a mythological legend to Drivers from the Great White North all live here and gather on the roads at the same time.  If it gets really bad they will delay the base opening a couple of hours for non-mission-essential personnel, but then everything else does the same thing, so you still have all the same drivers, you can just see them better.

Many of these people have 4-wheel ice skating equipment on their vehicles.  Okay, I might allow that you can get going faster, but you cannot stop any better, so when you are going down the Interstate at 75 MPH and hit a patch of ice, stopping becomes a problem.  Add to that the fact that you are from somewhere that thinks winter is when it gets down to 50 and you have to wear a sweater, well, you probably don’t belong on the road.

Then there are those of us who grew up around winter.  Winter means the time when the lakes and rivers get 5 to 10 feet of ice on them and people pull their ice-fishing sheds out onto the lake with their pickup trucks and then practice driving on ice and snow.  There, snow removal is done by plowing the snow to the middle of the street in banks that are 10 feet high and following them with a snow blower looking vehicle that shoots it all into the back of a dump truck that will haul it out into a woods somewhere.  They used to haul it to the river, but that could cause pollution, but you’ve gotta put it somewhere.

In Wisconsin the challenge was always to try to time your shoveling in such a way that you would beat the plow at its own game.  See, while the main streets were plowed with the method described above, the side streets and residential areas were plowed to the side of the road, which meant you had snow banks in front of your house.  It also meant a snow bank in front of your driveway.  The trick was to try to time your shoveling so that you only had to shovel the end of the driveway once.  You would do the walk, You could not leave the walk for a couple of days and wait for it to melt or you were fined, you would do the porch, the top end of the driveway, anything to avoid having to do the driveway twice.  Time would pass, your car would be warmed up (even if you had an engine heater you might still go out a couple of times in the night to start it in -50 weather so you could keep it going) from sitting running and you would think, “I guess he must be having a hard time getting through.  I’ll do the end real quick once and get out and go to the store to see how bad it is out there, hey.”  So you shovel the end of the driveway anyway, realizing the plow is not coming for a while, you start to back out and just as you get near the end, the plow comes and makes an impassible bank and you have to stop and get out and shovel twice anyway.  Then you see the guy coming back on the other side and when he smiles and waves at you it sure looks like he’s laughing.

However, you knew that if you didn’t shovel you could not get out.  It wasn’t going to hit 60 in the same day it snowed and all melt.  You HAVE to shovel in Wisconsin as a matter of survival.  Now, I am going to have a cup of coffee, read my e-mail and comments on my blog and get ready for Sunday School.

Remember, as the Good Book says, “If you curse the snowplow driver he will leave your street until last.”

What is up with the people that send you chain e-mails?  Sometimes it is an actually beautiful poem or sentiment or encouragement, then at the end it’s, "Send this to 10 people in 10 minutes or your computer will turn upside-down and become infested with packrats but if you send this to 10 people within 5 minutes money will fall from the sky."  Can’t you just send the sentiment and say, "Wasn’t this nice" or "I was thinking you might enjoy this piece" or "I was thinking about you today and wanted to send you something nice?"  You know, you could get in big trouble if you did that with the mail.  If you must forward stuff at least try to match it the person that is getting it.

Since I have gotten on this e-mail tangent, let me say something else.  Why can’t people be bothered to check even the simplest facts, or apply common sense to the most absurd statements.  Some of the e-mails people send around can give the Weekly World News, that bastion of journalism, a run for its money.  Well, okay, sorry.  I guess it could happen that Kentucky Fried Chicken was really growing genetically altered, four-legged headless chickens and that the FDA made them change their name to KFC since their product wasn’t really a chicken.  Yep.  Could have happened that way.  Like Bill Gates and AOL teaming up and tracking a particular e-mail which, if forwarded, will cause Mr. Gates to send you to Disneyland?

I think people who claim to be Christians should be particularly careful about the e-mails they send out.  After all, we are not supposed to spread rumors or tell lies or threaten people with curses, are we?  Made-up stories, unless people know you are a fiction author are lies, as are half-truths.  Many of the e-mails, especially one with a picture of John Kerry with Hanoi Jane, which was obviously doctored up by Photoshop, that went around before the election make us look like we have to stoop to their level.  Our man won on his integrity, not by lying about his opponent like others did.

When you get an e-mail that sounds too good to be true, or is some sort of breaking news that the mainstream media hasn’t reported, like a giant killer white shark in the San Francisco Bay that leaps out of the water and attacks helicopters flying over, think about it.  Well, I am sure, as the Weekly World News reported a few years back, that space aliens did meet with Rush Limbaugh and begged him to run for president.  There was a picture on the front page.  And what about the Yeti hooker that Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy spent time with.  There are photos!

Why in the world would you not think the same thing about e-mail as you do the checkout-line tabloids?  What possesses a person to think, "Oh, it’s in an e-mail, it must be true?"  That’s like saying, "They couldn’t publish it in print on the newsstand if it weren’t true."  We already know there is a bias in much of the mainstream media that takes every word that some dumb idol from Hollyweird says as the gospel truth but never investigates the truth.  Some of us even know there are outlets for a right-wing bias also.  Talk Radio is still entertainment, boys and girls and just like every other news story or ideology you should get as much information for yourself before believing it either.

As some of you have already learned, I have a method for dealing with Urban Legends that are sent to me in the e-mail.  I have a couple of websites that I use to determine the veracity of your story.  They are http://urbanlegends.about.com/ and http://truthorfiction.com/, which deal with urban legends.  These folks deserve for you to bookmark them.  The one on the About network is a little more cynical and politically left, in my opinion, but he tells the truth!  The second one is by a Christian who believes it is wrong for Christians to spread lies as though they were true.  I encourage everyone to check them out, not only for reference but also because they are entertaining.  You will find yourself going, "Oh brother.  Who would believe that?"  Anyway, when I have found out your story is wrong, I do a "Reply All", then go into the body of the e-mail, and get every other address that I can find and send it back with a scathing note and links to the truth.

Take a few minutes to bookmark a couple of reliable sites that will tell you whether this is the truth or not.  http://urbanlegends.about.com/ or http://truthorfiction.com/ are only two of a multitude of sites you can find.

In the meantime, on the humor blog, http://herbshumor.blogdrive.com/ I have posted an e-mail I received in 1999 that is called, "The Last E-Mail You Will Ever Need."

Take a moment to think before you hit that "send" button and remember, as the Good Book says, "All liars can go to hell."

Some of the new things I can do with a paid subscription here is put up a photo gallery, a hit counter and create polls.  This is going to be fun.  I think the first question I will do is whether Carter ought to have a ‘blog or not.

Carter and I have been friends for longer than many of my readers have been alive, 26+ long, grueling, tedious, er, um, ah, joyous, wonderful, years.  If he blogs it would definitely be interesting.  You could learn a lot about the Second Amendment, Military History and Tactics, his wife and kids and of course flatulence and hardened, dried, nasal mucous.  Oh, come on now.  Don’t get your nose out of joint.  It’s not like that is all he has to talk about.  He is also very knowledgeable about stinky feet and is possibly the world’s foremost expert on beer and ketchup.  Well, not together.  At least I don’t think so.  He might also introduce you to Gronk.  (Carter, Gronk could actually have his own blog that you could link to from yours if you use these guys.  I would also try to make it appealing to the widest audience possible so Christians will want to read it and not be afraid, but that’s only a suggestion.)

Anyway, I will be experimenting with some of these new toys.

Thanks Margaret.

Remember, the Good Book says, "Whiskey is about the only enemy man has succeeded in loving."