Alright, speak up.  Are you dressing up tonight?  What as?  

Ready?  Go.

Well, Happy Halloween everyone. We are on the road this year so Kristin and the boys will have to get all dressed up and go out without me.  I hate missing doing things with the kids, but I know that they will have fun tonight.  I plan on dressing up as someone on a tour who needs a shower and a little more sleep.  

Thanks to everyone who commented and contributed to the conversation on the previous post.  It fascinates me how many different views there are.  Turns out there’s no real way to unite religion and politics huh?  I do appreciate all the insight though.  That’s exactly what I was looking for.

We are in Lynchburg, VA tonight and to keep things “light” I thought I’d share a story.  Every time I’m on a tour that stops here, I remember my first time visiting. Most of you have already heard this story but I think it’s worth repeating.  This is taken from a post just over two years ago.  

The following is an actual conversation that took place some time in February of this year at Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA. Imagine me sitting in an unfamiliar office next to a lit, scented candle working on my computer. Much like I am right now.

Unknown Man: “Oh, hello. How are you?”

Me: “Good”

Unknown Man: “Getting the office smelling good for the Dr.?”

Me: “Okay.”

Unknown Man: “Have a good day”

Me: “You too.”

(15 minutes later…)

Different Unknown Man: “Oh, hello.”

Me: “Hi.”

Different Unknown Man: “Who are you?”

Me: “Brody. Who are you?”

Different Unknown Man: “I’m Jerry Falwell. This is my office.”

Me: “Should I leave?”

Jerry Falwell: “Well, I guess I could have my meeting somewhere else.”

Me: “Okay.”

I wonder if the books with his pictures on them should have given me a clue?

Have a great, safe holiday.  What’s your plan tonight?

A while back I asked you all who was planning on not voting.  I got a whole bunch of answers ranging from folks not planning on voting, to people claiming it was un-American to not vote, to, what I consider the best answer, from Amy explaining that not only did people fight for our right to vote, they also fought for our right to not vote.  Now, here’s the thing.  I do not plan on voting, and here’s why.  It’s simple.  I’m not registered in Tennessee to vote.  Pretty easy right?  Here’s the thing though, I don’t think I would vote even if I could.  Maybe that makes me un-American or something, but I don’t see a good choice so I am opting out.

That being said I would like to know something from the Christians that are die-hard voting for Obama.  I’ve tried to follow the different views of Obama and McCain and honestly, like every other presidential race, whoever I am listening to sounds like they are saying what I want to hear.  Guys running for President are good at that I suppose.  But there is one thing that has stuck out more than once to me and I haven’t really heard a clear answer about it.  I’d like to know what Obama’s stance is on abortion and how that affects the Christian voter.

Historically, it’s seemed like the Christians have typically voted for the guy who has killed the least amount of babies.  Is that happening this time around?  Or has it become too cool to jump on board with Don Miller and other “forward thinking” Christians and simply overlook that tiny detail?  Again, it seems like every time I have looked into it it’s a pretty blurred area.  I still don’t really know Obama’s stance and when I find that out I’d like to know the Christian voters thoughts.  Carlos, I want to hear from you on this one.

Ready?  Go.

Growing up I didn’t carve too many pumpkins so as an adult I have always sucked at it.  I blame it on lack of experience and the fact that my brain has a hard time seeing the negative space.  Kristin, on the other hand, is pretty dang good at it.  She’s always had a way better pumpkin than me.

This year I decided to cheat a little and get one of those stencil things that tells you what parts to cut out and takes care of the whole “negative space” thing.  Cooper and I chose the pirate one.  That’s right. It’s not death or poison or anything gross or scary.  It’s a pirate pumpkin.  The teeth were pretty tough but I think it managed to turn out okay.

Kristin and Aiden chose the spider one.  Again, not because it’s scary, but because the bug guy killed all the spiders at our house and we were missing the ones that once covered our front porch.  Now for the next couple weeks our porch can have a spider living on it agian.

Blue went with the traditional.  Triangle eyes, round ears, sharp teeth and arm holding a sword style.  And if you look close you can see that this traditional triangle eyed pumpkin has eyelashes that a woman would die for.  Since I will be in Virginia on Halloween it was fun to have a little bit of that with the kids tonight.  And tomorrow?  Roasted pumpkin seeds.

Do you carve?

I’ve been in Texas for the past week where I’m not sure it gets very cold.  At least I’ve never been cold in Texas and I’ve been there a million times.  When I left the weather was right on the edge of getting cold and today I think it’s here. This morning I was able to walk Blue to he bus stop again and nearly froze to death.  It feels like winter is officially working it’s way in.  I even heard that it got down to around twenty-five degrees last night.

See here’s the thing.  I love it when it’s cold.  I love having to wear several layers.  I love seeing my breath in the mornings and holding tight to a hot cup of coffee.  This morning is that morning.  Not to mention I love being home with my family too.

Now I realize that for some, the arrival of the cold might not be considered a “Positive Post Tuesday” worthy thing, as some of you might not like the cold, but to me it’s my favorite time of year.  October has to be one of the best months of the year.  I know it’s been asked before, but what’s your favorite month?  

Welcome to Tuesday.  For those of you just showing up, this is how Positive Post Tuesday works.  It’s really easy.  Write something positive on your blog, then come back here and fill out the box below.  And remember, if you don’t have something nice to blog, maybe you shouldn’t blog at all…. at least on Tuesdays.

Have a great one.

Wanna hear something weird?  The other day when we were playing football, during one of the plays I hit my arm on something.  It instantly started hurting but I didn’t know what from.  Now, today my arm looks like this.  It doesn’t look too bad but the weird part is that the palm of my hand is starting to swell and my middle and ring fingers are hard to bend.  

I assume it has something to do with the tendons inside there getting all banged up, but I’ve never had anything like that happen before.  In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever bruised that part of my arm before.  It’s a little weird.  Problem is, I am left handed and it’s hard to do things including type so I’m going to be done now.  

Any medical people out there have an idea of what might be going on?

Well as most of you know, we played a little game of flag football yesterday in Wichita Falls. The crew won by a substantial amount and I may have messed up my wrist, but we had a great time. Now, some of you mentioned wanting to see my “uniform” for our flag football games and here it is.

You’ll notice that I put this picture on a day where my stats will suck. That’s not an accident.

What’s on your mind today?

So, before this tour started I knew that there was one day when MercyMe’s normal guitar tech would be off for a wedding and there was talk of me taking his place, though nothing was confirmed.  Until yesterday.  I found out at about ten in the morning that I would be his replacement and I’d have to somehow figure out what I was doing.

Now, I’ve played guitar for over ten years, and tuned plenty of guitars, and even was technically Phil’s guitar tech on the Crowder tour, but even that was only two guitars.  But last night was a little different.  Especially since I was the only one and there are two guitar players.  Not to mention I’ve never actually tuned a banjo.  

I got a crash course lesson right after sound check which consisted of lots of pointing and me frantically writing on little strips of tape.  I was a little stressed all day about it, but once I got into the second or third song it was going pretty well.  

In fact aside from walking directly into Bart after one of the changes I think it went great.  I am pretty glad that Wes is back, but it’s cool to know that it’s not that big of a deal if I need to do it again.  So that’s the question of the day.  

What’s something you have done recently that was something you were nervous about doing but pulled off?  Too specific?  Okay.  What’s something you’ve accomplished recently that you feel pretty good about accomplishing? 

Ready?  Go.

I don’t know if my TwitterGrade is good or bad, but I know when I got a 95.3 in high school it was good.  According to the site your Twitter is graded on a number of things.  

The number of followers you have

The power of this network of followers

The pace of your updates

The completeness of your profile

…a few others

What’s yours?

You may or may not have noticed the new tab at the top of this blog named “MYNH”.  Guess what that stands for.  Yep.  ”Music You’ve Never Heard”.  It’s a feature I have messed around with a little on this blog and would love to develop into something one day, but for now I thought it would be a good place to just browse.

Here’s the problem though.  I keep running out of music.  Between traveling, family, SkörInc, and well… sleep, I haven’t had a ton of time to keep up on the music I’ve never heard.  So I need some help and since this will be an ongoing thing (thanks to the new tab) it will, hopefully, be a good resource for years to come.  Okay maybe not years to come but at least for the next couple days.

So let’s hear it.  What’s some music I have never heard?  Ready?  Go.