Monday, December 15, 2003

11:22 PM Didn’t get around to doing my shopping after all. Got tied up in church affairs almost all day. Maybe tomorrow.

11:21 PM Dennis Byrne exposes the absurdity of the bestselling Da Vinci Code. 10:26 AM Monday greetings to Vita Loredo, Wayne Benfield in Jacksonville, Florida, Bernie Schuck in Indiana, to Paul and Becky Hedgepeth in Russia, to Gordon Wright in Sycamore, IL, and a special hello to newlyweds Ted and Leanna Engel.

9:52 AM Congratulations to Derek and Deneen Taylor on the birth of Elijah Nelson Taylor, Saturday, December 13, weighing in at a very healthy 8 pounds, 13 ounces. Mother and son and father are all doing well.

8:36 AM This is Christmas shopping day for me. Like a lot of men, I tend to put off shopping as long as humanly possible. Marlene helped me by putting together a list of ideas of things she might like. She loves shopping. To me shopping is like having surgery—without an anesthetic. Or maybe it’s more like doing a military operation in hostile territory. I don’t want to go in a store and browse. It’s all “search and rescue"—go in, find what you want, get out before you are captured. Actually, that makes it sound worse than it is. I enjoy Christmas shopping—especially when I can get some cash and don’t have to write checks or use a credit card. Years ago Steve Meyer explained to me that guys who are truly from Chicago carry cash. They put in their front pocket and they pull it out when they need it. One night when we had come back from Moody after I had hosted an Open Line broadcast, we stopped at a hot dog stand to get something to eat. I opened my wallet and found that I had $6. Steve looked at me and said, “Weak. That’s weak, Pastor Ray.” (You’d have to do Steve’s deep voice to get the true effect.) That’s when he told me that true Chicago guys carried cash in a roll in their front pockets. To prove his point, he asked some guy standing next to us where he carried his money, and the guy said, “In my front pocket.” Steve explained that I was from Alabama and needed education in these finer points of Chicago culture. Okay, where was I? I’m going Christmas shopping today. That’s the big news. More later.