The Non-Essential Adventures of D'Art

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night to the howling wind.  I listened as the wind whipped around my house and sounded like it was destroying limbs and branches on every tree nearby.  I wasn’t afraid.  In fact I found myself smiling, not wanting to fall back asleep.  Because this was the second night in a row that the weather was flirting with me.  The night before I woke up to one of the most impressive thunder and lightning storm I may have ever witnessed.  It was incredible.  I knew that I was loved.

I have always had an inclination to nature oddities, and for some strange reason I believe that God is trying to tell me that He has everything in control during these times.  In 1997 El Nino hit the California cost, and I was living in the San Francisco Bay area.  One particular night I stood by the Light House in Santa Cruz while waves from the ocean broke over the sea wall and onto the road.  I was ecstatic.  God was in control of the waves.  I clearly was not.  I felt loved.

I’m not sure how to express my thankfulness other than, I’m glad that He speaks my Love Language.

I don’t typically have a addictive personality.  I’ve never really been addicted to anything.  I have a bunch of likes and preferables, but no real have-too’s and must-haves.  Ever since I was a wee little lad I’ve wanted to collect something.  I’ve tried Baseball cards, and decided that I liked the 16 year old piece of gum that was included more than I enjoyed the cards themselves.  After baseball cards came hats.  I loved hats, big hats, small hats, silly hats, and sports hats.  Then my hair got too big and I could no longer wear hats.  Lame.  My worst collection of sorts was Hawaiian shirts.   My wife still reminds me of that horrible misguided phase in my life.  

These days I’ve found a new vice.  Shoes.  Specifically Chuck Taylor All Stars.  More specifically Low-top Chuck Taylor All Stars.  I’ve got a couple pairs.  How many you ask?  I’m not telling.  But you can check out some pics here: Part of D’Art’s Chuck Taylor Collection

Enjoy.

At the tick of Midnight tonight we usher out 2008 and in comes 2009.  Time for celebration.  That is until my children wake up tomorrow morning at 7:30 and sit down to watch Noggin, only to see the great ant race.  

Noggin is going away from my TV at 12:01 am tomorrow morning.  It’s a classic fight of egos. Viacom who owns Noggin and a bunch of other channels including,  Comedy Central, CMT, MTV, Nickelodeon, Spike, TV Land and VH1, want to charge more for their channels.  Time Warner is going to stick it to Viacom by not agreeing to their demand of more money. Thus forcing Viacom to remove their channels from my Time Warner cable.  Thanks guys.  

So who wins? My kids, maybe they’ll play outside more.  Oh wait, it’s winter. Suck. 

Who loses? Me.  No more Colbert Report.  I’m so bummed.

The other day I got pulled over for speeding. I was told that since I now reside in NC that I must register my car here. “No problem,” I told the officer…after all, he let me off with just a warning.

So today I started the journey of registering my vehicle. In NC for some reason you must get an inspection before the DMV will let you proceed with the nitty gritty. I got up early and headed out the door to get the inspection. After $23 and sitting in the inspection place for 23 minutes they let me know that I failed inspection. What?!? I guess that my front tires didn’t have enough tread.

I’m now sitting in another tire place waiting on the guys to put on some new tires.

Next it’s back to the inspection place. Then off to the DMV. Then who knows what wild goose chase they’ll send me on. Oh well, everybody knows that one thing leads to another.

…But it’s funny as heck!

I love the underdog.  

I’m not a big MMA fan, but last night, I found myself watching what was supposed to be the Kimbo vs. Shamrock fight.  Shamrock poohed out, so someone had to fight the behemoth Kimbo Slice, that somebody would be a yahoo named Seth (The Silverback) Petruzelli.  Who calls them self a silverback?  Lame.  Petruzelli was a virtual nobody, Kimbo was an internet backyard brawler sensation.  And besides all that Petruzelli had going against him, add to that his toenails were painted pink.  This joker had no chance.  Classic Underdog.  

The bell rang, and 14 seconds later Petruzelli knocked Kimbo out. 

The Underdog wins.

I get excited.  

I paint my toenails pink.

I love the Underdog.

My wife hates Twitter.  OK, so maybe “hate” is a strong word, but she doesn’t get it.  She says that Twitter makes stalking somebody OK.  And to that, I say, “Is that wrong?” 

With Twitter I get to see into the lives that I would never have any access.  I get to publicly spy on people like Perry Noble, with whom at this point in my life, would be near impossible to get an audience with.  Or Mark Batterson, or Mark Driscoll or Chris Rivers.  So I’m a nerd, but I do like to see what people are doing, and saying.

So if you are a Twitteraholic like myself, then feel free to follow me, BIGDART.  But be warned, I’m not very exciting.