Rough night

It's been a pretty rough 24 hours. My wife has developed some kind of super nasty burn on both of her legs, the back of her neck, and her lower back. It's very painful, and it itches like crazy. We've tried every possible remedy (except the $3,000-$4,000 trip to the ER), and we couldn't get anything to work. We were both up all night (with her in much more discomfort than me). As of right now, it seems like a couple of our last-ditch efforts have started to pay off a little. She's probably gotten a couple of hours of sleep, and we think we've at least dulled the pain and itchiness. Of course, she has a final paper that's supposed to be finished sometime today, and a final exam tomorrow afternoon, and I've got a big huge "I-promise-this-test-will-absolutely-totally-kick-my-butt" final exam in less than four hours for which I am utterly unprepared.

On a happy note, I'm an uncle again! Check out Pam's blog for pictures of Micah Nathaniel Rohde.

A Happy Mother's Day to Lisa Marie Rohde!!!!!

Don't even think about arguing with me. I have the greatest mom in the world. If you try to comment with some blasphemous musing about your own mom being the greatest I probably won't publish it. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for people disagreeing with me in life. I consider myself to be wrong at least 82% of the time (that statistic is from my informal study). However, when it comes to my mom I'm right, and I won't let my blog become a place for other people to claim motherly superiority.

To my mom:

You are the greatest mother for which I could ever hope

You always taught me right from wrong and to stay away from dope

Sometimes you spanked when I was bad and I didn't like that belt

You know, the one you hit me with that sometimes left a welt

But even though it caused me pain I know your love was true

Cuz every time you did it you'd say, "This hurts me more than you."

But that's enough about the whippings because they were pretty rare

(After all JOEL was the troubled one -- sometimes you even pulled his hair!)

Thank you for always coming to all of the sporting events I had

You came and cheered regardless if I played good or bad

You kept score at my baseball games and bought me food in-between

You sewed up holes in all my clothes and washed grass stains from my jeans

You brought snacks in elementary school, and came whenever there was a field trip

All the kids thought you were cool, so by association I was hip

You made sure that I always went to church on Sunday morning

We both liked when Pastor Dan was preaching, cuz he was never boring

And now you're a mother to lots more boys, and a girl thrown in to boot

I wonder if you do it just because they're all real cute

I wish that you and I lived closer to one another

It's very hard for me to be so far from my mother

I miss you very much, and I love you lots and lots too

Sometimes I think about you when I'm feeling kinda blue

I hope you have a very very happy Mother's Day

And when it's done I hope you don't up and run away!

Love you mom!

The Mississippi Squirrel Revival

This was one of my favorite songs as a kid, and now thanks to youtube I can share it with all of you. And no, I'm not a hick. Just a kid from a small town in rural Iowa.

a new look

I changed my blog background and title. Just a little change-em-up attitude. The background will look familiar to many of you - I'm pretty sure Joel used to have it as his background. I suppose as baseball season draws to a close and football season begins in the fall I'll probably make another change.

Anyway, just thought I'd alert you.

Now you can see what life's really like for me

My sister-in-law, Pam, blogged about a month ago in a twittery kind of way. Each half hour she posted what she was doing. The only rule about blogging this way: No cheating. Since she encouraged others to try the same thing, I decided to take her up on it. So here's my day. Boring moments and all.

6:30 Waking up

7:00 Reading about the possibility of a Super Bowl being played in London in the not-so-distant future (if you ask me, it's one of the dumbest ideas anyone in the NFL has ever had)

7:30 On a morning walk with Elizabeth

8:00 Watching the morning news

8:30 Cutting cheese for my breakfast bagel

9:00 Discussing an "Obama" bumper sticker with Elizabeth on our drive to school/work

9:30 At work: helping take down our church's Easter cross that's been hanging from the ceiling for a month

10:00 At work: addressing postcards for a youth group mailing

10:30 No joke -- sitting on the toilet playing Sudoku on my iPod touch

11:00 At work: stuffing envelopes for another mailing

11:30 Talking with co-workers about the new Star Trek movie coming out tonight

12:00 Addressing more postcards for yet another mailing (I promise I do more at work than mail things, use the bathroom, and chat with co-workers, but I'm not allowed to cheat and apparently the mailing stuff today all happened right around half-hour marks)

12:30 Checking out the book sale at the Denver Seminary Library

1:00 At Lowe's looking at cheap charcoal grills I could afford so we can have brats and make my wife really happy. No luck (about the grills -- but my wife's plenty happy)

1:30 Eating some lunch; watching CSI: New York

2:00 Messing around on iTunes

2:30 Messing around on Garage Band (a program that lets you create songs, jingles, and podcasts)

3:00 Looking up Hobby Lobby locations

3:30 Desperately trying to make my car start

4:00 Is there anyone on the planet who can fix our car tonight?

4:30 Waiting for the tow-truck guy

5:00 Still waiting for the tow-truck guy

5:30 It's not the starter! It's just the battery (according to the tow-truck guy). Now we're just waiting for the battery seller/installer guy

6:00 The old battery's really in there. Battery seller/installer guy is having a tough time getting it out.

6:30 Car stuff's over and taken care of! Heating up some leftovers for supper.

7:00 Getting ready to go to the store

7:30 In-between stores on our mini shopping trip

8:00 Settling in for "The Office"

8:30 My watch must be fast. "The Office" isn't quite over yet.

9:00 Blogging about what I did every half-hour today.

Free audiobooks

Christianaudio.com offers a free audiobook download every month. Previous free books have included John Calvin: Of prayer -- on the Christian Life, Abandoned to God by Oswald Chambers, and Not For Sale by David Batstone. This month's free audiobook download is Foxe's Book of Martyrs. If you like audiobooks, and you like free things, then go to their website and sign up to get their free monthly e-mails that tell you about the free download each month.

e-mail attachments

Google has what it calls Google Labs, which is where they test out things that they're thinking of adding to the "cool things you can do with Google." So I guess they let people try them out for awhile and if they succeed it becomes a regular thing.

I recently added one of these labs ideas to my gmail account. Anytime I write an e-mail and mention that there's an attachment, but I forget to attach something, I get a pop-up dialogue box that says something like, "It sounds like you were thinking of adding an attachment to this message." It's awesome. Because from the conversations I've had with others, and the fact that I fairly often receive e-mails with things "attached" only to get another e-mail a few minutes later with the thing actually attached, this is a problem many people have. So, I just wanted to say that it's saved me from sending double e-mails a couple of times in the last week, and I think it's a pretty nifty thing.

iBible

I don't know why I haven't seen more of these being used in churches.