Fall's Not Here, But We Can Almost See It

Slightly hard to fathom, given the scorching temperatures outside, that it is a little over a week until September, which at least to me is a "fall" month as the temperatures start to transition to cool, the skies are a nice blue, it rains occasionally, and there is a whole different feel to the day. When the heat index is still reaching around 100, you long for those kind of days. With colleges starting this week after public school beginning last Friday, it won't be long before there will be football talk in the air. Personally, I'm not a football person. I will watch occasionally and I generally know what teams are doing well and stuff like that, but I can definitely take it or leave it. (Which is good since Meron hates it and forbids it on our TV!) But, while I'm not looking forward to football season that much, I am very excited about football weather.

All this talk of fall came to mind because last night we had a meeting of the Finance and Nurture committees at church. We started planning our fall stewardship drive, which will culminate in November. Blake is very excited about this model of getting our pledges in and it seems to be a very effective program. We are still a little ways out on really going full bore on it, but there are lots of good ideas in the program, including a catered meal on Committment Sunday. Meron surprised me by volunteering to organize that, but I'm sure that she'll be able to get it all arranged, especially with others at the church helping her find a caterer, etc.

We wrapped up the book we were doing at PK last night. While Dr. Stanley had a lot of interesting things to say, he seemed to say them often, so we skipped a few chapters and went straight for the big finish. Now we are trying to decide what to do next. We have read a number of Max Lucado's books and have enjoyed them. Max has a very good writing style where he keeps it simple, has good illustrations, and makes the most out of both. We also considered reading one of Chuck Swindoll's Great Lives of the Bible. I've read the Moses one and it was a fascinating read. If we don't do that one, I may have to go pick up Paul or Job, two that I think would be very good to read.

Cards won again last night, but since they were playing Pittsburgh, that was almost automatic. St. Louis has beaten them 15 times in the last 17 meetings, and since 2002, they are an astounding 41-20 vs. the Bucs. The Pirates have a pretty good shot tonight, though, as Jason Marquis, who has lost his last nine decisions (I believe) goes up against hot-shot (and undefeated) rookie Zach Duke. I'd like to think Marquis could turn it around, but I'm not so sure. I personally thought he should have been traded in the off-season, but he's had some success this year with the Cards, just not recently.

Random song from my computer: "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" by Billy Joel, off of his Greatest Hits, Vol. I. I've always enjoyed "story songs" (like "American Pie" for example), so that's probably why I'm so fond of this one.