Back in February Keely told me that Dave Barnes (I’m not sure if y’all realize this, but I kind of enjoy him) did a stand-up show in Nashville last year, and she said, “Hey, if he does one again this year, y’all should totally try to be there.”

And I was all, “Well, um, DONE.”

The stand-up show was this past Thursday night, and IT WAS A DELIGHT. Before the show the husband and I had dinner with some fun friends, and I cannot adequately express what a great meal we had.

However, there are two magical words that just may help you to understand: CHEESE FRITTERS.

After dinner we went to the Dave Barnes comedy extravaganza, and while we didn’t conduct an official survey, the four of us were pretty confident that we were the oldest people there. By a considerable margin. And the age difference was made all the more evident by the fact that Travis started to yawn A LOT about ten minutes before the show started, which, by the way, was at 7:30.

SORRY WE KEPT YOU OUT SO LATE, PAPAW.

On Friday Sister and I shopped the day away just as we’d planned, but I’m afeared that something must be deeply, terribly wrong with me because I did not buy one thing.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I bought a twelve-pack of diet Coke and a pack of IceBreakers gum. But unfortunately I cannot actually wear those items. Unless I find myself in the middle of some sort of impromptu Project Runway challenge, of course.

Friday night at something like 1:30 in the morning (is that contradictory? to say “Friday night…in the morning”? rest assured that my intention is not to confuse), Sister and I were sitting in her den – with our respective laptops, of course – just like a couple of sixteen year-olds who had nothing to do but scour the web while we watched video after video on CMT.

Which reminds me: the median age for a female country music artist? Is now seven.

Anyway, at some point in our late night / early morning interweb surfing we realized that lots of blogs wouldn’t load at all in Internet Explorer. And we also realized that it was taking my blog approximately four hours to load in Safari and Firefox. As it turned out (thanks, Twitter, for the help!) there were two culprits: Site Meter and Bible Promise. So I took down the code for both, and then everything worked perfectly fine.

You may have heard me sigh audibly around 2:30 Saturday morning.

And please, let’s remember: the Bible still has promises. You just won’t be finding them in my sidebar until I can figure out why those promises take so long to load.

Perhaps my blawg is in a season of spiritual rebellion. Sort of like its author in her early 20s.

Ahem.

So.

I guess I should get to my point (aside from the fourteen inconsequential things I’ve already discussed, none of which will increase the quality of your life even one teensy tiny bit; however, you are probably all too aware that I consider rambling to be one of my spiritual gifts).

Here we go.

I’m going to take a bit of a bloggy break for the next couple of weeks. We need to get ready for the school year and then get in the swing of our new schedule, and I want to do that without self-imposed deadlines looming over my silly little head. I have some stuff from my archives scheduled to auto-post, and hopefully that will prove to be mildly entertaining if you have a day where you’re absolutely desperate to be mildly entertained.

I live to serve, you know.

I’ll still be posting over at allaccess a couple of times a week, so check in with us there if you get a chance.

And if all goes as planned, I’ll be back here around August 18th-ish.

See you soon, everybody!

It would seem that our abundance of summertime activities finally caught up with me, because for the first three days of this week I didn’t leave my house. Oh, I showered, mind you (GOALS!), and I decked myself out in my finest all-cotton pajamas, but I didn’t leave the house. We were HUNKERED DOWN. Loved every second of it.

But yesterday afternoon I finally gave up the reclusive ghost and ran a few errands. It was delightful, I tell you. The traffic lights! The cars! The sunshine! The cheerful merchants! I was so thrilled to be in the company of other people that I didn’t even mind the excruciating heat, and that, my friends, is saying something.

Later today we leave for our last little summertime adventure. We’re going to Nashville to see Sister and her hubby, plus (hopefully) spend a little time with some of our buddies who live there. I am BEYOND EXCITED about our dinner and entertainment plans tonight, and then Sister and I have a day-o-shopping lined up tomorrow. Consider yourselves warned, Nashville-area Steinmart(s).

Anyway, I’m feeling renewed and refreshed after all this time at home. Plus, it’s given me the opportunity to do some Deeply Analytical Thinking about Critical Issues. You know, things like “Why is Popeye’s so much better than KFC?” and “Why do so many of the girls singing country music right now have blonde hair?” and “If Dave Barnes and David Crowder Band were playing in my town on the exact same date at the exact same time, HOW COULD I POSSIBLY CHOOSE?”

So as you can see I’ve been very, very busy.

Thanks for hanging with me during the downtime, internets.

I heart you more than you know.

Hey y’all.

I was planning to do this earlier today but I totally forgot because I AM HIGHLY ORGANIZED.

But anyway. Think of this as a little mid-day bloggy fun.

Third Day‘s latest (oh-so-awesome) CD, Revelation, hits stores today. And to celebrate that, Melanie, Carlos and I have a golden opportunity for you to win some stuff.

Some Third Day stuff.

I’m guessing you probably figured out that last part by now.

So.

If you’d like to a chance to win a copy of Revelation as well as a t-shirt autographed by the members of the band, leave a question for Third Day in my comments. You can ask them about music, about faith, about whatever.

Well, maybe not about math. I can’t fathom they’d want to answer questions about math. But maybe I’m just bringing my own personal math-related baggage to the Q&A table.

Anyway. Leave a question. Mark from Third Day will pick five of them (and five from Mel’s comments, and five from Carlos’ comments) to answer on his blog on August 18th. And EVERYBODY who leaves a question will be entered into the CD / t-shirt drawing. If you want to enter the drawing three times, just ask a different question at each of three participating blogs.

There. I believe that’s all.

Rock on.

I do most of my links over on my daily links page, but I had so many good ‘uns roll in late this afternoon that I thought I’d just slap them here on the front page because, well, this way is easier.

I am a model of blogging efficiency.

1. Pockets of Dreams – Such a cool way to help people in Uganda. If you don’t read anything else today, read this post by my friend Phil.

2. Bloggy Giveaways – SWEET MERCY at the free stuff.

3. Skribit – No, not our bloggy friend Scribbit. Skribit. I saw this on Mark’s blog, and it looks like a handy little widget, especially for those of us who, um, occasionally, um, struggle with writer’s block.

Not that I’d know anything about that, of course.

4. The TV – And speaking of Mark, he and his Third Day compadres are going to be on The Tonight Show Tuesday night. Personally I think the whole blogosphere should tune in, because HELLO, THERE WILL BE A BLOGGER PLAYING MUSIC ON NATIONAL TELEVISION.

THIS IS A WONDER TO ME.

(Live-blogging by Mark here.)

5. Bloggity Goodness – This post of Megan’s and this post of Shaw-awn’s perfectly capture the everyday rhythm of married life. And both posts made me smile.

Enjoy, interweb peoples!

This past weekend my sister-in-law Janie was here with my nephews, and we pretty much sat around in our pajamas for three days while the boys played Wii and staged battles with light sabers and wrestled.

And do you know what I realized? When Janie and I are together, we have a tendency to do two things: 1) watch reality television and 2) eat all manner of cheese. And I don’t mean to brag, but we did both of those things exceedingly well over the course of her visit.

Friday night we went out for a real-live grown-up dinner at a restaurant where – get this – YOU COULD NOT ORDER CHICKEN NUGGETS IF YOUR LIFE DEPENDED ON IT. We ate all sorts of yumminess and rolled out of the restaurant about two hours later. So basically it was divine.

Saturday we went to the store to get the stuff for buffalo chicken dip (see: cheese) so that we could nibble on that while I introduced Janie to “Flipping Out” (see: reality television). Then we came home and made the buffalo chicken dip and nibbled on it so much that it pretty much qualified as a meal and I didn’t even cook supper.

The cheese, it is powerful.

And then last night I cooked an actual meal that included hash brown potato casserole (cheese!) before we watched “Design Star” and “The Next Food Network Star” (reality television!) and ate cheesecake (say it with me: CHEESE!).

You might say that we enjoy a theme.

So now Janie and the boys are gone, and I guess it’s time to wash clothes and vacuum and oh, I don’t know, PUT DOWN THE CHEESE. We’re heading out on our last little summer adventure at the end of this week, and then it’ll be time to come home and settle down and get ready for the little guy to start kindergarten.

But I really can’t even talk about that last thing. For reasons I’m sure you understand.

Have a great week, everybody!

I’ve gotten a couple of emails asking me if the Before & After deal is today, and so just in case you missed the post a few weeks ago where I chickened out freaked out at all the work in store postponed it for a little while, I just want to clarify that no, the Before & After deal is not today. We have family coming into town this weekend, and I didn’t want to try to supervise / administrate Ye Olde Mr. Linky while the relatives are here.

Plus, you know, I’m nowhere near ready to post before and after pictures of projects around the house. Unless we just changed the whole deal to a “Before” carnival. In which case I’m aces.

And I think I told you about two weeks ago that I’d get a new Before & After button ready, but then I went out of town and completely dropped the ball and haven’t done a new button and I think it’s quite obvious that I AM A TOTAL FAILURE.

So. New button. Yes. At some point in the near future, I will post one.

Also.

This week has been the first time in, oh, about a month when we’ve been home for the entire week (many days! in a row! without crossing a state line!), and the amount of stuff I need to get done in this house has overwhelmed me. Plus, you know, COMPANY COMING.

So I’m off to change sheets and clean bathrooms and purchase foodstuffs that are suitable for eating. Because I’m guessing that half-eaten container of Key Lime Yoplait isn’t going to be enough to get us through the weekend. Unless, of course, I pair it with that sleeve of stale saltines in my pantry.

And that does sound delicious, now doesn’t it?

By the way, last night I upgraded my WordPress to the latest version after Antique Mommy reminded me (via Twitter, no less) that there’s an automatic upgrade plug-in, and raise your hand if the first part of that sentence makes your head hurt just a little bit because hey, here’s me, trying to raise my hand and type at the same time.

Once I remembered that I had the necessary plug-in on my WordPress dashboard (head. exploding. from overwhelming. nerdery.), I clicked a button and clicked another button and clicked some more and about five minutes later I’d installed the new version of WordPress WITHOUT BLOWING UP THE BLAWG OR ANYTHING, Y’ALL.

But the point of this sideline tale is not to boast of my technical prowess, which, as we all know, is decidedly non-existent. The point is to tell you that WordPress now has A WORD COUNT FEATURE, and that is how I now know that this particular post?

FOUR HUNDRED AND SIXTY FIVE WORDS.

(So far.)

And I think at this point that it’s safe for me to say: HELLO, NEW OBSESSION.

Because now I feel obligated to bring this puppy in at an even five hundred.

And.

DONE.