Poor, Unfortunate Souls!

When I go to sleep every night, I usually turn on my tv, set the timer and fall to sleep listening to the news or David Letterman or whatever is on the channel.  Most nights I leave it on channel 2 so when I wake up in the morning, I can turn on the news and just let it be background noise while I get ready for work.  That's about all the news I watch.  However, on weekends, I will stay up and watch an NCIS marathon on USA or maybe some E Hollywood News on E.  Then when I'm sleepy, I set my timer and go to sleep.  So on Sundays when I turn my tv on to listen to the choir broadcast, USA and E will have on televangelists.   Its pretty good entertainment, I'm not gonna lie.

Its interesting to listen to these men and women preach about being a Christian.  Very rarely do I hear them speak of the scriptures and reference anything from them.  Even less frequently do I hear them speak of Christ and his life.  The topics are usually fairly broad and non-specific.  The "conferences" are set in enormous auditoriums with flashy lights and statues of their own kind.  None of them have any reminders that you're listening to a religious broadcast.  Very often there will be some voice dubbed over the pastor, reminding you to call in NOW for your copy of the pastor's way to happiness for the low price of $29.95 plus shipping and handling.  It reminds me of this creature:

Remember her from The Little Mermaid?  Arielle went to Ursula because she wasn't happy and wanted to "buy" her freedom.  Ursula promised all she wanted for the low price of .... her SOUL!  These televangelists promise you happiness and freedom for the low price of your soul and your money. These pastors, who preach Christianity without bringing Christ into their discussion and have graven images on their stages, aren't interested in you or your personal struggles.  It is such a sharp contrast to my religion's General Conference coming up next weekend. 

During our General Conference, we get to watch broadcasts or attend the meetings for free.  There's no charge, ever.  If you want more information, we give you books for free.  We talk of Christ.  We preach of Christ.  We sing of Christ.  My church leaders truly live a Christ center life and you feel of their concern for you even when they don't know your specific name.  They remind you that CHRIST knows your name.  That our Heavenly Father knows your name.  The meetings are filled with the spirit of Christ, not of phones ringing for people to pay for happiness.  You feel uplifted.  You feel inspired.  You feel the light of Christ within you and want to share it with others. 

My leaders ARE concerned about my soul, but they don't need money or power or idols in order to express that.  They simply remind me to gain a testimony of my Savior and his life, to live as He lived and look forward to returning to Him some day.

New yummy Italian!

Last night I went to dinner with some friends and one suggested we try out a new place called Roma Ristorante.  Its located in a strip mall and I can honestly tell you I was a bit snobbish about eating Italian food at a strip mall, especially with my love of Italian.  However, I retract all the comments I made as the food, atmosphere and service were fantastic!  I had the pasta carbonara (shocker) and wanted to drown myself in it.

Check out the CityWeekly review and then go check it out yourself!
http://www.cityweekly.net/utah/view-place-5843-roma-ristorante.html

Just keep reading...

What's on my counter at the moment:

Really, Duke?

As you've seen, March Madness takes over in my life.  My niece is the keeper of the scores for our family, but I do brackets at school, too.  This is actually a really small group compared to other years haha I usually average about 30 brackets to manage for a few weeks.  I was gone from school for two days last week right before games started on Thursday so I couldn't do my usual collections, but the die hards are in :)  The top row are brackets from kids who don't even attend my school anymore but they send them to me.  One of them is currently playing ball in Oregon (yay SWOCC!)

We got KILLED this weekend when Duke and Mizzou lost.  That's gonna hurt haha

Have you tried these yet?

Pick up a bag at Costco.  They're my new favorite treat!

Too much time on your hands? Or just super creative... you decide

One of my students presented me with a gift.  Its a hair clip... made from a Dr. Pepper can.  Being that my favorite beverage is Dr. Pepper, its quite thoughtful.  But where exactly does one wear a soda can in her hair?

Its Madness, I tell you!

March is a month of sports in my family.  I think I could safely say it started when my parents started having children.  See, they had three daughters before they had a boy.  I wouldn't say my parents pushed us into sports or forced us to be "tomboys" because we liked to play basketball or volleyball.  The fact is, my dad really liked sports and we liked spending time with my dad so we grew up watching games with him.  We learned to yell at the tv and holler about bad calls.  We would cheer and scream and jump up and down when our teams won.  Our living room was often one full of neighbors and kids and other family members joining us for popcorn, kool-aid and games.

I will never forget the night Danny Ainge dribbled the entire court to give BYU a win over Notre Dame in the 1981 NCAA March Madness tournament.  Our living room might as well have been the actual location of the game for as much celebration was happening there :)  I will never forget checking out of seminary in 9th grade to head down to the Marriott Center in order to watch an exhibition game with the Boston Celtics who had three BYU guys at the time.  Nor will I forget watching Larry Bird play his last game here in Salt Lake at the Salt Palace.

When we joined the big time and got cable, that opened up a whole new world of Atlanta Braves baseball and I remember watching Dale Murphy and Brett Butler (who I thought was very handsome in my younger years) since baseball was now available through the miracle of tv.

We watched baseball and basketball and football.  Golf came along later.  We avoided boxing (just because its stupid) and I somehow fell in love with tennis watching Ivan Lendle and Stefan Edberg and a very young, new American named Andre Agassi.  Most recently, I've adopted soccer as my sport.  It was always fun to call home from college and tell dad about how you had bested some dumb boy with your boundless knowledge about fouls or penalites or how many championships a team had.  Its taken my mom most of her married life to find out how best to deal with all the sports fanatics in her family, but she's held up well. 

Its now March and our favorite thing is coming up in one week... Selection Sunday.  Its the day the colleges find out if they're going dancing in the NCAA tournament.  Its the day we all start scrambling to read up on the teams so we can fill out our brackets by game time.  Is it anything major or life changing?  Probably not for any of us, but it IS our thing.  Its our family time.  And I'm so looking forward to it!