BagOfNothing.com

First off, I need to publicly apologize to Bob Sturm. This man has been nice enough to link to BoN numerous times, and even has taken time out of his personal schedule to meet me twice and speak to a class at my former church, and my comment about him last week was harsh and not constructive. What I should have stated is something along the lines that I think he sounds a bit more negative as of late, and I miss the more positive sounding Bob.
This will be the only post today, but hopefully there will be enough material in this one post to make up for the lack of number of posts that usually appear daily.
As many of you know, I’m very fortunate to be part of a scholarship selection committee that honors my best friend. The scholarship was set up by his mother after he passed, and she was nice enough to ask his college friends to be part of the selection committee. There’s so many blessings tied into this, but one that I selfishly enjoy is the excuse to hang out with my closest high school and college friends for one weekend a year. The location in which we meet rotates between Abilene and DFW each year, this year I had to travel to Abilene. Normally I dread going to Abilene, mainly because of some bad memories, but I convinced myself to think happy thoughts.
You know, I just dislike traveling in general. I love the creature comforts of home, and I really don’t like spending time away from my dogs wife.
The plan was to leave mid-morning on Friday, with plenty of time to summon the courage to finally visit the grave of my best friend and stop by the credit union I use to work at while I was in college. But things don’t always work out that way. WifeGeeding’s kindergarten class has been very good this week, so after sleeping in, I decided to bring DogGeeding and OtherDogGeeding in for a visit. After that eventful trip, I came home to pack.
While packing, I had my bag on the bathroom counter. After I placed some bathroom items in my bag, I was going to carry it over to the bed, but I failed to noticed that the bag slightly overlapped on a tray full of glass bottles and such, and you guessed it . . . lots of broken glass and liquids all over the bathroom floor. Cleanup took a long time, and then I noticed WifeGeeding’s 4Runner needed an oil change, so I had to have that done and fill up with gas before heading out west.
Calling all auto experts . . . but I noticed that sometimes while I brake, the steering wheel of the 4Runner shakes/vibrates. The brakes were replaced about a year ago – so do you have any idea of the cause and the possible amount that will cost to fix?
OK . . . so I started to head out west only to run into some major thunderstorms, which caused me to be even more behind that what I planned. Grrrr.
The grave is a bit outside of Abilene, but since I was running late and needed to get to the credit union before it closed, I didn’t stop by. I was also so anxious to see WifeGeeding and the dogs when I left on Sunday that I make yet again didn’t visit the cemetary. For sure the next time I visit it’s going to be a priority.
Luckily I made it to the credit union before it closes. Turns out it stays open an hour later than what I have thought. I spent time connecting with some old coworkers, and cashing in on some change. Members are able to cash in change free of charge. Speaking of change, take a look at this pic (click to enlarge):

The glass mug contains only pennies. The tube on the right contains mostly quarters and nickels, with a few dimes. Whoever can guess closest to total dollar amount without going over wins a crispy pork product that I will personally put in the mail before the end of this week. Leave your answers in the comments section. Answer appears Wednesday or Thursday.
Why so few dimes? My father collected them and I adopted the same practice, but a few must of gotten dropped in there by accident.
After the credit union, I visited my old church, where my friend Tim is now the university pastor. Timmy has been a friend since elementary school, and I still have a bad habit of calling him Timmy and not Tim. There have been some changes to the church and his ministry, and he was nice enough to give me a tour and update. It was like he was a proud father, you can see how joyful he was, and it was heartwarming.
It was because of Tim that I decided to stay until Sunday. I have never had the opportunity to hear him preach. With my new comers class at my new church not meeting this week, I would be a total douche if I didn’t take this opportunity to support him.
Sometimes I wish my friends would support me in this, but it’s not like I can grant them access to my meetings or have them sit in my little cube; and the university that I teach at doesn’t allow visitors.
Tim and I drove to DJ’s house. You may remember DJ from a previous Bag of Randomness in which he was mentioned. He and and his recently bought the house, and it was nice to see the joy in the face of hosting us.
From DJ’s house we went to go eat at the one place that serves the best BBQ in the history of ever – something us non-Abilene guys really miss. On our way to Sharon’s we passed my old apartment complex, which was when time informed us that former Dallas Cowboys Quincy Carter now lives near. Quincy is now playing and selling tickets for the Abilene indoor football team, click here and look down the left sidebar for details. He makes $250 everytime the team wins.
It’s amazing that we are able to get anything done after we eat, because we are so full of BBQ and the world’s best potato salad that we can’t see straight, but we made it back to DJ’s house to start the selection process.
Typically our meetings stared with a Bible study. But the person who was in charge of presenting it forgot. Now, this guy is the head pastor of a church in my hometown of Mineral Wells, and I thought being a head pastor for ten plus years one could just whip something up . . . but no. So he’s gonna have to present next year.
Other than the Bible study, we go around the table one by one and provide updates on what has happened in the previous year regarding our life and our family’s. This is one of the best parts of the weekend. After that we get started reviewing each applicant.
There was one really funny moment. It was obvious that one applicant wasn’t going to be in the top three because of the lack of quality in his or her application, which consists of a form, a personal essay, and a letter of recommendation from a teacher and one from a member of the community. One of my friends asked, “Should we even both looking over this one?” With one of my other friends replying, “If he/she took the time to turn one in, we should take the time to trash it.”
Trust me, we take this responsibility seriously, but you can tell when something was turned in last minute, and we want to make sure this $25oo isn’t going to be wasted.
I got a new camera and decided to test out the new time lapse feature. So if you want to see a bunch of dudes gather around a table discussing items for about four hours broken down to three minutes, here you go:

DJ just got a puppy, a yellow lab named Rollie, after baseball pitcher Rollie Fingers.

DJ is the one on the right, the puppy is in the middle.
After much debate on the winner, we headed down to play pool and shuffle board. Man, that shuffle board and get addicting.
The rest of the night was spend just chit-chatting about days gone by, and a bunch of dudes farting like there isn’t any tomorrow. I noticed the next day DJ’s wife was airing out the place. Guys will be guys.
After sleeping in, we all ate breakfast at Cracker Barrel, which is another tradition. We even ran into an old professor.
Turns out I was the only one staying behind, so Tim, DJ, and I decided to head to Hardin-Simmons where DJ is the head athletic trainer. We were lucky to catch a baseball game and softball game, and I drove around campus to take pictures. As much as I knock that university, it does have a beautiful campus. Feel free to view a slideshow of all my Abilene pictures here on Flickr.
I spent a lot of time in this building as a finance major.
The campus has somewhat recently added an alumni wall. Basically its a large circular wall and every graduate since the beginning of the university has his or her name on the wall, including honorary degrees.

I was surprised to see that my name was spelled correctly.

In case you were wondering, my name was announced as Keith Walter Geeding, which is the way it is displayed on the diploma that I have no idea where it’s located. My middle name is the first name of my father in case you were wondering.
While at the game one of my old bosses made an appearance, and it warmed my heart that after so much time between visits he remembered me by name. He was definitely the best boss I ever had, for the funnest job I ever had.
While at the game, I noticed that this one dude had pink boots on.
And the only reason I’m showing you this picture is because of the purple back rests on the bleachers. Those back rests use to belong to the old stadium the Texas Rangers played in, and I installed and painted the majority of these. Yup, I left my mark on campus.
After the games Tim headed back to work on his sermon. I have never seen him work so hard on something, and I was impressed with how serious he was going into this. The only other time I saw him that day was for dinner, because after dinner went back to the church to rehearse in the sanctuary.
The rest of the afternoon DJ and I made a trip to Lowes and to a few garden places trying to find a certain tree I’ve been looking for. No luck. Oh, speaking of Lowes, man, this kid had a weird haircut. Pic1 Pic2
While watching the news in Abilene I saw something about Confederate flags being placed on graves of confederate soldiers. Usually you don’t hear this sort of stuff in Texas, at least I haven’t in my 33 years in MW, Abilene, and DFW.
While at DJ’s house and when we were all out to dinner I experimented with my new camera tying to take some “artsy” photos:

I like the reflection of the face in this picture.
Of course you can catch the entire set and larger pictures on my Flickr page set. In that picture set is a family picture I took of Tim’s family, probably the most photogetic family in America.
It was interesting attending church Sunday morning. I spent a lot of time in that church while I was in college, and this was the first time I worshipped in it in almost a decade. Not to mention, I’m a recovering Baptist and all. But when it comes to supporting a friend, I have to put some differences aside.
It was great walking into Tim’s Sunday school class and seeing Tim in his element. I was really impressed, and it’s always neat to see someone “in charge” especially when you have known this guy since elementary school. I remember when we were freshmen and we worked a 5th Quarter in Albany, TX. A 5th Quarter is basically a youth get-together at church after a high school football game on Friday nights. Tim was a communications major and wanted to be the first to speak and kind of work as the emcee of the evening. I remember after he spoke he told me he was disappointed in himself because the first thing he did was say “ummmm” and kind of froze a bit. I didn’t think he did bad, but he had high expectations for himself, and it’s nice to see how he has developed that skill.
When I walked into the worship (which I always kind of thought look what I would imagine the Great Hall in Beowulf would look like) I actually recognized my old Sunday school teacher. He recognized me, but I don’t think he could put a name to my face.
I sat with DJ and his wife. Turns out the kinda sit in the back, which was new to me because all my memories was of sitting towards the front. DJ actually split right before the sermon. I learned that there’s a rotation of people that leave to pray during the entire time when the pastor is presenting the sermon.
When I attended the church, which oddly I’m still a member of, I don’t recall the meet-and-greet. Well, this church had the longest meet-and-greet that I can recall.
I felt the Lord certainly spoke through Tim, who delivered a difficult message over Galatians that encourage us to not be ashamed or compromising of Christ. I’m not doing justice to what all Tim said, I’m over summarizing and simplifying it. But the content was head on, the delivery was exceptional, and I was moved a few times as Tim came close to choking up on certain parts of his sermon. You could tell it really hit home and meant a lot to him, and I was happy to see all this hard work and dedication to this sermon was paying off.
After the worship service a pretty darn good looking brunette came up to me and asked if I was who I was. She said she remembers me from back in college when we were all part of the college ministry. I couldn’t believe that an attractive girl like this could remember me, I had a lot of bad luck with the ladies in college; but I was honest with her and told her as much as I would like to, I simply don’t remember her. She then mentioned if she showed me pictures of us and everyone else together then I would remember. That still didn’t ring a bell, and I still can’t recall her from anything.
Since I had a late breakfast, I didn’t stay for lunch and I wanted to just get back home to see the dogs WifeGeeding who I missed so dearly.
Driving home provided another time lapse experiment with my new camera. I placed it in the neck rest to record my trip home. It wasn’t positioned as well as I liked. For instance, you can only see my arms on the steering wheel, but you do get to see a lot of scenery from when I left the church. It records until I get a little past Weatherford. The one thing I probably should have done was take pictures of all the Bluebonnets and Indian Painbrushes wild flowes along the Texas highway. Absolutely beautiful in parts, especially after the hard rain on Friday. Oh, but the video is basically three hours of driving cut to about four minutes