This is the last picture of my parent’s old chicken barn.  All that’s left is a concrete slab.

Ah, the memories…

Funny thing is I don’t remember ever having chickens in there.

Pigs, horse, cows, baby opossums, poop.  Yes.

How true this is.  I know the words already, because I’ve heard them come out of my wife’s mouth 50 million times.

So we got up, had another good breakfast and checked out of the the hotel.

I just had to go to the Fry’s Electronics store down the street. We don’t have cool stores like that in Kansas City. I could spend the whole day in that store. Sniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiif. Ahhh, the smell of electronics. Sweet manna from heaven.

After a while, we headed east to the Kemah Boardwalk (warning: annoying auto-play music). It was OK. It was a small amusement park on the Galveston Bay. Ho-hum.  Here’s some pictures.

The highlight was the three nice retired ladies sporting the “Rock Chalk Shamrock” t-shirts in honor of the Jayhawks on St. Patrick’s Day. I even didn’t care that one of them smirked and asked about my Bucks shirt. Hey, I can be a native Kansan and still root for the Bucks. Someone needs to.

We snarfed a quick leftover lunch in the parking lot, we headed for Dallas. I was tired already and this trip was a real drag. We did see the big ole Sam Houston statue.

We finally made it to Dallas. We had some time to waste so we decided to find some Texas BBQ to really make the comparison with Kansas City BBQ. We had seen Pappa’s Bar-B-Q places all around, so we decided that’s what we’d try for dinner. Very nice atmosphere. We got a sampler platter and a few sides. The ribs were very tender. Brisket was so-so. The coleslaw was excellent. However, the meat didn’t really have a smoky flavor and the sauce was real tomatoey. It was good, but, sorry, just can’t stack up against Jack Stack in Kansas City.

After that we bummed around a local Target and returned the rental car at about 9-ish. We took the Enterprise shuttle to the airport. Our flight was set to leave at 6:00am the next morning. We figured that it would be a waste of money to have the rental car for another day and a hotel room for 5 hours, so we decided to camp out at the airport.

Bad idea.

Dallas Love Field Airport has a central TSA checkpoint, which just so happens to close overnight, so we had to sleep in 5 or 6 of the 25 or so chairs outside of the terminal area. It was fine for a couple of hours. Nothing was open and there were hardly any people around. But, that didn’t stop the annoying PA announcements from going the WHOLE STINKIN’ TIME. I tried to sleep, but there was just no way to get comfortable. I got bleacher-butt real bad. Not good.

We met an older gentleman who had a 6 hour (!?) layover in Dallas while en route to Houston. It was a last minute flight for a funeral. The poor guy struggled and struggled to get comfortable and rest, but he just couldn’t do it. He ended up walking back and forth in the hallway for 4 hours. We talked a security guard into letting us use a chair from another area, but it didn’t really help him that much.

I finished the Chasing Cool book I had been reading. Pretty good book.

Caleb slept almost the whole time. I maybe got in an hour. Rachel stayed up the whole time. Becca slept a little longer than me. About 4 am, a real annoying family showed up with takeout IHOP. Rude. Ugh. About 5 something they opened the checkpoint and we finally made it to the nice terminal seats.  Didn’t matter, we were all zombies, except of course, for Caleb.

I hardly remember the flight home.  We arrived in KC at 8 something in the morning.  Took the shuttle out to our car.  Wouldn’t start.  Had to pay $30 for a jump.  Home.  Must…get…rest…pillow…ZZZZZZZZZ.

You better believe that I’m not booking flights for weird times anymore.

And so it went.  Texas Vacation 2008.

photo by mlsnp

When deciding where to go to church on vacation, we thought we’d dip our toe in to water of a mega-church. The closest one to where we were: Lakewood, where Joel Osteen is pastor.

Since it is such a huge church and because it was mostly out of curiosity that we were even going, Rachel and I discussed whether or not it was appropriate to bring our camera. I opted just to snap a few discrete shots with my phone.

Once we found the parking garage, we took a shuttle to the arena/sanctuary.

We were greeted with a firm handshake and a “Welcome to Lakewood.”

Right inside the front doors and up the escalator was a huge bookstore and what was apparently the mission statement of the church emblazoned on the wall.

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. — Jeremiah 29:11

Seemed quite obvious based on everything we’d seen so far that this verse was a central to everything at Lakewood.  Osteen’s book, Become a Better You, was on display in several places around the sanctuary.

We looked around a bit and headed over to the help desk. They pointed us in the direction of the floor where they had children’s church. The children’s ministry was divided up between two different floors.

The check-in process was impressive. You can’t tell very well from this picture. Each kid filled out a card that was immediately entered into a database at one of the eight check-in kiosks. We got 3 stickers — one for each of the kids and one for us parents. We had to present the parent sticker when we picked up the kids.

Rachel and I headed for the sanctuary. Most all of the “good seats” were already filled. We ended up in the upper level stage right section, right next to the platform. Here’s a good shot (that I didn’t take) of all the whole sanctuary.

The service started out real nice. The music and band sounded amazing considering where we were sitting.  There was a choir on both sides and up from the platform. The band was behind, but in front of the golden spinning globe. The worship team had about 8 vocalists. Once the band was done, the whole platform the band was on sunk into the floor and all of the musicians walked out into a lower level. That was pretty slick.

It pretty much went downhill from there, IMO. Osteen’s wife and “co-pastor” got up and did a little sermonette after one of the songs.

Ugh.

She had another little spiel before the offering.  The word “offering” is apparently very clappable.

I wish I could find the sermon that Osteen preached online somewhere, so I could post it here for you to have a listen.  Nearly all of the verses were taken out of context.

It was basically a steady stream of God’s blessings on your life, prosperity, destiny, just believe it, free will, nothing is impossible, ad nauseam.

We picked up the kids with our sticker and headed back to the shuttle and then to our car. We quizzed the kids about their worship experience. Something about Pater.

I’m so disgusted just pondering it all again, that I’m not even going to write about the altar call, and my thoughts about whether Osteen is a Chuck-E-Cheese robot or a real person.

If I find that sermon, I’ll post it.

We ate lunch at the Goode Company Hamburgers and Taqueria which was pretty close to the church. We got there when they were still serving breakfast. I ate a fajita dish. It was pretty good. It just happened to be right across the street from the Houston’s that I ate at while attending NYC in Houston in 2003.

After lunch we headed back to the hotel, changed clothes and hit the road for Galveston. Not only was there construction on the road, but everyone from the whole United States of America was heading there for Spring Break. It really wasn’t that far from the hotel, but it ended up taking almost 2 hours to get there. Once there it was cold, very windy and frankly, not that great.

The highlight probably was the dead jellyfish on the beach. Caleb had fun poking it with a stick. I think I’d rather visit a tropical beach next time — one with out the Spring Break, my stereo / car / girlfriend / motorcycle / six-pack-is-better-than-yours morons.

You can see all of the pictures here.