Something old...Something new...

So far this last week has been just as hectic as I thought it would be, but nevertheless, God is faithful and I am still breathing! The battle plan is in place and I now feel like I can accomplish all the work my professors have assigned for me to do. It's always good to have everything in perspective and to have a plan to carry out - at least for me it is. I was never much good at "winging it". I bet I would feel ten times better if I could just memorize these Hebrew vowel points a little bit faster...

Well, in the "Something Old" category, my friend Grae took me to my first "big time Southern football game" on Monday night at Clemson (vs. Florida State). From the tailgating to the game itself (which Clemson actually managed to hang on and win) I was awed by the masses of people that turned out for the festivities. There were at least 84,000 people in the stadium for the game and for a guy like me who was used to seeing maybe 4,000 people sparsely populate McAndrew Stadium at Southern Illinois, it was quite loud and energetic. I just wish I didn't have to listen to that FSU band play their "Tomahawk Rhapsody in D minor" all night. Even though Grae and I didn't get back home from Clemson until sometime after 2:00 am and I dragged my feet all day yesterday, I was still very glad that I went.

Turning the page to the "Something New" category, I have now become fully initiated in the Apple cult by becoming the proud owner of a new iPhone. Through the benevolence of many family members pulling their generous monetary birthday contributions together and the patience of my gadget-sympathetic wife, I became the newest carrier of the device on Saturday (yes, two weeks before my birthday). Let me just say this right off the bat: it is by far the coolest and most integrated gadget I have ever laid my hands on. Sure it's expensive, but you cannot get anywhere near the functionality in any other phone out there. (There is only one other phone on the market now that is even WiFi capable and it is only $50-100 cheaper and its data package costs much more.) Without rattling off any more details, I'll just say that for a person who doesn't have internet in the house and was already an AT&T customer, I am going to save money by having it in the long run (what does internet cost for the home these days anyway??). Hate on Apple all you want and believe all the negative hype being generated by the other haters out there all you want as well but this man is a believer (e.g., it only took 1 minute to get the phone activated through iTunes and the Edge network works just fine and dandy when WiFi isn't available). The more I use the phone in the near future, I will post a more thorough analysis of it.

**UPDATE**

We took our receipt to the Apple store last night and got our $200 refund due to the price drops. This makes a good product even better!