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Speaking of good movies.  One of my all time favorites is Mr. Holland’s Opus.  Yeah, it’s a relatively old one, but gosh, it makes me feel good, especially at the end when Mr. Holland’s Opus is played.

This movie, too, like The Blind Side, shows what can happen when you take an interest in other people and do things to try to help them.  It shows how a little kindness, a little personal investment, can pay off with great rewards for the other person – and for you, even if you don’t see it at the time.

It also shows how we can make our grandiose plans for our lives – or even just normal plans – and while we may never achieve what we thought we wanted for our lives, instead we’ve actually reaped something far greater.

If you’ve never seen Mr. Holland’s Opus, I recommend it for an evening’s viewing.  It might be considered a ‘chick flick’ but even for you guys who feel like you’re not achieving what you wanted out of life, it’s good to watch.  It’s a good reminder that, as a line in the movie states, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”

Have you seen the movie The Blind Side yet?  It’s been out a while and just made it to the cheap seats, which is what I’ve been waiting for.

The clips and trailers made it look like a superb movie and I couldn’t wait for it to get to the $3 theater.  It turned out to be a good movie, but as with every movie that I’ve expected a lot from, it underdelivered against my expectations.

However, it is still a very good story.  A small act of kindness by a child leads to an act of kindness by his mom.  This leads to a more extensive outreach into a person’s life and before you know it, he’s part of the family, his life forever changed.  A true story, too.

Stories like this just show how we don’t know how our reaching out to help another person in need will change their lives – and ours.

If you buy a cart of groceries for a needy neighbor, it might not end up with such far reaching consequences as this family had in the movie, but I guarantee you’ll make your neighbor’s day. But you never know what moment will touch someone’s life so much that it changes the course of their destiny.

Speaking of the dentist.  How is it they can possibly get away with charging so much for services?  And why don’t we have better dental coverage that pays for more of the charges like a good health care plan does?

A root canal easily costs nearly $1000.  That’s $1000 for a TOOTH.  And then if you need a crown on that tooth afterwards, that’s easily another $600 or more.  And these are prices WITH dental coverage.

Why does work on one tooth cost so much money?  You can buy a decent running car for that much money.  You can make mortgage payments for that.  I don’t get it.  But what are the options?  Let the tooth rot and have it pulled?  Sure, you can.  Then what about the next tooth that goes bad?  Yikes.  Either you end up broke or toothless.

Of course, the best plan is to not get in this position of needing dental care of such depth, but if you’re past that point, you know what I’m talking about.  It’s sickening and depressing.

We saw the coolest television at the dentist a while back.  Okay, admittedly we’re not up on the latest technical advances out there, so this is probably old news for many people.  But, they had a flat screen television (yes, we’ve seen those before, hah!) with a DVD player built in (that’s the really cool part!)

I love that we can have one less thing (a standard DVD player) cluttering up the room.  Of course, the down side is that if the DVD player breaks, you have to take in the entire unit for repair.  But we hardly watch TV anyhow, so that wouldn’t be a great loss while it’s in the shop.

But, I think it would be worth it to have the TV on the wall and the DVD player integrated into it.  Nice and neat.  No muss, no fuss.  Surprisingly, there were only 2 models of TV with DVD integrated when we went looking at them.

No, we didn’t get one.  As nice as it is, we can’t see spending much money, if any, for a television.  Usually we get

I had never considered having a TV room in my house, but after last night, I like it!   We were at our church, which has just moved into a new building.  And in this new building is a new ‘nursing mothers’ room.  The old nursing mothers room was a room with a 1-way window looking out into the sanctuary and regular padded seats.  Regardless of the privacy the one-way window provided, it’s still a little weird to get into a nursing state with several hundred people sitting on the other side of the glass and walking by, looking at themselves in the ‘mirror’ of the window.

But the new room is a fairly small room with 2 rocking recliner-gliders and a good sized wall-mounted flat screen TV with the service piped in there.  It’s a very comfortable room.

It’s so comfortable that I no longer dread nursing during the service.  And it made me consider how comfortable and cozy a TV room would be in a house where television isn’t the main gathering place.  It would eliminate people walking in front of the screen or being bothered by other noise in the house. And likewise, it would eliminate the television bothering other people in the house.

I am a “24” fan.  Have been from the first season.  It’s one of the shows that I think gets better every season (with the exception of perhaps season 3 or 4, which I didn’t care much for.)  I read something the other day saying this may be their last season.

What?!  No!

Apparently there aren’t enough viewers anymore and it’s too costly to produce.  This is sad.  They may turn it into a movie format instead, but that’s just not the same. That’s no longer “24” unless they make 12 movie sequels (12 movies x 2 hours = 24 hours) but that won’t work, so I’m guessing the movie will just be a movie.

24 isn’t without it’s flaws, but I still enjoy it. They still manage to keep me on the edge of my seat every week wondering what the next twist will be.

I just finished watching last night’s episode online.  So… will Manhattan be taken out?  Will Dana surrender?  Will Cole be taken down with her?

And does Cole resemble Keanu Reaves or what?  Not so much physically but facial expressions and voice.

Sigh… now to wait another week until next Tuesday morning.

When people are different from us, its easy to judge them or have some kind of preconceived idea that affects the way we treat them.  Not always, not everyone, but if we’re honest, we know it’s true more often than not and more than it should.  Good looking, bad looking, obese, rail thin, jock, geek…

A friend sent me a link yesterday with an interview of some lady who went undercover into an evangelical Christian church.  Undercover?  In a church?  What, are they some kind of illegal group or mafia-type now that you have to go in undercover?

She wrote a book – naturally – about her experience.  I don’t know what all her findings were, but she did mention in her interview that after she got past her preconceived ideas about them, she realized… Christians are people, too.

Do we do that?  Judge people or groups to the point that we don’t even see them as human any more?  Do we forget that they have feelings, ideas, children, parents, jobs?  The people you come across in your daily activities — if they don’t look like you, even if they don’t act like you, even if they believe things you would never believe in, remember… they’re still just people, too.

As I lept from video to video about sock poi or poi in general, I happened across a video about Maori doing a poi performance. The link is in yesterday’s post. I remember the first time I heard about the Maori, it was in reference to body tattoos and how they will tattoo their face as part of their cultural traditions. It seemed a bit over the top on one hand, but cultural traditions are what they are, so I completely understand from that point of view.

But the more tattooed faces I saw, the more I liked them. They’re not just tattoos to stand out or be different or be like everyone else. They’re symmetrical, they tell a story, they’re part of their heritage. They’re Ta Moko. The men usually have spiral tattoos over their entire face; the women on the lips and chin only.

I wondered what it would be like to see a businessman with a Maori tattoo in the US. They look so good (to me, anyhow, and I’m not a tattoo fan either) that I think it wouldn’t be long at all before I would stop noticing the tattoo altogether and it would become part of the person.

We happened across a new and, in my opinion, very intriguing activity the other day – poi spinning.  Poi has its roots with the Maori of New Zealand and if you’ve been to Hawaii, you’ve probably seen it there, too, at a luau or other traditional festival.

Poi spinning is better seen than described.  This is Maori poi.  Looks easy enough, right?  This is a more modified version of poi spinning.  This lady is good!

You can purchase poi spinners, or you can make a really cheap pair of sock poi (Google ‘sock poi’) by putting a juggling ball or tennis ball or small bag of rice into a long sock.  You can also put a cord through a tennis ball for an inexpensive poi.

We’re excited to get started – not only the two of us, but the kids as well.  We spent an hour or two watching poi videos online this weekend and the kids (okay, and us, too) kept exclaiming how cool it looks and how they want to try it.

Hey… it’s cheap, it’s something everyone can try, it improves flexibility and coordination, and it’s a workout at the same time.  All that from tennis balls and socks – go figure.

Airport security is changing.  And you probably won’t like it, especially if you’re on the more modest side of things when it comes to baring body parts.

Are you wondering what body parts and airport security have in common?  Well, right after the so-called underwear bomber of Christmas 2009 failed to take down a plane, the scramble was on to install full-body scanners in many airports around the country.  They basically take a full body xray to be sure you’re not carrying anything you shouldn’t.  The scary thing is, these images show… well… everything.  It’s the x-ray vision of the comic books of old where people could see through clothing with the proper technology.  That technology is here.

The good news is it will be much harder for someone to carry something on board a plane that they shouldn’t.  For example, the so-called underwear bomb would have been detected by such a scan.  Thankfully, despite not having the body scan in place yet, he was not able, for whatever reason, to bring the plane down.

Are you willing to let your body be x-rayed, showing all your private body parts, in order to fly safer?

Earthquakes in Haiti, earthquakes in Chile, tsunamis in Hawaii (almost!) They’re more and more frequent, these ravages of nature. Once an earthquake or other disaster hits a town or country, one of the local news stories we always see is how people here are trying to reach people there that they know – family, friends, missionaries, co-workers, etc.

Remember when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans? There were even children separated from parents, neither knowing if the other was alive or where the other was.

Let’s take this time to prevent such communication breakdowns within our families, should something so devastating happen to us. In fact, it wouldn’t even have to be a natural disaster. What if a terrorist attack or major chemical spill quarantined off your neighborhood and/or closed lines of communication? Cell towers may be inoperative, phone lines may be jammed, you may have lost your cell phone in the chaos.

Choose a friend or family member in another state and use them as your emergency liaison. Make sure each person in your family has the liaison’s phone number. In the event of a disaster, everyone call the liaison as soon as you’re able to let them know you’re okay and where you are. They can be the focal point to reunite you all again.