friday night lights

quite possibly the worst sports movie I've ever seen. I can't believe that I actually just heard a halftime speech involving "hold each other in your heart." I'm going to list a few of the things that are just ridiculous.
1. The football play looks, as my buddy Will always says of football movies, "more like war footage than a football game."
2. They sit down and have a freaking debate about where to play the game and who officiates it. I believe that's something that's decided beforehand.
3. They have a three person coin flip to decide who goes to state, rather than any other sort of tie-breaker.
4. They just ran a delayed draw on a 4th and 2 inches, which is something that not even Jim Donnan would call.
5. A cheerleader just pushed the opposing team's running back 3 feet.
6. They let the quarterback play with blood down the entire front of his jersey.
7. Got to love the quarterback turning into Tommy Frazier on the last play, running over folks, jumping over folks, and looking like an all American until they have a group hug on the one foot line and he falls down.
8. Yeah, the alchoholic father is going to give his son his state championship ring right after they lose the game. RIGHT.

They at least didn't have a completely sappy ending, so that helped, but overall I still think this was one of the worst sports movies I've seen. Maybe Varsity Blues was worse, I don't know, but this was pretty bad. I'm by no means an expert on high school football, since I only played in 7th-9th grade, but just being around football makes me realize that a lot of this movie was unrealistic. Maybe I just wasn't willing to suspend disbelief so I never got started in the movie, I don't know. Anyway, to quote Amanda, "I'm sure glad we didn't rent this [we checked it out of the library]. Still, it wasn't worth the gas to go to the library [which is all of .3 miles from our apartment]."

Peter

coffee

Hurricane Katrina is freaking scary, so I'm trying to distract myself from the Weather Channel by looking up stuff on the internet.

One of the things I found was this: Coffee might soon be considered a health drink, courtesy of Slashdot (and yes, I do regularly read a site whose subtitle is "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"). I've always teased my Grandma Young about the fact that she averages about 6 cups of coffee a day, including one at every single meal. Now, I'm beginning to think that maybe she's on to something (well, that and the fact that she's by far the most mobile and well-preserved 87 year old I've seen). Anywho, coffee gets my recommendation for the day.

Some of you from the UA Wesley Foundation may notice that I am shamelessly copying Eric St. Clair, who recently began offering the "Eric Seal of Approval" to the lettuce crisper and the St. Loius Arch. Well, E's smart, I like him, and I like his idea, so I'm stealing it. If he comes and beats me up, blame the GIS program at St. Loius U. Or better yet, start searching the woods of Cherokee County, since that'll probably be where my body is buried.

That's all for now,
Peter

college gameday preview

Amanda and I are both fired up about the pending football season.

We're also quite perplexed by Mark May's "beard." Did he just decide to have an anti-goatee and shave right under his lip, or is his beard-growing ability as bad as mine?

And how about Hoover High school getting on ESPN? That's just nuts, particularly considering how bad they sucked when I was in high school. That was the only guaranteed win Homewood had when we were in Class 6A with Hoover, Vestavia, and Pelham. Now they're on freaking ESPN. Amazing what having a decent coach and annexing half of the state of Alabama will do for a football team.

Wesley Foundation Alums at Peter and Amanda's Wedding 

The two of us 

panama and FSU

Well, Amanda and I are spending our first New Year's as a married couple in an unusual way: we'll be on a mission trip in Panama. We'll be going with Will Willimon, bishop of the North Alabama Conference, and other young clergy types. We're not sure exactly what we'll be doing, despite the fact that I'm one of the only folks going who have been to this area of Panama (although I went in 1999, and my major contributions were my excessive sweat aiding in mortar maintence and playing with the 40 Panamanian children who came to watch us work). We're allegedly going to be staying in a hotel in David, which is about 45 minutes away from Ceinaguita, where we will likely be working. Last time I went we were helping put the walls up on their building, and this time there's a chance we might be laying some tile on the floor, so it'll be neat to see the way things progressed since then. Hopefully it won't be quite as hot since it'll be in December, although I'm sure it'll still be pretty warm.

In other news, I'm kind of excited about the possibility of Alabama and FSU playing in 2007. That'd be pretty neat, and a lot better than adding a D-2 team or something to fill the 12th game. As per usual, the only thing holding up the deal is money, with CBS wanting to get a piece of the action instead of just letting ABC cover it.

our new home

Welcome to our new place on the web. Our old home was annoying since no one could post, so I thought I'd start us off with something new.

Theoretically, this will be a place to find out the latest on the von Herrmanns, to find things that we find amusing or interesting, and to harrass us so that we can in turn harrass you. We'll see what happens.

Peter