Shane Life

3 years ago, my buddies had an idea. Since most of us were in town during the holidays and since most of us lived in either Gardner or Olathe we should have a football game on Thanksgiving weekend. Thus, the Gardner-Olathe Annual Turkey Bowl was born.

This year was the first year I was able to play. In 2006 I was in Council Bluffs with Alli and in 2007, I had just had that back thing happen to me and I wasn’t really in any state to play.

I had thought that my absence was perhaps the reason that Gardner had won back-to-back games. I learned today (as they went back-to-back-to-back) that Olathe SUCKS at flag football. Two hours later, I’m defeated, demoralized, cold, wet and REALLY tired.

But it was a lot of fun.

I figure, while I’m still young, I probably should take advantage and still play. My sore body would suggest otherwise.

No, this is not another Chiefs post…

This Sunday, I’ll be preaching at my home congregation, the Olathe Community of Christ.

It is the second Sunday of the Advent season and the theme is “Bring Hope”. If you’re in the neighborhood, please feel free to stop by and say hello. I’ll be the one up front orating and expounding.

15520 S. Ridgeview Rd.
Olathe, KS 66062 [map]

Did you know…

…Olathe, KS, my city of residence, is where the cowboy boot was invented?

To celebrate, Olathe throws an annual festival called Old Settler’s Day. It’s a crazy time for the city, culminating in a 3-hour long parade. Organizations and businesses from around the city have booths and spaces where they either peddle their wares or promote their organizations.

Our church, the Olathe Community of Christ, has had a booth there since the 1950’s, the early days of the congregation. The festival started in 1898, but I can find very little information about what it signifies. I’m going to go with the invention of the cowboy boot.

Saturday was my shift at the booth. Me, B, D, J and J arrived around 11:45 and were quickly trained by the crew before us, helping them to navigate the lunch rush. Around 1:30 PM, the parade ended and the lunch rush became chaos. One member of our church came up with the concept of a foot-long brat which proved to be incredibly popular at the festival. We had many workers from other booths coming because they’d heard of our brats.

Working with my friends was a lot of fun. Jason and I manned the front of the booth and interacted with all the folks purchasing food which Darin and Bryan fulfilled orders and Jeff worked the grill. Despite a couple of minor setbacks when we ran out of certain items, it went really well and we made an awful lot of money for the church while having a lot of fun in the meantime.

Still, a festival is still a festival. A carnival is a carnival. And a carnival in Olathe…well, let’s just say that the residents should not be so quick to put themselves on the same level as other Johnson County residents quite so fast. Olathe is still very much a farm town and Old Settler’s is a great example of it.

A couple weeks back we were at the movies at the Olathe Studio 30 AMC and Alli came out of the bathroom and said, “Have you seen the new hand dryers in there?”I hadn’t, but I had to check them out. I found in the bathroom the new Dyson Airblades.I wouldn’t know what I was looking at if they didn’t have a sign over them explaining what they were and how to use them, but once I saw them, you have to admit that they were pretty cool. Then, you put your hands in them and you realize that someone just took the mundane task of drying your hands after washing them to a whole new level.Look, I realize that we’re talking about bathroom hand dryers here, but you have to understand how cool these are. At a time when energy prices are at an all-time high, Dyson is making an effort to reduce energy costs through innovations like the Airblade, which does so through 3 key ways:

• A digital motor that runs at half the wattage of antiquated hand dryers
• Infrared sensors that only turn on when your hands are inside the dryer
• A 12-second dry time

I haven’t seen them implemented anywhere else besides the Olathe theater yet. I’m assuming it is a test market for AMC before they decide to roll them out to their 350+ theaters worldwide. If the energy savings are what they claim to be, that would be huge for a company the size of AMC and their success would hopefully encourage other national chains with older types of hand dryers to switch to this newer, more energy-efficient means of drying your hands.I’m surprised that I haven’t seen more about this. Maybe I’m a little too excited about something simple like better hand dryers, but sometimes the simple things can make a world of difference.

Just wanted to invite all my readers to the Olathe Community of Christ tomorrow. I’ll be preaching on the subject of, “What Must I Do to Be Saved?”

I just wanted to extend the invitation.

As Senior High leaders, Alli and I have never been able to go to the annual Young Christians’ Weekend in Branson until this year, our finale as leaders. We left the church on Friday night in a 15-passenger van. It was the way to travel, for sure, but that didn’t make it any easier for the driver - ME.

I missed a turn around Harrisonville and to make up for my mistake, I took a Missouri highway from 71 Highway across to Clinton, Missouri. I figured that a Missouri highway would be OK, considering it was starting to rain, but I should have taken into consideration that Missouri has the 2nd worst roads in America. In addition, the rain started. And by rain, I mean “the equivalent of a scene from the movie Twister.” We were on a backroad, no streetlights, and I couldn’t see the road. I actually had to stop the car and hope that no one came up behind us. Scariest time I’ve ever had in a car. Not only that, but I have the responsibility for 11 other people in the car, 8 of which are teenagers. Yikes.

Now, Branson is typically a 3-1/2 to 4 hour drive from Olathe. It took us just a shade under 6. But we made it.

The weather report had it raining on Saturday, too, but it was beautiful. It wasn’t hot, it wasn’t humid. It was about 70 degrees with a mix of clouds and sun. NO RAIN. A great day to be at:

Silver Dollar City is a really cool theme park in Branson and it hosts the annual Young Christians’ Weekend. A neat thing about it is that all of the crafts and stuff that are sold there are made by REAL PEOPLE. They aren’t processed, they are made in front of you. Alli and I sat and watched a couple guys whittle wood for about 30 minutes.

Our Senior High were awesome. They met us at all the designated times (save one small misstep) and they really represented the Olathe church well.

Saturday closed with a really neat rally, led off by the vocal stylings of Steve Doody. Steve had a pretty good band, but it was really highlighted by his keyboardist who rocked a mean keytar:

A keytar. Awesome. I really thought that might be the highlight of the night, but that was brought next in the challenge, which was put forth by Pete Newman of Kanakuk Camps. The title of his talk was “How to Receive Underwear Dancing Joy”. It was a great message and one that I think the group of 4,000 strong really took to heart. Recording artist Matthew West then closed the evening with a great concert.

We got home on Sunday without incident and I breathed a pretty big sigh of relief. We had a great weekend and I’m really thankful that we were a part of it. I’m glad the keytar was a part of it, too.

This is, quite possibly, the greatest day in the history of southern Olathe. It will only be eclipsed by the day that this location opens.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS? This Chipotle is being built less than 5 minutes from our house!

This is huge.

Alli and I happened upon our house and this development by a freak accident. We were just driving around Olathe and found this random street at the back of a subdivision that was filled with new houses and lots. It was separate from the other subdivision and from what we could tell, the houses looked nice.

They were. It was really difficult for us to find any other house that gave us as much for the money as this one. We moved pretty quickly (maybe quicker than we should have, but we were only a year into our marriage…we didn’t know much).

We were able to customize this house as much as we thought to at the time (but would have done more had we thought about it more) and we got a great house. I have two favorite parts of this house:

1. The master bedroom. It’s HUGE. because our house is a front-to-back split, the master sits above the garage, which is nice since we have a really big garage. So our master suite gives us a lot of room and a great bathroom and closet.
2. The basement/movie room. This became our movie room once we bought our big screen TV (before we even had furniture to go in the room). We spend more waking time in this room than any other in the house and we love it. It’s cozy and decorated with all sorts of movie posters and memorabilia. And it has comfy couches and a great TV.

Some might say we live out in the country and I agree…it is far, but we have very good highway access and we are only about 25 minutes from my work, give or take 5-7 minutes based on the Olathe lights.

We enjoy being in our house and we are very thankful to have a roof over our head.

Morons.

Do bank robbers EVER get away with it? 25-year sentence automatically. Stupid stupid stupid.