BarlowGirl and family businesses

Probably my favorite Christian band is BarlowGirl. The way they use harmony in many of their songs sometimes sounds very nice (and pretty cool at other times). There lyrics are good too... but right now I'm not trying to show all the reasons why BarlowGirl is my favorite band.

Actually, I'm trying to say that I think the way they do things together is really neat.

The band consists of three sisters (Rebecca, Alyssa, and Lauren Barlow), and their dad (whom they used to be a backup band for) and mom are their managers. Also, their older brother and his wife manage their website and message board, if I remember correctly.

I make this point because I think it's pretty cool when a family finds something that they're good at and can make a family business out of it.

Cali Lewis and her husband, Neal Campbell, who produce the GeekBrief TV with Cali Lewis podcast, decided they were going to work together when they got married a little more than 10 years ago. I think that's pretty nice, especially because many couples have separate jobs ...

Father and daughter banquet

An unique event took place last Saturday.  Our church was having a father/daughter banquet, and since my dad wasn't here, I went in his place with my little sisters.  At first, I thought I would feel more out of place than at almost anywhere else, considering I was the only one who was neither a father nor a daughter, but I found myself more at ease as the night progressed.  

The evening's events consisted mostly of the catered dinner and a "game" in which several little girls had to guess the answer to the questions their fathers had been asked (such as "What is your favorite hobby?").

I mostly took pictures (lots of them), talked to a few people, and watched my sisters.

So as it turned out, my previous misgivings at going to the banquet vanished after I'd been there for a while.

Moral of the story: things may not always be as you anticipate them to be. 

  

Always bring a camera

Now, this may be the most boring post yet, but there's always a possibility someone may be interested. Yesterday, we were running were running errands and stopped at Harris Teeter, a grocery store. I see a variety of cool cars in its parking lot from time to time, including a Porsche Cayman S with a "handicapped" placard (driven by a woman wearing a nurse's or hygienist's uniform who looked relatively young and walked just fine...the car must not have belonged to her), a Mercedes-Benz SL 550 that looked rather bad with all the pollen on its black paint, a Mercedes CL 550, and other not so uncommon cars such as a Shelby Mustang GT500 (the previous generation GT500; not the '10 model). However, yesterday I finally saw a supercar/exotic car there, just like I had seen a Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera in the Barnes & Noble parking lot near us.
As I was standing next to my van, I noticed a yellow car several rows away. I thought, "I know what that car is...," but it took a moment for it to click. Of course, that's a Ferrari F430!
"There's a Ferrari!" I told my brothers, and they all rushed off to see it. It was an F430 - an F430 Spider, actually (the convertible model, for those who weren't sure what "Spyder" means). If you've watched National Treasure, the F430 Spyder is the car Riley drives off in at the end of the movie.
Unfortunately, unlike the Gallardo at Barnes & Noble, which I had gotten pictures of with my mom's cellphone, I was unable to do so this time. My brother had the phone and wouldn't part with it, and when he tried to take a picture of it, he accidentally took a video of it - once it was already down the parking lot and not that clear in the video. The owner drove off in it after only about a minute after I noticed it. So naturally, I was rather disappointed that I didn't have the digital camera like I had had on previous occasions when I took the photos of the M3 and Z3 M shown above.
The moral of the story?
If possible, bring a camera with you, since you'll probably never know when you'll want or need one, even if you aren't a car enthusiast like I am.
By the way, I threw in a couple of photos of a Plymouth SuperBird ("The King" in the movie, Cars) that I caught some photos of on the road one day.

Veritas series book review part 2

The second novel in the Veritas series, Nightmare Academy explores the theme of absolute truth as opposed to relativism (naturally, since the novels make up the Veritas series, and veritas means truth).

This time, the Springfields (Elisha, Elijah and their parents, Nate and Sarah) investigate the case of a boy found on the road who says things that make no sense. He is later found dead under suspicious circumstances. The Springfields delve deeper into the case, and then Elijah and Elisha, as well as their parents, find that all is not what it seems...