familybush.com

Update: He’s gone! It’s Sunday morning and I just checked to see if my little-fish-who-could moved up and see that he has disappeared from Google-dom. Yeah! Crud!

You probably already read about how a random photo of a fish I used in a post crashed my blog for a while.

Well, things are just getting worse (or better, depending on how you look at it).

This is bizarre really. I have no idea how Google works out who pops up first when something is searched, but for some strange reason that fish image I used keeps moving up the ranks and directing more and more fish-loving people to my blog. I’m talking several hundred hits a day because of it.

The image went from #6 to #3. Now, I’m only trailing crazy fish woman and robo-fish.

That means the image now makes it on the first results page without having to click on the ‘image’ page. And, that means, more traffic. Which probably means more bandwidth issues. Look.

Go ahead. Try it. Go to Google and type in ‘fish’.

If you look to the left you’ll see a small button that looks like this:

The number tells you how many people are looking at familybush.com at that moment. If you click on it you can go to a map that will show you where visitors are from.

I recently noticed a visitor from . . . well, see for yourself.

Yup, someone is checking my blog from one of the Dharma Initiative stations (probably from the Pearl). Look how close Portland is.

A college student asked me “What is your philosophy of ministry?” as a part of an assignment. This is what I came up with:

What is my philosophy of ministry? Truthfully, I wasn’t even sure what a philosophy of ministry was. I googled it to see what I could come up with. I got a lot of stuff. Mostly churchy sounding stuff that didn’t resonate. Best I can tell, a philosophy of ministry is a statement that indicates what one feels are the key elements on which to focus in the Christian life and the manner in which those elements ought to be developed and nurtured. So, that’s what I’m going to base my answer on . . .

Ok. I thought about it for a while and figured something out. I don’t really have one. Not officially anyway. I hope that doesn’t make you flunk your paper. Actually, I do have one, but it’s pretty simple and I definitely don’t have it framed above my mantel. I guess I could sum it up best with this: Follow Jesus (Yeah, I know. It’s too simplistic. I get told that a lot.). I might even flesh it out a bit more to this: Follow Jesus: Love God, Love People.

I don’t have some big philosophy of ministry, I think, because I doubt Jesus had one written on a scroll and hidden in his tunic. I don’t think he consulted his Philosophy of Ministry every morning to make sure that he was on the right track. Nope. Definitely not. He did what God asked of him. That’s it. Obedience. And, if that meant healing tons of sick people, then that’s what he did. Or, if it meant slinging tables and money all over the temple and driving the people out with a whip, then that’s what he did.

Yeah, I know. That’s dumb. You’ve got to have principles and strategy and alliteration to guide you. I mean, to depend on the Holy Spirit on a day to day basis is ludicrous.

Do I sound super-pious? Well, I’m not. I go days making decisions based on my selfishness rather than direction from Jesus. But, some days I do hear him and obey him. And, it’s amazing. So, that’s what I’m aiming for. Direction from Jesus not a philosophy.

I know a lot of people will disagree with me on this. That’s cool. I know I don’t have it all figured out. I scrawled that out in about five minutes, shooting from the hip (heart). Just thought it might provoke you to some introspection.

I recently discovered Gawker, a free mac application that produces time-lapse videos. It works great and is a lot of fun. Check out my first time-lapse creation.

Click here to see Sophia making the most of Memorial Day watermelon.

A pictorial representation.

I woke up to an email that said: Your bandwidth allotment for familybush.com has been exceeded! Contact midphase host technical services immediately!!!

So, I went to my blog and saw this . . .

Chihuahua. There must be a problem. And, since I had no idea what that meant, I looked it up. Basically, bandwidth limit refers to how much traffic your site can get during a given time.

Wait a minute. I blew up the server because I got so many visitors to my blog? I find that hard to believe. So, I go to my stats page. And, on the search engine terms section, I see this . . .

Huh? Fish? Why would over 200 people in the last 24 hours have been directed to my blog by typing in the word ‘fish’ in a search engine?

So, I go to google and try it. This is what I get . . .

Check out the 6th entry. See the link under it? That’s right. Familybush.com. A while back I wrote a post about being pregnant and dreaming about fish. I used this image as an illustration. Somehow that landed me here. No. 6 out of hundreds of thousands of results for the word ‘fish’ in google.

Mystery solved.

Also, just a plug for Midphase Hosting. They upped my bandwidth in minutes with no charge.

As we drove past Arkansas Skatium on our way home from church, one of the girls had this comment to make:

Girl: Man, I’m a pro at ice skating. I look like that Chinese woman. What’s her name again?

Me: Michelle Quan?

Girl: Yeah, that’s the one. The first time I went ice skating, I didn’t think I could do it. But, I got out there and started flying like a swan.

Wow.

In conclusion to Arkansas’ biggest shindig, here are the highlights in Kerouacish stream-of-consciousness form.

little rock. people. vendors. food. funnel cake. patches the clown. stages. zz top. dogs. water. rain. lemonade. stroller. fountain. kids. face paint. gymnastics. watermelon ice-cream. laughter. riverbucks. chaka khan. johnny lang. kazoo. monster bumpin’. pictures. heat. steam. bridge. arkansas symphony orchestra. family. long-lost friends. crafts. drums. boats. river market. grilled corn on the cob. gyros. jack links. buttons. walking. corndogs. fried catfish. sunscreen. sunburn. fun. bathing suits. noise. microphone. dance. joy. FIREWORKS!

We’re in Cabot enjoying our weekend. We’ll head back to the PH tonite.

{Little Rock School of dance performing on the Yarnell’s stage}

{A frighteningly large-legged clown getting people to shoot basketballs at him.}

{At the craft tent.}

{Los of rhythm under the drum tent.}

{Facepaint!}

{River City Gymnastics at the Yarnell stage.}

{Albany Marine Corp Band Tubateer}

{The Fountain}