The History of the name "The Beast"

Just so you know, this is not a self-proclaimed nickname, and it initially had nothing to do with my character of person, rather the style of my hair. Stewart Austin, my doubles partner during my junior tennis days, gets the credit for branding me with the nickname. Back in those days, my hair did not grow down and long, as it is right now, but it grew thick and out, like an afro. So, at one point I just let my hair go crazy. It was on the tennis court that Stewart came up with the line of "you look like a beast out there."

Funny enough, I kept this hair style into my first year of college, where one of my tennis teammates changed my nickname, for him anyway, from The Beast to The Lion. I guess he thought it looked more like a lion's mane.

Ramblin' Road Trip

The theme this year for vacation bible school is "Ramblin' Road Trip." I am doing the music this year, which means that I lead 120 children in movements to the various songs in VBS. Every year, a guy named Jeff Slaughter writes the VBS songs, he works for the SBC, and I have to admit, they are some seriously addictive songs. You go around singing them all day long and they stick with you. It is pretty fun to watch all these kids learn the movements and they are so excited about doing them. VBS goes from 6-9 pm, so by the end of the day, I am pretty much wasted. But, it really is fun

During the opening worship rally, I do something called "Silly Songs with Mr. Philip" and the kids love it. I just sing some silly little song that I wrote and they go around singing that song all the rest of the night. My worship area is called "Big Phil's Tune Up Shop", so I am wearing this authentic mechanics shirt that James Aaron bought me. It even has "Philip" on the shirt, although it is spelled wrong. "Phillip."

Andi and I had a fun time tonight laughing and talking about the wedding. It is overly exciting and amazing to find myself so looking forward to all of the things that we have to do. I guess I should probably propose to her at some point. We really have the coolest apartment I have every seen, for a one bedroom anyway. The floorplan is killer and when we saw it, we knew this was the place. Basically, we are going to take all of Missy and Andy's furniture off their hands for them. Which is nice.

The First Entry

Hello out there in the blogging world. This is Philip, and I have started my own personal blog after a rather lame attempt to get my family to participate in our own blogging community. After two weeks, the only entries were mine, so I figured it was time to cut free from the "family" blog site and just start my own. I hope maybe some of them will comment from time to time.

To be honest, this is about the last thing I would have thought I would ever do, since I tend to sprint in the opposite direction of anything that the mass majority of the world is doing. However, keeping a diary is something that I need and want to do, and I am just positive that I will keep better records doing it this way than by the old fashioned way of a book by my bed. I perform in a contemporary Christian hard rock band called Judah First. When we come back from concerts, me and the other band members always write "reviews" of our experience on the road on our Judah First message board. Those reviews are precious to me and I find myself going back to read them all the time. So, I figured it was time to "review" other areas of my life as well, so I will have something to read later on.

Of course, the disadvantage of journaling this way is that I will not get super personal. That would be reserved to the book by the bed. This is really just more of a "here's what happened" kind of thing. The top three categories will be my band, my church, and my family (including my upcoming marriage!) So, thanks for stopping by and I will see you sooner than later.

The Beast