I'd like to apologize: Volume 5

It's Thursday, which means it's time to get something off my chest -- and I'm not just talking about the pizza sauce from the Round Table Pizza that I ate tonight. So, this week I offer my apologies:

* To Katie Webb, for throwing a roll at her when I ate dinner with the family.
* To Katie Webb, for throwing it while her mom wasn't watching.
* To Mike Lara, for doing all his dishes.
* To our congregation Sunday morning, for starting the first song just a liiiiiitle bit too fast.
* To Aaron, Christina and Andrew, for embarrassing them during junior high chapel yesterday (but thanks for being good sports).
* To Brandon Groll, for missing his birthday -- oh wait, I remembered it...
* To Jennifer and Steven Nelson, for subjecting you to potentially contaminated chicken last Friday night (and no, I wasn't the one cooking).
* To the woman at BloodSource who drew my blood donation today, for cringing when she didn't quite hit my vein correctly.
* To Howard Dean, for making fun of him in a post earlier today.
* To my Kansas City Royals, for forgetting that they're in town playing the Oakland A's next week.
* To Levi Jones, for losing track of his email address.
* To the Battaglia family, for their loss this week.
* To all of you, for whatever hurt, pain, wound, injury you may have suffered this week at the hands of those who claim to love ya.

I'd like to apologize: Volume 4

It's Thursday, which means it's time to get something off my chest...and I'm not just talkin' about the massive work of fiction I tried reading today. Anyway, this week my apologies are headed toward:

* To Cindy and Katie Webb, for cheating online and telling them the results of the American Idol show on Wednesday night.
* To Dr Pepper, for abruptly ending my lifelong relationship this week.
* To my friends at Freedom Fireworks, who provide a totally entertaining training sessions each year -- despite what I wrote in my previous post.
* To all the Tylers I know...Combs, Gillespie, Bewick, Anderson, Snyder, Hale... for confusing their last names far too frequently.
* To the wonderful folks at Round Table Pizza, who haven't seen me in weeks.
* To Melody Brown, for making her memorize my sandwich order at Togo's.
* To Mike Amaya, for missing his college graduation party...because of some silly fireworks thing tonight. Ugh.
* To all the coffeehouse night attendees last week, who heard me play the violin publicly for the first time in a long, long time.
* To Dustin Basye, for not calling you up to have lunch when I was on your end of town this week.
* To the folks in church Sunday morning, for my phone crashing and not being able to receive your text messages in the middle of my sermon as I had planned.
* To the folks in church who did the right thing and kept their cell phones at home, for springing an unexpected surprise on them.
* To all of you who think I actually wrote this on Thursday instead of Friday, for attempting to trick ya.
* To our junior highers at our school, for missing yet another chapel service with ya.
* To our friends down in Mexico, just because.

I'd like to apologize: Volume 3

It's Thursday, which means it's time to get something off my chest...and I don't just mean the missed drops of antibiotics I'm using to treat my pinkeye! This week I offer my apologies:

* To anyone who touched my eye on Monday, for the possible pinkeye they will soon experience.
* To Jeremy White, for forgetting to give him my $5 for the PDYM lunch today; it'll get to ya, I promise.
* To people who've been using tax preparation software for years, for thinking they were silly; now I know why you do it.
* To Tyler Combs, for making jokes about what life will be like when he's away from Turlock for a few months.
* To Kaiser Permanente, for complaining about their quality of care, which was much better this week than I've had in the past.
* To the folks at Thunder Valley Casino, for not stopping off at their fine establishment and wasting money on Tuesday.
* To Jack Bauer, for thinking his world get any easier -- or more realistic -- this week.
* To Starbucks, for only visiting once over the last week.
* To our coffehouse crowd in advance, for hearing me doing something musically tomorrow that I might regret.
* To Dave Welborn, for using AIM to chat with him, even though he lives just down the hall from me.
* To Hillary Clinton, for taking yet another blood oath to never ever vote for her.
* To my neighbors, for still having Christmas lights up (but not used) even though it's almost May.
* To Jim Sanders, for not connecting with him last week like I had promised.
* And on a very serious note...to the family that visited our church on April 15, for the loss of their mom in a car accident just 2 days after they were with us. Your family remains in our prayers.

I'd like to apologize: Volume 2

It's Thursday, which means it's time to get something off my chest. And I'm not just talking about the salsa I dripped on myself last night! This week, I offer my apologies:

* To Sanjaya, for not voting for you.
* To true "American Idol" fans, for rooting for Sanjaya.
* To my brain cells, for watching "American Idol."
* To Kurt Johnston, for secretly orchestrating the whole "America's Top Pastor" debacle.
* To customers at Wal-Mart last week, who may have seen me walking around in a pair of far-too-holey jeans.
* To Dani, Gabriel and Sal, for making them eat the disgusting candy bars last night.
* To the fine folks at Mizu sushi, for being a little too intimidated by some of the sushi they were serving yesterday.
* To the federal and state governments, for being a last-minute filer once again this year.
* To my friends at Simply Youth Ministry, for taking far too long on a certain project.
* To Jennifer Gomez, for proving that some people WILL buy stuff for me at Starbuck's and pay for it.
* To Tyler Gillespie, for my jokes.
* To the rest of humanity, for my jokes.
* To Isabelle Read, for making her cry last night with our video testimony from a guy who passed away last week.* To "The Apprentice" and "Survivor," for no longer really caring.
* To "The Deadliest Catch," for missing an episode.
* To Round Table Pizza, for being very upset the other night when none of the local stores would deliver me a pizza, even though my house MUST be in someone's territory, thus forcing me to buy pizza from (yuck!) Domino's instead.
* To you, dear reader, for once again making it to the end of my weekly apologies.

I'd like to apologize.

With all the big-name people in our world who feel the need to apologize (this week alone, Don Imus and Paul Wolfowitz -- what a combo!), I've opted to go introspective and apologize to a few people:

* To that kid at camp in 2nd grade, for throwing his toothbrush into the river.
* To my downstairs neighbors in Berkeley, for creating lots of noise above them during my two-week stay in their multiunit house.
* To the National Weather Service, for stealing a few of their pamphlets on a trip in 3rd grade.
* To various hotels and motels, for permanently borrowing signs from their rooms and stairwells during my years of high school competitive speech trips.
* To Carl's Jr, for doing the same thing to their table numbers.
* To TBN, for the jokes I made at the network's expense last night when preaching about evangelism.
* To my friends at the Simply Youth Ministry podcast, for skipping past all the other questions until I reach mine each episode.
* To Sarah Simmons, for almost never replying to her emails.
* To one set of neighbors, for living in my house for more than 5 months without introducing myself to them.
* To the people in my cabin at camp last week, for all those smells.
* To my long-dead cat, for trimming his whiskers, which he never seemed to enjoy.
* To Jeremy Anderson, for never dropping the jokes about him causing me to sprain my ankle while playing racquetball...4 years ago.
* To Shirley Shedd, for missing her retirement party.
* To Trudy Bryan, for missing her funeral.
* To former newspaper co-workers, for marking all their newspaper designs with red ink.
* To the Turlock Journal, for calling it The Urinal, even when I was an employee.
* To all 3 of my faithful blog readers, for not writing more frequently.
* To my students, for repeating certain stories way too frequently.
* To employees at Burger King, for truly "having it my way" with my burger orders.
* To Vince and Anthony Battaglia, for the silly footage at the end of our camp video.
* To Ernie Lara, for not including his funny footage from camp.
* To that stalker chick, for screening calls and not taking hers.
* To Steven Nelson, for always beating him in chess.
* To America, for voting for Ross Perot back in 1992.
* To America, for voting for George W Bush. Twice.
* To you, if you've read all the way to the end.