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Yesterday, with the exception of about 10 minutes, was a pretty stress-free day.

I got a chance to meet the newly arrived Sadie Osenga, and though she slept through my visit, I did get to see her. Her big sister Ella (such a cutie) was fun to chat with for a few minutes as well. Sadie is a pretty baby, which of course means she looks like her mom. No offense to Andy, but…

After chatting with the Osengas for a few minutes, I went back to the Peters’ house (that has been so kindly opened to me when I’m in town) and had a bowl of Danielle’s “Chicken Noodle Yahoo” which was formulated and named all within about 10 minutes. Basically it’s a chicken noodle soup, but so much better than any other soup I’ve had.

Eric and I left his place and went to pick up Sandra, where I got to meet the Webb’s dog Levi, the most absolutely brilliant dog in the world. The dog actually understands English. It was one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen. Sandra got Levi’s attention and told him that he was going with their friend for a few days. They opened the door, and Levi ran and jumped in the friend’s car. It doesn’t sound so impressive now that I’ve typed it, but it was pretty cool to watch.

From there, we picked up the formerly voiceless Jill Phillips and headed south to Huntsville. The trip went pretty well, except I made Sandra car sick. She says it wasn’t my fault, but I think she’s just being nice. The wind was blowing, and the car was hard to drive.

We got into Huntsville and were looking for a road when we got a flat tire. I’ve been driving for many years, and I’ve never had one. Of course, these are people who are traveling for a week, so they all had suitcases in the trunk. I unpacked the trunk while Eric tried to break the lug nuts loose. Getting the tire off of the car took a little more weight than Eric had available to put into his efforts.

We got the tire changed and were back on the road in about 10 minutes. It seemed like it was much longer because the crazy cold wind was blowing. It was actually fun to watch Eric since he’s the type who gets cold if the temperature drops below 60.

After that, we were back on the road and at the church in almost no time at all. We found where we were supposed to go and then got ushered over to eat a pretty awesome meal. It was catered in “The Lodge,” which was an enormous recreational facility for the church’s youth group. They have 2 pool tables, a foosball table, and an indoor basketball half court.

Don’t ever challenge Derek Webb to foosball. You’ll lose.

And, for the record, Andy Gullahorn did not make the over-the-shoulder-while-not-looking-at-the-goal shot from behind the 3-point line as Derek said “Would you make a shot already?” It’s our word against his.

Then I went back over to the church to get a seat. I met up with some message board folks for a quick “howdy” and then we settled in for the show.

The performance was really good. Seeing Jill in the group was nice. She was really missed on Wednesday. Jill, Andy Gullahorn, and Ben Shive joined Eric in the round for “Squeeze” and it was (as you might expect) awesome. Geof recorded the show, and I’d be thrilled if just that one song turned out to be worth hearing. The Christmas portion of the night was nothing short of breath taking.

Mr. Peterson apparently got overcome with amazement in the realization that the Christmas story really is true, and he was fighting back tears for the final 3 or 4 songs of the evening.

I bid everyone farewell and headed for home. I got back about 2:00 this morning.

I got up in time to take my girl to school, and then I spent 3 and a half hours at Kauffman Tire in Hiram. Those were probably the last hours (and dollars) I’ll ever spend with Kauffman. (More on that later…)

Now it’s time for me to pick up my 1st grader and bring her back home. They’re heading to see our favorite spine doctor, and I’ll be heading down to Fayetteville for tonight’s BTLOG show. It’s an exhausting time, but I love every minute of it.

Andy’s telling of this story amazes me every time I hear it, and I’ve heard it a lot. You can listen to the whole CD online over at Andy’s site. Just go to www.andrew-peterson.com and click on the “Open Player” link.

It’s about 8:30 Nashville time right now. I’m sitting in a quiet house in Nashville watching snow flurries in the back yard.

Yesterday I drove to Nashville for what has become an annual pilgrimage. I met with about a dozen other folks I know from the internet, and we had some good Mexican food. Then we all headed to the historic Ryman Auditorium for Andrew Peterson’s Nashville performance of “Behold the Lamb of God.”

The show was a lot of fun. I got introduced to the music of Sara Groves, and so far I like what I’ve heard. (Also, because Jill Phillips was sick, Sara has more of a part in the concert than she might normally have had.)

My bud Eric Peters got to be a part of last night as well. It’s about time!

Pierce Pettis pretty much blew me away with his songs. That guy is one amazing songwriter.

Andrew Osenga was there and played his totally awesome electric guitar parts. Then he left to go pick up his wife from the hospital. (They just had a baby.) I didn’t expect him to be there last night, so it was a great surprise when I heard he was playing.

For anybody going to Huntsville tonight, fyi, Randall Goodgame will be with the group for tonight’s show.

I picked up my copy of Andrew and Randall’s new kids CD. I’ve only heard the first few songs so far, but what I’ve heard has been fun to hear.

Today I’ve got some things that need to be done in town, and then we’re heading down to Huntsville for the show tonight. I’ll meet up with Geof and hang out with some of my favorite people tonight and then drive home after the concert.

For those of you in Atlanta, look for me Friday night at the show. There are a few of you that I haven’t seen in a while, and it’ll be good to catch up a bit.

The snow is really coming down pretty hard now, so I’m going to go enjoy it while i get my morning dosage of caffeine. More later…

Andrew Peterson and Randall Goodgame have teamed up to release a CD of songs they wrote for their kids.  “Slugs & Bugs & Lullabies” releases today.

More than just a bunch of kids songs, SBL was designed to help kids wind down at the end of a day.  There are songs about pirates, eating vegetables, bears eating children, and the creation of man.

You can listen to two of the songs here.  You can buy it here.

I’m not a fan of Sendmail.  I’ve got nothing personal against it, but qmail is so much better.  This week I needed to do a little testing with SMTP authentication and decided to just setup sendmail to do it, since sendmail was already installed on my test server.

I was able to get all aspects of the mail server working, except the SMTP authentication.  Go figure.  After a good bit of Googling, I found a step-by-step guide to getting SMTP authentication within Sendmail configured.

So if you’re googling looking for the same thing I was, here’s your link.  The step-by-step guide took all of 5 minutes to get through.

I have a new ambition in life.  Somebody tell me how to land a part in an episode of “The Office.”