Justin Acuff’s Blog

Well last night I got the call that I had been expecting for the past couple of weeks. My grandpa passed away. Thanks for all the prayers y’all have put up on his behalf. The funeral date hasn’t been set yet, so I’m still waiting to see if I will be going to Dallas for Let’s Start Talking training or not. I think they want my great aunt’s to come down for the funeral so I’m thinking it will be on Monday.

I haven’t been real good about keeping my past 4 years of digital photos very organized. So I’m starting to get around to organizing them and getting rid of ones that just aren’t worth keeping.

Anyways… Many of y’all know Andrea Butt and know how she HATES having her picture taken… Well while sorting through some of my very early pictures, I found one of her driving on the way back from Gateway Getaway (Yeah it was still called Gateway back then). Anyways click on more to see the picture.
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You now must use http://www.justinacuff.net/ to access my blog. But if you reading this, I don’t reckon that’s a problem.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1577753,00.html

I went to bed last night at about 10:30 CST. This morning I woke up at 5:30 CST. I went downstairs and was up long enough to drink a glass of chocolate milk and turn on the 6:00 News. Seeing that church doesn’t start for until 9:30, I decided to go back to bed for a little bit. That’s when I had this dream that I can still vaguely remember…

It was just another Sunday at Laurel, or so it seemed. After class, we all proceed to go upstairs to the “Auditorium”. I was hanging out in the foyer greeting people as they were coming in. Joey was leading singing that morning, or so it appeared. His first song was “The Steadfast Love of the Lord”. After that I decided to go into the “Auditorium” and get a seat. The first thing that struck me was we had two projection screens. One on the left and one on the right. The next thing that struck me was that all the pews were gone and people were sitting in chairs. (By struck me, I guess I mean now that I’m awake they sturck me, not necessarily struck me in my dream.) The chairs were in a circle that was as big as the room would allow. The rest were just rows behind the circle. When I found my seat Joey was leading the congregation in “Step by Step”.

Now here’s what the dream gets a little strange. Up until this point, that could SO be a normal Sunday. But this wasn’t any normal Sunday. I had picked up one of the Bulletins / Order of Worships but didn’t actually bother to look at the Order of Worship. The next thing that happens was Joey sits down and some guy gets up and starts reading some passage from the Bible. This guy looked familiar to me, but I was certain he didn’t normally come to Laurel. So I finally looked at the Order of Worship and they had Caedmon’s Call as a special guest at our worship service. Next Derek Webb gets up and starts leading the congregation in singing. It wasn’t the traditional Church of Christ a capella singing though, but it wasn’t quite the complete band that you would normally hear when listening to Caedmon’s Call. Instead it was a very stripped down band. It actually just looked like two of the guys with acoustic instruments that weren’t plugged into the sound system. They were just playing while the guy was leading everyone in song.

I can only remember two songs. One of them was a Caedmon’s Call song and the other one was “Diving In” by Steven Curtis Chapman. I didn’t have a radio on or have my iPod playing, so there isn’t any reason why those particular songs should have been featured in this dream. During the middle of “Diving In” is when i woke up. I don’t remember anything else about this dream.

What does it mean?

I’ve really been meaning to post recently, but I just haven’t quite gotten around to it. So a lot of stuff has been happening since then. Let’s give a real quick run down.

• Jack Reese Seminar
• Went to my former Roommate’s wedding
• Started Working with Agape kid Darius
• Starting to work with Jr. High Kids on Sunday Nights
• Been trying to talk to my old youth minister to apply at Laurel

I’d like to expand on each of those, but in reality, it ain’t gonna happen. So I might be brief about it. I pray that everyone at Laurel will take what Dr. Reese said this last weekend to heart. I might get around to posting about my thoughts on his book. BTW: If anybody wants to read it, you can borrow my copy.

Maybe I’ll get around to posting on Saturday night. I’m going home to visit my family and see my Grandpa. As many of ya’ll know, he ain’t be doing real well for the last several months. He keeps hangin’ on though.

Well that’s all. If you were expecting more, sorry. Like I said, maybe Saturday night I’ll post, ’cause their sure ain’t a whole lot to do in Taft, TN. Y’all take care now, ya hear?

Gonna need your help on this one. (That means comment if you know another one not already listed!)

We’ve decided that to go along with the lessons on grace, we’re gonna sing Amazing Grace to many different tunes… This is where your help comes in… I’ve sung it to a few different songs, but perhaps you’ve sung it to a different song and wouldn’t mind sharing.

Anyways… here’s my list of songs
Amazing Grace
Peaceful Easy Feeling
Gilligan’s Island
Joy to the World
House of the Rising Sun

If you’ve got another feel free to share it. Now its time to finish reading The Body Broken by Jack Reese. This weekend is going to be very busy.

Ok, so after talking with Muriel Brown this evening, she has given me an idea on something that can be a regular feature on the Laurel Website. (My idea, so if you think it sucks, its all my fault.) It would require constant input from people though. The feature would be “What our Members are reading”. This would, of course, only consist of the Christian/Religious books. For me… I’ve noticed that ChristianBook.com is usually the cheapest place to get books… Laurel also has an Affiliate account with them… What this means, is if you enter using the link below or the one on the Laurel Website, up to 10% of the purchase will go back to Laurel… So if you buy a lot of books, you might as well tithe too.

Christianbook.com Home

Last night at church I was talking with Ron Clark. He would like to get together another group and bike all of the Virginia Creeper Trail. The date for this trip would be October 15. There isn’t a home game, away game, or wedding planned for this day. It is really a fun bike trip. If you’d like to go, let me know. Hopefully, this will turn into a more official trip.

This weekend was absolutely perfect to get outdoors. The weather was really nice, it was a holiday weekend, and gas dropped below $3.00 per gallon. Actually on Saturday, it was still up around $3.29 per gallon. I didn’t have tickets to the game, but instead of watching it at home alone, I decided to head over to the CSC. I also wondered what it would be like to bike over there. I live probably just 5 miles from campus so its not far at all. Its mostly downhill on the way to campus, which means on the way back, its mostly uphill. I’ll start biking to work more often now.

On Sunday, after lunch, a few of us decided to go for a quick hike between then and meeting up with people to go to Boomsday. We headed up to House Mountain, the highest point in Knox County. Its a nice hike that you don’t have to drive very far for. Its only about a 15 minute drive from the CSC. Jon and Loraine also joined us for the first time. Along the way, we decided to go off the trail because it looks like there was an overlook. At the overlook, we “tried” to spell out VOLS. This picture is just one of our attempts. Also on this hike, somebody came up with animal and names for everybody. You’ll need to reference Loraine’s blog for those.

On Sunday we also decided that we were gonna hike Meigs Creek. Meigs Creek runs right into The Sinks, a popular swimming hole in the Smokies. Meigs Creek is also a trial that is known for the number of stream crossings you have to do. Typically, if you have to cross 4 streams on a trail, you would say that its a lot. This trail has 21 stream crossings. This is the perfect time of year to do it because the water is down and all the streams can be navigated by careful rock hopping. Brad had invited his friend Alysha to come with us on the trip. So on the way back we decided we would get a group photo. I didn’t have my mini tripod with me, so I just sat it on a rock across a stream and hope I could make it back in 10 seconds. It was a lot of fun.

In case you don’t know where to find the CSC Pictures, but you know my blog addres… Come here: http://gallery2.cscutk.org/. The following is just one account of how Ktownleelee, Crazy Hands Dobbs, and Cuff Daddy won the scavenger hunt tonight… Our prize…. A $7 gift card to Buffalo Wild Wings.

First of lets start out with how the teams we’re formed… At first they let us decide on teams, but of course, that doesn’t work out… The CSC doesn’t come to decisions very easy. Then Katy just numbered us off 1 through 5. (Though they were six teams, one decided that they were keeping their team as it was.) It ended up being Myself, Eric, and Alicia on a team.

The next item we received was the list of rules. (Props to Eric for typing these up so I can just copy from his blog).

• Each picture is worth 1 Point
• Walking and running are the only forms of transportation allowed; NO CARS!!
• Groups must stay together at all times and take pictures with one camera!
• Please do nothing illegal; if you violate this rule, tell them you are from somewhere else. Ha ha.

Bonus: If you bring back food for your fearless leaders (Jesse and Katy) this will count as 4 points.

1. A picture of at least one group member roasting a marshmallow on the Torchbearer.
2. Reenacting Andy and Rebeca’s proposal in the exact location that it took place.
3. A picture of a group member reading the Beacon in front of the fish pond at the Pasque building.
4. A picture of a teammate rolling down the hill in front of Ayres Hall with the building in the background of the picture.
5. A picture of a teammate swimming in the pool at the T-Recs.
6. Bring back a pizza box from Mellow Mushroom.
7. A picture of a teammate flipping burgers at some restaurant.
8. A picture of everyone in the group forming a human pyramid on the rugby field.
9. A picture of your entire team sitting behind the RA desk at any dorm.
10. A picture of a teammate with a ticket scalper on the strip.
11. Paint “CSC” on the rock and take a picture of it and some of your teammates.
12. Take a picture of a teammate playing on the Thackston school playground which is on Lake Ave.
13. Take a picture of a teammate riding the bull at humanities.
14. Take a picture with an usher from the Clarence Brownf Theatre.
15. Take a picture riding the trolley cars down by Thompson-Bowling Arena.
16. Take a picture with a random architecture student working in the architecture building. (Random does not include Zach Spivey or Eric Dobbs!)

Well, so the first thing we do is we go to South Carrick were Alicia just so happens to be an RA. We easily got our picture behind the desk. Alicia volunteered herself for the swimming pool picture, so she went up to her room to change. Eric and I waited in the lobby for her. This proved to be where we would come out on top. During this time, we used my intricate knowledge of the UT campus to synergize a strategic plan for accomplishing our goal of winning the scavenger hunt. We came up with a map of the route that would maximize the number of spots taken. We also got to talking with one of the RA’s behind the desk. She was kind enough to supply us with a can of spray paint. Rock On!

From there we went onto the TRECS to get a picture in the swimming pool.

Our next item required us to break into the Thackston School Playground. Luckily we found a place where jumping over the fence wouldn’t be to bad. Eric quickly hopped on a swing and started swinging.

The next item, which we didn’t have to take a picture of, was a pizza box from the Mellow Mushroom. We all went inside (along with another team) to get our box. We also came away with a lemon from the Mellow Mushroom. You’ll notice, one of the bonus items was food. Lemon would qualify as food.
After the Mellow Mushroom we continued down the strip. Before taking a picture with a ticket scalper, we stopped into Walgreens to buy a bag of marshmellows. You’ll notice, these were needed later on. Being the night before UT’s first football game, I expected scalpers to be out more in force. We only saw like two. The first one refused us to get a picture taken, but luckily this nice guy had a good spirit about it and let us take our picture with him.

Our next picture was a little bit tricker to get. We decided to go into Krystal’s to get the burger flipped. It turns out, Wendy’s was really the place to do it, but you know Cuff Daddy… He’s not going to let some silly rules get in the way of accomplishing his task. After asking the manager if we could do this, and after getting shot down because of health codes, we decided to improvise. We bought a Krystal Burger and flipped it ourself… In the dinning room area. You can see in the picture, the hamburger is in the air, and thus being flipped. Rock On!!!! It actually took us like 12 tries to get this shot. Alicia couldn’t manage to keep it in the frame. But this one turned out really good.

For our next picture, we headed up to the hill. We also picked up a Beacon for later usage.

Thankfully, I have card swip access to Science and Engineering, so we cut through it to get to the fish pond between Pasqua and Estabrook. This is were Eric would decide to read his paper.

After the pond incident, we took a very long route over to the trolleys by the arena. I was starting to get tired by then, but I kept on running.

From here, we would just ran over to the Torchbearer for the very illegal roasting marshmellows on the Touchbearer.

After some very illegal marshmellows, we headed over to Europa. Again, Eric volunteered for this picture. I had trouble getting it framed, mainly because I couldn’t see it. Oh well, here’s probably the best of the ones I took.

Our next destination would be the Art and Architecture building. Eric being the Architecture majors, knows were all the people hide out at the A&A building on a Friday night. Here is the snap we took.

Our final destination would be the rock. Our contribution was the bottom CSC. As you can see, only 1 other group actually painted CSC on the rock. Another group tried to take credit for it, but it was easily proven that they didn’t do it with another picture.

Finally we headed back to the CSC with our pictures and food items. Our grand total was 17 out of 20 points. After not being 100% sure of Andy and Rebecca’s proposal spot (I knew the general area, but not the specific spot) and determining that the Rugby field would be too time consuming, we decided not to do those. We flat out forgot to do the Usher at Clarence Brown… That is something we could have easily accomplished between Europa and the A&A building. Oh well. Like I said, we won… if though some accused us of cheating because they didn’t see Alicia… (She just happened to be at the end of the hallway.) Eric and I just happen to be a little bit faster up the stairs then she was. In general we were never too far apart.

So this is the story of how you too can become a winner at the CSC Scavenger Hunt.

Acuff Press: September 2, 2005 - The Wendy’s on the Cumberland Avenue should be avoided at all costs. Today it was found in violation of the health code. Non employees were photographed behind the counter in the kitchen area flipping burgers without a hair net and without washing their hands. This happened on more than one occasion. Your reporter tried something similar at the Krystal’s on the Strip. He was not near as successful. So I would have to recommend Krystal’s over Wendy’s. You heard it first. This will probably be the ONLY time I recommend Krystal’s over Wendy’s. More news at the end of the 11:00 hour.