I heard about this story by Karin Shaw Anderson of an amazing young lady Cassandra Hayes on KLIF on my way to our church's annual Christmas Eve service with my brother yesterday evening. However you can help, a family in Garland has agreed to forward correspondence to Ms. Hayes. Send letters to: Cassandra Hayes, c/o Terri Mowles, 631 W. Ridgewood Drive, Garland, Texas 75041. She said when interviewed on the show that she works at the Cheddar's on Hwy 635 and Greenville in Dallas.

I also heard that the city of Dallas had verified that there at at least 20,000 valid signatures on the Blackwood petition, which means the requirement by the city charter is met and that the strong mayor form of government will be on the ballot for the May 7th, 2005 municipal election in Dallas.

The youth group had our white elephant gift exchange yesterday after the service. We partied late last night; I and my brother didn't get home until like 4:00 this morning. Therefore, when my uncle called from Germany and woke me up this morning at around 10:30, I was understandably pretty grouchy. He and I talked and talked and just out of curiousity, I asked him about the gas price in socialist Germany and he told me it's about €1.10 a liter, which is about €4.40 per gallon. With the current exchange rate of $1.3519 per Euro according to Yahoo!, that works out to be $4.948 per gallon. No wonder they all drive those little itty bitty cars. A couple years back, when I first got my new Toyota Tacoma pickup truck and told my uncle that it drives 18 miles per gallon, which works out to be roughly about 7 to 8 kilometers per liter, he thought I was nuts to buy a car like that.