so, i got tagged by josh on this. i didn’t quite get it, but i went backward through several levels of tagging, deep into the very tightly knit world of saddleback youth ministry bloggers, and i now think i get it. create a category for each alphabet letter, and a response to that category. and no stealing categories from previous (a.k.a. current or former saddleback youth department staff) alpha-posts. so, without further stalling…

a is for amazing grace: the last movie i saw (in a pre-release screening)
b is for beer of the moment: gulden draak
c is for currently listening to, song: my itunes is on “party shuffle”, and the current song is “when did i stop dreaming”, by elvis costello, from the album “north”
d is for dinner prior to typing this: veal piccata, at ciao’s, in tulsa, oklahoma
e is for elephant: babar. ooh, or, modoc!
f is for freezing today: most everywhere in the u.s. except the lovely place i live. ha!
g is for gulp: big
h is for hardest two things i’ve ever dealth with: getting fired from a church, and yaconelli’s death
i is for instant pudding flavor: pistachio. no question. hands down, the best.
j is for jelly i would enjoy right now: jalapeno, on top of cream cheese, with some nice bretton crackers
k is for kajagoogoo: band name i cannot believe just popped into my head as i was considering a k-word
l is for laughter: three southern belles are sitting on the front porch of a plantation home. the first one says, “my daddy gave me a mercedes for my birthday.” the third one says “that’s nice.” the second one says, “my daddy gave me a first-class trip to europe for my birthday.” the third one says, “that’s nice.” the first one asks the third, “did your daddy give you something for your birthday?” “why yes,” responds the third, “he gave me etiquette lessons.” “oh! did they help?” asks the first. “yes,” responds the third, “instead of saying ‘f you’, now i say ‘that’s nice.'” (as told to me recently by the tobester)
m is for malevolantitude: a word i just made up to refer to the degree of a person, organization or situation’s intentional mean-ness (or malevolant-ness).
n is for norwegian translation of youth specialties: ungdom spesiell (actually, that’s “youth special”, because the free online english to norwegian dictionary i used didn’t know how to translate “specialties” — so, i probably just wrote “special youth” or something like that. but i can pretend. so back off.)
o is for oestreichers i know: uh… mom and dad. and, my wife and kids. that’d be about it.
p is for precious little things: liesl and max
q is for qdoba: restaurant i noticed the other day, which is actually a chain, and which, for the life of me, i can’t figure out why someone thought that was a good name.
r is for random moment of my day the other day: walked to the other side of the tulsa convention center, where i heard music, to find a large ice arena with a dozen little girls spinning on the ice in some sort of competition
s is for scotch: bushmills 12 year (not techically a scotch, since it’s from ireland), available only from the bushmills factory store in bushmills, northern ireland.
t is for tastiness, unparalleled, for a burger: the “rory” burger at corvette diner in san diego, with peanut butter, bacon and mayo. no, really. i’m serious. it’s fantastic.
u is for uvula: strange little body part that is extremely funny to say for some reason. it means “little grape” — who knew?
v is for vector, as in: what’s your vector, victor?, or, charlie peacock’s original band.
w is for wussiest of the wussy: tom from 24. is it wrong for me to want a fictional tv character to die?
x is for x-scape: annoying mispronunciation of escape, overheard the other day from a flight attendant during a horribly-hacked safety demonstration.
y is for yes!: nz with the fam in 2 months.
z is for zinc: ’cause it’s the first z-word that came to mind, and i have to finish this crazy thing and get back to work!

whew. that took too long! but, heck, i’ll tag josh back and make him come up with a whole new personal abc’s, just to spite him for tagging me on this in the first place! while i’m at it, i’ll tag brian also, because he’s josh’s boss. so there. and i tag anyone else who wants to be tagged. tell me in a comment, and i’ll add it to the post, so you get another incoming link on technorati!
john took the bait.