We wonder why dogs drink out of toilets. They wonder why we pee in their water bowl.

The ezine Slate has a feature called The Explainer in which they answer interesting questions from readers. Not an advice column - that's Dear Prudence - but how-things-work questions. The last week of every year they have a poll and allow readers to pick from all the leftover queries, choosing the question of the year. I like some of this year's options:

• Why do people put their hands to their heads/faces when something goes wrong?
• Are blind people sleepy all the time? We're wired to get sleepy when it's dark and most of us have trouble staying awake with our eyes closed for any length of time.
• Why do so many of our state names end in "a?"
• When a tall guy pees into a toilet and there's a splash that lands on the floor, is it water or pee?
• When you cut open a pumpkin there's no woosh, meaning there's gas already in the hollow core. What is it and how did it get there?
• When a mosquito bites you on your tatto do they get ink along with the blood?
• When you flush a roach down the toilet still alive does it die? Or "are you giving it a sportsman's chance" of re-entering my life and seeking revenge?

I watched a rerun of Top Gear (the British version; the U.S. version isn't nearly as good) and Jeremy Clarkson was trying to to a sub-10 minute trip around the Nurburgring in a Jag diesel sedan. Turns out anyone can drive that epitome of a road course. Pull up, pay 14 Euros (about $18) and go 'round the track. So on open track days it's full of people driving it in everything from superbikes to VW Jettas. 

I wonder if anyone has ever done it in a '62 Beetle. 

I called Pat today but he didn't answer. 

sigh

I want to spend more time with my message but I feel prepared for Sunday's service. It's a little more complex than our normal worship service but not some much that we'll trip over ourselves. 

The big question is how many will attend. Including children we run about 50 on a typical Sunday morning. Add a few because it's Christmas, although we'll have some gone for the same reason. 

The question of attendance has more to do with what response we'll see to our outreach efforts over the last two weeks. Because of the faithfulness of the people of Pathway we had the resources to do some advertising. And because Matt is the V.P. at Arrowhead Advertising we had access to the expertise to do it right. For the last two weeks we've have an ad on Facebook that only appears on the pages of people in our geographical area who have identified themselves as Christians. For the last week we've had an ad on Google that appears when anyone in our area does a search using one of several words we selected - Bible, church, expository, etc. And Monday we sent out an "email blast," a professionally designed email that went to 100,000 email address belonging to people who have self-identified as Christians in our geographical area. If they open the ad they can click on a link within it and go directly to our web site. Of those who rec'd the email, 5,645 read the email and of those 923 clicked through to our site. That number, 16.4% of those who opened the email, is considered a very high rate. If we get 1% of those to come we're talking NINE families. That's a huge number relative to our size. And I can't think of a better time to have done this than now, with Christmas Sunday upon us. 

We're praying that God will give us results, for "unless the Lord builds the house they labor in vain that build it." 

Here's what they got in that email: