• We have high temperatures in the 50’s forecast for this week. Incredibly thankful for spring to be making an appearance.
• Stayed up too late watching the Oscars last night. Have watched only two of the films nominated across all categories: District 9 and Star Trek. One of these days I’ll catch up on some of the others. Very little time for watching movies these days.
• Star Trek is the last movie I’ve watched in a theater. Before that I think it was The Dark Knight the year before. At least that gives us lots of choices to watch on DVD.
• Three day work week for me this week. Then on Thursday we road trip to Indiana. Becky and the girls will drop me off in Indianapolis where I’ll hang out/ride along with Andy Osenga for a couple days while he plays some house shows.
• Becky and the girls will head up an hour north of Indy to visit some friends who moved there from CR last year. Everyone is pretty darn excited about it.
• Have the details lined up for Andy O to play a “house show” at Brewed Awakenings in CR on Monday, April 19th. Hope to get the “official” confirmation from Andy this week so I can start publicity in earnest.

• Slow-ish week turns into busy weekend. Lots of family in town, softball tournament, leading worship. Fun, but busy.
• Oh, the occasion for all the family visiting: Laura turns 5 on Monday. Hard to believe I’ve been a parent for five years now.
• No matter how cool the gong is on “The Great Gate of Kiev”, the solo piano version of Pictures at an Exhibition is far and away superior to the orchestrated version.
• Just when I think my homebrew DVR is all working and I’m ready to blog about it, something else isn’t working quite right. I’ll be installing the Windows 7 Release Candidate tonight.
• I’ve been flexing my web design muscles again a bit this week and it’s kinda fun.
• I’m down 7 or so pounds in the #20lbchallenge this month. This weekend’s meal plans will be a challenge to that accomplishment. (Two months to go!)
• Looks like I’ll have a quick trip to Ottawa, Ontario for business in a few weeks. Wish it were Toronto instead so I could meet up with Dan & Laura.
• I haven’t had the heart or inspiration to blog about politics lately.
• All the things that are on my mind re: God and church are things that need to be worked through first in our lives before they’re worked out on this blog.
• I reactivated the IntenseDebate commenting plugin – they’ve improved it a lot since last time I tried it. Now with Facebook and Twitter authentication! Leave a comment below and let me know what you’d like to have me blog about.

• Monday road trip to Nashville was awesome. Saw some friends, made some new ones, saw a great concert. (Geof recorded it and you can download MP3s.)
• Driving 1300 miles in two days will make you a little bit saddle sore.
• Work has been somewhere between ridiculously crazy and insanely crazy for the past couple of weeks. Looks like it’ll stay that way until the middle of May.
• I’ll be traveling to Toronto for work in a couple of weeks. Looking forward to finally meeting Dan and Laura in person.
• Listened to about 15 hours of D. A. Carson sermons/lectures on my road trip. That guy is an amazing teacher.
• At the moment I’m listening to Manchester Orchestra (which isn’t a symphony orchestra, Dad, it’s a rock band) and they’re pretty darn good.
• Guess it’s time to get back to work.

Laziness, and no big topics to contemplate. Put those two together and you end up with my blog as of late. Sorry folks. So, a make-up post of sorts.

• Only four more weeks until the baby is due. I’m sure we don’t really understand quite how life will change going from 2 to 3 kids, but we’ll figure it out. Excitement is building among all the residents of our little home. (Well, maybe not among the cats.)
• We’re now several weeks in to our first Stonebridge small group and we’re really enjoying it. It’s fun to make some new friends. I did get a few weird looks last night when I briefly touched on the whole gay marriage thing, but my lament about Christians being known more for their support of Prop 8 than for their love for their neighbor was well-received.
• I’m applying for a new position here at work – a fantastic opportunity. Not going to say too much about it here just now, but I have an interview tomorrow at 1 pm.
• Another thing that’s sneaking up on us – Laura will turn 5 this summer, and so the school questions start coming up. We’ve pretty well decided to homeschool her for the time being, and communicated that intent to our local elementary school last month. Now I’ve gotta get the ins and outs of the homeschool support/oversight system understood in preparation for next fall. Oh, and sign up with HSLDA.
• When I have trouble coming up with something for the fifth bullet, you know that either things have been fairly uneventful or I’m just having a horrible time remembering anything. *sigh*

I’ve been neglecting this blog for the past few weeks, so it’s time for an update of sorts. So… bullet points!

• We’re in the home stretch of the pregnancy… just a little more than two months until baby #3 is scheduled to make his/her appearance. The girls have finally decided that they’d like a little brother – they want to have a prince to play with them when they’re playing princesses.
• We’ve decided on sticking at Stonebridge for the forseeable future, and we’re starting to plug in. First up: small groups. The group we’re joining starts up next Monday night. It’ll be good to just sit down and get to know some folks.
• In the vein of church stuff, I’ve contacted the music pastor at Stonebridge and arranged a time to get together and talk about how I might occasionally serve on the worship team. The key word here is occasional. I don’t want to be in a position where I’m indispensable. I think it can be worked out.
• On the work front, the project I’d been working on for the past 18 months got shut down last week. All of us working it are getting transferred to new projects and new groups. I’m going to be joining a group that focuses on aircraft certification. It’ll mean a lot less coding and a lot more documenting, but it’ll be very good experience and learning for my DER ticket.
• It’s still winter in Iowa, but it’s been at least tolerable the past week. It got up above freezing yesterday, and we haven’t had any significant snowfall this week. I can handle winter when it’s like this.
• I’m really looking forward to a weekend with very little on the schedule. Nothing scheduled for Saturday, just church on Sunday. Time to crash.

Well, enough for now.

It’s been a crazy week so I’m reduced to one of these play-by-play lists. Sorry.

• Note to self: eating at Texas Roadhouse only two hours before playing a rec league basketball game: not such a good idea.
• Looking forward to getting out of town this weekend.
• There is pretty much nothing cuter than a four-year-old excited about being invited to a friend’s birthday party.
• Is Thanksgiving really only two weeks away? Where has the year gone?
• I’m getting a kick out of Fake Geof Morris this morning.
• It’s been far too long since I’ve listened to Mel Brooks’ The Producers soundtrack. Hilariously clever lyrics.
• I’m with Kari – it’s too early for Christmas music.

A week without a blog update + lack of creativity = desperate measures. Hence, the bullet points.

• This past weekend felt far more like autumn than summer; this morning when I woke up it was 53°F outside and 63°F in the house. Beautiful sleeping weather. It’s gonna warm up a bit this week, but nothing too bad.
• I thought it felt like I ran into a strand of web as I walked into the dining room this morning. A few minutes later I felt something on my neck. Becky, you can thank me later for killing that spider.
• My sermon on Saturday night went pretty well. I intended to link to it here but didn’t get it uploaded last night. It’ll have to wait.
• Now I need to get my backside in gear for my next sermon, only two weeks hence. How do I focus all I want to say about worship into 30 minutes?
• Next week I’m headed to Denver for some training and a conference. I think it’ll probably be warmer in Denver than it will be at home while I’m gone.
• Nick & Allie led worship Saturday night at Imago and did a fantastic job. Allie wrote a new tune for the hymn Under His Wings that has been stuck in my head all weekend. Thanks a lot, Allie.
• My poor backyard is being overtaken by crabgrass. Gotta do something about that.

Well, now, that was random, eh?

I’ve been in Montreal since Monday night, and it’s my first trip here, and for that matter, my first trip out of the country. I don’t have any profound essays to write but a bunch of little observations that work most easily as bullet points. So here goes.

• It’s the little things that mess with you. Ordered a Whopper at Burger King the other night (I was craving the fries) and was asked if I wanted “the trio”. What in the world is “the trio”? Ends up that’s what I know better as a combo. [lightbulb goes on]
• The roads are bad. They aren’t marked very well, the lanes are narrow, and the traffic is horrible.
• The other weird traffic thing: rapidly-flashing green lights. As far as I can tell, a rapid green is equivalent to a green left arrow in the US; it’s letting you know that it’s safe to turn left, because the folks opposite you still have a red. Rather non-intuitive, but it works once you get the hang of it.
• Sewing machine stores in shopping malls. Apparently people in Canada really like to sew or something.
• A big report came out today in Montreal that is the result of a year-long commission holding hearings and taking suggestions on how to deal with all the ethnic and cultural issues they have in Quebec. It’s interesting listening to talk radio this afternoon to hear what people have to say about it. The commission’s conclusion is that the worst of the division is more stirred up by the media than by the ethnic groups involved. Figures.
• Of course French is the predominant language here in Montreal, but pretty much everyone I’ve run into switches pretty much effortlessly into English. Still, it frustrates me a bit that they have to; it feels like I’m making them do me a favor rather than being able to just interact with them on their terms.
• Tim Horton’s (a donut/breakfast chain – think a Canadian Dunkin’ Donuts) has tasty food, but no trash cans. Weird. It feels like a fast food, there are lots of tables to sit and eat… but apparently they expect you to just leave your trash on the table. Very strange.

Well, enough of that. Still, it’s been an interesting place to visit. Tomorrow I fly home.

• Playing basketball three times a week is good for your game and your weight, but sure does make you sore.
• Hard to believe it’s almost February already. Next weekend: trip to Lincoln, NE to see Caedmon’s Call and Andy O.
• Five-hour road trip to see said musicians: seems relatively short. Oh, and Mom is coming down to watch the girls so Becky and I get a couple days out to ourselves!
• Doing double-duty this weekend – leading at both Imago and Noelridge.
• I’ve registered a domain name to hang out a shingle for web design services. Don’t know how much business I’ll manage to drum up, but after doing so many freebie websites for friends over the past several years, it’s fun to think that I could actually get paid for it instead.
• Tweet140 mocks me even as I’m writing this post.
• Haven’t traveled for work yet this year but that’s gonna change soon – there’s the threat of a last-minute trip to Seattle in mid-February, and a scheduled trip to Augusta, GA in early March.
• I think I might actually only finish two books in January, which is a real low for me. It’s not that I haven’t been reading – it’s that I’ve been reading a long, thick book that has to be read slowly.

This excuse for a real post brought to you by the two Advil I took with breakfast this morning.