Chris​Hubbs​.com

Hey, it’s Friday.

• The weather is really too nice to be sitting in the office all day today. I might have to do something about that.
• My oldest daughter is in the College for Kids program at Coe College this week and next. One of the classes she’s taking is Web Design, and I had a proud nerd dad moment when she told me she was ahead of the rest of the class because she already knew some HTML.
• It’s amazing how a shower, shave, some weights at the gym, and it being FRIDAY helps a guy’s general outlook.
• Reading through Matthew in my reading plan the past couple weeks and I have started highlighting every place that Jesus heals someone. I have green highlights now on almost every page. Setting things right, indeed.
• The back-and-forth the past few days over Eugene Peterson’s comments regarding homosexuality and gay marriage have been enlightening and saddening. I feel mostly like the big evangelical machine took advantage of an old saint who deserves better treatment. Ugh.
• How is it mid-July already?
• My friend Lyz wrote this piece a couple years ago about her sisters and a major car accident. It’s a beautiful piece of writing.
• It’s been a fairly quiet summer event-wise, but in September Becky and I have tickets for concerts two weekends in a row: U2 in St. Louis, and Andrew Peterson’s Rich Mullins tribute concert in Nashville. Now to figure out what we’re doing with the kids.
• I’m leading worship this weekend, but apparently I haven’t thought much about it yet because the worship leader disaster dreams haven’t started yet. Probably tonight.
• There’s a lot of pain in this world. Be kind.

• I’m glad I signed up for the 0530 kickboxing class, but it’d really help if I’d go to bed earlier at night. Short sleep + workouts = ouch.
• Also = zzzzzz. The folks at the coffee stand know my order (large Americano) now and have it going when I walk up.
• Not so great: realizing 45 minutes in that what you thought was a one-hour Webex meeting is actually a two-hour Webex meeting.
• Better: having said two-hour Webex meeting only take an hour.
• My diet that’s supposed to be accompanying my kickboxing class isn’t helped when my wife buys two-pound cinnamon rolls from the local bakery.
• I’ve been busy enough lately that I started drafting this on Tuesday morning and just finally published it on Wednesday afternoon.
• On balance, I’m not really complaining about the cinnamon roll.

• After traveling two out of the last three weeks for work, it’s good to be home.
• It’s been really fun having football season start up this past few weeks, but now that the MLB playoffs are starting I’m likely gonna ignore football as long as the Cubs are still in it.
• There is a huge amount of Cubs gear for sale in all the stores around here.
• I’ve been saying that my goal is to not buy another piece of Cubs gear until I can buy one that says “World Series Champions”. Here’s hoping that means I’ll get to buy some before too many more weeks/years go by.
• Please don’t jinx it please don’t jinx it please don’t jinx it #GoCubsGo
• On reflection, it’s been an odd year for me music-wise: I don’t think I’ve bought an album or really sunk my teeth into anything new all year. The last record I bought and really fell in love with was the Hamilton Original Broadway Cast recording last fall.
• Hamilton. Chicago. March. Can’t wait.
• It’s possible that part of my reason for buying less music is that I’ve had a Spotify subscription this year. I don’t listen to it a ton, but it’s great for taking a listen to some new album w/o having to go purchase it or just listen to 30-second samples first.
• Can we just get done with the election already? The presidential candidates have been in Iowa since at least August 2015. This is far too long.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

I’m in Florida for a work trip this week. It’s been a good time so far. Doesn’t hurt when the view out your conference room window looks like this:

But without further ado, the bullets:

• Rental car for this week: Chevy Camaro convertible with about 3000 miles on it. As usual with sports cars, it doesn’t have the visibility I’m used to in my old Saturn and my minivan.
• Amending the previous statement: if you put the top down, the visibility is pretty darn good.
• How can you tell the Midwestern boy visiting Florida: it’s the coldest week of the winter here (highs only in the low 60s!) and I’m driving around with the top down.
• I’ve been a long-time Tweetbot user but I’ve been fooling around with the official Twitter app on my phone the past few days. It’s interesting to evaluate the design choices. All the ads, sorry, “sponsored tweets” in the official app are sure annoying, though.
• Last year when I came to this committee meeting, Atlanta got their big ice storm and it took me three extra days to get home. Glad that this year the storm went much further north and won’t interfere with getting home.
• Watched Guardians of the Galaxy on the way down here. Not sure it was what I was expecting, but I enjoyed it a lot. The plot seemed far less important than the characters, and I really liked the characters. Merits a second watching.
• Then watched The Maze Runner the other night. That was 90 minutes I’ll never get back.
• I picked up a $199 Samsung Chromebook right before this trip. I’m reasonably impressed. Cheap hardware, but still functions pretty well. Will be curious to see how it holds up as I use it more.

Enough for now.

I’m on business travel this week to San Diego and with so many thoughts rattling around in my head, bullet points might be as good as it gets for now.

• There’s been a long-time West Coast - East Coast argument among my friends related to burger joints: In-N-Out vs. Five Guys. I like Five Guys, and today made my first trip to In-N-Out. It was fine, but it’s no Five Guys.
• I had more response on Twitter and Facebook to my burger joint comments than I’ve had on any post for months. Apparently I have a lot of friends who have very strong opinions about burger joints.
• It’s been a burger-heavy trip; I ate at Hodad’s at a friend’s recommendation on Monday night. It was also pretty tasty.
• I love the SoCal weather but can’t imagine living here. The traffic. :shudder:

Some thoughts unrelated to my location this week, in decreasing levels of significance:

• Ferguson, Missouri. So sad. So much pent-up history rearing its head the past week or two.
• Everywhere else in the world: apparently also falling apart. Come quickly Lord Jesus.
• I have a long post about death rattling around in my head but no time or will to write it right now.
• I’ve found precious little interesting new music this year, but the eponymous debut record by the band Colony House is a winner.
• I won (well, shared) the “Special K” award in our church softball league this season: the award for the most strikeouts. I think I had two.

Just a few random observations…

• Crazy softball game in our church league last night. We were behind 3-0 most of the night, then with two outs in the bottom of the 5th inning we scored 13 runs to invoke the mercy rule. Wild.
• I finally got my iPhone back from Apple after I sent it in to get the lock button replaced. Or at least I got an iPhone back. I didn’t record serial numbers, but the device ID reported by my work’s network is different, and it’s missing the little scratch on the screen. I’m not complaining - it’s basically a like-new iPhone 5, 18 months after I originally purchased it.
• Curious what the iPhone 6 will turn out to be and whether it’ll be enough to tempt me into an upgrade. If they have a larger device and I can get a decent price for my old iPhone, that might be enough… otherwise I can always wait for the inevitable iPhone 6S.
• I thought I lost my Fitbit somewhere going through security on the way home from my business trip last week. Was thinking it’d be a good excuse to need to check out the next round of wearable devices undoubtedly coming out this fall. Ends up I found it this morning in an obscure corner of my backpack. Oh well.
• Looking forward to meeting another “internet friend” in person tomorrow. I’ve met a couple dozen folks over the past decade who started out as “internet friends”, and they’ve been pretty consistently awesome. I have no doubt this next one will be, too.
• I’m feeling really tired this morning. I have a few vacation days scheduled over the next couple weeks, which should help. I need to schedule a few more. Things just don’t slow down.