Chris​Hubbs​.com

It’s Thursday at nearly 7 pm and I’m on the next-to-last day of a quick business trip to France. This is my first visit to France, so my bullet point format seems useful for sharing a few assorted observations after a few days here.

• Jet lag is aggravated by shifted working hours. At home, I’m an early bird. Up before 5 am, at work before 7, home by 4, asleep by 10. Here work starts around 9, and dinner doesn’t start until at least 8. Last night’s dinner with customers started at 8:45 pm and ended just after midnight. Yummy food, but tough in the morning.
• I think I could spend a full day exploring the Amsterdam airport before I really got bored. The place is huge. Unfortunately I only have 65-minute layovers there both directions.
• For business hours being so late, all the shopping around here apparently closes at 5pm sharp. Makes it hard to shop for the family when I’m not here for a weekend. (Sorry in advance, family.)
• If I were coming here very often, I would need to learn some French.
• The food has been really good. I guess that shouldn’t come as a surprise.
• I’ll probably set 3 alarms tonight to make sure that I wake up in time to catch my 6 am flight.
• I know I’m bigger than the average human, but it’s still a little unnerving when every toilet I sit down on gives off ominous creaking noises as if it were going to fall off the wall.
• That last bullet probably gave you an unpleasant mental image. Sorry.
• OK, if I were really sorry I would’ve deleted that bullet.

Tomorrow morning at 6am I leave Toulouse. TLS -> AMS -> ATL -> CID and Lord willing I’m home by 4 pm Central time. That’s a long day, but with a happy end.

Because hey, I haven’t done one of these on a Thursday for a while.

• It’s been kinda quiet at work this week. Certainly that won’t last.
• Looks like I’m going to make my first trip to Europe in a couple of weeks for some work meetings. Gonna be a lot of flying for two days of work, but it’ll at least cement my frequent flyer status for another year.
• With the cold wet weather all week I have this suspicion we’re gonna go from pseudo-winter to summer without a decent stretch of spring in between. Which is kind of a bummer. I like spring.
• I’m not sure what it is about Stephen Hough’s playing, but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every record of his that I’ve gotten so far. (I got his new one, “In the Night”, this week. Hyperion has the digital downloads available a couple weeks before the CD drops.) My favorite is still his recording of Rachmaninov’s second concerto, though.
• I’m annoyed that Home Sharing doesn’t work well on iOS7. I wanted to listen to that new Stephen Hough record on my phone in my bedroom last night, and should’ve been able to just hook up to home sharing from my iTunes library on my iMac. However, it stalls out about 80% of the way through the loading process and never actually works. Sounds like it’s a known problem since iOS 5 or so.
• Even with that and a few other gripes with iOS, I have a hard time believing I could be inclined to get some Android phone instead of an iPhone 6 next time I need a phone.
• This fall will be the first time in nearly 15 years of owning a cell phone that I won’t be champing at the bit for my 2-year contract to come up so I can get a new phone because I’m so unhappy with my old one. (I may be champing at the bit if the iPhone 6 is particularly awesome, though. I’d love a bigger screen, and to get a 32GB model instead of the 16GB iPhone 5 I have now.)

Well, that ended up more tech-oriented than I thought it would. Sorry. That’s what you get for random bullet points.

Because hey, I like this format.

• Just when you think spring was here, we get snow. The ground and roads were covered this morning. Ick. At least it’s melted off by this afternoon.
• There’s a 60 degree day in the forecast. I’ll believe it when I see it.
• Of course, next week I’ll be in Florida for work where the highs are supposed to be in the low 80’s every day.
• You aren’t reading this just to get Chris’s thoughts on the weather, are you?
• I just submitted a big proposal at work this afternoon. Praying that it is looked upon favorably.
• I desperately need some other music to get rid of the Frozen soundtrack earworm that’s plagued me the past week. The girls have been singing “Do you want to build a snowman?” incessantly.
• I did something this morning I haven’t done in ages - turned off my alarm w/o realizing it and overslept past something on my calendar, in this case my Tuesday morning Bible study. Oops.
• I have fresh brownies on the stove and a chapter of The Hobbit to read to the girls, so this will be my last bullet.

Because, hey, it’s been a long time since I’ve done one of these.

• Did my first three-service weekend on worship team the last two days. I think I made the right decision to go to only one week per month.
• The worship set, albeit short, was a good one.
• Did a special number with a friend and it turned out really well.
• Have come to happy acceptance of the fact that I’ll never really be a soloist, but I can be a darn good backup singer. That works for me.
• Work has recently given me a case of ‘be careful what you wish for because you might just get it’. More to follow, but it’ll be an interesting next few months.
• We’re right in the middle of birthday week at the Hubbs house. Two birthdays down, one to go. Being 37 doesn’t make me feel nearly as old as having my youngest daughter turn 5 does.
• After griping that I missed Markdown support in my move back to Wordpress, my friend Randy pointed out that Wordpress added Markdown support via the Jetpack plugin a few months back. Huzzah!
• I’ve got a lot of thoughts brewing on the recent developments re: Bill Gothard and Mark Driscoll, but nothing really that feels solid enough or useful enough to be worth posting. Praying for all concerned.

Such are my scattered thoughts for Monday.

I haven’t done one of these in a while, but was reminded just how much fun they are. So, without further ado…

• I just got invited to join the Boar’s Head Tavern. More exciting than I’d like to admit.
• Just ordered a little M-Audio MIDI controller keyboard to hook up to my Mac. Christmas money well spent! Time to start playing around with Garage Band.
• I have to remind myself when blogging through Stringfellow that it’s not necessarily that I’m reading groundbreaking thoughts, but that I just haven’t read many liberal / Arminian theologians.
• After a couple of years of not traveling much, my spring looks like it’s settling into a once-a-month travel groove. December: Florida. January: Seattle. February: Washington, DC. March: Wichita.
• My not-quite-3-year-old daughter correctly used the phrase “That’s what I’m talkin’” tonight. I could not have been more proud. (We’ll get her to add the “about” one of these days.)
• Excited to hear the news that I will be an uncle come July - first time on my side of the family! So excited for Andrew and Heather.
• While I’m happy that this nifty daily Bible reading app I found for my phone might help me do the read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year thing, I feel shame that it’s taking my technology addiction to help encourage my soul addiction.
• I could’ve posted each of these as Tweets or FB status updates, but somehow this was more satisfying.

• 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.

There is a more substantive post or two in here, I promise. But for now - bullet points.

• Sewer pipe was replaced, all the pipes are now flowing smoothly. Thankful for drains that drain and that it all got done before the snow started.
• We got our Christmas tree yesterday and amazingly enough Katie hasn’t tried to pull it down yet.
• In the “for the first time in over eight months” file: all three girls slept through the night last night. AWESOME.
• I was invited to fill the pulpit at our old church plant for the Sunday after Christmas. (The new pastor will be on vacation.) I’m honored to be asked. Text will be 1 Peter 1.
• Oh yeah, did I say snow? We got just a bit overnight, but the forecasters are calling for the SNOWPOCALYPSE on Tuesday night and Wednesday - or at least 6 - 12 inches of the white stuff, along with 40 - 50 mph winds.
• Matt Chandler is the real deal. Continuing to pray for his recovery from brain surgery. This pre-surgery video is awesome.
• Every time I think I’ve gotten to some conclusion on whether we’re at the church we should be at long-term, something else comes up that pushes me back the other way. Kinda feels like we’re still in a holding pattern. Still praying.
• And to finish with the truly trivial, we watched Nebraska do again on Saturday night what they seem to do best - snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. Nobody deserved to win that Nebraska-Texas game. Texas came away the winner anyway. *sigh*

• Blog posting has been a bit slow lately since I typically post during breaks at work and my blog has mysteriously become inaccessible from work.  IT was no help in fixing it.  I’m using Posterous as a sort of go-between - a solution that works but that I’m not fond of.
• Had a good, full weekend. 
• Marriage conference Friday night and Saturday morning at church.  Very good.
• Watched a fun Hawkeye game Saturday night.  They whooped Penn State good.
• Played on the worship team Sunday morning, lots of fun.
• Finally got the fascia and soffet on the garage painted.  That’s been on my to-do list since last fall.  It looks a lot better.
• Found out Friday afternoon that the job transfer I’ve been trying to get for the past 6 months will be approved.  Will post something more officially on it once I go through all the official steps.
• The upcoming two weeks before the transfer will happen have the potential to drag a good bit.
• I have two book reviews that I need to get posted here before the publishers demand their books back.  Problem is, I’ve only gotten one of them read so far.  Posting one would be a start, I guess.

• 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.