Chris​Hubbs​.com

• FINALLY with some warmer weather here in Iowa. Softball is supposed to start in two weeks and it’s been too cold to get out to practice. Tomorrow, though, we’re supposed to hit 70. Hallelujah!
• I drove to Naperville, IL last Friday to see Andy O, Eric Peters, and Jeremy Casella play a concert. Hung out with them before and after the show (with the “after” including pizza at Giordanos!), had a great time. What a great group of guys, and so darn talented to boot.
• I posted a bunch of pictures from the concert on Flickr.
• My Flickr Pro account (gifted from Geof last year) is about to expire. I want to pay to continue it for another year, but for some reason when I go to pay it won’t accept my password… the same password it just accepted for me to log in. It happens on two different browsers. Something funky is going on.
• What, you say, it’s tax day today? Somehow April 15 is a lot less exciting when you’ve had your taxes filed and refund in hand for a couple months already.
• And to come full circle, back to softball. We’re actually going to be playing in two different leagues this year: our usual Monday night church league, and then on a Friday-night city league team to which we were invited by a friend of mine from work. Becky had to think all of about two seconds before agreeing to play in the second league… should be a lot of fun.

• 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.

Yep, 105 comments held in moderation. All of ’em spam. I guess I should tighten up Spam Karma 2 a little bit. But still, not hard to bulk-moderate ’em all into oblivion.

Other thoughts from the week:

• Cell phones showed up yesterday via Fedex. It was easy to activate them, then dialed 0 to get out of a weird automated service and talked to a very nice real person at Verizon who got our number port going.
• One odd thing: in the store and on their website, Verizon claims that porting a number over will take between one and four hours. When I actually initiated the port yesterday afternoon, the woman told me it could take up to 72 hours. It’s been 16 hours so far, and still nothing.
• We’ve had colds most all week at our house. Not fun. Haven’t actually slept through the night in a couple of weeks. No wonder I’m tired.
• Going back to Standard Time from Daylight Time makes it feel like winter to me. That’s what I associate with winter: that it’s dark by suppertime. And so it is this week. On the positive side, we’ve been getting to bed earlier, though whether that’s due more to the time change or the sickness is anyone’s guess.
• It sounds like we are ever-so-close to having a building deal done for our church plant. It will be nice to get a start date set and then get this thing going. I’m guessing the first Saturday in January - that would be 1/5/08.
• I had no meetings scheduled at work yesterday, and none again today. Must be some kind of record. Not that I’m complaining.

So that’s pretty much my week. Not very exciting.

Oh, one last thing I should mention: congratulations to my friend Geof who has won a Space Flight Awareness Award from NASA. It’s a big deal. Wish I could come with you to see the shuttle launch, G, but I don’t think I’ll get free. And I’m not a single woman, either, so I’m a bit out of your target demographic. ;-)

[As always, I am grateful to Daniel for this very useful format.]

• Addie didn’t sleep well last night. She’s getting a tight-ish cough, stuffy nose, ick. No fun.
• There’s been an owl somewhere near our bedroom window for the past few nights. That rascal hooted nearly all night.
• Read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road in one long take last night. Chilling and bleak. Images that stick in your head.
• Result of all of the above: sleepy this morning. Very sleepy.
• It also may have something to do with all the CiCi’s Pizza I ate yesterday. I think I ate a piece too much.
• A long-ish day at work today.
• Tonight we’re going to see David Wilcox in concert here in CR. We’re going with some new friends of ours. Should be fun. Hope I stay awake.

Bullet points for the weekend:

• Church plant plans are moving right along. Looking like the start date might be the beginning of the year.
• Tonight will be my first night all week of just coming home from work and being home. Too many evening activities makes for a long week.
• Major weekend activity: tree trimming and collecting brush. Hiawatha picks up brush starting Monday.
• Waiting to hear whether or not I get a freelance website development job. Hoping I do.
• You know you’re short on sleep when the Diet Pepsi doesn’t really help things any.
• The new Iron and Wine album (The Shepherd’s Dog) is really good.
• The new Radiohead album is good as well. I don’t usually dig Radiohead, but the new album is quite accessible.
• Meebo (my browser-based chat client of choice) just released a Firefox plugin that’s actually pretty good. Not perfect yet, but beats having to keep extra FF windows open.

That was pretty random. Sorry.

• Had a productive weekend; got the lawn mowed, some concrete patching done, led music at church.
• Miserable weekend as a sports fan: Cubs played terrible and got swept; Huskers got mauled by Mizzou; Hawkeyes ran into a freight train called Penn State. At least the NHL season is new, so Dallas can’t be too far out of it yet.
• I’m headed to Oklahoma City for training tomorrow. Can’t imagine it’ll be too exciting. Let’s just see if I can get somewhere on time this time. My recent luck with flights hasn’t been good. Flying United this time.
• Listening to the new album from Iron and Wine. It’s good.
• I am officially now a Company Designated Engineering Representative (DER) for the FAA. I have only partial approval authority at the moment; it’ll take time and experience to get full approval authority.
• It’s been a week now of just bringing a bottle of pop to work in the morning rather than filling my mug at the convenience store. It’s going OK. I have decided, though, that Coke Zero is too sweet for me - I like Diet Pepsi better.

[Once again, thanks to dan for creating a good format to rip off.]

• Laura turns three today! Happy birthday to my little sweetheart.
• New Orleans was pretty cool. I have a couple of blog posts floating around in my head, maybe I’ll have some time this weekend to write them out.
• Never trust the airline when they say “oh, everything will be delayed, so you’ll make your connection just fine.”
• Driving home 4 hours from Chicago is long, but it beats staying there overnight.
• I almost forgot the going-away lunch in my honor scheduled for today. That would’ve been embarrassing.
• I have pretty much successfully moved into my new building/cube/department. Such fun.