It's not Monday, it just feels like it.

The joys of having a Monday holiday: a 4-day work week, and a Tuesday that feels like Monday. Oh, and a Tuesday jammed full of meetings since they couldn’t schedule ’em on Monday. (And Geof, don’t give me grief about “jammed full” - 4 meetings today is waaay more than my average has been for the past several months. :-) )

Overall had a nice weekend; a busy Saturday included playing a pipe organ for a wedding, which was kinda cool. Any real organist present would’ve recognized me for the hack organist that I am, though. My pedal skills are in the poor-to-non-existent spectrum. Also finished catching up on Harry Potter movies this weekend, and read a book called Making Room For Life, which was decent, but I guess I didn’t find it as revolutionary and impacting as my friend (who bought it for me) did.

Now it’s on to a fairly busy week; looking forward to next weekend when the cooler temps arrive (highs around 70F! Woohoo!) and my folks and brother come to visit.

Well, I asked.

Becky and the girls stopped by my workplace for a few minutes this morning to drop off some lunch for me. As I sat in the van with them chatting for a few minutes, this conversation with Laura (3 years old) ensued:

Me: Yeah, Laura, I’ve got to go back to work for a few hours…. but then I’ll come home.

Laura: And you’ll go wee, wee, wee…. all the way back to my house?

[Becky chokes strangling laughter at this point.]

Me: Yep, then I’ll come back to your house. Wee, wee, wee, like the little piggies? Are you saying that Daddy is a little piggie?

Laura, with comic scorn: No.  [Pause for perfect comedic timing.] You’re a BIG piggie!

Well, I asked.

Caedmon's Call - Overdressed

Well at least half of you who read this blog are already listening to this album, but I should still note that Caedmon’s Call released their 15th album yesterday, entitled Overdressed. It marks the return of Derek Webb as a contributor to Caedmon’s, though whether he’s actually considered a “member” of the band is fuzzy to me at the moment… the word “contributor” has been used more, I think.

Christianity Today gave this album 5 out of 5 stars yesterday, and it deserves them. Good solid music and songwriting all the way around. My man Andy Osenga had a lot of influence on this album, and it’s better off for it.

If you’re interested in Overdressed, you can check out the info over on the cc.net Song Vault. Also, Bryan Allain has been doing some amazing liveblogging from the past few days and there are multiple videos, pictures, and inside info on songs available on CaedmonsCall.net. Go check it out. You can buy the album from their online store, too. I don’t think it’s available on iTunes yet, but it should be shortly.

Bullet Points for a Monday

How can it have been a week since I last posted? Well, it has been busy. So in the spirit of “short updates are better than none”, here we go.

  • Airline travel can be a pain in the backside. After two canceled flights on Monday, flew to Seattle early Tuesday morning. Got to my committee meeting a couple of hours late.
  • Kudos to the hotel (the Hilton Garden Inn in Renton) for being nicely setup for wi-fi access; seamless transitions between the meeting room, lobby, and bedroom.
  • Got to see my college roommate Matt and his wife Abbie one evening. Had a good time catching up.
  • Got to meet my partner-in-crime TK for some breakfast and Starbucks on Thursday morning. Also took a couple of cheesy pictures and some even cheesier video.
  • Managed to leave a library book in my hotel room in Seattle. :-( They said they didn’t find anything, but I’m sure I left it there. I’ll call again today and see if it turned up.
  • Finished the Harry Potter series while on the trip. The ending to Book 7 was almost perfect. The most I’ve enjoyed a series of books in a long, long time.
  • Got home and had to mow the grass since it had been raining all week. It took twice a long as usual to mow. Ugh.
  • Preached on Sunday morning. Audio available if you’re curious.
  • Talked to my brother Ryan last night for a little while. He’s really having a tough time at the moment, wrestling with some tough decisions. Pray for him.
  • Caedmon’s Call did their first show to release their new album, Overdressed, last night. There has been some seriously great liveblogging going on. (Go, Bryan!) What I wouldn’t give to have been there. At least it sounds like we’ll get a bootleg from the concert sometime soon.

I’m now back in the office for six weeks before my next trip. It will be nice to settle into some sort of schedule.

How can it be so hard to leave town?

Instead of sitting here writing this blog post, I should be on a Boeing 757 just taking off from Minneapolis en route to Seattle.  But you’re reading this, which means I’m writing it, which means yeah, I’m not on the plane.  I don’t know if it’s weather or just general incompetence, but Northwest Airlines decided to cancel my 12:45 flight from Cedar Rapids to MSP.   I found this out around 10 AM, contacted travel, and got a rebooked flight on Alaska Airlines, leaving Cedar Rapids at 1:30.

As soon as I saw the booking info, I checked online to see the departure status.  What? Canceled?!?  Yes, American Eagle (codesharing with Alaska Air) canceled the 1:30 flight from Cedar Rapids to Chicago.  Back on the phone with corporate travel.  Everything was booked on all the remaining flights out of Cedar Rapids today.  Unbelievable.   Finally I am set up on a 5:10 AM flight tomorrow morning from CR.  If everything goes on time (a big if IMHO), I will get into Seattle around 9 AM Seattle time, and make it to my conference only an hour or so late.

Not fun.

New Specs

I got my most recent pair of glasses about 6 years ago.  Now, I don’t wear them all that often; my Focus Night and Day 30-day contact lenses have been my friends.  But still, there are times when I need or want to wear the glasses.  My existing pair is half-rim, and while they seemed at the time I bought them to be really small lenses, in reality they are still pretty big.  I’ve been thinking of getting a new pair for a while now, but the opportunity hadn’t presented itself.

This afternoon, though, I will be headed to visit my friend Roy who is an optician.  He says that the folks in his office can pick out the employees from my company just by the glasses they choose; engineers and nerds, all.  He has promised that the pair of glasses I end up with won’t make me look like an engineer.  I’m looking forward to the change.

Seattle

It’s 8 AM in Seattle and this hotel restaurant is a pretty comfortable place to sit and write.  The in-room web access doesn’t seem to be working, but the wi-fi in the lobby works just fine, so I can sit here and catch up on news and email whilst eating from the voluminous breakfast buffet.    It’s fairly cloudy and cool this morning, but there’s the threat of sunshine this afternoon, which would be nice.

I’m in town to support a meeting with a customer, but it still leaves me with most of the morning (the meeting doesn’t start until 11) and a good portion of the afternoon (the meeting is over by 2 or so) free.  Couldn’t manage to get a flight back home tonight on short notice, so I"ll be leaving on the early (5:45) flight in the morning.  Such fun.

This is my third trip to Seattle, and I really do enjoy the area.  So beautiful with the mountainous terrain, all the water, and I just adore the cool weather.  After the meetings today I’m planning on heading downtown to the Pike Place Market; for sure a tourist location, but it’s been recommended by a couple friends so I guess I’ll give it a go.  I’ll be sure to post pics tomorrow when I get home.

Well, I’ve pretty much finished up here at the restaurant so I think I’ll move to the lobby, find a plug-in for this laptop, and start working on some work stuff.  Should be at least moderately productive today.  :-)

Headed Out, West Coast Edition

I’m sitting in the airport terminal at Cedar Rapids as the plane that is supposed to take me to Chicago is unloading its prior passengers.   From there it’s off to Seattle.  If all goes well I should be there by 8 PM Seattle time.   I’m making this whole trip in order to be in person to make a twenty-minute presentation for a customer.   Such fun.  But it will allow some time tomorrow afternoon for some sightseeing in Seattle before heading back home early Tuesday morning.  I’m bringing the good camera; hopefully I’ll have some good pictures to share once I get back.

New Orleans: Music and all that Jazz

One of the things that was high on my list of things to do while in New Orleans a few weeks ago was to find someplace with live music. New Orleans is all about jazz and blues, after all. It was pretty wild to walk through the French Quarter and think that guys who are jazz heroes of mine like Harry Connick, Jr. and the Marsalis family spent time playing in the clubs on those streets. So very cool.

I headed around the Quarter rather early in the evening, which unfortunately cut down my number of opportunities to hear the live music. Most of it started later - 8 or 9 PM. However, I did hear a very good older band at a little bar that I am thinking was called something about the Society for the Preservation of Jazz; I can’t find a link on a quick Google search to back me up. They played pretty good standard New Orleans jazz, but they were old-timers; nary a dark hair in the bunch - all grey.

As I headed back to my hotel, I ran into a group of about a dozen teenagers playing on the corner of Canal and Bourbon Streets. They were mostly brass instruments with a couple saxophones thrown in for good measure and a rockin’ percussion section. And they were smokin’ hot. My little video clip here really doesn’t do them justice, and I’m bummed that I didn’t think to start recording them until just near the end of their set.

It’s fun to think that one of these kids may be a jazz star of some upcoming year. While New Orleans took a massive hit from Hurricane Katrina, it sounded to me like she still couldn’t kill the music.

A real post - sort of

So most of the recent posts here have been just links to other stuff. Sorry about that. Have been doing lots of reading lately, not so much writing. Most of my writing posts here have been of merely the logistical bullet-list variety. Today I have a random assortment that isn’t entirely logistical, but is in a bullet-list; maybe there’s something you’ll want to comment on, though.

[Voice in my head: “you fool, you just fell victim to one of the classic blunders!…” which is blogging about blogging… desperate, I know. Humor me.]

So, in no particular order:

  • I still owe everybody a post on music in New Orleans. If I ever remember to up a little video to YouTube, I’ll write the post.
  • Have you ever choked yourself by having saliva “go down the wrong pipe”? It just happened to me. Weird.
  • I have lately been listening to a series of lectures by Don Carson on the book of Revelation. (You can download them here.) The amillenial viewpoint has always been a mystery to me (being raised a good dispensationalist and all), but Carson, along with a few things I’ve heard from N. T. Wright, has given me the most reasonable case yet for that position. In a lot of ways it seems to make more sense. Anybody got a book recommendation that might help me think through it some more?
  • I’ll be traveling to Seattle in a couple weeks for an industry committee meeting. Gonna meet up with my old college roommate while I’m there. Should be fun.
  • Immediately after I get back from the committee meeting I’ll be preaching during our Sunday service at Noelridge. Still trying to decide on a text.
  • Sorry, Geof, I already have a web project lined up for my trip to Seattle. It doesn’t have anything to do with any Square Pegs. :-)
  • Last but not least, congrats to my internet friend Dan who is getting married this weekend!

I told you it’d be random.

Update, one too good to pass up:

  • I just watched my wife beat on a peppermint candy with her cell phone.  Hilarious.