Chance Meetings with Friends

It has been a nice morning thus far. I got up at my usual early hour, got motivated enough to go run (woohoo! it feels good.) and then decided somewhat on a whim (and also influenced by the absence of any milk in the house for my cereal) to go grab a light breakfast at the little restaurant in the Hy-Vee grocery store. I took my Bible along to read a little, and figured it’d be a nice way to get the morning started.

Not two minutes after I walked in, Sam walked in behind me. He and I used to have breakfast there on a regular basis, but my busy schedule put an end to that a couple of months ago. So it was really serendipitous this morning to have him show up and join me for breakfast. We got to chat for a bit, mostly about work and stuff, but still just good to catch up.

So Lord, I hope You’re not too put off that I didn’t read like I was planning to; that one Psalm was good stuff, though. I will assume that You decided it was more important that I visit with Sam this morning. And I’m OK with that. Thanks.

Holiday and Vacation

It’s now been 10 days since I’ve actually set foot in my office. Last week was the conference to Atlanta, and then I took Friday off. Now it’s Monday, and I get today and then tomorrow off for Independence Day. It’s gonna feel weird to actually go back to work… but there will be a lot to be done.

This weekend we have the whole family here at the house; Ryan came in from Chicago, Aaron is back from Panama, Andrew and Dad and Mom came down from Wisconsin, and Rebecca is now in Cedar Rapids but she came over here to spend the night with the family. Good times. Aaron has become a total Caedmon’s Call fanatic :-) and has become very, very good on the guitar. It’s fun to be able to just sit down and sing Caedmon’s or Derek Webb songs with all the harmony and stuff.

This morning after breakfast I went on a long bike ride - probably 15 miles or so. It’s been too long since I’ve been out for a good ride. It feels good; I need to be more active. I gained 5 pounds on my business trip last week; too much good food and too much sitting on my backside.

This afternoon we’ll grill out and then I dunno what we’ll do tonight - Rebecca’s gotta work, but the rest of us will still be here until tomorrow.

Atlanta: Impressions

This is the first time I’ve ever visited Atlanta. I’ve driven through a few times, but that doesn’t count. I’ve driven around the north end of Atlanta for a while the past few days, and there are things that stick out. There are churches everywhere. I didn’t think that Iowa was that godless, but I can’t believe how many more churches it seems like there are here. And BIG churches. Wowza. There’s also a lot of Chick-fil-a restaurants. We have one in Cedar Rapids, but I think there’s one on every corner here in Atlanta. But all the signs still say “Closed Sunday”, though, so that’s cool.

I have a theory that not all of Atlanta is under construction, but I’ve yet to see too much evidence to back that theory up. I’ve seen construction everywhere. There’s construction at the airport. There’s construction at the hotel/convention center where I’m at. I’ve been to two shopping malls, there is construction at both of them. I’ve been through road construction on every trip so far. Sheesh people, get things fixed already!

I am a bit surprised that the accents I’ve heard so far aren’t that thick; certainly not near so much as the ones I heard in Tennessee and Kentucky last week. Maybe I just haven’t talked to the right people. My waitress last night had a German accent; the guy I’m listening to at the conference right now has an Indian accent so think I can’t even understand him. Maybe I’ll get a better reading on accent tonight when I have dinner with Jeff and Adriene.

All in all, Atlanta has been A-OK so far. That being said, there’s no place like home.

Road Trip: Andy O CD Release Show

After hearing the announcement that “much rock will be had”, I decided if I could make it work in my schedule, I’d head on a road trip to Nashville to see Andrew Osenga’s The Morning CD release concert. The schedule worked out, and next thing you know, I was on the road.

It’s not as bad a drive as I’d feared from Cedar Rapids to Nashville. I left at 4:30 am, and with very minimal stoppage I arrived in Nashville by 2:30 pm. I checked into my motel and then left to drive around and aquaint myself with the Nashville area. I drove past one shopping mall that was very dead, and then another one which turned out to be the Green Hills Mall that Andy Gullahorn sings about. After having located Mercy Lounge and how to get there, I went back to my motel to crash.

I apparently gave myself too much time to get down to the Lounge, because I got there about 30 minutes before the published “doors open” time. Deciding to escape the heat and humidity outside, I stuck my head in and managed to hear the end of Andy and the band’s sound check.

There were two openers for Andy; the first was Dave somebody; he sported a Napoleon Dynamite-style afro and a bunch of falsetto vocals with his acoustic guitar. Not bad, but not very memorable. The second act was Matthew Perryman Jones. MPJ is one of the Square Pegs, but I hadn’t heard any of his music until that night. He was very good. He played a few songs solo, then brought Andy O, Cason Cooley, and Eric Weigel up to play with him. Again, very good stuff. I bought his new CD Throwing Punches In The Dark after the show.

Then it was time for Andy. He was playing with a full band: Cason Cooley on keyboards, Eric Chris Weigel on bass, Paul Eckberg on drums, and a guitarist Jason Feller on guitar, and a percussionist whose name escaped me. They played a lot of music from Andy’s new album The Morning, starting out in album order with In Gym Class In High School, After The Garden, and White Dove. He played a few songs from his earlier album Photographs, including Kara and When Will I Run. The highlight of the night was probably his rocking Santa Barbara from the new album. It is a classic roll-the-windows-down rock and roll song, and it was great that night.

I thoroughly enjoyed the show, and also the chance to meet a bunch of folks, some I had already met, some I had not. This is where I name drop (though is it really name dropping if the people are only “names” to a few people?) : Geof Morris (of rmfo.net fame), Ron Davis (aka Ronzilla) of moreron.com, a couple of other dot.netters, and then in addition to the aforementioned band members, there were Jeremy Casella, Chris Mason, Andy Peterson, Ben Shive, Randall Goodgame, and oh yeah, Andy O’s wife Alison. Very cool.

After helping carry Andy’s gear down to his car, I called it a night and crashed hard at the motel. The following day brought me back on the reverse trip from Nashville to Cedar Rapids; again about a 10 hour drive. It was a great time, well worth the drive. As I told Andy, next time I’ll come back, but I’ll bring my wife along. :-)

Well whaddaya know?

CID has free wireless internet in the terminal. My flight was delayed by about 15 minutes, but now I guess it’s about time to board. I wonder if DFW has wireless? I guess I’ll find out in a couple of hours.

Today's Lesson: Motor Mounts

Yesterday I had an unhappy occurrance. I had stopped at Quik Trip to get some gas on my way to work. When I got back in the car and turned the key: nothing. No lights, no radio, definitely no engine turning. I checked the basic things I know to check (battery cable connections, fuses, etc) and found nothing apparently wrong. So I coasted it down from the gas pumps into a parking spot and walked the 6 blocks home and took the minivan to work. Soon I got a tow truck called and since my preferred mechanic was booked full until Tuesday (a day on which I plan to be on the road), I had the tow take it to the local Saturn dealership’s service department.

Two hours later I get the phone call. They checked everything out, my alternator is fine, my battery is fine. However, I had a bad connection with a battery cable/terminal. So they replaced it, and now the car starts fine, even better than before. However, they did notice that a motor mount had collapsed and needed replaced. I did a quick bit of investigation, ascertained that motor mounts are probably important, and had them replace it. So by 3 pm they had sent a nice lady in a courtesy car to pick me up, and upon my payment of around $200, I got a car back that had a new negative battery cable, a new motor mount, and an oil change.

What I had not realized was how much of a difference the motor mount made. The engine just feels tighter now. It accelerates better. It’s just all-around improved. I took it for a spin up a few exits on the interstate last night with the windows down and the cool night air in the cabin, and it was glorious. Oh, and the car ran really nicely, too. I think it’s ready to make the trip to Nashville next week.

If you’re ever buying a used car, I could recomment the ‘99 Saturn SL - at least, my ‘99 Saturn SL. We bought it 5 years ago, have put 70k miles on it, and so far the only two repairs have been an oxygen sensor back in ‘03, and now the motor mount. That’s a level of repair I can handle.

road tripping

In a bout of insanity, I have decided to take two days off work and drive to Nashville for Andy Osenga’s CD release concert. I don’t know what possessed me. But I’m looking forward to getting to meet Geof and maybe some others, and seeing Andy do a full show with a full band… awesome.

“Much rock will be had.” – Andrew Osenga

:-)

I'm sore... but I think it feels good.

Having been disgusted with my lack of exercise for a while, and having been challenged by my wife’s initiative to start swimming on a regular basis, I bit the bullet yesterday and set my alarm back an extra half-hour so I could get up and run to start the morning. Yesterday morning wasn’t too bad - I was ready to get up at 5:15, I did about 2 miles in 20 minutes, and felt pretty good. Woohoo!

Fast-forward to this morning. 5:15 seemed much earlier. I was sore. But I argued enough with myself to go ahead and get out of bed and do it again. But my heel was hurting this time; it felt like it was rubbing funny against my shoe, enough to hurt a bit, but I didn’t think there was much to it. Finally I sat down on a park bench about half-way through my run, and found that I had a bloody sock to rival Curt Schilling’s. Bummer. I guess it was worse than I thought. So I’m wearing my sandals to work today, and I’ll have to figure out what to do with the shoes this weekend. I’ve had ’em for 3 years or so, but haven’t worn them that much - they should still be in decent shape… oh well, I’ll figure it out this weekend.

So anyway, now I’m at work feeling a little bit sore. But that feels good - much better to have sore muscles than to be feeling fat and lazy. :-)

It's Monday already...

That’s actually not a bad thing, just a statement of fact. Had a nice weekend; installed a screen door on the side entrance to our house. It went pretty easily, but I ran down the batteries in my drill and had to wait until Sunday for them to charge up so I could finish the job. Note to self: pick up a cheap electric (plug-in) drill sometime so that doesn’t happen again.

Sunday was nice, church in the morning went well, then finished the aforementioned screen door, then later on we took Laura to the splashpad at the park. She’s still a little bit scared of the water, and quite a bit intimidated by the throngs of (larger) kids, but she’s figuring it out and getting braver. I have to keep reminding myself that she’s not even 2 yet. Amazing. Then we came home and I washed all of the nasty tree pollen and junk off the car, Laura helped with that, too. Give her a wash rag and she has all sorts of fun. Becky took some pictures, if they turned out I’ll have to post one.

It was awesome sleeping weather last night; it only got down to about 70 in the house, but the humidity was really low. Nice to have the windows open again and the a/c off at least for a day. Now it’s Monday and back-to-work time. This afternoon is softball… it will be fun to play again after a week off for the holiday. I’ve got Andy O’s The Morning playing on the iPod for about the zillionth time since I got it, and it’s still good. Probably even better than the first several times. More good stuff to appreciate each time. You’ll probably get tired of my raving about The Morning before I get tired of raving, so just get used to it… or go buy the album and joing the raving maniacs. :-)

weekend, where did you go?

Well it’s long past time for a weekend update.

Becky’s folks have been here for just over a week now (since May 20th) and we’ve been enjoying their visit. They will be leaving tomorrow to continue on their adventure across the USA. Becky’s mom is blogging their adventures, you might want to follow along! But that’s not about the weekend, now, is it?

Friday night my folks, my brother Ryan, and sister Rebecca came to visit. It was great to see them again. Rebecca is getting ready to move down to Cedar Rapids in a few weeks, so we’ll be seeing quite a bit more of her, I think. Which would be a good thing.

Saturday we didn’t do too much; some shopping occurred, and Becky and I went to a graduation party for a young man from church.

Sunday was busy. I led the WT playing the bass for the first time. It went pretty well, and I sure enjoyed playing bass. Wish I had an opportunity to do it more often. But I’m not about to want to get rid of the bass player we already have - he’s awesome. Then at the end of the first service we dedicated Addison. Then the second service was pretty much the same except we had two baptisms, and no baby dedication.

Sunday afternoon we all went out to Stone City to visit the Berberich’s. It’s always a good time. Stayed there until around 6:30. Then late Sunday night Becky, Ryan, Rebecca and I went to see the new X-Men movie. It was pretty good, but not nearly as good as X1 and X2. Still, it was fun to go out on the town and have mom and dad stay home with the kiddos. :-)

Monday we slept in, grilled out, and then my family took off for their homes. So things are finally calming down. But then last night Laura was up 6 times during the night throwing up. She was one unhappy camper. We quickly progressed through all the sheets we had for her crib, and then went to blankets and towels. She was sleeping OK, but just kept waking up vomiting. Yuck. But Becky reports that she’s doing better today, that some food is staying down, so hopefully she’s on the mend.

With so little sleep last night, something tells me I won’t manage to stay up through the whole Suns-Mavericks game tonight…