odds and ends January 2006

I’ve been a bit haphazard in my posting habits lately, so I’ll just dump a bunch of stuff in here in lieu of a real post. I’ve been reading lots of stuff lately, just not posting. I’ll have to make that change.

I’m headed to Wichita tomorrow for my DER orientation. It’s just a one-day session, so I’ll be on the late flight home tomorrow (back to CID at 10:04 PM). So beginning on Thursday, I will officially be a DER Candidate and can start reviewing stuff and recommending approval of TSO items. It’s a fairly significant new chapter in my career here.

Next topic: congratulations to my friends Lee & Amber Adams on the birth of their daughter Adi Grace early Sunday morning! Adi is their first, and I’m sure they will soon come to find just how wonderful daughters are. :-) Now we just need to take a trip down to see them sometime…

Next topic: Last night was the talent show at church. I did two songs, opening the show with Randall Goodgame’s Susan Coats’ Pants and finishing up the show with Andy Gullahorn’s Holy Flakes. Becky noted afterwards that most people’s response to the former was “huh?” She said it’s mostly a “Chris song”, which I think means that my weird sense of humor appreciates it, but most (normal) people won’t. Oh well, that’s what talent shows are for. The most frequent question after the talent show was “where do you find these songs?” I take great pleasure in knowing that I can dig up songs that nobody’s heard of but that people really like. Of course, I really only get away with it because I’m the only one at the church that listens to all of the Square Peg types.

I guess that’s it for now. I promise I’ll try to write a sensible post soon.

I still feel the same...

I thought I’d feel different by now.

I remember sitting in a recliner in the living room of a quiet house after the boys I was babysitting had been sent to bed. I remember thinking what a nice scenario it was: a house, a wife, children, stability. I remember being that high-schooler sitting there, leaning back and trying to imagine, for a moment, what it would be like to be in that position someday. I remember thinking that it would be a great quiet confident feeling to sit back, survey my domain, and relax in the peace that came from such stability. I remember thinking how wonderful it would feel to be that different person.

That was 1993, nearly half a life ago. I’m married to a wonderful woman. I own my own home. (No recliner yet.) I have a daughter that is the sweetest little girl that has ever walked the earth. Another child on the way. I have a job that I like, and that likes me. All those things I had wished for, I now find I have. But I still feel like I’m the same person. I still have internal conflicts, fears, and doubts. I’m still imperfect. (Why did I think that would ever change?) I still worry. I still feel guilt, frustration, and anger. I still wonder about the future. There are still times when I am happy to just crank up my iPod and let the music block the world out for a while.

This is probably my biggest surprise about growing up: that while everything around me has changed, and I undoubtedly have changed, I don’t feel like I’ve changed. Maybe I lack perspective. Maybe if I compared snapshots instead of the continuum, I’d see the differences more starkly. Maybe I’m just forgotten what it felt like to be a teenager. But maybe not.

A person twice my age will read this, shake their head, and think I could’ve told him that, and it’s likely that 20 years from now I’ll say the same thing. But today I’m not willing to write it off quite that quickly. It means something that the desires of a dozen years ago are still wandering around in me today. There’s something to be learned from the knowledge that home, wife, and child haven’t fully satisfied them. I know some of the answers, but for today I think I’d rather just sit back and ponder the questions. Maybe I need to go find a recliner…

and it comes around to me... "4 things"

I’ve kinda been waiting for this one… Thanks Stephanie for tagging me!

Four jobs I’ve had

  • roofer during a hot Texas summer
  • Waiter at “Hennington’s” in Granbury, TX
  • fixer-upper of messed-up data for the BNSF railroad
  • resident computer geek for JW Operating of Longview TX

Four movies I could watch over and over

  • Lost in Translation
  • The Princess Bride
  • Fiddler on the Roof
  • The Thomas Crowne Affair

Four books I could read over and over

  • The Lord of the Rings
  • The Chronicles of Narnia
  • Orthodoxy (Chesterton)
  • the Manifold series (Stephen Baxter)

Four places I have lived

  • Fremont, NE
  • Granbury, TX
  • Longview, TX
  • Hiawatha, IA

Four TV shows I watch

  • House
  • MI-5 (Spooks for you British types)
  • Hustle (a new show on AMC, also by the BBC)
  • pretty much any sports

Four places I have been on vacation (ok, so I haven’t traveled much)

  • Destin, FL
  • Estes Park, CO
  • Chicago, IL
  • Los Angeles, CA

Four websites I visit daily other than email

Four favorite foods

  • Enchiladas
  • Sesame Chicken
  • Pizza
  • a good steak

Four places I’d like to be right now

  • not at work
  • at home with Becky and Laura
  • at my favorite coffeehouse with a good book and my laptop
  • on vacation someplace warm and slow-paced

Four bloggers I’m tagging

You Probably Shouldn’t Lead Worship Anymore If… - purgatorio

It’s a bit image-intensive, but it’s a hilarious post that worship leaders and really all church music types will enjoy. Click the link!

You Probably Shouldn’t Lead Worship Anymore If… - purgatorio

a good weekend to be off

Yesterday was my first Sunday of just taking a break from leading the worship team. David Green did a very respectable job in my absence. The Lord used this weekend to remind me once again that His plans are so much better than mine. He knew I would need this weekend off.

Laura was difficult all weekend. It’s not really her fault; she’s teething, which makes her cranky anyway. It was combined with a cold this time (a cold that I have too), so in addition to the drooling, her sinuses are perpetually clogged, and she’s been running a 103 degree fever. Tylenol or Motrin will bring the fever down for a few hours and turn her back into her bubbly self, but about 4 hours into the 6-hour dosage, the fever comes back and she gets owly again. She’s not sleeping well, either; she’s been in our bed the last two nights, which is a last resort for us. We don’t sleep well with her in the bed; she’s a restless sleeper and snores. However, it’s better to lose sleep to a snoring baby in your bed than to a crying baby in the other room.

Sunday I made it up in time to get to the second service at church, so I did get to hear the sermon and the worship team. Like I said, they were pretty good, David’s got a good musical sense. Mostly they were just lacking a clear leader. Somebody on the WT has to know where you’re going, when you’re going there, and then just grab everybody and take them along. That just takes practice, and time doing it. As long as people are willing, I’ll be happy to provide them opportunities to practice, and any coaching that I can do along the way.

Now it’s Monday. Becky reports that Laura is still feeling bum this morning. Please, Lord, can this teething get done with?

the next album I'll have to buy

Andy Osenga notes today that Ben Shive is going to release his own album. No word yet on when this will happen (Andy intimates maybe sometime this year), but Ben’s website announcing that fact is funny enough to make it worth the read.

Don’t know who Ben Shive is? For shame! The man is a genius, I tell you. Genius.

finally up and running

It’s taken too long, but noelridge.org is finally up and running with real pictures of our people and a color scheme that’s much more readable than the old light green. Now there’s just regular maintenance to do… but that’s fairly easy.

This task has been on my list of stuff to finish for far too long now, so it’s good to get it done.

being productive

Last night Becky was gone to a baby shower at the church, and so after I put Laura to bed around 7 I had a couple of hours to myself. As tempting as it was to sit down and watch Month Python & the Holy Grail (which Becky hates and I haven’t watched in a long time), I decided to get some useful stuff done.

Who’d believe how much you can get done in 90 minutes? I got the dishes done, got most of our income tax stuff figured out (thanks to TurboTax… now we’re just waiting for my W2 and we can file), and got stuff coordinated for worship team this weekend. And I still had time to turn on a movie that was on the Tivo that I thought I might like. It ended up being kinda boring, so I ignored it.

Tonight I have free again. I think I’ll do some playing with Photoshop and maybe we’ll watch some movie we can agree upon. Either that or we’ll start watching the American Idol auditions… that should be good for a laugh or two.

Oh, I should also add a comment about a new TV show we watched last night - it’s called Hustle and it airs on AMC. It’s produced by the BBC, and the best way to describe it is as Ocean’s 11 in a one-hour show. I’m looking forward to seeing a few more episodes… the first one was pretty good.

BookJournal: Fortunes of War

Fortunes of War is a recent title from Stephen Coonts. It is in many respects a standard military adventure novel, but it is based on an interesting premise. What if a newly militarized Japan tried to seize Siberia from a weakened Russia? How would the world respond? What might happen?

From there the action is good enough to make it a decent read. The story focuses on two fighter pilots, one American, one Japanese, who are friends but end up fighting on opposite sides. The story almost wraps up a little too quickly and neatly; I was left wishing for something a little less formulaic.

Now, maybe I’m a hard audience to please; Red Storm Rising has always been my benchmark of a good war novel. Sure, it’s long, and has a gazillion plot threads, and is (like all of Tom Clancy’s stuff) overly technical, but that’s the way I like ’em. As much as I wish Clancy and/or Bond’s writing schedule would accelerate a bit, I’ll take their epics over the consistent (but formulaic) offerings from Coonts any day.

FeedLounge!

The long-awaited FeedLounge finally opened for public signups yesterday. For those of you not familiar, FeedLounge is a web-based RSS aggregator/feed reader. As a sometime-user of Google Reader and a sometime-user of Bloglines, and never very happy with either, I was excited to hear that this product might be what I was looking for. Geof has been alpha-testing for a while and has sung its praises far and wide, so I was all primed and ready to sign up yesterday.

Having been a FeedLounge subscriber for all of twelve hours now, I can say this: I am not disappointed. FeedLounge has an amazing user interface, good enough that though it’s just a web page, it tempts you to think that you’re running a separate application. It allows for feed tagging, tagging and flagging of individual posts, and, what may be one of my favorite features already, direct links to subscribe to comments for blog posts that provide you that capability. Fantastic!

FeedLounge won’t be for everyone. If you’re only subscribing to a dozen or so blogs, just use bloglines or something similar. Also, FeedLounge is a subscription service; $5/month or $50/year. Well worth it, IMO, but that’s your judgement to make. But for people like me who are subscribed to hundreds of feeds and want to be able to get at them from anywhere, FeedLounge is a great way to go.