2008: A Year of Reading in Review

This the only year-end post I’ll write; just a summary of my book reading list from 2008.

Some quick details:

Total Books Read: 78. This is down a bit from 86 last year.

Fiction: 57. Non-fiction: 21.

That ratio is still weighted a little heavily toward fiction, I think, but when I know how shallow and quick some of those novels were and how long and think some of the non-fiction was… well, it evens out.

Favorite novel of the year: A Prisoner of Birth by Jeffery Archer. This was far and away the best, most enjoyable story I read all year. It’s essentially a modern-day retelling of Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo. What sold me on it, though, was that there were characters you could really root for. Good guys that were really good. Honorable supporting characters who remained honorable. Such a good story. I should put it on reserve at the library again.

Runner up: The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

Favorite non-fiction of the year: This is tough because non-fiction spans such a range of subjects. Some high points, though:

Worst book of the year: How Would Jesus Vote? by the late D. James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe. I thought my blog review of it was bad until I read Ron’s review. He said, in short:

The book is awful. Simply awful. I can’t stress to you how amazingly awful this book is. Do not buy, read, or borrow this book. I will likely use my copy for kindling in the fireplace this winter.

I love Ron.

OK, that’s enough book wrap-up for this year. I’m contemplating a change in format for book reviews next year, doing a full post on each book and cross-posting them to Amazon to build a little bit of reviewing credibility there. Dunno, it’s just a thought. [No, Geof, I’m not doing it entirely because you changed the format of GNM.]

Next year’s list will still exist in some format. First book on it will be an old one by Stephen Baxter. Almost finished it for 2008, but not quite.

Wedding bells, etc

I’ve taken plenty of pictures the past few days, but the dial-up internet connection here at the folks’ house isn’t up to uploading them, so they’ll wait until we get home on Sunday. (To be quite fair, my folks aren’t Luddites in the least when it comes to the internet; they simply live so far out that their only options are dial-up or ridiculously-expensive satellite. But I digress.)

It’s such fun to have the whole family together again for a weekend - Andrew and Heather are in from Washington; Ryan is here from Chicago; we’ve come up from Iowa and the rest are, for the moment, locals of Richland Center, WI. I have a feeling these full-family gatherings will be fewer and farther between as the years go on, so we need to enjoy these when we have the chance.

New Years’ Eve we celebrated Christmas as a family, exchanging gifts and eating rather too much. I was blessed with a case for my iPod and a copy of N. T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God, a lengthy volume that will likely keep me busy for a long while this upcoming year. (Thanks, Ryan!) New Years’ Day was rather uneventful; much decorating was done at the church, and it was concluded by my brother Aaron’s bachelor party - a party much unlike what typically comes to mind when you say “bachelor party”. Let’s just say it was attended by nearly 20 men who carried Bibles and weren’t afraid to use them. :-) It was a good, encouraging time, enjoyed by all.

Yesterday, though, the preparations continued in earnest for Aaron and Emily’s wedding. Final decorations were hung; we walked through the rehearsal; finally, we ate a LOT of tasty catered Mexican food for the rehearsal dinner, and celebrated Aaron’s birthday. Oh, and Rebecca made the cakes, and whipped up a LOT of frosting. (Pictures to follow.)

Now it’s Saturday morning and we’re praying that the freezing rain forecast for late this afternoon holds off for a few extra hours so everyone can make it to the wedding. The big event is at 4:30 this afternoon, with dinner and dancing to follow. Big congratulations go out to Aaron and Emily on this landmark day in their lives. Now if you’ll excuse me… I think I have a shirt to go iron.

Christmas 2008 wrap-up

Nothing like a holiday and a week off work to slow down the blog posting.

We started our Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve, attending the service at Stonebridge. While it was a bit longer service than I expected, it was quite good, and the girls managed to sit through it (a whole hour!) without making too much ruckus. Then we made a quick trip down to the Fedex office to pick up the new laptop that had made it as far as the distribution office but not actually delivered.

Christmas morning we opened presents. Highlights for the girls: Addie got a little tent and sleeping bag; Laura got a scooter and a “spotting scope”. (It looks like a pirate spyglass to me, but Diego calls his a “spotting scope” and that’s all that matters to Laura. :-)) The girls also ended up with a multitude of puzzles and DVDs. I got some good stuff, too: some gift cards to my favorite local fast-food places (guilt-free eat outs!), a new fountain pen (OK, I’ve had it for a few weeks, but it’s a Christmas present none the less), and a couple of CDs. I got Becky a new jewelry box and a Baby Blues book; she appears to be enjoying both of them.

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More Christmas photos on Flickr

On Wednesday we’re headed up to Wisconsin to see my family; Andrew and Heather are in from Washington; Ryan is in from the other Washington (DC), and Aaron and Emily are getting married on Saturday! Exciting times for the Hubbs family. Then next week “real life” starts again and I have to go back to work. I am thankful, though, for this Christmas break. A week and a half off of work is such a lovely thing this time of year. Happy New Year to you all!

My current songwriting struggle

Songwriting, you ask? Yeah, if you missed it, I was invited to attend the Iowa Songwriter’s Guild meeting last month and they planted the bug again. So I’ve been keeping the songwriting idea in mind, looking for and writing down ideas, phrases, and so on. I have at least one idea that I really like as a concept; now I have to find a way to put actual words to it.

As a worship leader and accompanist for many years, one of my greatest gifts has been that I have an immense capacity for remembering music and lyrics and then playing them back. I could sit down with nothing more than a list of song titles and play and sing you songs for hours and hours. That skill, though, seems to become a curse when it comes to songwriting. Because I have trained my brain for so many years to remember and replay other people’s melodies and lyrics, now when I try to create my own phrase, I write down two words and it makes some other song lyric pop into my head. Play a couple of chords and it pops a song into my head. And once it’s in my head, it’s hard to banish.

I’m going to keep at it, though, and hope to attend January’s Guild meeting with at least something to show for my efforts. I may not ever turn out a great song, but it’s at least worth the effort to try.

Just Us at Christmas

In the 11 or 12 Christmases Becky and I have spent together, each has been celebrated with one set of parents or the other; most of them with my family, which has always lived closer, but a few Christmases we’ve made the drive to North Carolina to celebrate with Becky’s family. This year, though, a convergence of plans and events has set things up so that we will be spending Christmas day at home, just us and the girls. We’ll get to see my family the following week (for a wedding, no less!) but this week it’ll just be us.

Becky and I now get to start to decide what our family Christmases will look like. There’s a huge amount of latitude, given that there are no expectations from anyone. If we want to make changes, now is the time. If you think about it too long, it becomes a little bit overwhelming. Becky touched on it yesterday when we were discussing our Christmas dinner menu. She said she didn’t plan on making all the usual side dishes to go with the ham, but when I noted this was her chance to start a new tradition, she said she didn’t really know where to start.

It seems to me that part of the reason traditions don’t change too greatly from generation to generation isn’t just the fond memories we have of years gone by, or the actual love of specific foods or songs; it is also the added comfort and ease of just keeping things the same - in other words: change is hard. Now, that’s not a very heartwarming thought for a pre-Christmas afternoon, but it’s what I’ve got for today.

So yeah, I don’t forsee any huge changes for the Hubbs family this Christmas. We might go wild and fix a few different side-dishes to go with the ham. But we’re still having ham. Some things are just too sacred to mess around with.

More Ketchup!

Our little Addison (age two and a half) caught a low-grade stomach bug earlier this week. She wasn’t notably ill or uncomfortable, just sleeping more than usual and not wanting to eat much of anything. That it was, in fact, a stomach bug became clear on Wednesday morning when she threw up. Still, she was running around like normal, and talked more and faster than an overcaffeinated chipmunk for the first ten minutes after I got home from work.

Later on Wednesday, with church activities canceled due to other folks being sick, we decided to go drive through Culver’s and bring some burgers home. (Oh, and some cheese curds… yum yum.) Addie wanted to eat, so we went ahead and gave her a quarter of a cheeseburger and a few fries. And I tell you: that girl went to town.

She ate the first few fries in no time flat. She asked for more. What the heck, we said. If she’s hungry and wants to eat, she can have all the fries she wants. So she ate a couple more fries, then started in on the burger. She had eaten probably half the burger, and had the rest of it half-chewed when I saw her make a gagging face. I warned Becky and she grabbed Addie’s plate (by now empty except for a few fries) and up came the burger. After a couple more heaves she was done, and her determination was remarkable. Without even sparing a second, two words came out of her mouth.

“More ketchup.”

See, it didn’t matter that she’d just thrown up her entire dinner back on to her plate. What mattered was that there were three unscathed french fries left on that plate, and there wasn’t enough ketchup left for those fries. That, my friends, is focus.

While she didn’t get the rest of those fries, she did start managing to keep food down Wednesday night, and by Thursday afternoon she was eating another cheeseburger, and more french fries, and feeling fine.

[Disclaimer so I don’t feel like a bad parent: yes, we regularly feed our kids stuff healthier than cheeseburgers. The end.]

A fun evening, a late night, and musical kinship

I’ll work through that title backwards. How do you know when you have some musical kinship with someone else? How about when they pull out that obscure song that they really like and want you to hear… and it’s a song you’ve been playing on repeat on your iPod for weeks?

That very thing happened last night at Nick and Allie’s house. After the Iowa Songwriter’s Guild house show I hung out for a while to hear some of Allie’s new hymntunes and to generally talk music with Nick, and he pulled out The Khrusty Brothers’ Sympathy for Jesus. What a great song. That provoked a discussion on Don Chaffer and Waterdeep, and ended up with Nick lending me all of his Waterdeep CDs so I can take a listen. So far, so good.

Earlier in the evening Nick & Allie hosted the Iowa Songwriters’ Guild monthly meeting, which this month was a special house show. Each of the writers played a couple of songs, and I quite enjoyed hearing folks share their talent. I was motivated to try to dust off my long-neglected songwriting chops; what remains to be seen is if that motivation will last long enough to actually write anything. Nick did send a book on songwriting home with me, though, so I’ll have to take a look at it. We’ll just have to see how it goes.

Sometimes Things Don't Turn Out Like You Expect

When Andy Osenga’s The Morning came out two and a half years ago (to much fanfare on this blog) I would not have predicted that New Beginning would become the signature track off the record. Early In The Morning would’ve been my bet, with then either House of Mirrors or Marilyn next on my list.

Thirty months later, though, New Beginning has become the most durable track, evidenced by, if nothing else, the fact that Andy is performing it almost every night this year on the Behold the Lamb Christmas tour.

The bridge of the song still gets me every time:

I can feel a prayer rising And I don’t even know the words Still the groaning is the postage And it will not be returned Though we’re living in this rubble Of our reckless plans and games We are reaching for the promise That we will not stay the same…

Thanks, Andy, for a great song.

Everybody's Working for the Weekend

Yes, we have a weekend coming up. Unfortunately, we’ll be heading into the weekend with a house full of sickies - Becky, both girls, and I are all fighting colds, coughs, and sore throats. Ick. So, here’s my list of guesses of things we’ll do this weekend.

  • We’ll want to sleep in tomorrow morning, but won’t really get to, since the girls pretty much are up at 7:00 regardless of what day it is.
  • We’ll rent another DVD or two from the store and catch up on a bit of our movie watching. Maybe Wall-E or Hancock.
  • We’ll hit CiCi’s for cheap-o pizza.
  • We won’t get to church, given that we’re all feeling icky.
  • We’ll visit the library sometime… probably Saturday.
  • We’ll watch some college football… most definitely the Florida/Alabama game.
  • I won’t post anything more interesting than this to the blog.

There’s my profound list for Friday. I’ll check back in on Monday to see what kind of score I get.

A College Football Playoff Proposal

OK, so can we just agree that the BCS really stinks, and there must be a better way to do college football playoffs? Every year there’s whining because some team deserves a shot and doesn’t get it, and some other team may not be as deserving, but the computers seem to like them… it’s just never good. So here’s my proposal for moving Division 1-A NCAA football to a playoff system.

1. Expand the Big 10 and Pac 10 to 12 teams each. There’s already a weird schedule imbalance between the Big and Pac 10’s and the SEC and Big 12. Namely: the conference playoff. The SEC and Big 12 are having big games this coming weekend, but the Big 10 has already been done with its season for two weeks now. It just ain’t right.

So get Notre Dame to join the Big 10, which would make twelve teams (Penn State joined as the 11th team almost 20 years ago). Get Utah and Boise State to join the Pac 10, giving it 12 teams. That allows each of the big 4 conferences to form two divisions and hold a conference championship game.

2. Split them into divisions this way:

Big 10 Midwest:

  • Illinois
  • Notre Dame
  • Iowa
  • Wisconsin
  • Purdue
  • Minnesota

Big 10 East:

  • Michigan
  • Michigan State
  • Ohio State
  • Northwestern
  • Penn State
  • Indiana

Pac 10 North:

  • Oregon
  • Oregon State
  • Washington State
  • Washington
  • Boise State
  • Utah

Pac 10 South:

  • USC
  • California
  • Arizona
  • Arizona State
  • Stanford
  • UCLA

There’s another added benefit: Notre Dame, Boise State, and Utah have all fairly regularly been “non-BCS” teams that got to go to BCS bowls, which always throws a wrench in the works. This would get those teams up playing with the big boys and incorporated into the system.

3. Make an 8-team playoff.

Eight teams means only three rounds. (The conference title games are effectively another round of playoffs in and of themselves, but who’s counting?) Three rounds is doable. You can use the four existing BCS bowls as hosts of the first round of the playoffs. It does mean you have to move them so that they all play the same day again, but hey, the bowls were better that way, anyway. Since we already have that silly extra National Title game, that means we’d only have to add two games to the schedule to do a full three-round playoff.

4. Give the champions of the big four conferences the top four seeds in the tournament.

Because hey, they deserve them.

5. Let an NCAA committee seed the top four teams and then select and seed four more teams to fill out the tournament.

If they want to keep the BCS rankings and use them as a guide, fine, but let’s not have computers picking and seeding teams. The NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament teams and seeds are chosen by a committee, and it’s the best tournament out there.

6. Play the title game the week before the Super Bowl.

There’s almost always a dead week in between the NFL Conference Finals and the Super Bowl. Seems like the perfect week to play the title game.

So there you go. A simple way to pull in a few more teams, give us a couple more big conference championship games, and settle things once and for all with a real college football championship. What do you think?