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Well I’ve been a slacker lately as far as meaningful posts go… don’t know how this one will rate.

We had a nice weekend. Stayed home Friday night and crashed. Laura wasn’t feeling too good Friday night; she started coughing and got herself so worked up that then she threw up. I don’t know if, as a parent, you ever totally get used to being vomited on; however, I’m certainly getting practice at it, if not totally comfortable with it. :-) She finally got to sleep and slept well, though, so that’s a blessing.

Played church league basketball Saturday and won in double overtime. We were playing a team we totally had overmatched, so we played easy, slacked off. Of course that meant that when it was time to close it out and play seriously, we weren’t ready to do so… so we ended up in 2OT. At least we won… it’s only our second win of the year.

Got a new washing machine delivered on Saturday, too. Our old one was starting to die, and we have intermittent problems with water backup on the drain pipe for the washer. We got a new front-loader that uses only half the water that the old one did. It’s also amazingly quiet. I think it’ll prove to be a good investment.

Sunday we had a pleasant surprise - my mom stopped by on her way home from Omaha. She had been there on sad business (her step-brother is dying), but it was good to get to see her anyway. We took her out for a late lunch and had some yummy mexican food that I had been craving for a while… I know, now I sound like the pregnant one. ;-) After mom took off, we crashed, watched the Bears get beat in the playoffs, and audited giving receipts so I can get them sent out this week.

Now it’s Monday and I’m back at work, reviewing TSO deviations and waiting for the FeedLounge beta to go public so I can sign up. That’ll probably be worth another blog post in itself. :-)

Occasionally when I walk through our building here at work to get to the cafeteria, I walk past some work areas where we have people making things. They probably have a fancy word for it, fabrication or some such. But it is cool. This one little work area I walk past, they have 4 or 5 pegboards full of some sort of little tool bits. I don’t know what they are - they may be cutting bits or burning bits or something I’ve never seen before. But there’s hundreds of them, all hanging there neatly organized and ready to use. And there on the benches are pieces of plastic and metal that people are working on. Cutting, shaping, joining.

My job is much more abstract. I write software. That means I sit and type things into a computer, and trust the computer to translate those words into more abstract code. When you get down to it, this stuff is just little 0s and 1s encoded as magnetic fields on a computer disk. Then I go down to the lab, and squirt those little magnetic fields into a very expensive piece of computing equipment, which causes pictures to come up on a screen once we squirt some more data (electrical impulses) into the back of the equipment. It’s fantastic. It’s complex. At times, it’s very cool - we can accomplish very complicated things very quickly and efficiently. But at times, it feels a bit empty; there’s nothing real solid I can point to at the end of the day and say “I made that”. The constant abstraction makes it that much more meaningful for me to walk the halls and see real things being made.

I don’t know what it is about the way we’re wired, but I, for one, occasionally need to see, feel, hold real stuff. Now don’t get me wrong; I’m a big geek, I love technology, I could explain our flight displays to you from the processor and hardware all the way up through the application software, and every level in between. But there are times when I just need to get my hands on something real. We bought a new washing machine last night, and I need to build a pedestal for it. Maybe this weekend I can go out and do some building myself.

No, Geof, I haven’t read the book, and this isn’t about the book. However, it has been nice lately to get some things done.

I’ve had the Noelridge Park Church website sitting incomplete for several months now. I just needed to get some photos taken, but had never gotten it done. I got the pictures taken and sent them in on Monday. Soon we will be updated and ready to go. Phew!

In addition, tonight I will be getting things scheduled such that I have the first of what will be regular weeks off from leading the worship team. I need the break. I’m very thankful to the Lord for bringing in other musicians who can share the load.

There have been a bunch of other little things recently that haven’t been big notable items, but just things that have been on the waiting list for a while and now are getting completed. It’s a good feeling. It’s also probably timely; come the beginning of March I’ll have other things to keep me busy. :-)

OK, so Becky is due with kiddo #2 the first week of March. We’ve talked baby names a little bit, but really haven’t gotten anywhere. We had an easy time with kiddo #1… we got to Laura and both went “yeah, that’s it!”. We had semi-agreement on a boy’s name if she’d been a boy, but I wasn’t totally keen on the middle name.

So I figure, what the heck, I have readers, right? Leave me ideas. Any boys or girls name suggestions? No promises that we’ll use any of ’em, but if we do, I’ll have to send you a prize or something.

I’m already a day late on this - it’s January 2nd, not the first. I’ll probably come up a (metaphorical) dollar short, too… you won’t find any deep New Year’s resolutions here. Somehow I’ve never been much for New Year’s resolutions. Not that I’m against them - I just never put too much effort into them. This year is no different.

I could write a lot about the year gone by, but if you want to read about it I have blog archives that cover the year. :-) I could write about the year upcoming, but seeing as I lack the ability to see the future, my predictions will be at best haphazard in accuracy. Much will change; much will remain the same. I don’t want to sound too nonchalant about my life, but in a sense, I am; I am confident that the God who has directed and guided me through my first 28 years will continue to guide me through my 29th. He will continue to provide the conviction that drives change; blessedly, He is also the provider of the ability to make that change.

So welcome to the year of our Lord 2006. May He bless you richly this year as He continues His good work in you.

OK, so Christmas was actually two days ago. Now the family has all left for their respective homes and our house is quiet. It was a very nice Christmas. Laura is old enough this year to understand about opening presents and to really enjoy the toys she got. She could’ve just stopped with the first one… after 7 or 8 she was overwhelmed. We ended up leaving the last few of hers for her to open later.

I received many thoughtful gifts this year. In no particular order…

• Jamie Cullum’s new CD, Chasing Tales
• Duke Ellington’s 70th Birthday CD
• A cool t-shirt from Target - a spoof of the famous “Dogs at Cards”, but with Snoopy and his pals playing poker. Actually, I got two of these.
• Two Family Christian Stores gift cards - the first will buy me Derek Webb’s Mockingbird, dunno what I’ll get with the rest.
• Lemstone bookstore gift certificate
• Best Buy gift card
• Burger King gift card…. mmmmmm…. Whoppers.
• Some gift fundage from Becky’s folks… I’m using this to buy the Adobe Photoshop Elements/Premiere Elements bundle pack I’ve had my eye on for a while.
• A bunch of misc sundries

I think that’s it. My apologies to anybody if I forgot their gift.

Now I have the rest of the week off from work, so I’ll have to find some projects to work on. Somehow I think I’d go crazy if I did nothing but sit and play on the computer all week. It wouldn’t score many points with Becky, either. :-) So, I’m off now. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!