personal
- 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 just watched my wife beat on a peppermint candy with her cell phone. Hilarious.
- Sunday - flying out to Orlando.
- Monday - Freescale Technology Forum begins.
- Tuesday - Becky flies out to meet me. The girls are staying with my folks. (Thanks again, Mom and Dad!) Oh, and it’s our ninth wedding anniversary.
- Wednesday - more FTF during the day, and we’re seeing Blue Man Group in the evening.
- Thursday - FTF in the morning, then it’s off to be beach bums.
- Friday - whole lotta nothing. We have a hotel on the beach in Cocoa Beach. Should be nice.
- Saturday - fly home in the afternoon. We have an overly-long layover in MSP, but such is life.
- Ran a 5k in the morning. Finished in 31:33. It was stinkin' hot outside.
- Sat and watched the parade go by. With two cute little girls, you get a lot of candy.
- Watched the girls while Becky went to a baby shower.
- Went to church for an all-evening elder meeting. Boy will I be glad when this is over.
- To church, but didn’t have to lead music - only taught Sunday School. Good times.
- Got a couple very sweet Father’s Day cards and a couple of t-shirts. My favorite: the one that says “Those who think they know everything annoy those of us that actually do.” Hehe.
- Crashed some in the afternoon, then cleaned house to prepare for my mom and sister coming to visit.
- Watched Cinderella Man for the first time. Russell Crowe, for all his personal problems, is a heckuva actor.
- Devil’s Lake is a beautiful park. Dave, if you read this, yeah, it’s worth going for a day trip or an overnight. Lots of nice hiking, the water is beautiful and crystal-clear.
- What the park service considers “paved, flat, and level” in a hiking trail isn’t so much what I’d consider “paved, flat, and level”. It scares me a little bit what one of their “difficult” trails would look like. :-)
- Tent camping when it gets down to 40F at night is kinda chilly.
- Tent camping when it rains overnight is more of a pain.
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.
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.
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 told you it’d be random.
Update, one too good to pass up:
The Challenges and Blessings of Hospitality
Last week Becky and I had a discussion about, well, a bunch of things, but the one thing that came out of it was an agreement that we needed to be inviting people over more. We enjoy having folks over to share a meal, play games, and hang out, but we do it far too rarely. So we discussed for a while what day would work best for us, (if we want to be consistent, we’re gonna have to pick a day and stick to it), and came up with Sunday evenings. We don’t have any Sunday evening church activities, and, we concluded, but 5 PM on Sunday we’re usually bored anyway and looking for something to do, so why not have folks over for supper? Having thus planned, we invited two couples (+ kids) over, and started preparing for Sunday night.
Now, normally for something like this we’d do a lot of meal preparation and house cleaning on Saturday, leaving us time on Sunday to rest and relax before having visitors. (I do love my Sunday afternoons to crash.) But this past Saturday was a softball tournament that went from first thing in the morning until mid-afternoon, and then left us so tired we had no motivation to start cleaning. “We still have tomorrow to get ready” was our motto.
So Sunday afternoon rolled around and it was time to get ready. So we picked up toys, vacuumed, snapped green beans, made lasagna, did the dishes, put the leaves in the table, and next thing you know, it was 5 PM and our guests were arriving. So much for our theory that “we’re bored by 5 PM anyway…”! 5 PM showed up and we hadn’t sat down all afternoon. Well, not quite true. I sat down to rip a few sermon recordings to mp3 for the church website. But that was it.
We had a great time with our guests last night. We ate plenty of good food, finished up with some to-die-for homemade chocolate-mint ice cream, sat around and swapped stories about growing up in small towns, raising kids, and protecting our homes from late-night marauding insects, and laughed hilariously at this video of Ringo Starr visiting the studio as Andrew Peterson is recording his new album. Look for the cameo appearance by Chris Sligh (formerly of American Idol) and Ringo’s quick wit when Chris declares himself “more of a Paul man”. (Andy Gullahorn is a genius, I tell you! A genius!) Time flew by, and by the time folks were leaving to get kids to bed and prepare for the upcoming week, it was nearing 9 PM. It was a wonderful evening.
Now I know that our guests from last night pretty much all read my blog (hi Roy, Bridget, Dave, and Barb!), so I want to say this up front: we had a great time, and practicing hospitality this way is absolutely something we needed to do and to continue to do. However, yeah, it was a challenge. First of all, we need our Sunday rest, and it was pretty well lacking yesterday. I will also admit to being kinda frustrated yesterday when it became apparent about 3:30 that there was no way we were gonna have time to sit and crash before folks came. So we need to make sure that we use our Saturday more effectively next time. Becky and I also need to make sure that we communicate our expectations well; when I’m thinking and working towards one thing and she’s got something different in mind, and then the time crunch hits, well, it has the opportunity to not be a lot of fun. We’re still learning this communication thing after 9 years of marriage.
What I will conclude from the weekend, though:
We need to continue the hospitality. Dinners with friends are a lot of fun. Chocolate-mint ice cream can be really, really good. We need some time for Sunday rest. The Cubs still managed to win without me watching them. Sleep is sweet.
(Oh, and that Andy Gullahorn is a genius.)
It's Monday again already?!?
Well, it was a busy weekend. The whole family showed up Friday night for one last get together before we head our separate ways this fall. The result was two days of playing cards, music, football, and making at least one obligatory Hubbs shopping trip to Walmart and Sam’s Club. Aaron and Andrew also got haircuts… Andrew opting for the “I wanna look like Chris” haircut. I don’t think he’ll be maintaining his, though, so he should have hair again by the time he gets out out to Oregon.
Hit the gym this morning to run and do a little lifting, and yeah, it feels good to be sore again. I’ve been too much of a slacker the past couple of months. Gotta get back to it. The pounds don’t lose themselves.
What day is it again?
Having a day off from work in the middle of the week has totally thrown me off. Yesterday seemed like Saturday all day, which meant that I kept going into a panic about not being ready for church the next day… no music picked, Sunday School lesson not prepared… I had to keep reminding myself, wait, Chris, tomorrow is only Thursday… you still have time. So last night I picked the music. The Sunday School lesson is still waiting.
Had a good time up in Troy Mills yesterday with the Marsceau family and some assorted friends as we watched the parade, enjoyed Grandma Hazel’s fried chicken, and sat around visiting. Then last night got some work done around the house in preparation for my family coming to visit this weekend. My sister is heading back to Panama for several months and so we’re getting together to have one more weekend as a family before she leaves. We’ll be pretty scattered this fall, what with Andrew heading west to Portland (attending George Fox) and Ryan heading east to DC (grad school at Georgetown). Ah, well, we couldn’t all stay in the Midwest forever.
So now it’s off to a slow day at work… there will be a lot of people taking the rest of the week off. At least, as Geof Morris just reminded a friend, tomorrow is Friday. :-)
Ready for a break
Today is my last day in the office for a week or so, and I am definitely ready for the break. A synopsis of next week’s events:
I shall come home a more rested person. It will be glorious. :-)
Notes on a Tuesday Morning
I’m getting ready to go sit in an all-day meeting with some customers that are in town. Not real exciting, but should be some good discussion. Mostly it’s just looooong. At least food is provided. :-)
Ordered a case for my new iPod yesterday; it’s the one that Tony recommended to me the other day. I expected that if I ordered early on Monday morning that I had a good shot at 3-5 day UPS shipping getting it here to me before I leave for Florida on Sunday. But as of this morning it still hasn’t shipped. If I don’t see some movement by noon today, I’m gonna talk to Tony and get one back-channel.
Went to Texas Roadhouse last night with the family and my mom and sister who are in town visiting. Didn’t think I’d eaten too much last night, but this morning I can feel it. :-(
My Florida trip is coming up in less than a week. Orlando. We have tickets to see Blue Man Group, Becky’s going to Sea World one day while I’m at my conference, and then we have a hotel on the beach for a couple nights before we come home. And the girls are staying with my folks. 5 more days…
Sheesh, It's Monday already?!?
So for it being a weekend, it was a busy one. A synopsis:
Saturday:
Sunday:
Now it’s Monday and back to work. But one week from today I will be in Orlando, FL, on Day 1 of my week-long conference/vacation. Ahhhhhh. I think I can make it one more week.
Playing the Waiting Game
I hate waiting. I really do. I’m impatient. It’s not a quality I’m proud of; it’s a fault that needs corrected. (“Lord, give me patience… and please hurry!")
It’s worse when I have things I’m waiting for and impatient to get. In my current case, I’m waiting for two things. First, the Qwest DSL hookup information, which I had been anticipating last week Thursday. They promise it will get here today. It better. Second, my (second) refurbished iPod. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the guy at Best Buy remembered to put it into the system promptly; some time this week UPS should deliver another refurb; hopefully it has less problems than the last one did.
So for now I sit and wait, knowing that patience is a virtue that should be cultivated. I’m trying to learn.
Devil's Lake Camping Trip
Yes, as promised, we went camping last weekend up at Devil’s Lake State Park in Wisconsin. My brother Andrew pretty much organized the whole thing; his girlfriend Heather is visiting and it was good to get to see everybody. Some thoughts from the weekend:
Now, mind you, I don’t want to sound whiny. It was a fun weekend, a good time was had by all. Many pictures are available on my Flickr site, and I’ll append a few of them here. We had a fun time just crashing around the campfire, playing on the beach, and hiking. We enjoyed watching the rain whilst sitting indoors at McDonald’s eating breakfast on Sunday. :-)
Overall, it was a good weekend, but good to be back home, too.
Camping!
When I was a kid, we went camping as a family all the time. I think some of my siblings enjoyed the out-of-doors more than I did, but still, it was a good time for the whole family and a cost-effective way to go on vacation. :-) After we got married, Becky and I went camping a few times; most notably we were in Colorado camping when 9/11 happened… but that’s a different story.
Fast-forward to today. Well, to tomorrow. Tomorrow morning we will pack the van and head out to Devil’s Lake State Park in Wisconsin for two nights of camping with my family. Andrew’s girlfriend Heather (hi, Heather, do you still read this thing?) is visiting for the next 10 days, so Andrew has organized pretty much the whole camping trip. (“Remember to bring your softball equipment” x 100 or so. :-) ) I’m hoping the girls will enjoy it; they’ll certainly enjoy seeing all the uncles and grandparents again. How well they sleep in a tent will be an entirely different story.
I’ll be sure to take a bunch of pictures and post them here once we get back. This weekend starts what will be a whirlwind month and a half for us; this camping trip, I have a trip to DC, Becky’s folks visit for 2 weeks, I run a couple of 5ks, and then we go to Orlando for the better part of a week while the girls stay with their grandparents. It’ll be fun, but it’ll also be a relief to have it slow down in July.
(Yikes! Did I really just say July?)
A real post
This place has been full of links lately and very short on actual posts. Partly that’s been due to some network difficulties, partly that’s just been due to my own laziness. So finally I’ve got my blog reconfigured so I can get to it all the time, and now it’s time to write something.
Becky was remarking last night on how funny we are with our scheduling. If we have our whole week scheduled full with stuff, we go crazy. It’s just too much. We have to have a couple of nights on the calendar kept open just for us as a family. That being said, when we have nights free on the calendar, we are unlikely to just stay home; more often we’re out doing something as a family. (Maybe this’ll change a little more now that spring is here and there is more outside work to be done?)
Take last night, for instance. We had the night free, so what did we do? Head to Coralville to the mall. Becky needed some summer clothes, so we spent a few hours, found a bunch of stuff for her, ate some supper there, and got home way past the girls' bedtime. But it was a good night. Now morning has just come a little early. :-)
I’ve got a bunch of travel coming up in the next week. Friday afternoon I’m driving to Omaha to see Andy Osenga play a concert. I’m planning to just drive back after the show, so it’ll be a lot of hours on the road, but still definitely worth it.
Then Monday I’m headed out on a trip for work to Salt Lake City, and will be there until Wednesday night. Then with Friday off (Good Friday), we’re heading up to Wisconsin to visit my folks for Easter weekend. So yeah, it’ll be nice to finally be back home after all that. So far April isn’t booked up too much… dunno how long that’ll last. :-)
Having thus caught up on the trivial business of my life, I’ll sign off.
A Resolution
As I updated my 2007 reading list yesterday, I became convicted about how many novels of dubious quality I’ve read (23 books in 75 days!) and how short my time in the Scripture has been lately. As such, I am making this resolution: for the next month (March 20 - April 20), I am going to restrict my reading to just the Bible. I want to read it in broad pieces, to try to pick up the sweep of the grand story of God’s work.
I don’t know how far I’ll get in just a month, but I have a feeling it’ll be a ways. So don’t expect any reading page updates for a while. I don’t think it’ll be a great loss. :-)
In Praise of Good Customer Service
I’ve complained enough about bad customer service here on the blog (see: the OfficeMax debacle of a couple years ago) that I want to make sure I say something about really good service when it happens.
When I was in DC last week, I hit a shopping mall one night to wander around and pick up something for the girls. While I was in there, I ran across Paradise Pens, a neat little store specializing in, well, pens. They had everything from basic ballpoint to pens costing nearly $2000. I wandered in and struck up a conversation with a very friendly store manager. I mentioned an interest in fountain pens (I’ve often been curious, but never been to a store that sold them), and she took 20 minutes and showed me some different pens, let me try them out, answered my questions. Excellent service. I ended up buying a low-end fountain pen, cost about $40.
When I got back to the hotel and opened the pen, I found one issue: the pen cap, which is supposed to screw onto the pen body, was just a bit oversized. The cap wouldn’t screw on, it just slipped off. Well, that isn’t so good. I used a little bit of tape I had along to shim out the screw so it would hold, but that wasn’t a good long-term solution. And I didn’t have time to get back to the mall to return it.
Finally earlier this week I sent an email to the info address on the Paradise Pen website. After a couple of days I had no response, so I forwarded the email again. Who knows, maybe they are bad at checking email. Finally this afternoon I just decided to call the toll-free number they offered. So far, the service hadn’t been so good, huh?
I called the number, dialed the extension, and the phone was answered by a real person. She said her name was Carrie. I said “hi, my name is Chris Hubbs, and I…” and she started to tell me my story, that I live in Iowa and bought a pen in DC and the cap was too big. I was stunned. “So you got my email, I guess.” Yes, she said, she’d gotten both of them, and was surprised that the store hadn’t gotten back to me yet. I went and checked my email, and found that a message had just arrived from the store. The manager of the DC store was letting me know that they were sending me a new pen and a postage-paid envelope to return the faulty one.
I told Carrie that I had received the email, and that the solution was fine with me. She gave me her name, phone number, and extension, and told me in no uncertain terms that if anything wasn’t to my satisfaction, to call her directly. “I’m the one with the big stick,” she said. Wow, do I appreciate that attitude. I am looking forward to receiving my new pen and getting a chance to really use it. And I will now recommend Paradise Pens to anyone interested in buying a good pen.
Getting back on track
It’s been a disorienting past ten days or so; last weekend (10 days ago) we had the big storm, which meant church was canceled, which always really throws me off. Then last week I was on travel, only in the office for a few hours on Friday. So by Saturday night I had no real idea what day it was… fortunately Becky reminded me that we would be going to church the next morning.
We had a bit of a backwards morning at church music-wise. David Green, normally our bass player, was leading music from the piano. He asked me to play bass with him. So I hacked my way through it, and I think we managed OK. A learning experience for both of us.
Now it’s Monday morning and I can look forward to a regular week at the office. There are times I’m less than excited about coming in to work, but this week it’ll just be nice to have things back to normal.
Odds and Ends Feb 2007
I’m sure I’ve used that title before, but oh well. Seems like this place has been filled up with book reviews lately and not much else. Let’s see, what else should I talk about? The cold? The temperature display on my PC at the moment says it’s -9 degrees F outside. We’re supposed to get a heat wave by the weekend, though - up into the 20’s!
Life has pretty much settled down for now after the craziness of December and early January. One bit of fun is that we’re having our church talent show down at Central Park Presbyterian Church (a facility we’re talking about buying), and they have a nice pipe organ… so I got a request for some organ music. I’ve been working on Bach’s famous Tocatta & Fugue in D Minor for a couple of weeks now and have the keyboard parts learned pretty well… but I’m worried that the pedal parts will be my undoing. I’m headed over to the church tomorrow night to practice on the organ for a while. We’ll see how it goes. If it’s a total flop I’ll just pull out some piano fugues and play ‘em on the organ… good enough. But still… a PIPE ORGAN! Too much fun.
Goodbye, Krispy Kreme
Sometime while we were gone on our Christmas vacation, our local Krispy Kreme closed down. It opened back in 2000, is only two blocks from our house, and the smell of fresh donuts often wafted over to tantalize us. I have a love-hate relationship with Krispy Kreme donuts; when they’re fresh and warm, they’re a real treat. Once they’ve cooled to room temperature, they become a total sugar overload and I am no longer a real fan. But still, I’m sad to see them go.
The local Krispy Kreme franchise owner says that the distributing facilities elsewhere in the state can handle the Cedar Rapids area’s distribution needs, and Krispy Kreme donuts will still be available in many retail stores. So people can still get their fix if they really need it… but it won’t be the same as driving up to the store in the morning, the smell of donuts in the air, and being offered a free fresh hot glazed donut. Wow, those were good.
On the upside, the news story says they’re likely to open an Arby’s in the old Krispy Kreme building. That will make Becky very happy. :-)
The Usual?
“The usual?”
That’s the question that was posed to me this morning. Now, it was just at the local Quik Trip store that’s on the way to work, but still, it made me think a bit.
The details of me having a “usual” are unremarkable. I am in the habit of stopping at that QT every morning on the way to work sometime between 6:30 and 7:00 AM. I have an older 52 oz mug that I fill with Diet Pepsi from the fountain. I usually add a shot of cherry syrup to sweeten it a bit. They upped the price on me several months ago; it now costs $0.93 once the state of Iowa taxes it.
So this morning I didn’t have to say “refill” or “yeah, it’s pop” (apparently some folks refill a 52 oz mug with coffee! Yikes!) - as I walked up to the counter, the guy said “just the usual?” and I said “yep” and handed him a dollar. Actually, I set the dollar on the counter; he was already pulling my seven cents of change out of the cash drawer.
There’s a word I’m heading towards here with this story, and that word is community. Now sure, maybe it’s a stretch to say that the Quik Trip guy knowing what I usually get is community. (Maybe it’d be better for me if I wasn’t drinking 50 oz of Diet Pepsi a day!) But when you start having consistency in an area to the point where you and your habits are known, and people start responding to you as a person they recognize, rather than just some random human they have to deal with today? That’s the start of an opportunity for a relationship; one that builds community and provides opportunities to interact about more meaningful things.
My hope is two-fold. First, that I will be a part of a community long enough that people will know me and what I am about. Second, that what I am about will be more meaningful than large daily doses of liquefied caffeine.
An Update
It’s been far too long since I’ve written much here on the blog; it’s been a busy week or two. While not a full remedy, a brief update will at least catch you up to speed on Chris’s life in December of 2006.
Christmas Shopping: I have finished buying for four people; I have three left to buy for. I know pretty much what I want to buy, just haven’t gotten to the store yet. I’ll try to finish up early this week; that’ll be the earliest I’ve ever finished Christmas shopping, I’m sure.
Book Reviews: For those of you who listed books for my reading list, I haven’t forgotten you. I’m still working through The Russian Debutante’s Handbook as recommended by Geof Morris. I nearly finished it last night, but sleep got the better of me. It’s due back at the library tomorrow, so I better finish it up tonight. It’s been an enjoyable read, definitely a change from my usual reading fare.
Church Stuff: I haven’t led music in a month now, and I finally realized yesterday how nice the break has been. This was the first Sunday that I actually just showed up for church without giving any thought or concern to whether the music team was lined up and prepared. And it went just fine. Next week will break the streak; I will be leading next Sunday.
Travel Plans: We leave a week from Wednesday (the 20th) for North Carolina. We will swing through Nashville to see Becky’s brother and then head to Charlotte to see Becky’s folks and sister/brother-in-law/niece. Should be a fun time, if the 20-hour drive doesn’t kill us. :-) We should be back home by the 30th or 31st.
Christmas break should provide some more time for posting - I’ll try, I promise! :-)