personal
-
The evening at the coffeehouse went well. I ended up doing a little more instrumental and a little less vocal than I had originally planned, since the place was so full and noisy during the first hour that any attempt at capturing their attention for a vocal would’ve been a disaster. Still, I got to sing some, got to play a bunch, and even got some tips! Good times.
-
Geof hasn’t posted the answer on his blog yet, but he declares (and I agree with him) that the answer to the evil brain teaser is that yes, the airplane will fly, since the engines are pushing against the air, and the air is unaffected by the conveyor belt. So kudos to Aaron, who almost immediately came to the right answer.
- 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
- Lost in Translation
- The Princess Bride
- Fiddler on the Roof
- The Thomas Crowne Affair
- The Lord of the Rings
- The Chronicles of Narnia
- Orthodoxy (Chesterton)
- the Manifold series (Stephen Baxter)
- Fremont, NE
- Granbury, TX
- Longview, TX
- Hiawatha, IA
- House
- MI-5 (Spooks for you British types)
- Hustle (a new show on AMC, also by the BBC)
- pretty much any sports
- Destin, FL
- Estes Park, CO
- Chicago, IL
- Los Angeles, CA
- Enchiladas
- Sesame Chicken
- Pizza
- a good steak
- 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
- 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
youth time
OK, so my ankle is a little bit sore this morning.
I wonder if it has something to do with playing soccer barefoot in the church basement with the high school youth group last night?
Well, maybe. :-)
I haven’t hung out with the youth for a while, but did last night at the youth pastor’s invitation so we could plan the youth Sunday coming up on the 30th. And yeah, then I had to stick around and play soccer. Good times.
The Joy of Friends and Fellowship
Yesterday was the annual Eggstreme Easter Egg Hunt out at the Berberich’s home in Stone City. This is I think the fifth year that we’ve had a hunt at their place. It’s a beautiful venue, out in the country with acres of clear lawn and then miles of trails through the woods. This is the first year that we haven’t had a big hand in actually organizing and preparing for the hunt; we just showed up. It was nice. :-)
The Berberich family has become like our own family to us; the parents are about our parents' age, and their seven children range from older than me to a big younger than my sister. They’re up to 11 (I think) grandchildren now, with a couple more on the way this year. So much fun. Past years we’ve gone out to their place on Monday nights to play basketball on their indoor half-court. They are the models of generous hospitality; you are always welcome in their home, and there’s always a cup of coffee, a fresh-baked roll, and time for some conversation.
But somehow amidst the busyness of this year, we’ve managed to drift apart a bit. That’s the way things go sometimes, I guess. As we were driving out to Stone City, I realized that it had been an entire year since we’d been out there, and nearly nine months since I’d seen the family, dating back to their daughter’s wedding last summer. I have occasionally wondered if there was some reason that perhaps we’d slipped off their radar screen, some offense we’d caused or some misunderstanding that had kept us apart. But what a joy to see them again Saturday, the hugs and the “wow, it’s been too long”, and the “is that Laura?!? I didn’t even recognize her she’s so big”. Restored fellowship is sweet.
So we had a great day out there. Laura did her first real hunting for eggs and had fun. We enjoyed the food afterwards and the chance to catch up a bit… with a hundred or so people there it was hard to have too much time to talk! But we all agreed as we left that we needed to get together again, sooner rather than later. I have confidence it won’t be a whole year before we visit again.
odds and ends March 2006
The server has been down for the last few days, so I haven’t been able to update. But now it’s back and running, so here goes. Actually, there isn’t a whole lot to update about.
Becky and Addison came home from the hospital on Wednesday. We are slowly getting sleep schedules adjusted and Addison is sleeping decently at night.
I had already planned on taking the whole week off, and what better weekend to take off than the opening weekend of March Madness? I will confess to having watched far too many basketball games this weekend. There were some good ones. I was disappointed when the Hawkeyes lost their first-round game on a miracle shot, but hey, if you leave the door open…
Saturday morning I had a very minor sore throat; I was feeling pretty tired, but wrote that off to the wacky sleep schedules this week. By Sunday morning that very minor sore throat became a very major sore throat. Thankfully I already had someone lined up to lead worship for me. So instead of going to church, I headed off to MercyCare North, where the doctor took one look at my throat and just shook his head. He did a throat swab for strep and when the result came back and the “Yes” field had four stars in it and was circled, well, I don’t think I was suprised.
So I’m home again today. I really was ready to get back to work. Becky, don’t take that wrong when you read this. :-) I’ve logged on to the work computer here from home to respond to some email and such, but I’m sure things are just piling up there waiting for me, and I’m ready to get going on it. Maybe tomorrow. The doctor says I should be non-contagious by then. So then if I’m only feeling up to it… The other real bummer is that being still-contagious right now, I have to try to avoid too much contact with the rest of the family… and it’s hard to be home with Laura and not want to spend time playing with her.
Well, that’s my whine for the day. :-)
the web sites can wait
It’s Tuesday afternoon, and I’m sitting on the couch in a darkened hospital room. There’s a little bit of hazy sunlight filtering through the miniblinds behind me, and a muted television sits ignored across the room. My wife is napping, my older daughter is at a friend’s house, my newborn daughter is asleep in the bassinette, and I have had a few minutes of precious quiet. Sure, the nurse interrupted it a few minutes ago to check temperatures and pulses, but she is forgiven.
I have realized just a bit over the past couple of days how I thrive on being busy. I am busy, you know. I am a project lead at work. I have a wife and two kids. I lead the worship teams at church and participate in leadership activities there. I’ve been playing basketball in two recreational leagues this winter. I maintain websites for myself, my family, my church, and my friends' ministry and business. I have a very hard time slowing down.
This came to me most vividly somewhere around noon yesterday. Addison had been born only nine hours before. Everything had been cleaned up, she was sleeping, Becky was resting, and I had eaten lunch. And I didn’t know what to do next. I kept thinking that it was time to head to work, or think about work, or worship team, or something. Surely there’s something I should be doing. And it took a while for me to realize that no, there was nothing else I needed to be doing. I should be right here, enjoying the rest, getting to know my new daughter, and caring for my wife.
Why do I feel the need to make it busier? Partly I’d like to ascribe it to my mental “wiring” - I don’t handle boredom well. I like to multi-task. My wife marveled one night a couple of weeks ago when I was talking on my cell phone, having an IM conversation, and posting on my blog all at the same time. I hadn’t even thought about it; it’s just the way I operate. But I think more responsibility lies on the shoulders of my own choices and decisions. I need to make the conscious effort more often to slow down and enjoy the things in life right here around me. Busyness doesn’t make life richer; rather, I think that busyness is the thief that steals the richness of the glory that we see in everyday life. It’s time to think more about everyday life.
I think Addison is stirring now, so it’s time to put this to practice and set down the laptop. The web sites can wait.
a new addition
No, it’s not the baby. But today we did end up purchasing a nice used minivan. It’s a 2001 Dodge Grand Caravan, has about 70000 miles on it. Got a pretty good price and traded in (!) my old Toyota Corolla that was on its last legs. Laura seems to really enjoy riding in it, and it’ll have lots of room for us and our stuff especially after we add kiddo #2.
I’ll try to get some pictures in the next few days. Today it was raining so it was hard to get any.
Still waiting for the baby, I’ll be sure to keep you posted on that. :-)
starting out hectic
Well, no baby yet. But that still doesn’t mean my Monday has calmed down much. :-) We did a bunch of minivan shopping this weekend, and have found one that seems like it might be a good fit; in our price range, in decent shape, etc. I need to get my mechanic to look at it, and the first availability they have is tomorrow, so I guess I’ll be patient until then. Actually, my mechanic wasn’t available until Wednesday, but a mechanic that a friend recommends highly is available tomorrow, so I’ll go with that one. Maybe by then the bank will have gotten back to me on the loan approval.
If Becky goes into labor tonight or something, it’ll throw a bit of a wrench in the car purchase works, but it’ll be a welcome wrench. The van can wait. :-)
I still feel the same... a follow-up.
In a previous post, I wrestled with the ideas of being 10 years removed from my teens, but still feeling many of the same feelings that I did back in those years. It’s been interesting to see the reaction from my siblings. It caused Ryan to reflect on his life, which is good… wait, not that he needs to do more reflecting… it was just interesting to hear his thoughts. :-) I think Rebecca’s comment was just that my post scared her. I take that to mean that she was hoping that things would get better as you get older…
Now that I’ve had a while to chew on it, let me give my siblings (and anybody else who is still reading this) some more thoughts that might encourage you a bit.
Things have changed. I would be very stupid not to recognize that a lot of changes in my life have brought stability and peace over the past dozen years. Relationship worries have been removed by my marriage and the wonderful relational stability it brings. Monetary worries have largely been alleviated by a good job, which meets my needs and then some. Not that financial worries are never there, but they aren’t the how-the-heck-am-I-going-to-pay-for-this-month’s-rent type of worries. What-am-I-going-to-do-with-my-life worries have been largely alleviated as I find peace and confidence in God’s plan for me here in Iowa, with my family, my job, and my church. So take heart, brothers, sister, the process can be agonizing (and still is for me, at times), but there will be a day, sooner than you think, where you will stop and look back on things much like I just have.
At the end of that previous post I wrote in conclusion:
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.
Let me talk about some of the answers. Well, at least the one big answer. The answer is that the longings built into each of us cannot be totally fulfilled in this life. Many of them can, and growing closer to God daily will help bring that about. But some cannot, will not ever be fulfilled in this life. But that is the constant reminder for us to look forward to that hope that we have of all eternity with Christ.
As Andrew Peterson reminded us with his last album, we tend to think at times of heaven as this far away country where we will go someday, but that’s not the way it is; rather, God and heaven is home, and we are now in the far country.
it's Monday...
…and I haven’t posted since last Wednesday, which means I’m a real slacker. I fall into this basic pattern of blogging where I show up on Monday, realize I’m a slacker, then because I have nothing more thoughtful to post, post a weekend update. Yawn. But since I’ve already fooled you into reading this far, here was my weekend:
Friday night Becky and I went and saw King Kong at the cheap theater. It was worth seeing on the big screen. It was pretty over-the-top; Peter Jackson would get you squirming, and then when you thought it should be about done, he’d make you squirm for another 10 seconds. The plot/story was OK, but pretty basic. The one part I really liked was the way the shots at the top of the Empire State Building were done; they had me fearing the heights even though I was safe in my seat. Well done that.
Saturday morning I headed over to Mount Vernon to accompany a young man from church who was trying out for a voice scholarship at Cornell College. It was fun to be on a college campus again, and even more fun to be on one that had good music facilities. If I were on campuses too often, I could definitely get bit by the college bug again and think about studying up enough that I could go back and teach. Sounds fun, but I think it’s unlikely.
Played a church league basketball game on Saturday and then headed home. Took Becky and Laura out for dinner and did a little shopping. Oh, and Becky’s mom headed home Saturday morning. It was great to have her visit, she was a big help to Becky, and she and Laura had soooo much fun.
Sunday led worship as usual at both services. We were without practice this week, which left us a little bit rough, but it turned out OK. That was about it for Sunday. Stayed home, just a lazy afternoon.
Now we’re to Monday and another week. It’s not too exciting so far. If it gets exciting, I’ll be sure to post about it.
Loose ends
Just to tie up a few loose ends from previous posts:
Well that’s about all the news from the home front for today. Becky’s mom is here to spend the week, we’ve been having fun with her, and also we’re enjoying having a babysitter for the week! :-) We went and saw The Producers at the theatre on Saturday (good old cheesy Mel Brooks - gotta love it!) and we’ll probably go out again either tomorrow or Thursday, kind of a last-chance date before the baby is born. Officially there’s about 2 more weeks left… I guess we’ll take it a day at a time.
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
Four movies I could watch over and over
Four books I could read over and over
Four places I have lived
Four TV shows I watch
Four places I have been on vacation (ok, so I haven’t traveled much)
Four websites I visit daily other than email
Four favorite foods
Four places I’d like to be right now
Four bloggers I’m tagging
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.
Weekend update Jan 2006
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. :-)
making things
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.
getting things done
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. :-)
baby names
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.
the obligatory new year's post
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.
Christmas time is here...
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…
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!
Christmas shopping... check.
My today didn’t go as planned. But that’s OK - it’s turned out just fine anyhow. Becky showed up on IM at 7:30 this morning (waaaay early for her) and said she was feeling poorly. It ends up she’s got this one-day stomach bug that a bunch of folks around here have had; throwing up and the whole works. So I left work about 8 to come home and take care of Laura.
Laura and I played and stuff in the morning, then she took a nap. This afternoon, we went down to Coral Ridge Mall to get out of the house and so I could start finish my Christmas shopping. I managed to pick up stuff for everybody except Becky. Laura was very good, enjoyed walking at the mall, didn’t fuss much.
Now it’s evening, and instead of going to the coffeehouse as we had planned, we’re sitting here at home watching Northern Iowa play for the D I-AA football championship. Actually, to be fair, Becky told me to go ahead and go to the coffeehouse if I wanted to, but I decided I felt like staying home instead. And now, I think I’m the only one watching the football game… I’m pretty sure she’s fallen asleep here on the couch.
Such is the exciting Friday night of this old married guy…