Chris​Hubbs​.com

It’s been slow around these parts lately, which likely just means that life has been pretty busy. Even online there have been a bunch of other projects that have been taking my time. I guess I could discuss a few of them and you might not get too bored. :-)

One of the web projects I’ve been working on is a new site for Coldwater Programs. Kevin Sutton is raising support for this outdoor exploration and leadership training ministry. I’ve done some design and layout work on the site, now it’s just waiting for him to add content.

Another site that kicked off last week is the AndrewOsenga.net forum, which is an online home for the fan community of Andy O, as he is affectionately known. I’ve been happy to see folks registering and discussing thus far, I hope it will continue. I enjoy the interacting and discussing.

The other big thing coming up is the church plant. No, not the philodendron on the piano. We here at Noelridge along with a coalition of other churches in the area are planning to start a new church in downtown Cedar Rapids. We have a facility we can meet at, and we’re planning on starting services on Saturday night, October 27th. The Saturday night service will be an adjustment for me, but I’m really looking forward to see what the Lord has for us down there. I’ll be the music guy; I’m also doing some website design. The name isn’t finalized yet, but one potential domain name has already been reserved and I’ve been doing some basic web design.

So at the moment it’s Sunday morning and why am I blogging on Sunday morning? I’m on the laptop at church, ripping this morning’s sermon audio to mp3 so it can be posted on the church website. Laura is downstairs in Sunday School, and Becky is off running errands. This laptop is pretty old and slow, so I have a bit of time to write before it’s done ripping the audio. Then it’ll be homeward bound for a bit of rest before work starts up again tomorrow. Life is busy, but life is good.

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.

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.

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 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 told you it’d be random.

Update, one too good to pass up:

• I just watched my wife beat on a peppermint candy with her cell phone.  Hilarious.

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.)

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. :-)

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:

• 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.

I shall come home a more rested person. It will be glorious. :-)

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…

So for it being a weekend, it was a busy one. A synopsis:

Saturday:

1. Ran a 5k in the morning. Finished in 31:33. It was stinkin’ hot outside.
2. Sat and watched the parade go by. With two cute little girls, you get a lot of candy.
3. Watched the girls while Becky went to a baby shower.
4. Went to church for an all-evening elder meeting. Boy will I be glad when this is over.

Sunday:

1. To church, but didn’t have to lead music - only taught Sunday School. Good times.
2. 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.
3. Crashed some in the afternoon, then cleaned house to prepare for my mom and sister coming to visit.
4. Watched Cinderella Man for the first time. Russell Crowe, for all his personal problems, is a heckuva actor.

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.