personal
- Back before we had Laura we’d go watch movies in the theater.
- Once Laura was born, we’d wait until they came out on DVD.
- Now that we got our Tivo, we’ll end up waiting until the movie gets shown on TV. :-)
bleary eyed
I know I owe everybody a blog post (it’s been a couple days… time to keep writing) but it’s been pretty slow around here lately. My latest task at work has been to manually compare two 200-ish-page documents and mark all the changes. (At this point, the geeks reading this are asking “why manually diff it when you could use a tool?” The answer is, I’m looking for functional differences, not trivial wording differences. Ugh.) I finally finished that up this morning but my eyes are a little bleary now and I know more about this next new airplane than I really wanted to.
I did some fun website stuff last night for my RecMinUsa site… my pastor (who runs RecMinUsa) wants to be able to update the “upcoming events” page without having to look at HTML. So, I created a formatted text file that he can update, and then a perl script to post-process the text file and merge it with an HTML template to create the page. It seems to work OK… hopefully I kept it simple enough. :-)
I read some more of Peterson’s Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places last night. I’m to the point in the book where he’s talking about how Christ “plays” in community. I’m still organizing my thoughts on the topic, but it’s good stuff. I’ll have to devote a post to it when I get the time to think.
Well that’s the 8:45 news from Iowa… kind of boring, huh? Sorry. Come back again, it’ll be more interesting next time. I promise.
slowly getting more out of touch...
I have this “movies I’ve watched recently” link section on the side of the blog. I intended to list movies that I saw in the theater or on DVD. If you’re a regular reader, you will have noted that it hasn’t changed in quite some time.
I noted a progression yesterday while talking with Becky. We were thinking of renting Meet The Fockers, but decided to just watch something recorded on the Tivo instead. The progression goes something like this:
I will have to break this chain for some movies; obviously when the new Star Wars movie comes out I’ll be watching it in the theater. But as a whole, I feel myself slipping more and more into behind-the-times oblivion, at least as far as pop culture goes. Oh well. It’s not always bad to be out of touch. :-)
well, no projects this weekend...
So the weather intervened this weekend and I didn’t do any outside projects… apparently a high of 50 with the wind 25 mph from the north is not conducive for working outside. :-) I did get the lawn mowed, though. I live in a neighborhood that’s mostly old retired folks, at least one of whom seems to have his personal ambition to make everybody else’s lawns look terrible. This guy mows his lawn every 2 or 3 days, so it’s always immaculate. I try to get mine mowed every week or so, but it usually still ends up looking shaggy.
So instead of outside projects I got a bunch of inside stuff done this weekend, which was OK with me. My list of little miscellaneous projects is always long, so this weekend shortened it up some. Receipts are done. Meeting minutes are typed up. The downstairs is cleaned up and swept. All in all, a profitable weekend. Then I taught Sunday School on Sunday and then in the afternoon bought a used CD that I’m enjoying this morning: Eric Clapton’s Unplugged. I know, it’s a 13-year-old album, but I’m just finally getting around to it.
Such is my random life from this weekend. Hope you enjoyed it. :-)
projects
Springtime has finally arrived in Iowa, and that means that the weekends become project time. That also means that it’s time for my annual realization of how lazy I am. I like projects to an extent - specifically, I like the ones that are small, and have great observable effect when they’re done. But now that it’s spring time Becky has a list of outdoor projects that need done.
Now I’m not disagreeing that they need done; they do need done, and they will improve the way our home/yard/garden looks when we get done. I just have trouble getting motivated. I like my winter Saturdays when I can get up late, read a book, watch TV, and be lazy. I will remember that I like summer Saturdays, too; but they’re more characterized by work, sweat, and tiredness at the end of the day. Which is OK; I just have to remind myself that I do enjoy it - my laziness wants to tell me that I won’t enjoy it.
So to put aside the navel gazing and introspection, this weekend we’ll be doing some planters in the back yard. We’re buying the landscape timbers today, and tomorrow we’ll be cutting and assembling them. Maybe I’ll even take a picture or two for illustration once we get done. Thinking about it now, it probably won’t even take that long - Becky’s got it all planned out how she wants it, so it should just be cut and assemble. At least, I can hope that it stays easy. Ahhh… the smell of sawdust. Now I guess that is something to look forward to.
softball..... finally!
We had our first softball practice of the season last night. It was a beautiful night to be out, and fun to put the glove back on and play some catch. That being said, I was terrible! I couldn’t hit the ball to save my life. Now, I’ve never been a good hitter, but this was ridiculous. Becky was smacking the ball around such that I, in comparison, looked like a little weenie. :-)
Well, that’s my embarrassed rant for this morning. It was still a great time. Hopefully I’ll come up with something more substantive to post later on.
preaching on short notice...
It had been planned for about a month that I would fill the pulpit at my church on April 24th. Then about a week ago I got asked if I could switch to the 17th, to fill in for our youth pastor who has been sick. So, on short notice, I think it turned out OK. You can listen to the second half of the sermon here… apparently the audio guys only managed to record half of it. Arrrgh.
The topic of the sermon is “Three Characteristics of a Loving Follower”, from Ephesians 5:1-2. It’s not super-exciting, but one of my better efforts (of which only total 3, so I’m relatively inexperienced here). And that’s your little insight into Chris’s life for today. :-)
softball...
I starting reading some of the other rmfo blogs and found David’s post on softball. I’m quite jealous that his season has already started; mine doesn’t start for a couple weeks yet. I’m looking forward to it hugely. Actually, I should call it “our” season… Becky and I play on a co-ed church league team. She’s the die-hard softball player (played in high school), I’m the recreational player.
This will be the first season that we’ll have a little kiddo on the bench to take care of - Laura was born right at the end of last softball season. It’s already been determined that I will be the one in charge of child care if somebody needs to sit with her during a game. Hey, I volunteered. I figure Becky missed almost all of last year (except for some heroics in the last game of the season… but that’s another story) since she was pregnant so it’s the least I can do. :-)
Well this is kind of a boring post but I’m trying to figure out trackbacks and add some traffic to the new blog, so that’s what you get for the day.
--Chris
another year older...
Has it really been 3 weeks since I’ve posted? Good grief! No wonder nobody reads my blog…
Well, we’ll make this a general information-type post and maybe it’ll be easier to write. :-)
Yesterday was my 28th birthday. Didn’t do much very exciting; work all day and then meetings at church until 8:00 last night. We’re going to go out for dinner tonight, so we’re not avoiding partying, we’re just delaying it.
Becky got me a Kyser Partial Capo (which I’ve been thinking about buying for months and never have…) so I’m really excited about that. Maybe this afternoon I can head home and try it out. I’ve seen other people use them to great effect in performances, and I’m hoping I can do the same. She also got me one of those plug-it-right-into-your-TV video game things, it has Pac Man, DigDug, and Galaxian. I do so love the retro games.
So all in all it wasn’t a bad birthday. Birthdays, as a whole, change in tone as you get older. When you’re a kid, you look forward to it for weeks, it’s the most exciting day of the year (save Christmas), it’s a huge deal. Now at 28, my birthday was really just another day. And that’s OK with me. It is fun to have an excuse to go out for dinner and maybe buy something I’ve been drooling over for a while… but then I can do that other days, too. So that’s my ho-hum attitude this March the 15th. Don’t think I’m complaining… I’m just learning to recognize the joys of every day.
Are online friends weird?
I spend quite a bit of time hanging out at the online message board called “The Rumor Forum”. It is a group of people who are loosely grouped as fans of the group Caedmon’s Call. Many of them have known each other for several years, have attended concerts and other get-togethers as a group, and in general are pretty good friends in real life. I, on the other hand, just started hanging out there about a year ago, haven’t met any of them, etc. And yet somehow I find myself drawn in, wishing for acceptance and looking forward to each day’s interaction. Why?
If I could answer that question, it’d make my wife happier for sure, and might even make me happier… although I’m not that grumpy to begin with. :-) I don’t know why it’s addicting. I don’t know why I consider these people friends… and yet I do. Is it weird to have a friend you’ve never met in person? Is it strange to consider interactions carried out entirely through your web browser as “friendships” in the first place? Such are my random thoughts on this Saturday morning.
I’d really like to meet some of these people. One of them might be coming to town on business sometime this spring, so I could get together with him for dinner or something… but many of the others may be people that I never really “know”, whose only face I see is the little avatar they put next to their online posts, whose history I know from reading their blogs… kinda weird, I guess. I’d like to meet some of them for real. Somehow it would validate some of the thoughts I’ve had towards them, which would be nice. And hey, it’s always nice to make more friends… my friend list is rather limited, although I consider that the way God has it for now, rather than a complaint.
getting older...
It’s a weird thing to get older; and then in a way it’s the most natural thing we ever do, since we’re all doing it all the time. The latest realization of this was when I ran across my little sister’s blog (see link to the right).
Rebecca is 10 years younger than me; I remember her primarily as the little girl, as a preschooler and elementary-schooler. I left home for college when she was not quite 8, so my memories of her after that are fewer and farther between. She’s now 17. Where has time gone? It’s so strange to read her posts where she does all the normal teenage-girl-type things, agonizing over boys (mostly asking why are they so awful, and why are none of them like her awesome brother (not me, though I wish it were :-))) and quoting lyrics from angsty (is that a word?) songs. Come to think of it, I was a lot that way when I was a teenager…
Part of me feels better when I remember that she’s going through the normal teenage stuff, and that she will get past it, and will have a great life. The other part of me wants to just be protective and make things all work out for her, which I know I can’t. Arrrgh. All I can do is hope and pray that she makes the right decisions (she’s doing a good job so far) and that God works things out. I know He has good plans, but it’s hard to trust.
I haven’t told her yet that I’m reading her blog; I don’t know if she’ll be OK with it or if she’ll be mortified that her older brother is reading the same stuff that her friends are. I’ll promise not to be peeved that when she was writing her eternal post (she had a contest with a friend for the longest post, and she won) she mentioned her other three brothers, but not me… :-) Well at some point I guess I’ll tell her. Maybe it’ll help us communicate better. Maybe I can even give her a link to mine….
My second post...
Seems like I should have something profound for the first blog entries, and I can’t think of anything. Oh well, I guess I can just jump right in to normal life and after a few days it won’t seem awkward because it’ll be past.
Talked to Lydia last night for the first time in probably 8 years. Haven’t seen her in probably 15 years. It was good to talk to her. Heard her voice to from sad to happy in about 2 seconds, which was really nice. We’ve fortunately managed to avoid that awkwardness that comes from having a very different relationship 10 years ago; I think we’re going to be fine with the fact that we’ve moved on, that I’m married with a kid now and she’s living her own life. It’s so cool… really kinda fun to have a friend from that long ago.
Took a long walk last night on a beautiful, soggy night outside. Makes me wish I lived in Seattle or Scotland or something. But here I am in Iowa. :-)
This is my first post...
Well the blog is here and now I have to actually maintain it. We’ll give it a try, though.