Jacobs Piano Recital

This was Jacob's 2nd recital.  You can see how much he improved from last May here.  Now he is doing both the treble and bass clef, and the notes are not labled on the sheet music.

Bush Shoe Incident

Who throws a shoe? Honestly?

Happy Halloween

There is one thing that I really love about Halloween and it is the sense of community that you get walking through your neighborhood in the evening and stopping at all of your neighbors houses.  The rest of it I don't really care for... We always get home way too late, and with way too much sugar.  Overall we had a great time though.  This year we went with 2 other neighbor boys (Jacobs best friend who he also sits next to in class), his little brother who just happens to be 4, the same as Ethan and their dad.

Darth Vaders holding Superman captive for a picture.  Yes, they both wanted to be Darth Vader and they were both okay with the other one wanting to be the same thing.

Here they are at the neighbors house right before we head out together.

Super Sammie :-)

Conversation Piece

What do you think when you see this?

Thank you NBC

Last night we watched Heroes online because our DVR is not cooperating.  They have a few short commercials throughout it.  Here is what they consisted of:

1. Little girl neatly packing up the contents of her dollhouse.  Mother comes in and says "come on Anna it is time to go".  Camera pans back to see the room full of packed up boxes.  Deep voiced man explains how "When you go through a foreclosure it doesn't just affect you".

2. Different little girl laying on her bed with images of pollution, deforestation and toxic waste being projected across her and the room.  The girl sternly says "You promised me the world... Is this what you had in mind?"

3.  Three young adolescent boys sitting around an old station wagon, with several other old cars parked next to it.  The film quality is reminiscent of the early 80's.  They are obviously bored, sitting in different positions, one on the ground one reclined on the hood and the other leaning on the wagon.  They are completely disengaged with each other and fidgety.  After 10 seconds of only hearing the basketball that one of them is apathetically bouncing, another man with a deep voice says "The community almost built them a community center... but almost is as close as they got".  Then more quiet idleness and slow basketball dribbling.

So I just wanted to thank NBC for wiping that silly naive smile-of-life off my face and putting me in my place by reminding me that we live in a world where little girls are evicted from their dollhouses, we are destroying the planet for our children, and our teenagers are teetering on the brink of violent crime due to boredom and not building them a community center is sure to push them over the edge.

I thought I was just going to get an hour of fun entertainment, but instead I got a fresh outlook on life.

Introducing Peter...

Okay, so maybe I am almost a month late, but he sure is cute... err, I mean, he looks like he is going to be a football player or maybe a firefighter.

That's Going To Hurt In The Morning

Poor guy "fell"* off a neighbors trampoline and landed face first on the patio. He spent a few hours laying pathetically on the couch, took a short nap, then got up, ate chips and salsa and ran downstairs to play video games with Jacob. The bump is actually a lot worse than you can see in that picture. He is attempting, unsuccessfully, to pull his hair back for the picture.

*I say "fell", but actually he was pushed by someone whose name will go unmentioned.

Completely Lost

We finally finished the 4th and most recent season of Lost.  We started Netflixing the first 3 seasons last spring, but the fourth season we watched online because it isn't out on DVD yet.  We were able to watch it in HD online which was very impressive.   No lag time and short 30 second commercial breaks. 

So for all of you who have so rudely talked about Lost in front of me and I have shushed you, or held my hands over my ears while loudly singing "LA LA LA", you may now speak freely in front of me or better yet to me about Lost and I will gladly listen.

For those of you who haven't watched it, I highly recommend seeing Lost, it is one of the best TV series of all time.  I fought watching it for a long time because I thought it would be like the X-Files and just break my heart with a major let down by ending with some guy sitting in a cave smoking a cigarette and saying that the world was going to end in 2012.   I was worried until lobiwan informed me that the producers specifically said it was not going to end in disappointment like the X-Files and that they have had the story line mapped out from the beginning.

Thank you lobiwan I will never doubt you again.  I just can't believe that we have to wait until "early 2009" for the 5th season to begin.

Bad Day Addendum

Before reading furthure please be sure to read the post "A Really Really Really Bad Day or One Good Thing is...." first, as this is an addendum to that.  

This afternoon things were going better.  I started to get hungry and we didn't have anything to eat so I went to Quiznos and got a sandwich with soup to go.  As I pulled out of the parking lot it sounded like my back passenger tire was flat.  So I pulled over as soon as I could and parked in front of this nail salon.  Sure enough it was completely blown out.  No problem though I have a spare and everything I need to change it.  I tried calling Jenny and noticed that my cell phone was was almost out of batteries, strange I just charged it.  She didn't answer.  Oh well I figured I would have it changed in 10 minutes and be home in 15 anyway.  

I took everything I needed out of the trunk, yes it was all there.  I opened the side door so I could listen to NPR news while I took care of business.  After placing the jack I removed all of the lug nuts, then I jacked up the car.   A news story was on about ball jointed dolls.  Aparrently they are all the craze now in Japan and gaining interest in the US.  So I gave the wheel a good yank to pull it off and it didn't budge, no matter what I tried I could not get the wheel to move at all.  I wiggled it, I kicked it, I spun it, I cursed at it.  Nothing worked.  I tried calling Jenny again, still no answer.  I double checked the wheel to make sure I wasn't missing anything, no everything looked right, it should slip right off.  These women spend thousands of dollars on these silly dolls that I guess look like real people, sounds like the setup for a B horror movie to me.

Oh I forgot to mention that this entire time I am working on this, two women where sitting 10 feet away from me in front of the nail salon talking about me in Vietnamese and laughing.  I am sure it was a great time for them.

I still hadn't eaten my food, so I sat on the parking lot curb and ate my sandwich with my fingers black with grease and dirt.  With what I am sure is the last bit of juice in my phone battery I eek one more call to Jenny, still nothing.  So I called my Dad and it went something like this:

Dad: Hello.

Me: Dad, real fast I am almost out of phone batteries.  I have a flat tire and I am parked next to Hollywood Video, try to get a hold of Jenny and let her know.  I haven't been able to get a hold of her.  I am trying to change the tire but I can't get it off.  I have taken off all the lug nuts and it won't move, I think it is rusted on.  Any ideas?

Dad: Well you haven't jacked the car up yet have you?  You have to do that before it will come off.

Me: Yes Dad (In my mind that was a given, but apparently he has little faith in my automotive knowledge), I of course I jacked the car up...

We then discussed how I should walk to a nearby automotive place and see if they can help.  Which is what I did.  A nice man at the Jiffy-Lube gave me a can of "ZAP", basically WD-40, with the nozzle broken off so I had to push the spray stem up against what I wanted to spray.  At this point it has been at least an hour since I left the house to get a quick sandwich and come straight home.  On my way back to the car Jenny called, I told her what was going on.  She felt adequatly sorry for not having heard my prior calls.  I asked her to bring my hammer and a good can of WD-40.  She said she was on her way.

Back at the car, one of the nail salonists (posibbly a made up word) started asking why I wasn't able to get it changed yet and I explained about it being rusted on, but not to worry because my wife was bringing me a hammer.  She went in and brought out a big heavy hammer, perfect for what I needed.  Did you know that a really nice pair of eyes for one of those dolls could set you back several hundred dollars.

I sprayed down the lug nuts as best I could with the broken spray can and started hamering away.  It still took a surprising amount of whacking, but it eventually came out and I was putting the spare on when Jenny arrived.  I finished everything up, we returned the can of "Zap" to the friendly people at Jiffy-Lube and went home.  I stopped at QT to get a Coke on the way back.  Jenny had asked me to get a pack of stamps while I was there.  They were out, but gave me my drink for free.... maybe the day was turning around.

Some people go as far to treat the dolls like their children.  One woman interviewed explained how she had a 17 year old girl with dark hair and an 8 year old boy with blonde hair...  What a stupid news story, I don't think I really like ball jointed dolls.

A Really Really Really Bad Day or One Good Thing is....

Well the one good thing is that he had only had water and saltines since last night, but let me start from the beginning. Three weeks ago Jenny came down with this strange mystery virus. It doesn't cause a fever, or runny nose, or coughing, any of the usual things that indicate that you are sick. It just made her feel bad; body aches, tiredness, general malaise. Stay at home mom's don't really get sick days so for the most part she still had all of her regular duties in child care. I think I went in late a couple of days so she could sleep in and I took at least half a day off. After about a week of this you start to wonder if the person is faking it, that is, you wonder until you come down with the same sickness. Fortunately she started getting over it as I came down with it.

So for the next week I felt horrible with no visible signs of sickness, then on the Friday of Labor Day weekend we had a trip planned to Buena Vista Co. I was pretty hesitant about it since I was still getting over being sick and I was still very tired. But we packed and hit the road. I had a sore throat and was exhausted the whole time, but it was okay otherwise. Even after getting back on Tuesday I still was not feeling my best. Finally after a few days I came down with a full blown cold, missed another day of work some where in there, I think... it is all pretty foggy, and slowly everyone else in the family has come down sick now too. Except Ethan.

I wish Ethan was sick because right now he is screaming "DADDY, I AM TALKING TO YOU" while I ignore him. He has been crying for me to put on a show for him for the last 10 minutes and I told him not right now, but that I would do it for him later. That isn't good enough though, he wants it "NOW!". Before that he was throwing a fit because he wanted his yo-yo back, before that he was throwing a fit because he was frustrated with the yo-yo because he couldn't get it to do what he wanted it to.

Jacob came home sick from school yesterday with a fever and since he absolutely refuses to take any medicine he suffers through his high temperatures with no relief. At about 4:00 this morning Jenny got up and went to Dillon's and Walgreen's because her ears were hurting so bad that she wanted to get some ear drops. After she got back and laid back down, around 5:00 Samuel starting crying. I put a shirt on him, covered him up better and gave him some of the ear drops (Finally Ethan went away... wait he is back... Jacob threw up in the toilet, he is okay though), so after laying Samuel back down in the middle of the night I checked on Jacob and he was burning up. I took his temperature and it said 106!! I freaked out a little bit, brain damage begins at 105 (or so I have heard). I woke Jenny back up and ran to get some ice water. She took his temp again several times and it only came to 103, whew, that was a close call. So Jenny laid back down and I finally convinced Jacob to take some Ibuprofen. That is the best he has ever done with taking medicine and he slept until after 9 this morning because of it.

Samuel has this 6th sense of knowing when I lay down. After finishing with Jacob at around 6:00 I laid down and as soon as I shut off my lamp, WHAAAAAA. Samuel was crying for something again. This time I held him for a little bit and gave him some Ibuprofen too. He slept fine after that.

After we got up this morning things are mostly a blur. I remember laying on the couch and Ethan and Samuel fighting over who could lay where on top of me. I remember Ethan bulling Samuel several times and whining because he was hungry (yes I did get up and feed him). Then he started with the aforementioned yo-yo at about 8:30 and hasn't stopped whining or crying or throwing a full blown fit ever since.

Jenny's ear problem was only getting worse. She already had a scheduled appointment this morning that she went to and when she came back she was obviously in extreme pain. She took some Ibuprofen, some more sudafed to help clear up her sinuses and then she even took some percocet left over from when I had my wisdom teeth removed (I am sitting on the deck right now and Mason, our dog, just chased a squirrel from out of a tree onto our house. He is looking down at me and for a moment I actually feared that he was going to pounce on me. I could see it in his beady little eyes. Whew, he is gone now. Off to hatch another evil plan). Still the pain was not letting up for Jenny. So she called her Dr. and scheduled an appointment for about an hour later at 10:50. She wanted to leave right then, and since she was in no shape to drive herself I loaded everyone up in the car to take her. The kids were mostly still in just their underwear, I had to carry Jacob from the couch out to the car. We pulled out of the driveway and drove up to the stop sign at the end of our street and Jacob said, "I feel like I am going to puke". I put the car in reverse and started to back up to our driveway again and BLAAAAAH.... BLAAAAAH... too late. The one good thing is that he had only had water and saltines since last night.

So Jenny took my car while I cleaned out the van. Ethan then threw a fit because we weren't going with Mommy. Jenny called about 45 minutes later and sounded horrible, I could barely understand anything she said, just that the doctor had given her some prescriptions that she was waiting to get filled at Walgreen's. When Jenny got home later, Ethan had thankfully calmed down and she was feeling a little better. She said that she got in to see the doctor early after they saw her putting finger dents in the armrest of her chair in the waiting room and that when the doctor looked in her ear, she gasped in surprise to see how swollen the inside was and that her ear drum was bleeding a little bit. There was a pinhole in it that was draining fluid and it might get bigger which would actually be a good thing because then it would drain faster. She gave Jenny a steroid, antibiotics and some oxycodone.

Things seem to have calmed down for the time being. The kids are quietly watching TV, Samuel is playing nicely, Jenny is resting in bed and now I have to figure out how to feed all of us . I really don't feel up to cooking anything and fast food sounds terrible... maybe I will just lay down while I have the chance.

I am sick of being sick!

Icon of Christ

Tonight I took pictures for a friends family that was being chrismated into the Eastern Orthodox Church. St. George's Cathedral was already beautiful but this last week they put up this mural icon of Jesus made from thousands of little glass tiles. This is a huge mural up above the front intrance and they are working on St. John the Forerunner (John the Baptist) to the right of him and then they will start on the "Theotokos" (Mary the mother of Jesus) on the left, and around the corner facing the main street will be St. George (Saint George). They had to hire some guys from Italy who specialize in this sort of thing to create it. Unfortunately this picture doesn't do it justice.

If you stare at the tile on the top left corner of the Bible and twist your eyes just right you will notice a picture of the Last Supper coming out at you in 3D.

Buena Vista

We spent last weekend in Buena Vista, CO. It's very beautiful; completely surrounded by some of the tallest mountains in the world. Above is a composite of 6 pictures of one of the ranges. Mt. Princeton is the tall one on the left. The picture is more dramatic if you click on it to view a larger size.

"Mount Princeton (14,197 feet high) is one of the fourteeners of the US state of Colorado. It lies in the Collegiate Peaks, in the central part of the Sawatch Range, just west of the Arkansas River. While not one of the highest peaks of the Sawatch, it is perhaps the most dramatic, as it rises more abruptly from the Arkansas valley than the other peaks of the range."

-Wikipedia

Life of a Web Designer...

I have been designing websites professionally for over 8 years now.
You would think that I would have thicker skin than I do by now, but
it never fails to get a nasty response from a client on a website and
it throws off the rest of my day. Here is the scenario: customer
asks for a website, they give you little to no direction. You create
a rough draft of said website and email them a link to preview it. As
expected it isn't what they envisioned. Customer then sends you a
nasty email about how disappointed they are and, if you are lucky,
they then give you all the detail of how they expected it to look in
the first place, but didn't bother to tell you until now. You are
then left with the mixed feelings of frustration, anger, and
insecurity. Frustration that they didn't tell you how they wanted it
to look to begin with. Anger that they would have the nerve to put
all the blame on you rather than saying something like "This is a good
starting point but we were looking for something more in this
direction...". Insecurity about the fact that I should be able to
read their mind.

My first reaction is always to get mad, then I think, "I am
professional and above this, I am not going to let it get to me". Then
I start blaming them for not communicating better with me or not
giving me enough information. The best solution is always to give
myself time to cool off before responding in any way. Finally after
some time, rather than trying to defend my self and accusing them, I
settle on accepting it and send them a professional email explaining
how I will work with them until they are happy with the end product.
It is a somewhat humiliating process because I have to take the Burger
King philosophy of "Your Way, Right Away", the customer is always
right.

I suppose I am much better at taking this sort of criticism now than I
was 5-8 years ago. It only bothers me for an hour or so now, and it
used to pull me down for a few days. I guess that is progress.

The Fastest Decade of My Life, or Time Flies When You Are Having Fun, or Spending 10 Years With Your Best Friend

Today Jenny's and my marriage to each other turns 10 years old.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARRIAGE!!

If you have some spare time you can read about those 10 exciting years in Jenny's newest post here.

No Line On The Horizon

November 14!

Team Rip Your Heart Out and Shove It Down Your Throat

When we first started the season and they were assigning us to our different teams and coaches, I gave the lady Jacobs name and she said ""Ok, he is on Team Caring". "What?", I said. "Are you serious? Team Caring is the name of our team? That has to be a joke! Why not just call us Team Lame, or Team Rainbow Lambs and Flowers? You name your ball team after some kind of ferocious or noble animal like, The Lions or The Stallions, not Team Caring!!" Ok, I didn't really say that to her, but I did think it.

We never spoke of that name again. I don't even think the boys ever knew that was the name of their team. How could I reveal such shame to them. They enjoyed the season though, and as you can see they "won" medals. I don't know what they did to win the medals, seeing as everyone else received one also, but I think it has something to do with paying the $55 to play T-Ball. Now I only wonder if later when they actually accomplish something and win a medal it will mean just a little bit less because of this.

Last Game...

Ok really they have one more game. A make-up game on Saturday.

T-Ball

Jacob and Ethan started t-ball this year. They are on the same team which makes things easier for the whole family. I forgot to bring a camera to the first game so these pictures are from their second game. This week there was much improvement about not running to get the ball if it is on the other side of the field and then tackling everyone else in order to get the ball first. You can see an example of that in the bottom picture.

The games are pretty simple. We only play 2 innings. Everyone gets to bat each inning and everyone plays the field (it gets a little crowded). There are no stikes or outs and we don't keep score. I guess if we did keep score the team with the most players would win since everyone gets to run the bases.

Mr. Intense

The ball went right into his glove.

Jacob Batting

Ethan Batting

Not much to say

I remember a Seinfeld episode where Jerry walks into his apartment and hits play on his answering machine to hear "It's George... uhh, I don't have anything to say" Click.

Thats me. Sorry it has been so long since I posted anything.

The Rise of the Rest

Here is a rather long article but well worth the read. If you are depressed about world news give it a try b/c it is very optimistic. If you can take the time I would love to hear what others think. I am sure for some it will raise red flags about a one world government, but that isn't what globalization is about and I think it is very sad and disheartening when Christians end up on the other side of supporting billions of people rising out of abject poverty! Below is a quote near the end of the story that gives a good summation to conclude the article. Mainly I like his optimism and talk about the "growing pie".


‘The Post-American World’ or 'The Rise of the Rest'

Americans—particularly the American government—have not really understood the rise of the rest. This is one of the most thrilling stories in history. Billions of people are escaping from abject poverty. The world will be enriched and ennobled as they become consumers, producers, inventors, thinkers, dreamers, and doers. This is all happening because of American ideas and actions. For 60 years, the United States has pushed countries to open their markets, free up their politics, and embrace trade and technology. American diplomats, businessmen, and intellectuals have urged people in distant lands to be unafraid of change, to join the advanced world, to learn the secrets of our success. Yet just as they are beginning to do so, we are losing faith in such ideas. We have become suspicious of trade, openness, immigration, and investment because now it's not Americans going abroad but foreigners coming to America. Just as the world is opening up, we are closing down.

Jacobs 1st Piano Recital

Jacob started piano lessons with Calana in January. Today he had his first recital. This was the first time he has ever done anything in front of a large group (about 50 people) by himself. I was very impressed with how he handled himself. Later he said he really liked it and when asked said that he wasn't nervous at all.

Here are the 2 songs that he did.

512 Ahhhhhh!!!!

Possibly the coolest license plate ever!!!

The Waiting Place...

Waiting for a train to go
or bus to come or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a YES or NO
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting."

Nuclear Power & The Environment

I have liked Patrick Moore for a while now. I think for an environmentalist he seems to have a pretty level head and realistic attitude towards how we should balance energy needs and protecting the environment.

Greenpeace founder now backs nuclear power

"Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore says there is no proof global warming is caused by humans, but it is likely enough that the world should turn to nuclear power...." more >>

The Good News: I didn't cut my arm off

Welp, I survived another tree trimming season. Every spring I have to get out my chainsaw and take care of the jungle in our backyard and every year I am afraid of cutting off one of my own limbs. Last year while I was working in the backyard a neighbor two houses down was in his backyard using his chainsaw. I just happened to look over and see him cut off a branch and his later fall out from underneath him. I jumped up on one of the kids toys and yelled over to see if he was ok. I didn't hear an answer right away so I ran over to climb the fence when I saw his wife come out of the house and another guy who must have been with him frantically yell up to her to go get some towels. Now, any time someone is using a chain saw and there is an accident where someone yells "Go get a bunch of towels", that is not a good sign. Soon the paramedics arrived and he was taken to the emergency room. I never did find out what happened but the incident did nothing but confirm my fear for my chainsaw.

This year I just took care of some minor trimming myself and we hired a professional service to "lift the skirt", or whatever dirty metaphor it is called, on our 2 big maple trees. My goal is to be able to grow grass in our backyard. Right now all we have is dirt. you know the growing conditions are bad when even the weeds can't take root. If you remember, last year I planted grass and it came up nice until we got about 8 inches of rain in a month. It flooded the yard for too long and the grass died. Apparently swamp like conditions are not ideal for grass. This year I decided I would give it another try. I have a 2 fold approach. First, I realized that a raised garden bed along the back fence was working as a dam, so I removed the railroad ties and leveled the ground. Second, we trimmed the trees quit a bit yesterday morning and hopefully that will give the ground the sunlight that it needs.

It is amazing how hard it can be to recover just a small piece of land from years of neglect. It has taken us 3 Spring/Summers to finally have the backyard in what I would call respectable shape. Mostly it just needed A LOT of pruning and trimming. Even though I had already done a lot over the last 2 years, the entire ground was covered with branches when the trimmers were done. It took 2 of them at least 30 minutes just to load what they cut and the brush pile I already had onto their flatbed.

I hope to plant the grass in the next few days. I will keep you updated on the progress or lack thereof, but the weather doesn't look like it is going to make it easy for me.

Water Fight After the Rain Tonight

"Ethan don't shoot me I have my camera!"

"Can you hold still for just 5 seconds so I can get a picture of you that isn't blurry."

Shooting the spider on the back of my car

Wishing he could run with the big boys

Cow Town Field Trip

A Flying Cow
...and you hate it when a bird poops on your windshield!

Virtual House Fire

Several months ago the processor on our computer went bad. The computer had lived a good life and was in need of being replaced anyway so then I finally had a good reason. I ordered the parts to build the new computer, but when I removed the hard drives I placed one of them on the desk with the intent of adding it to the new computer later. This was the drive that had all of our pictures and music on it. I am talking thousands of songs and tens of thousands of pictures! Then a magnet was accidentally set on top of the drive.

The drive was quite a mess. To make a long story short I was sort of able to recover most of the pictures and luckily I had all of the music and most of the pictures backed up elsewhere. I suppose we may never know for sure how much was lost. It was like a virtual house fire. One of the things that people fear most with a house fire, other than the loss of life, is losing those irreplacable things like family pictures.

The digital age we live in comes with pluses and minuses. The negative thing is that rather than taking a rare fire or flood to destroy 10 years of family memories it can take one simple little magnet. The advantage is that it is easy to have multiple copies of these digital items like music, pictures and documents. But of course you have to take the time to make sure you actually back them up. After lots of searching I think I have found a pretty good and inexpensive solution. Its called iDrive. You install a small program to your computer, configure the settings and it backs up all of your files, and this part is important, to an off site location! You aren't just backing up files to another hard drive in your house, which is better than nothing, but still vulnerable to theft and fires, but you are backing up to a secure server located somewhere else. It uses 128 bit encryption both in trasmitting the data and in storage, you can access the backup from any computer with an internet connection and you can have 2 GB of storage for free! If you need more than that, it is less than $5 per month. A great deal if you ask me.

Remember it is not a question of if your hard drive fails it is just a matter of when. Keep in mind that most hard drives have a life of 2 to 5 years at the most. Please, please, please take my advice and make sure that you have some kind of backup system, it will save you a lot of frustration and heartache later on.

The Big Three-Oh!

Well I completed my 30th year of breathing today. Of course such a monumental occasion makes one contemplative of their life. Hmmm... so let's see, professional things are good (maybe more on that later), family life is great. I have 3 perfect little boys, and I am in love with Jenny more than ever! Spiritually... that one is a bit tougher. Either I am closer to God than I have ever been or further than ever. To say that I have gone through a sort of spiritual paradigm shift over the last year and a half would be an understatement. While the essentials of my faith have stayed the same, I have taken a critical look at nearly all of the beliefs that I have embraced for the last 20 some years, and changed many of them to one degree or another. Some of these new beliefs have left me at odds with the majority of mainline Christianity.

At times this growth has been fun and exciting and other times it has been remarkably painful. Last night was one of the painful times. I meet with a group of Eastern Orthodox guys on Monday nights. As the only "Protestant" (I don't really like that term b/c I am not protesting anything) in the group they normally know what to expect from me. Of course I am not going to agree with praying to saints, venerating Mary, or submitting to the Eastern Orthodox hierarchy (limited though it may be), but last night I surprised them. Last night against my will, and better judgment, I espoused an idea that not only went against the Orthodox Church but most of evangelicalism today. And although all of these friends were earnest and polite in their discussion of this issue I still couldn't help but feeling beat up, defeated and heretical when I got home. It was bad enough that two of them had to call me directly afterward to make sure, first that I was okay and second, to further express their concern.

Even if I am very wrong, this could be a good experience, right? I once heard someone say that everyone should be involved in a heresy at one point or another in their life that is so great that they will forever be more forgiving and gracious to others (or something like that). Still it is hard to be in the minority. It is hard to have everyone around you think you are crazy. It is hard to not have the majority of Christian thought or Christian history to fall back on. There is great safety in numbers. On this point I envy my Orthodox friends. It seems very comforting to say "this is the way things have always been and greater men than I have already made a decision on this issue so who am I to question it."

I suppose in some small microscopic way this is how Peter and the Apostles felt when they declared that Christ had risen, or how Paul felt when he completely reversed course and started preaching the Gospel that he had persecuted, or Martin Luther when he nailed his points to the Church door. On the other hand this is probably how all of the "great" heretics of history felt too. Is the only thing that separated them from the great champions of the faith that they were wrong?

Anyway, I am going to try to forget about this for now and start enjoying my birthday, I have taken the day off work and we are going to go eat lunch now.

Have a happy tax day :-)

Chucky Jesus?

This morning Jacob has been asking me to give him words to spell on paper. So we went through things like "run", "jump", "sun", etc... Then he rolled out some play dough and wanted to spell words with it. So I asked him if he could spell "Jesus". He asked if it had a "Z" in it and I explained to him how the letter "s" makes the "z" sound sometimes. As we were sounding out the word "Jesus" several times, Ethan said "Chucky Jesus". I looked at him and he said "I want to go to Chucky Jesus". At this point I realized that in 4 year old language "cheeses" and "Jesus" are pronounced virtually the same. So I asked him if he realized that it is "cheeses" not "Jesus", like what we eat on Pizza. He looked up at me and smiled with a sheepish smile that told me that all this time he thought his favorite place in the world to eat was "Chucky Jesus".

The Mirth Mobile

Only 10 hours left to to own an excellent piece of Wayne's World memorabilia.

Wayne's World AMC Pacer Up For Sale on Ebay

"You are bidding on a 1976 Amc Pacer, this car is the coolest of the un-cool and the most famous pacer ever. This is a rare chance to own a real Paramount pictures built Wayne's World Pacer. This car was built by Paramount as a prop for the Paramount Kings Island ride, Stan Milenkos."


"Party on, Wayne", "Party on, Garth!"