MUST WATCH of the day...

That being said.....as soon as I posted that I read my friend Matt's blog. Matt has one of the coolest blogs I know. He always finds the coolest stuff. Great ideas. New inventions. Quality stuff. And besides that he's a really nice guy. So I found this video on his blog. It hits me because this is a conversation the youth pastors in my area have been having for a couple years now.

Good enough

Facebook has made my more cynical than I already was. Everyone thinks they have something to say.

So I come here and I start to write and I begin to doubt. I have always recognized that my voice won't change the way the world turns. I begin to question why I bother.

So it's not that I"m slacking. It's not that I don't want to post. It's just that nothing is "good enough".

STOP THIEF!!!

This is pretty self explanatory. The only thing that might not be clear is the thing I'm putting in my pocket is what I use as a wallet. It's really just cards and money together with an elastic hair tie. Tobiah likes playing with the money. We were sitting outside while Corban was riding up and down the street on his bike. Tobiah kept taking my wallet out of my pocket over and over and over again.

READ THIS of the day.

I was cleaning out some old links I had bookmarked and found an article Bono had written for the New York Times. It's from way back in April. It's a little dated, but I think the point of what he's trying to say is not. What are we doing?

READ THIS NOW.

9/14 Monday update

the weekend that was:
-Friday was a normal sort of day. Hanging with the boys.
-Friday night Mari and I went out. This was big since we had a new babysitter. The boys love Jolee, and she's around because she's going to a local community college. The best part (for me) of our date was that we went to a local hockey game. Jamestown has a junior team (16-19 year old really high end play). They were AWESOME! Marjorie doesn't really get into hockey. She likes going, but sits there and contemplates the universe and talks to me about stuff. I stand up and yell at nice goal and she says, "do you think we should go look at that house?"
-Saturday morning was just family time. Ran to the library. Nothing special.
-Saturday afternoon I left for Kane. The marching band had an exhibition there that evening. I geocached my way there. Good outing. The show was GREAT! They've come a long way. We still have things to work out, but really solid sound. I was proud of them. I got home to find two boxes full of paintball guns! Yeah it's like Christmas.
-Sunday was church. Because of our new addition the church is really messed up. So we didn't have Sunday School but church time changed anyway. So we had time to kill at home in the morning. Good naps after church.
-Sunday night was the start of our Connections Ministry at the YMCA. Youth group was really good. LOTS of younger kids. I think there were only 3 high school students. Good and weird at the same time.
-I left there to go get my goalie gear and head to the rink for a 10pm game. The team we played had asked me to play for them earlier this year. They were young and quick. They went up 3-0 early. We fought back slow but sure and won 6-5. Not a great outing for me. But we won.

where i am at the moment: Home. Mari's home too. We're running some errands this morning and then we're all headed off to Wexford to get another test run for Tobiah. We'll see how this one goes. This is the worst test they run on him. It's not a fun experience as a dad holding your son down who's crying and you can't do anything for him......and he's totally justified in crying because I would be to.

on my to-do list this week: I need to get music done early this week. Wed. is our anniversary and so I'm skipping out on worship team practice. I have some phone calls to make. I need to order Bibles. I have to finish the drum cadence for this year. I need to mail out some paintball guns to their original owners. I'm sure there's more

procrastinating about: I'm not sure I have tons of time to procrastinate. Probably the phone calls if anything.

book I'm in the midst of: Still reading Sex God and Round Ireland with a Fridge.

media that seemed to catch my attention this past week: I love finding music that I didn't know existed. This past week I found the "group" Owl City. Totally blown away. Basically it's just a guy who makes music LITERALLY in his basement. I can't get enough. You really need to check out his stuff. I'm going to put a video at the bottom of this post. WOW. So good. Kind of Postal Service ish.

grand revelations this past week: This literally just happened. Tobiah knocked Corban's cereal bowl over and milk went everywhere. I was mad because Tobiah was just looking for MORE food. So I sent the boys in the room so I could clean up. As I was doing that I thought to myself "whoever said no use crying over spilled milk.....was a moron".

how i’m feeling about this week: WAY too busy this week. I wish I had more time to just chill this week. I don't think it'll happen.

Big Boy

So last week was a new start for Corban. He had his first day of pre-school. We kind of felt that he needed a change from just day care. Next year he goes to kindergarten. So he started last week at St. Joseph's school. He goes 3 days a week for half days. So far he's loving it.

So for the first day of school I turned into my mom and took his picture. You just HAVE to take first day of school pictures right?

MUST READ of the day

Part of me wanted to hold this until Random Saturday, but the way I've been blogging, who knows if that'll actually happen.

A couple years ago...maybe before Corban came home...I decided to read Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut to see what I was missing. I was hooked. I just liked the way Mr. Vonnegut wrote. I ended up reading every major novel he wrote and several of his shorter stories as well. I really liked his writing style a lot and found that so many of his books really strung little subtle things together.

ANYWAY....I came across this blog post about a speaking engagement Mr. Vonnegut did a number of years ago before he passed away.

YOU MUST READ THIS!!! It's is his explaination of drama. In the age we live in, this is so very spot on!

9/7 Monday update

the weekend that was:
-Friday I had the boys. It was good.
-Friday night was Warren's first football game. Since I'm the percussion instructor for the marching band, I go to the home games. Warren has had a bad football team for a few years now. Like really bad. We actually won 45-0. Wild.
-Saturday morning we were all up early and out of the house by 8am. We headed to Mission Meadows Camp. I spoke there for their teen camp this summer. The boys LOVE camp. As we're pulling into camp Tobiah starts pumping his arms in excitement! The reason we were going is that they have had a Labor Day "family camp" for a number of years. The director Karen asked me to come and lead music for the speaking sessions on Saturday. It was good to be at camp. I struggled a bit with the music. The attendees of family camp are more the grand parent and great-grandparent age bracket rather than "we have family now". It went well though. We got to swim. We got to play a lot. Good time on Saturday.
-Sunday morning all the Evangelical Covenant churches in the area have a joint service at MM. We're talking about 375 people. Very cool. Sunday afternoon was picnic and lots of play for everyone. Corban spent the entire day at the waterfront....boating and swimming with Mari.....Tobiah and I took naps.
-Today we came home, did groceries and chilled.

where i am at the moment: Home. I like going away. I REALLY like camp. It's good to be home too. I'm a home body. The boys are in the bath. Their bedtime is coming soon. They're both tired.

on my to-do list this week: Need to get music ready for this Sunday. Need to write a drum cadence (for real this time). Our Sunday night ministry starts this week, so I should probably plan something cool for that. I need to chat with Mike about our book we're reading together. I need to get some flyers to some teens. I need to update the youth blog (I've been even worse about keeping that up to date this summer than this one!)

procrastinating about: Take your pick from one of the above.

book I'm in the midst of: I've been casually reading "Sex God" by Rob Bell. I got back into it this weekend. I'm also re-reading "Round Ireland with a Fridge" by Tony Hawks. My friend Becky sent it to me a couple years ago. She had great taste in books for me to read. This one is awesome!

media that seemed to catch my attention this past week: During marching band season it's really hard to get our marching songs out of my head. This year we're doing a version of Buddy Rich's "Dancing Men". We're doing Kansas's "Carry on my Wayward Son". We're doing "MacArthur Park". I did however find a "band" who's sound I like. They're life view is a bit skewed though. They're called Kidnap Kids. The two main people are two females who play guitar and xylophone. I've always been a sucker for female lead bands.

grand revelations this past week: Not everything has to minister to me, to be valuable. Different things impact people differently. Because I don't like a song, doesn't mean that it won't make other people cry.

how i’m feeling about this week: I hate weeks that start on Tuesday.

The return of Random Saturday

-A picture paints 1000 words......or 6 maybe.

-If you've ever read this blog before or have met me you know I love coffee. Some artistic folks in Australia love coffee too. Why do all things like this have to be of the Mona Lisa though?

-So what if you wanted to be a ninja, but you have to work in an office to make ends meat? Voila.

-Or perhaps you're Rambo but care about your good looks? We've got that covered too.

-There are lots of blogs out there dedicated to very specific niches. I've been sitting on this one for awhile. I love it. It's called Advanced Style. It's mostly just pictures of older people that are dressed awesome. I love it. I don't check it often, so that it's fresh every time that I do check back in.

-If Jesus played sports what would that look like. Who cares? Apparently someone. I was a bit disappointed that Jesus wasn't a goalie.....because you know he saves. My favorite is the Jesus with kids doing Martial Arts. Nothing says turn the other cheek than Jesus doing Martial Arts.

-Need a Macbook Pro? Check e-bay or a pawn shop in NJ soon.....cause these guys cleaned house! 31 seconds and they made out.

-In related news if you pick up one of those hot Macbooks you might want a table to go with it.

-How is Bob Dylan not dead yet? Who cares. Better thought is that you could own a GPS for your car with his voice on it! I would like to know if he will also being singing "Positively 4th Street" for the GPS as well.....

-I just stumbled across this. There's a band/guy called Moldover who just put out a CD....with a built in theremin! What's a theremin? So this guy created a special CD jacket with a circuit board and it's a low-tech theremin. VERY cool. The CD and packaging costs 50 bucks.....which is the only reason I'm not buying this album I think.

Video time!!!