Not a Great Movie

Life without a car is simple. When I was figuring out what I could do with my day today, I narrowed it down to everything within walking distance. Given the temperature, this didn't leave many options.

I chose the movie rental from Redbox.

G.I. Joe is out and I still hadn't seen it, so I watched it this afternoon.

It wasn't that good. I probably won't watch it again, though if they made a sequel, childhood nostalgia would force me to watch it also.

Tomorrow is an office day. It will likely be more productive than today was.

Retreats and Gadgets

Had a good time away with the volunteers that we (the paid staff that oversee Young Adults) work with most heavily on our retreat this weekend.

Had fun playing with my new Google phone this weekend.

Finally got Google Wave invites this weekend, so will be looking forward to playing with that as well.

Holidays, family, selling a car, getting new phones, attic work, retreat, more Google gadgetry and fantasy football....extended weekends are exhausting. Minus the car thing though, all great stuff.

Hope everyone else enjoyed their weekend as much as I did. Now to acclimate to a new routine.

New Gadgets

I can't imagine i will need to do this often, but the fact that i can is pretty cool.

I'm not at home or near a computer, but able to use my new Google phone (Samsung Moment) and one of its apps to blog from the basement of a house in the middle of nowhere while watching a movie with my volunteer team.

Sometimes technology is just really cool.

Turkey Day

Eat a lot of it. Dip some of the leftovers in Miracle Whip.

Eat more cake than you eat pie, but have both.

Watch some football.

That's a Happy Thanksgiving. Hope you have one.

Wide Eyed Wednesday

Starting a no car experiment tomorrow.

Will be leaving the house early in the morning with Jenny as she goes to work.

Will find a coffee shop to spend most of the morning in with books/computer.

Will meet around lunch time for standing appointment at Wednesday lunch hour with Jenny and one of the young adults from church.

Will do something productive with the rest of the afternoon.

Will go home with Jenny.

1 Vehicle, 2 lives, doable? Test begins tomorrow.

Just Put On a Happy Face

Sometimes, I get motivated to disregard "natural" feelings and decide I am able to put on a happy face.

Today, I found such motivation.

It has been easy the last 3 or 4 days to dwell on a car being at the shop. A car that we have no intention of getting fixed at the shop because of its price tag to do so.

So, like may be natural, we began evaluating our options. Would we pay to have the car fixed, would we buy a different used car from a dealership, or would we buy one of the two brought up by family members?

How snobby am I? Yeah, I didn't appreciate my car breaking down. I'll admit, financially it isn't something I would ever hope for, to essentially have $5700 washed down the drain with the turn of a key. But seriously, how snobby am I? This situation may not have been fortunate, or in my favor, but I have options. I HAVE OPTIONS. What can I really complain about? I've got numerous different paths to "reconcile" the situation from which I get to choose.

Funny thing is, the one that is leading the pack right now, wouldn't have entered my mind without said misfortune.

What if we lived for a while with just one car? What are the implications of restructuring my schedule at work and in my life commitments that enables us to do what we've committed to doing and find most important to our lives with just one vehicle between us?

As I've begun to think about this option more, I have started to realize that there is a part of me that just wants to try it. I think I can make it work, at least for a while, and I have envisioned some of the self-imposed structure that may actually be more beneficial for my personal development than having so much of the freedom to be lazy on my own time. I've realized I can be an intensely disciplined person when my mind is set to something and am now curious how beneficial certain things can be if I just decide to restructure some of the disciplines of my life based on this "misfortune."

So, I've decided to just put on a happy face. I've decided to be thankful for the ability to weigh options in response, and to even get excited about trying an option I may have otherwise never considered.

I have no doubt that the moment not having a vehicle becomes a hindrance to effectively carrying out my commitments (read work and mentoring meetings) that I will without hesitation evaluate other options more heavily, and honestly admit that I'm still open to hearing lots of vehicle options for Jenny and I, but I'm kind of excited about trying something different for awhile.

Bad Phone Call

Saturday didn't include the most exciting phone call ever.

Anytime the car mechanic begins his phone call this way, you know you are in trouble....

"Sorry I didn't call you earlier, it's been a pretty crappy day around here, but not as crappy as yours is about to be."

Looks like it is funeral time for my car.

Ugh....Really?

My car is making noises like it wants to die. Not fun noises at all.

Weirdly, it goes quiet when it hits 4th gear.

I hate car problems.

Time to take it to the shop though....hoping the damage isn't too costly.

Blurry Thursday's

I sometimes think it is weird that I need to have anything I will do for Friday understood by Wednesday night because Thursday's are so blurry.

The 14 hour days that are typical of Thursday often leave me with no time to do anything for a Friday.

That, and the paint is getting to my head. Some bathroom second coat was put on tonight.

Tomorrow already feels like a blur.

Paint

There is some on the wall in our in process Master Bathroom.

It's on the way.

New OS Fun

After $32.18 and a couple hours of fun, I've officially upgraded one of our laptops to Windows 7.

There is something energizing about starting fresh on a computer. Re-Installing and downloading programs is sometimes exciting for me.

That was a chunk of my evening tonight.

Time to keep the process up.

I think ITunes is next.

What an Ending

The Colts were outplayed for 58 minutes. That has happened a couple of times this year (like against the Dolphins).

The Colts played out of their mind for 2 minutes and were handed a gift in the form of a blunder from one of the coaches who makes the least blunders in the game.

Peyton Manning always receives gifts kindly.

Reggie Wayne can catch really well.

Colts win by 1 in the most exciting football game I have seen in a long time.

Go Colts!

Sermon Time

After a team meeting that altered my mood more towards tension and despair than excitement, and then, the need to change that mood in 10 minutes or so before I got up to teach tonight... I need refreshment.

I'll find that in playing stupid mind games and listening to sermons.

It's sermon time.

And It Begins

Time for football to start on Thursday nights.

Maybe that will make Jenny happy, since I work Thursday nights it is one less game each week that I am able to keep up on in real time.

Toddler Time

We went over to babysit Luke and Jesse tonight.

I spent most of the evening playing with Luke. Jenny had me come look at something on the T.V. at one point and that made me want to stay upstairs watching instead of returning to the trains downstairs.

Fortunately, I convinced Luke to go pick out a book for me to read to him.

I think we read 7 or 8 books tonight. He just ran to his bookshelf and picked another one each time we were finished.

I got to stay in the chair.

It was awesome.

Changing Expectations

The conference this weekend was different than I expected. Not necessarily better or worse, but definitely different.

The last couple of conferences I've attended by parachurch organizations had a lot more resources at their disposal. Attended in the 10s and 100s of thousands, a conference like the one this weekend with a couple hundred in attendance just can't compete with some of the things those others offered.

I actually thought the conference this weekend did a lot of things well, but don't know that Jenny and I were in their target market.

Regardless, it was nice to get away for a weekend with nothing to think about except our relationship. That would never be a bad weekend.

Away We Go

Jenny and I are taking a weekend away starting tomorrow.

We are going to Fargo, North Dakota with my boss and his wife to a marriage conference for the weekend.

It is one of the "Weekend to Remember" events hosted by Family Life Services if you've ever heard of those.

We are most excited for a free weekend away, but will take any of the marriage help we can get as well (not in that desperation tone, but in that added bonus tone).

Bacon Ruins Me

There are lots of days I want a sandwich or burger from a restaurant I am at, and am disappointed to read bacon as something the sandwich includes.

You see, they always vamp up the price for the bacon, but they don't subtract that if you ask for it without bacon. I have trouble dealing with this conundrum.

Today, there was a delightful sandwich I wanted for lunch as a special: a barbecue chicken sandwich with pineapple, cheddar cheese, and bacon. All ruined by one word.

So much so that I ordered the half sandwich and soup that was $3 dollars cheaper just because I was annoyed that everything seemed to come with bacon.

You ruin my hopes bacon, you smash them to the ground.

5 Books in Half an Hour

That is my challenge this Thursday.

I'm planning on telling the story of Israel as seen in the first 5 books of the Bible this week.

We are beginning a series through the book of Deuteronomy, but much of what happens in that book only makes sense if you have a solid foundation of the story of Israel that has happened in the 4 books leading up to it.

In a short run through with my supervisor today to figure out how to maximize certain parts of the teaching I actually heard him say "you've almost even got me excited about sitting down and reading the book of Leviticus after that."

It makes all the time spent loving the Old Testament and trying to put it in proper perspective for people who ignore the majority of it worth it.

Hoping for similar kinds of understanding/excitement come Thursday night.

I just wish I had a lot more than half an hour.

Fantasy Failures

Twice this year, the team Jason and I co-own has been the lowest scoring team in the league for a given week.

Twice this year, we tied another person for that low score and somehow managed to not lose when scoring the lowest amount of points.

Twice this year, this happened while we played the same individual.

If you are going to fail, you might as fail with someone and in doing so, scrape by with a tie.

Vanishing Time

I always look forward to the day that starts after an extra hour of sleep due to setting the clocks backwards.

Yet I always wake up that day realizing that I didn't use that hour for sleep.

Rarely do I use my extra hour wisely, I always squander it doing something useless late at night.

Another year with a wasted hour at this time.