Foreigners

I've been thinking about "home" a little bit recently. We were visiting family this weekend who live about an hour and a half from our home. I was thinking about how if we lived there, it wouldn't ever quite feel like home. At least, to me. It would feel like we were always visiting. Never home.

A friend of ours is a native of Argentina, but also a citizen of Italy (and lived there for several years) and now resides here in New York. (Married to a US citizen.) So she has many homes, and in a way, often feels like she's "not home".

Home is interesting. It's definitely a location, but it's also a state of mind. The Bible says we who follow Jesus are foreigners. That we are never quite home. We read about the first disciples of Jesus today (the boys and I) who left everything at Jesus' simple invitation to, "Come follow me." He had no home, they had no home. They were travelers. Foreigners. Strangers.

Jen & I have also noticed recently how different we are. We are not like most of the people we know. Our priorities, what we want our family to live like, be like, look like. We're different. We feel, quite often, like foreigners.

So, how do you endure that? I guess the way you do is to know that no matter where we are in this life we are always foreigners. We are never home. We belong somewhere else, and until we leave this life or Jesus comes back for us, we'll always feel a little homesick.

With all the burdens of this foreign place that I am bearing lately, I am definitely "longing for home". For peace. Rest. But, that time has not come yet.

For now, I enjoy the "home" that God has given me. My beautiful wife, and five amazing kids. And our little yellow house. :-) Oh that life were only that simple.

Perhaps it can be.

Random Bible Verse Generator

I received an email this week from a guy who has designed a little widget that randomly displays a verse from the Bible (16 translations currently) that you can paste to a website or blog... wherever you'd like. It was pretty cool, so I pasted it in the sidebar to the right. The funny thing is, talk about out of context! Sometimes if you just get one verse... it can be a pretty random message! :-)

If you'd like to get your own, you can visit their website.

Apple Event, Tuesday Sept 9th, 2008

Given that I am now employed by Apple, I will refrain from speculating on any of the product or service announcements that will be made, but this invitation went out from Apple this week, regarding an event scheduled for next Tuesday morning (local time) in San Francisco. Looking forward to seeing what they announce!

(Believe it or not, even working for Apple, I don't know any more than you do!) :-)

Are You Ready For Some Football??

NFL football is back! The regular season starts this week with a game featuring the World Champ NY Giants and the Washington Redskins on NBC Thursday night, a full slate of games on Sunday (including the BILLS GAME!), and then a double-header on ESPN on Monday Night. I can't wait!!

The Bills are looking really good this year. From the coaches and the offensive and defensive schemes, to the players, established and new... it really could be a fun season to be a Bills fan. (I know I say that pretty often, but... seriously. Just watch...) :-)

The start of the season also means that it's time for Dad & the Boys to make their weekly NFL picks! :-) I almost feel like I am looking forward to that more than the football :-) It was lots of fun last year, and should be even more fun this year! We're doing the whole season this time!

There's a cool Facebook application where you can make picks and compare your results against your friends... it's called Pro Football Picks, if you're interested.

So, just a few days away... let the games begin!!

Not How I Planned It

Well, I just got back - AGAIN - from Buffalo. We spent the extra long weekend there visiting with Jen's family, and came home pretty late tonight (got the kids in bed around 11pm) to find that I had forgotten my laptop there. An hour and a half away there. And, not only do I have a lot of work to do tomorrow (for which I need my laptop) it is also the only day this week that does not have something else going on.

This was not good.

So, I was contemplating when to fit in the extra three hour round trip I was needing to do, and decided to call my in-laws to let them know what happened, and that I would need to come get it. I talked to my father-in-law about it and said I'd need to either just come right then, or maybe get up super early in the morning, to get started on my work at a decent hour. I was leaning toward the morning, and told him so.

To my surprise, he called back about five minutes after we hung up and said they would meet me about half an hour closer to me as soon as I could make it there! That saved me an hour, so I jumped right in the van and headed out.

When I got to our meeting place (in about 55 minutes! Gotta love traffic at midnight on a Monday night!) there was my father-in-law, waiting for me in his car. I offered to buy him some of his favorite coffee to say thanks, but he declined. Instead, after saving me time and money by meeting me, he also gave me twenty bucks for gas! That paid for my unexpected, unwanted trip! Wow!

So, a bad situation was made nicer by the generosity of my second dad. That definitely made the late-night trip much nicer, and the end of this long day much nicer!

Half Mom, Half Dad

We were looking at old slides last night at my wife's family reunion. We get together every Labor Day weekend, and this time, at Jen's request, Dad broke out the old slide projector and we spent an hour or so looking at old photos.

Almost every photo brought laughs along with a funny story or two. Sometimes it took a bit longer to remember a particular story, at least every detail of it. And often, someone would comment how one of the now parents look just like their offspring. Our little Kirstie looks a lot like her mommy used to!

But as I looked at the photos, I kept thinking, "It's not totally like Kirstie..." (And not just because I think she looks like me...) :-) There was just something very different, even though there was a lot the same.

That got me to thinking about how we are all a mix of half mom and half dad. (And all of the people that went into that before them!) There's one part of dad and one part of mom, so I suppose that's true. Even still, when you look at some people, you can't help but say, "Wow! You look like your mom!" (Or, Dad, as the case may be.)

So where does the other half go? :-)

I have also noticed lately a pretty cool (and sometimes hard) thing about kids. Not only do they get physical traits passed down through the generations, they also get personality traits. Inside stuff that is harder to see. I think that's so fascinating. I like to think that I just am who I am. And, certainly that's true. The combination of "traits" I have from my parents and all my ancestors makes me unique, just like everyone is unique. But partly, I am also just like my mom, dad, grandmas, grandpas, etc.

How crazy is that? :-)

So somewhere in that little Kirstie who looks so much like her mommy is half of her daddy. I'm sure some of it can be seen in physical traits, but it will be interesting to watch her and see myself in her mirror. Hopefully she got mostly my good traits. :-)

Frank Caliendo on Letterman

A friend passed this along recently, and I just watched it again. Wanted to share with you. It's old I think, so you may have seen it. He's quite good at all the impressions he does here, but I really love his Bill Clinton! What he says, and his facial expressions! Hilarious! Thanks Chris :-)

RE: Blogging

What I have noticed over my five years of blogging is that blogging is very much about the moment. If I try to get to something later, maybe even get a few paragraphs into a draft version here, it never happens. Or, if it could, it doesn't seem relevant anymore. (To either reader or writer.)

That's one reason why this blog has been so silent lately. It's not that there are not things to comment on, or discuss... it's just that there is never enough time to sit down and post something "in the moment". I really thought there would be more here as I am taking several days off in a row, but there has not been. My days used to freer somehow, and I was already sitting at my computer... so posting to the blog in a sort of "stream of consciousness" way was very natural. Not so any more!

I have thoughts on the whole political race. Actually, much of what I think of senator Obama remains true. Read here and here if you are interested. (Posts from March and April of this year.) I have been working on our Buffalo Bills Show. Super fun stuff going on there! And I would love to share more stories from our family... always learn a lot from interaction with my kids!

I could also tell you about the crazy environmental "humans are bad" speech we got at the aquarium yesterday during the sea lion show...

But... at least... not right now.

So, from experience... never. You'll have to hear that one from me in person. :-)

The blog will roll on. Life will shift again, and there will be moments to jump into the e-stream of consciousness. There are still plenty of thoughts from Greg's Head... but the "moments" to share them have been fewer and much farther between!

Stay tuned...

Now I Know What To Do

This morning, while I was checking email on the laptop and watching the kids play in my in-laws' driveway, Kirstie stopped by to ask me a question.

"Dad, how do I stop if I'm going down a fast hill on my bike?"

Puzzled by the question I asked, "Well, what do you mean? Why do you want to know?"

"I just want to know what to do if I'm going down a fast hill and I can't stop," came the matter-of-fact reply.

"Well," I began, "I guess if you try your brakes and they don't work, then you would just try and get to the edge of the road and sort of lean over so you could fall off the bike on the side of the road. Or, if you could... maybe just jump off the bike."

She was listening intently to all I was saying, and then when I stopped she just got back on her bike and began to ride away. About ten feet away she said a very cheerful and satisfied, "Thanks!"

I laughed and said, "For what?"

"Well," she said, "Now I know what to do when I'm going down a fast hill on my bike!"

Five Years of Blogging

Believe it or not, I have been at this "blogging" thing for five years now. Today. August 26th, 2003 was my first post, and now almost 1400 posts later, I'm still at it. (Albeit, quite infrequently this past month or two!) I love this avenue to share thoughts, start discussions, share links and information, and even post photos and family news to the world wide web of internets. I imagine I'll be doing this for another 5 years at least... unless of course this is true. :-)

Over five years I have shared the stories of not one, not two, but three additions to our family, I have told a few funny stories from the many children who inhabit our home (like this one, and this one, and this one) and even shared the emotions of times of very difficult loss, and the aftermath of that.

We have an amazing God, and I have loved sharing so many thoughts on life with him, as he leads me along, helping me know him more, so I can trust him more - rather than keep trying to trust in myself more. I even made that one of the main tabs above, Life With God.

Thanks for visiting GregsHead.net over the past five years. Blogging is a conversation. It's a conversation starter, and the beauty of it is that you can actually respond inline to the conversation. Add your comments below anything I publish here. I love that. Life is a journey, that's meant to be shared. (Oh yeah! I also have published three books along the way! A Journey Shared, Life in the Rearview Mirror, and There's The Steeple... Here's The Church.

This post is getting longer than I thought it would, but that's because I am trying to cover five years worth of stuff in a few short paragraphs! If you'd like to read more, you can actually access the archive directory directly right here. Just click on any month from the previous 5 years and you'll see all the posts from that month.

Thanks again for joining me for the past five years (or however long you've been here). Once life settles down for me (and I can figure out where to focus my energies) I should have the time and energy to share my thoughts here again, and continue the conversations.

Looking forward to that.

Cool Special Effects: Death Star Over San Francisco

I can't believe it's really been a week since I have posted anything here. Not for lack of content, only lack of time (and energy, I suppose). More to come... but for now, enjoy this crazy video above, passed along to me by a friend.

Two Cuts, And A Pig-Man

As I was putting Julia, our two-year-old, to bed last night, she was looking at my awesome, old-school Sabres shirt, with the vintage logo pasted on the front of it. She was touching it, exploring it, and without looking up she said to me, "Dad, you have two cuts."

"Cuts? What do you mean?" I asked, looking down to see what she could mean.

"Like we have downstairs. Those are round. You have two cuts, right here."

She continued.

"And you have a pig... man. Two cuts, and a pig man."

Older sister Kirstie chimed in, "That's a Buffalo. Right?"

No. I do believe that is two cuts and a pig-man. :-)

08.08.08

You probably do not need to be reminded of this, but today is the one fun day every year where the day, the month, and the year all match. This one happens to also be the first day of the summer olympics, happening this time in China. It's also the tenth wedding anniversary of some good friends of ours.

And, it's just a Friday.

The numbers on the calendar don't really matter, but I just thought it was fun, and wanted to post it. :-)

So enjoy your 08.08.08. Maybe a game of Crazy Eights is in order? Maybe play the old Beatles' tune "Eight Days a Week" and catch an episode of Eight is Enough on DVD afterwards? Start it at 08:08:08pm local time! Got any other ideas? Leave 'em below!

Special Guests at the Apple Store

All kinds of people come into the Apple store. I get to meet and talk with people of all ages, backgrounds, and nationalities. That's a pretty fun part of the job, actually.

A couple days ago, I got to meet a few guys that were even more fun to chat with, being a long-time (big) Buffalo Bills fan.

I was working in the iPhone section, and a couple guys came up to check out the phones. One of them was studying it, so I offered to answer any questions, and began chatting with him.

The weird thing was, his friend looked a LOT like Ashton Youboty from the Buffalo Bills. I took a couple glances, but kept thinking, "Nah... he's too young... too small. But it sure looks like him... Maybe a brother?"

As I was talking with Ashton-look-a-like's friend, another guy from the store came up and said, "So you guys from Ohio State?" They were both wearing OSU garb, so it was a valid question. The guy is a Purdue grad, so it was a Big Ten thing... I didn't bring up my MSU affiliation, as I was trying to be helpful with the iPhone, not play on long-standing college rivalries, which are an important part of life amongst Big Ten schools... :-)

The guy who was checking out the iPhone said they did attend OSU, and they played football there. That of course intrigued me, as I knew that Ashton Youboty played football at OSU. Now I was pretty certain this was Ashton's brother or something. Well, as I was going to ask, he left to go check out something else, but I asked his friend... and sure enough, it WAS Youboty, and the guy checking out the iPhone was another young Bills player, Dustin Fox!

After he revealed his "secret identity" I paused for a moment, then said, "I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but... I just... thought you'd be bigger."

He laughed and said, somewhat sheepishly, "Everybody does..."

We chatted a bit. Dustin said he's the "team techie" and I showed him around to a few other toys in the store. They left and I was glad to have gotten to meet two of the (well, really just one) Buffalo Bills!

But the night was not over.

Much later in the night, I looked up at the big board that shows the names of people with appointments at the Genius bar, where we offer tech support on our products. One of the names on the board was Ashton Y. Now... there could be another person named Ashton. And perhaps even another Ashton with a last name starting with the letter Y. But, the likelihood of Ashton Youboty and this other potential Ashton Y. being in the same Apple store on the same night... not very likely. :-)

So, apparently, Ashton was coming back.

And indeed... not long before closing time, Ashton (but not Dustin) and maybe four other friends strolled into the store. I was still manning the iPhone station, so I greeted them and helped one guy out, giving him an overview of what the iPhone does. Since they all came in together, I figured they were all Bills players, but honestly, I did not recognize any of them. Except Ashton, who was sitting at the Genius bar, getting some help from the Geniuses.

Well, as we were finishing up (it was just about closing time) the store cleared out - except for our Buffalo Bills friends - and I was no longer needing to stay at my station, so... I went over and introduced myself to Ashton. (Who, at this point, was just sitting at the Genius bar, waiting for something.)

"So, you're Ashton Youboty," I began. He nodded. "I just wanted to come say hello. I'm a big Bills fan, and your friend Dustin said you who you were when you guys were in here before." I told him the story of how I thought they'd be bigger, and he said, "Man, I am bigger. I'm fat! The coaches want me to lose weight!" Then he added with emphasis, "It's hard to lose weight!" Ha! He didn't look like he needed to, but I'm sure his coaches know what they're talking about. :-)

After wrapping up a few other things, I had a moment to say hello to the other guys. I made sure that there were not other customers in the store, and that they (the Bills players) were not busy being Apple customers, and I finally got to say hello.

"So are you guys all Bills players?" I asked.

"Yeah." (Their unified, hushed reply was a little less forthcoming than I had hoped...)

"Well, I have two boys at home, and they will want to know who I got to meet tonight, so... what are your names?"

The guy immediately to my right said, "Jabari." I actually didn't quite hear him, so I asked him to repeat and when I understood him that time I said, "Jabari Greer! Nice to meet you." Ashton was next to Jabari, and then we went around the circle of guys and they all introduced themselves as I shook their hands.

"Reggie."

"Reggie...." I said in a leading tone.

"Corner." He smiled when he said it. Some of these guys are not really that outgoing... :-)

"Reggie Corner! Nice to meet you." (It really was. This was fun!)

We got to the last guy around the half circle, who said, "Jon Corto." I heard him just fine, but I asked him to repeat it, because I had never heard of Jon Corto, and I know my Bills! So I probed a bit further, asking what position he played, and where he was from... still no luck.

As I was probing, Jabari said, "Well, tell us who you are!" So, I laughed and introduced myself. "My name's Greg... Campbell. Actually, I have a Bills show..."

"Really?!" said Jabari, "Here in Rochester?"

I explained the Buffalo Bills Review, and actually, I thought I remembered that Jabari had been in the running for - or possibly won - an award from our show this past season, but that turned out to not be true. I did let him know that though, and he said, "I'm gonna have to check that out!"

In explaining the show, I mentioned that I grew up in Buffalo, and that's how I became a big Bills fan. That's when Jon asked where I was from in Buffalo. Turns out he is from Orchard Park - where the Bills play! So I talked with him a bit about that, how cool it is that he is from there and now playing for the Bills! Kinda living vicariously through that for a moment... :-)

They didn't stay much longer, but it was very cool to meet them all and chat a bit about Bills football, even the Buffalo Bills Review. When I started working at the Apple Store, never imagined that I'd get to meet five Buffalo Bills in one night! Was definitely a fun experience.

Wonder who will be coming in today?

Brett Favre is now a J-E-T

I just posted an article on this to my Buffalo Bills blog, but wanted to also post here...

Brett Favre is a NY Jet!

Holy cow. That's crazy. I won't elaborate here (as I already did there) but suffice it to say, our division (the AFC East) has gotten significantly more interesting.

Bills first pre-season game in two days! Whooohoo! :-)