Just a quick update on the soon-to-be-available books from GregsHead…

I was supposed to have received the copies of Rearview Mirror in Ohio, but they were shipped to my sister’s neighbor’s house… they didn’t know who I was, so they sent the package back to Nebraska where it was shipped from. It shipped again yesterday (due to the holiday weekend, it took a bit longer) and will arrive at my house on July 11. Yeah!

I just received an email from the printer for the Here’s The Church book, and they said they should be shipping out by July 14. So I’d say I will get them no later than July 19. Yeah!!

This means that I will be setting up the GregsHead bookstore very soon… 🙂 I’ll have copies of all of my books available through there.

We’ll be back with more, after this…

By a super-bizarre set of circumstances, we stumbled across my first school on Tuesday. I went to kindergarten here in 1980 I believe… That’s a long time ago. I only lasted here 3 weeks before my parents put me in a Christian school. (More advanced educationally… public school wasn’t cuttin’ it.)

This is me and my son (roughly the same age as I was way back then) at the site of my first experience with “the system”. 🙂

It was definitely a moment. 🙂

This is for real. A massive structure visible for miles on the interstate (I-75 north of Cincinnati, OH). A really big, really scary Jesus.

Yikes.

UPDATE: Touchdown Jesus… Butter Jesus… whatever you might call him, perished on June 15th, 2010, from a lightning strike that engulfed the statue in flames, leaving only the charred, steel frame behind.

It all started early last Saturday morning. We had driven across the state of Virginia, visited with friends, and enjoyed a night in a decent hotel room on the previous Friday. We awoke early in the morning so that we could get a jump on the day and enjoy more time with family in Ohio. As we were just about to head out for breakfast… Kirstie tossed her cookies. Totally out of the blue. No idea it was coming. She was not acting sick in any way before just blowing chunks.

Gross.

So, we initiated clean up mode, and called ahead to our awaiting family to let them know we’d be a bit behind.

Kirstie was definitely sick. She was slower, complaining, and just looked sick in general. She continued to throw up a couple more times till there was nothing left in her little tummy.

We finally got on the road, but not till after I had managed to slice a fairly large chunk of my thumb off with a razor cleverly concealed in one of our travel bags. With a couple bandaids and some paper towels I managed to get the blood flow stopped. Quite a start to the morning.

Kirstie ended up being OK enough to go to our family reunion later that day, but she did have a few more rounds of the up-chuck. Actually, she was pretty sick for the next couple days. Just… off. Perhaps she still is a bit, though her appetite may be starting to return.

Well, on July 4th we had a super celebration with my cousin Jimmie and his wife, as well as our Grandma Alta. We went out to lunch, then back to their place to hang out. Then we went (just the six of us) to Young’s Dairy (a favorite hang out of mine since I was a wee laddie). We had a fantastic day. As I was showing off the photos from the day just before bed time… Ian spewed his lunch and dinner and whatnot ALL OVER the room. I mean all over. It was super, super gross.

Very gross.

Well, Grammy & Grandpa (and Mom) did a great job cleaning up. I helped get the other kiddos in bed, then with Ian. Whoa. It smelled bad, was really gross, and I was SURE we were in for a long night. (Especially with how long Kirstie’s tummy trouble lasted.)

We weren’t. Ian seemed better even before bed, then slept the entire night till after 10am! The sickness was a very brief one time thing, apparently.

Until tonight.

On our way out for McDonald’s on the way to Frontier Field for a Redwings Game – Alex hurled. Fine, nothing wrong, then BOOM… large mess all over the van. Thankfully, Ian was quick with the bucket, and much went in there.

Well, that was the end of our fun night out, and the third kid since Saturday to spew. What’s worse… Ian starts acting sick again! AHHH!!! Both boys were wandering the house with little buckets. We got the boys in bed, with no more incidents.

Then about 11:30…

BARF!!!!!!!!!

Ian loaded up his bed with the good stuff. More clean up. More bad smells. More nasty.

So far, at 1:06… we’re still OK. I’m going to bed now, and fully expect to be awoken to the sound of coughing and massive amounts of liquid flying against the wall.

I hope I’m not grossing anyone out…

Well, we’ll keep you updated on the pukefest….

STAY TUNED

We just got to spend a few days with my sister at her house in Cincinnati. That is so rare. We usually see each other in large family gatherings, and then for only an afternoon or something. So this weekend was greatly anticipated, and in many ways, did not disappoint. We had a great time with them.

However, there was one thing I noticed that disturbed me. It had nothing really to do with my sister, except that we are complete opposites, and so perhaps that was the instigation of my unpleasant thoughts and/or words.

I noticed that I am prone to complaining, at least about heat. My body was not made for heat, or sun. I said to my brother-in-law today, “I think I’m part albino…” But, whatever my physical condition, I could not stop commenting on my discomfort. Worse than that, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. That’s all that I was thinking about, so that’s what I was commenting on.

Was that complaining? Do I need to hold my tongue more? Can I? I’m not sure. I determined this weekend that I would like to, though. It wasn’t just the heat. That was perhaps the best example, but I also (perhaps in my unusual openness) had a few things to share regarding my disagreement with some chosen activity for the day. 🙂

Why must we complain so? Why must I? I think I am pretty good at thinking about other people, at least in general. But this weekend proved I have so long to go.

Hope you had a great time, Sister. We did. I’d like to see if I can do less complaining next time, and use my words to encourage, instead of complain.

I got up at 7 something this morning again. Two weeks in a row. What happened to my day off? 🙂

It will be fun to sing with my sister this morning. Looking forward to meeting Gil Contreras as well. He’s a bit of a legend. My bro-in-law calls him the Billy Graham of Mexico. He’s 85 yrs old and probably has lots of great stories to tell.

But, I am also looking forward to not doing this next Sunday. 🙂

We just arrived at our stop for the night. Didn’t quite make it from Mechanicsville, VA to Bristol, VA to Cincinnati, OH. We are staying at a hotel in Lexington, KY. We’re tired.

Precisely at midnight, we heard a very strange, loud noise coming from the back of our van. We could NOT figure it out. AND, it was starting to smell hot… so we stopped. All the kids woke up… grrr…

I got out and figured out it was the rear wiper motor that had been stuck for weeks, finally kicked on and was overheating! We almost had a fire in our van. Nice.

All is well. We’re here.

And I learned today that “You haven’t lived until you’ve sampled a landfill.”

Thanks, Heent. 🙂

In many conversations I have with friends who would benefit from having a Mac but just don’t know it yet, one of the main counterpoints offered is that Macs are just much more expensive. This is just not true. Yes, the bottom line is greater, but that’s because you’re getting MORE. 🙂 So, for fun, I decided to configure a Dell system and an iMac with the same (or nearly the same) specs… just to see which would be cheaper. I figured it would at least be close, but that the Dell would maybe still win.

I WAS WRONG.

Apple 20″ iMac (with AppleCare) = $1968
Dell XPS400 with 20″ monitor and 3yr service comparable to AppleCare) = $2199

THE APPLE was CHEAPER!!!

You guys… not only are you getting better hardware, better software, and better customer service… IT’S CHEAPER!!! AND, it runs Windows, AND they’re not hard to use!!! (I have spent two days trying to get my friend’s Dell to connect to two different wireless (and ethernet) routers! TWO DAYS! My Mac connects instantly, with ZERO configuration.

For the list of specs/options that I selected for both machines, click the links here:
Dell | iMac

I really think that no Windows user would be dissapointed with their purchase of a Mac. Especially the iMac. It’s definitely the absolute best value of any platform. (At least that I am aware of.)

If you’re interested, I recommend:
Purchasing a NEW iMac (17″ or 20″)

Or, save a couple hundred dollars on a refurb 17″ Intel iMac. (only $1099)

You seriously can’t go wrong.

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This public service announcement brought to you by BWD-Graphics: Apple Authorized Business Agent AA071715 🙂

We were part of a program this morning that was fairly unique. Jen and I were set up with microphones and folding card table chairs at the very back of a stage, hidden by a thick black curtain. We had no visual cues as to when to begin our musical portion of the program. Only a voice through the house sound system told us when to begin. It was really quite interesting. 🙂

It worked out fairly well, actually. The theme of the program was “worship”, and specifically how it is not just the music we sing together on Sunday mornings. It was good, visually creative, and definitely an interesting experience.

Afterwards, in a casual conversation with a few people around that same stage, one person asked me if I “was able to worship” in that setting. The question was sincere. I think she meant, was I able to have a personal, emotional connection with God. That is one of the goals of such a program – to evoke some feeling of having “worshipped”. In that sense, it was a valid question. But, it felt like the question missed the whole point of the program that they had just put together. 🙂 We were just saying not 15 minutes prior that worship is not a feeling during a song service, but a life lived in response to God’s awesomeness.

So, my response was, “Uh… yes?” 🙂 I meant, “Yes, I guess so, since all of life is worship – like we just said – so.. then by default, so was that moment in that place.” All were a bit confused, and something else distracted us from that conversation, so we just moved on.

But I didn’t. I kept thinking about the question. How it seemed like it revealed that nothing that was just said during the service even registered at all.

Later on tonight, we were singing for VBS. Our musical portion was at the end of the night’s program. As we were being introduced, the speaker (the same one who put the service together for the morning) said something like, “So, let’s use this worship time to really focus on God.” Some other things were mentioned that revealed that we still really think that the act of singing together to God is in some way a higher form of “worship”.

I was slightly amused, but also so puzzled. How do we get to the point of elevating some activities in our lives to being more spiritual, or more “worship”? There must be something to it. There are accounts in Matthew where Jesus was “worshipped”. After he walked on the water out to the boat his friends were in, it says they worshipped him. So there must be some meaning to that verb. But overall, it seems that what we see in Scripture is a more general sense of a life given to God is “worship” to him. It’s not about an emotional connection via a song lyric. (It can be, but it’s certainly not limited to that.)

I really have no conclusion from all of this, it’s just been mildly fascinating to jump back into this setting. We have been removed from it for quite some time, so to see up close again the culture that has become somewhat distant to us has been … interesting. I will likely have more interesting observations as the week progresses.

Please do not be offended by any of my observations. You’re welcome to comment here. I do not mean any disrespect to any one individual, nor do I harbor any feelings of ill will or arrogant superiority. I am befuddled by what we have decided makes up a “relationship with God”, and perhaps even more so since I have not been around the church culture for a while. I am definitely open to suggestion and anyone’s thoughts, so, if you feel the inkling, please comment and enlighten me. Or, if you concur, please verbalize that as well. (Or, type-a-lize it… as it were.)

I love to challenge ideas that no one else challenges. I think it helps me figure out the core of things… and what we have added on just because that’s the way we’ve always done it. 🙂 I like to get to the core.

I am after all an Apple guy… 🙂

We just finished a 12-hour drive from our house to the home of our friends in Mechanicsville, VA. I’m tired, but wanted to share something I observed on the 500 plus mile trek across many states.

We saw many people today. At our various stops. That was fun. Some were friendly, others kept their polite distance. That’s what I was doing as well, as a good little American. Personal space and privacy are paramount, or so we think. I happened to see a table full of multi-ethnic children of all ages, and one “mom” looking lady. There were seven kids, and her. I was intrigued, so I thought about going up to ask what their story was, what brought them together. I was stopped however as my cultural limiter reminded me that to do so would be to presumptuously invade their personal space. I don’t like to presume, so… I did nothing.

As I considered my choice, I thought about how we tend to treat everyone around us as the background, the backdrop of our lives. Perhaps this is just me. But it seems that we are taught to, and happy to, allow other people to have their private space. Not to intrude. But, how will we ever get to share each others burdens, each others cool stories? How can we share life if we never even interact?

I hope to remedy this. I hope to look at people the way Jesus does. The way he did when he walked around Israel. Each person has a story, and supreme, unique significance. Just because he made us. Instead of blending into the background, I want to engage the world God has placed me in… even if my culture would have me do otherwise.

So strangers, beware! I’m about to interact!