Cathie went to Chicago on Friday morning with her Mom and Madeline on a girls shopping weekend, so Nate, Emily and I are going solo. Friday night, Nate and I did a guys night. We played cards, watched the world series of poker, watched x-men, drank pop (caffinated even), ate pizza rolls and stayed up late.

Saturday was a pretty lazy day where we just hung out for a while, not doing much productive. Jay and I worked on our message for Sunday and then Will, Jess, Heidi, Jason and I hung out last night.

The message went pretty well today. Jason and I did what we wanted to do, and it went pretty smooth. There were no horrible screw-ups or things that in retrospective we'd of radically changed, so I guess that's a good thing. You can listen to the message here. The beginning of the message starts out with this video clip, without which you might be kind of confused.

I've got to start pulling stuff together for the message next Sunday, which is me going solo. I've got the content together, I've just to go put it in some kind of order and write it out.

We can all sleep well tonight: Singapore has lifted it's ban on chewing gum. Read more here:
Before Singaporeans think about unwrapping a pack of Wrigley's Orbit gum that's just started selling here - and only in pharmacies - they must submit their names and ID card numbers. If they don't, pharmacists who sell them gum could be jailed up to two years and fined $2,940

Can't help but smile when I look at this picture. 

I got signed up as a beta-tester for gmail - Google's e-mail system. Great interface, with 1 GB of storage. So far, I like it. I'm guessing it doesn't allow any kind of POP access, though. The interface isn't as mature as Yahoo, doesn't have any of the toolbars or thick client tools to access it, but it's new, and based on google's track record, should be great eventually.

Will, Brad and Ted took me out for Sushi last night for my birthday. We gorged ourselves. The also got me a bottle of 18 year old Glenlivet Scotch.

My brother Jon thought it important that I clarify an earlier post. Justin and Lori did in fact join Mark, Jen, Cathie and I in celebrating their birthday. Jon did not feel it was clear. He also asked that I add some kind of cross reference to him and a picture. I've given him both.

I was originally going to be doing the message on the topic of Drawing closer to the heart of God this week as a part of a new series entitled The Sacred Romance. We decided to shift the start of that series to after memorial day, and this Sunday, do a different topic. Jason, Dan and I spent time today putting together this Sunday's service, which includes a team-teaching that Jason and I are going to do on the irrational act of discipleship. We're going through the story of the disciples, a rag-tag group of guys who have been immortalized in stain glass, but in reality were a bunch of average joe's who somehow kept their eye on Jesus in the midst of doing and saying some dumb stuff. This should be a great message, and I'm looking forward to teaching with Jason. We have a good time up front and our relationship comes out in how we work together, based on doing youth ministry for the past two years.

It was a weekend of Birthday parties. We went out with Mark and Jen to celebrate Justin and Lori's birthday on Saturday. We had a great time at Mongolian Barbecue, to Starbucks, and then to see Dan/Buck Enterprises play a couple songs at a Skate festival they were playing at.

On Sunday we celebrated Jason's birthday, starting with luring Jason on stage under false pretenses about doing announcements only to have the whole church sing Happy Birthday to him. I shared with the church how much Jason loves a good hug (the man hates anyone invading his personal space in general). He estimates he got about 50 hugs that day. That night, we had a suprise party at our house under the guise of watching the Simpsons season finale. Matt & Anne, Ted & Sherri, Jess, Jason Monstrola, Nate and his wife, Meghan, Tim, Cathie, Myself and Will were there. When Jason walked, in, he got hit hard with Silly String, largely in the face and crotch. Typically when Silly String comes out of the can it turns into string. Not this stuff. It came out as propelled liquid goo that stuck to whatever it came into contact with. Not in a good way. It was a good time. We watched the final Simpsons episode and then watched a couple episodes of one of my favorite shows Wild Boyz.

We're starting a new series next Sunday called The Sacred Romance, Drawing Closer to the Heart of God. I'm doing the first message in the series, which is a stretch for me. I've done brief teachings during our Sunday service and longer stuff for the kids in our youth group, but never the whole 30+ minute message on Sunday. The topic I'm doing is one that I'm very passionate about, which is the reason I was asked, and probably the only reason I'd agree to do it. It's probably something I'll thrash on most of the week trying to make sure I've got it down. I started doing a mind-map of the subject, trying to visually lay out what I'm going to talk about, which helps. I don't think it'll be great, but it probably won't suck either.

What an amazing storm yesteday. I called it an early day yesterday we headed out to go see Shrek 2. On the way to pick up Nate this huge storm came through and a huge tree (five foot in diameter) came crashing down 100 feet in front of us on the road. After seeing Shrek, we went to Chucky Cheese and then just hung out afterwards. We've got a pretty laid back weekend, which is nice after being gone for five days.

It looks like I'm home all next week. Cathie and Madeline leave on Thursday night to go to Chicago with Cathie's mom. They're going to hit American Girl and the Miracle Mile.

We're taking the kids to go see Shrek 2 this afternoon.

I got into Chicago about 5AM this morning, took a cab to my hotel and then crashed until about 10:30. I had meetings all day and we're going out to dinner. I've got my senior leadersihp team meeting through Thursday and then I fly out thursday afternoon. Think we're going to take the kids out of school on Friday as a suprise and go see Shrek.

Great article: Vaseline Man Can't Slip Cops about a man who covered his hotel room with 14 jars of vaseline, and then himself.

Erik Larson turned me on to this cool app - the
Google Deskbar. It's a google search bar that lives on your Windows XP Toolbar and pops up a window with results. Cool interface, very efficient.

I got up around 5AM this morning, worked out and had some grueling meetings all day long - contract negotiations fry me. Afterwards I went over to Fisherman's Wharf for some fresh seafood. I'm sitting at the airport waiting to fly out at 11:30 PM PST.

So I flew out to San Francisco on United today.  The plane was huge and much nicer than Northwest, but I got pimped on the meals.  Maybe I haven’t flown coach for a while, but they charged me $10 for lunch on the plane.  And as always happens, O’Hare stuck it to me.  We ended up sitting on the Tarmac for an hour and a half before taking off, on-top of the 4 ½ hour flight we had in front of us.
On the flight, I watched the movie Final Destination.  Bad movie overall, but it starts out with this horrible plane crash scene.  Looking out my hotel room right now, I can see the sun setting behind Treasure Island and the Golden Gate Bridge.  It’s really beautiful.

I'm reading a bunch of books in parallel right now:

Traveling Mercies : Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott is a bunch of related stories about her journey of faith that are really well told, kinda feeling like you're sitting down having a beer with her hearing them.


The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive
by Patrick Lencioni is a parable that teaches some great business acumen. By putting it in the form of a story, the concepts stick with me way better than reading it in a dry academic way. Great book, part of a series of three.


The Sacred Romance: Drawing Closer to the Heart of God by Brent Curtis & John Eldredge. I read this book 7 or 8 years ago and it rocked my world and my faith. It opened up my eyes to living the Christian Faith from my heart instead of a bunch of tips and techniques to happy living. It gave me a new set of eyes to view my relationship with God, seeing myself in a whole new light. Figured I'd read it again.


Managing The Professional Service Firm by David H. Maister. This is pretty dry and academic, but it's helping me think through my new job a little more strategically instead of just responding to things as they're thrown at me. I'm really trying to focus and prioritize what I'm doing, and needed something to help me get a better handle on things. David Maister's love for himself comes across in this book. Our company had brought him in to do a workshop around professional services and his self-love came through at that workshop as well.

I need some fiction to throw in there right now. I've got the new Vince Flynn book on order at the library. Any suggestions?

I'm flying out to San Francisco later this afternoon. Since I'm Gold Elite on Northwest, I've been upgraded to First Class this year on every flight except one. For this flight, I'm on United. The next closest flight on Northwest was $1,300 more, which I couldn't justify. I was really hoping to get Northwest because of my flight schedule: I fly out today, I've got an 11:25PM flight tomorrow night from San Fran to Chicago, which gets me in at 5:00 AM. That gives me a few hours to get to my hotel and sleep before my meetings in the afternoon. I fly back on Thursday.

The nice thing about all the plane time is that I'm able to crank through a lot of back-emails. I've got about 400 that I need to sort through.

Ya gotta read/watch Will Ferrel's commencement speech given at Harvard. Funniest part (stolen from Noel's Blog). Read it here. Watch it here (Forward to 1hr 25min).

So my gift to you, Class of 2003, is to tell you about the real world through my eyes, through my experiences. And I'm sorry, but I refuse to sugarcoat it. I ain't gonna do it. And I probably shouldn't use the word "ain't" during this day in which we celebrate education. But that's just the way I play it, Homes.

Graduates, if you will indulge me for a moment, let me paint a picture of what it's like out there. The last four or, for some of you, five years you've been living in a fantasyland, running around, talking about Hemingway, or Clancy, or, I don't know, I mean whatever you read here at Harvard. The Novelization of the Matrix, I don't know. I don't know what you do here.

But I do know this. You're about to enter into a world filled with hypocrisy and doublespeak, a world in which your limo to the airport is often a half-hour late. In addition to not even being a limo at all; often times it's a Lincoln Towncar. You're about to enter a world where you ask your new assistant, Jamie, to bring you a tall, non-fat latte. And he comes back with a short soy cappuccino. Guess what, Jamie? You're fired. Not too hard to get right, my friend.

A world where your acting coach, Bob Leslie-Duncan -- yes, the Bob Leslie-Duncan -- tells you time and time again that you will never, ever be considered as a dramatic actor because you don't play things real, and are too over the top. Amazing! Simply amazing!

I'm sorry, graduates. But this is a world where you aren't allowed to use your cell phone in airplanes, during live theater, at the movies, at funerals, or even during your own elective surgery. Apparently, the Berlin Wall went back up because we now live in Russia. I mean just try lighting up a cigar in a movie theater or paying for a dinner for 20 friends with an autograph. It ain't that easy. Strong words, I know. Tough talk. But more like tough love. Because this is where my faith in you guys comes into play, Harvard University's graduating Class of 2003, without a doubt, the finest, most talented group of sexual beings this great land has to offer.

Thursday night I went out to see Van Helsing with Will and Mark. The big mistake here was going to the 9:45 PM showing. The movie was good, well, what what I saw was good. I slept through at least an hour of the 2hr 25min movie. Ever time I woke up, there was another action scene. Good, cheezy comic book type action, bad acting, but a fun movie. Sure beat seeing the Punisher.

Interesting article dealing with the fact that this is one of the first movies or books in a long time that shows the Catholic church as a positive force in the world, instead of focusing on them being a corrupt conspiracy.

We had Madeline's dance recital today. Tickets were $10 each... What a racket. The thing was TWO HOURS long and had at least 30 different groups of kids doing their numbers in different costumes. Other than seeing Madeline do her dance, the best part of the recital was when a group of 40-something moms came out on stage dressed as Indians and did a hip-hop dance. Will and I were sitting next to each other holding our hands over our mouths and shaking uncontrolably as we watched them do a dance-off against a group of 10 year old girls dressed like cowboys to the song "Cherokee People". Apparently, this is how the west was really won - through competive dance between the cowboys and indians.

I got a chance to go mountain biking yesterday for the first time this year. It was a little muddy, but beautiful. Great day for it and it felt good. I met a friend of mine who happens to be a co-worker of mine (Bill) at the trail, we rode and talked and then had lunch.

I just got back from seeing the movie Van Helsing. Will, Mark and I went to the 9:45 showing. Mistake. I literally slept through 75% of the movie. The parts I did see were pretty over the top. In a bad way.

I went to high school with this guy. This is an interview with Rob Bell, pastor of Mars Hill, the church my brother Jon goes to in Grand Rapids.

Cathie and I went out on a date last night. We went to P.F. Chang's for dinner and then to see the movie Mean Girls. Great movie about a home schooled girl who is brought into public school and has to deal with a totally new world. Hilarious movie, written by Tina Fey of Saturday Night Live fame. Kinda reminded me of the movie Heathers, but not quite as Dark.

THis is a really interesting interview with Madeline L'Engle, who wrote the A wrinkle in time series. She has a unique perspective on stuff. I don't agree with it all, but her personality comes through in the interview.

We had our big Survivor season finale party last night. Every survivor season we have a group of friends come over every Thursday night. This season included: Cathie, Myself, Jason S, Tim, Phil, Meghan, Jess, Will, Anne, Matt, Katie, Jason M and Sheri as the regular attenders. We're really not that big of survivor fans. We spend most of the time mocking the show, rewinding, pausing and finding humerous stuff here and there. The best part of it is hanging out together each week. People show up around 8:30, eat and talk for about half an hour, watch the show eventually, watch another show (Wild Boys, I want a new face, or Viva La Bam) talk some more and then call it a night around 11.

We had a big thunderstorm last night so we let Emily sleep in our room. When we came up to bed, we found Emily looking like E.T. - surrounded by her stuffed animals.

I'm in town all week! No travel. When I'm around on Mondays I try and work in Madeline's kindergarden class. Today I got a chance to plant Lima beans with the kids. We made it fun. It's great in small doses, but I'm not sure how Sheri, their teacher does it ALL DAY LONG. I'd go nuts. She's got some tough kids in there and she has amazing patience with them.

This is a great application called EvilLyrics. Not sure why it's called what it is, but here's how it works. As you play songs your media player of choice (WinAmp, Windows MediaPlayer, iTunes or or MusicMatch), the application automatically pulls up the related lyrics, does guitar chords, album cover art, amazon information, and lyrical meanings.

I'm in the middle of reading two different books: Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World by Henri J. M. Nouwen and The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive by Patrick M. Lencioni.

Life of the beloved has been a tough read for some reason. A couple friends have raved about the book, but I can't get into it. It's some great broad concepts, but nothing yet that jumps out at me or connects to me.

The Four Obsessions is a great book, of three written by Leciconi, all told in a parable form, which for me, helps the concepts stick a little easier. This particular book tells the story of two executives and an individual who works for both and contrasts the impact of these four obsessions between the two different leaders.

I've got the new Vince Flynn book Memorial Day on order at the library. I need some good fiction reading.

I'm still in Kansas City, coming home this afternoon on the 3:30 direct flight. It's beautiful down here, 90 degrees with very little humidity. Madeline went to the Doctor on Monday and was diagnosed with strep throat. I've now got a sore throat and I'm assuming the worst. It looks like I'm home all next week and I can't wait. I gave up a customer entertainment event at the Indy 500 in order to have a complete week without travel and I had to push back on an overnight trip to California,k but so far, so good.

This is nuts. A construction worker had six nails driven into his head in an accident with a high-powered nail gun, but doctors said Wednesday they expect him to make a full recovery.

I went to see the movie The Punisher tonight with a couple of guys from work. I was looking for a mindless movie that wouldn't require much thinking. I ended up dumber for having seen the movie. I was a big fan of the comic book growing up, but this didn't capture the spirit of the comic book, plus the acting bad. John Travolta's acting was horrible to the point of it being funny

This video is hilarious. The dubbing is seamless.

For everyone in my ELP class who uploaded their pictures, I've posted the pictures here.

I'd been travelling quite a bit and doing a horrible job of balacing my priorities. Actually, I was doing a decent job of balancing all of them but my family. I was fitting them in in tiny little chunks whenever it was convienent. Even when I was talking to them, I was only half way there, checking e-mail, with the TV on - Continuous Partial Attention. When I got back, I found that Cathie and I were horribly disconnected. We had a talk that was pretty painful (for me) to realize what I'd been doing. Last week when I travelled, I decided to put Cathie and the kids first - chunking off a big block of time where I turned off the TV, my laptop and just spent time with Cathie and the kids, on the phone. What a difference in our connection when I got back.

This past week has blown. I've had stuff blow up at work, with close friends and in my church. Thankfully, Cathie and I worked through our stuff last week. I was tapped by the end of yesterday. Spent the past two mornings reading through Isaiah 40:
Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD
will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

Jason and I have had a number of discussions about whether there was any redeeming value in Tarantino's Kill Bell series. Jeffrey Overstreet's review of Kill Bill - Vol. 1 and Vol. 2:
The moral drama, the choices and the consequences, the speeches about identity—unlike the violence, these are presented in all seriousness in order to get us thinking more than other genre pics usually do.

Life will go on. The voices of the Simpson's have been resigned!:
The actors who provide the voices for Homer, Bart and the rest of the cartoon stars of Fox TV's "The Simpsons" will return to work this week with twice as much "D'oh" in their pockets, having won a new contract collectively valued at $33 million a year.

The first concert I ever saw was Jefferson Starship in Lansing, MI when I was in 6th grade. Turns out, I shouldn't bothered. This article in USA Today claims the album 'We Built This City' ranks as the worst record ever