My church is pretty dysfunctional, but I love it - I think. Over a year ago, it came out that our Senior Pastor had been having an affair with our Programming Director. Chaos ensued as we came to understand the amazing damage this man had inflicted over years of ego-driven leadership. He'd tried to build a church with himself at the center and created all sorts of blurred boundries that we later discovered would have huge ramifications for us down the road. We trudged through the best we could and it was incredibly painful. Lots of people left the church for one reason or another. Four months ago it came out that our new Programming Director had been having an affair with our worship leader. More people left the church over this. Throughout both of these situations, people were cruel - villifying the elder board, writing scathing, hurtful e-mails and lashing out at people in horrible ways.

Through all of this, I can't remember seriously considering leaving. Sure I haven't always agreed with how things have been done, but I haven't left, and I'm trying to figure out why. I've watched our church's attendance dwindle two a fraction of what it was, and continue to see good friends leave. As I sat this morning journaling, the thought came to my mind that maybe I'm missing out by staying at my church. Maybe all of these people who've bolted over the past year and half have it right and I'm way off base. Maybe I'm the kid playing in the skanky lukewarm mud puddle, thinking "it doesn't get any better than this", while there's a beautiful beach across the street that I'm missing out on. I don't know.

I know that I love my church. I love that it's full of people totally different than me, full of a bunch of broken, sinful people, just like me. We're a church full of all sorts of recovering addicts, an ex-prostitute, an occasional ex-stripper, cheats, liars, thieves and adulters. All sinners, just like me. I love that it's a group of people who are pursuing God however they can. It's a place that loves kids of all ages, my kids, junior high kids, high school kids. It's palce where kids can come with tattoos and piercings and get a big hug from Joanne when they walk in the door. It's a place where a five year old can come in and people like Shannon and Alysa will hang with them, help connect them, and show them by example what Jesus is all about. It's a place filled with people like Linda go into the inner city of Detroit every weekend to bring the poor food when they're hungry and mittens and hats when they're cold. It's full of guys like Mark, Les and Mike who get up every Sunday morning and run the sound, video and light system. Their work is totally transparent to those around them, unless they screw up. Sometimes our music isn't great, sometimes we have people teaching who are less than polished (me), somtimes we're just getting by.

I wonder how much eaiser it would be to leave and go to a church where I'm anonymous, where there are a whole bunch of people just like me and I don't have to deal with people that annoy me. I think it would be so much easier to go to a church where people only see the part of me that I want them to see, and not the junk below the surface. I think about how nice it would be to be a part of a big church, where the ugliness that is the reality of church is hidden below the surface.

I stay, and I'm not always sure that's the best way to go. Most of the time, I go to church on Sunday, see this group of misfits that I do church with, do life with, and I think to myself, "Where else would I go?" I've invested over 10 years of myself in this place, these people, this vision, and I can't see myself doing it any other way. I've seen people changed at such a core level, and turn around and impact others, who in turn do the same. I've seen people whose lives have been horribly lost find Salvation. I've seen myself go from being a self-centered, egostical, duplicitous jerk to being just an egotistical jerk. I've gone deeper in my life with people at my church than I ever thought was possible, found healing I never thought could happen, and grown deeper in my relationship with God than I knew I could go. I love this place. But then again, I'm probably missing something.

I take solace in one of my heros, Mike Yaconelli, who was pretty familiar with going to imperfect church:

It’s no wonder that most of us feel completely inadequate to do anything other than cook breakfast, and even then we wonder if we shouldn’t check our menu with a dietician, a nutritionist, a vitamatician, and a chef.

Then we go to church, and we leave completely demoralized by the expert insights into the nuances of the original Greek and Hebrew, which are obviously out of our intellectual reach as laypersons; the clear and obvious principles of godly living that everyone should know, but of course, we don’t know; the unending litany of success stories that make anything that has happened to us pale in comparison. The worship band is so polished, the choir is so professional, the drama is so theatrical, and the multimedia presentation so state-of-the-art that we leave reaffirmed in our own incompetence. It is no wonder that you and I, the ordinary people of God, go to bed each night with a dull uneasiness, a gnawing ineptitude that is present when we drift off to sleep and there to greet us when we awaken in the morning.

We constantly hear complaints about the lethargy of the Church, the apathy of the congregation, the inactivity of the majority. Could it be that the collective passiveness of the church is the direct consequence of the expertise of the leadership? Could it be that the unwillingness to perform by the many is a natural response to the flawless performance of the few? Could it be that the authority of the expert has robbed the non-expert of any authority at all? Could it be that the unending parade of "heroes" has made it impossible to find the real heroes hiding in the ordinary and commonplace?

The power of the Church is not in its super-preachers, or its mega-structures, or its large institutions. The power of the Church is in its individual people whose sacrifices throughout everyday life have an authority no expert can match.

My church is not perfect and it's not full of heroes in the traditional church sense. It's full of misfits who've been radically affected by a risen savior and are just trying to get by with what they've been given. It's a group of people who've been loved at the core and can't help but share that love, telling others about it in any way they can. I love my church. I think I'll stick around for a while.

Today was our annual memorial day picnic. The weather wasn't supposed to cooperate, but it did. My main goal of today was to get multiple pictures of Noel enjoying a can of Budweiser beer. Because he's a pastor, you may ask? Nope, he's one of those drinkin, smokin kind of pastors. It's because of his recent message, Why I hate Budweiser in a can (which by the way is a great message, except for his snobbish contempt for the blue collar worker and our beer).

Notice the smile? Doesn't look like he hates Bud as much as he wants you to think. Click here for a more comprehensive photo album of Noel and his Budweiser can.

We had a million kids there. Fifteen total, most of them under the age of 5. The newest addition is my nephew Bender, being held by Madeline, wearing her crazy looking hat from her recent Brownie camp-out.

We also had a ton of food. Grace brought a great cake and cheese dip that happened to look like something I did one night in college after a long night of drinking and a stop by Quality Dairy for some chilli cheese fries. I"m not sure if Jon's throwing up in here or what that face is.

Cathie had asked me to buy some wine coolers for the ladies. We were all suprised to see how my brother Dan joined right in and enjoyed a wine cooler as well.

We also had the traditional water fight. The kids had buckets, hoses, water balloons and squirt guns ready to go. Here's Nate dumping a bucket on Emma. Not sure how he stayed so dry.

It's really not a Kurt party unless we all weasel a nap in here or there. Kevin, Dan and I are able to get a nap in at some point at just about every family gathering. It's a gift, I tell ya.


You can see the complete photo album here.

I had a heavy weight on me this morning regarding some church crap and I sat down to read the bible. This was the first thing I came to, and I feel like the whole chapter was written for me. I've read it a million times, but this time it felt personal. It's so easy to forget how big God is, how small I try and make Him and to feel like I need to carry everything on my own.

^{Isaiah 40
27} Why do you say, O Dave,
and complain, O Dave,
"My way is hidden from the LORD;
my cause is disregarded by my God"?

²⁸ 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.

²⁹ He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.

³⁰ Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;

³¹ 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.

Technologies I'm trying out:
Airclick Remote Control for Mac and PC -
Microsoft Desktop Search Engine
Flickr Automatic Photo Posting to my Blog
Treo 650 Phone


More Recent Technologies I'm still using that have stood the test of time:
Sony DSC-T1 Digital Camera
Bloglines
Bitcomet
Flickr
Mac Mini
Altec Lansing inMotion iPod Speakers
Allofmp3.com
Winamp Media Player w/Ipod Plugin
Picasa 2

Stuff I'm looking into but haven't decided on:
Good Bluetooth Headset (Looking for reccomendations)

Fun weekend so far, but kinda tiring. On Friday night Ted, Will, Bob, Brad and I got together for Bob's birthday out at Brad's cottage. We grilled out a huge meal of steak and salmon and enjoyed some fine beer and tequila (Bob collects fine tequila). After dinner we went out on the boat, complete with my iPod and iPod speakers. We went from song to song, enjoying some quality sing-a-longs. I know what you're thinking: a bunch of guys singing along together on a boat ride.... We were singing rock-and-roll songs from our past... Forget it, sounds pretty odd no matter how I describe it. Cathie went out dancing with her friends Jen and Lori.

On Saturday we got together for our friend Justin's birthday at the Girard's house, along with the Niemi's. It was pretty low-key, but fun. Could have been better if Justin had gone along with my suggestion: My idea was that we get out a bunch of magazines and cut out words and pictures that define our friendship, and make a giant friendship collage. Kidding... That's from Scrubs. Cathie and I came home and got caught up on Alias... Well, almost. We've still got the season finale to watch.

Today after church we had some friend's, Jason and Jess Shinn and Jason and Tracy Raitz come over along with their three kids, Becca, Bob and Zach. We barbecued and hung out and talked about life. Jason's just left a dream job at a mega-church to work for Project311 full time. Jason's got a dependence on God that's phenomenal. He tours around speaking nationally, and is a phenomenal leader of huge teams. Here's 8 questions with Jason...

Tomorrow is our annual barbecue. It started about 10 years ago with Noel and Grace, Mike and Micky and Cathie and I. It's grown to almost 30+ people. Should be fun.

I was finally indexing all of my digital pictures, which I hadn't done in a while. I came across some great pictures that I'd forgotten about, like this:


No explanation really needed here.


Emily's pre-school class went to a farm for the day and Emily got to milk a cow. Not a huge deal, except that every time she squeezed the teet, it was squirting farmer Don in the face, and she thought it was the funnies thing she'd ever seen.


Nate and I went to see Nate's best friend Austin's hockey game on Thursday. Nate's been wanting to see it for a long time, and it was great watching him root for his friend. These two guys have been inseparable since they met 4 years ago. Austin lives right down the street and the two of them play any chance they get. He's a great kid, finally beginning to understand my sense of humor. The three of us were playing street hockey on Saturday where I caught a hockey puck in the tooth.


We've got a big tree in the front yard that Nate's been trying to climb higher and higher. One of them will break next, Nate or the tree.


We had a couple of girls from the youth group, Delaney and Xtina, babysit the girls last night and the girls got make-overs. Emily got her normally afro curly hair straightened and Madeline got her hair crimped. They both got their nails done and were so proud of their new looks.

I finally setup a VPN connection into my home network so that when I'm traveling, I can easily access all of my files and computers. I'd been doing it before through port forwarding through my router, but that had it's limitations. I originally was looking at some of the new routers that have the capability built in, until I noticed that XP Pro has the capability natively. Here's a good article explaining how to set it up. Couldn't be much easier.

Great article on the challange of being in community with people radically different from yourself:

More pointedly, I am coming to terms with the fact that community is not about people like me. It's easy to be in community, or at least on congenial terms, with people who are similar to me: similar musical tastes, similar clothing tastes, similar discussion interests, similar stages of life, similar political leanings, similar biting critiques of other people.

I guess that's one of the things I like about going to a relatively small church. I'm forced to bump up against people that are the totally different than me. I'm forced to interact, get to know, learn to love and walk through conflict with people that are the opposite of me in terms of age, political leanings, sense of humor and every other category I can think of.

Look around the room next time you’re gathered with other followers of Jesus. See the different faces: some attractive, some homely, some happy, some depressed, some attentive, some distracted, some awake, some sleeping. Think about the person you just bumped into at the door whom you’ve never met beyond an awkward initial conversation. Think about the person across the room you would rather not have to talk to, let alone see. Think about the people you’re glad you haven’t seen this time. Did I hear a sigh of relief?

If only Jesus had formed a community out of something other than ordinary, irritating, disagreeable, quirky people. Life would certainly have been easier for all of us. But also less true

.

If left to my own, I wouldn't interact with some of the people that I interact with at church. I'd rather stay with people just like me. It'd be easier. As the article says, my church is full people who who are "other than ordinary, irritating, disagreeable, quirky people". Just like me.

I think we all agree that there's some weird stuff out there on the internet, some odd, some disgusting. I think I've discovered the strangest, most pointless web site in the world. The site is called Crying While Eating. The site is a collection of videos that people have uploaded of themselves crying while eating something. There's a description showing what they're eating and what they're crying about - everything from the mistreatment of animals to the lack of true love in the world. I want to travel around the country door to door and ask these people to get a life, but I probably won't, unless I video taped it and created a web site called, "Going door to door and talking sense into stupid people.com"

I don't understand this site and why it's becoming so popular. It's called Crying While Eating. People on the site post videos of themselves, of course, crying while eating, and explain what they're crying about. I'm trying to get this. I'm not sure there is a weirder or more pointless site out there. Could someone please help me understand this?

I'm testing out the new Microsoft Desktop Search that integrates in at an OS level. It covers more document types than Google and doesn't require a browser.

Cathie, Will and I finally watched the last 4 episodes of 24 tonight. What a great ending. The VP turned President was quite the tool. Will and I considered going over to the actor's house and punching him. Jack Bauer ha a new identity, and he's wearing sunglasses in the end, the Amber Vision sunglasses as seen on TV. Unfortunately, his new secret identity should be "Jack Ndabox".

Google has a nice new personal portal page.

Emily came up to Cathie today and said, "Mom, you're a Jane Ass". Cathie clarified and found out that she's also a genius.

I finally watched the season finale of Lost. 2 hour show, 80 minutes of commercials. Wow. I still need to get caught up on episodes of Alias. Cathie and I are 2 episodes behind the season finale. Will's coming over tonight to get caught up on 2 episodes of 24, plus the season finale. I'm off tomorrow and Monday!

At the gym this morning I was listening to a message by Noel entitled Why I hate Budweiser in a can. It's a phenomenal message that tackles an issue I've wrestled with: The paradox of how the Bible seems to say at the same time that salvation is our decision and at the same time that we must be chosen by God. He approaches it in a very humble way and does a decent job explaining some scientific principles (for a History major). The big issue that I have with his message, him, and now our friendship, is that he insults Budweiser in a can. He could have said that my kids were ugly, but Bud in a can? What other drink speaks of summer like Bud in a can? Barbecuing on a nice summer day? Wakeboarding and tubing out at Brad's cottage? My friend, my Bud in a can. The only other person I've heard take this kind of position with Budweiser is Mr source text himself, my friend Ken Buck. To think that they could be so far apart on so many issues (like postmodernism, hence Noel christening himself Po-Mo-Noel), yet agree on one thing, Bud in a can. The best part of the message is where Noel compares Jonah to Jack Black. I'll never think of one without the other.

Whoah. This is wild. It's an anti-drug/prostitution campaign that shows pictures of prostitutes and addicts over time based on police mug shots.

I'm pretty ambiguious about Llamas in general, but this is amusing: The Llama Song

I flew down to Dallas this afternoon and it was painful for a few reasons:
1. I flew American Airlines. Detroit being Northwest's hub, I rarely fly anything but Northwest. I have no frequent flyer status on American, but that wasn't such a huge deal. The aisle seat I was in was designed for a guy with very, very tiny shoulders. Shoulders that wouldn't get hit everytime someone walked down the asile.
2. The whole flight was full of people from a huge network marketing convention that was in Detroit over the weekend. The gal sitting next to me tried to sell me on it. I explained to her that I was heavily sedated, not right in the head, and not the kind of person she would want selling her stuff.
3. We had bad turbulance and a bad pilot. The plane jumped around like crazy and our landing was horrible. We slammed into the tarmac, bounced up and then slammed in again.

It was 90 degrees when I landed in Dallas, TX.

We had our Project 311 board meeting last night. Great meeting, great group of guys all with a passion around what we're doing. We've grown together as a board and cool to see everyone headed in the same direction. Anyways... We had a conversation last night around church sponsorship of what we're doing in 311 and how they could sponsor us in the same way they sponsor other missionary groups. No big deal... except for how it was communicated, and how immature I must be to think it was funny. One of the board members, who will remain nameless, (Bruce), explained that "To understand where the church is coming from, you really have to put yourself in the missionary position and..." He didn't get much further as I fell on the floor laughing. Like I said, immature.

Haven't sold our house yet. Found a couple we like, but I'm not real interested in owning two at the same time, so we're holding off on making any offers. It's only been two weeks, but what a load of fun trying to keep the house immaculate for the showings.

I'm a big fan of Billy Graham. I so respect the way the guy has lived, the way he communicates his message and how he's stood the test of time. This audio photo album in USA Today is cool. Here's the associated article. When he's asked how he hasn't fallen into the Mark Freier or Jimmy Swaggert trap of infidelity as a pastor, he explains "I told God that if I was ever unfaithful to my wife, I wanted him to strike me dead." Pretty decent motivation if you ask me.

In the article, he talks about his lack of involvement in politics,

"If I took sides in all these different divisive areas, I would cut off a great part of the people that I really want to reach. So I've felt that the Lord would have me just present the Gospel" and stay out of politics, he says.

Televangelist Pat Robertson asserts that God has lifted his "hedge of protection" around the judges, legislators and voters who agree with allowing abortion or gay marriage or physician-assisted suicide. But asked whether God has forsaken America, Graham's answer is fast and firm: "Noooo!" His reply stands on faith.

"The Lord said, 'I will never forsake you.' No matter how sinful we are, how bad we are, God loves us. At least from my point of view, I believe he sent his son Jesus Christ to die on the cross for us because he loves us and he doesn't have any termination to that love."

Actual line from Sunday's Simpsons episode:
Bart: "Look at me, I'm a grad student, I'm 30 years old and I made $600 last year."
Marge: "Bart, don't make fun of Grad students, they just made a horrible life choice."

Nate and I went to see Star Wars yesterday afternoon. My flight got in around 11 and I picked Nate up from school and we went to the 1:30 showing. We loved the movie, and whispered back and forth throughout the whole thing about the stuff we noticed. It was great to get the closure on everything and have the things come back around to an end-point in the story.

On the way home, Nate and I had a couple of great discussion about the movie. A little background on the discussion: Since our kids were little, we've tried to teach the idea from Proverbs 4:23 "Above all things, guard your heart, for it affects everything you do." We've tried to teach the kids to look at what they do, say, watch, read, listen to and hang out with in this context. Nate and I had a great conversation about the gradual decline of Anakin Skywalker in the movie as he slowly gives into one small step across the line at a time. We then talked about how Sidius was like the snake in the garden, tempting Luke with power and the belief that the Jedi Council did not have his best interest in mind. Cool abstract thinking for an 8 year old.

As we talked, Nate through out there, "Dad, Jesus wasn't perfect." I responded quickly with "Sure he was. What makes you say that." Nate replied back, "No he wasn't, he did things that were wrong, like ditching his parents to teach at the temple and throwing the tables around in the temple." We talked about these for a while, and he stuck to his point. We agreed we'd go look the stories up in the bible and try and understand them better. I'd proud that he's such an independent thinker on this stuff, not satisfied with easy answers on his faith and willing to go dig deeper at an 8 year old level. I'd rather have a critical thinker who owns his faith than a puppet who can recite all of the bible verses but doesn't process what he believes to make it his own.

I went on this ride called the Slingshot today. Twice. The towers are 300 feet tall with a giant cable stretched to the bottom of the ride with two seats attached. You sit in them and it launches you straight up at 96 miles per hour to a height of 365 feet. You flip over, face downward and fall 200 feet, bounce and repeat. None of the guys I work would go until I went the first time and then Ross decided to join me. We got the DVD of it.


After the Slingshot, we went over to Disney Town over by Pleasure Island. It's a collection of resturants and other Disney crap. People were in line for Star Wars, dressed the part. They'd walk by and I'd say "I'll bet your going to the new Star Trek movie tonight, right?" They all acted pretty offended that I didn't know what movie they were there to see. It amused me and that's about all that matters. I'm flying out tomorrow morning at 8. Going to see Star Wars with Nate at 1:30.

Anyone out there enough of a css guru to figure out how to set up the bloglines script to output li list tags with each bloglines item? This is about the closest I've found to changing the output, but it doesn't add the li tags in. The best solution I've seen so far is to do a nightly dump of my OPML file and then parse it using perl scripts at night into the appropriate HTML code. Seems like it'd be a lot easier for bloglines to just insert the appropriate list tags in their output. This one has potential, but I don't think I can embed PHP into my blogger hosted blog.

I'm in the process of changing my blog template. Felt like it was time for a change. 10:30 at night after a long day is probably the wrong time to do it.... I feel obligated to stay up and get it right. Not gonna happen.

We went to dinner tonight at the Universal Studio's City Walk. It's a huge outdoor collection of resturants in the big theme park style. We ate at Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville. The margarita's stunk, the food stunk, but the atmosphere was cool. Not sure how the two tied together, but there was a woman walking around on 6 foot stilts making balloon animals for the kids.

I don't typically talk to the people I sit next to on airplanes, but I struck up a conversation with the guy next to me and I'm glad I did. He was one of the more interesting people I've met in a while. He works for a conservation organization called Ducks Unlimited which I learned all about, but that wasn't the most interesting part. He grew up in Anchorage, Alaska where he worked Salmon Boats and at Salmon Cannerys. He told me all about those industries, the legalized pot up there, the 3 months of daylight and darkness and the wacked out culture up there. It was fascinating. I wanted to write down some of the stories and put them here, but I'm drawing a blank. I'll post them when I remember them.

I walked off the plane and there was a guy standing there with one giant four fingered mickey mouse hand on, holding a Disney Cruise sign in the other hand. I asked him if he was aware that he only had four fingers. He quickly responded back that he'd had five before he visited Wendy's recently.

I flew from Kansas City down to Orlando with a co-worker and friend of mine, Matt. I went through security first and saw a whole bunch of the security people standing around. I asked two of them to give my buddy the "bonus treatment", not really thinking they would. They did. Two guys searched every inch of him and his stuff for 10 minutes. Funny to me, not so funny to him.

Susan had the baby! Benjamin Kenneth Kurt was born this morning and weighs around 7lbs 2oz and 19 inches wide. More importantly, he doesn't have a really big head like Kevin and the other two kids. Kevin said that it was a pretty easy labor, I guess as easy as having a baby can be, and that's all relative to a guy's perception on labor.

Nate's excited that the boys still rule the numbers in the family!

Tom won Survivor! Am I the only one with a plutonic man-crush on Tom?

I was laughing out loud on the plane ride yesterday while I was reading this book. Most of you probably haven't heard of Kevin Smith, but he's one of my favorite directors out there. I guess he's the only director that I really give a hoot about or would bother to read one of their books. You've probably seen him on Leno doing the Roadside Attraction pieces (damn funny) if you haven't stooped low enough to see the Clerks/Mall Rats/Dogma/Jay and Silent Bob movies.

My sister Susan is on the way to the hospital to have her baby. She'd invited Cathie to come be in the delivery room with her, but since I'm on the road, it's probably not going to work out for her. Nate's rooting for a boy, because if it's a girl, that baby, combined with Beth and Jon's upcoming baby girl will tip the balance of the nieces and nephews to the feminine side. Maddie and Emily are of course hoping for a baby girl. For Kevin's sake, I'm rooting for a boy.

Susan called me a few weeks ago to bounce some names off me - not to see if I like them, but to see how much fun could be made of them. This stems from all of the nieces and nephews getting strange nick names. Heck, everyone in our family has one nick-name or another. It was a big part of our teasing each other growing up as kids and now they've stuck and become endearing. Except for Dan's nickname which he's never really take to. Ask him about it sometime. We've had Matthew - Shabadu. Gabe - Gabriella. Allie - Shiek Ali-bab-wa. If it's a boy, kevin wants to name it Luke so he can say "Luke, I am your father." Seems like a big committment for a one-liner like that, but it'd be worth it to me.

I flew into Kansas City yesterday, had some meetings and I'm flying down to Orlando today through Thursday. I'm taking Nate out of school on Thursday afternoon so he and I can go see Star Wars. We got 1:30PM seats for the Digital Showing at Emagine theatre. I saw the movie Sin City on the Digital Screen and was blown away. The difference between film and digital is the difference between regular TV and HDTV. Both the sound and visual quality are astounding! He and I are both pretty excited about the new Star Wars. We've been playing the game Episode III - Revenge of the Sith which is amazing! The light saber battles are the best part of it. Nate and I have daily "Champion of the World" competitions.... I've only held the title for one day - kinda embaressing.

There's a Corel User's group conference at the hotel I'm in. Who the heck still uses Corel/Wordperfect software? Who still uses it to the degree that thy would travel some distance to meet with other users to talk about Corel software. It's an odd looking group here for this conference. Lots of fellas. Gee, that's suprising. Men at a computer user's group conference?

I'm giddy as a school girl about the new XBOX 360. It's a completely high definition based system, complete with 3 core CPU's. It sounds amazing. Check here for more info.

My little sister Susan is having contractions. It's her third. They're about 8 minutes apart. They don't know if they're having a boy or a girl. My bet is it's one or the other.

I'm back from Leesburg, VA. I'm so glad to be home. 3 meals a day of bad cafeteria food (the food at this place has gone severely downhill over the past 10 years), hallways like mazes and not going outside except to hit the gym. The only nice thing was the unlimited starbucks certificates we had for the onsite Starbucks.

My nephew Gabe (Susan and Kevin's son) had to go to the hospital last night after he shoved a lego up his nose. Apparently Kevin heard Gabe screaming at bedtime, figuring he's just throwing a fit. Kevin goes up and Gabe tells him that his nose hurts. Kevin asks why and Gabe replies "Because there's a lego in it!" Kevin responded with the obvious question "Why do you have a lego in it?" His response: "Because it looked like it would fit". Urgent care couldn't get it out. It finally came out with a good nose blowing.

This goes to prove Drew and Mike's theory that "If there's a hole, something's going in it."

As I was laughing, Cathie reminded me that Nate had a similar deal happen. She'd taken him into the doctor because of an ear ache. The doctor looked in and pulled out an eraser from his ear. He couldn't remember how it got there until it suddenly came to him. He'd found it on the bus and thought it was an ear plug. People were being loud, so he put it in his ear. Makes sense.

We had a fun weekend. I met up with Bill Belanger to go mountain biking out at Island Lake. It was a good time to catch up with Bill. We don't do it enough now that we're not on the same team. I got Cathie a mountain bike for Mother's day. I'd gotten her one (in theory) when she was pregnant with Emily, but we never actually got the bike. I sized it and picked it out for her, and brought it home to suprise her. Friday night I had a Project 311 Vision meeting. On Saturday I woke up early and hung out with Emily for a while, until I started jonsing for some sugar cereal. I ran up to the store at 8 and picked up my two favorites - Captain Crunch and Golden Grahams. We had a showing that morning at 11:30, so Cathie and I brought Nate an Madeline over to a neighbor's house while we hooked the bike-buggy up and took Emily on a bike ride. We rode over to a nearby neighborhood where we checked out a model home. We had more showings that afternoon so we took the kids and their friends to 7-11 and then to the park to hang out for a couple of hours. We ended the grilling bonanza with Chicken Fajitas and Cathie and I got caught up on Tivo'd episodes of Alias that night.

On Sunday, I let Cathie sleep in and made her breakfast in bed, except I figured out too late that we no longer had a breakfast-in-bed-tray. Oops. I took the kids to church and let Cathie lounge around the house for a while. I hadn't hung out with the kids in Fusion for a while and it reminded me of how much I love those guys. After church, we headed over to Cath's Mom and Dad's house. They have an awesome in-ground pool and we had beautiful weather, so we hung out in the pool for Mother's Day, grilling out and splashing around. I was messing around with some of the new features on my new digital camera, including the speed-shot mode, which takes three pictures in a second, capturing action shots really well. Cathie's brother Ed was doing front and back flips, so I was getting stop motion shots of the action, which turned out really cool. We headed back around 6 so I could pack and get to the airport. I finished up some homework for this class on the plane and got here safe and sound.

I just got into my hotel.... Not really a hotel so much as a giant maze. I think I complain about this place everytime I come here... so this is really no different, just accentuated by the fact that I arrived at midnight half asleep, which made it a little tougher. The place is the National Conference Center in Virginia. It was built in the 60's as a training facility for Xerox. It was designed to put you in a learning frame of mind and is a giant multi-level pyramiding maze, color coded and numbered to "help" you find your way around. Check out this map... This is how you figure out where you're supposed go. Simple enough, right?

I'm here through Friday for the pilot course of some Principal training that we're going through. The challange with training like this is that it's like a vacation, except you're still expected to perform the same amount of work, e-mail and voice mail as you would during a normal work week. Fun, eh?

Project311.com is up finally up and does a nice job of giving an overview to what we're all about. If you haven't heard of it, Project 311 is a ministry that I'm a part of that focuses on teaching students to love God passionately and love others selflessly by equipping churches and youth pastors with the tools they need to make this happen. Our first big event is coming up in June, Blitzfest, where we'll have 75 bands at a two day festival, complete with skate park, climbing wall and inflatable crap.

One of my co-workers, Chris Jones, was traveling on a project and somehow was selected as the guest of the day at the Hampton Inn. They do a random drawing, put your name up, give you a parking place and free breakfast in bed.

Buck sent me this bumper-sticker site. Some of my favorites:

This has been my first whole week at home without traveling in a long time. I had a chance to get out and go mountain biking today, the first time of the year. It was phenomenal! I went out to Maybury State Park's Singletrack, which is about 4.5 miles. It's my new favorite trail. They lengthened it and added some really technical stuff with rock piles and tree-falls. You get a lot of speed without any really nasty uphills. I'd forgotten how much I love mountain-biking. I love the danger, the adventure, the exercise, the challange, the peace and quiet, the smell of the woods, the sweat, the speed and again, the danger of it all.

Today felt great. I think the cardio and circuit training I did for my legs this Winter paid off a little bit. I'm going biking wtih Bill and Noel tomorrow. I'll know just how out of shape I am then.

I was just in awe as I looked around me today biking. It smelled so good, looked so green, it was just beautiful. Made me wonder how heaven can be better. I got to thinking about something I'd read on the can this morning in the book Epic, by John Eldredge. He was talking about the ultimate restoration of things as referenced in Revelations 21:5 (Behold, I make all things new.) He goes on to talk about a great passage from the end of The Chronicles of Narnia, when everything was restored:

It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed, and then cried: "I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this.

I got to thinking that what I was blown away by out there in the woods was just a glimpse of what the world will be like once it's restored to it's original beauty. Wow.

Emily's pre-school class had their mother's day celebration today. The kids made the mom's these beautiful hats out of wallpaper. Cathie came down into my office wearing these piece of art and I could hardly keep my hands off her. I suggested that she wear it around for the rest of the day, she declined.

We had a second couple come through our house last night and another tonight. The second couple is looking at making us an offer once they confirmed that the lot behind us is zoned residential. That's fair. Apparently this is pretty good traffic for having listed our house mid-week. Our agent told us that we wouldn't normally get anyone until the weekend. It's loads of fun keeping the house spotless. My threat of breaking the kids fingers for messing the house up is losing it's effectiveness.

We're on day 5 of the grill-a-thon. So far we've grilled steaks, bratwurst, hamburgers, hotdogs and a chicken on the grill. Tonight is ribs! This grill is awesome.

Spring is here! Even though we had frost this morning, it warmed up enough so that I can begin one of my favorite Spring and summer time traditions: Sitting on the deck, listening to the birds chirping while reading a good book, smoking a good cigar and having a glass of scotch. I had a chance to smoke one of my Cuban cigars that I brought back from the Bahamas. It was a Cuban Cohiba, first one I've ever smoked, and probably the last. Very rich ciar, great draw, too peppery for my taste, but very smooth.

Our house is finally on the market and we've already had a couple of showings. One couple was ready to make an offer, but haven't sold their home yet. Not sure on the other one. During the showings, I have my mac hooked up to my 52" HDTV showing a slideshow of the home, the yard, the rooms. Digital pictures look amazing on there. The feedback we got was that the people loved the home and were blown away by the TV, saying they stood there for 10 minutes watching the pictures.

We're pricing our home at $269,900, which I think is just right. There's this whole funky balance of wanting to price it to move, but not too quickly. If you sell too quickly, then you know you probably priced it too low. Checking realtor.com, we're the only 4 bedroom in the area in our price range, but we're one of the more expensive houses in our neighborhood, which brings the price down. We'll see what happens.

Something I overheard at the gym today as two guys were working out together:

"Dude, did you see my butt moving?! Whoah, that was wild! Check it out, it's still doing it!"

Simpson's Highlight from Sunday's Episode The Heartbroke Kid: Watching Homer dance around in leiderhosen to entertain german tourists while singing both verses of Ninety Nine Luft Balloons
- in German.

It looks like the Treo 650 is going to be out for Verizon on May 11. I've heard lots of dates, and this one seems the most firm. I'm in.

I had a first this weekend. Not necessarily a good one, but a first, none-the-less. A couple Sunday's a month I work with a group of guys, starting around 7AM to load up a semi-trailer full of all of the stuff it takes to do church at a high school. We jave everything packed in 15 of these huge 8'x5'x3' containers that we bring into the school, unload, do church, re-pack and then reload in the trailer. We have breakfast in between unloading and setting up and church, which gives us a chance to hang out and talk. Believe it or not we have fun doing it. This last Sunday Matt Gielow, Brad Jeffrey, Ted Haase and I loaded it up and counted 13 containers. On the way back, we counted 12. Odd. We went back through, checked for a missing container and didn't find it, so we figured we'd miscounted. The High School called today and let us know that it had been left behind. Amazing that in 15 years of doing church in a high school that it's never happened before.

Cathie heard Emily shouting "Mooooooommmmm!" from her room this afternoon while Emily was taking her quiet time. Cathie went up to her room and found Emily tied to her dresser, unable to move. Apparently, she had taken the strings from her dress and tied herself to the handles of her dresser in a giantic knot, eventually discovering she couldn't get free.

I got a chance to play with a Sony PSP the other day and I was blown away. What a piece of technology! The screen quality is amazing, the controls are great, awesome sound quality. Tough to justify for $250. But I wouldn't complain if I got one for a gift.

Good new torrent search engine: Torrent Typhoon.

I was listening to David Sedaris, Live at Carnegie Hall this morning while I was working out this morning, which in hindsight was a bad idea. If you've never heard of David Sedaris, he's on NPR (National Public Radio) quite a bit, especially on the show This American Life. He's one of the funniest story tellers out there. His books are good, but hearing him tell the stories live is hilarious. I was in the middle of lifting and would spontaneously start laughing. Didn't work well. But damn, he's funny.

We sat down with the kids and had a family meeting to talk about moving. We've been talking about it for a while, but the kids are in denial. Nathan and Madeline don't want to move away from their friends, Emily is just saying it because they do, since the friends she plays with aren't in our neighborhood. It's hardest on Nate, who's best friend Austin lives two houses down from us. They're inseperable, and we love the guy kid. I threw some paper up on the wall and we brainstormed on the good and bad things about moving. We talked through them and prayed about it as a family. The only consolation Nate had was that I told him we'd set up a DLP projector in the basement for video games and movies. This whole part of it is making moving hard.

I sold $80 worth of my crap at our neighbor's garage sale! I was going to toss it all. My neighbor did all the work and I collected the money. Nice setup.

I worked some more on the yard yesterday, trimming the shrubs and cleaning all of the leaves and crap out of our back lot line. Not a lot of fun, but it looks nice now. We had our real estate agent over on Saturday to do a walk through of our house and let us know what more we needed to do to get things ready to sell. She said we're good to go. We've got a couple coming over to check the house out on Tuesday before we put it on the market to see if we can work a deal. If that doesn't work out, we're listing it on Tuesday, sign in the yard and all. I'm impressed with our real estate agent so far. She's extremely high energy, talks a million miles a minute, but knows her stuff. We've started looking at houses online also. I think we're looking outside of the City of South Lyon, which is pretty much across the street from where we're at now. The tax differences are huge. We save about $4k/yr by NOT being in the City. The downside is well water and no snow removal. I gave Cathie our budget and I'm good with letting her pick out the house. She's picky and knows what she wants. If it's good enough for her, I'm sure I'll like it. The only restriction I have is making sure that the living room has appropriate acoustics and location for my HDTV. And an office for me. Other than that, I'm good with whatever she likes.

Cathie and I went to see The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on Saturday night. These books were the staple of computer geeks 20 years ago (wow that makes me sound old) when I was in high school. I'm a huge fan of all of the late Douglas Adam's books. They're style is a cross between an intelligent man's Monty Python and Space Balls. I remember playing the text based adventure game of HHGTTG of my TRS-80 Color Computer a long time ago. Anyways, I've been looking forward to the movie and I wasn't disappointed. I thought it was a great representation of the story and the characters. The big themes came through from the book, but I'm not sure how it would come across for people who hadn't read them. Screw 'em. I liked it.

The last of the fish were flushed today. Emily stood above the toilet watching them swirl around telling them, "I love you fishies! Bye! I love you!" We're trying things a little differently this time, letting the water sit for 48 hours first and only putting one fish in at a time. We'll see how many fish deaths we can add to the five we've already got.